One: The Winter

It had been a bad year for children. The winter was long and the reserves of coal at the Orphanage had vanished by the second month. By the third month snowfall reached the sills of the second floor. The world had been obliterated to icy blur, the horizon an unblemished sheet except for the tops of the ornamental trees that lined the drive poking through the snow like rotted teeth.

The warden first took axes to the dining hall's tables and chairs. The fires burned of deep lacquer and the cinnamon smell of besa wood. The bunks went next but these fires went quickly, the hunger of the flames greedy for the dried pulp pine. The library went last, books and shelving. The cook kept the book leathers for soup but no page was spared the furnace. Every record and document since the manor had been converted to orphanage disappeared to ash. A hundred year history of lost boys and forgotten girls surrendered to warmth for the abandoned living. With the last burnable scrap fading to ember and the orphans threatening to pull up floorboards and stair railing, the warden consented to sent a small group of boys to brave the outside and the things of winter.