precise Gothic lettering painted upon rough-hewn birch wood, it declared that these were the grounds of the Children's Home for Human Enlightenment.
The sign neither mentioned hope nor counseled its abandonment. But in the driver's opinion, it should have.
Months had passed since the farm was given a new life, but the purpose of this place was unclear. Tales told of a flickering electric-blue glow in the windows at night, the pervasive whiff of ozone, muffled screams, and always—always—the loamy shit-smell of freshly turned soil. But the countless rumors did agree on one thing: Herr Doktor von Westarp paid well for healthy children.
And that was enough for the driver in these lean gray years that came tumbling from the Armistice. He had children of his own to feed at home, but the war had produced a bounty of parentless ragamuffins willing to trust anybody who promised a warm meal.
A field came into view behind the house. Row upon row of earthen mounds dotted it, tiny piles of black dirt not much larger than a sack of grain. Off in the distance a tall man in overalls heaped soil upon a new mound. Influenza, it was claimed, had ravaged the foundling home.
Ravens lined the eaves of every building, watching the workman, with inky black eyes. A few settled on the ground nearby. They picked at a mound, tugging at something under the dirt, until the workman chased them off.
The wagon creaked to a halt not far from the house. The mare snorted. The driver climbed down. He lifted the children and set them on their feet as a short balding man emerged from the house. He wore a gentleman's tweeds under the long white coat of a tradesman, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a precisely groomed mustache.
“
“
“You're still paying, yes?”
The doctor said nothing. He pulled the girl's arms, testing her muscle tone and the resilience of her skin tissues. Unceremoniously and without warning he yanked up her dirt-crusted frock to cup his hand between her legs. Her brother he grabbed roughly by the jaw, pulling his mouth open to peer inside. The youngsters' heads received the closest scrutiny. The doctor traced every contour of their skulls, muttering to himself as he did so.
Finally he looked up at the driver, still prodding and pulling at the new arrivals. “They look thin. Hungry.”
“Of course they're hungry. But they're healthy. That's what you want, isn't it?”
The adults haggled. The driver saw the girl step behind the doctor to give the towheaded boy a quick shove. He stumbled in the mud. The impact unleashed another volley of coughs and spasms. He rested on all fours, spittle trailing from his lips.
The doctor broke off in midsentence, his head snapping around to watch the boy. “What is this? That boy is ill. Look! He's weak.”
“It's the weather,” the driver mumbled. “Makes everyone cough.”
“I'll pay you for the other two, but not this one,” said the doctor. “I'm not wasting my time on him.” He waved the workman over from the field. The tall man joined the adults and children with long loping strides.
“This one is too ill,” said the doctor. “Take him.”
The workman put his hand on the sickly child's shoulder and led him away. They disappeared behind a shed.
Money changed hands. The driver checked his horse and wagon for the return trip, eager to be away, but he kept one eye on the girl.
“Come,” said the doctor, beckoning once to the siblings with a hooked finger. He turned for the house. The older boy followed. His sister stayed behind, her eyes fixed on where the workman and sick boy had disappeared.
The gypsy girl hurried to regain her brother. The corner of her mouth twisted up in a private little smile as she took his hand.
The driver thought about that smile all the way home.
Fewer mouths meant more food to go around.
The promise of a cleansing frost extended west, across the Channel, where the ravens of Albion felt it keenly. They knew, with the craftiness of their kind, that the easiest path to food was to steal it from others. So they circled over the city, content to leave the hard work to the scavengers below, animal and human alike.
A group of children moved through the shadows and alleys with direction and purpose, led by a boy in a blue mackintosh. The ravens followed. From their high perches along the eaves of the surrounding houses, they watched the boy in blue lead his companions to the low brick wall around a winter garden. They watched the children shimmy over the wall. And they watched the gardener watching the children through the drapes of a second-story window.
His name was John Stephenson, and as a captain in the nascent Royal Flying Corps, he had spent the first several years of the Great War flying over enemy territory with a camera mounted beneath his Bristol F2A. That ended with a burst of Austrian antiaircraft fire. He crashed in No Man's Land. After a long, agonizing ride in a horse-drawn ambulance, he awoke in a Red Cross field hospital, mostly intact but minus his left arm.
He'd disregarded the injury and served the Crown by staying with the Corps. Analyzing photographs required eyes and brains, not arms. By war's end, he'd been coordinating the surveillance balloons and reconnaissance flights.
He'd spent years poring over blurry photographs with a jeweler's loupe, studying bird's-eye views of trenches, troop movements, and gun emplacements. But now he watched from above while a half dozen hooligans uprooted the winter rye. He would have flown downstairs and knocked their skulls together, but for the boy in the blue mackintosh. He couldn't have been more than ten years old, but there he was, excoriating the others to respect Stephenson's property even as they ransacked his garden.
This wasn't vandalism at work. It was hunger. But the rye was little more than a ground cover for keeping out winter-hardy weeds. And the beets and carrots hadn't been in the ground long. The scavenging turned ugly.
A girl rooting through the deepest corner of the garden discovered a tomato excluded from the autumn crop because it had fallen and bruised. She beamed at the shriveled half-white mass. The largest boy in the group, a little monster with beady pig-eyes, grabbed her arm with both hands.
“Give it,” he said, wrenching her skin as though wringing out a towel.
She cried out, but didn't let go of her treasure. The other children watched, transfixed in the midst of looting.
“Give it,” repeated the bully. The girl whimpered.
The boy in blue stepped forward. “Sod off,” he said. “Let her go.”
“Make me.”
The boy wasn't small, per se, but the bully was much larger. If they tussled, the outcome was inevitable.
The others watched with silent anticipation. The girl cried. Ravens called for blood.
“Fine.” The boy rummaged in the soil along the wall behind a row of winter rye. Several moments passed. “Here,” he said, regaining his feet. One hand he kept behind his back, but with the other he offered another tomato left over from the autumn crop. It was little more than a bag of mush inside a tough papery skin. Probably a worthy find by the standards of these children. “You can have this one if you let her alone.”
The bully held out one hand, but didn't release the sniffling girl. A reddish wheal circled her forearm where he'd twisted the flesh. He wiggled his fingers. “Give it.”
