Chapter Text
The first night, when he came, Tom was eight.
He looked out on darkness settling over the street, climbing to where he leaned by the gate of the orphanage. The cold bit at his bruised knuckles. Every little touch made it hurt more, and less. And he saw the woman.
The hair that the wind caught, from under her cloak, looked dark at first, until she passed a streetlamp and it shone like fire. She wasn’t looking at where she was going, she was looking at the road, and at what she carried in her arms. Then she reached the gate and looked up at him.
Her face was white, first with shock, and then it twisted into something darker. She looked at him like she had never wanted to see him. Later, he supposed he was everything she hadn’t wanted to see. He was what the future held for the thing she held. Tom couldn’t remember ever having seen the color of her eyes before.
They stood there a last moment, and Tom studied her eyes, thinking about the items in the jeweler’s window, the ones he never lingered over too long. Then he looked down at the thing she carried in her arms, wrapped in cloth too fine for the street they were in. There was an eye showing, curved in sleep, and a little nose.
The woman’s gaze followed his down. He thought he heard her inhale sharply, and she reached out—seemed to hesitate between the ground and his figure, and then shoved the bundle into his arms. She turned abruptly around, took a step away.
“His name is Harry,” she said, her voice low. Then she tucked her cloak tighter around herself and set off down the street, leaning against the wind.
Tom looked down at the burden in his arms, strangely heavy for how small it was, and thought about leaving it on the ground. He didn’t know what made him turn around and take it inside to Mrs. Cole and no doubt a storm of interrogation. Maybe it was the little mouth, a little open with every breath, as yet incapable of forming words.
Was it silk? Velvet? He didn’t know what this texture was, but the warmth of the cloth on his bare arms was something he could only have imagined before.