Chapter Text
I dream of gods — and — monsters and the man who knew I was both.
(ember)
St Margaret’s Children’s Home sat in the heart of Lambeth, in South London. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant part of the city, either.
London was well known for its glass towers rising across the river, their mirrored facades catching what little sunlight the English sky was willing to surrender. Money poured into the City, into the Square Mile, where wealth had built itself a kingdom of stone and steel. It was not beautiful in the conventional sense, not compared with the grand avenues of Westminster or the quiet elegance of Kensington, but it was polished. Gilded. Impenetrable.
Lambeth was none of those things.
Here, the streets existed in a perpetual misery of rain-slicked pavements, overcrowded estates, cut-price markets and councils stretched so thin that there was scarcely anything left to give. The buildings were stained with years of soot and weather, their brickwork darkened by London rain. Rubbish gathered in corners. Shopfronts were boarded over, then reopened, then boarded over again. The city carried on around them, but Lambeth often seemed to have been forgotten somewhere along the way.
Across the river, the Square Mile glittered beneath a sky of money. Sharp-shouldered men hurried between offices in dark suits, imported leather briefcases tucked beneath their arms. Through the windows of towering buildings, Bloomberg terminals flickered endlessly with numbers, fortunes appearing and disappearing with the click of a keyboard.
The two worlds were separated by little more than the Thames.
It was possible to walk from one to the other in less time than it took to finish a cigarette.
Yet they might as well have belonged to different cities.
The Portland stone of the City, the polished glass and glowing ticker tapes belonged to an empire built upon capitalism and ambition. Lambeth existed in its shadow, as poor places so often did beneath the machinery of wealth. The river was not merely a river. It was a boundary. A constant reminder that prosperity existed elsewhere.
Westminster’s spires stood plainly across the water, impossibly grand against the grey sky, as though London itself had decided to display a life that the people of Lambeth could never possess.
Not even in their wildest dreams.
The borough received little recognition from the councils, and even less money. What funds existed seemed always to disappear somewhere else, siphoned away into districts deemed more deserving, more presentable, more important. Lambeth was left with the things nobody wanted: neglected estates, empty factories, crumbling buildings and streets where poverty had settled so deeply that it seemed to have become part of the architecture.
It was not the sort of place anyone expected to raise children.
Let alone house them.
And yet St Margaret’s Children’s Home had stood there long before the wars. Some of the children fortunate enough to have parents of their own believed that it would still be standing beneath the same grey skies a hundred years from now.
There was something strange about Lambeth.
For all its misery, it possessed the bones of somewhere that might once have been beautiful.
Georgian terraces stood shoulder to shoulder, their elegant iron balconies rusting above doorways blackened by years of grime. Victorian churches pierced the skyline with solemn steeples, their bells tolling above streets lined with bookmakers, off-licences and shuttered shops. Businesses changed hands so frequently that nobody could remember what had occupied a particular storefront six months earlier. Some were bought by men with connections to the gangs. Others were snapped up by wealthy investors who saw nothing in Lambeth but cheap property and never intended to do anything with it.
The council estates were harsher.
Soot-blackened concrete blocks rose above streets where Victorian houses had been demolished decades before, their exposed walls and broken windows bearing the scars of neglect. Concrete had begun to crumble beneath years of rain and frost. Communal stairwells stank of piss, damp mould and cigarettes. Windows were patched with cardboard. Washing hung from balconies above streets littered with cans and broken glass.
The railway viaducts were perhaps the last embers of whatever prosperity the borough had once possessed.
They swallowed whole streets of the neighbourhood, great arches of blackened brick passing overhead and casting permanent shadows over mechanics’ garages, abandoned workshops and damp storage rooms. Everything beneath them smelled faintly of mould. It did not matter how hot July became; the brick remained cold and wet, as though the darkness had seeped into it permanently.
Lambeth always reeked.
Diesel from the double-decker buses, beer and cigarette smoke outside the pubs, and the damp, earthy smell left behind by rain on crumbling pavements.
The sunlight was different there, too. Or perhaps there simply wasn’t enough of it.
In the wealthier districts, sunlight could turn old stone golden and make the city look almost romantic. In Lambeth, it rarely reached the streets for long. Buildings crowded together beneath heavy skies, and even in summer the clouds seemed determined to smother the borough beneath a permanent grey pall.
You were lucky to see a proper ray of sunlight. Luckier still if it lasted.
It made the place all the more miserable.
Some of the children at St Margaret’s called Lambeth a rubbish heap. The older ones had less polite names for it. They said people born there were destined to die there, as though the borough itself had some invisible chain wrapped around their ankles.
It was a ruinous place, filled with poverty.
Empty factories stood with their windows boarded over, weeds pushing through cracks in the concrete. In the place of demolished homes were patches of stubborn wasteland, where weeds pushed through broken bottles and wound themselves around rusted shopping trolleys that had become permanent landmarks.
The children of St Margaret’s knew the borough by its rules.
They were not written down anywhere. Nobody needed to write them down.
The first was simple:
Don’t cut through Bottle-Lid Alley.
That was where the drunks slept.
Everyone knew it.
More than one teenager had been found there over the years, beaten, assaulted, or worse. Mothers warned their daughters about it before they were old enough to understand precisely what they were being warned against. They would take their little girls aside before primary school, wagging stern fingers and making them swear they would never go near the alley.
Not for sweets. Not for money. Not because some stranger promised them a puppy.
Never.
The second rule was even simpler.
Don’t talk to strangers.
Given the kind of place Lambeth was, the rule hardly needed explaining.
Even the youngest children at St Margaret’s understood it.
They didn’t possess the sweet, unquestioning naivety children were supposed to have. Lambeth had a way of stealing that from them early.
A five-year-old might not understand what a drunk was.
A six-year-old might not know why a man lingering outside the playground made the matrons nervous.
But they knew not to speak to them.
There were places for children to play, of course. There had to be.
But no parent with a lick of sense would have considered them safe.
Not when drunken strangers wandered around the playgrounds, loitering beside rusted swings and broken benches. Not when discarded needles occasionally appeared beneath the slides. Not when the police were forever driving slowly past.
There were football pitches, too. Once, they might have been fields.
But the grass had been trampled almost entirely into mud, leaving behind patches of stubborn green surrounded by dirt, broken bottles and flattened beer cans. Boys played football there anyway, shouting across the pitch while police cars idled at the edges.
The pitches were one of the places the police watched most closely.
It was where they caught the addicts. The dealers. The petty criminals.
The men who had nowhere else to go.
Lambeth had learned to live with them all. And St Margaret’s had learned to live with Lambeth.
That was the reason nobody sensible would have chosen the borough for a Children’s Home. But sensible people, as the matrons of St Margaret’s often said, had very little to do with children like theirs — Orphans.
Most people who funded the Children’s Home had done so, far away from Lambeth, comfortable in their warm homes. Though sensible to a degree, perhaps, they didn’t know Lambeth. If they did, they would’ve moved the Children’s Home by now. Surely.
St Margaret’s might not have been as old as the crumbling ruins scattered throughout Lambeth, but the building itself was. The old families of the borough had grown up with it; and for as long as anyone could remember, the great old house had been an orphanage.
Wool’s had stood in its place for well over a century, its dark red bricks blackened by London rain and soot, its tall windows staring down upon the street with the grim severity of a prison. Most of the children who lived within its walls would have agreed that prison was precisely what it felt like.
It had first opened its gates in the late eighteen-sixties for the unwanted and abandoned children of London. Its name had been changed decades ago to St Margaret’s Children’s Home, but nobody in Lambeth had ever bothered to call it that. To the children who passed through its heavy doors, it was simply Wool’s—or Woolley’s, as the older ones called it.
The building had not softened with age. If anything, age had hardened it, as though every winter, every death and every generation of frightened children had left another layer behind. Whatever warmth it had once possessed had long since been buried beneath institutional paint and habit, and the borough that had grown around it seemed to have acquired something of the same hardness.
St Margaret’s was a cold place. Its corridors were narrow, its stairwells echoing, and every footstep seemed to travel through the walls. The building—and whatever ghosts had accumulated within it—clung to the children who slept there fitfully, leaving something of itself behind in each of them. Even those who escaped its gates for greener pastures—or the methden down Bobby Lane—never seemed to escape Wool’s entirely.
Lambeth had never quite let go of it either.
The old name belonged to the neighbourhood as surely as the streets did. Parents had grown up beneath its shadow. Shopkeepers had watched generations of children spill through its gates. Half the families in the surrounding streets seemed to have some story about a Wool’s child who had once worked in their shop, played in their alleys, or grown into a neighbour. There was old Mrs Amy Knight, for instance, fondly known as Grandmama Amy, who ruled over the Sweetie Shop with an iron fist and had been known to claim that half the children in Wool’s had been raised on her peppermint creams.
There was an odd sort of affection for the name.
Wool’s had been stern. Sometimes cruel. It had known more sorrow and death than any building ought to contain. But it had also fed and sheltered thousands of children who might otherwise have had nowhere to go. For all its faults, it had stood as a shield and sword when others had failed them.
So when the institution was renamed, Lambeth simply refused to follow suit.
Above the wrought-iron gates, the faded letters of WOOL’S ORPHANAGE remained, weathered by decades of rain and smoke. Beside them, fixed to the old brick-and-stone wall, a newer brass plaque sat: ST MARGARET’S CHILDREN’S HOME.
Officially, the orphanage was gone.
To the people of Lambeth, it would always be Wool’s.
Why wouldn’t they call it that, when it still looked like an orphanage?
The building occupied an entire corner of the main street behind black iron railings, their spear-shaped tips beginning to rust. The bricks, once a respectable red, were buried beneath soot, while ivy clawed relentlessly at the walls, returning almost as quickly as the gardeners could tear it down. Narrow Gothic windows stared blankly over the pavement, set too high for children to look out comfortably and too small to admit much sunlight.
Its front doors were made of oak so thick they resembled church doors. Every winter, damp swelled the timber until the doors groaned whenever they were opened. They had long since been declared a heritage treasure, which was the only reason nobody had thought to replace them.
Inside, the corridors seemed to stretch forever. Polished floorboards reflected the dim yellow bulbs humming overhead, while the walls—once painted a hopeful cream—had been darkened by decades of nicotine, coal dust and countless hands until they had taken on the colour of old teeth.
The staircase sat at the centre of the building, curving upward like the enormous spine of some extinct creature. Hundreds of thousands of footsteps had worn shallow hollows into its wooden steps, rounding them beneath the feet of generations of children who had climbed them, skipped them and, when nobody was watching, jumped three at a time.
The dormitories occupied the upper floors.
Rows of identical iron beds marched across the polished boards with the uneasy precision of soldiers on parade, each separated by the same measured distance. At night, thirty children breathed beneath a single ceiling while moonlight strained through thin curtains.
There was no such thing as privacy in a place like this.
The younger girls slept with dolls whose button eyes had long since lost their shine. Some had names stitched into their dresses by children who had already left. Others had no names at all.
The dining hall, unlike the rest, resembled a chapel.
Long wooden tables stretched beneath tall windows, and the smell of boiled cabbage had soaked so deeply into the beams that no amount of scrubbing had ever managed to dislodge it. Disinfectant lingered beneath it, along with cheap soap and over-steeped tea. Cutlery scraped against enamel plates while the shoes of matrons—and, in the early hours, nuns—clicked sharply across the floor.
St Margaret’s believed deeply in routine.
It’s good for the children, they always said.
It’s good for the soul.
Six o’clock in the morning was when the bells rang, dragging the children from their beds. Hair was brushed almost a hundred times if Sister Winnie was watching.
“I expect all of you to be presentable by breakfast,” she had said one morning, watching a younger girl struggle to tie a ribbon into her hair. “Or you’ll be scrubbing the dishes for the next month.”
The rest of the week followed much the same pattern: breakfast, school, lunch, school again, chores, dinner and lights out.
And most of the children at St Margaret’s got along well enough.
All except one.
Asteria Potter was a troubled child.
There were several of them at St Margaret’s. Most were troubled for rather ordinary reasons: hanging Sister Winnie’s knickers from the front gates, stealing toys from the younger children, refusing to scrub the supper dishes. Most were boys, and in a home crowded with girls, Sister Abigail was fond of declaring that it was simply in their nature to act out.
Asteria Potter was another matter entirely.
She was not a mischievous boy who knew no better, nor one of those spoiled children who threw themselves upon the floor when asked to clean a plate. Her troubles had begun long before she was old enough to understand what trouble was.
Nobody had ever liked Asteria very much.
Even as a toddler, stumbling uncertainly along the corridors on fat little legs, there had been something about her that unsettled the nuns. At first, it was only her eyes. They were too green, too bright, too strange—unnatural, Sister Winnie had once whispered, when she thought nobody was listening.
Then there was the matter of her temper.
Or, rather, her complete lack of one.
Asteria did not cry.
Not when she fell. Not when she was scolded. Not even when the bad men—the doctors, as some of the boys called them—came to give the children their injections.
Sister Winnie had once wondered aloud whether something was wrong with her mind.
It was not until Asteria was five that anyone stopped wondering.
That was the year Miss Pratcher went through the window.
There was no sensible explanation for it. One moment the woman had been standing over Asteria, red-faced and furious; the next, she was sailing backwards through the open window as though an invisible pair of hands had seized her and thrown her into the courtyard below.
After that, they began calling Asteria demon-spawn.
Not openly at first.
A few of the nuns refused to believe it. She was a child, after all. Children could be cruel, children could be strange, but this was impossible. Utterly inconceivable.
Then Amelia Ryne woke one morning with her hair knotted around the bars of her bed.
Another girl began losing handfuls of hair.
And Ryan Boyle broke his arm.
Or so he claimed.
He came screaming into Sister Winnie’s office with tears streaming down his face and his hand clutched against his chest.
“She did it, Sister! She did it with her mind. Ow! Ow! It hurts!”
After that, there was very little room left for disbelief.
There were seven attempts at exorcism.
None of them worked.
Eventually, the nuns gave up—not on the conviction that something was wrong with Asteria, but on the hope that they might somehow cure it. They moved her to the third floor, where she was given a room of her own, far from the other children and, most importantly, far from the children who had never liked little Asteria Potter.
Nobody thought to ask why.
Nobody asked why Asteria had thrown Michelle Pratcher through the window.
Nobody asked why Amelia Ryne had woken with her hair tied to her bed.
And nobody, least of all, asked what Ryan Boyle had done before he came screaming for Sister Winnie.
He was a bully, after all.
Everyone knew that.
It was simply easier to believe Asteria was a demon than to wonder whether she had ever had a reason.
St Margaret’s avoidance of the girl was something of a collective agreement.
Asteria went out of her way to make it easy for them. Even during assemblies, she kept to the back, sitting on the end of a wooden bench with her feet tucked beneath her, the toes of her shoes idly tapping against the cold grey tiles. From there, she could see everyone without being seen herself.
Unless one counted Ryan Boyle who still hadn’t forgiven her. Not after all these years. He had made that perfectly clear.
He was perhaps the only child at St Margaret’s who did not ignore Asteria—not because he wished to speak to her, but because he delighted in provoking her. He liked her anger. Liked the way her eyes filled with tears whenever he pushed too far, as though discovering the precise point at which she might finally break was some private game between them.
More than once, he had tried to push her down the stairs.
He seemed particularly determined to discover whether her arm would break as easily as his had.
Asteria’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed. Emerald-green fury burned beneath her lashes as she stared at the insufferable little—
Clap.
She startled.
Her attention snapped towards the head of the dining hall, where the high table usually stood. It had been removed that morning, leaving behind only the raised wooden platform upon which the matron now stood.
Clap.
The sound echoed sharply through the hall.
Forty-one children fell silent.
Mrs Davenfield stood above them, waiting.
There was a particular kind of arrogance in the way the woman carried herself—something polished and effortless that even the nuns found distasteful. Asteria had always assumed it was because Mrs Davenfield outranked them. The matron had been appointed by the parish priest to oversee St Margaret’s, and there were few things the nuns resented more than being ordered about by a woman who had not taken holy vows.
They disliked her.
Mrs Davenfield, Asteria suspected, didn’t care much.
She was not an old woman, though she possessed the peculiar severity usually associated with women twice her age.
She looked no older than forty, with the immaculate appearance of someone who considered untidiness a moral failing. Her brown hair was drawn into a tight knot at the nape of her neck, every curl brushed sharply into place, not a single strand permitted to escape. Her dresses were always dark and modest, buttoned high beneath the throat and cinched neatly at the waist, with a small silver brooch fastened beneath her collar.
Even in summer she wore stockings.
There was never a wrinkle in her skirt. Never a smudge upon her shoes. Never a hair out of place.
Her hands were much the same. Narrow and pale, with long, bony fingers and neatly trimmed nails. A wedding ring gleamed upon one finger, though nobody at St Margaret’s had ever seen a husband attached to it.
She kept her hands clasped behind her back whenever she addressed the children, as though even the smallest gesture might betray some forbidden softness.
Some hint of affection.
God forbid.
Her face was handsome, Asteria supposed, though only in the severe fashion of a statue. High cheekbones, a narrow nose and thin lips that always seemed poised upon the brink of disapproval. Fine lines gathered around her eyes, though Asteria doubted they had been made by laughter. More likely, they had been carved there by years of squinting at disappointing children.
It was her eyes that Asteria disliked most.
They were pale and watery blue, almost colourless. They possessed none of Sister Marion’s warmth, nor Sister Winnie’s quick temper. Mrs Davenfield rarely looked angry. Anger, Asteria had decided, was beneath her.
She was always watching, and somehow that was worse. There was something terrifying in being observed by a woman who never needed to raise her voice.
Mrs Davenfield was respectable.
A quality Father Michael valued, and it was precisely why he trusted her with St Margaret’s. The nuns suspected there was rather more to the matron’s closeness with the parish priest than either of them admitted, though Asteria had never understood why that mattered.
What mattered was that Mrs Davenfield had been given authority.
And she used it.
There was only one thing about her that made Asteria think she was particularly ill-suited to running a home full of children.
She wasn’t maternal.
Not in the slightest.
Mrs Davenfield regarded the children as numbers before she regarded them as children. Asteria sometimes imagined there must be a ledger somewhere containing all forty-one of their names, neatly reduced to ink and figures. Their grief was an inconvenience. Their tempers were defects in character. Their fears and nightmares were nothing more than childish nonsense that ought to be corrected rather than comforted.
And Asteria Potter, above all, was a problem. A problem-child of the highest order.
Strangely, Mrs Davenfield had never struck her. She had never called her demon-spawn, either—not aloud, at least.
No. Mrs Davenfield did something far more unsettling. She treated Asteria as though she were guilty already.
There was no smile sweet enough to fool her. No apology was ever sincere enough. Every missing spoon somehow invited Mrs Davenfield’s suspicion. Every broken window seemed to draw those pale blue eyes in Asteria’s direction. Whenever a younger child began crying, the matron’s gaze invariably found her.
Always her.
She had never called Asteria demon-spawn. Asteria was fairly certain she thought it.
Clap.
Mrs Davenfield brought her hands together once more, the sharp sound ringing through the hall.
Asteria eyed her suspiciously.
Announcements from the matron were almost never followed by anything good.
“Attention!” Mrs Davenfield called, clearing her throat. “Unfortunately, your weekend trip to Brighton has been cancelled.”
A groan rose from the children. It rolled through the dining hall like a collective death rattle.
Ryan slumped forward, his elbows knocking against the table. Several children booed loudly enough that the sound struck the rafters.
“Silence!”
The single word cracked across the room. The hall obediently fell quiet.
Mrs Davenfield waited until every eye was upon her.
“I promised you all an annual trip,” she continued, smoothing an invisible crease from the front of her dress. “So, instead, we shall be going to London Zoo.”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then the disappointment transformed itself into something considerably more enthusiastic.
Excited whispers broke out across the tables.
Mrs Davenfield lifted one long, bony finger.
“If you do not behave, none of you shall be going.”
Silence hung over the hall. Again.
“I expect you all to be on your very best behaviour. You will be going in three groups. Sister Agatha will take the younger children, from four to eight. Sister Marion will supervise those between nine and fourteen. Sister Winnie will take the older children.”
Her pale eyes travelled slowly across the room.
“I expect no complaints. No whining. You will all be representing St Margaret’s.”
Asteria sank slightly lower in her seat.
That sounded ominous.
“I want you to be on your best behaviour,” Mrs Davenfield continued. “Anyone who acts out will go without pudding for the entire summer.”
Gasps struck the hall. Forty-one children stared at her in collective horror.
No pudding?
That was almost sacrilege.
Mrs Davenfield allowed herself the faintest smile.
“Think of tomorrow as a Sunday service. You will rise early, dress in your best clothes and conduct yourselves accordingly. Do I make myself clear?”
A chorus of reluctant agreement answered her. Her gaze moved over the children once more. Then stopped.
“I’m looking at you, Boyle.”
Ryan stiffened.
“If I see muddy shorts again, you will not be going at all.”
Ryan scowled. His eyes flicked over his shoulder towards Asteria. As though any of this were her fault.
Asteria stared back innocently.
Well. Not entirely innocently.
She hadn’t reported him to the matron. She had merely told Sister Winnie. And Sister Winnie, as far as Asteria was concerned, was simply Mrs Davenfield with a rosary.
Asteria pressed her sweat-slick palms against the folds of her white skirt. It was the first truly hot day of the summer. The season had arrived reluctantly this year, dragged kicking through weeks of grey skies and rain—not that it made much difference in Lambeth. The borough always seemed to swallow sunlight before it reached the pavement.
She leaned back against the sticky leather seat, wincing as it clung to the backs of her legs. She had claimed a place near the front of the bus, well away from the cluster of children packed into the back rows. Amelia had declared that only the best sat there, making it abundantly clear that Asteria wasn’t among them.
Not that she’d wanted their company anyway.
The bus smelled of warm vinyl, diesel, and roast-beef sandwiches slowly sweating inside folded paper bags. Somewhere behind her, someone had already opened a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps, their sharp tang cutting cleanly through the heavier scent of diesel.
The bus lurched violently over a pothole.
Ryan’s laughter exploded through the aisle as one of the younger boys dropped his drink, water splashing across his scuffed school shoes.
Asteria rolled her eyes.
She detested him.
“Here,” she murmured instead, pulling a neatly folded napkin from her lunch bag and offering it to Sam.
The little boy looked up with a gummy smile, the gap where his two front teeth made him appear even younger than seven.
“Thank you!”
She gave a small nod before turning back to the window, resting her temple against the cool glass.
Lambeth disappeared street by street.
The roads widened almost imperceptibly. Boarded-up factories and soot-blackened estates fell behind, replaced by cream-coloured terraces with wrought-iron railings and window boxes spilling over with scarlet geraniums. The city seemed to straighten its back the farther they travelled, exchanging neglect for polish without so much as an apology.
The bus groaned as it climbed onto the bridge.
They were crossing the Thames.
Asteria found herself leaning closer to the glass before she’d realised she’d moved.
The river stretched beneath them, thick and brown, carrying barges that drifted lazily with the current. Sunlight shattered across its surface in a thousand broken pieces, softening the city into something almost beautiful—something it never seemed capable of becoming from Lambeth’s side of the water.
Westminster rose beyond it.
The Palace of Westminster sprawled across the embankment in honey-coloured stone, every spire, gargoyle and carved window catching the morning light. Big Ben stood above it all, its great clock face gleaming against an impossibly blue sky. Below, tourists swarmed the pavements like brightly coloured insects, cameras bouncing against their chests as red double-decker buses rumbled through the traffic with practiced indifference.
Sister Marion barely spared the landmarks a glance.
She was too busy counting heads.
Every few minutes she ticked another name off her clipboard, lips moving silently.
At last she smiled, clapping her hands twice.
The chatter died down—not with the instant terror Matron inspired, but with the obedient reluctance reserved only for Sister Marion.
“There’s the zoo,” she announced. “And when we park, I expect every one of you to leave in a proper line.”
A chorus of delighted gasps swept through the bus. Children abandoned their seats, crowding the windows until foreheads pressed against the glass.
None of them had ever been before.
Asteria stayed where she was.
Then she saw it.
A bright yellow mural stretched across a wall ahead, two giraffes painted so vividly they seemed almost alive. Their impossibly long necks rose above the painted treetops, reaching towards a cloudless sky with effortless grace.
For a heartbeat, they looked real.
“Woah,” Asteria breathed, unable to stop herself from smiling.
They slowly came to a stop, the doors of the bus opened with a loud hiss. Asteria grabbed her school bag, swinging it over her shoulder as she walked out of the front door, little Sam followed behind her. His shoe laces in a jumbled mess.
Her heart thundered in her chest. But she knew the Sister would help him. Sam had always been the favourite child, sent to St Margaret’s when he was barely a few months old — after being abandoned at the hospital by his teenage mother, who was thirteen and from an unsuitable home. Even Aster wasn’t immune to the boy’s sweet nature.
(He was adorable.)
Sister Marion blew a whistle, gathering the twelve children that were hers. She eyed Ryan and Asteria as they waited in line, the boy nudged her in the ribs sharply.
“Ow!” Hissed Aster. “Get off!”
“Boyle,” snapped Marion. “Leave Potter alone.”
Ryan scowled, crossing his arms as he muttered a sorry under his breath.
Marion’s brow arched. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
“Sorry, Sister,” he gritted.
Marion gave a curt nod, satisfied enough, before lifting the clipboard against her hip.
“You’ll go with partners—” she paused, staring down at Sam. “Honey, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with Agatha?”
“Can I stay with Aster?” Sam asked, already reaching for the hem of Asteria’s cardigan.
“Oh. I don’t think—”
“Please!”
“Alright,” sighed Marion. “But stay with Aster, okay. Don’t wander off.”
Sam beamed.
Great, she thought, now I’m a babysitter.
They stepped through the gates and into the zoo, swallowed almost immediately by the chaos of the crowd.
It was overflowing with families.
Asteria’s ears rang with it all. Babies wailed from their prams. Runaway children shrieked with laughter as they darted between their parents’ legs, chased by exhausted adults calling their names across the paths. Pushchairs rattled over uneven paving stones, while balloons bobbed overhead like bright scraps of colour trying to escape into the summer sky.
The air was thick with smells that seemed determined to compete with one another—fresh popcorn, sizzling hot dogs, sugary candy floss, damp grass, and beneath it all, the unmistakable scent of animals: musky, earthy and warm, drifting through the trees on the breeze.
Broad paths wound beneath towering plane trees, their leaves whispering softly overhead. Painted signposts stood beneath their shade, pointing visitors towards impossible promises.
BIG CATS
PENGUINS
REPTILE HOUSE
PRIMATES
Families flowed around them like a river.
A little girl sat proudly on her father’s shoulders wearing plastic lion ears until her ice cream slipped from the cone and splattered across the pavement. Her delighted grin collapsed into an earth-shaking wail.
Asteria winced.
“Come on,” Sam whispered eagerly, tugging at her sleeve. “Let’s go!”
They hurried after the line of children weaving behind Sister Marion towards the giraffe enclosure.
The real giraffes dwarfed the ones painted on the mural.
Their impossibly long necks disappeared into the blue of the summer sky, and their eyelashes were absurdly long—thick enough to cast tiny shadows across their eyes. Asteria found herself wishing, for perhaps the hundredth time, that she’d brought a camera.
She watched, wide-eyed, as one lowered its head to strip leaves from a branch, its dark tongue curling expertly around the foliage.
“They’re enormous,” Emily breathed.
Ryan folded his arms with exaggerated disappointment.
“I thought they’d be bigger.”
Asteria shot him a look.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You’ve never even been to the zoo before. How would you know how big they were meant to be?”
His ears flushed pink.
“I saw them on a documentary,” he said, lifting his chin with stubborn conviction.
Asteria snorted.
“You don’t watch documentaries.”
“I might.”
Sam tilted his head so far back his cap nearly slipped off. Grinning from ear to ear, he waved enthusiastically at the nearest giraffe.
“Hello!”
The giraffe ignored him entirely, continuing to chew with slow, dignified indifference.
Sam looked crushed.
“I don’t think he likes me.”
“I think he’s just busy,” Asteria said.
Sam accepted this with surprising seriousness.
They wandered onward beneath dappled shade, the crowd growing thicker with every enclosure.
They heard the lions before they saw them.
A roar rolled through the lion house, deep enough to settle somewhere behind Asteria’s ribs. Conversation faltered as visitors instinctively turned towards the sound, and a hush swept through the crowd.
By the time they reached the glass, however, the excitement had evaporated.
The lion hadn’t been roaring at all.
He’d only yawned.
He lay sprawled across a rocky ledge behind thick glass, his golden mane catching shafts of sunlight spilling through the high windows. After a moment, he rolled lazily onto his side and turned his back on his audience with regal indifference.
“Boring,” Ryan huffed.
Asteria folded her arms.
“He wouldn’t be so bored,” she muttered, “if I threw you in there.”
They sat beneath the trees in the courtyard for lunch before continuing through the rest of the zoo. Paper wrappers crinkled as the children unwrapped their roast-beef sandwiches, the smell of warm bread and meat rising pleasantly in the summer air.
Asteria took a bite.
The bread was still fresh, soft enough to almost melt against her tongue. It was one of the few advantages of living at a children’s home, she supposed. St Margaret’s employed a proper cook, and the woman knew what she was doing. Beef, chicken, fresh bread, cakes, sauces—things that tasted as though they had actually been made rather than produced somewhere in a factory and wrapped in plastic.
Asteria had always thought homemade food tasted better.
She took a long drink from her water bottle, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. The heat had settled heavily over the courtyard. Her T-shirt clung damply to her back, and loose curls had begun escaping the blue ribbon at the crown of her head.
Sister Marion passed around apple tarts after lunch.
Asteria ate hers in three bites.
She brushed the crumbs from her skirt, folded the paper neatly before putting it in the rubbish bin and returned her water bottle to her bag.
Then they were off again.
The Reptile House stood near the lake, tucked away from the brighter paths beneath a cluster of trees. A painted sign pointed towards it, its colours faded beneath years of rain and sunlight. Compared to the open courtyards and colourful enclosures they had passed through, the building looked almost forgotten.
Asteria rather liked it.
The moment she stepped inside, the temperature dropped.
Her shoulders sagged with relief as the afternoon heat disappeared behind the heavy doors. Cool, damp air brushed against her skin, raising gooseflesh along her arms.
The light was dim.
Only small lamps above the enclosures illuminated the darkness, casting pools of yellow across glass and stone. The sounds of the zoo became muffled behind the walls, reduced to a distant hum.
Asteria liked it. It was almost peaceful.
She wandered along the narrow passage, peering into the glass cases lining either side. Great snakes lay coiled in impossible knots, their bodies piled upon themselves like living ropes. Lizards sprawled beneath heat lamps upon sun-warmed rocks, their ancient little faces expressionless as they watched the crowds pass.
They looked remarkably unbothered by the children pressing their noses against the glass.
Perhaps they knew they were safe inside their glass castles.
Sam certainly didn’t seem to understand that.
He pressed his nose against the nearest pane.
“Look! Aster! Look!”
Asteria leaned over him.
A thick green snake lay curled around a branch, its scales gleaming beneath the artificial light. It was enormous—far larger than anything Asteria had ever seen outside a picture book.
“That’s a boa,” she said.
Sam looked up at her, wide-eyed.
“How do you know?”
Asteria grinned and pointed at the little plaque beside the enclosure.
BOA CONSTRICTOR — BRAZIL.
“Oh.”
Sam huffed.
Then he stumbled sideways.
Asteria turned sharply.
A large boy had shoved him out of the way.
“Get out of the way,” the boy snapped, poking Sam in the ribs. “I want to see the snake!”
His rat-faced friend sniggered behind him.
Asteria’s eyes narrowed.
The boy was enormous.
Not merely fat, though he was certainly that. He was broad and pink-faced, with a roundness to him that made his clothes look as though they’d been designed for someone considerably smaller. His blond hair had been combed into a neat little tuft atop his head, though the effort seemed rather wasted when the rest of him looked as though he’d eaten far too much pudding.
He had the unpleasant, self-satisfied look of a child who had never been told no.
Aster disliked him immediately.
Even Boyle seemed relatively tolerable by comparison.
His mother stood behind him, thin and rather severe looking despite the softness of her blonde curls. Her hair had been arranged into careful waves, not a single strand out of place, and she wore a dress far too formal for a day at the zoo. She had the polished appearance of someone accustomed to having every comfort life could provide.
The boy’s father was rather hard to miss.
He was a large, red-faced man with a thick brown moustache and a stomach that strained against the buttons of his firmly pressed suit.
The other boy wasn’t related to them.
At least, Asteria didn’t think so.
He was thin where the boy was broad, with narrow shoulders, a pointed face and small, restless eyes. His dark hair hung untidily over his forehead, and he seemed to find everything his friend did immensely amusing.
He laughed when Sam was shoved aside.
“Did you see his face?” he jeered, glancing down at Sam’s trembling lips. “Aw. Are you going to cry?”
Asteria gritted her teeth.
She didn’t particularly like most of the children at St Margaret’s. She had never pretended otherwise.
But none of them were as kind as Sam.
The boy would have given a lung to the world if he’d thought it might make it a better place.
“Leave him alone!”
The blond boy turned.
His blue eyes travelled over her, taking in the white skirt, the cardigan and the wild dark curls escaping from the blue ribbon holding her hair in a high ponytail.
He grinned.
“Or what?”
Asteria folded her arms.
She bit her lip.
What would she do?
There was very little she could do, and the little bastard knew it.
She glanced towards his parents.
Useless. Both of them.
The boy nudged Sam again, harder this time.
She caught Sam by the shoulders and pulled him behind her.
“Stop it!”
The boy’s grin widened.
“What are you going to do?”
His mother sighed.
“Dudley, darling. Come on. We can go and look at some of the other snakes.”
“But Mum—”
“Dudley.”
The boy snorted.
He turned back towards the enclosure, glaring at the snake as though it had personally offended him.
The snake had barely moved.
It seemed to possess the same opinion of Dudley that Asteria did.
Dudley glanced up at his father.
“Make it move!”
The man tapped the glass.
Once.
Twice.
The sound reverberated through the enclosure.
The snake didn’t move.
“Do it again!”
The man knocked harder.
Still nothing.
The snake merely flicked its tail.
“This is boring.”
Asteria glared at them, one hand still resting protectively on Sam’s shoulder.
“Then go away,” she muttered. “Find another snake to bother.”
Dudley huffed and waddled after his parents.
His thin friend followed loyally behind.
Asteria watched them go.
Pathetic.
She crouched beside Sam.
“It’s all right, Sammy. They’re gone.”
Sam immediately returned to the glass, gasping.
“Aster!”
She looked up.
The snake had opened its eye. The beautiful green creature slowly raised its head. Its scales caught the muted light, gleaming like polished emeralds. It regarded Sam for several long seconds.
Then it blinked.
Or, at least, Asteria could have sworn it winked.
Sam giggled.
Asteria felt a smile tugging at her own lips as he attempted to wink back, squeezing both eyes shut so tightly that his whole face scrunched.
“Sorry about them,” Asteria whispered.
The snake’s tongue slipped between its jaws.
“Speaker.”
Asteria froze.
“Can you understand me?”
The snake flicked its tongue.
“Speaker.”
Sam stared at her.
“Are you talking to it?”
Asteria grinned.
“It’s a magic trick.”
“Oh!”
Sam’s eyes widened.
“What’s it saying?”
Asteria glanced towards Dudley and his family, now disappearing towards the crocodiles.
“That they’re annoying little shitheads.”
Sam dissolved into giggles.
Asteria smiled.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I speak.”
The snake shifted, its great body tightening around the branch.
“Get me out of here, Speaker.”
Asteria blinked.
“Why?”
“I am sick of these fools.”
Asteria glanced at the glass.
She frowned.
Before she could answer, a familiar voice rang across the room.
“DUDLEY! MR DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT’S DOING!”
Dudley came running back.
“What?”
The thin boy wasn’t far behind.
Asteria barely had time to turn.
“Move!” Dudley shouted.
His fist struck her ribs.
Pain flashed through her side as she lost her balance. Sam tumbled with her, and the two of them crashed onto the cold stone floor.
A loud piercing scream tore through the room as Asteria looked up.
Dudley and his friend had stumbled backwards from the enclosure, their faces white with terror.
The glass was gone.
The snake remained coiled where it had been, staring serenely at the empty space where the barrier had stood.
Asteria’s breath caught.
She knew.
She didn’t know how she knew.
But she knew.
I did that. It was me!
Asteria stared at the empty frame.
The snake slowly uncoiled. Its enormous body slid over the branch, scales whispering against wood as it descended towards the floor. It landed with a soft, heavy thump.
Then it began to slither towards the crowd.
People screamed as parents stumbled backwards, dragging their families towards the doors as the reptile house erupted into chaos.
The snake passed directly beside Asteria. Its tongue flicked against the air.
“Thank you, Speaker.”
Sam had gone pale. He clung to Asteria like a limpet.
“Holy shit.”