The Beginning Woods

There was a time, not so long ago, when a strange phenomenon swept the world, baffling scientists and defying explanation.

It had nothing to do with gravity or electricity.

It altered no weather patterns, sea levels or average temperatures.

The migration of beasts across the globe did not change, and plants continued to grow, bloom and die in their proper seasons.

Even the biochemical reactions that sustain life went on with unceasing vigour, as they had for millions of years, propelling organisms down myriad paths of development, just as the continents drifted apart, moved by the massive forces generated in the bowels of the earth.

Almost the entirety of creation was ignored by the new phenomenon, which concerned itself with one thing alone.

Us.

The crisis took place in every country. It was compared to a plague that knew no boundaries, or a fire that ravaged a forest. But scientists were able to cure the plague, and the secret of putting out fires had been discovered long ago.

There was no stopping the Vanishings.

When they first began nobody realized what was going on. Crumpled piles of clothes were discovered at the bottom of gardens or in cupboards under stairs, but that was no reason to suppose someone had been Whisked Away Into Nothing, that they had Ceased To Exist, that they had been Cancelled Out.

Such things were unheard of, after all.

Then the Vanishings began to spread. Before long thousands were Vanishing every day, and it became clear something unusual was going on—especially from a scientific point of view.

Of course, whenever a great problem threatens the world all enemies put down their swords and work together to find a solution. This was the case with the Vanishings. Scientists came from far and wide to form an International Symposium in Paris, and a special fund was set up to provide them with everything they needed to carry out their research.

It was decided to house the Symposium in the Trocadéro Palace, an old museum filled with ancient artefacts, archaeological treasures, paintings, sculptures and fossils. Artists and inventors had gathered at the Trocadéro in 1878 to mark their achievements at an International Exposition, so there was a pleasing historical precedent, but since then the palace had fallen into disrepair, and an immense effort was required to renovate it in time for the Grand Opening.

Overnight, a skeleton of scaffolding sprang up against the walls. Beneath the flapping plastic that cocooned the building a team of sand-blasters went to work on the decades of grime and soot that had blackened the granite and limestone. Hundreds of workers with barrows poured into the museum and carted off the many treasures to L’Hôtel des Invalides, where they were wrapped up and placed in storage. An army of engineers burrowed deep beneath its foundations, installing laboratories, generators, wires and computers, while gardeners dug their fingers into the barren slopes leading down to the Seine, planting trees and shrubs, decorating them with fountains and pools of water. Finally, stonemasons laid a terrace of granite flagstones in front of the palace, and erected golden statues around it to lend the old building the grandeur it deserved.

The opening ceremony of the International Symposium for the Prevention and Cure of the Vanishings was a great day for the human race: a day of hope and purpose. The palace gleamed like a hero’s smile, proudly bearing its pennants and flags as medallions of trust and responsibility. Below, the doctors and professors processed through the gardens, their chins tucked solemnly into their necks, their whole manner imparting gravity, wisdom and, most of all, determination. When they reached the terrace a band struck up and the crowds of people cheered. They were the champions of humanity, proclaimed the trumpets and the drums. They were going to pit the might of science against the mysterious disappearances that threatened to devour the human race.

After speeches, applause, music and cheering the Seekers, as the scientists came to be known, filed into the Trocadéro, where they immediately went to work on a buffet lunch provided by the Mayor of Paris. The people remained outside watching the windows, expecting a triumphant shout to go up at any moment, but the palace only settled into the evening gloom, like an old man in a deckchair folding a newspaper across his face. As darkness fell the crowd began to disperse. Flags, no longer needed for waving, were dropped onto pavements, banners were stuffed into bins and the cafés and bars began to fill up once more.

How long would it take the Seekers to stop the Vanishings? That was the question on everyone’s lips. Six weeks? Six months? A year? We do not know the length of the road ahead of us, the Chief Researcher said in his speech. We do not know if it will be easy or difficult. We must be patient. We must be cautious with our hopes.

So the world held its breath and waited for the first findings.

Meanwhile the Vanishings continued unabated. In every country, people Vanished without warning. Seeming to sense they were about to be consumed, they took themselves off somewhere secret, like dying elephants. Because of this, most of the Vanishings went unwitnessed—until the telltale puddle of clothes was found there was no reason to suppose a Vanishing had happened at all. But now and again people would find themselves trapped in crowded train compartments, or in busi- ness meetings, where it was not possible to escape the public eye. Some Vanishings even occurred live on television. Elenia Diakou, the Olympic champion figure skater, Vanished in front of six million viewers while singing the Canadian national anthem on the gold winner’s podium; Paul Herbert, the French financier, unintentionally set the record for the highest-altitude Vanishing when he disappeared from beneath his parachute at 57,000 feet; and Edwin Wong, the virtuoso pianist, Vanished while laying down the final chords of Rachmaninov’s Prelude in B minor, which the judges deemed so in keeping with the nature of the piece they awarded him the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium prize, even though he was not there to receive it. It goes without saying that there was no shortage of wild theories to account for the Vanishings—but nobody paid them any attention. Everyone was waiting for the Seekers to crack it. Only they could come up with the answer.

But the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, and the Symposium doors remained closed. In this vacuum of information a new, frightening idea took hold—that the Vanishings could not be stopped, that they would continue until nobody remained.

Only one thing gave cause for hope, a little quirk in the behaviour of the Vanishings that soon became obvious.

Children did not Vanish.

There was something about children the Vanishings did not like, or could not touch.

But nobody could say what this was.

After two long years of evidence-gathering and fruitless speculation, the Chief Researcher was forced to admit that the Symposium was no closer to understanding the Vanishings than before. In the storm that followed this confession a new man took over—an unknown scientist called Professor Courtz.

His inaugural address on the steps of the Trocadéro inspired fresh confidence in the hearts of those who were afraid. They took comfort in his military-style moustache, his grey hair slicked back with tonic, and most of all in his astonishing blue eyes, which sparkled with intelligence. There was something solid and reliable about him, something well thought out and structured, like a judge’s closing remarks or a balanced equation.

He ended his speech with an appeal for privacy to study the Vanishings undisturbed. All future contact, he announced, would be made through subordinates at monthly press conferences. Those watching barely registered the significance of these words. But that public appearance was indeed his last, and afterwards he disappeared from view.

At first this odd conduct was tolerated and even appreciated. The new Chief Researcher was a serious man who did not seek celebrity. Well and good! But after some time his reclusive behaviour lost its appeal. Nobody believed the bland reassurances of the Symposium bulletins, and an idea gathered force that the Professor himself had Vanished, that he—even he!—had succumbed.

It was around this time that the light appeared, glinting and twinkling in the highest window of the Trocadéro. Nobody knew who spotted it first, but there it was, shining through the night when all others had been extinguished. This tiny beacon was all the troubled citizens of the world needed to regain the faith they had lost. When the children of Paris woke from nightmares of empty houses, their parents would carry them to a window and point across the rooftops.

There he sits, they would say. There he sits, working away.

One day he’s bound to solve the Vanishings.

One day soon! 

There are many ways of disappearing besides Vanishing.

Some people fall into the sea and are marooned on desert islands. Others climb into the mountains, where they shiver and make clothes out of yak fur. There are even those who leave their lives behind and take to the open road, where they get sore feet and a magnificent suntan.

People have always disappeared; it’s nothing new. It’s something people just do.

D

OCTOR

​ B

ORIS

P

ESHKOV

Reflections on the Vanishings

1

I

N A

B

AD

L

IGHT

Boris tapped the desk lamp that had just flickered and died, then unscrewed the bulb and examined the faintly glowing filament, his worn, engineer’s fingers unflinching on the hot glass.

So that was it, he thought.

At long last.

When he’d left the Symposium he’d made himself a peculiar promise: he would continue his struggle to solve the Vanishings until all the bulbs in his flat had blown. Only when he sat in total darkness would he allow himself to admit defeat.

For days now he’d been carrying this last lamp from room to room—to the kitchen to prepare pots of coffee, or the bathroom to stare at his hollow-eyed reflection—trailing the extension cable round the towers of boxes and stacks of files that were his only companions.

And tonight his time had run out.

He sat in the darkness, overcome with relief. For so long now he had wanted to surrender and let it all go. He had done all he could, and more. It was time to stop.

Except…

He picked up a screwdriver and pushed himself to his feet. An hour later the refrigerator lay in pieces, and he had built a new lamp from its dismantled parts. But instead of turning it on and resuming his work, he placed his chair by the window and stared out at the lights of Paris and the streets they half revealed.

In the distance, across the rooftops, the many windows of the ISPCV were dark—all except one, where his old mentor, Professor Courtz, wrestled with the same mystery. He gave Courtz’s light only a momentary glance, and fell instead to watching the late-night loners of Montmartre, meandering about below as though trapped in a labyrinth from which there was no escape; the drunks, the flâneurs and the entangled; the eaters of opium; the criminals. One day soon, he knew, he would join them—when his struggle against the Vanishings had driven him mad.

What hope did he have, after all? He was no longer a top Symposium Seeker, with access to laboratories and state-of-the-art equipment. Now he was nothing more than an unknown Russian scientist sitting alone by the window of a tiny Montmartre flat. He had his pencils, his notebooks and his brain, and that was all.

But maybe that would be enough.

Of all the scientists in the world, Boris was the closest to unlocking the secret of the Vanishings.

But he did not know this.

If someone had told him—if, one day as he sat at his desk, a peculiar little man had crept out of the cupboard behind him and whispered softly in his ear: You nearly have it, my lad, keep going! he would not have believed him for a moment, even if the little man had then disappeared in a flash of blue light. Sometimes he thought the Vanishings were a mystery he would never understand.

Nevertheless, even Courtz and the Seekers were far behind Boris in the quest to solve the Vanishings. Boris had something they did not, something worth more than Symposiums and funding and hi-tech equipment.

He found the Vanishings beautiful.

Every night, on his own, he studied his files and reports, his photographs and videotapes, trying to find some kind of common cause or link between each case. Over and over in his head he saw the films he had gathered of people fading from the world. The Vanishings were sad, it was true. But were they surprising? He did not leap to this conclusion like everyone else. The Vanishings were certainly strange, but strange in a way that made him tremble with longing, a longing to understand them and put an end to them, and maybe even a longing to Vanish himself—something he was quite prepared to do, if it meant discovering a solution.

Answers, he knew, would not be coming from the Symposium.

Courtz and the Seekers treated the Vanishings like a problem of science. Boris felt a different approach was necessary. He reacted to the Vanishings not as a scientist trying to analyse a new phenomenon, but as a complete individual, a living, breathing, feeling soul.

The Vanishings, he had argued again and again, had nothing to do with science. They came from something else, something human, something poetical. They had sprung from a place where science had no authority: the human condition itself. They had been started not by a change in scientific law, but by an alteration in human nature, possibly even a tiny alteration—a single turn of a single screw in a machine of a million parts.

Perhaps this change had been brewing for centuries in the processes of history, like a potion in a Witch’s cauldron.

Perhaps it had struck like a bolt of lightning in recent years.

But it had come.

He lit a cigarette and continued to stare out of the window at the streets below.

As far as he could tell there was only one chink in the Vanishings’ defences, a tiny window through which he hoped to force entry. Again and again he came back to this clue, but he could not see what it meant.

Children did not Vanish.

Children had always been the choicest prize of the Wolf, and here was the Wolf, leaving them be. Not because it wanted to; not out of kindness. Whenever he saw a child pass in the streets below his window, he thought he heard the Vanishings snarling in the air—held at bay, somehow, by a lollipop. And this puzzled him.

Perhaps it is children who will stop the Vanishings, he muttered, scratching at his beard. Not men like me.

Thoughts like these, dispiriting to others, only aroused his determination. He switched on his improvised light and opened his notebook to look back through his thoughts. Doing so could set off a new association. But tonight he got no further than the very first entry—a short question, written the moment he’d learnt of the Vanishings. He’d erased it at once, but the letters were still visible, the indentation still there under his fingers. Now it looked more ridiculous than ever, no better than the wild guesses put forward by the celebrity scientists on television.

He snapped the notebook shut and threw it away from him, then fell once more to staring out of the window. This time there were no thoughts, no ideas, no memories—only a deep sadness that captivated him, and seemed to speak more truly of the Vanishings than words ever could.

He did not stir again until his watch beeped.

It was nearly time for the meeting.

Heaving himself to his feet, he slung on his rumpled black jacket, thrust some coins, keys, matches, cigarettes, pencils and paper into his pockets and left the flat, his heavy tread booming on the stairs that would take him out into the electric glow of the Paris night.

The question remained, faint in his notebook, faint in the back of his mind:

Ten minutes later he slid onto a stool in a tiny café hidden along the rue Jacquemont. It was two in the morning and as usual he was the only customer. Ghostly white sleeves hovered in the gloom behind the bar: with a clink, a candle and a coffee materialized in front of him.

He lit a cigarette and waited. In the mirror above the bar his reflection watched him from behind dimly glinting bottles, his pale face drawn with exhaustion.

If I solve the Vanishings, will I be able to sleep and enjoy life, the way other people sleep and enjoy life?

It seemed an impossible fantasy, but a pleasing one, and he was beginning to dream of a simple garden, of potatoes and cherry trees, when a movement in the mirror caught his attention. He was being observed, he saw, by a tall figure standing in the shadows near the door. If it was the woman he had come to meet, she had entered so quietly neither he nor the barman had heard.

Mrs Jeffers?

Who else would it be, this time of night? She moved forwards a little, enough for him to see long, wrinkled hands arranging the folds of a golf umbrella. Get him to turn off the lights, will you?

Lights? He glanced about. You mean the candles?

"You don’t turn off candles, Doctor Peshkov. It’s the cigarette machine. The beer fridges. And that absurd Eiffel Tower lamp beside the till."

But why?

You know why.

I do?

Look—have him light more candles if the dark frightens you.

But the barman was already making the necessary adjustments. "Pas de problème, he murmured. Pas de problème."

"Pierre, merci," said Boris, as candles appeared one by one in bottles along the bar.

Lovely, the old woman said approvingly. Now we can get down to business.

She left the shadows, and Boris watched in the mirror as she organized her limbs on the stool beside him. She was about as old as he’d expected from the antiquated handwriting of her letter. Her dark-grey hair was twisted into a serpentine tower, held in position—magically, it seemed—by a single silver pin, long as a knitting needle, thrust diagonally downwards. Ornate silver earrings hung from her ears, which drooped under their weight. Her face was long and bony, and covered in an elderly fuzz of white hair, while her close-set, penetrating eyes reminded him of a bird—a heron, or a crane.

It was all typical of the cultured, eccentric sort he’d expected. So why, as he studied her, did he feel a creeping unease? From the moment he’d seen her appear in the shadows by the door a small balloon of fear had been inflating in his throat.

I don’t remember the last time I was up so late, she complained, propping her umbrella against her stool. I suppose you adore night-times in cities. Wandering the streets. Collar up. Frowning like a murderer.

You’ve been following me?

At night? Not likely. As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing worse than a city at night.

And yet here you are.

"This is a special occasion. Speaking of which. Monsieur! Puis-je une WHISKY! She rapped on the bar, making a loud clacking sound, and he noticed several silver rings glinting on her fingers. It’s not past your bedtime though, is it?"

What? No. Actually yes, he said. It’s been past my bedtime for two days.

What’s keeping you awake? Monsters under the bed?

There are no monsters under the bed.

Are you sure?

Quite sure, he said. I’ve checked.

"You had to check? I like that, hehheh, that’s good. Merci, dear boy." The barman retreated with a hushed de rien, and she sipped her whisky. So what is it, if it’s not monsters?

Boris crushed his cigarette into an ashtray and imagined telling her what happened when he tried to sleep.

How he’d lie down and close his eyes.

How one of the Vanished would appear in his mind.

How he’d think about this person—who they were, where they lived, who they’d left behind—and how he’d find something had slipped from his memory, their age or some other detail.

How this would torture him so much he’d have to get up and go through his files until he found the missing information.

And then he’d be trapped. He’d have to look at them all, one by one. Because the thought that terrified him more than any other was that one had been forgotten—that not only a name, or an age, or a birthplace, but an entire life had slipped from existence for ever.

The café door banged—a stack of freshly printed newspapers hit the floor. He blinked and came out of himself. From the old woman’s face he saw that he hadn’t just imagined telling her—he’d actually spoken his thoughts out loud.

I thought you’d be like this, she said, touching his arm. And seeing you now, and listening to you, I understand so much about you. You’re a kind man, and you’ve taken the Vanishings to heart, that’s all.

Boris felt his eyes, absurdly, filling with tears. His rough fingertips fumbled them away. If the old woman saw she pretended not to.

So, he said. "Why were you so determined to meet me? Why not one of the Seekers?"

Oh, my little story isn’t something you want regular scientists getting their hands on, she said, with a quiet smile. It’s for someone a bit more… from both worlds, if you know what I mean.

There’s only one world.

Have you checked that too?

I don’t need to. I’m sure.

She clicked her tongue. Don’t say that. It doesn’t come from you, from your heart. Professor Courtz might say it. But not you.

The sudden mention of Courtz took him by surprise. He’s a recluse. How do you know what he’d say?

It’s plain what kind of man he is. All circuit boards and equations. He’d rather words were numbers and ideas were formulas. You’re different. There’s something of the cauldron about you. Something Witch-made. It’s a mind like yours that’ll solve the Vanishings, not a mind like his. Don’t you know that?

I know Courtz. He gave her a grudging look. Perhaps you know people you don’t know quite well.

You’d be surprised, dear boy, what I know, you really would.

Do you know how to stop the Vanishings?

I know how they started.

"That’s nothing. Even Pierre knows that. Pierre, les Disparitions, c’a commencé comment?"

"Par les Anglais," mumbled the barman from behind a newspaper.

You see? said Boris. It was the English. Everyone has an opinion. What’s so special about yours?

Who’s talking about opinions? This isn’t something I thought up. It’s something I saw.

We have to correctly interpret what we see.

And if there’s only one possible interpretation?

Then there is no need to seek out mine.

I didn’t come here for your opinion. I came here for your help.

My help?

Your help, she said again, nodding. "I would say your help alone, but we never really are alone are we, Doctor Peshkov? Even the most solitary traveller is pursued by demons. Or Wolves."

Wolves? He glanced at his reflection. The other Boris was there, no surprises. What do you mean?

First things first. I’ll tell you what I saw, then we can get down to business. Are you ready?

He nodded, and she leant in close to whisper in his ear. It was only a short sentence—having said it, she leant back and sat waiting for his response.

He scratched the side of his face to hide his disappointment.

Why did he bother with these meetings? They always turned out the same way. Some wild story. Some strange fantasy cooked up by a lonely soul. Over the years he’d heard hundreds of theories. And this one beat the lot.

"A baby started the Vanishings? He was unable to conceal his disbelief. That’s what you wanted to tell me?"

That’s it, yes, she nodded, before adding hastily: I’m not saying he did it on purpose. He can’t have known what he was doing—I mean, he’s only just learnt to walk.

I’m sorry, he said. I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous.

There’s that fellow Courtz again. Why do you keep trying to be someone you’re not?

Whatever our differences, we are both scientists. We share certain basic standards. By those basic standards, it’s absurd.

Is it? What have you discovered about the Vanishings that makes you so sure?

This was a good point, he thought, but he was unwilling to waste any more time. He reached into his pockets for some coins and was about to leave when a late-night taxi turned on the road outside. Twin shafts of light swept through the bar, catching the old woman side-on.

Dratted stuff, she muttered, flinching slightly. Just no escape, is there?

The moment was over in a second, but he saw it. Pain flickered in her eyes, and the skin around her nose and mouth tightened. Even her hair changed, the iron-grey gleaming white as the light passed over it.

Somehow he managed to conceal his first reaction. Then panic was galloping up on him. He fumbled for a cigarette, and snapped one match after another trying to light it. Giving up, he reached for a candle—but that stopped him dead.

The candles…

All that fuss about the lights…

The cigarette tumbled from between his nerveless fingers. Somewhere a thousand miles away, the old woman was speaking. Was he feeling all right? He’d gone all pale. And he was pale enough to begin with!

I’m fine. I just… I thought I saw… Please, go on…

He put his palms flat on the bar. Lowering his head, he forced himself to breathe steadily. Deeply.

And then he saw her umbrella, propped against her stool.

Her neatly folded umbrella.

His body went weak.

She’d been folding it when she came in. That meant she’d had it open. But it hadn’t been raining. She’d been walking around on a clear night under an open umbrella. Why?

You know why.

He felt himself collapsing. He did know. He’d just refused to admit it. And now the question was rising in his mind, no longer faint, no longer a whisper—but a roar.

Tensing his shoulders, he held himself together with sheer force of will.

It couldn’t be that.

It was impossible.

He would prove it.

He caught Pierre’s eye. "Lumière," he mouthed.

Bizarrely unconcerned, the barman sidled towards the switch that would ignite the chandelier glittering darkly above them. The old woman had noticed nothing and was still talking, but now he couldn’t understand a single one of the words she was saying.

Beschreibung deß Lebens eines seltzamen Vaganten, genant Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim, wo und welcher gestalt er nemlich in diese Welt kommen—

German.

Why was she talking German all of a sudden?

Panic drove him to his feet. She stopped and stared in astonishment as he stepped away from her. She saw the guilty flicker of his eyes towards Pierre, whose hand was lifting towards the tiny brass switch.

Oh you merry fools, she muttered.

Her hand snapped down for her umbrella.

The chandelier lit up in a blaze of light.

She jerked like a bomb had gone off, her arms coming up to cover her head. A second later she went for her umbrella again, bending down, but this time she keeled forwards, toppling off her stool. He threw his arms round her.

You idiot! she got out. Turn it off!

He stared in horror at her upturned face. Her eyes were bulging out of their sockets, white as hard-boiled eggs.

She was blind.

He’d blinded her.

And her hair! The grey tower of tightly bound coils was falling apart, crumbling like ash from a cigarette.

He ripped off his jacket and threw it over her.

PIERRE! he screamed. "Vite! Vite!"

The barman was pressed back against the wall, shaking his head from side to side.

"Vite? Comment-ça, vite?"

"La lumière, pour l’amour de Dieu! Éteins!"

Pierre’s hand flapped up.

click

Nothing.

clickclickclickclickclick

PIERRE!

"Ça ne marche plus! Ça ne marche plus!"

Boris vaulted the bar and struck the brass plate a terrible blow with his fist. It disappeared into the wall with a puff of dust—the light flickered but did not go out.

He spun back round.

The old woman was pulling herself along the bar, knocking over stools and bottles. His jacket had fallen from her head, and now the light was really going to work, turning her from a tall old woman to a hunched, shrivelling creature. Her spine arched into a question-mark curve, the vertebrae popping one by one. Her face drew against her skull like a sock pulled too tight. She lifted her hands to shield herself—they crisped and crackled into blackened claws.

He vaulted back over the bar and snatched up her umbrella.

Pressed the catch and pushed.

It jammed.

clickclickclickclick

Howling, he smashed it to pieces against the bar.

The old woman sagged against a table. Candles and bottles went flying.

Idiot… scientist, she got out. Teeth dropped from her mouth and rattled across the table like dice. Then she slid onto the floor, a tangle of skin and bones—curling up, smaller and smaller. Above her the chandelier rattled with malevolent energy, every one of its crystals shivering with delight as it punished the old woman for daring to intrude where she did not belong.

Boris cast about, snatched up a stool and sent it spinning upwards.

With a violent crash the bar was plunged into gloom.

Swiftly he was on his knees beside her. Her breath was coming in shallow gasps. She was saying something.

What was it?

Again!

Candle…

There were many scattered about. He relit one and held it next to her, anxiously touching her shoulders, not knowing what to do, how to help.

A twitch of her fingers motioned him away.

He jammed the candle in a bottle and slumped back against the bar. He watched that light as it worked its ancient magic, stroking her with the gentlest of touches, a painter at a work of restoration.

He’d nearly killed her.

He’d nearly killed one of the Forest Folk.

He pressed his trembling hands to either side of his head.

Now he knew two things he hadn’t known before.

Why the old woman had come to him.

And that it all very definitely had something to do with the Woods.

2

T

HE

ORPANAB K

OBOLD

Babies come in all shapes and sizes.

A baby might be beautiful or ugly, fat or thin, it will make no difference. Whatever its appearance, the baby will be loved, and will enjoy the nurturing consequences of that devotion.

The one thing a baby absolutely must not be is spooky. A spooky baby will struggle to kindle love.

Is this thing before me really, truly, in actual fact… a baby? That is the terrible doubt in the minds of those who behold a spooky baby. "Might it not be something else?"

The baby who started the Vanishings was one such spooky baby.

In those early days the Vanishings had not yet begun. He had set them in motion, and they were still to make their grand debut, but even so—right from the morning of his arrival at the Surbiton Centre for Orphaned and Abandoned Babies, he made himself known as an oddity.

Nobody knew where he’d come from. The ORPANAB nurses only knew he’d been found in a bookshop, and this lack of information was in itself spook-worthy. Babies arriving into their care usually came with some token from their previous lives. A tear-stained note. A snot-streaked blanket. This one had the nerve to arrive empty-handed.