Agnella’s Song
Suzuki Ootsuki
Old memories stir within me.
I remember the heat. Warmth. Joules. Life’s pulse, fluttering beneath the bones and flesh and blood and skin that shaped it. But in time, that life would follow the second law of thermodynamics—everything breaks down—and grow cold and motionless. So I did what I could to prevent it. Calming, binding, embracing, hugging, wrapping, adoring, and when all else failed—dissolving. Occlusion. Unification. Mating. Melding. Mixing. Melting together. Forming one thing: heat.
Oh. How warm…
✦ ✦ ✦
There are children in this world whose mothers sing them lullabies, whose fathers read them bedtime stories. Children who know neither hunger nor thirst, who count sheep and fall fast asleep on a comfortable bed with no rusty springs. Children whose sheets are warm, and free of mold, and don’t stink of the old man who used them last.
I grew up with none of that. To me, these sound like stories, like dreams, the stuff of imagination. Children sniffling, their backs hurting, their bellies empty; that was real to me. The furious creaking of misshapen box springs served as my childhood lullaby. In place of sheep, I counted the scabbed, itching wounds on my back as they healed. I owned nothing but my pain and the fact that I’d survived another day. My knees pulled up to my chest, I would curl into a ball on my side. This sleeping method was the first thing children learned in the orphanage.
I was eleven years old.
I was born on a stormy night, a few days before Christmas, in a poor farmer’s rundown barn. The wind bled through the walls. Unlike another child born on Christmas, the three wise men didn’t appear by my pillow. Indeed, I received no blessings at all; I was born and abandoned like a stray dog.
Normally, that’s where my story would end. A newborn infant hardly has the stamina to survive England’s harsh winter. If only my life had ended there, parentless, quickly growing cold. The light of my life would have been snuffed out before morning, and I would have slept until the trumpets called forth the rapture.
But it didn’t end there. The farmer found me. This farmer—the man who later adopted me—told me this story at every opportunity. He’d seen a strange green light through the barn windows and realized something must be wrong. In his mind, the Lord guided him to me, appealing to the goodness in his own soul. But when they investigated later, they saw no signs of any light or fire—it was believed my mother or parents had gone about having me in the dark, intending to abandon me. In other words, the spirits he’d imbibed that day had made him see things, according to my adoptive mother’s more rational analysis.
Either way, my adoptive parents took me in, and my life was spared.
Naturally, this decision hardly came from the goodness of their hearts. They had four children of their own and a grandmother who lived with them. My food didn’t cost much, and the experienced old woman and the family’s youngest daughter cared for me. If I grew up to be useful, that was good; if I became a jewel they could sell off, even better. If somehow my relatives emerged and offered a reward for my safe return, my adoptive parents would be both rich and renowned for their mercy. For poor people, orphans can be a worthwhile investment.
They named me Agnella—Purity.
They gave me the name of their fifth child, a victim of cot death some six months earlier, reusing it to avoid the trouble of thinking up a new one. Fortune has never truly smiled on me, but in that way I was lucky. Having baby wraps and diapers on hand probably factored into their decision to adopt me. Whatever its origins, I genuinely like the feel of my name. Agnella. Most people simply address me as “hey” or “you,” my adoptive parents included, but this name is the one thing that’s mine alone.
I lived with that family until I was nine. On good days I received two meals. I worked from the time the sun rose until it set. My bedroom was a drafty corner of the barn, otherwise occupied by a scrawny bull named Brown and a pair of garbage-eating mountain goats named Gray and White. This was the same barn where I’d been born. I had no reason to complain. I slept on the straw with the flies in summer and huddled up against Brown, Gray, or White for warmth in winter. I spent many moonlit nights singing myself to sleep, the animals my only audience. I worked as I was ordered, without thought or complaint. They beat me sometimes, but I didn’t object to this treatment. I had no concept of right and wrong. I knew no other world. The barn, the fields, the forest and rivers, the little village we sometimes visited, the bull and goats, my adoptive parents and family—that was the only world I knew.
But two years ago, I abruptly lost that world. It began with Brown’s death.
One winter morning I woke shivering in the cold. The moment I opened my eyes, the bull let out a long sigh and closed his. I shook him, calling his name. He looked at me one last time, then glanced toward the window and closed his eyes again.
I stayed by his side until his heart stopped for good, and all traces of his warmth vanished from the world.
The bull’s loss was a fatal problem for my adoptive family: He’d towed their plow. For a while they unsuccessfully tried this and that to gain the funds needed to buy another bull. Then, one morning, they called me by name, a rare occurrence. They said I wouldn’t need to work that day, that I should bathe in the river before noon and change into my cleanest clothes. I did as I was told. When I returned, they handed me over to a visitor I’d never seen before. There was no time to say goodbye.
My adoptive parents had simply sold what they owned, earning the return on their investment. Meanwhile, I was put into a car and driven east.
They’d sold me to a place named Arkham Home, a small orphanage near the town of Norwich in Norfolk.