I didn't like being touched. Especially not when they dyed my hair. The soot paste stung my scalp. It always burned a little, especially when they didn't mix it right or left it on too long. Sometimes, it dripped down the side of my face and into my eyes. They'd tell me not to rub it. Not to squirm. "It's just ash and herbs, not poison," they'd mutter, like that made it better. I stayed still. Not because it hurt less that way, but because I knew it would be over faster. Stillness was easier than struggle.
My hair was long—too long, they said. It went past my shoulders in soft, uneven waves that caught the light. Not boyish. Not normal. Not forgettable. So they dyed it again. And again. Always this dull, splotchy brown, streaked with green when the herbs went bad. Sometimes, when they were lazy, they just smeared soot over the crown of my head with a damp rag. My ears would ring after.
Still, I didn't cry. I'd never cried, not once, since coming here. Even if I was hungry. Even if I scraped my knees on the stone tiles or burned my fingers trying to touch the hearth. Even when one of the older boys pushed me down the stairs—on purpose—and I lay there, blinking up at the ceiling while blood filled my mouth, I didn't cry. Crying was something the others did. Loud, wailing sobs that summoned caretakers like bells. I didn't want bells. I wanted silence.
I also didn't speak. Not really. It wasn't that I couldn't. I just… didn't want to. The words felt too big, too clumsy in my mouth. The toddlers babbled all the time—half-sentences, sing-song nonsense, squeals and giggles. But I didn't want my voice to come out like that. I wanted it to feel right when it finally came out.
So I waited. They called me a freak for that. And for other things. The older children whispered it when they thought I was asleep. The caretakers didn't stop them. Some of them said it, too.
I became invisible in the way that strange things often do. They stopped making me sit at the table for meals. Stopped asking me to join playtime or prayer circle. I had a spot—under the East stairs, next to the kitchen wall. A hollow space that had once held firewood or maybe cleaning tools. It fit a mattress, just barely. That was all I needed.
The boys' dormitory was too noisy—snoring, sleep-fighting, whispers in the dark. Under the stairs, no one touched me. No one asked anything of me. I could watch the shadows move across the wooden beams. I could listen to the thrum of kitchen footsteps above me, the rattle of spoons and bowls, the creak of old hinges. I liked that space. I liked alone better than noticed.
When I was under the stairs, no one asked why I hadn't eaten. Or why my hands were bleeding from the cold. Or why I stared at corners like something lived in them.
In spring, I liked the garden. Even when it was mostly dirt and dry grass. The others ran around, chasing each other with sticks or dried cherry stems. I didn't join them. I just watched. At the very back of the garden, there was a cherry tree, tall and gnarled and older than the building. In spring, it rained white and pink petals that caught in my hair. In summer, it gave cherries so sweet they made my teeth ache.
But I liked fall the best. When the air grew sharp and the leaves changed. When the grass crackled beneath my feet and the sky turned the color of soot. The wind danced through the bare branches and sent bursts of color flying—amber, ochre, fire-red.
The children stopped playing outside then. They huddled around the hearth instead, wrapped in shared blankets, trading secrets and warm bread crusts. They stopped asking me to sit with them. Eventually, even their eyes stopped seeking me in the shadows.
That was fine. I stayed outside. Sat on the cold stone. Let the wind press its fingers into my hair and tug at my sleeves. I watched the clouds change shapes, watched the leaves lift and fall and settle again. Sometimes, I would lie down and pretend I was a stone, too. The earth never asked questions. The trees didn't speak. The sky never tried to hug me. So I stayed where it was quiet.
Sometimes, a cat would appear—slipping through the garden fence like a shadow. He always came when I was alone. Obsidian black, sleek and silent. One eye gold, the other a sharp green like moss after rain. He didn't purr or meow. He just sat near me, sometimes curling around my feet, sometimes resting against my side. We never touched more than that.
I liked him more than any person. He never looked at me like I was broken. When my fingers turned numb, I'd stand up. The cat never followed. He just blinked once—slowly, like a secret—and vanished again between the fence slats.
Inside, everything smelled like dust and soup and soap that didn't clean anything. Outside, the world smelled like rain.
I was two years and nine months old, and I didn't have the right words for the things I saw. Or felt. Or feared. But I noticed them.
I noticed how Matron Lynelle's hands trembled more when she held the baby bottles. How Sister Alira had stopped wearing her ring after her brother died in the war. I noticed how the cook kept a piece of candy in her apron pocket and gave it only to the children who cried loudly.
I noticed everything. Even if I never said a word.