The house exuded warmth and safety in the smoke that puffed from the chimney and in the light that poured from its windows and the front door which was ajar since the boy with the rabbit had disappeared through it. From within Enoch could hear the bustle of activity and the scraping of chairs even from the doorstep where he stood behind Miss Nightjar as she swung the door open all the way.
The front hall had a homely atmosphere to it in itself. Coat hooks lined the white walls and below them was a line of muddy boots in all sizes. There was a doorway either side as Enoch hesitantly stepped over the threshold behind the woman. Almost immediately his senses were assaulted with a wave of noise and delicious smells that wafted from the room to the left of the entrance.
"Miss Nightjar's back!"
"She's back already!"
"And in time to eat with us!"
A whole assorted of different voices rang from the room and there was a scurry of feet before half a dozen children hurtled into the entrance and Enoch shrunk back a step as they ran to hug Miss Nightjar who was smiling and patting them warmly on the shoulders as they welcomed her home.
There were three boys and three girls, ranging from about seven to seventeen years of age at first glance. The boy whom Enoch had seen at the gate was among the older along with a red headed girl with freckles and eyes as blue as Enoch's.
More faces were peering from the doorway of what Enoch assumed was the dining room alongside another woman who bore a great resemblance to Miss Nightjar only with more refined and pointed features. Something birdlike, much like Miss Nightjar, glinted in her eyes as she made eye contact with Enoch and smiled warmly at him.
"Who is this, Miss Nightjar?" One of the younger girls, who looked around twelve piped up and was joined immediately by a young girl and boy who spoke together.
"Has he come to live with us too?"
"Is he peculiar too? He has to be, doesn't he to get here?"
"He doesn't look it."
"Look at his eyes. He looks more peculiar than you do, Alexander."
"Alright, alright....settle down at once, children, I'm glad to be home with you all too." Miss Nightjar clapped her hands and all the children hushed to listen to her.
"This is Enoch, and yes, he has come to live with us..."
All eyes in the room, and the children and woman watching from the doorway, turned to Enoch and he felt his ears burn furiously. The last thing he wanted was to be surrounded by a dozen people asking questions about him. Twelve hours ago he'd been in his own house in London watching the life leave his mother's eyes.
A sudden gasp made everyone, including himself, look over at the red headed girl who was staring at him in such a strange way it unnerved Enoch and made him scowl at her.
"'e looks awful." A boy with sandy hair who didn't look much younger than Enoch whom he hadn't noticed before, spoke up and Enoch realised that he was the only one amongst the crowd who looked distinctly odd. Scaly flaps of skin protruded from either side of his neck that moved slightly when he spoke.
"Alright that's enough, all of you." The other woman tutted from the doorway and placed her hands sternly on her hips. "You all know what it was like when you first got here, leave the poor boy alone and go finish your supper before it all goes cold. Nigel, would you go and draw a bath first, please?"
There was a general buzz of grumbled agreement and a few of the children had the decency to look ashamed of themselves as they all turned away and filed back into the dining room save for the oldest boy who jogged off down the hall and up a flight of stairs.
"Thank you, Olivia." Miss Nightjar sighed as the other matronly looking woman came over towards them. She held out a hand and motioned for Enoch to come closer which he did so only reluctantly. "Enoch? This is my sister Miss. Thrush."
"Hello Enoch...I hope you'll find everything to your liking here once we get you settled in."
She had a kind voice and an equally kind smile that put Enoch a little more at ease enough to nod at her and hold her gaze for a second before looking back at the floor when she continued, "Why don't you come with me now? You've had a very long day, I'm sure. Come along."
Enoch looked back over his shoulder as he allowed her to lead him away down the hall in time to see Miss Nightjar nod encouragingly at him before clapping her hands together and following her wards into the dining room.
xxxXxxx
"I'm sure that right now you want to just sink into a nice bed and sleep..."
As if on cue, Enoch's stomach growled again and he screwed up his nose as he followed Miss Thrush up the stairs at the rear of the large house. "Somefin' ta eat might be good." He mumbled and the woman ahead of him laughed softly, a very melodic sound like a bird's song.
"There'll be hot food waiting for you, Enoch....here," She led him to a door just off the upstairs landing and opened it to reveal a cosy looking bedroom. Two beds with wire frames and soft looking mattresses were set up on opposite sides of the room against the white stone walls. There were two small chests of wooden drawers between them and on the far end of the room, a single wardrobe. A few books and a cap lay on the bed nearest the window and the drawers beside it were slightly open making it clear that side of the room had been claimed.
"I hope you don't mind, you'll be sharing a room with Nigel, he's about your age. Well...more or less."
Miss Thrush gestured to the second chest of drawers as Enoch looked around his new bedroom with a deadpan expression. "You should find clothes to fit you already there if you want to bring something. We're running a nice hot bath for you now."
Enoch pulled open the top drawer and started to glance through the shirts and trousers waiting ready for him. They weren't at all unlike his own, at least that was something familiar.
"We're not really in 1901 are we?" He asked finally through a slightly hoarse throat and looked over at the woman in the doorway who smiled kindly at him.
"We are indeed, it's what we in the peculiar world call a time loop. A single date in history preserved to protect peculiars from those, or events, that would harm us-ah, Nigel."
The boy, whose rabbit had vanished since Enoch had seen it with him running towards the house had appeared from around the corner.
"Bath's all drawn, Miss Thrush." He looked past her into the room to his new roommate and tilted his head curiously. He'd just opened his mouth to address Enoch before Miss Thrush cleared her throat and gave him a pointed look.
"Thank you Nigel, go and finish your supper now."
Enoch was thankful that the other boy left without speaking to him yet. He didn't want anything but to fill his stomach that had been empty all day, and be left alone to sleep, or just to brood. It was like living in a dream, he still wasn't quite sure it was all real.
With an armful of clean clothes, he followed Miss Thrush around a corner to a bathroom.
"We prefer to keep the boys to one bathroom and the girls to another while there are so many of you to use them." Miss Thrush pushed open the door and stepped aside to reveal a stone bathtub filled with steaming hot water that had never looked more inviting to Enoch.
"We'll let you get settled in your own time, Enoch, after all you have plenty of it now. Some food will be waiting in your room for you." She smiled and cast a glance over his injuries. "Tomorrow you'll meet the other children and we'll have you fixed up as good as new in no time at all."
With that Miss Thrush left him alone and closed the door.
Enoch sighed and enjoyed the first moment he had to himself since Miss Nightjar had found him hours ago. He dropped the pile of fresh clothing onto the floor by the sink and sat down onto the stool near the bathtub as he started to remove his ruined shirt and trousers.
The bath was almost too hot as he sunk down into it and groaned as it stung his welts and made the bruises throb once again. He closed his eyes and ducked his whole head under water only to come up spluttering with a pained wince.
The water was nearly cold by the time Enoch summoned the will to get out of the tub. As he dressed, he looked at himself into the mirror over the sink and despite the obvious damage done, he felt cleaner than he had in weeks, not just hours. His damp hair started to curl again in all directions as he rubbed a towel through it and left his old clothes in a pile in the corner.
A full plate of roasted vegetables and meat was sitting on his nightstand, still warm with a pitcher of water and a glass when Enoch went back to his room. Starving, he wolfed the meal down in minutes and had drained half of the water down with it. It wasn't like the lumpy porridge and meat pies he was used to getting back in London, though he had known better than to complain about.
Enoch lay on his back on his bed for another full hour in silence before the door opened and Nigel, the oldest of the boys in the house came in.
He was tall, like Enoch, with an untidy mess of light brown hair and hazel eyes that looked over at Enoch curiously as he entered the room and sat down on his bed across from him to take his shoes off.
"I'm Nigel."
"Enoch." Enoch muttered and turned his head back to stare at the ceiling. He'd found nightclothes and everything else he could need already there in the drawers for him. It was as if they'd known they would find him. Another of the hundred questions he had to ask in the morning.
"How old are ye'?" Nigel asked, unfastening his bracers as he began to change into his own nightshirt.
Enoch didn't really want to talk and introduce himself to the others yet. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep and forget. Only reluctantly did he reply,
"I'm sixteen."
"Ah...I'm twenty-five."
Enoch couldn't help it, his eyebrows shot up and he turned to stare weirdly at the other boy. "What? No you ain't...no way."
"Actually I am." Nigel grinned, as if he'd been waiting for the opportunity to throw off somebody like that. He threw back the covers on his bed and sat back on the mattress. "I was here when the loop started. I was seventeen then. It's s'posed to be 1909 now, right?"
"I thought it was." Enoch frowned, still staring strangely at the other boy who just laughed.
"You'll get used to being in a loop quick enough. You'll look sixteen forever now. So what can you do?"
Enoch did not want to talk about raising the dead now. He didn't want to talk at all. The boy sighed and sat up so he could wriggle under the covers and ignored the question.
Nigel raised his eyebrows at his new roommate's obvious dismissal of the question but shrugged it off. They had all been found by Miss Thrush or Miss Nightjar once, it had been new to all of them. From the look of Enoch, it hadn't been easy for him either.
"Alright...fair enough."
Enoch turned the knob on his oil lamp to extinguish the light and rolled over onto his side as Nigel's light went out too. This bed, though there was a safe feeling about the whole place, felt foreign and unfamiliar to him. As he closed his eyes, Enoch's mind drifted back to the last memories he would be left with of home. His father's face, angry and scared as he rained blows on Enoch. His sister's face, crying for their father to stop it, and laughing when Enoch made her doll dance. His mother, telling him to let her go as life faded from her for the second time.
He didn't want to cry again and clenched his eyes shut tighter against the wetness that stung them as his shoulders shuddered under the blankets.
xxxXxxx
By the time Enoch left the bedroom the next morning in and navigated his own way downstairs to the dining room, it was a hive of activity. The dining room was long with an exposed kitchen at one end of it where Miss Thrush and three of the children were moving around getting breakfast ready and carrying large dishes of toast and pots of porridge to the table at which the rest of the children and Miss Nightjar all sat chattering amongst themselves.
In total there were nine children, including those carrying dishes and utensils to the table, and the two matronly looking women who cared for them. Enoch just leaned in the doorway, unsure what to do with himself when Miss Nightjar caught sight of him from her seat at the end of the long table and waved him over.
"Do come in, Enoch, don't be shy now. Have a seat."
All conversation stopped and all the eyes in the room turned curiously to Enoch again as he muttered a quiet, "I'm not shy" and stepped over to the far side of the table to sit on the end of the long bench beside the boy with the protruding neck flaps and the empty seat that he assumed would be taken by Miss Thrush.
"I think introductions will be in or-" Miss Nightjar cut herself off and a few of the younger children burst into laughter. Enoch leaned forward over the table to see what they were laughing about. A rabbit had leaped seemingly from nowhere and onto the edge of the table beside Miss Nightjar where it snuffled its nose happily.
"Nigel, what have we told you about this? Outside, at once! And then wash your hands before you eat."
"He just wants a bit'a toast, Miss. N..." Nigel's sheepish face peered out from the middle of the bench and he clambered over to run around and pick up the furry, sand coloured rabbit from the table. "Sorry, Peter..."
"Animals on the breakfast table indeed...now where are your manners, children? Introduce yourselves."
The first voice to pipe up was a little dark haired girl with hazel eyes who beamed happily at Enoch across the table. "I'm Victoria, I'm eight years old, really I'm thirteen, and I can...umm...move things."
To demonstrate she raised her right hand out in front of her and a moment later a pitcher of milk went sliding down the table seemingly of its own accord and skidded to a stop at the end where it teetered dangerously on the edge until Miss Thrush rescued it as she assumed her seat.
Victoria blushed and lowered her hand. "I'm still practicing."
Enoch's jaw dropped the slightest bit, much to amusement of a pair of blonde boys at the other end of the table whom Miss Nightjar raised a warning eyebrow at and they stopped at once.
"You can all...do stuff like that?" Enoch asked, suddenly finding his voice again and eight faces all grinned at him in response, accompanied by the occasional announcement.
"Kind of, I can run really fast, I'm Alexander." Chimed in the older of the snickering boys and puffed out his chest proudly.
Enoch was distinctly less impressed than he had been with Victoria and just stared at him before turning to the sandy haired twelve year old beside him.
"What's that on your neck?"
The boy, who until now hadn't said a word, raised his eyebrows at Enoch like he thought he was stupid and pointed to the scaly flaps on his neck. "Gills, o'course." His accent was as Cockney as Enoch's and for a moment, just one, Enoch was sure he seemed oddly familiar.
"What like a fish?"
"Yeah, to breathe underwater...whatcha fink?"
"Oscar, manners now..." Miss Thrush chided and the boy with the gills sighed and started to ladle porridge into a bowl as the other children began to help themselves when the last of them sat down at the table.
Nigel reappeared, sans the rabbit, and slunk back into his spot on the bench as Enoch began to spread jam over a piece of toast while one by one, the children continued to introduce themselves. Some insisted on telling their 'real' ages as well as their peculiarities whilst others, like Elizabeth, Earnest and Darcy only said their names.
The only girl left was the sixteen year old red headed girl who had gasped when Enoch walked in the night before. She was sitting right across from Enoch and silently buttering slices of toast before he glanced over at her and raised an eyebrow.
"What do you do then?"
"I'm Cara."
Enoch had not been expecting an Irish accent and his eyebrows shot up in surprise when she spoke.
Her eyes bored into his suddenly with the same peculiar stare she'd given him the night before, as if her blue eyes were drilling right into his head.
"Why shouldn't I be Irish? Somethin' the matter with that?"
"No-what? I didn' say nofin."
A few snickers sounded down the table and Enoch caught sight of both Victoria and Nigel hiding their laughter behind cups of milk.
"Cara can read minds, Enoch." Miss Thrush kindly clarified when Enoch's eyes shot back to Cara who had a small smile on her freckled face as she resumed eating.
"You can what? All the time?"
"Only if I want to." The girl looked back up at Enoch who looked slightly unnerved, despite the array of peculiarities around the table. "That's what hard to believe?"
"What about you, Enoch?" Cecilia, a blonde girl physically ten years old and whose entire torso had become metal, asked curiously as bowls were scraped clean.
"Yeah, how are you peculiar?" Alexander piped up beside Miss Nightjar and a general buzz of agreement and curiosity filled the air as everyone turned to the new boy.
Enoch's head throbbed painfully and he was unpleasantly reminded of his bruises just as prominent, if not more so than the day before. He reached up to touch his slightly swollen jaw as he forced down a last bite of breakfast and looked into everyone's expectant faces.
"I uh...bring back dead fings."
A few of the girls pulled faces and a mixture of expressions of disgust and interest passed around the peculiars.
"A kind of necrokinesis, if you will." Miss Nightjar chimed in on his behalf as if hoping to assuage some of the other's children's hesitancy at Enoch's unusual habit.
Enoch momentarily forgot to look cross with them and stared down the table along with a few of the others. "A kind of what?"
"Manipulation and communication with the deceased. Limited, perhaps, but similar."
"That didn't make it sound any less gross, Miss N." Oscar, the boy with the gills, added to a general hum of agreement and laughter.
"It can have quite impressive results really, I've witnessed it myself."
"When?" Enoch was too busy trying to work out how to say whatever the name was that Miss Nightjar had given his abilities to notice the uncertainty on the faces of half of the children. "Oh right...the bird fing...it ain't just dead bodies though, it's other fings too."
xxxXxxx
Ymbryne. Timeloop. 1901. Peculiar. Wards. All sorts of terms and dates and years were thrown around all at once in Enoch's head that he thought he might explode when he was sat down in a little office with both Miss Thrush and Miss Nightjar. They really were in 1901, there was a newspaper that sat for years on the desk with just the same date, April 3rd 1901, and just the same news as the day repeated itself over and over again.
Within the loop, that apparently only peculiar people could enter, the peculiars it protected could live a continuous experience forever without ever aging a day, though the conditions of the date in question remained just the same. In contrast, any normals within the repeated day would remember nothing and wake up each morning to tread exactly the steps they had trod before. So that in case a peculiar should accidentally reveal themselves they would not be remembered upon the resetting of the loop.
Enoch did not completely understand at all, although he nodded in all the right spots and pretended that he did so he would not have to sit through a peculiar history lesson a second time. He had a stinging ointment applied to his face and neck that softened into a soothing balm after applying. Most peculiars arrived in this condition, he had been told, chased from their homes or abandoned by frightened families who only wanted normal children.
The ymbrynes had made it their duty to travel and find peculiars in need to give them a home and a place of protection. The education of the younger ones fell into their hands and as such there was a little school room at the back of the house where either Miss Thrush or Miss Nightjar would teach them.
Enoch was told little of what peculiars needed protection from outside of the more violent normals. The information he could gather only implied they were hunted by some creature, man or beast he wasn't sure and when he asked, Miss Nightjar pursed her lips and would change the subject.
"When you need to know, Enoch." She had said to his distaste.
April 3rd 1901 in Swansea, Wales was a brisk spring day where the same wind blew again and again over the Cliffside meadows and hills and a soft shower always occurred between five and six in the afternoon each day. The countryside was so vastly unfamiliar to Enoch, who had lived in the busy city of London his whole life that he thought even real fresh air would take some getting used to in contrast to smoky, disease ridden streets of East London and the foul scent of the Thames.
He was shown around by Nigel, who Enoch learned could communicate with animals when he suddenly began to have a conversation with a sheep; Elizabeth, a fifteen year old who had only been in the loop for two years herself and was so flexible she might have been boneless, and Earnest, a Welsh fourteen year old who wore special gloves to prevent his hands sticking to anything they touched like glue.
xxxXxxx
"Will you show us what you do?"
"Yeah, I want to see it!"
Enoch had finally escaped the company of so many new faces to be by himself for a few minutes wandering near the outcrop that was the entrance to the loop. He hadn't even heard the two people following him and turned around with a slightly annoyed sigh. Alexander and Cecilia stood behind him, looking up expectantly and with an interest in his power that Enoch was not accustomed to seeing.
"Where'd you co-hey!" Before he could even finish his thought, the blonde boy had vanished, leaving Cecilia giggling and Enoch looking bemused suddenly.
"I told you I was fast."
Enoch spun around and his eyebrows shot up to see Alexander now perched on top of the rock swinging his legs casually as if he'd been there all along.
"So..." He continued, albeit a little pompously. "Will you show us or not?"
"Sure." Enoch rolled his eyes and took a few steps away as Cecilia moved around him to stand by the rock. "Just bring me a couple'a dead fings."
"Oh...is that what you need?"
"Well it's a bit less impressive ta make a livin' thing live more, ain't it? And I don't fink a little girl like you would like it much."
"I'm fifteen actually!" The ten year old looking Cecilia chimed in indignantly and rapped a fist against her stomach with a reverberating clang. "And I don't get sick."
"Hooray for you." Enoch kicked a stone which went clattering towards the edge of the cliff and turned his back on them to start stomping back towards the house.
The peculiars were widely distributed through the afternoon, so when Enoch sunk into an armchair in what he thought was the empty living room he thought he had escaped being peppered with questions without having to withdraw into his room. He stared out the window at the few boys and girls that ran past kicking a football between them. Not since his school days had he been surrounded by more than a few children or people his own age at all for any length of time. Despite his mother's wishes, he had never so much as tried to make any friends. Here there was no escaping all the people, no matter how much he might want to. Still, even despite his lack of social skills and the slightly overwhelming situation he'd plunged into, Enoch could not deny the atmosphere of safety that far exceeded any he'd felt in London.
"You'll adjust soon enough to the loop, it's safe here for people like us."
Enoch jumped, torn from his thoughts by the sudden Irish brogue of Cara whom he hadn't noticed was sitting behind a desk at the far end of the room scribbling something in a notebook. He opened his mouth to ask how she'd known what he was thinking before he remembered and sighed at her.
"Do ya mind?"
Cara didn't answer the question but the peculiar stare she had been giving Enoch softened considerably before she spoke again.
"I'm sorry about your mother. Your father did that to you didn't he?"
Enoch, whose gaze had turned back to the window, stiffened suddenly and a muscle in his neck twitched as he slowly rotated his head to stare icily at the Irish girl. "I wasn't even thinkin' that." He snapped. "How d-"
"You were last night when ya got here."
"Well that ain't any concern o'yours, is it?" Bidden by the Irishwoman's words, Enoch's mind immediately flooded with the images he desperately wanted to forget but knew he never would. He leapt to his feet impatiently and with such force the chair scraped backwards a few centimetres on the wooden floor. "Get outta my 'ead."