Welcome Home

The Folger farmstead is looking for help in exchange for board and lodging, or so says the notice board outside the ancient church. A frail priest with a keen eye peddles the message, in secret, to a bold and lucky few at the local orphanage. Bold enough to chase their dreams? We’ll see.

Prepubescent sisters of indeterminate origin cautiously weave their way out of the village. From cobbles to dirt-flaked dust roads, and into the open countryside. Their goal: the furthest farmstead from town. Walking becomes wearisome and stretches into the small hours until, arriving in darkness, the children tap on a weathered door. Grey wood, shunted into limestone, resting beneath a sturdy wooden lintel. A cobweb. It’s a pleasant surprise that they are quietly greeted and welcomed in by long hair, delicate hands and a reassuring face.

“We’re here to help.”

“Welcome home, my darlings!” croons Miss Folger.

Time has never floated by for the two sisters; but has instead dragged in accustomed hardship. Bruise-coloured pits flood behind heavy eyes, and ribs embrace lonely souls. Clavicles beckon. Miss Folger puts a stop to this. Soon enough, skin brightens, and arms and legs plump in decorative frills and glowing colours that match the girls’ cheeks. Dolls, in folded, snowdrop-white socks, pretty frocks and daydreams; delicately flowered nightdresses, silk slippers and repotted hopes.

Days become months become years, and the siblings blossom.

They say all good things come to an end. What they don’t say is how hard the end can hit.

Nighttime. Drunken farmhands. The door leaps from its frame and slashes open to the sounds of raucous words and slurred laughter. Wanting.

The reply is feather-fall silence.

Instant fear. Held breath.

Stumbling. The din of clattering kitchen paraphernalia. Into the next room. The next. Up the stairs. The first on the left. The girls.

That night, no one sleeps. Miss Folger’s tears fall as she clings to her bed linen. She can’t deny that she has bonded with these girls, just like she imagined she would with a daughter of her own. Her lip trembles under the fabric. Minutes claw their way through the darkness, until silence reigns again.

By the time sunlight blinks over the crumbling drystone walls the sisters have gone; they have fled with nothing but what their shoulders bear. Miss Folger wakes to a hollow day that jars with the joviality of the flitting spring birds. It is with a quivering heart that she returns to the village to tack her advertisement to the old church notice board:

“Children Wanted. Household Chores Only. Offered: A Home.”

Good.

The church plays its part and the door taps once more. A girl and a boy, both around 16.

“Welcome home, my darlings!”

The children are not the tender age of seven or eight that she so likes to raise as her own. They have blossomed already.

She makes the call that night.