Like me, the caregivers soon decided she was a freak. It didn't take long. A few days. Maybe a week. That was all it took for the whispers to start, and the hands to stop reaching out.
She didn't cry—not once. Not when she was hungry. Not when her diaper turned cold and heavy and made her skin raw. Not even when she was left in the same position for hours at a time, blinking slowly at the rafters while the others wailed for milk or warmth or a soft voice.
She didn't babble. No coos. No sleepy sighs. No laugh when the other babies were rocked or tickled. Just silence, like her voice had been lost in the rain she came in. They didn't like that. Caretakers didn't know what to do with quiet.
Sister Alira, who used to coo at the infants and whisper their names like incantations, started avoiding her crib entirely. She fed her last. Changed her only when the smell forced someone to. And always roughly—like the stillness was a defiance. "She gives me chills," she muttered once, not realizing I was behind her. "No sound. Like she isn't real."
The others started calling her things when they thought no one could hear. "Cursed."; "Doll-baby."; "Wrong." They didn't use her name. Because she didn't have one. I didn't understand it. The man said he'd come back in five months. He gave gold. Five whole coins—enough to feed four children for the winter. But they still left her.
Left her to lie in her own waste. Left her with a cracked bottle and cold food. Left her in the crib even when the baby twins were moved to better beds. And she never cried. I don't know when I started helping. Not exactly. It wasn't a decision. Not a moment. Just… a pull.
At first, I cleaned her hands when they got sticky. Fed her extra spoonfuls of porridge when Sister Alira turned her back. Then, one night, when the nursery was full and noisy, I wrapped her in my own blanket and carried her to my space under the East stairs.
She fit beside me easily. Didn't wiggle. Didn't whine. Just lay there, very still, with her head pressed gently to my chest. Her breath was shallow. But warm. She felt like a small coal tucked into the blanket. I thought she would cry there. Because it was darker than the nursery. Smaller. Closer. But she didn't. She never did.
And after that night, I didn't bring her back. I started changing her. Not just wiping her hands, but everything. When she needed a new cloth, I took it from the nursery myself. No one noticed. Or if they did, they didn't say anything. She started eating beside me, too. Sitting upright with my help, mouth opening carefully, slowly. She never reached for the spoon—just waited.
I started sleeping curled around her. Her skin stayed warmer than mine. Maybe that was her way of thanking me. In my head, I gave her a name. Evelune. It felt right. Eve, like a beginning. Lune, like the moonlight I first saw on her face.
Her hair was soft—black as soot, but not harsh. It curled at the ends like smoke. Her eyes were dark, but I started to see a layer under the dark. A faint blue—like stormwater or river glass, something that looked clear until the light passed through it.
She was very still when she slept. Her hands would fold under her chin, or curl like a sleeping cat's. Sometimes her mouth would twitch, like she wanted to speak in her dreams but didn't know how. I understood that. I hadn't spoken yet, either.
They didn't question why she was missing from the nursery. Not really. They knew she was still there. They just… didn't look. No one missed the quiet ones. By the second week, she stopped waiting for me to carry her.
When I went outside to the porch, she followed, crawling clumsily over the cold tiles, dragging the edge of the blanket with her. I'd sit down and fold it around us both. She never looked at the garden. Only at me. As if I were the only thing she'd chosen to keep. I didn't know what to do with that kind of trust. So I said nothing. I just let her sit beside me.
One morning, I woke before the rest. The fire hadn't been lit yet, and the windows were fogged from breath and storm. I lay on my side, Evelune pressed against my back, her arm resting softly on my ribs.
She had started doing that—reaching out in her sleep. Not holding. Not clinging. Just contact. Warm. Soft. Real. It made the quiet feel different. Not heavy. Not empty. Just full in a way I couldn't explain. She didn't need words, and neither did I.
We just… noticed things. How the garden smelled after rain. How the cat sometimes blinked from the fence post but didn't approach while she was awake. How the corner of the hallway near the storeroom always dripped during storms. How the older boys stopped talking when we passed, like we carried a silence they didn't want to touch.
Sometimes I wondered if she remembered anything before the orphanage. If she missed the man with the leather gloves and the five gold coins. If she knew this wasn't where she belonged. But she never looked toward the door. Never toward the carriages. Only toward me. And I wasn't sure what that meant.
She would be gone in spring. That's what they said. That's what the gold paid for. Five months. Temporary. But she had already curled her fingers into my blanket. She had already buried her silence into mine. And I didn't know how to give her back.