Marcus was at the upstairs window when it started.
He had been reading, or trying to. The book was open on his lap, but his eyes kept drifting to the garden below, where Darwin was helping Mrs. Hale with the late tomatoes. Lena sat nearby on an overturned bucket, watching the sky.
Mrs. Hale straightened from the row she'd been weeding, pressed a hand to the small of her back, and said something to Darwin that Marcus couldn't hear. She picked up the empty water bucket and headed toward the kitchen door, refilling it, probably. She always watered after weeding.
Darwin kept working. Lena kept watching the sky.
The older boy from the dining hall appeared at the fence. Two others flanked him, one thin and watchful, one new and nervous.
"Well, look who it is." The biggest boy's smile was ugly. "The little princes of Barrow Hill."
Darwin straightened slowly.
"Go away."
"Who's going to make me? The old witch? Your crazy brother?" The boy stepped closer. "I heard about him. Stares at things like he can see through walls and also looks down on us like he is smarter than everyone else"
"Leave Marcus out of this."
"Or what? You'll cry to Lucia?" The boy stepped closer. "You know what I think? I think you're all freaks. You and your brother and that weird girl who doesn't talk-"
Darwin moved.
But the boy was ready this time. He had brought friends. He had brought weapons: makeshift clubs made from broken chair legs.
The first blow caught Darwin across the shoulders. He stumbled. The second hit his ribs. He fell.
They were on him then, all three of them, kicking and hitting. Darwin curled up, trying to protect his head.
The world was pain. Boots and fists and the dull thud of wood against bone. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Could only curl tighter and wait for it to stop...
Something flew past his head.
A rock. The size of a fist. It caught the thin boy square in the temple and he staggered sideways, cursing, hand pressed to his bleeding scalp.
Darwin looked up.
Lena stood three feet away. The overturned bucket lay at her feet. Her small hands were already reaching for another rock, one of the border stones from Mrs. Hale's garden. Her honey-brown eyes were fixed on the attackers.
"Get away from him." Her voice was barely a whisper. But it carried.
The broad-shouldered boy laughed. "Look at that. The mute speaks." He took a step toward her. "You want to be next, little-"
Lena threw the second rock. Hard. It missed his face by an inch and smashed into the fence behind him.
She was already reaching for a third.
The distraction was enough.
From the window above, Marcus saw Darwin go still. Not frozen. The opposite. A coiling, a gathering, like a spring being compressed past the point where physics said it should break. And then, just for a heartbeat, a flicker. Amber light, there and gone so fast Marcus almost missed it. Almost.
He pressed both hands against the glass.
Below him, something shifted inside Darwin. He felt it the way you feel a bone pop back into place, sudden, whole-body, irreversible. The world went sharp.
Darwin couldn't explain it later, not really. One moment he was on the ground, pain blooming through his body. The next, everything was clearer. The sounds. The movements. The exact angle of the boot descending toward his face.
He caught it.
His hand closed around the boy's ankle before he thought about it. He pulled, harder than he should have been able to, and the boy went flying backward. Not three feet. Ten. He hit the garden fence and crashed through it, splinters exploding outward.
Darwin was on his feet before he registered standing up. His body was moving on its own. The thin one swung a club at his head; Darwin ducked under it, grabbed the boy's wrist, twisted. The boy screamed and dropped the weapon.
The third one ran.
Darwin stood in the ruined garden, breathing hard. His hands were shaking. His heart was pounding so fast it hurt.
What just happened?
He looked at the broad-shouldered boy, groaning in the wreckage of the fence. At the thin one, cradling his wrist. At Lena, staring at him with wide eyes.
Mrs. Hale was running toward them, her kerchief flying.
"What in the name of-" She stopped, taking in the scene. "You!" She pointed at Lurk. "What did you do?" She rounded on Darwin. "And you, what happened here?"
Darwin looked at his hands. They seemed normal. Just his hands.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "They attacked me. And then... I don't know."
He really didn't.
Mrs. Hale stopped three feet from the ruined fence. Her eyes moved from Lurk, groaning in the splinters, one arm bent wrong, to the thin boy clutching his wrist, to the scattered pieces of chair leg, to the tomato plants crushed flat in the dirt.
Then to Darwin. Standing in the middle of it, breathing hard, not a mark on him except the bruises already forming on his ribs.
Then to Lena. Small hands full of rocks. Face blank. Ready to throw again.
"Put those down," Mrs. Hale said. Her voice was steady. She had that look she got when the kitchen chimney caught fire.
Lena set the rocks down.
Mrs. Hale crossed to Lurk first. She knelt beside him, her knees cracking, and ran her hands along his arm. He hissed through his teeth.
"Not broken," she said. "But you'll wish it was when I'm done with you." She hauled him up by his good arm. He swayed, face grey, eyes darting to Darwin. Not angry anymore. Just that look, the one Darwin didn't want to think about.
"You two." She pointed at the thin boy and then toward the house. "Kitchen. Now. I'll deal with your wrist, and then we're going to have a conversation about what happens to boys who bring clubs into my garden."
They went. Lurk limped ahead, not looking back. The thin one cradled his arm against his chest and followed.
Mrs. Hale stood in the wrecked garden for a moment, hands on her hips, surveying the damage. The fence. The tomatoes. The border stones Lena had pulled up for ammunition.
"Three weeks of work," she said quietly. "Those tomatoes were nearly ready."
Then she turned to Darwin.
"Inside. Both of you."
Darwin didn't move. His legs felt strange, shaky, like they belonged to someone else. Lena appeared at his side and slipped her hand into his. Her fingers were cold.
They walked back toward the house. Mrs. Hale followed, her eyes on Darwin's back. She didn't say a word the whole way.
In the kitchen, she sat Lurk and the thin boy at the far table and wrapped the wrist in a splint of wooden spoons and clean cloth. She did it roughly but competently, the way she did everything, no wasted movement, no softness, but nothing cruel either. Lurk stared at the floor the whole time.
"You're going to fix that fence," she told him. "Every board. Every nail. And if I catch you within ten feet of those children again, I'll write to the magistrate and have you sent to a workhouse. Do you understand me?"
He nodded without looking up.
"Get out of my kitchen."
They left. The door banged shut behind them.
Mrs. Hale stood for a moment with her back to Darwin, her hands braced on the counter. Her shoulders rose and fell once, a long, controlled breath.
Then she turned, pulled a bottle of iodine and a clean cloth from the cabinet, and crossed to where Darwin sat.
"Let me see," she said, tilting his chin up.
The cuts on his face were shallow, more scrapes than wounds. She dabbed at them with the cloth, the iodine stinging, the vinegar smell sharp enough to make his eyes water.
"I've heard of it," she said, working steadily. "Mothers lifting carts off their babies. Soldiers running for miles without stopping. The body can do strange things when it needs to." She tilted his chin to check for swelling. "You're a strong boy. You were scared. That's all it was."
Darwin, looking at her steady, practical face, wanted to believe her.
He didn't mention that his hands had felt warm afterward. That for just a moment, his muscles had sung with a strength that didn't feel entirely his own.
He didn't mention the strange golden flicker at the edge of his vision.
That night, he lay in bed and tried to make it happen again.
He stared at the ceiling. Clenched his fists. Willed the warmth back into his hands, the sharpness back into his eyes. Come on. If it's real, do it again. Prove it.
Nothing.
Just a boy in a dark room, staring at a ceiling, feeling stupid.
He tried again the next night. And the night after that. Sat in bed with his hands out, concentrating until his head hurt, waiting for the golden flicker, the surge, the impossible clarity.
Nothing. Every time, nothing.
See? he told himself. It was adrenaline. Mrs. Hale was right. Bodies do strange things. It doesn't mean anything.
But he had thrown a boy ten feet through a fence. He had caught a boot mid-swing like swatting a fly. He had moved so fast the third kid hadn't even seen him stand up.
And the warmth. The way his whole body had hummed with something that felt like more.
He shoved the thought down. Buried it deep. Because if it was real, if he was something other than a twelve-year-old orphan with strong arms and quick reflexes, then he was something he didn't have a name for. And things without names were things you couldn't control.
He'd rather be ordinary. Ordinary was safe. Ordinary meant the marks on his forehead were just birthmarks and the world made sense and nobody would ever look at him the way Lurk had looked at him in the garden, not angry, not embarrassed, but afraid.
He started wearing the pendant openly after that. The carved tree against his chest. He told himself it was just a necklace.
He didn't believe that either.
----
Marcus watched his brother closely in the days that followed.
Darwin seemed fine. Normal. Still doing pull-ups on the doorframe, still protecting Lena, still arguing about chores.
But Marcus couldn't stop thinking about the garden. The amber flicker he'd seen through the window, that split-second glow before Darwin had moved like something else was driving his body. He kept telling himself it was a trick of the light. The afternoon sun catching the glass at a wrong angle.
He didn't believe it.
He didn't say anything to Darwin. Whatever had happened, Darwin clearly didn't want to talk about it. And Marcus had his own secrets: the strange shimmer he sometimes saw at the edges of the property. The feeling that the air was thinner in certain places. The sense that something was watching from beyond the fence.
Brothers didn't need to share everything.
But Marcus started paying closer attention. To Darwin. To the marks on their foreheads. To Ingrid's tired eyes and Lucia's late-night walks.
Something was happening.
He just didn't know what yet.
----
Tommy found Darwin behind the tool shed two days later.
Darwin was sitting with his back against the rough wooden planks, knees drawn up, staring at nothing. His bruises had faded to ugly yellows and greens.
"So," Tommy said, sliding down to sit beside him. "You want to tell me what actually happened?"
"Mrs. Hale already told everyone. Adrenaline."
"Yeah. I heard." Tommy picked up a twig and snapped it between his fingers. "I also heard Lurk tell his mates you threw him through a fence. With one hand."
Darwin didn't answer.
"And that you moved so fast he couldn't see you properly." Tommy snapped another twig. "Lurk's a liar about most things. But he looked scared, Darwin. Like, properly scared. Not embarrassed-I-got-beat-up scared. Scared like he saw something he couldn't explain."
The silence stretched.
"I don't know what happened," Darwin said finally. His voice was quiet. "One second I was on the ground, and they were kicking me, and I could hear Lena screaming. And then..."
"Then what?"
Darwin looked down at his hands. Just hands. Normal hands.
"Then everything was different. Clearer. Faster. Like I was watching myself from the outside." He shook his head. "It doesn't make sense."
Tommy was quiet for a moment.
"You know what I think?" Tommy said.
"What?"
"I think some people are just... more. More than regular people. Doesn't mean you're weird or broken. Just means you've got something extra." He shrugged. "My auntie used to say some folks are touched by starlight. Said it makes them special, but it also makes things harder. Because they can do things other people can't, and that scares people."
Darwin looked at him. "You don't think I'm a freak?"
"I mean, you're definitely a freak." Tommy grinned. "But you were a freak before you threw Lurk through a fence. This doesn't change anything."
Despite everything, Darwin felt himself smile.
"Your auntie sounds cool."
"She was. Also a little crazy. Used to talk to the chickens like they understood her." Tommy stood up and offered Darwin his hand. "Come on. Mrs. Hale saved us some of the good bread. The kind with the raisins."
Darwin let himself be pulled up.
"Tommy?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For not... you know."
"For not thinking you're a monster?" Tommy shrugged. "You protected Lena. That's not monster stuff. That's hero stuff. Even if you did it weird."
They walked back toward the kitchen, shoulders bumping. The sun was setting behind the hills, turning the sky orange and pink.
"Hey," Tommy said. "If you ever figure out how you did it... could you teach me? I'd love to throw Lurk through a fence."
Darwin laughed, the first real laugh since the fight.
"I'll let you know."