Orphan HornsRyan Connor

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In a hidden corner of the waiting station, Dawn found the orphans left mewling in their nest. With a toothless howl they called to her, red tongues lashing at the air. She came to them, kneeling, and whispered for them to hush.

I’m here now, she said, you’re not alone.

The orphans nipped at her fingers, searching for food, but Dawn calmed them with a song and stroked the dark fur behind their ears. They settled as she lay beside them, singing, until they sank into sleep, dreaming blind behind fused eyelids.

Dawn sighed, a storm of questions were churning in her mind. How long had the orphans been here, alone and

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starving? What could she find for them to eat in these endless and empty tiled halls? How far had their mother crept, searching for food before vanishing altogether? Dawn had no answers, but she knew the orphans would not last unless she helped them.

Trains passed through the station on wailing tracks as Dawn stayed beside the nest. Through dark glass panels, she could see hazy figures drifting silently between passenger cars. The lamps cast traveler shaped shadows on the floor around her. A swarm of wayward ghosts, briefly fluttering over her until the station floor cleared and the trains moved on. She wanted to call for someone to help, for someone to tell her what to do, but she knew she would not be heard. No one would come. She was alone with the orphans.

She watched them stir as she lightly touched their silky coats, tracing the curve of their spines with her fingers. She could feel tiny hearts pulsing beneath their skin, tiny

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lungs filling with air. Life flowing through them that would soon run dry unless she found a way to feed them. To keep them safe.

Running a hand along the back of an orphan’s head she felt a sudden painful jab as her fingertip caught the edge of something sharp. She pulled her hand away, already feeling dizzy. As the poison set in, confusion swells, her eyesight fades. Time goes funny. She can see now, a pair of tiny horns nestled in the orphan’s downy fur, sprouting from the gentle arc of a young skull, tucked in slumber beneath warm paws. Everything turns black.

Dawn collapses.

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In her dream Dawn watches a whispered pair of shadows slip through the station halls, prowling on soft feet. Long bodies silhouetted against the glass, dark coats pulled taut over sinew and muscle. The orphans, grown, begin their hunt.

Blade shaped curves cut away from heavy skulls, held low along the dark tiled hall as they slink toward the lamp light’s edge. Watching the empty platform, they wait for the engine’s groan. They know the sound, a call to feed.

The train bursts from the tunnel mouth in a cloud of sparks and flickering light. Pulling to a stop on screaming brakes, the doors unfold. The orphans wait. A traveler steps from the train, swaying on unsteady legs, and blinks at the dim station lights. As the doors pull shut and the

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train lurches into motion the orphans bristle, bodies tense like a drawn bowstring.

Dawn tries to call to the traveler, but she is just an observer here. Sleep locked, muffled and bodiless. She can only watch. For a moment the station is still… then, a twitch. The traveler moves, the orphans move first, stinging with their horns. Dawn finally screams and the sound sends her spinning back into darkness as the dream is torn.

She wakes.

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Dawn exhaled.

She sat up, her head a tangle of poison-ache and dream lag, slipping back into synch with the station around her. She heard the orphans chirp at her in infant tones. Dawn turned and studied them, searching for the killing shapes from her dream. She knew that somewhere, locked away in those tiny bodies, encoded in biology and chemical codes, a monster slept. She watched them, but she could only see a pair of hatchlings, helpless and vulnerable. Starving, but still growing.

The orphans watched her back from the nest with eyes like round, ink-black gems, drinking in the dim station light. Eyes for stalking dark hallways. Hunting eyes. They whimpered, pawing at her with tiny claws and padded

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feet. New teeth like white needles, cutting red through soft gums. A pair of horns, rising from each head.

Dawn knew, she understood what they needed to live.

She bit at the scab where the horn had torn her finger. Ignoring the pain, she pinched at her skin helping the blood rise to the surface. She fed them each with a single drop placed carefully onto outstretched tongues, quivering with hunger.

She gathered the orphans in a bundle under her shirt and left the station. They needed her, and though they would soon grow beyond her control and need more than a drop of her blood to live, she would care for them.

They would be her secret children, growing strong beneath their horns.

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