"Oh, Lirssa! Happy Christmas!" Alicia cried out when she opened the door of High Spires House to welcome Lirssa.

In an instant, Lirssa was surrounded by happy faces, cheerful voices, and touches on her arms and back. Mrs. June gave a pat to her cheeks. "Oh, aren't you the chilled one. Come inside to the fire. What do you have there?"

Lirssa lifted the basket up with the remainders of the Christmas crackers she had delivered to each of the foster houses of her special acquaintance. "There should be one for everyone."

"Oh, maybe one extra. Benji was adopted yesterday!" Liam exclaimed as he tugged on Lirssa's sleeve to draw her into the mayhem of a parlor where the tree gleamed a joyous echo of the occupants. Simple toys were hugged, marched, and tossed about the room. "Did you see, Lirssa" Look!" Sampson brought up a framed picture of every living knight in the Holy Order of Saint Aldwin. The frame was fine silver, and while all of the knights were in their dress uniforms, a few seem to have 'snuck' Santa hats onto their heads. "Mrs. June says it is called a photograph. It's like magic!"

"It's magic alright." Lirssa agreed and feather fingered the edge of the frame. "Did you have a good Christmas, Sampson?"

There was a smile that had something secret in golden eyes. "The best!" And he took the picture back to the mantel where he set it with reverent care and then turned to his toy wooden sword, looking ready to knight one of the new children Lirssa had not met.

"Lirssa, oooh, how pretty!" Ginny came up and reached out to the locket shaped like a tiny, scrolled envelop hanging from the delicate gold chain.

Several of the other girls and a few of the boys came up to see what it was. "Where'd ya get it, eh?" Anasta asked, her cornflower blue eyes wide and bright cleared from black hair pulled back to reveal the faint point of her ears.

"Was it a Christmas gift?"

"Did you buy it yourself?"

"I think it's beautiful."

"Oh, look it opens!"

At that Lirssa, curled her fingers around it to conceal it and the voices went quiet, but they looked at her fully expecting her to tell its story. They'd never seen her not ready to tell a story about anything. "Well," she started and looked to Mrs. June, but the matronly woman was looking at her knitting needles. She was looking too strongly at the knitting needles, and Lirssa knew she heard and was not going to assist. "Well," she began again, "Mister Ali and Miss Fio gave it to me."

"Did you get a family for Christmas, too, like Benji?" Anasta's smile was uncertain, hurt and happy mixed in a carousel of feelings.

"She already has a family."

"Nuh-uh."

Not comfortable with the debate of the constant loss of parental figures, Lirssa shrugged and backed from them. Only, the children were curious and followed her to the corner where she wanted to escape. They were not going to let her. Eyes shared looks of confusion, delight, wonder, and most of all hope. "Don't you want a family, Lirssa?" Logan asked. "You told me families are the best thing."

It was what she had told so many of the children when she found them huddled or lost, scraping out livings in the street. It is what she had told some of the children that day at the dinner given by Mister Mason and Miss Eva. It was all so confusing.

It was scary, too. The things that happened. The things they could do. "Families are really great, but, like...you know how Mrs. June and Mr. Ephram make sure the parents that want you are right for you? They learn what you like to do and what you need to make the right match' It isn't easy."

Anasta curled up close to Lirssa and reached to play with the locket again, opening it while Lirssa was explaining to the other children. She held up the paper. "But they love you, Lirssa. It says right there."

Taking the paper away with a snatch, she folded it up and put it back in the locket, then tucked the locket away beneath her shirt. It pressed cold but instantly started to warm against her flesh. "It isn't easy." She repeated.

"What makesth 'em not a goo' fit?" Daniel, another of the newer boys with deep as pitch eyes and straw blond hair spoke up with his missing two front teeth lisp.

It was another shrug. Lirssa couldn't really think of a reason, only, sometimes she felt like the grown up. Worrying about the drinking, the fighting, the mean people that surrounded the couple. But, Mister Ali could climb. Miss Fio could play music. They were smart and kind to her. They didn't understand, but they tried. And they understood magicks. It was a new, uncertainty to Lirssa's life.

"They've got troubles is all."

"Everyone's got troubles, Lirssa. That's what you say." Hannah spoke again.

"Well, I'm too old."

Anasta frowned. "You tell Esther and those others they aren't too old. You're not much older than they are."

"I'm different."

"We're all different and special. That's what you said." Daniel countered.

"They aren't my family." Lirssa finally spat out, though her stomach lurched and she felt sick saying it. It felt like a lie, but it wasn't. Some of the children looked down at their laps. Others got up and returned to their toys.

"Come along, children. Lirssa brought things for you all to open. We should do that before it gets too late." Mrs. June smiled that cookies and milk smile, redirecting the others back to the festivities. "Night has already fallen, and Lirssa has a home to return to." The last she said with a pointed look to Lirssa.

Everything was upside down and inside out. Lirssa felt like she had betrayed someone.

"Do you have questions?" The charm bracelet around a bony wrist jangled. The rheumy eyed lady turned one card and then another on the table. It was a weary table, worn surface muted brown with age and use. Its legs wobbled, teetering like the old lady who swayed back and forth while she turned her cards. The tent was warmed by the braziers. Lirssa stood at the edge of the open flap. The entrance turned away from the cold wind, but welcoming to those who passed by. Lirssa had been one of those.

Afternoon gave the shadows of tents and people long lean looks when the clouds rumbled out of the sun's way. It drew Lirssa's shadow deep into the tent. She did not go any closer, and the liver spotted lady with saffron skin dripping from her cheeks like wattles. "Do you have questions or no, youngin'?"

Lirssa froze. "How'd you know?"

Seven teeth, Lirssa could count each one in that smile the old lady gave, gabled in the grin. "You aren't blockin' enough light to be tall, 'less you're one of the wee folk. And even then, it's the youngins of them that come to me, not their prissy think they know it all adults. And," she wheezed out a chuckle, "I'm not blind. Not fully at least." A cough into a rampant red silk handkerchief. "Well, come in, come in and let's see what I can tell you."

The old fortune teller was just like out of the books. So much so, that Lirssa pinched her arm before she walked further inside. Music and laughter rose up in the wagon circled camp just some steps beyond the fortune teller's faded blue tent. Lirssa stopped just out of arms reach of the table, drawing off her wide brimmed hat to hold in her hands.

It was day, Lirssa had been running out with her street friends, catching up, stopping at foster homes, and she had not brought Dante with her. Now she wished she had. "I should go. I don't know why I stopped here anyway."

A shuffle of cards, the woman closed her eyes as she worked. "Hmm, you were looking for a part of your past, I think. You have city coat and hat, not a hamlet child, which is all that is on this road nearby." She turned over a few cards.

Lirssa had been looking to her past a little. She had run into Michael, apprenticed now, and it got her to thinking about the school she once went to and the people she lived with when she went to it. Only, she had not gotten far on the road to that house north of the city when she came across the caravan of performers. These were the people of her youth. Those she had sat around fires with and learned her trade and theirs as well. The stories and hocus-pocus of slight of hand, smoke and mirrors.

"So, questions about love is it, youngin'?"

"Love?! What, no...no, I don't well, not that kind of love. I don't care about that." Lirssa felt heat flush her face and blood pound in her ears for several unruly beats.

"Well, you will, and sooner than you think." The fortune teller did not raise her head from the cards, and then turned a few more. "So, love, but not that love. You're a lost one, you are. Oh, I know — you know where your feet are, sure. Those, no, those will not fail you if you treat them right." Bobbing of her head very like a chicken hunting for worms in the uncertain glow of early dawn, but she was hunting for clues in the cards.

Lirssa took a step back, and the fortune teller gave a boiling pot laugh. "Time, youngin'. Time you have and time you will lose, and you'll only trust what you see, so you had better open your eyes. No more rhetoric from me, my girl, as you can tell. I speak only the right words, and the words you have aren't right at all. Not at all. Go on with you now. There's a past you have to find by going forward, not back. But back you should go. Night is coming." The laugh sounded again.

Lirssa dashed from the tent and ran. She ran hard and fast with burning lungs and aching legs. She ran to the park and climbed the tree and only there against the biting bark against her cheek did she pause to gain her breath and close her eyes tight against the words that the old lady had laughed out at her.