With January 1908 came the middle of the harshest winter London had seen for years. So few people ventured into the streets and those that did never stayed out long if they could avoid it. With the exception of the children determined to make a game of pelting anyone in sight with snowballs. Trade in most businesses dwindled in contrast to the soaring demand of coal for fires. Snow fell so deeply over London that the unfortunate horses struggled to pull their loads through it and the wheels of wagons and carts more often than not had to be dug out of inches of snow before they could be used.

Whilst most trades, with the exception of coal, dwindled during this winter, the cities undertakers were in far higher demand. With outbreaks of pneumonia becoming increasingly easy to contract and hunger amongst the poorer classes reaching a dangerous level, the doctors and unfortunately undertakers in turn were busier than ever.

It was in the midst of such freezing conditions that Enoch decided to oblige his curiosities.

He lay wide awake in his bed, not daring to move from it until he was sure both his parents had passed his room on their way to bed. He waited a while after that too ensure that they would be asleep before tossing off the two blankets he'd huddled under and slowly sliding his legs over the side of the bed. The floorboards creaked as soon as he put weight on them and he stopped to listen for any movement elsewhere in the house before standing up. Pushing aside his bed, he upturned the few floorboards he had pried loose to extend his secret hiding place and plunged a hand into it much as he would an animal. Uncovering what he was looking for, Enoch quickly replaced the boards and stood up again. He pulled on his warmest coat and slipped into his boots before slowly slipping from his room onto the landing and down the stairs and quietly and quickly as he dared. The fire was burning low in the grate, giving off the last of its pleasant warmth as Enoch passed the kitchen and stole out of the door into the bitter chill.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and immediately regretted not bothering to put gloves on as he crunched through the snow to the funeral parlour. He'd planned ahead enough to swipe his uncle's key without his noticing early that morning as he arrived.
Admitting himself, Enoch let out a breath that misted in the air before him. It was so cold inside without a furnace or fireplace that there was little need at all for the cool box or really embalming at all. Freezing almost did the job itself in the winter.

He could already feel all the blood in his face flooding to his ears and he turned up the collar of his coat in a poor effort to combat it.

The body was laid out on the table, encrusted with a thin layer of ice crystals and so pale the skin was almost translucent. It was a middle aged woman with a hooked nose and greying hair, covered by a thin white sheet. She had been a victim of pneumonia that Uriah and Owen O'Connor had brought in that morning. This corpse would do as well as any other, and Enoch supposed might even be easy to bring back to life than a fat, sixty year old man.
Enoch pulled out the jar from within his pocket and placed it beside the dead woman's head. Inside was a heart submerged in a pickling solution to preserve its freshness as long as he could. He'd taken it from a dog that had frozen to death by the river. If pigeon hearts could not effectively bring a dog back to life for more than a moment, he could hardly have expected them to work on a human being.

Without batting an eyelid, Enoch dragged the sheet covering the corpse down. Whatever modesty anyone had in life could hardly be expected to carry through into death. He rubbed his hands together quickly, trying to warm them at least enough to stop the shaking as he picked up the razor sharp scalpel. It shook in his hand, poised over the breastbone for so long that Enoch could have frozen in place without realising it.

He could have pretended it was the cold that fogged his mind, but it would have been lying to himself. As accustomed, and strangely intrigued as he was by the sight of death, the only incisions he'd ever made in a human being had been surgical ones to replace blood with embalming fluid. He wasn't disturbed or disgusted, per se, as much as he was peculiarly curious. If the first time he'd cut open a cat had been odd, this seemed downright ludicrous or even deranged.
For a split second, Enoch's lips twitched as he imagined the faces of anyone who walked in and caught him in the act of what he was about to attempt. He'd be branded as a monster and a freak, and more likely than not a potential murderer in the making.

Releasing a long breath which froze in the air, Enoch dragged down the scalpel in one fluid motion. His own heart pounded hard in his chest as he hesitated only for a moment before pulling apart skin and flesh and reaching inside before he could think twice again. He might have expected to be more disgusted but no bile rose to his throat, only breaths that he drew quickly and shallowly as he groped around bone and between ribs for what he was searching for.
The moment his fingers wrapped around her literally cold heart Enoch saw the flaw in his plan. He'd forgotten to even open the jar with the dog's heart. Cursing to himself he reached out with his left hand and groped for the jar on the further side of the corpse, with some difficulty he pressed it between his chest and the table and carefully unscrewed the lid. Reaching inside, Enoch wrapped his fingers around the dog's heart and wriggled his hand loose. The jar slipped and shattered on the floor at his feet, sending a pool of pickling solution spreading over the wooden floor.
"Bloody 'ell..." Enoch muttered, but otherwise ignored it for the moment and turned his focus back to the task he was attempting.
Raising the dog's heart above his head, and tightening his grip on the dead woman's, Enoch let out a steadying breath and squeezed. As his fingers tightened around the disembodied heart, he felt the familiar ball of energy beginning to pulse inside his chest. In a moment it had become the running current that had become such a part of him that he barely noticed the unpleasantness anymore. But this time it demanded more, his breaths once again grew short and shallow and he gripped both hearts with such intensity he might have driven his fingers through them. With a surge of energy expelled from his fingertips, the dog's heart lurched in his hand and began to beat.

"Come on...come on..." He muttered through gritted teeth as bloody pickling solution trickled down his sleeve. But the heart in his right hand remained motionless, compressed only by his fingers. With a splutter not unlike a cough, the dog's heart began to lose the life that Enoch had restored to it. Its beating grew slow and weak as the colour and blood drained from it, leaving a greying clump of flesh Enoch slowly lowered to the table. It hadn't worked. The body did not so much as twitch as Enoch slowly released his hold on it and withdrew his hand.
Enoch sighed and kicked the table leg in a fit of frustration. Pain rushed through his almost frozen feet and he bit down on his tongue to keep from hissing out in pain. He looked down at the shrivelled organ on the table and pursed his lips. He was sure now that it was possible to raise a human being, but the heart had given out too soon, it hadn't been enough. If he wanted to succeed, he needed stronger hearts.

Quickly he pulled the sheet right off the table and bent down to mop up the spilled solution before tossing it back over the corpse and hoping no one would think to ask him to explain why the woman appeared to have been cut open overnight. He gathered the biggest pieces of the broken jar and brushed the rest under shelves and into corners. Lastly, Enoch picked up the spent heart and slipped out of the parlour where he hurled it as hard as he could down the street into the snow and emptied the broken glass from his pockets onto the curb. Tucking his hands in his pockets he hurried quickly

xxxXxxx

A dark cloud settled over the O'Connor household when little Faith contracted pneumonia in February. The disease was often fatal even among the fittest and strongest people, but for the very young and the elderly, it was nearly always so.
It had started as a tiny, chesty cough that could have only been a cold but within days she had dissolved into shaking chills and developed such a fever that it terrified Owen, Valentine and Enoch all. With no known cure and only basic medicines available, there was little hope that a two year old could fight it enough to survive. They moved her to a mattress by the fireplace where day and night someone always sat with her.

Six days into her illness, Faith's health looked grim at best. She was so pale and feverish she could hardly sit herself up and fussed terribly when her mother tried to spoon feed her broth and soup. Enoch woke to his sister's crying and coughing as he so frequently had done in the last week. The weather was no less freezing than it had been all of January and at first he just groaned to himself and pulled his pillow over his head, trying to not to let fears that his sister might die invade his mind. After five minutes of trying and failing not to think about it, he rolled over and pushed himself out of bed, taking a blanket with him. Wrapping it securely around his shoulders, he wandered out of his room and followed the glow of the fire that flickered against the walls down the hall.

Valentine looked up wearily at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. She sat on the wooden chair by the fire, rocking a bundled up Faith in her arms. The baby's blonde curls were plastered to her forehead with sweat and she had worn herself out crying as she laid her little head against her mother's chest. Valentine looked mildly surprised to see her son wander into the room, his own blanket wrapped around his shoulders. At first, for a day or so, both she and Owen had tried to keep Enoch away from Faith, lest he catch pneumonia too. When it became quite apparent that he was blatantly ignoring them anyway, they didn't bother. Living in the same house would be more than enough to transfer it anyway.
"Enoch, you should be asleep..." Her voice was thin and exhaustion apparent in everything from her thin face to heavy eyelids.

"She was cryin'." Enoch muttered in return, pulling his blanket further around his shoulders for warmth and sinking down to sit cross legged on the floor in front of the fire.

"You know how sick she is, Enoch. Don't be like that now." Valentine chided weakly before Faith squirmed in her arms and she resumed rocking forward and backwards slightly.

"I ain't being anyfing." He didn't have the desire to argue about it now and wisely dropped the attitude, instead he looked up at his mother and frowned. "You should go sleep, Mum." He pushed himself up onto his knees and edged closer to them. "I can watch 'er."

Despite how tired she was, Valentine's eyes widened slightly at her son's gesture. He wasn't so rude and bitter all the time that they didn't know he loved his family, but even so, it was rare for Enoch to offer to do something selfless of his own accord. She was slightly taken aback so that she momentarily forgot to reply. "Excuse me?"

"Yeh need rest too, Mum. I'm up now." Enoch settled himself on the floor beside Faith's mattress on the further side from the fire and looked up at his mother like he'd just made the decision for her.

Still slightly stunned at Enoch's change of attitude in the given situation, Valentine took a moment to look between her two children before brushing Faith's hair back and kissing her forehead.
The moment she began to shift her daughter, Faith began to whimper again and Valentine hushed her hurriedly as she slipped from the chair to her knees on the floor and started to tuck her back into her bed.
"Shh, little one...Mama's not goin' far...shh..."

As the blankets were bundled up around his sister, Enoch sat forward a little and stretched out a cool hand over the covers towards Faith who squirmed and tossed as her little eyes flickered between her mother and brother. Her tiny hand seized his fingers and in comparison to the chill of the rest of the house, her skin was quite hot to the touch. As soon as she felt her brother's presence she seemed to relax a little though her other arm waved towards Valentine as she kissed her forehead again and started to leave the room.

"Mama...mama..." Faith whimpered, starting to toss as she struggled to sit herself off, reaching out in the direction her mother had disappeared. Her eyes filled with fresh tears and her tiny lips trembled ready to burst out into more sobs.

"Shh..." Enoch hushed, shifting his position until he was sitting on the mattress next to his sister, moving the hand she was grasping to rest on her belly over the covers. "It's alright, Faith, I'm 'ere. I'll 'ave to do."

Her eyes, swimming with tears fixed on his face for a moment before she seemed to give up struggling and lay still. Her breaths came in a quick little pants which Enoch wasn't sure was because of the fever or she was simply trying not to sob. He smiled a little down at her when Faith squeezed his fingers tighter.
Enoch considered himself a realist and didn't care to give himself false hope or raise his expectations higher than he knew was likely to happen. He knew perfectly well that the chances of a two year old child fighting through and surviving pneumonia were dismal at best. But for once he hated his own outlook. Even to Enoch, who didn't laugh or smile genuinely very often, Faith had brought out the best in him in the last two years. She was such a happy child it was almost impossible not to smile with her. Just seeing her so miserable sent a pang of discomfort through his chest, and for once, Enoch couldn't bear the thought of death.

He just sat there beside her for a full hour, only moving to stoke the fire or sit her up and rub her little back when Faith started coughing again. Finally, when it seemed she would not sleep yet, Enoch pried his hand from hers and moved to sit cross legged on the mattress at her feet.
"Look 'ere...I got somefin to show ye."
Enoch cast a glance over his shoulder briefly before reaching down his nightshirt and pulling from it a little clay man. Faith just rubbed her eyes wearily and struggled to push herself up to see. Enoch leaned over to pick her up and sit her in his lap. Wrapping her up in the blanket around his own shoulders, leaving one of his arms and shoulders free, he tilted his head to smile at her. She craned her head up to him briefly before reaching one chubby hand towards the clay man lying on the mattress in front of her.
"Doll..." She rasped and Enoch smiled as she lay back against his shoulder.

"Yeah. It's a doll, but it's a special doll." With Faith's eyes following his hand, Enoch reached out, picked up the homunculus figure and pressed his thumb firmly to its chest. The clay man jerked in his fingers and started to wriggle its limbs experimentally.
Enoch looked down at his sister whose eyes had gone wide and were now fixed on the moving doll in his hand. He dropped it to the mattress and poked it upright with a finger. "Go on then..."

The homunculus struggled to its feet and waved a little arm up at Faith before jumping a few centimetres into the arm and kicking its feet together. As it toppled clumsily backwards, Faith laughed. It was a weak, throaty sound but it was a real laugh again, and Enoch grinned in response as he looked down at her.
When the little doll started to run around in circles on the blankets and kept falling over lumps of piled up covers, Faith laughed harder and clapped her little hands together excitedly. Reaching up one hand she patted Enoch's chin and smiled at him before pointing back at the doll. "Doll fall!"

"Yeah...'e's funny, eh?" Enoch smiled, wrapping her in more of his blanket when she started to shiver again before quickly reaching out to catch the homunculus as it started to climb off the mattress. "It's our secret, don't tell..." As an afterthought he muttered more to himself. "Not that you know what a secret is."

"E'och doll."

He kept Faith amused, with the occasional fit of coughing, with the homunculus for a lot longer than he expected her attention span to last. He made it dance for her, and lifted it to her face so she could touch it and giggle when it poked her nose lightly. For a while he could almost forget how sick she was she seemed so happy again. Eventually her little eyes started to droop and he felt her falling asleep against his shoulder. Enoch sighed and caught the homunculus where it had been swinging its little legs off the edge of the mattress again. With another press to its chest, the doll went limp in his fingers again.
Slowly, Enoch pushed himself up onto his knees and gently lowered his sister back into her nest of blankets. She stirred and coughed a little but did not seem to wake until he pried her little arms off of his and tucked the covers back around her.
"E'och...doll." She murmured, her eyes half lidded and one hand gripping at nothing.

Enoch looked down at the inanimate clay figure and bit his lip before he sighed. What was the harm?
He moved closer to the fire, and Faith started to whimper as he left her line of sight. Cracking open the clay chest, Enoch pried the dead mouse heart out from within and tossed it into the embers. By morning it would be so charred it would easily be mistaken to be coal. Hurrying back to Faith's bedside and crouching down he handed her the clay figure. Her hand immediately wrapped around it and pulled it to her side, hugging it close like a teddy bear.
"Go ta sleep, Faith." Enoch murmured, pulling his blanket back over his shoulders and trying to get comfortable on the floor at her bedside. As her eyes finally started to close he added in a whisper so soft he barely heard his own voice utter the words "Don't die."

xxxXxxx

Miraculously, four days later, Faith's fever had broken. Her chills and shivering were abating and the cough was lessening each day. The overwhelming majority of children who came down with pneumonia suffered from it until an early death, and there had been little reason to hope that Faith would struggle through it and recover. But as she improved little by little, there was reason to hope again. Day by day, Faith ate more and coughed less. They still kept her warmed by the fire where Enoch, when he was left alone with her, would make another homunculus perform for her. He saw little need to keep his abilities a secret from a two year old who could barely talk. Even if she managed to string a sentence together enough to tell anyone, why would they believe it?

The worst of the winter had abated, and the cold became more bearable as more people began to trickle onto the streets. Children were more commonly seen throwing snowballs in the last of the murky, dirty snow that lined the edges of the roads. But while the bitter chill was easing, Enoch's desire to try and bring a human being back to life, had not.
His first attempt had failed dismally, and hadn't achieved even a twitch. The heart he had used was too small and weak to reanimate a human's and Enoch knew he needed bigger. How he would get his hands on the hearts of larger animals, even just a pig, was another matter. He was hardly about to break into a stable and slaughter someone's horse and live cows and pigs weren't common in the city. But he did not need to kill anything to get its heart.

Enoch saw his opportunity in the window of a butcher's shop on a Monday afternoon. The off cuts and organs, particularly livers and kidneys, of beef and pork were in frequent demand by ladies shopping for their families meat. He stepped over a young girl in rags clutching a raggedy looking cat in her lap on the curb and was promptly elbowed aside by a stout middle aged woman with a ridiculous bonnet almost twice the size of her head. Surely in the cold it would have been sensible to dress more practically. Enoch scowled but sidestepped out of the way of several men and women milling around the shop, craning to look over heads into the windows and gossiping about how expensive good beef was. Drawing his coat closer to his chest, Enoch managed to sidle himself into the shop where the two butchers in bow ties and white aprons rushed about hurriedly filling orders and wrapping meat in paper.
Enoch tugged his cap a little lower over his face to try and reduce the chance of being recognised as he pushed his way towards an ice box on the wall, in which a range of off cuts were displayed. If he just found one heart...if he could just try it once. He wouldn't have to resort to thievery all the time, Enoch told himself. If it worked, he would find another way to get what he needed. Besides, it was only one comparatively small part. It was a poor justification and Enoch knew it but he couldn't bring himself to care much as he pushed aside a poorly cut hunk of pork and found what he wanted. There was one there after all. The fifteen year old looked up and over his shoulder one more time, his blue eyes seeking out the butchers who were paying no attention to him in their rush. He chanced it. Reaching out, Enoch picked up the heart from the ice and, as subtly as he could, drew it inside his jacket.

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