For over a month Enoch kept a low profile. So as not to draw his father's attention to any strange behaviour, he kept his head down and followed the daily routine in the mortuary to the letter. He didn't want to take the risk of being caught after so narrowly avoiding it only a month before due to the stupid mistake of not hiding his resources properly.

At home he still kept to his room, coming out only to eat, after a boxing over the ears or two for trying to get away with eating in his room away from the family. Sometimes across the dinner table, little Faith would grin at him and suddenly demand, "Enoch, doll!" To counter his parents slightly confused, albeit amused, expressions, Enoch would simply shrug and look back down at his plate to attempt to his the twitch as his lips threatened to crack a smile. So long as she didn't miraculously form a complete sentence of 'Enoch makes little clay dolls dance for me', he thought it harmless enough to let her in on a little of his secret. Even if she did, were their parents likely to believe it?

After six weeks of enlivening nothing but homunculi and the occasional dead bird or cat on the street, Enoch's fingers began to itch. Or more correctly, the soles of his feet did. He had long since embraced the strange tingling in his feet and fingers whenever he used his talents but now that he had been trying to resist the urge to bring another human back from the dead, it was beginning to irritate him.

Rain drizzled down in sheets so light it barely felt much more than fog on the faces of London's early risers, mainly workmen and school children, as they milled about the streets towards their various jobs and classes. Enoch had been up since dawn with his father, having been called to collect the body of a man who had died in the night. His wife, a matronly looking woman in her forties with a bossy tone and authoritative manner of speaking, had seemed strangely at peace with the passing of her husband. As they had wrapped and lifted the corpse inside the wagon, she had loudly expressed her keenness to come into the parlour that same day to discuss funeral arrangements. As they were about to leave, Enoch had suddenly decided he preferred to walk back, leaving Uriah and Owen to take the wagon.

It wasn't only the wait that irritated Enoch, he considered as he stifled a yawn and kicked a stray stone down the street, but the secrecy in which he had to conduct his 'experiments'. He didn't want to be found out by any means, he knew nothing could come of that, but Enoch's pride in his morbid achievements kept nagging at his mind how great it would be for them to be witnessed. Even making dolls for Faith to watch run around her bed filled him with a little more pride. He was in two minds as he ducked under a long beam being carried by two sturdy workmen who turned and shouted something after him which he ignored. Other men and boys didn't concern him anymore. They were painfully normal to him, why should he be bothered?

Enoch was special. He had long known it now. Wherever his powers had come from they were unique and they were a part of him, so why shouldn't he use it? Why should he have to hide? Because a superstitious and religious Britain in 1900 was not a place where difference was celebrated. He was no sideshow act, he toyed with dead things and transferred life between them. He had very nearly been caught in his morbid habit of collecting hearts once, and had, a few years ago really been caught with his hands in a dead cat. It didn't take much imagination to know what the wrong person would do to him if they knew what he was really doing. But all the same, he ached to do it again.

Enoch sighed and reached a hand up to scratch the back of his head as he stopped on the street corner. He could see the funeral wagon and aging bay horse at the end of the street outside the funeral parlour. Dropping his hand from his dark curls, the fifteen year old made his decision. He had a few minutes before his father and uncle would know he was intentionally dawdling, but that would be enough if he hurried.

xxxXxxx

It was a frightfully risky idea to put into action within the same building as three others and separated from them only by a few walls and doors. At any moment someone might have walked out to speak to him, or fetch something they had forgotten.
Enoch waited impatiently for his chance to do it. It was hardly lunchtime when the large, matronly wife of the dead man they'd collected that morning came into the shop. She shot Enoch a filthy look as she strode past, pushing him out the way with a robust shoulder like he was dirt to her eyes. Enoch made an obscene gesture behind her back as his father ushered her aside into the small room they used as an office to discuss business with clients. Uriah, who had moved to close the door behind the discourteous woman who had left it wide open, caught the gesture and raised a warning eyebrow at his nephew. Nevertheless, he nudged Enoch with his shoulder as he passed and leaned over to mutter, "I 'fought of that too..." to him before chuckling quietly and following their client.

Brushing away a stubborn curl of brown hair that kept falling in front of his eyes, Enoch glanced at the door as it closed behind the undertakers. He didn't have long, but he bargained on at least five or ten minutes before someone emerged from the room.

The boy shrugged off his coat and rolled up his sleeves to the elbows. Casting a furtive glance at the closed office door, he crossed the room towards the table where the husband who had just died lay stretched out and covered with a sheet. Pulling down the sheet halfway, Enoch unbuttoned the shirt to the last few buttons and tossed the grey sheet back over the chest. He drew in a breath and left his scalpel resting over the abdomen. He paused at the door and still hearing three voices engaged in conversation, Enoch pushed forward. He had hidden the pig's heart he'd taken from the old offcuts discarded by the butcher in the cool box again only an hour ago, and kept careful watch across the parlour in case he needed to intercept anyone in opening it. But he hadn't.

The heart still stank after chilling but Enoch was for a moment in doubt that it would work at all, being- he suspected- far from fresh. He only had minutes to carry out the rest of his plan and let the heavy lid of the box fall with a dull thump as he hurriedly paced back to the corpse.

"Come on..." He muttered to himself as his hand trembled slightly on the scalpel poised point down over sheet and flesh to minimise the mess. "Just do it..."

Wiping his face clean of any emotion, Enoch cast one final look towards the door and dragged the scalpel down through fabric and skin. Blood, forced outwards as he pressed down, trickled out and over the sheet as he made an incision just large enough in which to fit his hand. Without hesitating, Enoch plunged his hand into the dead chest halfway up his forearm as he navigated through flesh and ribs to find the dead heart. It was messy work, and blood poured out over his hand and onto the sheet he had forethought enough to cover the dead man with. He would have to dispose of them later when he had the chance. After a moment of feeling and groping, the boy's fingers latched onto his goal and with a little difficulty, he curled his hand around ventricles and muscle until he had a firm grip on the heart. Raising the pigs heart above his head in his left hand, Enoch took a deep breath and closed his eyes against the cool light in the room and steeled himself against the sharp burst of energy he was so familiar with. It burst from his chest and travelled up his outstretched arm until the pigs heart jerked and began to beat.
Enoch let out a breath through his teeth and opened his eyes, staring down at the motionless, dead face on the table. All his conscious effort was going into keeping a tight grip on both hearts as he felt himself once more become the cord binding them together and a home for the current as it began to flow.
His whole body tremored with effort as he willed the heart not to give out too soon and a low groan split his lips that had until now been pursed so tightly together they might have been sealed shut.

It happened suddenly. The man's heart seemed to leap within its dead shell and began to beat once more. Enoch only had seconds to finish what he had started. He let go with his right hand and drew his arm out of the body with such lack of care he felt his wrist scratch on bone. A hand began to twitch as he ripped off the sheet and hastily wiped the worst of the blood off himself and with one hand tried to button the shirt over the cut.

The dead lips parted and a long, rasping sound rattled the air just as Enoch made his decision. He cast the bloodied sheets at the back of a pile of used ones and ran for the door to the office. The pigs heart was still pounding in his fingers as he kept it hidden behind his back and tried to keep the power running as he pounded on the door of the office and opened the door to stick his head through. What better way to disguise that it was his doing than by bringing it to attention himself?

xxxXxxx

"We 'ave fine oak models if ye after somefin'-what?" Owen O'Connor looked up from the other side of the spindly legged desk in the small room just as Uriah dropped the samples of wood as there was a sudden pounding on the door and a second later, his son's head poked through the opening.

"Enoch, what are ye-"

"Look here, boy, what is the meaning of this?" Both men turned in surprise to the widow who was staring at Enoch's head in indignation before either of them could say a word to the boy themselves. "We're in business at the moment, that's quite enough-"

Enoch's face seemed even paler than usual, his eyes standing out against almost translucent skin as he scowled at the woman and cut her off, staring directly at his father instead. "'E ain't dead."

"What are ye talkin'-" Uriah too was cut off as Enoch spoke over the top of him.

"'E ain't dead!" He repeated insistently and Owen pushed himself to his feet and sidled around the desk towards the door.
As his father approached, Enoch drew back from the door and backed away a few steps as the two men stepped out. He pointed his free hand towards the table in the corner, keeping his left clasped behind his back and sticking near to the wall.

"Whatcha mean 'e's not dea-"

A loud thud drew three pairs of eyes in the direction Enoch was pointing across the room and as one, the brothers jaws dropped loose and hung stupidly at the sight. The silver haired gentleman seemed to have fallen to the floor and was now lifting himself up with the edge of the table. The same man they had loaded dead into the back of the wagon that morning and lay out on that very table.

"What in the good Lord's earf-"

Slowly, as if he were still regaining control of his own body, the corpse drew himself up to stand and stared right at them with slightly milky eyes.

"I...don't-'e was dead..." Uriah's voice was higher and wavered far more than usual as he pointed a shaking finger towards the man whose jaw was now opening and closing slowly, as if trying to remember how to speak.

"Dead?" The voice of Raymond Gallaway was slightly hoarse but otherwise was very much his own as he stared at the men across the room and a suddenly affronted expression appeared on the deathly pale skin. "I should say not, good sirs, and I will be bidding you good day!"

Perhaps roused by the surprising sound of her husband's voice, Mrs. Gallaway suddenly pushed her way through the door, quite red in the face as she stared between the undertakers. "What is the meaning of th-" Her gaze passed them by and landed on her husband who had just turned around and taken two very stiff steps towards the front door.

Several things happened at once.

Rosemary Gallaway let out a scream that could have, quite appropriately, woken the dead and her large frame toppled backwards in a faint, landing with a thud on the floor so strong that the men all felt it tremble beneath their feet. At the same time, the heart that Enoch clenched behind his back gave one last feeble little beat and went still in his fingers. Barely a moment after that, a low groan left the dead man's lips and he fell face forward onto the floor with a crunch as his legs crumpled.

Standing directly behind both his father and his uncle, Enoch subtly slipped the shrivelled and grey heart into his pocket and allowed himself a quick grin as a sense of elation began to balloon in his chest. He wiped it off his face quickly and tried to paint on the same expression of shock to mirror his father before hurrying between them and looking at each in turn.
"See? ... 'E wasn't dead..."

Uriah and Owen wore near identical expressions somewhere between horror and bemusement. All colour had drained from both their faces leaving them almost as ghostly looking as Enoch as they stared dumbstruck at the unmoving man on the floor.
Owen's mouth opened and closed stupidly for a second before he cleared his throat and seemed to regain a little composure. "Did you-"

"'ow could the kid 'ave done it?"
Enoch was quietly thankful for his uncle's interruption, though he was quite sure his father hadn't really believed he was responsible for this. To anyone but himself it would have sounded completely ludicrous.

"Well...'e couldn't 'ave been dead..."Uriah slowly stepped over towards the body, shaking his head as he crouched down by Gallaway's silver haired head. He reached up a hand to scratch his own head of thick dark hair in confusion before somewhat hesitantly pressing two fingers to the neck of the corpse to feel for a pulse. Finding nothing he lifted the heavy, limp wrist and watched as it dropped without resistance to the floor with a thud. "But 'e sure is now..."

A quite whimper turned all living heads in the room to the fallen Mrs. Gallaway who was weakly stirring on the floor outside the open office door. Owen snapped to attention and regained control of his limbs, immediately moving over to try and help the woman who was beginning to shriek hysterically.

"Enoch, gimme an 'and wiv 'im."

The teenager snapped his eyes back to his uncle who was waving him over and hurried to assist. Together, they hefted the heavy corpse up with great difficulty and dragged him between them back to the embalming table. Something wet began to pool against Enoch's shirt and he looked down to see the pool of blood blossoming through Gallaway's shirt. Uriah had seen it too as they heaved the man halfway onto the table.

"What the-that wasn' there before-'ey!"

Enoch's eyes widened a miniscule amount as his uncle suddenly bent to pick something up and for a moment he panicked that the pig's heart might have fallen from his pocket. He clapped a hand against his leg and let out a soft breath to himself as he felt it still there.

Uriah straightened up, holding the bloodied scalpel in his fingers and opened his mouth as if he were about to ask Enoch a question.

The boy cut him off before he could ask it. "Ye left it on the table...remember? Musta cut 'imself gettin' up."

"Did I? ...I must 'ave, I s'pose..."

xxxXxxx

He didn't want to risk bringing another corpse back in the presence of his family again so soon, but the feeling of pride and success that had blossomed in his chest had taken weeks to really fade away. The expression on that horrible woman's face before she fainted stuck in Enoch's mind and brought a slightly cruel sneer to his face every time he thought of it. She had deserved the shock after thinking she was so much better than they were.

Since the incident, O'Connor's Funerals had implemented a much more thorough process of ensuring the person they were about to embalm was in fact dead. Of course, they were often already in the process of rigor mortis but nevertheless, before any blood was drained, someone would check twice more for a pulse. This was a duty that more often than not fell to Enoch, much to his quiet amusement.

As the weeks wore into months, Enoch resumed his occasional midnight exploits to the mortuary and excursions in the middle of the night to find hearts to use. After several experimental attempts, he discovered that using several smaller hearts produced a very similar effect strong enough to bring back a human for a minute or two. It wasn't nearly as powerful, but it would do when he couldn't get his hands on pigs or cows.

One of the corpses had been that of a young man who could not even have been twenty yet and had drowned in the Thames. He had been the more accepting victim that Enoch had successfully resurrected and had quite willingly struck up a strange conversation with Enoch about what it had felt like. He liked it where he was now, he had said, a comment which had both intrigued and disgusted the younger boy.

With October came Faith's third birthday. Like many families in their social class, birthdays were small affairs that did not often extend beyond family unless the money was available to cater for more.

"There she is!" Uriah bellowed loudly as the door of his brother's house swung closed behind himself and his nephew.

The little girl let out a delighted laugh as she climbed down the last stair and ran on tiny feet towards the front door. "Uncle! Uncle!"
Uriah laughed and shrugged off his black coat before bending down to scoop up his niece into his arms.

"Enoch..." Enoch pulled off his own coat behind his uncle and cast it into a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room before looking over at his father who was motioning for him to follow. They rounded the corner into the small washroom as Owen rolled up his sleeves to wash his arms.
"I don't wanna see ye keepin' ta yourself tonight, Enoch." He said as he leaned over the basin and ran the tap of cold water.

Enoch sighed from his position leaning in the doorway and rolled his eyes when he thought his father wasn't looking. Unfortunately, he had glanced in the cracked mirror just in time to see it and turned around with a raised eyebrow to stare his son down. Enoch's stubbornness had definitely come from the O'Connor side. "Enoch..." Owen stated again warningly.

The teenager dropped his shoulders and started to roll up his own sleeves to the elbows. "I wasn't gonna. It's 'er birfday, why would I?"

"A 'yes', would 'ave been just fine." Owen shook his head, but his lip twitched slightly as he shook droplets of water from his hands before drying them on a towel and stepping aside so Enoch could wash up. "But good lad...now 'urry for tea, alright?"

"Yes." Enoch mumbled obligingly as his father clapped a hand down on his shoulder.

They ate a meal of stew made from leftover beef from Sunday's supper, and sweet dumplings that was followed by a sugary cake for Faith's birthday who sat bouncing happily on Valentine's lap.

Enoch hardly spoke a word unless he was spoken to and spent most of the meal pulling faces across the table at his sister to make her laugh and try to pull faces right back at him.

After the meal, Uriah produced a brown paper parcel which Faith eagerly ripped open to reveal a little new dress for her and squealed "Pwetty!" to anyone who would listen for the next five minutes. Enoch, who hadn't been able to be excused to his room, sat cross legged by the fire to stoke it as needed, pretending he couldn't hear the conversation of the adults only a few feet away. Uriah had lit up his pipe and slouched comfortably in a chair across from his brother and sister in law who had both lowered their tones and cast occasional glances over at their children.
Faith had begun jumping at Enoch's back and clawing at his shoulders as she tried to climb him. The boy couldn't help but smile to himself until eventually he caught her arms and dragged her gently over his shoulder to plop into his lap.
"Watcha doin', ey? ...I got somefin' for ye, too..."

"Owen..." Valentine nudged her husband from where she sat on the arm of his chair and nodded over to the fireplace.
Both Owen and Uriah turned to look and Uriah chuckled around his pipe as Owen raised a surprised eyebrow at the unexpected sight.

From somewhere on his person Enoch had produced what seemed to be a doll with bendable limbs about the size of his outstretched hand and was holding it out to Faith who was looking at it in delight.
"Well I'll be..." Owen muttered as he watched his son being surprisingly generous, "When'd 'e ever get 'old of that?"

"I made it." Enoch said loudly and looked over towards his parents, making it clear to them that he could hear every word they were saying. "That's what I've been doin' upstairs." It wasn't entirely a lie. He had certainly made the doll upstairs with Faith in mind. It just wasn't the whole truth.

"Enoch, that's very sweet o'ye." Valentine beamed at her son. It warmed her heart to see how good Enoch was with his little sister, even if the house was as far as his good will extended.

Enoch's ears went pink and he muttered something under his breath and turned back to Faith who had grabbed the doll and was walking it across his leg. Leaning forward, he whispered quietly enough that only she would be able to hear. "Maybe I'll make 'im dance for ye sometime. Shhh..."

"See? Nofin' wrong with the boy, Val." Uriah said, letting out a long puff of pipe smoke and mindful of keeping his voice low enough so Enoch wouldn't hear them. "Just needs mates is all. Not that easy to make in our line'a work right, Owen? But e's good at what we do."

"'E 'ad an 'ard time at school, never made none. I wish 'e would..." Valentine's gaze left her children and drifted back to her brother in law.

"I don't know...sometimes I don't fink that's all it is..." Owen answered just as quietly and exchanged a glance with his wife who forced a little smile and pushed back a strand of her greying hair.

"It's not all'a time...there's just somefink strange sometimes is all."

"Oh 'e's a young man now. E'll grow outta it."

"You don't live 'ere, Uriah."

xxxXxxx

December came and went and with it, Enoch's sixteenth birthday before Christmas. He was old enough now to work unsupervised for the whole day if his father chose, and did one day when his parents went out of the city and didn't return until suppertime. To commemorate that, his present had been a proper undertaker's black coat and hat. While the hat had belonged to his father, the coat was the newest piece of clothing he'd had since he was a small child.

He was shooting upwards as quickly as growing boys did and had in the last few months of the year before it trickled over into 1909, seemed to have shot up to his father's height. Though reasonably tall and lean, he was filling out quite well built with broad shoulders from digging graves and carrying coffins.

Enoch's eyes drifted around the park from his seat on a low bench. Around him young children laughed and threw snowballs that were half dirty slush at each other. He blew out warm air into cupped hands and rubbed them together furiously before stuffing them back into his pockets. He had come out here to be by himself, and perhaps to find some freezing pigeon to put out of its misery later. His blue eyes drifted away from the kids shouting across the path from him and instead rested on a group of pretty girls bundled up in their hats, stockings and long coats who were laughing at some joke not far from him. Enoch hardly realised he'd been staring until one of the girls nudged her friend and she looked over at him. She was very pretty, he vaguely noted, with auburn curls that stuck out from under her hat and large green eyes which stood out against her light skin. She smiled at him and he noticed she had a dimple in her cheek as she did. He raised an eyebrow in response and for just a moment his lips actually started to twitch upwards.
But as quickly as it had come, any expression vanished from his face when she scoffed, rolled her lovely eyes and burst out laughing with her friends. Almost as a single unit, the three girls turned on their heels and walked away chattering.
Enoch's deadpan expression turned just as quickly into a scowl as they walked away. He didn't really care what they thought of him, and he wasn't really surprised but the look of disdain on the faces of the girls had stung just a little bit.
He sighed out a breath and watched it mist in the winter air before he pushed himself up and started to walk in the opposite direction. His boots crunched the snow and twigs underfoot as he marched towards the gates of the park.
"-in the Boer War, you know..." A snatch of conversation between two men caught his ear as he passed a rather rotund gentleman and a younger man, not much older than Enoch was. Had they not been going in the opposite direction, Enoch may even have gone out of his way to listen in.

Though content with the funeral service that he knew like the back of his own hands, Enoch wanted to be a soldier. Not only that, but he wanted to be a general. Sometimes he would see army men in the streets, trickling out of pubs in the evening or talking loudly outdoors about the British Army's victories in exotic places like India and South Africa. The idea of having his own rifle or bayonet and learning how to defeat the enemy intrigued Enoch almost as much as death itself did, even if the two so often went hand in hand. He had told himself for years that when he was old enough he would leave home and join King Edward's army. Enoch was sure he could be unstoppable with his talents. After all, an army at his command who would not stay dead if shot down? He'd like to see any enemy of Britain come up against that.

So intrigued was he by the idea that it became a favourite game of his to create several homunculi and make them battle each other in small groups of two or three wielding nails or splinters of wood. One particularly infamous battle, the Battle of the Bedsheets, had ended in a brutal beheading of one little commander, distinguishable from his troops only by the pin Enoch had stabbed into the clay chest.