Three children was far too many. Landlords wouldn't allow three children. And though their parents tried their best to hide them, Hans and Greta were eventually found out during a surprise inspection – and with the eviction notice pinned to the door, what else were their parents meant to do?

“We can keep two,” their mother said, still hopeful.

“But which?” Their father dragged a hand over his eyes. “It would be cruel to separate them. At least this way they'll have each other. And we could try again, down the line. What are the chances of having twins a second time?”

“We could keep them both...” their mother started.

“Absolutely not. Jack was here first, it would be unfair to him to throw him out at this age.”

“But he's nearly eighteen...”

“Nobody wants a child his age. He'd surely die on his own. But the twins are so young and cute. They'll find a home right away – I promise.”

He took his wife in his arms and kissed her forehead, giving her shoulders a reassuring squeeze.

#

“What do you mean, you're not taking surrenders right now?” Color bloomed in their father's face, his voice lifting. They cowered behind him.

“Just what I said, sir. I'm sorry. But we're at capacity.”

Beyond the reception area, out in the housing space, there were distant sounds of yelling, laughter and crying and some noise that sounded like both at the same time. It made the hair on Greta's arms stand upright and her skin tingle. But her brother wrapped an arm around her, trying to stand tall.

“Well, I can't take them back to my house!” Father yelled, loud enough that an employee stopped walking past in order to turn and gawk. “Not unless you want our whole family turned out in the street.”

“I'm sorry,” the receptionist repeated. “But as a no-kill facility, we have hard limits on our capacity. We can't take any more until children until some are adopted or a foster opens up. That's just how it has to be.”

“What about the city pound?”

The receptionist frowned. “They can't turn you away,” she admitted. “But I have to warn you...their funding is even worse than ours. I promise you they're at capacity, too. Giving them your children is pretty much signing a death sentence for a different kid. Have you tried asking a relative, or posting an ad online?”

“Have I tried....? Jesus. What do you think I am? Did you think this was my first choice? Like I'm some idiot who didn't...look. I need this dealt with tonight, before my landlord comes back and inspects the house again.” He turned and gripped each twin by the shoulder, steering them back out the door.

#

It was near dark by the time their father pulled off the road. The city was far behind them; now they looked out over a wooded area. The trees were thick and close, and it was dark between their trunks.

Greta slumped down in her seat, making a quiet, frightened noise.

“Get out,” their father said, putting a threat in his voice.

His hand curled into a fist, as if preparing to strike them.

“Go on. Get out of here.”

Jack, in the front seat, kept his gaze averted, staring out the window, his jaw wobbling a little like he was trying not to cry.

Hans looked between his father and brother, then let out a breath. He pushed open his door and tugged at Greta's wrist. “It's all right,” he whispered. “I'll take care of you. Let's just go.”

Greta eyed her twin skeptically but followed him anyway. She murmured a farewell to Jack, who had always been kind to her, but she wouldn't meet her father's eyes. They closed the car door behind them and stepped down onto the grassy shoulder, hand-in-hand.

At first, the car didn't move, and they could make out their father's face through the glass, the way his gaze followed them in the rearview mirror. A slight downturn of his lips, a twitch in his cheek – but the expression quickly passed, and his gaze flicked away.

A moment later, the car's tires crunched over gravel, and it was replaced just by the glow of taillights in a cloud of dusty exhaust.

“We'd better go,” Hans said, squeezing his sister's hand.

“Do you know where we're going?” Greta asked.

He shook his head. “No. But maybe if we walk into the trees, we'll find something. It can be like an adventure.”

Greta was not feeling very adventurous. She was feeling sad and hungry. But she didn't have any better ideas, so she walked into the woods with Hans, and they wandered through trees in the ever-darkening forest.

After a while, when it was full dark and the woods were coming alive with night sounds, Greta spotted an orange glow ahead. She elbowed her brother.

“Look!”

“What is that?”

“I don't know. But it's something different than cold and dark.”

The twins crossed the forested lot, winding between the trees, until they came up on a fence. Over the top, they could see the roof of a house, with light in the windows. There was a gap in the fence, big enough for a child to squeeze through, and Hans stepped forward first to investigate.

“Greta, come look!”

Laid out on the back porch was a table piled high with food: a tray of sandwiches and liter bottles of soda, a plate of cookies.

But more amazing: they were not alone. Crowded around the table were many other children, some of them much older than the twins, and some much younger. The older ones were dressed in filthy rags and had ragged, broken-off nails. Some had scars on their arms and faces, wounds made by teeth and nails. The youngest kids were naked, crouching like feral things over food they'd pulled from the table. They scattered fearfully when Hans and Greta approached.

One of the bigger boys was missing an eye, and when he turned to look at them, they could see the way his eyelid crumpled in over the empty socket, weeping clear fluid at the edge.

“Do you live here?” Hans asked, hesitantly stepping forward.

“I live wherever I want,” the one-eyed boy said. He looked older than Jack, practically a grown-up, and he towered over most of the others who crowded around him on either side.

“What is this place?”

The one-eyed boy shrugged. “It's free food. Don't ask questions.”

Greta thought that was a very sensible plan. She took two sandwiches for herself and slipped handfuls of cookies into her pockets. She tried to take one of the bottles of soda, but an older girl – a teenager, clutching a little naked baby to her chest – bared her teeth and made a low warning noise, so Greta backed away with what she had.

#

Hans and Greta spent several weeks in the woods, where they learned the rules that governed the other children.

Bordering the small patch of woods they had been abandoned in was a subdivision. The house with the gap in its fence belonged to a family of soft-hearted people who usually left food out for the children. Sometimes they forgot, or were too busy to bother, and so the children went hungry or else hunted the small creatures that lived in the woods – mice and birds and lizards.

When they weren't eating, the children retreated into the safety of the woods, sleeping by themselves or breaking off into little groups. The children who were no longer really children would start their own families; that was why there were no clothes for the littlest ones.

“Do you ever go inside?” Hans once asked.

“Sometimes, when one of us gets hurt,” the one-eyed boy, whose name was Tom, explained, “the family takes them to a doctor. But they don't keep any of the children. Most of us are too wild to be kept, anyway.”

“What about the babies?” Greta asked.

Tom shrugged. “They're the most wild of all. They've never known anything different.”

“What about you, Tom? Did you used to have a house and parents like us?”

“I don't remember anymore,” Tom said, in a way that made Greta realize he didn't want to answer any more questions about that, so she stopped asking them.

For the first few nights, the twins entertained the idea that their parents might miss them – that they might come out and look for them, or change their minds about abandoning them. But when no one came for them after a week, they abandoned that thought and learned to live like the other stray children, their hair growing shaggy, their bodies dirty. They learned to scrap and claw and bite when others got too close or threatened them; they learned to defend their best sleeping places and their food.

One day, Tom did not join them at the table. They found his body later, by the road, half-curled in on itself, parts of him missing or smeared on the pavement. At night, the forest filled with high, keening noises: girls crying, babies wailing.

“I think Tom was the boss,” Greta said. “Like the dad. I think he took care of them.”

“Then someone else will have to. I think I have an idea.”

#

The Bruins were a proper family: A mother and a father and a son just a little bit younger than Hans and Greta. They lived in a proper house, with two bedrooms and a guest room that they kept for company. They were clean, well-mannered people with respectable jobs, and the little boy went to a good school. The only problem was their affection for strays.

“Feeding them just attracts more of them,” the man across the street tried to explain once, when he and Mr. Bruins both happened to be outside watering their lawns at the same time. “And then they stay and get into fights and some of them breed, which just makes everything worse.”

“I suppose you're right,” Mr. Bruins admitted. “It's just my wife has such a kind heart, and she can't stand to think of them starving. We'd take them all in ourselves if we could, you know. They're just...”

And there he trailed off with a sort of sheepish half-shrug, and he went back inside when the lawn was finished, and his neighbor went back inside and thought about how much he hated his neighbor for feeding the feral children, and how the hoards of them were driving down the property value for the whole block.

Because the Bruins were a proper family, they were all gone away at work or school during the day, leaving the house quite empty.

When the sun was out, and the other children were mostly hidden away to sleep in the shade during the hottest hours, Hans and Greta slipped through the hole in the fence and came up to the back door. The porch door was locked, but they found an open window in the kitchen. Greta was able to climb inside by standing on her brother's shoulders, and then she crouched on the counter by the sink and bent down to take his hands, hauling him up.

She slithered down onto the floor, exhausted with the effort, and he sprawled on the counter top, panting, before they both could collect themselves. Greta stood up and Hans climbed down and both of them washed their hands and faces in the kitchen sink and drank long and deep from the tap.

Then they began to explore the house.

They found a lot of food, even more than they ever saw in their own home. Mr. Bruins liked protein bars and whey powders, which the twins found too bitter, and Mrs. Bruins liked big salads with lots of vegetables, which the twins didn't think were very filling. But Junior Bruins liked peanut butter sandwiches and individually wrapped cheese slices, which they thought were perfect. They made sandwiches for now and for later, and stuffed the cheese in their pockets out of habit.

They explored the rest of the house, taking their time to look at everything. There was a big, firm couch made of the kind of leather that sticks when you sit on it, and the television was the kind with Netflix. Each Bruins family member had their own account, and the twins checked out each one. At home, they'd only ever gotten to watch whatever their parents put on the television for them.

Mr. Bruins liked nature documentaries and shows about fixing cars, which were pretty boring.

Mrs. Bruins liked romantic movies and shows with Korean actors, but the twins didn't like having to read the subtitles.

But they liked the cartoons that Junior Bruins liked well enough, and they watched a few different ones together, eating more of the sandwiches they'd made.

The television made them sleepy, so they left the living room and went down the hall. The guest bedroom was too cold and empty; there was even dust on the windowsill and the bed wasn't made up properly. The master bedroom was too dark and smelly. The grown-ups were slobs with their laundry, leaving it out all over the floor, and there was a dank, sweaty smell hanging over the bed. Greta and Hans wrinkled their noises and left.

Junior Bruins had a nice room, though.

He even had bunk beds, so his friends could sleep over.

Hans took the top bed, and Greta took the bottom, and they stretched out luxuriously beneath the blankets and fell asleep, warm and comfortable and snug.

#

That afternoon, Junior Bruins saw two strange children sleeping in his bed and he screamed.

His parents, already on high alert after finding the television on, remnants of protein powder and empty peanut butter jars scattered on the kitchen counter, sprinted into the room to see what was the matter. Mr. Bruins pushed his wife and son behind him, trying to shield them with his body as he faced down the intruders.

Hans and Greta stirred awake, disoriented.

Greta pulled the blankets up around her chin, protectively, but Hans saw all too easily where this was headed. From the top bunk, it was easy to see the look in the man's eye, his telegraphed intentions, and now that he'd gotten proper rest in a proper bed, Hans had no intention at all of ever returning to the damp and dirty woods.

“Get Junior out of here!” Mr. Bruins yelled. “And call child services! Or animal control! The police! Anyone!”

Feeding feral children was one matter. Having one in your house, spitting and angry, was something quite different.

Mr. Bruins looked around the room for some kind of weapon, something he could use to defend himself. His gaze landed on a baseball bat. He reached for it, but not in time.

Hans, his body coiled like a spring, leaped from the top bunk and slammed into the man, his fingernails clawing at his face, his feet wrapping around his middle, squeezing for purchase. Mr. Bruins, caught off guard by the weight, staggered backward, pinwheeling his arms for balance. Mrs. Bruins, still in the doorway, screamed.

Greta jumped forward, understanding now what had to be done. She slammed into the man's knees, and they bent backwards with the force of the impact, the joints reversing with an audible crunch.

Mr. Bruins cried out in pain and surprise, crumpling on ruined legs. Hans bit his ear for good measure, snapping his sharp little teeth through the soft flap of skin and cartilage. He spat out the earlobe as he rode Mr. Bruins to the floor, pinning his body over the man's chest, and looked up at Mrs. Bruins and her son in the hall. His eyes caught the light; when he bared his teeth, they glistened crimson.

Mrs. Bruins tried to run, then, but Greta was very fast, and she didn't get very far.

#

For a long time, the Bruins had fed the strays, and nobody in the neighborhood liked it, but they put up with it because they wanted to be neighborly. But this was just too much. Attracted from years of indulgence and free food, the strays had proliferated in the neighborhood – and now they were running wild all over, scratching up lawns and clawing at doorways, snatching up food left on patio grills and stealing groceries from parked cars. They were a relentless nuisance, and they seemed to be pouring into the neighborhood from the Bruins house.

The city deployed its vans to round up the strays as they found them. They got the paperwork they needed to enter the house. One investigator pushed open the door, and his partner gasped and started to cough, her eyes watering immediately with the stench – the scent of feces and blood and rot, and another smell, earthy like soft dirt.

“Go call for backup,” the female officer said. “This is a mess.”

Her partner was more than happy to retreat.

Covering her mouth, the investigator stepped inside and then froze, seeing movement in the corner of her eye. She turned slowly to look and locked eyes with a little girl, hair tangled around her face, eyes wide and rimmed in white.

She gripped something gray-white in her teeth. Flesh covered one end: a wrist and a hand missing some of its fingers.

The investigator was too stunned in her horror at the girl to notice the other twin who had slipped around behind. How lucky, Hans thought: They had a lot of work to do, all this luring and catching.

There were many children in this neighborhood that needed to be fed.

Feral Children

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