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Jill walks me home that night. It’s out of her way, but she doesn’t mind. We live where allthe orphans live: A small section of the province made of small houses that can house-- at most--five people, but Jill’s has ten. It is overcrowded, loud, and starved of love or happiness. We alllook like skeletons, our bones sticking out like thorns on a rose, our faces sunken in and gaunt.Beauty has no place here. Our hair is tangled and we all smell bad- except for girls like Jill and I,who work with soap, but the fragrance doesn’t last long, especially since our beds are shared andwe do not bathe, unless it rains. We are pitied on, yes, because most of us are forgotten bastards or  poor orphans. Jill was brought here when she was three: a fire had claimed another section of houses in the farmlands, her family’s included. She was found in the pig’s water trough, far enough away that the flames couldn’t touch her, but she was forgotten by whatever family she had.Guards found her two days later, brought her here, and three years after I was placed in the samehouse. At six, Jill knew how to care for babies, and when she couldn’t do it, an older child did it,and so on.I arrived during a great wave of orphaned children. It was called the Black Days: Four daysin which our whole province was in revolution. We do not know much about it now, sincecommunication is only by mouth, and a lot of what happened those days was forgotten-- or forcedto be forgotten. We orphans, though, we can keep the best secrets. A boy, Matthew, who was realyoung when it happened, can remember it clear as day. He’s a little strange, and most of us believehis family was involved but he was sworn to secrecy. He explained it to Jill and I when I was eight.He was eager to tell me, since I was one of the many brought here after.It seems the province had be suspicious of the governor, who had suddenly--with his wholefamily-- gone missing after many important documents disappeared that pertained to the salariesand food of all the working men and women. Six months passed before anyone started to worry in
 
the Lantern. By that time, the province was suffering. So many died in those months, the groundwas swelled with bodies and the air was polluted with smoke. Finally, a group, who calledthemselves the Alliance-- formed of men and women-- attacked the province’s government building and destroyed everything there, killing thousands of the guards and political advisers. Themain target was the governor himself, and they found him in a bunker below the building, wherehe and his family were hidden. He was stabbed, Matthew says, a hundreds of times on the ruins of the government building, with his wife and two children watching. The wife was next, and as she bleed to death on the ruins-- her husband’s corpse next to her-- a swarm of flying machinesclouded the skies. That’s when everyone ran, Matthew says. Some had planned for something likethis and safely hid, but over half of the Alliance died. Many women were given to the guards asgifts, but a lot were killed as trophies. The four days ended as suddenly as they began. A newgovernor has stepped up and he rebuilt the building and found the money. Still, no one knows whatthe old governor wanted from those documents. Some say it was a suicide-- he knew what wouldhappen. He looked innocent to everyone else, but why didn’t anyone question him going into the bunker? Was there something else going to happen that he refused to tell the province about-- is it possible he took the documents, knowing a rebellion would start, so that the Leaders wouldn’tcontinue with what he was hiding from? It seems farfetched, but something seemed too perfectly planned-- except for his death, of course.The only mystery is the children. Matthew thinks he saw a guard put them into one of theflying machines, but others swore a farmer and his wife kill them. They aren’t a concern. Theywere both too young to understand revenge against what they saw.I’ve only been told this story once, and yet, it haunts my mind in sleep or when I’m awakein the middle of the night. I feel like the rights of my people deserved the revolution, but why did
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