CHAPTER THREE

  VOICES IN THE GARDEN

  Spring had come reluctantly to London in 1933, as if nature itself hesitated to brighten a world so determined to wallow in economic misery. The Depression had tightened its grip on Britain, and Wool's Orphanage, never a place of abundance, had descended further into shabby austerity. Windows that cracked during winter remained unrepaired, covered instead with cardboard and tape. Meals grew sparser, uniforms more threadbare, and the general atmosphere of resignation deepened with each passing month.

  In the small garden behind the orphanage, a thin boy of seven sat alone beneath the single tree, watching the other children with detached interest. Tom Riddle had grown taller since his encounter with Eric Whalley two years prior, but remained slight, giving the impression of something carefully drawn rather than fully formed. His features had sharpened, the baby softness giving way to a more defined structure that heightened his otherworldly appearance. His hair, still black as night, fell across his forehead in a way that might have appeared artfully disheveled on another child but on Tom looked deliberate, like everything else about him.

  The garden itself could scarcely claim the name. A small patch of scrubby grass surrounded by high brick walls, its primary vegetation consisted of stubborn weeds and the gnarled apple tree that had somehow survived decades of children climbing its twisted branches. At the far end, a small plot had been designated for growing vegetables, though the current crop of stunted carrots and wilting cabbage suggested that London's polluted soil was resisting the effort.

  Tom had positioned himself strategically. The tree provided shade from the spring sunshine, a commodity in short supply among the twenty-odd children forced to share the limited outdoor space. More importantly, it gave him a clear view of the entire garden while keeping his back protected, a habit he had developed early in response to the casual cruelty of orphanage life.

  Not that many of the other children bothered Tom these days. The soup incident with Eric Whalley had been followed by several other unexplained occurrences involving children who had crossed Tom in some way. Billy Stubbs's rabbit had been found hanging from the rafters after Billy accused Tom of stealing his pocket knife. Amy Benson had lost her voice for three days after telling Mrs. Cole that Tom had been wandering the halls after lights-out. And Eric Whalley himself had suffered a mysterious case of boils that coincided precisely with his attempt to ambush Tom behind the coal shed.

  None of these incidents could be directly traced to Tom, who was invariably elsewhere when they occurred, with witnesses to confirm his whereabouts. But the pattern was clear enough to the other children, who had developed a collective instinct for avoiding Tom's displeasure. They didn't invite him to join their games, but they didn't taunt him either. They simply pretended he didn't exist, an arrangement that appeared to suit all parties.

  From her window overlooking the garden, Mrs. Cole observed Tom with a troubled frown. Seven years of bearing witness to the strange occurrences surrounding the boy had hardened her suspicions into certainty, though she would never have been able to articulate exactly what she suspected. There was something wrong with Tom Riddle, something that went beyond the usual troubles of orphaned children. She had seen enough damaged children to recognize the signs: the emotional withdrawal, the cruelty born of having been shown no kindness, the manipulation learned as a survival skill. But Tom was different. His behaviors didn't stem from trauma; they seemed to radiate from some core aspect of his nature, as intrinsic to him as his unusual eyes or his unsettling grace.

  Mrs. Cole sighed and turned away from the window. The gin bottle in her desk drawer called to her with increasing frequency these days, a temptation she found harder to resist as the world outside grew grimmer and her charges more difficult to manage with dwindling resources. But it was still morning, and she had standards to maintain, however eroded they might be by time and circumstance.

  Back in the garden, Tom had taken a small notebook from his pocket and was writing in it with a stubby pencil. The notebook, filched from the supply closet when Martha wasn't looking, contained Tom's observations. Not the childish musings one might expect from a seven-year-old, but methodical records of his experiments with what he had come to think of as his "abilities."

  Over the past two years, Tom had refined his control considerably. He could now move objects with his mind almost at will, though larger items still required intense concentration. He could make things vanish, though he hadn't yet figured out where they went or how to bring them back. Most impressively, to his mind, he could make people feel pain without touching them, a skill he had tested cautiously and recorded with clinical detachment.

  The notebook contained other observations as well. Which staff members could be manipulated and how. Which children held grudges and which forgot offenses quickly. The location of every item he had "collected" from those who had wronged him, hidden in a loose brick in the wall behind his bed. Tom considered knowledge to be his most valuable possession, and he guarded it accordingly, writing in a personal code that combined made-up symbols with backwards letters.

  A movement in the flower bed near the vegetable patch caught Tom's eye. He slipped the notebook back into his pocket and watched intently as a small green head emerged from beneath a withered shrub. The garden snake, no longer than Tom's forearm, flicked its tongue, tasting the air before slithering fully into view.

  Tom had seen garden snakes before, occasionally in the orphanage grounds and once on a supervised walk to the local park. But this particular snake had been appearing regularly over the past few weeks, always in the same corner of the garden, always when Tom was alone or separated from the other children.

  Glancing around to ensure no one was watching, Tom slid from his place beneath the tree and made his way casually toward the vegetable patch. The other children, engaged in a noisy game involving a deflated rubber ball, paid him no attention. Tom crouched by the flower bed, pretending to examine the sorry specimens of daffodils that had managed to push through the hard soil.

  "Hello again," he whispered to the snake.

  The snake raised its head, its black eyes fixed on Tom's face with what appeared to be recognition.

  "You understand me, don't you?" Tom continued, keeping his voice low.

  To his continuing amazement, the snake bobbed its head in what could only be interpreted as a nod.

  "Can you speak?" Tom asked.

  The snake's mouth opened slightly, and a soft, sibilant sound emerged. "Yessss."

  Tom nearly fell backward in shock. It was one thing to suspect that the snake understood him, quite another to hear it respond. The voice wasn't quite like a human voice; it had a whispery, rustling quality that reminded Tom of autumn leaves skittering across pavement. But it was undeniably language, not simply the hissing of an animal.

  "What's your name?" Tom asked, recovering quickly from his surprise.

  "No name," the snake replied. "Snakesss need no namesss."

  Tom considered this. "Then I shall call you... Nagini," he decided, the name coming to him from nowhere, feeling right on his tongue.

  "Nagini," the snake repeated, seeming to roll the word around in its mouth. "Yesss."

  A strange warmth spread through Tom's chest, a feeling so unfamiliar that it took him a moment to identify it as pleasure. Not the cold satisfaction he felt when exacting revenge, nor the detached pride in mastering a new skill, but something simpler, more childlike. The pleasure of connection, of being understood.

  "Where do you live, Nagini?" Tom asked, settling himself more comfortably on the ground. The other children's game had moved to the far side of the garden, leaving him effectively alone with his new acquaintance.

  "Wallsss," Nagini replied. "Warm stonesss, dark placesss. Many miccce."

  Tom nodded. The orphanage's ancient walls were riddled with cracks and holes, perfect habitat for small creatures. "Are there other snakes?"

  "Yesss and no," Nagini answered cryptically. "Othersss like me, but not like you. You ssspeak."

  "Is that unusual?" Tom asked, though he already knew the answer. If speaking to snakes were common, he would have seen others do it.

  "Very unusssual," Nagini confirmed. "Very ssspeccial."

  Special. The word echoed in Tom's mind, validating what he had always sensed. He was different, yes, but not simply different. Special. Extraordinary. Meant for something beyond the grim confines of Wool's Orphanage.

  For the next hour, Tom conversed with Nagini, learning about the snake's world, its habits, its perspective on the strange vertical creatures that dominated the landscape. In return, Tom found himself sharing thoughts he had never voiced to another living being, about his abilities, his isolation, his sense of being fundamentally separate from those around him.

  "They fear me," Tom confided, "but they don't know why. They can sense what I am, even if they don't understand it."

  "Fear isss good," Nagini commented. "Fear keepsss you sssafe."

  Tom considered this. "Yes, I suppose it does. But it's not enough. I want more than safety."

  "What do you want?"

  The question gave Tom pause. What did he want? He had never been asked before, had never really considered it in such direct terms. Safety, yes. Knowledge, certainly. But beyond that?

  "Power," he finally said, the word feeling right as it left his lips. "I want power. The power to control my own life. The power to make others do as I wish. The power to never be at anyone's mercy again."

  Nagini's tongue flicked out, tasting Tom's resolve on the air. "You already have power," the snake observed. "More than you know."

  "But not enough," Tom replied. "Not yet."

  Their conversation might have continued, but a shrill voice shattered the moment.

  "Tom! What are you doing over there?"

  Martha Jenkins approached, her plump face flushed from the exertion of crossing the garden. In the seven years since Tom's birth, Martha had grown stouter and more matronly, though she retained a certain kindness that the hardships of orphanage life had not entirely erased.

  Tom straightened, smoothly positioning himself to shield Nagini from view. "Just looking at the flowers, Martha."

  Martha's eyes narrowed slightly. Tom's interest in horticulture seemed unlikely, but she had long since learned that questioning him too closely rarely led to satisfactory answers. "Well, it's nearly time for lessons. Mrs. Cole wants everyone inside in five minutes."

  "I'll be right there," Tom replied with a polite smile that never reached his eyes.

  Martha hesitated, then nodded and turned to gather the other children, who groaned in protest at having their game interrupted.

  "She fearsss you too," Nagini observed once Martha was out of earshot.

  "Yes," Tom agreed. "Though she tries to hide it. She thinks kindness will protect her."

  "Will it?"

  Tom considered the question. Martha had never been cruel to him, had in fact sometimes shown him small favors, like extra bread or an occasional sweet saved from her own ration. Did that earn her anything from him?

  "Perhaps," he finally said. "For now."

  Tom glanced toward the building, where the other children were reluctantly forming a line at the door. "I have to go. Will you be here tomorrow?"

  "Yesss," Nagini promised. "I will find you."

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  Tom nodded, oddly comforted by the assurance. As he rose to join the other children, a thought occurred to him. "Nagini, can you come inside the building? Through the walls, perhaps?"

  "Eassily," the snake confirmed. "Many waysss in and out."

  A slow smile spread across Tom's face, not the artificial one he used to placate adults, but a genuine expression of pleasure that transformed his features into something almost beautiful, if unsettlingly cold. "Good. Very good."

  As Tom walked away, Nagini slipped back beneath the shrub, vanishing as completely as if it had never been there at all.

  The following weeks saw a subtle shift in Tom's routine. He still spent much of his time alone, still maintained his careful distance from the other children, but now he could be found more often in the garden, apparently absorbed in a book but in reality, engaged in lengthy conversations with his serpentine companion. Nagini proved to be not only an attentive listener but a surprisingly knowledgeable guide to the hidden world that existed alongside the human one, invisible to most but teeming with its own complex society.

  Tom learned that there were networks of small creatures living within the walls and beneath the floors of Wool's Orphanage, a parallel community with its own hierarchies and territories. Through Nagini, he began to map these hidden pathways, adding them to his mental catalog of the building's secrets.

  More importantly, Tom discovered that his ability to communicate with snakes was part of something larger, something Nagini called "speaking," but which seemed to encompass more than just language.

  "It isss old magic," Nagini explained one afternoon as they sat hidden behind the vegetable patch. "Very old, very powerful. Few have it now."

  "Magic," Tom repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth. It fit better than "abilities," giving name to what he had always sensed about himself. "Are there others like me? Other... magicians?" The word felt slightly wrong, conjuring images of stage performers pulling rabbits from hats.

  "Not like you," Nagini replied. "Othersss with magic, yesss. But not ssspeakers. Ssspeakers are rare."

  This information both pleased and frustrated Tom. He was special even among those with magic, which satisfied his sense of exceptionalism. But it also meant he was alone, with no one to guide him in developing his powers.

  "How do I find these others with magic?" Tom asked.

  "They will find you," Nagini assured him. "When it isss time."

  Time, however, was something Tom had limited patience for. Now that he had confirmation of his nature, he was eager to expand his knowledge, to push the boundaries of what he could do. And for that, he needed more than theoretical discussions. He needed practical applications.

  The opportunity presented itself the following Sunday, during the orphanage's mandatory church attendance. St. Mary's, the local parish church, was a gloomy Victorian structure as unwelcoming as Wool's itself. The children, dressed in their least ragged clothes, were marched there every week to sit through services that meant nothing to most of them but which Mrs. Cole insisted were essential for their moral development.

  Tom despised these outings. The church, with its talk of sin and redemption, struck him as a transparent attempt to keep people docile through guilt and false promises. The vicar, a portly man with watery eyes, seemed to take particular notice of Tom, often singling him out after services for additional homilies delivered with a clammy hand on Tom's shoulder.

  This Sunday, as the children filed into their usual pew, Tom noticed a flicker of movement near the altar. A garden snake, possibly Nagini though it was difficult to tell at this distance, had somehow found its way into the church. It was currently hidden behind a large flower arrangement, invisible to everyone but Tom, who had developed an acute awareness of serpentine presence.

  The service proceeded as usual, with readings and hymns that washed over Tom without penetrating his consciousness. His attention was fixed on the snake, which remained motionless throughout the vicar's droning sermon on the virtues of humility.

  As the service neared its conclusion, an idea formed in Tom's mind. A test, both of his connection with the snake and of his growing power. Focusing his thoughts, he sent a silent command: Come out. Show yourself.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, just as the vicar raised his hands for the final blessing, the snake slithered from its hiding place and moved directly onto the altar.

  The reaction was immediate and gratifying. The vicar, mid-benediction, caught sight of the serpent and leapt backward with a most un-clerical yelp. The organist, craning to see the cause of the disturbance, struck a discordant chord that echoed through the church like a mocking laugh. And the congregation, including the children of Wool's, erupted into a chaos of shrieks, gasps, and in a few cases, poorly suppressed giggles.

  Only Tom remained perfectly still, his face a mask of appropriate concern that concealed his inner delight. He had done it. Without speaking aloud, without even being near the snake, he had communicated his wishes and seen them fulfilled. It was a small victory, but a significant one.

  Mrs. Cole, attempting to maintain order among her charges, failed to notice the slight smile that curved Tom's lips. But Martha, seated at the end of the pew, saw it and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the church's perpetual dampness.

  Back at Wool's that afternoon, while the other children excitedly recounted the morning's disruption to those who had been too ill to attend, Mrs. Cole summoned Tom to her office. The room, like Mrs. Cole herself, had deteriorated over the years. The desk was more scarred, the chair more worn, and the woman herself more gray and lined, her once-crisp posture now permanently stooped.

  "Sit down, Tom," she said, gesturing to the hard wooden chair across from her desk.

  Tom complied, his face arranged in an expression of polite inquiry. "Yes, Mrs. Cole?"

  Mrs. Cole studied him for a long moment, her faded eyes searching his face for something she couldn't quite name. "There was an... incident at church today," she finally said.

  "The snake, you mean?" Tom replied innocently. "How strange that it should be in the church."

  "Yes, very strange." Mrs. Cole's fingers absently found the silver cross at her throat, a habit she had developed years ago and which now manifested whenever Tom was in her presence. "Particularly since snakes are not common in churches, especially not in the middle of services."

  Tom merely nodded, waiting.

  "The vicar was quite upset," Mrs. Cole continued. "He mentioned that the snake appeared to come from nowhere, and that it moved in a most... deliberate manner."

  "Snakes do move deliberately," Tom observed. "It's their nature."

  Mrs. Cole's eyes narrowed slightly. "Some of the children seem to think the snake was... responding to something. Or someone."

  "Children have vivid imaginations," Tom replied smoothly. "Especially after something exciting happens."

  The statement was reasonable, even self-evident, yet it hung in the air between them like an unspoken challenge. Mrs. Cole had been dealing with Tom Riddle for seven years, had documented dozens of inexplicable incidents that somehow always connected back to him. She knew, with a certainty that transcended evidence, that Tom had been involved in the church disruption. And Tom knew that she knew, and was daring her to make an accusation she couldn't possibly substantiate.

  "There have been reports," Mrs. Cole said carefully, "of you spending time with snakes in the garden."

  Tom's expression didn't change, but something cold flickered in his dark eyes. "I spend time in the garden, yes. There are occasionally snakes there. I don't see how that connects to what happened at church."

  "The connection," Mrs. Cole said, her voice hardening slightly, "is that unusual things happen around you, Tom. They always have. And I'm beginning to think they're not coincidences."

  For a moment, Tom considered how to respond. He could continue denying any involvement, which would be the safest course but would do nothing to discourage Mrs. Cole's suspicions. He could admit to some small mischief, playing the part of a normal boy caught in a prank. Or he could try something else entirely.

  "What sorts of things, Mrs. Cole?" he asked, allowing a hint of genuine curiosity to color his voice.

  The question seemed to throw Mrs. Cole off balance. She had expected denials, perhaps even contrition, but not this direct engagement. "Well, there's Billy Stubbs's rabbit, for one. And Amy Benson's voice. And Eric Whalley's... condition."

  "Those are unfortunate incidents," Tom acknowledged. "But surely you don't think I had anything to do with them? How could I possibly hang a rabbit from the rafters? Or cause boils?" He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes locked on Mrs. Cole's faded blue ones. "Unless you think I have some sort of... special abilities?"

  The question hung in the air between them, a challenge wrapped in innocent inquiry. Mrs. Cole felt the familiar chill crawl up her spine, stronger now than ever before. There was something fundamentally wrong in a child asking such a question, in the calm calculation behind those dark eyes.

  "I think," she said finally, retreating into the safety of authority, "that you should spend less time alone in the garden and more time with the other children. It's not healthy for a boy your age to be so isolated."

  Tom recognized the evasion for what it was, a tacit admission that Mrs. Cole had no real power over him beyond the basic custodial authority granted by her position. She suspected, perhaps even feared, but she did not know, could not prove. And that gave him all the advantage he needed.

  "If you think it best, Mrs. Cole," he replied with perfect politeness. "Though I don't think the other children particularly want my company."

  "Perhaps if you made more of an effort to be... agreeable," Mrs. Cole suggested weakly.

  Tom nodded, his face a mask of reasonable consideration. "I'll try," he promised, a lie so transparent that it barely qualified as deception. Both of them knew he had no intention of changing his behavior, and both knew that Mrs. Cole had no real means of forcing the issue.

  "That's all, then," Mrs. Cole said, suddenly weary beyond words. "You may go."

  Tom rose with his usual fluid grace and left the office without another word. As the door closed behind him, Mrs. Cole reached for the bottom drawer of her desk, where the gin bottle waited. This time, she didn't resist its call.

  In the corridor outside, Tom allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. The confrontation with Mrs. Cole had confirmed what he had suspected: the adults at Wool's, for all their nominal authority, were essentially powerless against him. They might suspect, might even know on some instinctive level what he was capable of, but they had no framework for understanding it, no language to describe it, and certainly no defense against it.

  That evening, as the other children played listlessly with worn toys in the common room, Tom slipped away to the garden for a final conversation before dark. Nagini was waiting in their usual spot, coiled beneath the withered shrub.

  "You are pleasssed," the snake observed as Tom approached.

  "Yes," Tom admitted, settling on the ground beside his friend. "I tested my abilities today. At the church."

  "I know," Nagini replied. "The one who came wasss my cousin. She told me of your command."

  Tom raised an eyebrow. "You have cousins?"

  "All snakesss are kin," Nagini explained. "Some closser than othersss."

  Tom filed this information away for future reference. If he could command one snake, presumably he could command many, creating a network of eyes and ears far beyond the orphanage walls. The possibilities were intriguing.

  "Mrs. Cole suspects something," Tom said, returning to the day's events. "She called me to her office to talk about the snake at church. And about other incidents."

  "Is thisss dangerousss?" Nagini asked.

  Tom shook his head. "No. She has suspicions, but no proof. And even if she had proof, what could she do? Send me away? There's nowhere worse than here." He paused, considering. "Actually, being sent away might be preferable. There must be better places than Wool's."

  "Better placesss will come," Nagini assured him. "When it isss time."

  Time again. Tom suppressed a flicker of impatience. He was seven years old, and while that was young by most standards, he felt ancient, weighed down by knowledge and power that set him apart from everyone around him. How much longer would he have to wait for the promised "better places"?

  "Tell me more about magic," he requested, steering the conversation toward more productive channels. "What else can I do besides speak to snakes and move things with my mind?"

  Nagini's serpentine equivalent of a shrug was a slight ripple that passed through its coiled body. "Many thingsss. Control fire, perhaps. Change one thing into another. Make people do what you want without asking."

  This last ability particularly interested Tom. "How?"

  "Focus your will," Nagini suggested. "Like with the snake at the church. But stronger, more direct."

  Tom nodded thoughtfully. He had already discovered that intense emotion sometimes powered his abilities, like when Eric Whalley's soup had scalded him. But using emotion was unreliable, subject to fluctuations beyond his control. Will, however, was something he could cultivate, strengthen, direct with precision.

  "I'll practice," he promised, more to himself than to Nagini.

  As darkness began to fall, Martha's voice called from the doorway, summoning the children inside for dinner. Tom rose reluctantly, brushing dirt from his trousers.

  "Will I see you tomorrow?" he asked Nagini.

  "Yesss," the snake promised. "And if you need me before then, call in your mind. I will hear."

  Tom nodded, oddly comforted by the assurance that his friend would be available when needed. It was the closest thing to security he had ever known.

  As he made his way back to the orphanage, Tom found himself reflecting on the day's discoveries. His ability to communicate with snakes was apparently rare, even among those with magic. He could command serpents from a distance, without speaking aloud. And the adults who supposedly controlled his life were, in reality, largely powerless against his growing abilities.

  Most importantly, he now had confirmation of what he had always suspected: he was not merely different, but special. Magical. Destined for something beyond the grim confines of Wool's Orphanage.

  In the years to come, Tom would look back on this period as a turning point, the moment when his vague sense of otherness crystallized into something more defined, more purposeful. The lonely boy beneath the apple tree had begun his transformation into something else entirely, something that would eventually shed the name Tom Riddle like an outgrown skin.

  But that was still in the future. For now, seven-year-old Tom entered the dim confines of Wool's Orphanage, his face composed into its usual mask of polite detachment, while inside, his mind buzzed with possibilities and plans. The voices in the garden had awakened something in him, a hunger for knowledge and power that would never again be silenced.

  Behind him, in the gathering darkness, Nagini watched him go, its unblinking eyes reflecting knowledge far older than its serpentine form would suggest. The boy would go far, would achieve greatness terrible and wonderful in equal measure. The snake had recognized the signs from the beginning, had been drawn to the dark power growing within the child like a moth to flame.

  All snakes knew the legends of the great speakers of old, the ones who had commanded their kind and risen to dominance through cunning and will. In Tom Riddle, those ancient bloodlines lived again, waiting to be awakened, nurtured, unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

  Nagini slipped back into the shadows, content with its role in setting those events in motion. The boy would find his path, would claim his heritage, would become what he was always meant to be. And when he did, the serpents of the world would be waiting, ready to serve the heir of their ancient master once more.