No one could say much, the first night.

There was no heat in the parking garage. Jacob, Ezra and the kids were bundled up in other people's coats, just like the kids in the Narnia books. To keep the kids distracted, Jacob recounted the Narnia books for them from his own scrambled childhood recollections, changing all the parts he didn't like. He could never have turned Queen Susan the Gentle away from Aslan's Country.

Every car in the parking lot was jolted from its original position and many of the windows were shattered, so Jacob and Ezra had crawled across the crumpled metal hoods and roofs to look for backseat treasure: coats, useful junk, crowbars and ice scrapers, maps, food, food, food.

They ate crackers, breath mints, bruised bananas, warm sandwiches, cheese slices in plastic. And they slept.

On the second night, Jacob ran out of Narnian recollections. He switched to real medieval history, which he'd always liked. He told them this story at bedtime:

"Perdigon was a troubadour from medieval France. He was the son of a poor fisherman, but he had talent and he made a life for himself. He started out as a minstrel who sang and did tricks. People were easily entertained back then. Just like we are now, with everything...the way it is. So Perdigon got to travel all over Europe. He composed and performed for kings in France and Spain, and the kings gave him land, fancy clothes, a steady income. Unfortunately, Perdigon got the idea that this meant he could dabble in politics. He used his musical talent as a tool for propaganda supporting the Albigensian Crusade, and publicly humiliated one of the kings who used to be his patron. In the end, though, Perdigon's rich friends abandoned him—or they died in the Crusade he'd been rooting for. Perdigon was left to the mercy of his enemies. His house and lands were confiscated, and he lost everything."

Julie, who was eight years old, lifted her head from her pile of coats. "How'd he get a planet named after him, then?"

"Well, the planets in this system were discovered using a Belgian telescope that was nicknamed TRAPPIST. I think it's an acronym for something, but I don't remember what it stood for. But Trappists are a kind of Cistercian, and Cistercians are a kind of Benedictine, so the planets in this system are all named after famous Benedictines," said Jacob. "Anyway, Perdigon went to the last nobleman he knew of who still thought kindly of him, and begged to be allowed to join a monastery. The nobleman had pity on Perdigon, and let him take refuge in a Cistercian abbey called Silvabela, where he lived out the rest of his days."

"Silvabela would be a nicer name for a planet," said Océane, the oldest girl after Shruti.

"It was shortlisted, I think, but then scholars said Silvabela never actually existed," said Jacob. "Perdigon was a real person, though."

"Why'd they lie about it, then?"

Jacob didn't know the answer to that offhand, and he had to improvise. "I don't think they saw it that way, whoever wrote the story down. I think they gave Perdigon's monastery a nice name so that people would understand that...that it was a happy ending, for him," he said slowly. "Silvabela means 'lovely forest.' He got to go someplace quiet and beautiful. Peaceful. Alone with his music. And he didn't have to please anybody else. Except God, I guess," Jacob added, yawning. He was exhausted. "Who knows if he ever did. But that's enough for now. Goodnight, kids. Sweet dreams."

Jacob had asked the kids what their parents used to do for them before bed, and now he was careful not to copy anyone's special ritual exactly; he wanted the kids to feel cared for, but he didn't want it to seem like a cruel mockery. Parents weren't replaceable.

Nothing was replaceable, really.

But he kissed on the forehead those who once had bedtime kisses on the cheek, and patted the hands of those who used to have shoulder-pats. There were eleven configurations of this and Jacob remembered each one. It was important.

Still, it didn't satisfy him to have told such an incomplete, rambling story to the kids. They deserved whatever closure they could get these days.

The next night he put Ezra in charge. "Tell them a fairy tale."

"I don't know any fairy tales," Ezra demurred.

"Sure you do. The company's named after one, tell them about the Taltos."

So on the third night, Ezra told the story:

"Okay, well...the táltos was a kind of Hungarian shaman, before Christianity. They stuck around for awhile afterward. They would go into trances to, y'know, heal the sick, see the future. Stuff like that. So. I had a lot of trouble naming the company and this was the best I could come up with—I actually kind of hate it," Ezra admitted, paying no attention to his underwhelmed audience. "I don't like giving people the idea that this is some kind of mystical ability."

"Isn't it?" said Shruti, sceptical. "Wasn't that your point last week, when you were comparing yourself to Joan of Arc?"

"I didn't...look, that speech sucked, okay?" Ezra then remembered that Jacob had written half of it and amended himself. "Or I sucked at delivering it, more like. Let me put it like this, I think at least some of the people we used to call mystics probably just had this neurological trait that I have. Maybe the táltos did too. Maybe. Speculation. Especially—actually, this is interesting—especially because they were supposed to have minor birth defects or deformities, which tracks with the recent Oxford study on psionic latency," he rambled on. "The táltos were born with teeth, or extra fingers or toes, or a caul. Or epilepsy, which always had a rep for being spooky. Used to be called the Sacred Disease, because people thought the god Apollo caused seizures. Hippocrates was one of the first—"

"Tell them about Hippocrates instead," said Jacob, who could tell that Ezra would have an easier time talking about science than fairy tales.

"Okay, yeah. Hippocrates was a doctor in ancient Greece, the island of Kos." Ezra was already warming to his topic. "You older kids might have heard the term Hippocratic Oath, that comes from his school of medicine. All the doctors he taught had to swear an oath that they would never use their knowledge to hurt anybody else. First do no harm. And he questioned the belief that epilepsy was caused by Apollo, because he was actually paying attention to his patients. He noticed that kids would run to their mothers when they felt a seizure coming on, but adults would try to hide someplace alone. So that no one would see them fall. The traditional belief was that they knew Apollo was coming, but Hippocrates said the patients were just scared. Humiliated and scared. Like, of course they were! Being sick, being treated like a freak, or like a prophet, which—trust me, that's just as bad. Hippocrates said epilepsy had nothing to do with Apollo. It wasn't sacred. It was just a disease."

"What did he think caused it?" asked Raff.

"Uh, he thought it was phlegm. So he was wrong too," said Ezra. "But still, that's a massive step forward. You gotta start somewhere."

"Well, then that's the moral of the story, that works," Jacob said, smiling. Ezra was trying. Willing to talk, engaging with the kids, once he let himself loosen up a little. Maybe he'd get better. "Goodnight, kids. Sweet dreams."

On the fourth night, Ezra had gone scavenging and Jacob was alone with the kids. They were all desperately hungry.

Water was no problem—there were machines everywhere which Jacob nicknamed Miriam's Wells, because one was never far away. You just had to push them over, a dangerous pursuit, but Jacob had been on the street as a teenager and knew the trick of it. He wouldn't teach the kids, afraid that they might get crushed, but he trusted his own reflexes.

"You've got each other for heat," he told them. "Everybody stay close."

"I can't sleep," whispered the youngest, Laura.

"Try having some more water, honey." It would make her feel a little more full. "And just lie still. It's good for your body to rest, even if you can't sleep."

"Ezra's not back yet."

"I know, sweetheart. But he will be."

A/N: Wattpad recommends chapters of 2000-3000 words, which does not come naturally to me, and with this novel (which is already written) I've had to break up some long chapters as organically as I can. I'll be posting the sections all at once, because structurally that's how they should be read, but I'm trying to be mindful of folks reading on the app. ❤