When Justice was a little girl, she had a dream that shed always believed, even when she didn’t think it was real. 
    This was when the Kasrics still lived in the smaller house south of London, before Justice had discovered how unusual her name was, and before anyone knew anything about the London occupation, or Father’s involvement in it.
    It was Christmas, 1864, which also made it the day before Justice’s sixth birthday.  Because she’d been born the day after Christmas, Father always made a special affair of her birthday, and she felt right down to her toes that something especially wonderful was coming tomorrow morning.  Father had even dropped a comment that in her wild imagination, she took to mean that she might be getting a pony.  Perhaps even…ponies.
    It was with this end that Justice, was creeping quietly around the worn banister, peering into the downstairs hallway, where Father was moving about.  It was well after midnight, when both of them should have been in bed, but Father was putting on his battered naval coat in the shrouded half-light of the moon shining through the front window.  He opened the front door and went soundlessly out into the cold.  Justice thought that he must have been going out to feed the ponies, and she wanted desperately to see them.
    So she hurriedly drew on her boats and heavy blue woolen coat, which were kept right by the door, the way Mother always arranged them.  She opened the door and stared out into the front garden.  The mist hung everywhere, moonlit clouds, rather than the yellowed stuff that hung about during the day. 
    Justice paused, sensing even at her young age that some steps take you further than others, looking back into the comforting warm dark interior of the house.  Her family all slept back there, in a house filled with [tea cozies], clocks, fireplace pokers and other normal things.  The sensible thing would have been to go back inside, to bed.  She knew it then, and understood it better later, but what she did instead was close the door and follow Father outside in the preternaturally still and misty night....