Jenna was abandoned on the doors of Xavier's school for gifted youngsters two weeks after her sixth birthday, and that's the only memory she has of her real family. They were nothing but a blur in her mind, and she had learned to accept that. Howeve...
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Jenna Beckett's life started at the age of six. Before that, there was nothing, only a blank gulf no exercise of her mind had ever been able to pierce. There was no memory, no family that she could recall. There was only the day that she arrived at the only home she'd ever known - Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
The remembrance was almost physical: the chill grayness of the fading day, the remorseless rain that soaked her, the icy cobbles of the strange town's streets, even the callused roughness of the huge hand that gripped her small one. Sometimes she wondered about that grip. The hand was hard and rough, trapping hers within it. And yet it was warm, and not unkind as it held her. Only firm. It did not let the young girl slip on the icy streets, but it did not let Jenna escape her fate either. It was as implacable as the icy gray rain that glazed the trampled snow and ice of the graveled pathway. There was a large, fortified building in front of them that stood like a fortress within New York.
The doors were tall, not just to a six-year-old girl, but tall enough to admit giants, to dwarf even the rangy old man who towered over Jenna. And they looked strange to her, although she could not summon up what type of door or dwelling would have looked familiar. Only that these, carved and bound with black iron hinges, decorated with a buck's head and knocker of gleaming brass, were outside of her experience. She recalled that slush had soaked through her clothes, so her feet and legs were wet and cold. And yet, again, she could not recall whether she had walked far through winter's last curses, or if she had been carried. No, it all started there, right outside the doors of the mansion, with her small hand trapped inside the tall man's.
It was like a puppet show beginning; the curtains parted, and there they stood before that great door. The old man lifted the brass knocker and banged it down, once, twice, thrice on the plate that resounded to his pounding. And then, from offstage, a voice sounded. Not from within the doors, but from behind them, back the way that they had come. "Father, please," the woman's voice begged. Jenna turned to look at her, but it had begun to snow again, a lacy veil that clung to eyelashes and coat sleeves. She couldn't recall that she saw anyone. Certainly, she did not struggle to break free of the old man's grip on her hand, nor did she call out, "Help me, Mother!" Instead she stood, a spectator, and heard the sound of boots within the mansion, and the unfastening of the door hasp within.
One last time the woman called. Jenna could still hear the words perfectly, the desperation in a voice that sounded young to her ears. "Father, please, I beg you!" A tremor shook the hand that gripped Jenna's, but whether of anger or some other emotion, she would never know. As swift as a black crow seizes a bit of dropped bread, the old man stooped and snatched up a frozen chunk of dirty ice. Wordlessly he flung it, with great force and fury, and Jenna cowered where she stood. She did not recall a cry, nor the sound of struck flesh. What she did remember was how the doors swung outward, so that the old man had to step hastily back, dragging Jenna with him.
The man that had opened the door had a kind face and a head completely bereft of hair, but even at such a young age, Jenna remembered being bewildered by him; for the door handle was quite high up, and this man was sitting within a low wheelchair.
