Amos was twelve when it happened, and it happened because he loved his mother. His father always said he was named after his mother Amy, and only his father could call him Amos. Everyone else called him by his last name, Hamilton; that is, they called him ‘Hammy’.

His hair and eyes were dark, his movements slow, and he liked things to be clean; he liked to clean things like his mother, and inside him he was hard and cool and hidden and strong and old as the inside of a young hill.

It was dark when it happened, because it was night when it happened, and it meant so many things.

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