Prologue
The piemaker's wife, Charlotte Charles of the quaint country town of Couer d'Couers, was thirty years, seven months, six days, and twelve hours old when the profit of their brilliant idea to artificially inseminate the woman came to fruition. At exactly four minutes, thirty seconds after midnight on a Tuesday, the piemaker's child was born. Properly plump and rounded as a newborn babe should be, she complained scarcely for the first three years of her life. Rather, she observed the world through older eyes, shaped by credos that neither her father, nor her mother could understand.
There was one remarkable thing about Charlotte Renee, the infant, and that was her special ability which had been quite unlike her father's. Touch a dead thing, the piemaker knew, bring it back to life. Touch it once more, gone for good. However, the heredity of his gift had surprised him. On one rainy October night, the street home to jack-o-lanterns and decorations of ghosts and ghouls and witches and candy corn, the piemaker had accidentally touched his wife. The toddler, drinking from a plastic cup full of juice, said nothing, as nothing had happened. Had anything unfortunate happened, she might have said 'Mommy?' But instead, Charlotte Charles, stood where she had been.
For a long while, the piemaker and the daughter studied each other. Nearing her fourth birthday, she sported a shirt with a dog on it that resembled the one in the kitchen beside them. The piemaker looked at the dog on the floor, expecting it to die as payment. But as nothing had happened, would anything happen to the dog?
The answer was no, and as if the universe was answering one of his questions, the dog reached up and licked the cheek of the girl in the chair. "Good doggy!" The girl said. "Good doggy, Daddy!"