A quiet winter morning dawns.
Before the prosperous familial home of Aloisius Treadwell, a blanket of fresh snow lies unblemished. And this, the town guard will remark later, is unfortunate, for the new-fallen snow has filled in footprints and erased the traces that might have been a clue of who and how many.
Standing as it does in the center of this pristine lawn, it would be hard to miss the marble birdbath with its bowl half-filled with dark crimson slush. Through the scrim of ice crystals on its surface protrudes the round white brow of a newborn infant no more than a week old. Its lilac lips are pursed as if in sleep, sealed with a delicate web of rime. Through the near-opaque ice swarms a tangle of ill-defined shapes that resolve themselves to the disbelieving eye as the pale outlines of limbs and miniature innards suspended like savories in aspic.
These things are prosaic: the snow, the bowl, the child. The chill white winter sun regards them all as equals and does not blink, though after a time, as it rises higher and its rays strengthen and stretch, a runnel overflows the lip of the marble basin and a single red star novas in the snow beneath.