The children came in large pine chests, packed in ice and wood shavings. We’d never seen children before, certainly never had them in our house. It appeared there might once have been some instructions pasted to the chests, but they must have been lost, scraped off in transit. After several days they thawed out completely and started moving around the house on their own. We didn’t know what to do for them. We hadn’t requested them, but they were here now and we knew we had to keep them. They cleaned up the wood and melted ice while we deliberated.