Things had gone terribly wrong in the village of Vita. The cows would not moo, the bells would not chime, and young Gertie Le Fleur was growing a flower, right out the top of her head.
No one was sure how, or even when, their misfortunes had started exactly, each remembering the sequence a little differently. The butcher would waddle out of his shop, wiping his bloodied hands across the front of his ill used apron, declaring that one morning last spring the cows had gone silently to the slaughter. He thought it might have been March.
“Lies,” chuckled the baker, shaking his head across the square. “It was the bells,” he declared. “The bells fell mute first... and that was May, at the earliest. I was pulling a pallet of walnut loaves from the oven the moment I realized that the bells had not rung me awake that morning.”
“It began with me,” stated the statue poised at the mathematical center of the square, as he wiggled one big toe, “only, no one noticed.” The villagers paid no mind to the statue’s claims. He was a lesser duke who had fought in a lesser war, after all.
For Gertie Le Fleur it all began with an itch.
“Girl, stop scratching your head,” her grandmother cried one morning as Gertie drowsily shuffled into the kitchen. “People will think you have bugs.”
“But, Baba, it itches,” Gertie mumbled, still scratching the top of her head.
“Well, you’ll only make it worse,” the rotund woman declared as she removed Gertie’s hand from her scalp. “You want sugar in your tea this morning?” she asked the girl, while quickly searching Gertie’s hair for lice.
“I don’t have bugs” Gertie huffed, slumping down in the chair closest to the oven. She was cold that morning in mid February.
“Sugar?” her grandmother repeated. Gertie shook her head. “You are the strangest child,” Baba Le Fleur declared, setting the steaming mug of milky tea in front of her granddaughter. “Whoever heard of a child who doesn’t want sugar?”
“Its too sweet,” Gertie mumbled into her mug. She had wrapped her thin hands around the mug and rested her forehead on its lip so that the steam warmed her icy nose.
“The strangest child,” Baba Le Fleur chirped, pulling Gertie’s shoulders back so that the girl was sitting up straight in the old wooden chair.
“But I’m frozen” she whined.
“Eat this. You’re too thin.”
Gertie looked suspiciously at the roll her grandmother had handed her.
“Don’t make that face at me child. You are getting too old for this petulance.”
“What is petulance?” Gertie questioned, picking apart the roll and lining up the small pieces on the table in front of her.
“That” Babe Le Fleur accused, pointing at the crumbs.
“Raisins!” cried Gertie in delight. There was a cinnamon raisin mixture hidden in the center of the roll. Raisins were not Gertie’s favorite, but they were unexpected that morning. Gertie enjoyed the unexpected.
“Stop scratching your head!”
“I didn’t know I was,” Gertie replied defensively,
Gertie was eight and in her third year of school that winter. She was the youngest of five children and the only girl. Ivan, Isaac, Irving, and Ithicus were all strong boys and big for their age. They towered over Gertie, tickled her, and tied her shoes.
“Gertie!” called Ivan, “We’re leaving without you.”
“No you’re not,” squeaked Gertie as she hopped down the battered and slightly warped stairs, boots untied. Upon reaching the bottom step she sat down, stuck her feet straight out, and began to adjust her scarf.
It was soft, the thick cotton wearing in spots from too many washings. A frayed edge strategically hidden beside Gertie’s ear always tickled. Tickled more as the day went on. This was Gertie’s favorite scarf, choked with overlapping red poppies woven into a barely visible dark green. She wore it on days she needed to be brave. Wore it on birthdays and exam days.
“You having a bad day already?” Ivan questioned as he steered Gertie out the front door.
“No” she replied reflectively, “there were raisins for breakfast, which was good, but” Gertie paused.
“But what?” Isaac asked kicking at a pile of snow.
“But something is wrong.”
The brothers nodded without hearing. Little sisters, much like lesser dukes, were more decorative than things to be taken seriously.
The snow was high that winter. It had begun falling in early October, which even for a village well aquatinted with snow was exceptional. Gertie waddled up to a snow bank pushed up against the gray stone wall bounding the brewery. A place that, by necessity needed to be bounded, to contain the smell and keep out the thieves. Many of the oldest women in the village still would not mention the brewery, or its owner, by name. The snow bank on this day reached up to Gertie’s chin. She starred into the snow, scratching her head.
“Puppy!” called Irving from up ahead. “You coming?” The brothers had taken to calling their youngest sibling Puppy the day she was born. “She looks like a new born puppy” Isaac had declared in awe.
Gertie poked at the snow, breaking off a chunk that had iced over. “Puppy,” Isaac chided “we are going to be late.” He moved her hand aside and rested his own atop her head.
“The snow, Isaac, its pink” Gertie whispered in disbelief.
Isaac chuckled at his sister’s youth even while noting that the snow did, in fact, look pink. “Its the sun Gertie. The sun makes it appear pink.”
“How?” Gertie challenged looking up into her brother’s down turned face. He had reached the age at which he was attempting his first mustache. It was not going as planned.
Isaac paused, unsure how to explain this to his sister, unsure how the sun turned snow pink. “That,” he began leaning down to Gertie’s eye level, “is an excellent question for you teacher.” He wrapped his arm around her small frame and redirected her toward the school building.
The church bells echoed off the stone houses, off the mountains surrounding the village, off the frozen pink snow. A gray kitten darted across the children’s path and scurried into a crevasses in the brewery wall.
“Why must we go to school so often?” Gertie asked her brothers as they entered the building.
Gertie was comforted by the smell of chalk and the warmth of the radiators. She hung her coat in her personal cubby at the back of the room and rubbed her head.
“Gertie, don’t” her teacher commanded, brushing Gertie’s hand aside. Gertie had long ago learned not to protest when given a command at school. She generally remained silent from the moment a brother left her by her classroom door until one collected her from the same spot at the end of the day. Gertie enjoyed silence.
“That child could frighten the devil himself” an Auntie had once declared of Gertie. She liked to watch, to examine. She found speaking an unnecessary interference. Needless to say, Gertie Le Fleur did not have many friends.
“Hey Gertie” Dom roared ramming his side into her arm. Dom was two years older than Gertie and still in her year at school. He made a point of pushing her, teasing her, poking her, and trying to force her to speak. “Why you got that stupid look on your face?” he whispered, pinning Gertie against the wall next to the cubbies.
Gertie turned her face away. His breath smelled. His breath always smelled, of garlic, onion, sour milk, and general decay.
He sniffed her. Thought of the sound of her giggle, her laughter when she talked to her brothers or grew bored during math. “Its cold,” he said to her, trying to look less mean, but not moving away. “Cold,” he repeated. “What are you looking at?” Dom turned his face to the window. “What?” he repeated moving his face closer, “your lip is bleeding. Gert, what are you looking at?”
Gertie starred out the window at the snow. The gray sky had burst open since she had arrived at school and soft heavy flakes of pink and purple ice were drifting to the ground.
“Can’t even answer a question?” Dom paused, willing her to speak. “Answer my question!” he commanded, slamming his left palm against the wall. Gertie was awoken from her reverie. She turned to look into Dom’s eyes. She scratched her head.
“What's wrong with you?” the boy whispered, releasing her.
Gertie was not really afraid of Dom, but she did not like him. Sometimes during class when he would throw bits of paper at her, she would envision a pack of wolves devouring him alive. She would hear his screams and smell his blood. Gertie cried the night her grandmother told her there were no wolves left in their village. The hunters had long ago killed them off.
“Children,” the teacher clapped at no one in particular. “Gertie, your lip is bleeding,” she reprimanded, touching her own bottom lip.
Gertie ran her tongue around her mouth. It bit like old metal, old pipes.
The day progressed as they have the habit of doing. The children were taught grammar, math, geography, and history. Gertie had not participated nor been expected too. She had drawn a cartoon about a sheep in her notebook. The sheep had wandered off and been lost in the mountains. It would never be seen again.
At break the children had gone outside to play in the snow and the teacher had fretted about the classroom getting wet upon their return. There would be puddles. Someone could fall.
Part way through a good scratch Gertie had discovered a lump on the top of her head. She poked it. Tried to feel the edges of it, gauge the size. Her hair was in the way, the scarf.
“Gertie Le Fleur,” the teacher interrupted Gertie’s medical contemplation, “do you need to see a nurse?” Gertie’s hand froze on the top of her head, mid poke. She slouched into her chair and shook her head. The entire room full of children had turned to stare at Gertie. She gulped and mourned the wolves, contemplated arsenic.
“Stop scratching yourself. Its rude,” the teacher continued before turning back to the blackboard.
Gertie slid out from her chair and tip toed out of the room, backwards. She slunk down the hall, hugging the wall. Imitating the spies in the movies her brothers loved and bought bootlegged from the neighbor's son. When Gertie reached the bathroom she closed the door behind her with warm relief. The bathroom was steamy from leaky pipes and hot radiators. It smelled slightly of mold and bleach and was painted a deep golden, for no imaginable reason. A third of the floor tiles were missing. Gertie checked that the stalls were empty before removing her scarf.
There was blood.
She tilted the top of her head toward the mirror and attempted to part the hair around the lump. Her hair was sticky. She couldn’t get a clear view. A loud noise came from outside, from the direction of the monastery. The mirror in front of Gertie shattered and fell into the sink basin. Fell like an armload of silver snow. Gertie starred into the bowl of tiny Gerties. She tilted her face from one side to the other, watching the hundred other Gertie’s mime her movements. She reached the tip of one finger into the basin and crunched in against the shards.
“Ow,” she yelped quietly. There was a tiny shard stuck in the finger, next to the nail. Great more blood, thought Gertie.
She was not frieghtened by the blood really. Having grown up with so many brothers she was accustomed to a degree of personal injury, a quantity of blood. This was different however. The semi self inflicted wound on her head was worrisome. After pulling the shard of mirror from her finger Gertie washed her hands and lip in the basin to her left. She tried to clean off some of the caked on blood from her hair, but it seemed to have little positive affect. If anything her hair looked worse, more matted.
Her scarf was ruined she noted, unfolding the weary cloth and wieghing it across her thin wrists. Though maybe not. The red poppies masked the blood well, taking it on as an additional yield.
Gertie gingerly replaced her covering, dried her hands on her thighs and made her way back to the classroom.
Some of the students at the back of the room whispered as Gertie entered, but the teacher was still teaching. Face to blackboard, back to class. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed, Gertie pondered not without a touch of disappointment. Few children want to be invisible under normal circumstances.
“Gertie Le Fleur!” roared the teacher, whipping around as Gertie’s chair creaked under her returned wieght. “We do not leave class without permission. Its r...” The teacher’s voice was cut off mid word. Her face seemed to freeze, mouth gaped open. Her shoulders shook a bit and a quiet chocking sound crept out from the back of her throat. The students began to giggle nervously. All except Gertie, who starred in horror at the consequence of her misbehaviour. The teacher clawed at her own throat in painc. Slowly, the students ceased their giggling and looked around at their commrads, uncertain what they could do.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a bursting balloon and a swarm of butterflies rushed from the teacher’s gaping mouth. Bright blue. Most of the students squealed in delight as the teacher fell to her knees gasping. Gertie remained silent, transfixed.
“Anything interesting happen at school today?” Irving asked his sister as he retrived her from the regular spot next to her classroom door. Gertie looked over her shoulder. Her teacher’s head was flat against her big desk, her face starring unseeing toward the window. Gertie shook her head. “Did you at least learn anything good?”
“Butterflies,” Gertie whispered.
“Hm?”
“Butterflies. They don’t like the snow.”
Gertie drew her stockinged feet with her onto her bed. She rested her chin on her knees, making herself very small. She was unsure what to do. She had walked home silently behind her brothers, which they had, of course, not found unusual. She has shaken her head in quiet refusal at her grandmother’s offer of a slice of honey slathered bread, which had been only slightly odd. She was hidding in her tiny room as yet not burdensom to her family, but how long could she wait before they found out? Surly the principal would call. The teacher herself eventually would arrive at the door filled to the brim with accusations. What was the appropriate punishment for her crime, Gertie fretted. Would the police drag her away or arrest her quietly in the dead of night? What would her grandmother be forced to tell the neighbors?
Gerties’ terror over the episode with her teacher had temporarily distracted her from the growth under her hair. She washed her face and sent herself to bed without supper. This did worry Baba Le Fleur, as the girl was awefully thin.
Gertie awoke the next morning to the gray predawn, a crowing rooster, and an aching head. She rubbed her face into her pillow seeking comfort. Before sitting up, Gertie gave her scalp a good scratch, despite the antisipated pain of the action. POP. The lump on her head, having grown over night, gave into the bite of her fingernails and perpetual scratching. The skin ripped open and it felt, to Gertie’s horror, as though something had trailed out. She held both hands out in front of her face, up toward the ceiling as far as her arms would take them. The offensive hands that had torn at her head. There was blood beneath her fingernails. Gertie lay very still, unwilling to move her head even slightly in any direction. She tried to breath deelply. She tried harder. Gertie could hear her grandmother in the kitchen below her making all the normal sounds of morning. She could hear her brothers rising in the rooms on either side. She lay very very still trying to think of what could unwind from the human head. She was certain that she was dying. Or already dead.
“Gertie!” her grandmother called, “I haven’t heard you yet.”
“Gertie!” Baba Le Fleur called again, louder as her voice got closer. “Are you awake?”
“I’m awake!” Gertie sqwaked too quietly to be heard. She swallowed, wetting her throat. “I’m awake!” she cried out louder as the handle on her door moved slightly.
“Good. Well, get up. You’ll be late,” her grandmother commanded from the other side of the door.
Gertie did as she was told. She slipped from beneath her covers, keeping her neck as stiff as possible. She tried not to touch anything with her hands. She hesitated at the door of her room. Pressing her ear against the door, she listened for silence in a house that rarely had any. Hearing the pounding of boys' bare feet descending the stairs, Gertie rolled open her door knob with the heels of her hands and rushed to the bathroom. She frantically locked the door behind her.
Gertie had come in search of the mirror. However, finding herself faced with the possibility of what was happening to her, she hesitated once again. She washed her hands, without looking up into the glass. She carefully cleaned beneath each finger nail, checking her cuticles, her knuckles, her palms for any residue. Finally, Gertie lifted her face. She looked pale she noted, perhaps even thin. She tilted her chin up toward the ceiling, noting the weight of the back of her head. She tilted her head to the right, noting the fall of her hair. Gertie Le Fleur hung her head forward and presented the top of her head to the mirror. She parted her hair with one hand. It was green. The lump that was not a lump any longer. There was something green and spindly trailing, as trailing was in fact the correct term for what was happing atop her head, from the wound. Gertie lifted a finger to her scalp. She poked the hair and skin around the wound, moving counter clockwise and slowly inward. When she got to the gagged skin, Gertie poked a little more forcefully, accusingly even. The spindly trail unfurled. Unfurled into a leaf. Gertie fell down in shock.
... to be continued...
