Petra K and the Blackhearts (3 page)

Later, only after I had cried myself out, did I boil water for tea.

T
he next morning, the classroom reeked of the perfume Tatiana had taken from my bag. It was at the very least distracting. Though Miss Kavanova said nothing of it during the lessons, she did open a window. I tried to concentrate on the lesson, but kept wrinkling up my nose. One got used to even the strongest of smells, but this one didn’t seem to go away, and it reminded me of Zsofia’s rejection of me each time I inhaled. Not to mention that there was a strange tension in the room that I couldn’t put my finger on. It felt as though there were some secret plan the others had set in motion. Just when that thought occurred to me, Miss Kavanova paused in the middle of our history lesson. “Is everything OK?” she asked the class. “Everybody looks a little green today.”
Yes, that was it
, I thought. Everybody did have a slight green pallor to them.

“Fine, Miss Kavanova,” said Tatiana firmly. “Now you were just telling us about some Jozseftown fairy tale.”

“It is not a fairy tale, this is history we are talking about,” replied Miss Kavanova sharply. “The Monarch, before his illness, recruited the best alchemists and scientists from the hovels of
Jozseftown to work for him in the Palace. Of course, there are stories of hauntings and curses still active in the ghetto.”

“Creepy,” said Sonia.

“Creeps
ville
,” said Margo. Everybody looked at me. They all knew I was from Jozseftown. I don’t know why we had to study it in class. Like I was some sort of living specimen.

“I think it is simply fascinating,” said Tatiana. It was hard to tell when Tatiana was being sarcastic. But the fact that she took a knob of dry sausage from her purse and began to gnaw on it lent an unprecedented insolence to her comment.

“Tatiana,” said Miss Kavanova, “put that away now! I have never …”

“Put what away?” said Tatiana, chewing rabidly. “Oh, this?” she said, looking at the greasy sausage in her hand, as if she did not know how it got there. Tatiana looked as genuinely astonished as Miss Kavanova. “Sorry, I don’t know what got into me.” The other girls giggled uncertainly, but were silenced by Miss Kavanova.

“Let’s break for a few minutes. Take some fresh air and when you return I want your complete attention.”

“Yes, Miss Kavanova,” the class chimed in unison.

I stayed in my seat while the others filed out of the room. Miss Kavanova seemed momentarily lost in her consternation, before noticing me. “Go on, Petra K. You too.” I left the classroom to join the others in the school garden. I wandered around the well-kept grounds, half-heartedly chasing the peacocks that lived there, gazing at the bushes pruned into sculptures, the bursts of violet and
tulipan
beds. Just once I wanted to see a bush that wasn’t sculpted, a flowerbed that wasn’t planted in straight, flawless rows. Then I would have a place where I would feel comfortable amidst all that stupid perfection. And, in truth, there was an occasion during break time in the previous year when I had actually kicked up a snapdragon bed just to create some confusion, only to find the plants precisely reordered the next day.

I wandered more. It wasn’t until I rounded a porcelain cistern that I happened upon the rest of the class. They were hidden in an alcove of hedges, sitting in a circle, feasting ravenously on food they had brought. Sonia was ripping the flesh from a pickled pig’s knuckle, Lenka had half a smoked chicken that she was tearing straight from the bone with her teeth, Tatiana was busy with another sausage, and Bianka, the kindest of the group, was apparently so starved that she had uprooted wild beet, the maroon juice running down her chin like blood. They looked like a band of savages, grease and pulp smearing their faces. Nobody even noticed me until Tatiana suddenly looked up. It was a look that I will never forget, one that was both predatory and defensive, as if they were birds of prey and I had stumbled upon their nest. But it was more than that: Tatiana’s emerald-green eyes shown with pure hatred. Which was nothing new—she never made an effort to hide her dislike of me—except that Tatiana had
blue
eyes. Of this I was sure. But as each girl paused to look up at me it was the same. They all shared the same piercing, emerald-green eyes.

I backed away, then turned and fled.

In my haste I knocked into Zsofia, who had been walking toward me. As I picked myself up, I snuck a look into Zsofia’s eyes. They were the same chestnut brown they had always been.

“Petra K,” said Zsofia. “You are the only one I can talk to. You are not going to believe what happened.”

“What?” I demanded.

“Yesterday, I followed the others until they agreed to give me a squirt from the bottle. But they sent me away after that, which was fine, because I had to get home for dinner anyway. My mother was so upset that I was wearing perfume that she made me go take a bath. In truth, I was feeling kind of funny anyway. Everything seemed sharper to me. And I was real hungry. All I wanted to do was go hunt down something to eat. You know, like actually
hunt
something down to eat it. It took all my self-control to draw a hot bath to wash myself. But when I was about to get in the water,
I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. What I saw wasn’t me. I had scales, and fangs, and my arms were webbed with wings. I was changing into some kind of monster. But when I looked at my body, it was normal; it was just my reflection that was changed. I got in the bath and scrubbed myself until all that perfume was off me and didn’t dare look into the mirror again until this morning.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“No, it’s not! It’s so
disappointing
!” said Zsofia, her face falling.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, I’m normal again,” my former friend said blithely. “Now everybody has green eyes and I still have stupid brown ones. I never should have taken that bath. They won’t even let me near them anymore. I’m missing all the
fun
.”

“Wow,” I said, impressed. “Do you think we will get out of school early today?”

“The chances are good.”

The bell sounded, calling us back to class. When we arrived in the classroom alone, Miss Kavanova looked visibly upset by the absence of the others.

“Where are the rest?” she asked. I exchanged looks with Zsofia, unsure how to answer. We remained silent. Miss Kavanova’s face reddened, and she began to twirl a lock of her hair with her index finger, which was what usually happened before she really lost her temper. But before she could exercise her wrath, in filed Tatiana, Lenka, Margo, Sonia, and Bianka. Their faces were clean of grease and beet juice, their uniforms neatly tucked in. The only thing that was different was the scent: it had grown stronger still. They must have besprinkled themselves again before retuning. My sleeve immediately flew to my mouth: the gnawing began in earnest.

Things were fine through mathematics, and half of our calligraphy lesson. But there was still a strong tension in the air. Miss Kavanova was putting on a show of teaching while the class was
putting on a show of learning: what was really happening was that our teacher was keeping a vigilant eye on us, waiting for the slightest disruption or hint of unrest. But no real hint came: until Tatiana rose from her seat and walked calmly to the window. Without even looking back, out she jumped. The entire class was silent; even Miss Kavanova paused, standing as still as a statue: the window was on the second floor. Then went Lenka, practically sprinting from her seat and leaping out the window, followed by Sonia and Margo. Bianka was last. She paused on the windowsill, looked straight at Miss Kavanova, and opened her mouth. But instead of an apology, or even a curse, a jet of fire flew from her lungs, stopping right before burning Miss Kavanova’s face. Then, she too jumped, leaving our teacher speechless and with singed and smoking eyebrows.

We got out early.

I
ARRIVED AT SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY
to find it closed. A proclamation hung from the gate declaring it off limits, on the authority of the Ministry of Unlikely Occurrences. I spent the weekend at home with my mother, cleaning the house. I scrubbed the floor tirelessly, as though I could scrub through to a different Pava, one where I belonged. Then, under the pretense of shopping for food, I went to Goat Square Market and put a coin into the metal hand of an automaton news vendor. I waited for it to slowly, creakily lift the kuna to its mouth, releasing a latch, which in turn let its potbelly fall open, allowing me to reach in and grab a newspaper. Thus, I discovered the fate of my classmates.

T
HAT THERE WOULD BE NO MORE SCHOOL
in the near future did not stop my mother from making me wear my uniform and keeping it neat and pressed. Mother refused to put me in the local Jozseftown school, with its leaking ceilings and intense focus on the study of the occult.

With so much time alone, I was haunted by the question: who poisoned my classmates? And why? To be honest, a little embarrassment might have done them good, but there was also Zsofia to think about. The questions circled around my head like gnats. They just would not go away, and no toy could distract me from their buzz. Alone in my attic room, my play chest of toys scavenged from Jozseftown trash cans felt outgrown: the stuffed newts, automaton dolls that moved on their own, and crystal mood shards that lit up in the dark. I wound up my metal Kina-made dragonka, and watched it clatter toward
me, its jaws opening, looking like a jagged, torn aluminum can, before it stopped and shot a weak flame from its mouth. But it offered no comfort. It was cold, like the house was cold, like my room and my mother’s tea had grown cold. I picked it up, and disposed of it in the depths of my closet, deaf to its rattling and scraping.

I
COULDN
’
T LET THIS THING GO UNSOLVED
. I hadn’t stolen the perfume that had poisoned my classmates. It wasn’t fair, should I be somehow blamed for it. And fairness is one thing that you can contribute to the world when you have no power or money. I decided to start my investigation into the tainted perfume at Goat Square Market.

The market was crowded that day, and luckily for me, abuzz with talk of the strange occurrence at the Pava School. Over time I have learned that there are two types of news: the kind you read in the newspaper, and then there is the real kind, that can only be heard by hovering around the edges of crowds. It was there that you heard the true story: chatter passed from a greengrocer as he passed a parsnip to a waiting hand, or between two old ladies as they appraised the day’s catch of eel.

“Terrible,” one lady said, as she held a dried plum to her nose. “I hear the Palace is not pleased.”

“I hear a minister’s daughter is still afflicted, and ate the family cat when nobody was looking,” her friend responded.

“Appalling,” the first lady said, allowing a smile that said she was relishing the gossip, be it true or not. Tiring of chatter, I bought a poppy bun and sat down to snack. It was then that I noticed a crowd had formed around the Dragonka Exchange, across the square. In the ancient Exchange, fortunes were routinely made by buying and selling shares in the precious creatures. The dragonka, of course, were behind most mysteries Pava offered up. They were the source of the nation’s wealth, as well as our living national treasures. The building that housed the Dragonka
Exchange was the pride of Jozseftown and shined like a single white tooth in a mouth of rotten ones.

I crossed the square to the Exchange, then pushed my way through the crowd, toward the newborn pup in the display case. I was only feigning interest, but after a moment, the dragonka pup’s charm began to work on me, and I started to look at it with genuine affection. It was rutty gray with an iridescent sheen—most were like this, or a muddy brown or murky green: muted, unattractively colored until they reached maturity and their scales became radiant. The pup seemed to gather its courage, expressing its need to fly, even with a crowd looking on. But its wings were still not agile enough, and it merely fell onto the cedar chips that lay on the bottom of the cage. It poked its head up and sneezed, then stuck its pronged tongue out and licked its nose.