Petra K and the Blackhearts

by M Henderson Ellis

  I walked under the arched gate that signaled the entrance to Jozseftown. Almost immediately the vibrantly colored houses turned to gray, soot-encrusted tenements, decrepit and vandalized places that appeared barely inhabitable. I wound my way through the knotty streets, past the betting galleries filled with dark-eyed Half Nots, and the Zsida-owned shops that sold antique books on mysticism or astronomical maps charting the outer depths of the galaxy. As always, vendors perked up at the sight of somebody in a Pava School uniform, at the possibility of a sale, until they realized it was just me, Petra K, one of their own. My face reddened as they turned their backs.

  I stopped short at a corner on Goat Square. I lived on the other side, but dead in the center of the square was a brightly painted cart, which was being drawn by a stout pig. Two boys wearing dusty, oversized smoking jackets were chasing each other around the cart. A third was handing a vial to a man dressed in farmer’s garb, and accepting a handful of kuna in return. A dark Half Not girl was corralling prospective customers from the afternoon crowd.

  “Revenge potions, falling in love potions, come one come all!” cried the littlest one, who wore a top hat a few sizes too big, so it covered his whole head, with two eyes cut out to see through.

  Charlatans, ripping off tourists with their fake potions. I’d been forbidden by Mother from talking to them or those of their sort. Gangs of children made homeless by the Boot, they congregated in Jozseftown, where they could live and conduct whatever shady business kept them alive, without interference from the government police and their red hounds. I always passed silently, no matter what insults they yelled my way. On this day, I did my best to slip by, keeping to the outer perimeter of the square. But the gang’s smallest, vigilant to any potential customer in the vicinity, called out to me.

  “Hey you!” he said, racing over, his black hat bobbing like a piston in a steam engine. I tried to ignore him, but it was too late. The others were alerted, and followed him. “What are you looking for?” he said. “Falling in love potions, revenge spells, shape-shifting ones? We got ’em all.” He pulled a small vial from his pocket and opened it: a green mist rose from its mouth. “The real thing.”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “I bet you need one to grow taller,” he said, a bit snidely.

  “Who’s talking?” I retorted. It was a bad move, because now they were all around me.

  I knew my mother was waiting for me to get home, but the gang blocked my way. I felt something cold and bristly brush my ankle. It was their pig, rooting around my shoes as though it might uncover a potato if I moved my foot. “Get it away!” I shrieked.

  “Rufus,” said the little one.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s not an it, it’s a Rufus.”

  The others began to move in closer, crowding me.

  “Where you from, a uniform like that?” the smallest asked. I could see the tattoo of the black broken heart on his chest: they were Blackhearts.

  “Hey—I know you,” said the leader, a boy with long, natty hair, who wore a white peasant blouse and carried a stubby walking cane. “You run through Goat Square like you’re afraid of your own shadow. People think you are from the other side of the river, but you’re not. Just another girl from Jozseftown. You think you are too good for us, don’t you?”

  “You don’t know me,” I said. But perhaps he did, for I was looking about myself, worried one of my classmates might see me with them.

  “Yes, I do,” he responded. “You live alone with your mother. Your name is Petra K. You can’t keep secrets in Jozseftown.”

  “I’m Abel,” the little one interjected, stepping closer, taking his top hat off. He had dirty blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and was in profound need of a scrubbing. “This is Jasper,” he said of the large, mean-eyed one. “That’s Isobel,” he said of a dark, misty looking girl. She was bewitching, in a brightly woven shawl wrapped around her body. “She doesn’t have a tattoo because it is against Half Not tradition, but she is still a member. And this is Deklyn, leader of the Blackhearts.”

  “I’m not allowed to talk to you,” I said, which was true. “I need to go home.” Again, I tried to duck from their midst.

  “Not so fast, not until you buy something,” said Deklyn. The boy would not budge. Nor would I. I may have gone to the Pava School, but this was my neighborhood, too, and his attitude made me loathe him and his dirty brow. I tried again, only this time I hit him squarely with my shoulder. I could see the surprise in his eye as I walked quickly away from the stunned group. It looked like they might follow me, but my escape was unexpectedly aided by the appearance of a large Half Not boy on the other side of the square. As if in imitation of the Blackhearts, he was holding small vials out to passersby. I recognized him as member of the Big Thumb Devils, a rival gang.

  “Hey!” the one called Jasper yelled to him. I had been instantaneously forgotten.

  “Come on!” Deklyn said, and took off to confront the boy, the others following. Only Rufus stayed behind, trailing at my feet until I too hurried from the square, toward home.

  OUR HOUSE SAT ON A DARK and cramped side street, across from an abandoned marionette repair shop. It was an old, decrepit townhouse ornamented with grinning gargoyle friezes on the eves and a chipped wreath of granite roses above the doorway, appearing as though the house itself had been a living creature that was suddenly turned to stone. It was always shadowy, and even to me looked abandoned from outside, though I knew mother was home. I unlocked the door and listened. Behind the first door on the left lay my mother’s room. Most times she was but a muffled and grave voice, beckoning me in for punishment or instruction.

  I tiptoed past the door to her room. How long, I wondered, had it been since she had sealed herself away in there?

  “Petrushka!” she called out, using her nickname for me.

  I shuddered inwardly, took a deep breath, then twisted the brass knob, which somehow managed to stay the same degree of cold year round. I cracked the door and poked my head in.

  “You are late,” mother said sternly. She was lying in bed, as usual, and drinking tea poured from a pewter pot that was at her constant bedside service. “Have you been playing where you are not supposed to?”

  By that, my mother meant anywhere.

  “No. There was a cart in the square. A gang of boys was there.”

  “I told you not to associate with their sort. They can’t even bathe in moonlight without turning it muddy.”

  “I wasn’t associating. I was just there.”

  Mother always needed educating. No, let’s face it, she needed help. But not in an obvious way. She would protest, and raise her eyebrow if you said anything intended to better her situation. You had to slip things in, like medicine in a sugar cube, so she could come around to things on her own. Though she usually didn’t.

  “Petra K, come here,” Mother said. I took a cautious step into her room. The bed ruffled, extending from her like an enormous, worn wedding dress of a jilted bride.

  “It’s OK, come closer,” she said when I had stopped at the foot of the bed. I moved around to her side. “Tuck me, dear,” she instructed. I tucked in the sheets expertly; it was my daily chore. “Now give me a kiss and get me some more hot water.” I kissed my mother’s cold, pale cheek. “It’s this neighborhood, dear. We shouldn’t be living here. But because of that … man.” By “that man” she meant my father. “That’s why I keep you close. That’s why I send you to a proper school though God knows we can’t afford it. So you don’t end up like that superstitious, devious man. No, I have said too much. Now go. Go clean yourself. I swear you are starting to smell like one of those little street thugs.”

  I reddened and at first felt shunned, then suddenly angry, then very lonely and sorry for the woman, who herself hadn’t washed in weeks. Still, I wished I could stay by my mother’s side for a little while longer, though I knew remaining would only bring more reproach upon me. So I swallowed my hurt and backed aw
ay, silently, measuring my steps to the door, then turned and ran, tears burning on my cheeks.

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

  Chapter 3

  The 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.

  “Creepsville,” 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.

  Strange Disease Overtakes Pava School

  Yesterday in the Central Palace District a butcher’s shop was looted by a gang of girls, whom witnesses claimed to be from the nearby Pava School. “I thought there must be a fire, or something like that,” said butcher Pavel Polak. “A group of neighborhood kids came rushing into my shop like a red hound was chasing them. But, no, there was no one chasing them, and they didn’t stop at the counter, scrambling right over it, almost like they were flying, and overtaking me. I shook them off as best I could then fled the store, letting them rip into the goods in the cooler. I could see them tearing into raw liver with their teeth, ripping chunks from leg of lamb, with crazed animal looks in their green eyes that I will not soon forget.”

  Polak then locked the store from the outside and alerted a patrolling Boot officer. He proceeded with caution when opening the door on the youngsters gone berserk. (He, like many others who witnessed the scene, swore the girls were actually flying around the room.) By his account, the group of girls did not rest until all the meat of the shop had been devoured, scraps of their rampage strewn across the walls and the windows smeared with grease. To subdue them, a mystic was summoned from the Ministry of Unlikely Occurrences. A tarp was hung over the shop’s window and the Boot quickly dispersed any curiosity seekers. Over the course of the night the mystic was able to tranquilize the girls with a spell, then had them delivered to and locked in his workshop. After experimenting with various materials, he was able to concoct an antidote, and by the time dawn broke, the four perpetrators were released from his cellar, claiming not to have a single memory of what they had done.