The Wonderling

by Mira Bartók

  BEFORE HE WAS CALLED THE WONDERLING, he had many names: Puddlehead, Plonker, Groundling, and Spike, among others. He didn’t mind these much, not even Groundling. The name he truly disliked was the first he ever remembered being called: Number Thirteen. It wasn’t a name, really. Just a number, written in red, on a piece of paper, filed in a drawer, in a room full of hundreds of files and drawers. It was embossed on a small tin medallion attached to a piece of cord he wore around his neck at a home for unclaimed creatures. It was sewn inside his tattered gray shirt and shabby gray trousers. And it was painted on his hard, narrow bed in a room full of the beds of other unclaimed creatures who had at least been fortunate enough to have been given the gift of their own names at birth.

  He looked like a young fox but stood upright like a child and had no tail to speak of. His eyes were a lovely chestnut brown and flecked with gold. But there was something about them that gave one the sense that, although he had not been in this world very long, he carried within him some inexplicable sorrow.

  He was a creature with an innocent heart. What kind of creature, though, who could say? Despite his fox kit face, his snout was more dog than fox, and there was something rabbity about him too, in the way his nose twitched when he sensed danger, and how he trembled when he heard the loud clang of the orphanage bell. But the most singular thing about him was that he had only one ear.

  How he had lost his other ear (or whether he was born without it) he did not know. His right ear, the pointy ear of a fox, was velvety soft and covered in reddish-brown fur like the rest of him, but for a small white spot on his chest shaped like a leaf. Except for his missing ear, Number Thirteen had nothing out of the ordinary about him, at least not outwardly, for he lived in a world where the line between animals and humans was not so clearly defined. Nevertheless, people thought him strange. “Bad luck, that ear! ” they whispered to one another. “Must be deaf as a doorknob, that one! And that name — Number Thirteen! Bad luck indeed!”

  At night, he comforted himself, as frightened children do all over the world. He’d reach beneath his pillow and pull out something soft and blue: a fragment of his baby blanket. Embroidered on one of the corners was what looked like the initial M, although he couldn’t quite make it out, for some of the threads, which had once been brilliant gold, had faded or fallen out over time. Wrapped inside the scrap of blanket was a tiny gold key. He didn’t know what it opened, or if it had ever opened anything important at all — just that the key and the blue scrap were the only things remaining from his very first home.

  But Number Thirteen — one-eared, nameless, and small of stature, for he never grew taller than three feet high — could not remember where he came from. Everyone comes from somewhere, and yet there he was, his origins unknown, even to himself. He could not remember being tucked in at night, or if he had ever been truly loved. What he did recall, however, was a sound from long ago: a beautiful, lilting song, floating through a sky full of stars, landing inside his fledgling of a heart. Other than that, he couldn’t remember a thing.

  When asked about his early years, Number Thirteen could recall only the terrible place he had been sent to.

  THE ORPHANAGE where Number Thirteen was abandoned shortly after his birth (by whom, he did not know) was called Miss Carbunkle’s Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures but referred to by its miserable occupants as, simply, “the Home.” It was located in the country, far from city or town. The Home, which had been built centuries ago in the shape of a giant cross, had been many things — first a monastery, then a prison, then a workhouse for the poor, and finally an asylum for unclaimed creatures.

  On the front of the Home’s brochure was a happy-go-lucky creature with the head of a rabbit and the body of a little girl, wearing a polka-dot dress and bow, clutching a bouquet of daisies. Beneath the picture, the caption read: Have you been unexpectedly burdened by a recently orphaned or unclaimed creature? Worry not! We have just the solution for you!

  The advertisement boasted of “a warm and welcoming place, nestled in an idyllic valley, surrounded by fields of buttercups, bluebells, and heather.” But none of the orphans ever saw a single flower or felt a blade of grass beneath their feet once they walked through the Home’s ominous front gate. In fact, the only green they saw was the moss that grew on the massive stone wall surrounding the place.

  And Miss Carbunkle’s Home was anything but welcoming and warm.

  The high black gate that rose to an arch in the middle stood a hundred feet from the entrance. Through it, any carriages came and went. Each of the gate’s iron bars was topped by a spike that resembled the tip of a medieval spear, so sharp that birds never perched there. Hanging from its apex was a rusty metal sign with faded black letters announcing the name of the wretched place. So many of the letters had worn off over time, the sign now read:

  On each side of the sign was the profile of a hawk. Someone or some force of nature had dislodged the sign long ago, and it dangled from a single nail, causing it to clank loudly against the gate whenever the wind blew or whenever someone entered or left the grounds.

  Let us just say that more entered than left, and leave it at that.

  Two dim-witted mastiffs the size of calves stood chained together in front of the gate, barking incessantly and salivating so much that small puddles of drool gathered at their feet. At night, beneath the eerie glow of the gaslight, the guard dogs resembled a slobbery Cerberus, the three-headed guardian of hell — minus one head, of course. The dogs responded to one voice only, that of the headmistress, Miss Carbunkle, who ruled over her dominion with a cold, impenetrable heart.

  To enter the orphanage itself, one had to pass through a heavy oak door, built into the wall and impossible to open without Miss Carbunkle’s big brass key. Carved into the door was the figure of another hawk, clutching a tiny mouse in its talons, a reminder lest anyone forget their place. The only way to pass from the Home to the outside world was through that door. There had been other doors built into the wall that surrounded the three-story building and grounds — ancient arched doors with beautiful pictures carved and painted on them — but Miss Carbunkle had sealed them all off when she bought the place. Along the formidable wall, only the ghost image of each original door remained — a palimpsest of an exit to the outside world.

  The wall, built centuries ago from thousands of rough-hewn stones, was three stories high and six and a half feet thick. As with the Home, the orphans called it simply “the Wall.” Except for the top of a tall white birch, the orphans could not see a thing over the Wall — not the lush valley, nor the rolling hills that embraced it, nor the farmlands beyond the hills, the blue mountains beyond the horizon, nor, beyond that, the glowing spires of the Great White City of Lumentown.

  And so the shy one-eared creature adapted to his surroundings and grew. Like so many others who have never known solace or love, Number Thirteen said little, kept his head down, and did what he was told. He felt that he knew nothing at all about himself or about the mysterious world beyond the towering wall and gate. What he did know in his heart of hearts was that he hungered for something. But what that something was, he had yet to find out.

  EVERY DAY BEGAN exactly the same at Miss Carbunkle’s Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures: Wake up at five a.m. to the Home’s earsplitting bell, followed by Miss Carbunkle’s screeching, “Roll call, groundlings! Rise and shine!” over the loudspeaker. Next, wash face and mitts in shared basin of dirty gray water left over from yesterday’s laundry. Then remove tattered gray pajamas, pull on tattered gray uniform (which looked identical to aforementioned pajamas), and rush outside with the others for roll call — all of this accomplished at breakneck speed.

  One bleak December morning, toward the end of the elev
enth year of Number Thirteen’s strange and lonely life, he and the others gathered outside in Kestrel Courtyard at dawn, as usual, for roll call. The orphans stood in rows of ten in front of the Wall that towered above them, closing them in on all four sides like a castle fortress.

  It was Monday morning, less than a week before Christmas and Number Thirteen’s birthday, for both fell on the very same day. Not surprisingly, Number Thirteen was completely unaware of this fact. And besides, celebrations of any kind were strictly forbidden at the Home.

  A damp mist swirled above the courtyard, slowly creeping into the orphans’ threadbare coats and bones. All the wayward and misbegotten creatures — the orphans, the foundlings, and the street urchins doing penance for petty crimes — stood at attention. They were the “groundlings” of the world — a hybrid mix of animal and human, or of animal and animal, that, in the hierarchy of the day, inhabited a place very close to the bottom. They were skinny and squat, furry and feathered, some nearly human if not for a rat tail or jackrabbit ears, a piglet face or wings and webbed feet. Most were half human, half animal, but not all. Some appeared to be all mammal, or reptile, or bird, but for the fact that they spoke and acted like human beings.

  The one thing they all had in common, besides the numbers they wore around their necks, was the dread they felt when Miss Carbunkle appeared, dressed in her black hooded cloak and carrying her hawk-headed cane, her mouth drawn in a permanent line of disapproval.

  That morning, like all mornings, Miss Carbunkle leaned forward on her cane, pursed her lips, and glared down at the young waifs before her. She was a tall imposing woman, and her astonishingly large flaming-orange wig (one of her few indulgences in life) made her appear even taller. Her bespectacled assistant, Mr. Sneezeweed — sour-faced, shoulder-stooped, and long of limb — stood scowling beside her, his greasy black hair clinging to his forehead and the sides of his long pale face.

  The headmistress began calling out names in a shrill, clipped voice:

  “Hershel!”

  “Here, ma’am.”

  “Cecil!”

  “Here, ma’am.”

  “Gaffer!”

  “Here, ma’am.”

  “Dimble!”

  “Here.”

  “DIMBLE!”

  “H-here?”

  “Here, MA’AM!”

  “Here, ma’am.”

  “Glover!”

  “Here, ma’am.”

  “Joop!”

  “Here, ma’am.”

  And so on. All the little groundlings, with names like Morris and Stanley, Nesbit and Snook, Twinkles and Nigel, Rufus, Tweeter, Moe, and Baby Tizer (who refused to grow larger than a hedgehog), answered in turn. There were ever so many, with more coming each and every week. They stood there shivering, staring up at Miss Carbunkle, whose face looked ghoulish in the gray morning light.

  Miss Carbunkle had been a beauty in her youth, but as time went on, she became so unfeeling toward the world that her heart, once so full, had become brittle and small. Her expression had shrunk as well, and always looked angry and pinched. Except for the two blotches of rouge on her cheeks, Miss Carbunkle’s face resembled an angry ghost’s.

  Miss Carbunkle paused to check her list. She could never keep the names of her wards straight, for although each of them looked so very different from the others, they seemed all very much the same to her — freakish, ill-formed, and wild. As Miss Carbunkle read off the names, her assistant absentmindedly stroked a small downy patch below his left nostril.Mr. Sneezeweed dreamed of one day sporting an extravagant handlebar mustache, but alas, at thirty years of age, he had yet to produce any facial hair whatsoever, save for the spot of fuzz.◆

  ◆ “Fresh as a newborn babe, my Mortimer, fresh as a newborn babe! His mama’s favorite, he is,” his mother would say to anyone who would listen.

  Sneezeweed, who was nearly as tall as Miss Carbunkle, was forever sniffling and blowing his aquiline nose into a dainty white handkerchief that his doting mother had embroidered with his name. The orphans called him “Sneezy” behind his back. Now, as always, Sneezy was alternating between blowing his nose and stroking his nonexistent mustache. In his other hand, he gripped a long wooden paddle, at the ready should anyone step out of line.

  Number Thirteen was far more afraid of Miss Carbunkle’s cane. She was known to strike a groundling’s backside at the slightest provocation. At the top of her cane was the head of the same sinister hawk carved on the Home’s oak door and painted on the Home’s unwelcoming sign. Its resemblance to the headmistress, with its piercing eyes and beak-like nose, was not lost on him. Sometimes, in the dim and sleepy light of morning, he swore he could see the hawk’s amber eyes blink.

  Miss Carbunkle opened her mouth to speak just as Sneezeweed, who was allergic to nearly everything — fur, feathers, mold, dust, and most every kind of food — let out a succession of explosive sneezes. The groundlings stifled their laughter as best they could, because laughter, like most other things, was strictly forbidden.

  The headmistress gave Sneezeweed’s foot a sharp stab with her cane and said, “For pity’s sake, man, control yourself!”

  Sneezeweed winced and said quietly, so as to not be overheard, “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but . . . but . . . it’s the spores, you see; spores are everywhere! And —”

  “Oh, shut it!” said Miss Carbunkle, and continued rattling off more names: Seymour, Petey, Queeg, and Pocket! Buttercup, Tillie, Millie, and Schmoo!

  Clearly, it was a Non-Alphabetical Day.

  On Non-Alphabetical Days, Miss Carbunkle read off her list in no particular order to keep the groundlings on their toes. Sometimes she read the same name twice. But none of that mattered to Number Thirteen, for even on Non-Alphabetical Days, he was always called last. Being only a number made his status lower than an X, a Y, or even a Z.

  Miss Carbunkle scanned the rows before her and called out the final name. “Number Thirteen!”

  But before he could answer, someone kicked the back of his knees, and he fell onto a small rabbit groundling, causing them both to tumble to the ground. “S-sorry,” he stammered, and helped her up.

  He could hear Mug and Orlick snickering behind him. Mug, a bulldog groundling, and “Smelly” Orlick, an opossum groundling who, for some inexplicable reason, always smelled like pond water, were the one-eared orphan’s most frequent tormentors at the Home. As far back as he could remember, they had bullied him. Once, when the headmistress and Mr. Sneezeweed had rushed out of the courtyard to catch the groundling that had set fire to Miss Carbunkle’s desk, Mug grabbed his ear and shouted in it, “Is anybody home in there, you stupid plonker?” His ear ached for weeks afterward. Mug and his friends had called him “Plonker” or “Plonky” ever since.

  He got used to it, though, just like he got used to everything else. Better to be a name than a number, he said to himself, even if it is an unpleasant one.

  “Number Thirteen!” Miss Carbunkle shrieked once again into the cold, misty air.

  He struggled, as usual, to get out the words, but the words wouldn’t come. It felt as if a large rock were lodged deep inside his throat.

  All of a sudden, someone pulled his ear really hard. Number Thirteen spun around to see who it was. Next to Mug and Orlick stood an imposing new arrival: a tall, gray, bristly-furred rat groundling with a long snout and two sharp incisors protruding from his mouth. He had large yellow-clawed feet and a long wiry tail. His shoulders were so scrunched up that it seemed his head was attached to them and that he had no neck at all. His eyes were small and shrunken and black as night.

  “Delighted to meet you,” whispered the Rat, who promptly belched right in Number Thirteen’s face.

  The poor creature almost passed out from the smell — a bouquet of dirty socks, fetid meat, and the flotsam and jetsam of dark sewers.

  Great. Now he had three bullies to worry about instead of two.

  Miss Carbunkle roared his name like a wild beast. He stammered out an inaudible
“H-here.”

  In a voice as smooth as silk, the Rat whispered in his ear, “What’s the matter? Rat got your tongue?”

  Number Thirteen began to tremble from the tip of his ear to his furry toes.

  “Number Thirteen, do you want the cane? Or would you prefer Mr. Sneezeweed’s paddle?” snarled Miss Carbunkle.

  He tried again, a little louder, but the headmistress still could not hear him.

  “NUMBER THIRTEEN!” she boomed. “Are you here or not? Make up your mind!”

  Finally, Number Thirteen, known to the world only as an unlucky number, forced the words out from behind the rock in his throat: “Here, m-m-ma’am.”

  The orphans let out a collective sigh of relief, and off to breakfast they marched, led by Mr. Sneezeweed. Fortunately, Mug, Orlick, and their new ratty friend were farther back in line.

  And Number Thirteen, who shuffled along with his head down as usual, wished he had a nice warm cap with which to hide his ear.

  NUMBER THIRTEEN trudged along as Mr. Sneezeweed led his wards down the long narrow corridor of Kestrel Hall. “One, two, one, two! Keep up, you worthless little beasties!” snapped Sneezeweed, holding his paddle above his head.

  They were heading off to the same place they went every morning: the dreary dining hall at the far end of the Home. And after that, two hours of Miss Carbunkle’s illuminating lectures on topics such as “The Necessity of Groundling Obedience in the Service of Progress and Industry” would be followed by more hours of tedious backbreaking chores: scrubbing floors, washing clothes in freezing-cold water by hand (or claw or paw), repairing broken desks and chairs, mending blankets and socks, and, more often than not, soul-squelching factory work.

  Sunday was the only day that deviated from the rest. The orphans awoke early for roll call and did their work, but to their immense relief, there were no lessons at all. That December day, however, was not a Sunday. It was just another Monday, and there was nothing special about it.