I was too hoarse to scream any more. I could only raise an arm or a leg as much as they let me, curling into a weak ball to protect myself. The village boys laughed as they took turns punching at my stomach, chest, arms, groin and face. My horrible, scarred face that helped them justify their attack.
“You sick, ugly witch!” Jacque spat. “You stay out of La Rue Sauvage, you hear? Stay out of our village!”
His palm weaved around my arms and slapped me. Tiny lights swirled about my face as 15
the sting settled into my cheek. I wanted to sleep.
To sleep forever and make them go away.
“Monster!” one boy yelled.
“Disgusting hag!” shouted another.
I stopped trying to rise from beneath them.
I shut my eyes, accepting blow after blow, my arms and legs burning with bruises. I no longer saw them. I saw myself and the image they so hated. The seven-year old girl with blonde hair and blue eyes and three thick scars slashed across her face. They ran at a slant, like torn pink ribbons.
The top one started above my left eye and ended below my right. The second ran below my left eye and scraped across my distorted nose. The last tore across my left cheek and my mouth, ending beneath the enlarged right portion of my lower lip.
No wonder they called me a monster.
My mind pictured something else as they kept hammering my stomach. I saw the wolf, large and leering and unstoppable, its jaws opening wide to swallow me. The wolf that stood on its hind legs and loomed over me. The living nightmare that spoke to me through its grinning fangs: Where are you going, little girl?
I found my voice and screamed.
“Helena!”
“Run!” the boys shouted. The pain stopped
– or at least, stopped mounting - replaced by a scuttling and sloshing of feet through mud puddles and fallen leaves.
“Helena! What have you boys done? Come back here, you!”
16
I kept my eyes shut and lay still, sobbing but relieved. Papa would stop them. He would chase them, punish them, his blue eyes blazing with rage above his thick black moustache. He would catch every last one of them and make them sorry for hitting me.
Strong arms surrounded me. They snatched me up, then slowed to cradle me.
“Helena.” Papa’s voice broke. “Helena.”
“Papa,” I rasped, too weak to hug him. I winced out tears as he held me, keeping my eyes closed, until I could breathe regularly again. “Did you get them?”
His chest sighed. “They ran away.”
“All of them? You didn’t catch any?” My voice croaked like a frog’s.
“Helena, I’m taking you to Doctor
Renoire.” He rushed me to the next street where we had left our wagon. I had wandered off to smell some flowers outside another shop, when the boys started hurling insults and chased me through the alley.
“I want to see Francois,” I said.
Papa cradled me closer as he sloshed across the muddy path. My burlap cloak scraped against my bare shoulders where my dress had been torn.
“I’m taking you to the doctor,” he said.
“Am I dying?”
“No, Helena. You’re not dying.”
“After we’re done – I want to see him.”
“I’ll think on it. Lie still.”
He laid me down on the hay in the bed of our wagon, pushing aside the pumpkins and squash 17
he had purchased to make room. I heard Papa’s horse, Royale, snort his readiness from the front.
Soon we were rolling and jostling along the dusty road, so much smoother than the hills outside our distant cottage. So smooth …
And I was so scarred.
18
2.
I still felt pain, stinging my stomach and face and between my legs, as I lay on the cot in the visiting room. But Doctor Renoire had cleaned me with soft cloths and lotion that took away most of the soreness. Soonafter, I had
