Drella was told there was something wrong with her head. In the small shrill school, she alone could not understand. It was like being among a baffling, alien species.

Seemed she should learn to smile when she was unhappy, to stop laughing, to speak up, to never speak to strangers, to share guilt for the acts of strangers, that strangers made the laws of the land, that the laws of the land valued things over life, that life ended if a stranger decided it, to be where she could be found, to feel one thing and do another. How could she hang so many contradictions in one skull?

She asked questions and incited an anger far fiercer than that provoked by bullies or stupidity. Mrs Rocust taught a religion of love and threatened to blot out Drella's sight with a pencil which she ticktocked from one iris to the other. The class laughed as one, seeing no anomaly. Their eyes were windows onto incoherence.

Rocust marched her out into the cold yard, where Drella felt relieved and peaceful.

Snow and night fell. The yelling kids were long since gone and Drella felt blissfully forgotten. The moon ghosted among clouds.

But Mrs Rocust slammed from the schoolhouse, locking up loudly, and took Drella by the paw to drag her through the shuttered town. Down steps and alleys, under lamps threading with firefly snow. Until they neared a little shop with bower windows, lit up like a shop on a Christmas card. A single knock, and they were admitted.

The shop appeared to be a cobbler's or machinist's. The proprietor was a rosy-cheeked man who winked at Drella and bid her warm her hands at the fire. Mrs Rocust lay her bag on the small table as Drella crossed the low-ceilinged room. The shopkeeper took hold of Drella's face, a scream smearing across his palm. Pushing her against the table, he hit her with a hammer until she was obediently still, then he and Mrs Rocust secured her to the tabletop. Mrs Rocust sat in a corner knitting as a broad drill bore a hole in Drella's skulltop and the shopkeeper drew out the contents. Brain sluiced along a drain like clotted milk. As knitting needles fiddled and clicked a metal keg and delivery tube were brought to bear upon the girl's open head. Hundreds of gleaming black spiders gushed down the pipe and filled the skull cavity. A few escaped, darting across the table before the wound was sealed over.

Back in school, there was nothing to be said. Hung in every skull was a ball of spiders muddling gleefully, lining the bonewall with an impenetrable web. Behind Drella's face was a roiling blizzard of little minds, without invention or comment. Inner contradiction was impossible. Her head felt fizzy but that only made her shout with the others.

Once she got a nosebleed which included a few spiders, and thought nothing of it.

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