Welcome to The Spot Writers. Prompt for this month: anything to do with global warming.
This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.
“The Year We Stopped G.W.”
by Chiara De Giorgi
On my desk, in my room at the Boarding School at the End of Dreams, I keep a thin glass vase with a blue papier-mâché flower in it. It is a magical flower that moves and dances when there is music. My friend Periwinkle, a flower fairy, created it last year for the Mid-Spring Fest. Every time I see it, I am reminded of everything that happened last summer…
Yes, last summer… Although everything started at Mid-Spring.
The Fest is always a happy moment for us students: mid-terms are over, and it is finally possible to stay out a bit more. Chill on the grass, have study groups by the pond… also secret trysts at the edge of the forest, of course, but they’re secret so I’m clearly not supposed to talk about them.
The flower fairies are typically in charge of providing fresh flowers to decorate the hall, which is where the problems started.
“We couldn’t pick any flowers”, said Mirabelle. “There weren’t nearly enough!”
Her friend Gardenia confirmed her words. “Yes, the meadows are practically empty of flowers.”
To be honest, at the time we were all more preoccupied with finding a way to still have flowers for the fest than with investigating the reasons behind the lack of flowers in the fields surrounding the school (which was due to no bees being around, by the way). The flower fairies came up with the dancing papier-mâché flowers and we soon forgot about this incident.
As the season progressed, the days got longer and the sun got stronger. The Larks – that is, the early risers, be they fairies, gods, shapeshifters, humans or whatever – set up a running group, led by one of Hermes’ descendants, a stunning blonde appropriately named Hermione. Every morning, before class, they would run across the school grounds, and when they showed up at breakfast with their glowing faces and dishevelled hair, they were typically welcomed by the sleepy eyes and the grunting of the not-yet-caffeinated rest of us.
One of such mornings, they rushed in calling for Professor Fishtail with urgent voices.
Professor Fishtail comes from the Land of the gods and more precisely – you probably guessed it – from the Sea Lands. His field of expertise is not limited to sea creatures; however, breeding and raising small water life forms is his hobby and it so happens that the big pond in the middle of the school grounds hosts a population of various kinds of fish that he himself carefully picks and procures… Or I should say hosted, as all the commotion on that fateful morning was due to the fact that the Larks, passing by the pond, had noticed Professor Fishtail’s precious creatures floating on the water.
The poor guy was inconsolable.
“I can’t believe all of my beloved specimens are dead…” he kept muttering, slowly shaking his head (which caused his fish tail to sway). “How did I not notice that the water was getting so warm?”
At the time, he was too shocked and the rest of us were too speechless, so no one discussed this event in a constructive way. More important: no one had the intuition to connect it to the flowerless fields and no one thought of investigating this further. It was only after a series of gradually more serious incidents – that culminated in the nearby forest catching first pests and then fire so that all the animals came running and stomping inside the school grounds – that the school council officially met to examine all the unusual facts that had happened in the previous months inside and around our school.
Long story short: it turned out that the cause of everything was a single student.
Grant Weatherby came from the human world. He was not human, though, he was actually the son of Gaia – as in Gaia-the-goddess-of-Earth. He mostly stayed by himself, he was very thin, he had pale skin, pale blond hair, and pale blue eyes. Quiet and almost transparent: no wonder no one, either teacher or student, had taken much notice of him until it was almost too late: if the accidents kept the pace they picked up last summer, by now there would be no school left at all. It had taken our teachers the best part of the season to trace all the disastrous episodes to him, and when they finally did, they voted unanimously to expel Grant. The question, however, was: where to send him?
Technically, since he came from the world of humans, he should have been sent back there. However, now that they knew what he was capable of, they realized that he had to be the cause of global warming there. To send him back now, would mean to consciously sentence the humans to a premature end.
While they were busy discussing Grant’s fate, a bunch of us students befriended him, challenging the headmistress’ orders: Grant was to remain alone in his room until the school council had reached a decision. It’s not as if there were Gargoyles guarding his door, however, so we just went there at night, knocked, and entered. We brought snacks too. That was actually a good idea, because it led to us accidentally finding the way to solve the crisis and save Grant Wheaterby – and possibly many lives.
We sat on the floor: a couple of humans, a couple of fairies, a werewolf and a flying mermaid. We started chatting and joking, trying to cheer Grant up. He was really sad. He was aware that he was to blame for all that had happened, but he had not intentionally caused any of it. As unlikely as it seemed, they were all tragic accidents. He could not provide any explanation and he had no idea how to stop it.
“I may even harm you”, he said, on the verge of tears, “and of course I don’t want to, but apparently I can’t control what happens around me.”
“I hear you”, said Ian, the werewolf. “We need to understand what triggers you!”
“Nothing triggers me! Bad things just happen around me!” he exclaimed in frustration.
We welcomed his outburst with silence and he added, more quietly: “Let’s have some snacks.”
We all reached in our bags and passed around what we had: I had brought crisps, Sally the flying mermaid had some dried shrimps, Luna the night fairy had brought a bottle of night dew, and Daisy the flower fairy some fruit juice. We all stopped short when Grant offered us a drink from the bottle he pulled out of his night stand. It was full of some slimy-looking dark grey liquid. And when he uncapped it, we almost gagged.
“What is that… er… drink?” asked Luna.
“It’s bio carbon dioxide-added petroleum – that’s the technical name”, he said, pointing at the label. “But I usually refer to it as carbonated black oil juice. All natural, you know.” And he took a sip.
We cast glances at one another. No one had the courage to say what we were all thinking: it was the most disgusting thing we had ever seen labelled as food!
“Sounds… interesting…” Daisy stammered after a while. “Wouldn’t you like to taste some of this instead?” She handed him the bottle of fruit juice. “This is also all natural. It is a mix: apple, banana, apricot, and pineapple! Yummy – and healthy…” she added in a whisper.
Grant took the bottle and poured himself a glass of juice. “Nice colour”, he commented. “And the smell is not bad either.”
“Try mine!” Luna said, giving him some of her night dew.
“Uh, this is good”, he said after taking a sip. “Where did you get it?”
Before Luna could reply, Ian pulled some salted meat out of his backpack. “Wanna try this, now? I’m not sure I am brave enough to ask what you eat for lunch…”
“Oh, usually nothing elaborate”, Grant replied, accepting one stripe of salted meat. “Sometimes a coal sandwich seasoned with kerosene or something like that. Hey, this is tasty!”
“Hey Grant”, I couldn’t help saying at that point. “Ever thought of changing your diet? You seem to enjoy our food quite a bit.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, why not? You can come every night until they send me packing.”
I decided to say what I had been thinking in the past few minutes. “I believe that if you stop eating and drinking fossil fuel derivatives you may solve your problem.”
His head snapped towards me. “How so?”
I didn’t really know what I was talking about, it was just an intuition, but I tried my best to explain.
“Well, what we eat and drink has an effect on us and our health, right? I think in your case it also has an effect on your surroundings. That’s why all those things happen around you: it’s not you, it’s what is inside of you!”
After a moment of silence, the others started debating my hypothesis, making suggestions, elaborating on it. Grant kept looking at me and said nothing. I was starting to think I had somehow offended him, when he suddenly grinned at me.
“If what you say is right”, he said, “once I start eating the good stuff, I could help heal the world.”
We spent the rest of the night making wild plans on what he could do and how we could help him. He was radiating happiness and nothing remotely dangerous happened to any of us in all the time we spent in his room.
The following day I went to speak to the headmistress. I wanted to explain my idea to her. It didn’t feel right that Grant Weatherby would be expelled for something that wasn’t really his fault. Especially if it could be fixed! I mean, sure, my hypothesis had to be proved, but it was certainly worth a try.
When the headmistress opened the door, however, she didn’t even let me talk.
“Come see this”, she said, and pulled me inside her office. She had a small TV on and she was watching the news from the human world. Just like it happens in the movies, apparently every news channel was broadcasting the same piece of news: something unexplainable was going on on Earth!
The water in polluted rivers was suddenly flowing crystal clear; plastic in the oceans was slowly turning into seaweeds and corals; the rain was so clean it could be bottled and drunk… Scientists were being interviewed but none of them had an explanation.
“Where is Grant Weatherby?” I asked.
The headmistress turned to look at me and she had a big smile on her face. She handed me a note scribbled on a piece of paper.
“Apparently your friend trusted your intuition so much, that he secretly left during the night. You can guess the rest.”
*****
The Spot Writers—Our members:
Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/
Writing Wicket 