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Dear Grandma Fifi,
Hello. I hope that you are doing well. I wanted to write to you and tell you that I am okay. I think that maybe Headmaster Singh is going to write to everyone’s guardians about what happened and I was worried that you would be worried. My friend Edgar said I should write to you because you should hear it from me. The school nurse accidentally created a monster when his curse went wrong, and my friends and I fought it. I have friends now. I miss you though. My friends are Edgar, Kevin, and Roland. I think you would like them.
Nurse Lenny is cursed like me and the other boys, but he uses his curse to heal people. I’m starting to learn how to use my curse for things that aren’t scary by controlling it, but even Nurse Lenny didn’t have enough control to stop his curse from hurting people. When he heals people, he takes their pain and it turns into coal that he spits out. He sent the coal to the boiler room to be burned, and somehow it turned into a monster. The monster was a wolf like me but it also had light magic like Roland and sound magic like Kevin. A part of it split off and turned into a crow, too. That’s what Edgar’s curse was. Edgar had a crow named Poe.
The teachers thought we were hurting people because the monster had all of our curses, but none of us wanted to hurt anyone. We didn’t hurt anyone. For a moment, I thought I had hurt someone again. We all fought the monster and Kevin and Roland killed it. My crafting teacher says that I’m not a monster. I think I might be starting to believe him.
I hit the coal monster some, but I was mostly trying to protect Edgar. He fell out of a window and I think he almost died. I turned into the wolf and held onto him to protect him when he hit the ground, but it almost wasn’t enough. He thinks it made him weak that he got knocked out by the fall but I didn’t. Edgar isn’t weak, though. The wolf makes me extra strong but that doesn’t mean Edgar is weak. He did his best but he got hurt anyway. I keep trying to tell him that he did his best. I don’t know how to make him believe me. He disappears every day and I think he’s crying. Maybe I should go after him but I know he would just say sorry and stop crying.
Edgar’s crow died. Poe wasn’t a very kind crow at first, but Edgar loved him a lot and was starting to learn how to communicate with him. Poe gave up his life to save Edgar. I don’t know how it worked, but he turned into smoke and Edgar woke up.
I try to tell Edgar that it’s okay to cry. You always said that I’d feel better if I let it out, but I don’t think Edgar understands when I say it. I’m not as good with words as you are.
Edgar got four books about sign language from the library. He says he’s going to learn it so that we can communicate when I can’t talk. He’s learning fast. We practice together between classes, and I help him shape the signs that he can’t figure out from the books. Edgar taught me a new word yesterday: “proprioception.” It means the ability to know where your body is and what your limbs are doing. Edgar says he’s bad at it. He has a list of things that he wants to get better at, like proprioception. I told him that he’s already very good at being someone’s friend.
My new friends are very cool. Kevin has farts that sound like music, and he can use the music to heal people or to fight monsters. He was embarrassed about his curse at first but I think he’s starting to see how cool it is. The teachers at the school want us to control our curses but they don’t make us feel ashamed about them. I think that’s new for a lot of the other kids here. My friend Roland isn’t embarrassed about his curse, but I think he’s starting to be scared of it.
Roland hears the voice of the Lord of the Church of the Sunset Dawn. I’m not sure if I like the Lord very much, because he isn’t always kind to Roland. Poe wasn’t always kind to Edgar, though, and he still died to save him. I don’t think curses can start out kind, but I also don’t think they’re always necessarily going to be bad. I hope Roland’s curse doesn’t stay bad. If he has to live with another voice in his head all the time then it should learn to be kind to him.
We had a dance party last night. Kevin played his violin, and Big Ben played bass. Roland is so good at dancing. He’s not afraid to look funny and he loves making everyone laugh. My face hurt from smiling so much. Edgar didn’t really want to dance, because he was watching Egg, but I convinced him to dance so long as I held Egg for him.
Egg is my other roommate, along with Edgar. We think Egg is part of Edgar’s curse but we won’t know until they hatch. For now, Edgar is very protective of Egg, Kevin plays them lullabies, and Roland keeps saying blessings over them. We all want Egg to be okay, because we couldn’t protect Poe. You always said that I shouldn’t need to worry about protecting people because I’m just a child, but Poe wasn’t a child or an adult, he was a curse. He was part of Edgar, and now he’s gone.
Is it bad that I cried over Poe as much as I cried over Mum and Dad?
I turned into the wolf the night after we fought the monster, and everything was okay. I didn’t hurt anyone this time. I think you’d be happy to know that. You don’t have to write back if you don’t want to.
I love you.
Monty