Writer: Chris Ahrens | Illustration: zela (zelazela.com)
The Pope of Fools awakes, ready to ring the mother of all bells to call the faithful. He waits and sits with his head in his hands, his countenance as broken as his spine. His strong hands and calloused face are as hard as the rock that imprisons him. His back is a tangle of healed and unhealed scars, some of them so fresh that his blood has dried to his clothes. The eyes, nearly dead, occasionally awaken to the light of observable hatred. The large ugly hump on his back, that misshapen sack of coal, the result of a spine broken when he fell from a horse as a child, is his most notable characteristic. Knowing that one so bent is cursed by God, the crowds wag their heads, shoot out their lips, curse him and spit upon him whenever he ventures into public. They would hang him and gamble for his clothes if he or his garments were of any value. He is the mirror of their own hatred and they never realize that ugliness is in the eye of the beholder, or that just below the thin flesh is something too beautiful to behold, a dove’s heart wounded by a fall in a garden long ago.
    From his lonely stone tower, Quasimodo looks out at the wonder of Paris, marveling at the order and the chaos and the rage and the love below. He sits and watches the shadows move, then counts on his fingers until he knows that it is exactly 12 o’clock. For 12 pulls of a cord he will be important, perhaps the most important person in the city.
    At just the right moment, he pulls the rope and thrills at the vibration surrounding him. The first toll is against the mob. The second is for forgiveness. The third is for the little brown mouse that he shares his lunch with each day. The fourth is for God. The fifth is for the priest who brings him food. The sixth is for himself. The seventh is for his mother. The eight is for his sister, who, unlike him, has a smooth face and can walk upright among others. She is being married today, and he crosses himself with his free hand in her honor. The ninth is for the friend he once made. The tenth is for his favorite monster that peers out with an ugliness that makes him feel less alone. The eleventh is for the joy he gets in ringing the bells. The twelfth is for his true love, La Esmeralda.
    If Quasimodo could see furt