The wind billowed through the cavernous towers of Notre Dame. Today was an important day, marked in the heart of the young boy since the idea had been proposed. It was to be his own wedding day. For weeks, months, years even, he had sat with his eyes transfixed on the glimmering daughters of Notre Dame. Their toll sent his heart racing, their shine reflected the glistening in his one normal eye. It was to their singing he rose each morning, their glorious echo penetrating even the silent walls of the cloister. He had aided those men who gave the bells a voice, even being permitted to pull the chord which fell from each bell as a truss of hair on a saintly woman. On occasion he was granted the joyous task to clean and polish their metal, but he was always deemed to weak, to young, to incapable to ring them. This was the day that he would ring the morning mass alone.
He climbed shakily up the familiar beams, his grip not yet strong, and sat before the great bell named Marie. She was to be his bride. As a young groom sat across from his love, he smiled serenely.
"Quasimodo! It's time!" the booming voice of Claude Frollo announced. "Ring the bells!"
Without thought, without a minute to spare, he climbed from his perch, a bird in magnificent flight, and tugged the cord for his dear Marie. She groaned, waking from a long night's rest, and soon she began to sing. It was all he heard, it was all he cared to hear. He laughed wildly, a joy filling him like he had never experienced. And suddenly, just as quickly as the joy had come, it vanished. A piercing sound, like the whine of a child but higher, filled his whole body. Pain shot from each ear through his entire body and he fell to the floor, tears flowing from both his eyes.
A young monk, who had been tasked with remaining in the tower to signal the hunchback, ran to investigate why the ringing had ceased before time. He saw the hunchback there, crumpled on the ground, with his hands clutching the sides of his head. The ringing was a shout, loud, and agonizing. It was not the same beauty he'd come to know from the bells, it was terror. The monk called the boy, and when no response was given, he dared shake the child's back. At first, Quasimodo lay still, but soon he moved, looking up to the monk with fear in his eyes. The monk, though repulsed by the face of the hunchback, knelt beside the boy and attempted once more to question what had happened. He then realized Quasimodo was covering his ears, and upon moving his hands the monk observed the bloody substance seeping out of his ears. Eyes widening, the monk ran quickly to find the Archdeacon.
As the Archdeacon ran from the sacristy to the tower, Quasimodo lay in the same spot, heart racing, fear filling him to the core. Had he lost his only normality? Surely his beloved Marie wouldn't steal his hearing for herself, would she? He would truly be grotesque, for he could not even hear the world about him. All would be lost, should he never hear another again. Worry consumed him and he sobbed, fearful for what would become of a wretch such as himself. The Archdeacon examined him for a moment, and upon realizing that Quasimodo had not been attentive to the warnings of bell ringers past, he concluded deafness was now the boy's fate.
And as the boy became a man and was plunged into silence, he accepted that Marie had taken a part of him for herself, for hers was the only voice he would ever hear again. Such was marriage, he concluded, that a part of himself be given to his beloved never to be regained. What need had he for normality? The loss of his auditory faculties was yet another thing that united him to the stone of his beloved mother, Notre Dame.