This Monstrous Thing

by Mackenzi Lee

  “Like what?”

  “So serious. It would appear that once you knew how to have a bit of fun.”

  “Suppose I did,” I said, though if I had, I’d forgotten now.

  Clémence stretched with a wince, then rubbed the side of her rib cage.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Fine. You were just a bit too passionate for me, that’s all.” She kicked a snowball down the road. It skittered and then burst against a tree trunk.

  “What was his name?” I asked. “The first lad you kissed.”

  For a moment, I thought I saw the same sort of deep sadness flash across her face that I recognized from the dozens of times I had seen Oliver wear it. But then she wiped it clean like rain fog from a windowpane and said, “Marco. It was back in Paris. He was an actor.” She glanced sideways at me. “What about you? Who was the first person you kissed?”

  “Mary Godwin,” I replied. “Oh, not Godwin, though, she’s married.”

  “You kissed a married woman?”

  “An almost-married woman.”

  “My, but you were wild. So Mary Godwin, but not Godwin. Do you know what she’s called now?”

  We rounded the corner of the cobbled high street and crossed onto the dirt road, turned muddy by the snow. I looked down at my boots, which were turning from black to brown, and tried to silence my clattering heart, which had not stopped beating for her for two long years. “If everything went according to her plan,” I said, “then I’d imagine by now she’s called Mary Shelley.”

  The night I kissed Mary was uncommonly warm for October. It was autumn heat, the sort of crisp, golden day that my mother assured me was a prelude to cold coming soon. But it was a rosy fall evening after that dreary, rainy summer.

  The night before Geisler left the city. The night before Oliver died.

  I was sitting on the steps to the flat in the dying light, reassembling a pocket watch I’d found smashed to bits in the street. With my head against the wall to the flat, I could hear muffled voices from the other side: Father, Mum, and Oliver, joined by Geisler. It was two days since he’d escaped prison and he had been hiding with us while the police turned over the countryside, thinking he’d fled Geneva. Tomorrow night, when their search moved back inside the city, he would make his dash for the border and return to Ingolstadt.

  Oliver was meant to have some part in the escape, though I wasn’t sure what. He’d been reading out on the stairs with me when Father called him in to discuss it. I kept waiting for them to start shouting, because one of them was bound to be upset over something sooner or later, but it all stayed quiet. That was somehow more alarming.

  As the sun began to drop below the skyline, I heard the flat door open, and before I could turn, Oliver flopped down on the step beside me and pulled his knees up to his chest. “I’m being sent away.”

  My finger caught under the ratio wheel and it pinched. “What?”

  He was staring straight ahead, down at the street, with his mouth set in a hard line. The sunlight splintered through his dark hair. “Once Geisler’s settled in Ingolstadt, he’s going to send for me so I can keep studying with him at the university there. He and Father still seem convinced they can make a Shadow Boy out of me.” He said it all so quiet and calm. He didn’t even look angry, though he’d spent so long being angry at Father and Geisler for nearly everything. He just looked empty.

  I let go a breath, so heavy and disbelieving it sounded like a laugh. He looked over at me. “What was that for?”

  “Oliver, that’s . . .” He had to know. He had just been handed what I’d been wanting and working toward my whole bleeding life and nobody had ever noticed. “Studying with Geisler at Ingolstadt is what I want to do,” I said softly. “That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”

  “No you don’t,” he said. “You don’t want to join the mad doctor in his devil work.”

  “He isn’t mad—”

  “And how would you know? You haven’t seen what he’s doing. It’s not you cutting up bodies for him in the clock tower.”

  “It’s science!”

  “No, it’s insane. And I don’t want you telling me I should be grateful for this. I’ve heard enough of that already. Hell’s teeth, Ally, I thought you’d be on my side.”

  “I am,” I replied. “I don’t want you to go!”

  “But you’d go, wouldn’t you? If he asked you instead.”

  “Oliver—”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Ally.” He stood up and stomped down the stairs, skipping the last one so he landed hard on the cobbles, then glared backward at me. “God’s wounds, I thought I could count on you.” Then he disappeared around the front of the shop, and a moment later I heard the bell over the door sing.

  I sat there for a moment with my eyes on the spot where he’d been. I felt clenched up and boiling and just a smidge panicked, because I’d never been apart from Oliver for longer than a night before and here he was leaving me for Germany. On the other side of the wall, I heard Father’s voice, then Geisler’s, and the shuffle of footsteps toward the door. I didn’t want to talk to either of them, and I sure as hell didn’t want to stew down in the shop with Oliver. There was only one person I could stand the thought of right then.

  I stood up so fast the pieces of the pocket watch spilled off my lap, then I jogged down to the street and turned away from where Oliver had gone—across the square and toward the lake.

  Mary was smiling when she came to the villa door, but I must have looked wretched, because it faded fast. “What’s the matter?”

  “Oliver’s leaving,” I said. “He’s going to Ingolstadt with Geisler.”

  A shout went up in the house behind her, a raucous and ravaged sound. A woman shrieked. Something crashed. Mary glanced over her shoulder, then put her hand on my arm, like she was holding me back. “Let’s walk down to the shore. Stay here, I’ll get my coat.”

  We took the path through the vineyards and down to the lake, where we sat, with our shoes off, on the trunk of a bare cedar that had toppled into the water. Our feet made ripples in the dark water as I told her what had happened. “You shouldn’t be angry at Oliver,” she said when I was finished. “He didn’t ask for it.”

  “But he says it’s wicked work, and that I shouldn’t be interested in it.”

  “But you are, and he can’t change that. Neither can you.” She dragged her toes across the top of the water, leaving a pattern like skipped stones. The cattails on the shore whispered as the wind snaked through them. “What is Dr. Geisler’s work, precisely?”

  “Reanimating the dead with clockwork.”

  “God’s wounds. That isn’t . . . real, is it? I mean, it can’t be done.”

  “Not yet.” She sounded so horrified I didn’t dare tell her the fiery fascination the idea lit inside me—the chance it might be possible—in case she too thought I was mad and wicked for it. I pushed my hands through my hair and shivered. Now that the sun was gone, it felt like autumn again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You shouldn’t keep it all tucked away.”

  “I’m all right. Tell me about something else. Recite a poem or something.”

  “I don’t want to recite. I want to talk to you.” She said it so quietly that I had to look sideways at her to be sure I hadn’t imagined it. Her shoulders were hunched as she braced herself against the fallen log, and the reflection of the first stars on the lake caught her face from below and freckled it with light. Even through my anger, I could feel her presence ringing inside me like a tuning fork struck against my rib cage. I had been dizzy over her all summer, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized how badly I wanted her, in every way. Someone to talk to. Someone to hold and touch. It took everything in me not to reach out and touch her right then.

  “It’s so quiet here, isn’t it?” she said. “Everything’s so loud at the house all the time. It was making me anxious, being shut up with all that noise. But I feel quiet here. I feel steady
.” Her head was drifting onto my shoulder. I held my breath. “I feel steady when I’m with you.”

  “You don’t like being at the house, do you?” I asked, and immediately wished I hadn’t, because she raised her head.

  “What?”

  “At your villa—you don’t like it there. You always leave like something’s chasing you.”

  “I like it fine,” she said, though her voice pitched on the word fine.

  “So why are you always out with me and Oliver instead of them?”

  “Is it so hard to believe I simply like being with you two?”

  “Both of us?” I could have kicked myself for how disappointed those words came out sounding. I knew Mary and Oliver weren’t interested in each other in any sort of romantic way—they’d both told me so, and always seemed so disinterested in each other beyond whatever antics they were daring the other into. But even knowing that, I still wanted it to be me—just me, for the first time in my life, just me and not Oliver—that she liked best.

  She looked over at me and her mouth twitched. “Well, Oliver’s good for a thrill, but he’s exhausting. You’re different. You’re very . . . simple.”

  I snorted. “Thanks for that.”

  “Oh God, sorry, I didn’t mean that you aren’t clever. You’re very clever. Much cleverer than me.”

  “Now you’re overdoing it.”

  “Sorry.” She laughed, one short, sharp burst. “What I meant is that I sometimes feel as though everyone around me is trying so hard to be complicated and coy all the time, but you’re so sincere in everything. You make me remember people can mean what they say.” And then she put her hand on mine, and pressed her thumb into my palm.

  A charge went through me, and when I turned and she was right there, so glowing and lovely that I almost closed my eyes again because looking at her felt like staring into the sun. And before I knew what I was doing, before I had time to think or plan or let the part of my brain that usually kept me from doing irrational things have a chance to speak up, I leaned forward and kissed her.

  And as soon as we touched, I knew I was wrong to have thought that we’d been building to this boil all summer. It wasn’t what I expected it to be, not warm or splendid, no fireworks or poetry. Mary’s lips were cold, and the moment we touched, she went corpse rigid. Then she put her hands against my chest and pushed me away. “Don’t.”

  I was so mortified that for a moment the most sensible thing to do seemed to be to let myself slide into the water and drown. “I’m sorry,” I croaked.

  “It’s all right.”

  “God’s wounds, I’m so sorry, I thought . . . I thought you wanted it too.”

  “Alasdair, I’m married.”

  It took a moment for her words to sink in, but when they did, I felt them deep and cold, all the way down to my bones. “What?”

  “I’m married,” she repeated. “Well, not yet. I mean I’m going to be. Once his wife . . .” A crease appeared between her eyebrows. “He has a wife, but he doesn’t love her. We eloped when I was fifteen, and we’ve been traveling while things . . . calmed down a bit at home. That’s why I’m here in Geneva. We wanted to get away.”

  “That’s . . .” I couldn’t think how to finish, so I just gaped at her, treading silence like it was water. My ears were ringing, the twilight rippling around me as though I were seeing it from below the surface of the lake. I stared at Mary for as long as I could bear it, then dropped off the log, landing up to my knees in the frigid lake, and splashed to shore.

  “Alasdair!” she called after me, but I didn’t stop. I snatched my boots from where I’d left them and tried to yank them on over my wet skin as Mary skirted across the fallen tree like a tightrope walker and came to stand beside me. “I should have told you,” she said.

  I flung the boots to the sand and raised my face to hers. She seemed so small, standing there on the shore with her arms wrapped around herself and her hair trailing in inky curls over her shoulders. “Yes. You should have.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you felt—”

  “How could you not know?” I cried, my voice ringing across the empty shoreline. “I’m so bleeding sincere you probably read it all over me. And Oliver told you, I know he did.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “And did you tell him about your almost-husband?” She looked away, which was answer enough. My hands curled into fists. “God.”

  “I only told him last week, because he saw Percy and me at the market. Please don’t be angry with him, I asked him not to say anything to you.”

  “I am angry with him,” I replied. “And I’m angry with you. You told me you were traveling with friends. What the hell have you been doing hanging around with two boys all summer when you’ve got an intended? God’s wounds, Mary, why did you lie to me?”

  “Because I didn’t think you’d want to be around me anymore once you knew,” she cried. “Everyone back home was so cruel about us traveling together without being married. I hoped things would be better here, but it’s even worse. Percy and his friends have a reputation for being sordid, so everyone seems to think that’s permission for them to make our lives their conversation. The papers run vulgar stories about us every week. People steal our underthings off our washing lines. Tourists rent telescopes so they can stare into our bedroom windows from across the shore, did you know that?”

  “Stop it,” I said. “Just stop, that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t explain why you lied to me.”

  “Then how’s this: when I met you, you didn’t have a clue who they were, or who I was, and I saw a chance to be free of that and I took it.”

  The moon had risen in earnest now, and in its light, I could see her clearly across the beach from me: arms crossed, chin raised, Mistress Mary, quite contrary, daring me to blame her for what she’d done. “Mary, I have told you everything about me. Things I’ve never told anyone before. Secrets that could get me killed. So why couldn’t you tell me that you were engaged?”

  We stared hard at each other for a long moment, and I silently willed her to say something that would take us back to just before I kissed her, some reason to go back to trusting her without question and adoring her just as blindly. But when she finally spoke, all she said was, “I’m sorry.”

  I snatched up my boots without putting them on and stalked off, sand caving under my feet. I wanted to say something more, wanted to think of something mean to throw back in her face. Oliver would have had something to say. He always did. But all I could do was walk away, trailing broken pieces behind me.

  The flat was dark when I got home. I stumbled through the kitchen and pushed back the quilt strung up to divide our corner from the rest of the room. Oliver was lying on his pallet, sucking on his unlit pipe while he read by the light of a candle stub. He looked up when my shadow fell across him. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Out,” I replied, already stripping off my clothes.

  “You’re all wet.”

  “No shit.” I flung myself down on my pallet so that my face was away from him. I was too hot for blankets and too exhausted to change.

  From behind me, Oliver asked, “What’s wrong?”

  I thought about confronting him. About rolling over and letting him have all my anger, because how could he act like Ingolstadt didn’t matter, how could he say Geisler’s work was wicked, how could he not tell me that Mary was married?

  But instead I packed it up tight and deep inside me and said, “Nothing.”

  “Are you angry at me?”

  “No. I’m tired.”

  There was a pause; then he said, “All right,” and a moment later the candle went out.

  And that was the last real conversation we ever had.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  By nightfall, the storm had settled into a whisper. Snowflakes wafted across the yard
and a faint sliver of moon peered out from between the feathery clouds. Over supper, Geisler announced we’d be leaving the next morning.

  I should have been ecstatic, with the promise of the return to Geneva to fetch Oliver, track down my parents, and end the nightmare of the last two years, but it felt as though a splinter had lodged inside me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong. I kept thinking about the list I’d found in Geisler’s office, and the other pieces of this strange puzzle that I just couldn’t quite make fit together in my head.

  Geisler disappeared after supper, muttering something about orders to be filled, and Clémence went with him. This left me alone with that nagging, deep and persistent like an itch in my lungs. I tried to press on with Frankenstein, but I kept losing the thought at the end of every line, and found myself reading paragraphs over and over without getting anything from them. I finally gave up and turned in early, but I lay in bed for hours, not even dozing, staring at the window with my eyes wide open.

  The moon was high when I decided if I couldn’t sleep, I was going to work on something. I needed clockwork, and I needed it badly enough that I was willing to risk both Geisler and the automatons to go back to the workshop and finish reassembling the clocks I had torn apart.

  I dressed in the dark, not bothering with a waistcoat and instead throwing on my coat over my shirt and braces. I remembered the empty fireplace in the workshop last time I had visited, and stuck a matchbox in my pocket for good measure. I’d have candles, if nothing else.

  I padded softly through the house, peering around every corner like a burglar to make certain the automatons weren’t about. The keys to the workshop were hanging beside the back door, and I eased them off the hook with my breath held, hoping they wouldn’t rattle. The keys didn’t betray me, but the kitchen door did—it creaked when I opened it. I stood still for a moment, certain I heard ticking machinery coming my way from the hall, then dashed out into the night. The snow between the house and the workshop was well trodden enough that my footprints would go unnoticed.