by Gemma Files
* * *
My life soon settled into a seductive routine of education—question and answer, enthusiasm and exploration, all framed by your careful supervision—and one day, my curiosity piqued by a word I had heard you use once too often without definition, I asked: “What is this God, Mikela?”
“They say God made the world.”
“As you made me.”
You laughed, shortly. “Not quite—God has no need of science. He simply thought the world, and so it was.”
“Then God made you.”
“If you believe so, yes.”
“And you made me,” I smiled. “So you are God.”
You turned, and I noticed a line between your brows I had never seen there before. “No,” you said. “I made you, that’s true—but God made all men, I only one. So I can never be more than God’s shadow—his pale, pale shadow.”
“You are my God,” I said, simply.
And you shook your head—but I do not think you really wanted to.
* * *
A month had already gone by when Ivan’s letter finally arrived, the gist of which was that he would be arriving shortly, accompanied by the new Countess—Rebecca, his wife.
Elle est tres belle, et douce aussi, Ivan wrote. Adding, in a cramped hand: Mais c’est seulement toi j’adore, mon cousin.
He advised me to expect him at any time. That particular evening, however, I intended to spend instructing my creation in the basics of English literature. So I filed the letter away, and promptly forgot all about it.
* * *
You had told me many times by then never to go beyond the last field of our lands. When I was ready, you said—and you would decide when that was. It rankled, even from a God.
That night, I sat near the window, watching a string of birds flap slowly across the purple sky. The light was almost gone, and the book I held was making my eyes hurt. I saw the last field’s fence against the red rim of the sinking sun. And something rose in me—something that could no longer be denied.
A minute later, I was on the ground, running quickly and silently. Had reached the fence. In one quick leap, had bridged it.
Once on the other side, however, I paused in mid-stride, unsure of my next action. Ahead and behind me stretched the road. Lulled by the cry of night-birds, the slither and skitter of small creatures in the long grass, I stood stock-still and breathed deeply. The dark air, tainted and singing, spread like wine through my veins.
I did not see the men until I was upon them, nor they me.
“Make way for the Count’s carriage, fellow!” One of them ordered, impatiently. Behind him reared a conveyance drawn by four harnessed things that stamped and snorted in distress, making their master curse, as my scent reached them. At this further disturbance, an exquisitely-dressed young man leaned from the nearest window, glancing imperiously about for the cause of his discomfort.
“Monsieur Grushkin,” he said to the first man, “remind me once again, if you would be so kind, what exactly it is that I pay you for?”
The man flushed. “By your leave, Count Ivan,” he replied—and stepped toward me, drawing a cudgel from his belt. But this fresh threat drew no reaction at all, since at that same moment—over his shoulder—I had spotted . . . her.
As dark as you were fair, and frail, with a cloud of ringlets hiding her dark, dark eyes. She hovered close by young Count Ivan’s side, peeping through the carriage window, and that slender hand with which she held the velvet curtain open was so pale each vein brought a faint blue blush to her nacreous skin. At the sight of her, my mouth dried out. My temples throbbed. And like a barb to my spine’s base, a hook arching up through dark water, the hunger took root: Soul-deep, nameless, aching. A negative image, fleet as steam on glass, faint haloed trace of an object struck by lightning, beneath which lurked only the dimmest recollection of what had roused it.
Silver flesh in a darkened room, and the slick touch of you stirring—sleepily—in my palm.
And when Gruskin’s men shone their lanterns in my face, as I blinked at them in mute surprise, their eyes seemed to widen as one. Rebecca saw as well, though from much too far away to mark my features, and fell back with a quick half-scream.
“Un monstre, pardieu!” Your cousin exclaimed, in equal parts horror and surprise. I did not feel the first blow, but the second stung me. I caught the man’s hand in mine, before he could strike again, and squeezed it until I heard a crack. He sank to his knees, screaming which is when the others leapt upon me.
I turned then, and ran. But not fast enough.
* * *
Exactly half an hour since I’d climbed the steps to his room and found him gone, I looked up as he entered the study. Behind him, a trail of footprints made from mud and blood admixed smeared their way across the polished granite floor.
“And where have you been?” I demanded.
“Get me a mirror,” he replied.
* * *
“A mirror,” I repeated, and bared my teeth as I had in the face of the last man’s torch. I saw your anger give way to fear, then—just a hint, but a surprisingly gratifying one. You passed me a frame worked with a swirl of silver crosses. I gazed into it for a long time, before raising my head again.
“Why did you not tell me,” I asked, slowly, “that I am a monster?”
“Because you aren’t,” you snapped, voice a lash.
“And neither are you a God.”
It was the first bitterness I had ever spoken. With that disposed of, I returned to the mirror.
“All in all,” I said, “the truth is this—that when you made me, you made me very ugly.”
“I made you,” you said, stiffly. “Most people would be satisfied with that.”
“Ah,” I said. “But if you had created me in the way most people do, Mikela, then I would be beautiful indeed.”
Then I turned the mirror towards you, showing you your own face, and at this you were silent.
* * *
I was certain I’d earned his hate, then, along with his rejection. And if I no longer held any authority over him, my position would soon become untenable. He might turn on me, hurt me physically, as easily as breathing. He might even kill me.
Where can one go from Divinity, after all—but down?
“Who told you you were . . . ugly?”
“A young man in a carriage.” He rummaged for the name: “Count—Ivan.”
“Ivan, here?”
“In the courtyard by now,” my creation replied, seemingly somewhat bemused by my panic. “Do you fear I might frighten your guests a second time, if given the opportunity?”
I flushed. “What I FEAR is Ivan withdrawing his patronage, without which you could never have come into being and cannot be maintained any further than I could on my own income—perhaps a mile or so from where we stand, if our luck held. As things stand now, your lack of cooperation may very well doom us both.” I paused. “Are you LISTENING to me?”
* * *
My right hand, unnoticed, had found the table. Under it lay the book I had been reading, its title outlined by my index finger. I reconsidered it.
“No,” I mused. “I am not a monster. But I am not a man, either. Not the shadow of God.” I looked at you. “I am your shadow.”
And still you sat in silence.
“I want a name,” I said.
“Choose one yourself, then,” you returned. “But quickly.”
I opened your copy of Beowulf, not quite at random, and pointed to a word.
“My name is Grendel,” I said, and heard the walls give it back to me.
3.
“You cannot conceive how glad I am to finally make you acquaintance, Dr. Kosowan,” claimed Ivan’s bride, and offered me her hand—which, like her cheeks, was both a bit too pale for comfort and yet flushed with tr
aces of a more hectic tone. Leading me to suspect that my cousin might not have too long a wait before being able to resume his bachelor status (albeit while clothed in a far less colorful wardrobe.)
“Madam,” I replied. And kissed it.
“I feel the lack much less than I thought I might, however,” she hastened to add, “since my husband’s family has already told me so much about you.”
“Of that, dear lady, I have absolutely no doubt.”
Ivan, who had spent most of our exchange lingering uneasily by the rack that held his grandfather’s silver duelling pistols, snapped his fingers, causing a girl to appear at Rebecca’s elbow. “Dovya, you will conduct your mistress to her chambers,” he said. “The journey has doubtless fatigued her, and she will wish to rest.”
At which Rebecca nodded, and left, without a further glance in my direction. But Ivan’s smile faded as he turned back, only to see me heading for the opposite door.
“You’ll stay, surely—”
“Regrettably not,” I replied. “I have a matter in the old wing—work of a rather unstable nature—which requires my immediate attention. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course I do,” he said. “ . . . Mikela.”
* * *
You found me in the gallery, a refuge I chose not only for its fascinating row of family portraits—each dark oil with its own little plaque, Kosowan name and date of birth—but because its shuttered window looked directly down on that of the Great Hall. Through it, I had watched your conversation with Rebecca—that delicate duel between light and dark, with Ivan looking on, drunken and faintly afraid.
It was true that I hated him a bit less now, having seen how hopelessly he fawned on you. But I cannot honestly say I liked him any better.
And what an idiot he must be, I thought for the thousandth time, not to see how much she cared for him—and how little you cared at all.
I stepped away from the window as you entered, pointing at the wall beside me.
“Your family,” I said.
“Yes.”
I pointed again. “Your father.”
“Whom I never knew, yes.”
I traced the gleam of paint to form a cheek, a jaw, a dark grey eye—and closed my own.
“You are not God,” I began. “But you created me. As your father was created by God, yet created another—you.” I opened my eyes. “So you are my father.”
* * *
And he smiled, so happy to have found me another title at last. While I smiled back, so unaccountably, witlessly happy . . . to bear one.
In the weeks to come, Grendel listened again: He read what I gave him, wrote what I set him, did what I told him. But it felt far too good to be teaching him once more, because there was a hint of the old look in his intent gaze—that look I knew well, yet could never bring myself to call by name. A little like worship, but a little more like love: The kind of love you hold for some pretty but intimately disposable thing, made all the more keen for knowing it won’t outlast the strain of your loving it. And with a pushing toward something unreachable behind it, as always—some nameless hurt that I could never diagnose, or salve.
Oh, how I hated how my heart clenched and thudded to see it.
4.
“You keep something up there in the old wing,” Ivan began, one evening. “Something which fascinates you beyond all else. Do you deny it?”
Already drunk, he swayed uncomfortably close to my desk, another half-full glass of brandy sloshing in one hand.
I shrugged. “Why should I?”
“Then deny this, cousin: Amidst such fascination, I find you have no more time for me.”
“My work requires—”
“Ah, yes.” He turned away, eyes straying as if magnetized, back to the mounted duelling pistols. “Your holy work, which I pay for. Whatever it is.”
“I’ve outlined my ambitions to you more than once, cousin.”
“Who is he, Mikela?” Ivan asked.
I had no real reply for such an implication, not that it merited one.
Ivan sighed to himself. Then, softly: “I almost begin to think that you no longer love me.”
“You are a married man now, Ivan,” I reminded him.
He nodded, soddenly. “Et elle m’aime de trop, aussi . . . ma pauvre Rebecca.”
Realizing that we had apparently reached the French-speaking portion of the evening, I rose.
“I should go—”
But before I could get any further, either by word or deed, I found that Ivan’s hand had already knitted itself deep into my hair, yanking downward. I hissed with pain, as the rest of me was quickly forced to follow.
“Release me,” I spat, fighting to keep my legs from buckling.
“Oh, I think not,” Ivan returned, almost civil—yet the pressure, as he lowered himself into my former seat, only increased. “On this particular occasion, I believe that you will rather stay and play the good host for my sake, angelic Mikela—always remembering who first gave you that position, and why. Stay, and be . . . gracious.”
So, realizing that cool reason would be manifestly useless in the face of such foolishness, I sank to my knees—unbuttoned him—
—and was.
* * *
And that was where I found myself: Lurking out in the darkness behind the window, as though I had no home to go to. For indeed, this pane of glass seemed to represent all that separated me from the rest of the human world—so easily shattered, so impossible to mend. With Ivan sprawled in your chair and you at prayer before him, his legs spread wide as your bright head rose and fell in his lap, panting as he thrust himself down your throat, eyes screwed shut.
The image rocked me back, like a knife-thrust to the stomach. That he would do this to Rebecca, given my feelings for him (and her), surprised me not at all. But that you would participate . . .
“And with him,” I whispered. “Him!”
Watching you nurse him, however diffidently, I wanted to knock him aside—and feed myself to you in his place, an inch at a time, until you choked.
To know would surely kill her.
But even as I formed this thought, I saw the study door swing open—at Dovya’s touch—to reveal Rebecca’s stricken face.
After which came the details, unrolling like some sordid farce: Dovya shrieking, hands over her mouth. Ivan, recoiling in mid-throe to spray your hair as you fell to one side, coughing up the rest of his spend onto the expensive Parisian rug. Rebecca, jack-knifing to spit a stream of solid crimson into one hand. And as she swayed toward the window, white and gagging, I saw in one awful rush just how unwittingly right my last prediction had been.
She fell. I stepped to meet her, arms outstretched.
A wave of broken glass bound us together at last as I folded her to me, her blank, burst-blood-vessel red gaze assuring me she had—at least—been spared the horror of my tears as her last sight.
* * *
Ivan I left in the study, drinking himself into a stupor, but it was only after a lengthy search that I discovered Grendel’s latest hiding-place. The closer I drew to the fabled old wing, the more I noticed a ceaseless muffled whine emanating from somewhere beyond the wall . . . the wall behind which, I knew, lay the abandoned ruins of my former laboratory.
I unbarred the door and opened it, darkness swallowing my light like a giant’s open mouth. But as my eyes grew sharper, I heard the sound I’d followed peak and change into muffled sobs. And a stench grew, something I hadn’t smelled since my nights in the local churchyard, collecting scraps from which to fashion my wretched “child.”
Grendel sat there, cradling Rebecca’s corpse and rocking in mourning, his back to the far wall. Setting my candle carefully down near the door, I knelt beside him.
“Give her to me, Grendel,” I told him, quietly. “Let me bury her, for
God’s sake. Why did you take her, in the first place? She’s dead; tuberculosis would have soon seen to that, if the shock hadn’t.”
He stared at me, then whispered: “How can you be so heartless?”
“I think,” I replied, slowly, “that I may well have been born that way.”
We sat in silence, then, while he spent some long time studying the eerie way Rebecca’s slack mouth seemed to smile, as though in sleep.
“I tried,” he murmured to himself. “I am my father’s son, and that must surely count for something. But I cannot, cannot—”
“Cannot what?”
Tears coursed from his mismatched eyes. “I cannot . . . make her breathe. Again.”
The words caught me short.
“But you could.”
Oh, yes: For this was to be the next step, the next temptation.
“Help me,” Grendel pleaded. “Help me, Mikela.”
And now it was my turn to look down at Rebecca, primarily to avoid the wet weight of his sorrowful gaze. Hearing, even as I did so, that traitor voice at the back of my brain begin its damnable litany yet once more: telling me how she was still fresh, still young enough to be malleable, still resilient enough to withstand the physical strain of re-Birth . . .
But at that moment, from behind us—shattering this reverie—came the slow sound of mocking applause.
* * *
It was Ivan, of course—his flies still unbuttoned, brandy bottle in one hand, duelling pistol in the other. The weapon which he now aimed—with surprising accuracy—at your brow.
“My cousin,” he said, “I find—just as I long suspected—that you have been deceiving me.”
You fixed him with a silver glare—but your usual power over him seemed, for the moment, to have been suspended.
“You’re drunk,” you said.
Ivan smiled—a mirthless twist of the lips.
“Indisputably,” he replied. “While you, lovely Mikela, are without doubt the coldest male bitch who ever slid between two sheets for money. Still, let all that by, my genius kinsman. Do introduce me to your new—acquaintance.”
