Before I could answer, Hannah pushed John aside with a rough hand. “Stay away from her,” she warned. Her skirts were wet and there was a smear of blood on her cheek.
“Is Claire ready to travel?” I asked. Leaving was my only goal. Nothing else mattered.
“Guard the child while I examine this one,” Hannah told John.
“But surely Mary is fine—” he said.
“Do as I say.”
John retreated into the shadows with reluctance, his brow lowered.
“Take off your clothes, girl,” she ordered, once he was gone. She held a pistol in one hand and she aimed it at me. “Unless you’d rather go back out into the woods with those monsters.”
I unbuttoned my shirt, protesting the entire time she examined me. “Nothing happened. He didn’t bite me. I swear,” I told her over and over, wondering how she knew I had seen the sangsue.
“They all say that.” Her touch and her words were gruff. “He wouldn’t be making you into a vache like that lass you brought home. I know that King. I can smell his stench on you.” She leaned nearer and sniffed me. “That monster kissed you, girl! Didn’t you have the sense to run or fight?”
Unwelcome tears began to flow down my cheeks, hot, stinging my skin.
She grasped my chin and lifted my face to the light that poured in the kitchen window. “He marked you, as well. You’re his now.”
“I am not!”
“Look in the mirror.” She pointed toward a washbasin and mirror in the corner and shoved me toward them.
I saw myself a moment later—the white streak in my hair that began at the temple and flowed down to the end of my braid, the scratches from the woods that colored my brow and cheek and arms. My eyes looked as if I were a wild thing, cornered and dangerous. This wasn’t my face, it couldn’t be. Yet, despite all that, one thing stood out more than any other.
A red welt ran down the side of my face, from my cheek to my chin. Right where the King had touched me with his clawed finger, right before he kissed me. Although it was greater in length, it looked almost exactly like the mark the lost village children wore on their brows.
He had claimed me, without my even knowing.
“He said I was protected,” I whispered, my words tumbling out as if they could prove my innocence. I remembered how I had felt in his embrace, how I hadn’t wanted to leave him. Even though I knew I was in danger and that he was planning something evil, I’d wanted to stay by his side. I shuddered, my stomach unsettled and bile rising in my throat. “He said I had a day and a night to decide—”
“To decide what?” Hannah demanded, pistol aimed at my heart. “Whether you would attack us all in our sleep? Whether you would invite him in to feed upon us?”
I shook my head, my braid loosening and my hair tumbling free over my naked shoulders and breasts. “No! There were children from the mountains. He said—” My voice choked as I thought about those helpless waifs, no parents to care for them. There was only him, and he was ready to turn them into monsters if I didn’t do as he asked.
“What children?” she asked, her weapon lowering slightly. She handed me my shirt and I clumsily started to dress myself, my fingers struggling with the buttons.
“He said the villagers gave him their children, just like you told us the other night. And these children now need me to take care of them, to hunt for them.”
Her head swung left to right in a slow shake. “There are no children left alive.”
“I saw them. They followed me through the woods, even when I tried to escape—”
Her eyes met mine and she fastened a weathered hand on my chin. “There are no human children. Not in the woods, or the villages or anywhere nearby. He’s lying to you.”
“How can you be sure? He said the villagers gave them to him, but he spared some of them—”
“That monster has never spared anyone, not a child or an infant or a grown woman. No one but you. Although I’m not even sure about you, lass.”
I pulled away from her.
“You don’t believe me,” Hannah said.
I shook my head. A shadow moved behind her. It was John, he had returned and now joined us in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to hear any of this. Would he believe me? Or did he think I was already one of the King’s consorts, here to kill them when their guard was down?
“The babe and mother are sleeping,” he said, avoiding my gaze.
“When I was a child,” Hannah began, “the King attacked the mountain villages. My uncle lived up there and he and his wife were both killed. The sangsue had captured all the children and turned them into tiny blood-drinking monsters. Then they sent the children back into other villages. Just like they did this time. There were no survivors among the little ones. Not then and not this time.”
“But they are so thin and they haven’t eaten,” I argued. “Surely these are human children who have traveled down from the hills.”
“He lets them nearly starve to death before turning them. They will always look like that.” Hannah paused. “Was there a girl with long red-gold hair and violet eyes?”
I nodded, remembering the tiny child who had crept into my lap, the one I’d wanted to keep.
Hannah glanced out the window, maybe wishing she was already a hundred miles away from me. When she finally spoke, her voice was so soft I could barely hear it.
“That is my cousin, Rosa. She was taken sixty years ago and she still haunts this area, from time to time. She has even appeared at my window, scratching at the lattice, begging to be let in. She hasn’t aged and never will. Perhaps she does need a mother. Perhaps they all do.” Her gaze met mine and there was a steely edge in her voice. “But that mother is not you. No human could ever care for them.”
John glanced from Hannah to me, confused.
“The King revealed his dark plan for Mary and it’s even worse than I expected,” she explained. “He wants her to join him. He wants more children, human children this time. But it would take a human consort to give him those—”
“That’s not what he said,” I argued.
“He is the King of lies and you will never hear the truth from him. Not if you were with him for a thousand years.” She slid her pistol in her skirt pocket. “We must leave within the hour. Your friend has brought the sangsue kingdom down upon us.”
I nodded eagerly, agreeing that we must leave soon. “I have two horses and we have the buggy. Claire and I already have our bags packed—”
Hannah put a firm hand on my chest. “You are not coming with us! He will be following you.”
Words wouldn’t form in my mouth. I could only stammer, shock forcing me to take a step away from her. “But—I—I—you can’t—”
“We won’t leave Mary behind, any more than we would leave the peasant girl with the bites or Byron’s lifeless body.” John stood tall over her, his head lifted, his eyes still not looking into mine. “We will ride within the hour and we will continue riding until our horses can’t go any farther. And even then, we will go on. We must. It’s our only hope.”
I tried to take his hand, to thank him, but he pulled away from me, his hand lingering in mine only long enough for me to feel his warmth. Then there was a cold emptiness.
And we were all running to gather up our supplies.
Seven
The contrast between life and death had never been so poignant to me before, as when we worked to squeeze everything we needed into the two-person buggy. Claire’s newborn babe wailed from the moment we walked out into the sunlight, her eyes pressed shut, her tiny hands clutched in fists that she waved at the heavens. Wrapped in a linen sheet, Byron’s body slumped between John and I as we struggled to carry it outdoors, searching for a place to put it among our things.
“You should leave that carcass behind,” Hannah said as she hitched the white stallion to the carriage.
“He deserves a decent burial,” John replied.
He glanced at me and, for the first tim
e, I knew John would have done the same thing I had. He would have sewn Byron back together, hoping against hope that there had been a spark of animal electricity left in his limbs, enough to revive him. Neither of us had spoken since he defended me in the kitchen, not even when we wrapped Byron’s body in sheets and blankets.
Claire began to weep again at the mention of Byron’s dead body. Sometimes I wondered if she’d truly fallen in love with him and if that was why she’d followed him here into exile.
In preparation for our journey, we left nearly everything behind, except for food. We took no extra clothes, save those we wore on our backs. John even left his anatomy journals and medical instruments, as if he never wanted to be a doctor again. I was willing to leave nearly everything I’d brought with me; still, there were a few things I had to keep, even if it meant carrying them on my back and walking.
I took my rifle and the dueling pistol, the same ones I’d carried into the forest earlier in the day, although now were both reloaded, plus a long knife—tucked into my boot—and my unfinished manuscript.
And the journal Percy and I had shared.
My throat tightened, as I thought about all the things he and I had written in that small volume, the poems we’d penned for one another and our observations on life, all of it seeming irrelevant now. We were no longer part of one another’s lives.
Claire and Hannah climbed into the carriage; the babe nestled in her mother’s arms, Claire staring off into the distance as if all of this had been too much for her. I didn’t know if she was aware of what was happening or if she knew about the sangsue.
Meanwhile, John and I struggled to drape Byron over the horse that would pull the carriage, latching our friend’s lifeless body in place so it wouldn’t fall off.
“He may yet revive,” John said in a low voice, not meeting my gaze, his face turned to the side so his words wouldn’t carry back to Hannah. “Although our own survival is not quite as hopeful.” He gave me a small smile. “You and Elsie should ride the second horse. I’ll walk alongside you.”
“You won’t be able to keep up,” I protested.
He shook his head. “I may fall behind, but I’ll keep you in sight. Always. Besides, I have my rifle.” He took my hand as I climbed onto the chestnut mare, helping as I slid my foot in the stirrup. We’d found a saddle in the wreckage of the stable, along with the carriage and all the trappings necessary to hitch it to one of the horses. Elsie climbed up behind me, then wrapped her arms about my waist. She no longer wore a ripped nightgown, but at my bidding, had donned one of Byron’s old riding costumes. I, too, was wearing another one of Byron’s cast-off garments atop my clothes—his old cloak.
I handed John my dueling pistol, noting he still wore that necklace of teeth Hannah had brought with her. “There’s only one bullet left,” I told him. He nodded.
“I’ll watch for him, Mary. Make sure he’s safe,” Elsie said. “Hannah gave me the other dueling pistol.”
“But they’re meant for close range battle,” I told her. “You won’t be able to hit anything far away—”
“It will be all right. Now, head for safety!” John slapped the horse and set it off on a trot.
Reins in my left hand, I turned to look back at him, fearing it might be the last time we would see each other. He knew what had happened to me back in the forest, how I’d weakened under the sangsue King’s charismatic enchantment. I wasn’t as strong as I’d imagined and, unfortunately, this had been revealed to both John and Hannah.
John smiled and nodded, already setting off on a strong jog.
Before turning back around, I lifted my eyes to gaze into the distance. I hadn’t expected to see anything, but I did, and it came like an icy frost, changing everything.
Percy stood at the edge of the forest, his body safe among cast shadows, his stance like that of a predator.
My beloved was watching me.
And I feared that as soon as the clouds covered the sun, he’d race after me, traveling from one pocket of shadow to the next.
The journey wasn’t what I expected. I thought having horses would make this easy. But the stallion fastened to the cart was half wild, rearing up and threatening to bolt off the path. We moved in short bursts of speed, then stalled, until I realized the beast could be calmed if I rode my chestnut mare at its side. I took both sets of reins in my hands and slowed my horse to a trot, allowing the white stallion to follow a few steps behind me.
Hannah didn’t like this arrangement, for she still didn’t seem to trust me, perhaps worrying that I’d lead them into a trap. If I turned around to look behind me, I’d see her stern expression and when she was certain I was gazing upon her, she’d lift the shawl on her lap, revealing a rifle aimed at me.
My death seemed to be the only certain thing on the horizon, either by one of the sangsue or by the old woman who rode behind me.
“What is that?” Elsie asked, pointing out toward the lake.
At some viewpoints, Lake Geneva looked as wide as the ocean, with no end, as if it went on forever and ever. Supposedly the waters were calm and smooth as glass this time of year, perfect for sailing. But the lake hadn’t looked calm since I arrived. Nearly every day, it had churned in a tempest of threatening waves and no boats had dared to go out on the water.
And now, an unnatural storm rolled down from the distant Juras. A chain of clouds stretched out like angry fists, ready to pummel the earth. Their upper edges were white and indistinct, while their undercarriage was a dark violet blue, mirroring the lake and darkening everything they passed.
Bolts of lightning sprayed out from between the knuckles of these great fists. Long jagged white sparks flared out, fraying the heavens.
It seemed almost alive, a supernatural being growing too fast.
“I’ve never seen a storm move so fast,” I said, forgetting to direct the horses. They whinnied disapproval and pawed the ground, crashing into one another.
“Move, girl!” Hannah called from behind me. “We need to get out of here and into shelter before this storm reaches us. Ride faster!”
“If we ride faster, we’ll leave John behind,” I called back to her, glad when I saw he was closer than I’d expected. If there was a battle in our future, we’d need him at our side.
Resting one hand on the carriage, John struggled to catch his breath.
“The horses won’t ride long in a storm like this,” he said, long gasps between his words. “Get to Geneva if you can. Find shelter, only make sure it’s uninhabited—”
“Go. Now! Or I’ll leave you behind,” Hannah said. Without waiting for me, she snapped the reins against the stallion’s rump. It reared, knocking John aside and causing the baby to start wailing, then the horse galloped off, faster than ever before.
“Hurry, get after them!” John cried as he crawled back to his feet.
The storm thundered closer, casting darkness across the lake, causing great waves to lash against the shore, so strong the water surged over the stony beach and across the road. John managed to stay upright and that was the only thing that convinced me to leave him. He’d be all right, somehow, even if I abandoned him here.
“Run!” I cried to my horse, leaning forward and pulling the girl into position with me. Together we charged forward, following the curve of the road, trying not to think about what might be gathering in the darkness behind us.
Eight
The wind grew stronger as we galloped beside the rising plane of fields and villas on our left. The road before us curved and dipped, at times completely vanishing around the curving hillside. I’d spot the stallion up ahead, white against the dark terrain, and I’d be assured that I’d reach him and the carriage soon, then all would change when the blasted white horse would surge forward, disappearing in the hazy distance.
“You should stop and let me off,” Elsie said behind me. “John and I will catch up with you in the village.”
“No,” I answered.
I glanced behind us, n
oting how the storm had reached the shore, dark sheets of rain blurring everything. Lightning cracked the sky, but even in that brief moment of light, I could no longer see John.
I was no longer certain he was following us.
I could either wait for him to join us, or I could forge ahead, pursuing my stepsister.
The entire Jura mountain range had been erased by the gathering storm, violet clouds tipped with fingers of lightning, while the valley echoed so loudly with one boom of thunder after another that I could barely hear my own voice when I spoke.
“Can you see the carriage?” I yelled. I couldn’t see through the murky darkness.
Elsie didn’t answer for such a long time that I was almost ready to repeat what I’d said. Then I heard her faint reply.
“Yes! They’re just ahead, past a stand of trees. Hurry!”
I dug my heels into the mare’s sides, snapped the reins, and urged her forward. The beast must have wanted to find her stablemate, for she began to run at a speed I didn’t think her capable of. The clouds were overhead at that point, gray darkness spilling down, the rain sheeting into the lake. Spears of light shot through the sky, some so close it seemed as if they were aimed at us. Elsie shrieked, her arms wrapped so tight around my waist I could scarcely breathe.
Yet, we continued on. We had to.
At last, the road leveled and there were no more barriers between our two parties. I could see the horse and carriage clearly; I would reach them in a matter of moments, and an unsuspecting gladness surged through me. Until now, I hadn’t allowed myself to fully acknowledge how frightened I’d been for Claire and her newborn. But I saw them, silhouetted against the last patch of clear sky up ahead, young mother with her head tucked down, babe wrapped and snug in her arms.
They will be safe.
My own failings as a mother must have been coloring my emotions, for since Claire had gone into her premature labor, I’d worried that the child would die. That thought had kept me on edge and had conjured too many memories of my own child’s death. It may have even made me vulnerable to the sangsue King’s lies.
Dawn: A Re-Imagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (The Frankenstein Saga Book 3) Page 4
