Chapter Thirteen
That night, I lay next to Marcus, tracing the firm curve of his bicep. I said, “You seem to have experience with men.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ve had my share. Women, too, mind you, although I never found their company satisfying… I had a rather extended relationship with a gentleman chemist. You remind me of him. Thoughtful, intelligent… And then he got married properly to a lady, and that was the end of that. That’s when I decided to travel. I hadn’t a stomach for society. I can’t pretend to be something I’m not, and eventually, people ask questions, as they are wont to do. Then, of course, I became shipwrecked, which worked out well enough for me. Especially considering the quality of the salvage that drifts onto the shore.” He twisted to smile at me, face inches from mine. The smile turned into a kiss, which led to his hand against my chest and mine on his thigh, and soon I had taken his cock into my grip and we were entangled on the bed in throes of pleasure.
The next two weeks passed blissfully and lazily, while my body mended and my spirit began to heal. I could have sketched Marcus’s body from memory by the end of that first week, so closely did I study his lean form. We bathed in the lake together, and we explored the forest and the winding beach. I taught him how to identify plants, and he introduced me to the mechanics of bird flight—wing shape, feather patterns, the anatomy of the flight bones, the physics of wind flowing around the pinions and causing lift. I began to appreciate the complexity of his project and the difficulty of granting man flight.
I set to exploring the island with renewed vigor. On afternoons as Marcus toiled over his wings, I hiked deep into the forest, taking clippings and jotting notes. Days passed, and in the second week, it began to rain as Marcus said it would. That brought an end to my long days adventuring. Around the same time, Marcus came to an impasse with his project.
“Missing something,” he muttered. “Missing something, but what?”
We sat together in the little cabin, riffling through books and reviewing Marcus’s notebooks on flight, waiting for the rain to stop so that I could go out or for inspiration to strike Marcus. Day after day, neither happened. On many evenings, he paced the living area of the cabin like a caged lion.
The rain put me in mind of London. I found myself longing for my raincoat. The memory of its oiled smell made me recall the rainy mornings I wore it to the street corner to hail a hansom. Until then it had been possible to keep the homesickness at bay. Between discovering the island and discovering Marcus, there had been enough on my mind that there was no room for thoughts of London. Now, trapped in the cabin with a distracted Marcus, I found myself with little to think about save the university green, the weight of Ferrous against my shoulder, pub food—all of the familiar things of home that I had taken for granted. I missed my housekeeper, too, and the horrible floral wallpaper that had come with the house.
With thoughts of London came a tightening in my gut, a sense of dread as I wondered how I would ever be able to resume my life there. There was no question in my mind that I would eventually need to return. One simply did not spend one’s entire life on a deserted island. I imagined trying to face my male colleagues and students without blushing, or how I would act toward women. Polite, but reserved. I feared my more perceptive acquaintances would begin to speculate about me, as Marcus said they eventually do. Perhaps I would have to take on a wife to keep up appearances, a girl like Cara who deserved more than a lie. Perhaps I might find happiness in raising a family. The sense of dread in my stomach told me otherwise.
It was these fears that made me feel more distant from London than the ocean between us.
One night, a little more than two weeks after I had arrived on the island, it stormed violently. It was a proper storm with thunder and sheets of rain, and I worried that the cabin might blow over in a strong gust. “It’s weathered worse,” Marcus assured me over dinner. Later, I found him sitting at the little table in the bedroom, staring at his electric finches with a distant expression on his face, perhaps listening to the thunder. More likely, he was mulling over his wings, which had now lain untouched on his workshop table for four days.
I did not disturb him, but instead went to the bed and lay down. With my eyes closed, I listened to the rain and the thunder. I was feeling particularly cramped, trapped, and lost that night. Lying there, I could almost imagine lying on my own bed at home. In my mind’s eye, old Ferrous was curled nearby, ears flicking at the louder peals of thunder. I would be teaching a class in the morning and hoped that the rain would die down by then, because I did not fancy arriving to class with wet trouser cuffs.
I was shaken from my reverie by Marcus sliding onto the bed next to me. When I turned over to make room for him, he said, “You’re still awake.”
“I hadn’t been attempting to sleep,” I said, looking at the wall. The image of London disappeared like fog in a wind, ethereal and then gone.
He pressed his body against mine and draped an arm over me. His touch instantly relaxed me, and with it, my longing for England twisted into a feeling of guilt and confusion.
“What were you thinking about?” he asked.
I hesitated. “Home,” I said. “London.”
“Ah,” he said, softly. “I imagine you must miss it.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I shouldn’t.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
I thought about it for several long moments. I said, “I have no one there to miss.”
“Well, that is sweet of you,” he said, and kissed the edge of my ear.
I closed my eyes at the sensation and sighed in his arms. I turned my head and found his lips with mine for a soft kiss. Marcus made me feel wanted and accepted. Why did I wish to leave?
We lay together for a while, and Marcus massaged his fingers through my hair. He said, “I do apologize if I’ve been preoccupied.” He sighed, and I could feel the warmth of his breath. “There isn’t much to do in the rain, and I’ve been so very absorbed. I do appreciate that you’re here, for as long as you’re here. I want you to know that.”
Quizzically, I looked at him. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, though I could feel the dark shadow of doubt roll over me.
“Not now,” he agreed. “But when a ship comes, I will understand if you do.”
Our gazes were searching. At his words, it felt as if a hand clenched about my heart. I shifted uncomfortably in his arms and looked away, relaxing my head back onto the pillow. I squeezed his hand. “Thank you,” was all I could think of to say, although I thought they were poor words. The thought of losing him unsettled me, yet I could not promise him that I would not go.
“I care about you,” he murmured, and something had gone out of his voice, some vital energy.
I kissed him again. “And I care about you,” I said, hesitating only out of shyness. Those words, at least, I knew were true.
Chapter Fourteen
I woke to the soft light of dawn and a sense that something was amiss. Rain still pattered lightly against the roof. Marcus’s familiar warmth was gone from behind me. I rolled over and found no sign of him save a disturbance in the linens where his body had been.
As I took my clothing from the chair and donned it, I noted that Marcus’s boots were missing from their usual spot under the bench. Marcus himself was neither in the room, nor the living space, nor his study. I knew, inexplicably, that I would not find him in his workshop, either. A brief trip into the rain confirmed my suspicion. The wings remained folded on the workshop table as they had been for days, untouched.
As I stood hunched under the roof of the open workshop, a flurry of rain gusted in with the wind. It was a pushing, snatching wind that battered the roof and shook the trees. Of last night’s storm, it alone persisted in strength. The thunder had abandoned it and the rain had slackened to a tired drizzle. But the wind was enough to tumble a grown man to the ground, and was without question responsible for the felled branches, scattered brush, and toppled trees
that littered the ground. It was just the sort of wind, no doubt, that had swept me onto this island to begin with.
I knew with certainty where I would find Marcus—on the beach, searching for salvage carried in by the storm. I staggered through the wind and rain toward the beach, driven by an unsettled feeling that gripped my stomach and pulled me on.
The sunlight that glowed through the clouds was diffuse and grey, lighting the beach like gaslight. Monstrous waves crashed over the surf, pounded onto the beach, and spread hungrily over the sand. Debris littered the beach. Much of it was windswept foliage from the island. I traced my way through a scattered maze of leaf bunches and tree limbs, scanning the coast for Marcus.
I spied a large, dark shape heaving at the edge of the surf. As I approached, it resolved itself into a wooden board, apparently splintered from a ship. That was not all there was. I saw hand-sized chunks of wood, whole planks, and—farther down the shore—large, dark structures that may have been the remains of the ship itself.
Fear clenched my belly, for certainly, Marcus was among these, searching for loot. My feet began to move quicker all on their own, leading me toward the broken shapes. I called Marcus’s name as I went.
I came upon one of the ship’s masts, which leaned dangerously and was still attached to a broken piece of decking. A scattering of white barnacles freckled the base and the deck wood, which was dark—darker than it should have been, even under the dismal grey light of the morning. Distracted as I was with finding Marcus, I could not put my finger on why this struck me as odd.
“Marcus!” I called, and barely had time to dance back as a breaker crashed against the shore, setting the mast to bobbing. I heard the crack of wet wood, and I knew the thing would not remain upright much longer. Suppose I walked up to it at the wrong moment, and a sudden wave swept it down over me? Or, more likely, what if it had happened to Marcus?
I jogged along the shore, glancing through the wreckage, urgent now with worry. There, yards out from the surf, bobbed what seemed to be a section of the ship. Without a thought, I doffed my clothing and waded into dark water. The light rain fell upon my naked shoulders. Underneath my feet, the sandy bottom shifted with every swell of the ocean water.
Perhaps I was just touched in the head, but I would like to think that it was some deep and urgent intuition that drove me to swim to that section of ship in the water, risking the violent waves and the immersion of my clockwork arm.
“Marcus!” I cried as I reached the piece of wreckage, paddling to keep abreast of a wave. At first, I heard nothing save the sounds of the ocean, but then I heard what could have been a voice, muffled and strained.
The next wave carried me right up to the floating wreck, and I clung to it. The cry of a human, though brief, was unmistakable now. I heaved upward at the edge of the structure with both arms—with no leverage save my treading legs—until it lifted from the surface.
Through the grey and the shadows and the roil of moving water, I almost missed him at first: Marcus, trapped underneath a cage of rotting wood, coughing and sucking at the air. I called his name, in fear and in relief. Then, the next wave swept me sidewise, and the wreck came rolling down over him again. Ocean water swelled over me and filled my mouth and nostrils.
I resurfaced with a gasp to find the wreck almost atop me. I caught its edge with my hands only a moment before it overwhelmed me, and was dragged along with it. I believe that only the mechanical strength of my prosthetic arm saved me from being sucked underneath as Marcus had. When the next wave pulled the wreck in the opposite direction, I kicked my legs and pushed at it with a surge of force. It toppled over, and then there was Marcus, thrashing in the water.
I hooked my left arm around his and pulled him through the waves to the shore, then dragged him high onto the beach where the spreading water did not reach. We left a trail of blood behind us, a dark and snaking thing through the sand. I fell onto my knees beside him and held him up as he coughed spastically in my arms. There was so much blood pouring down his left side that I could not tell where it came from, his arm or his side. He choked, doubled over, and wretched into the sand. He cried out like a wounded thing and rocked back, clutching his bloodied arm.
He looked down at his arm and held it out at an angle, clutching the fist. Rain dropped onto the blood, diluting it and also revealing the long gash on the forearm. He touched his hand to his left collarbone. “Clavicle…broken,” he said in a strained voice, and from the way he blanched, I worried that he would pass out there on the sand. The rain fell across us in rippling sheets, heavier now. My wet clothes clung to me, and the wind dashed right through them. I did not fancy carrying him back to the cabin.
“You’ll have to stand. I can help you walk, but we can’t stay here,” I said. I pulled my shirt off and bound it around the arm tightly.
“Yes,” he agreed, teeth clattering. “Hypothermia…in tropics. Who…would have…thought?” He attempted a smile, but it twisted into a grimace.
Thankfully it was his clavicle that was broken, not his legs. With my arms supporting him, he stood and began to walk, haltingly. We went slowly, while I braced us against the changing wind and navigated through the beach debris. It was easier to walk once we had reached the trees, for they buffered the worst of the wind.
“And now we are even,” he said once we had reached the cabin, gracing me with a wan smile before collapsing onto the ground near the stove.
Chapter Fifteen
I swiftly loaded wood into the stove and began a fire. As it warmed the room, I stripped Marcus there on the floor. He was pale and shivering, but conscious. Though blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage, it seemed to have stopped flowing. I dared not move him from the stove’s heat until he had dried and was warm, but I was otherwise unsure of what to do with him, as I hadn’t an ounce of medical knowledge.
He stirred, looked down at his arm, and touched his fingertips to his left collarbone. He looked at me and said, “You’ve immersed your arm.”
“A good thing I did,” I said.
One corner of his mouth twitched upward. He said, “Fill that bucket by the stove and bring it here. There is a rain barrel outside. While you are there, dip your arm into the barrel to wash the salt from it.”
I hesitated, then did as he said. When I returned, he directed me to place the water in a kettle on the stove, gather clean rags, and find a bottle of brandy. He also had me fetch a small patent leather bag and bring it to his side. The water was boiling by that time, and warmth had suffused the room. Color returned to Marcus’s face. He had picked the bandage from his arm and was regarding the angry gash that ran from his wrist to his elbow. He said, “It will need stitches. Have you any experience with a needle and thread?”
I said, “No. I’ve a housekeeper for that sort of thing. You don’t mean for me to…” I swallowed and could not finish the sentence, for the thought of sewing his flesh made me green.
He gave me a look of wry humor. He said, “It’s easy, really. I will talk you through it. First, take the needle and the catgut from the bag.”
Swallowing back a wave of nausea, I took the needle and thread as he said and laid them on a clean rag on the floor beside him. He then directed me to boil the needle, wet a rag with water from the kettle, and uncork the brandy. When the rag had cooled but was still steaming, I washed the gore from his arm, then tipped a generous splash of brandy over the laceration.
“Good,” he said, grimacing, and took a shot from the brandy bottle for himself. “Now, thread the catgut through the needle.”
I held the end of the thread awkwardly between one mechanical thumb and forefinger. My hands trembled so fiercely that I could not fit the catgut thread through the eyehole. Marcus looked at me with dry humor and said, “Go on, you’ll never get anywhere like that. Take a drink of this.” He offered me the brandy, and I took a burning gulp of it. Its warmth spread through my limbs and steadied me. Soon, I’d threaded the needle. I looked on with dread, wait
ing for his next directions.
He eyed me and asked, “Are you ready?”
“Never.”
This teased a genuine smile from him. He took the last of the clean rags and placed one of its rolled edges between his molars. Then, at the far end of the laceration, he pinched the two edges together. He said, “Here now. Pull the needle and thread clean through one edge before you pierce the other.”
My mouth had gone dry. “I am not sure I can do this with the prosthetic,” I said. “I haven’t really done any detailed tasks like this since the accident…”
He shook his head. “You can. I have faith in my own work.” There was an edge of teasing in his voice. “Go on, then. Start with one edge.”
I did. Piercing the skin was beastly business. Marcus clenched his jaw around the rag and breathed roughly as I worked. When I had both edges of the wound on the thread, I pulled them tight until they were puckered together. Cold beads of sweat pimpled my forehead, and the color had drained from Marcus’s face once again. We repeated the pinch-pierce-pull-pierce-pull process at least a dozen more times, until the entire length of the wound was closed. After the last stitch, I sat back heavily, light-headed from drink or queasiness, though I was not certain which.
“You did well,” he said, removing the rag from his mouth. He took another drink of the brandy. “Unfortunately, there is more.”
Thankfully, “more” did not involve any further stitching. We dressed his wound with honey and a linen bandage, and then he explored his left collarbone with careful fingers. “It’s fractured, but not broken,” he concluded with gruff relief. “You’ll have to bind it for me and fashion a sling for this arm.”
I wrapped his shoulder tightly, arranged his arm in a loop of linen, then helped him to the bed. Salt still filmed our skin, but we hardly cared. I detached my prosthetic and left it near the stove to dry, then sat on the floor with my back against the bed. Marcus rested his good hand in my hair. At length, I asked, “What were you doing out there?”
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