The Lantern's Ember

by Colleen Houck

  “Oh,” Ember chirped. “I’m right here.”

  The doctor looked startled. “You…you keep your ember inside a witch?” he asked. “How…unique.”

  “No,” Jack said as the pumpkin floated in the air behind the doctor. “Her name is Ember. My lantern light resides in my pumpkin.”

  “A pumpkin, you say?” When the doctor turned, he squeaked in fright but quickly recovered and pulled his spectacles from his pocket once more. “Ah, how curious.”

  He tried to look on either side of the pumpkin, but the globe turned so its smiling face was always facing him. It blinked rapidly when he drew closer and almost looked as if it was going to sneeze. “Er, yes. Well…I suppose there’s plenty of time to explore your light at a later time. Now, I’m sure you’re all famished, yes?”

  “You forgot me,” Ember said, rising and curtsying to the doctor.

  “Indeed, I have,” the doctor said, taking her hand and kissing it.

  Ember noticed that the doctor had a crooked tooth, but otherwise his skin and face looked flawless. Too flawless for a man his age. There was a meow and the doctor looked down. He leaned over and picked up a large tabby cat.

  “Why are you such a needy girl, Brunhilda?” the doctor asked. “Can’t you see I’m busy talking to this lovely little witch?” The cat began purring and soon others came close, rubbing against both the doctor and Ember. “I’m so sorry, my dear. The cats have a natural affinity for witches. I’m afraid you’re like catnip to them. They like the little static shock of witch power they get when they touch you.”

  “I don’t mind,” Ember said, reaching down to scratch the head of a black cat with a white streak. “What’s the name of this one?”

  “Nicodemus,” he replied distractedly as the cat mewed loudly and scratched at Ember’s skirts. Another jumped directly into her arms. Ember barely caught it. The doctor quickly dropped the one he held and pulled the new one from her arms. “Hazel, you little hoyden,” he said, tapping the creature on the nose. He set her down as well, shooing the beast away. But she was replaced quickly by others. “Oh, my,” he said as a dozen cats began circling. “They are indeed proving an annoyance. Yegor, have the cats removed from the immediate vicinity.”

  “As you wish, mas—Doctor.”

  He clapped his hands and the cats hissed and meowed loudly, all of them turning their attention to Yegor. After he slipped one hand in his pocket they vanished from sight far too quickly for Ember to see where they went.

  “How…how did you do that?” Ember asked.

  “Do what, my dear?”

  “Get the cats to follow your commands.”

  “Oh, that’s easy enough. They’re all implanted with a tiny chip as big as your smallest fingernail. It gives them a wee little shock. It doesn’t hurt them, merely irritates them enough to make them leave the room.”

  Ember glanced at Finney. His eyes were wide, and he began scratching furiously on his notebook.

  “Now,” the doctor said. “Where were we? Ah, yes. You were about to introduce yourself.”

  Ember was not quite so enamored of the doctor as she’d been before he sent the cats away. “I believe it would be more appropriate for you to introduce yourself first.”

  “Me?” The doctor looked around the table. “Haven’t I already?”

  Ember shook her head.

  “Well then,” the doctor said. “I’m afraid it is a terrible habit of doctors and men of philosophy to often forget the social niceties. Do forgive me, won’t you, my dear?” When Ember inclined her head, he bowed his and said, “Allow me to introduce myself properly, then. My name is Dr. Monroe Farragut, and this is my home here on Deadman’s Island.”

  Swallowing, Ember said, “What a…what a charming name. Did you come up with it yourself?”

  “The pirates named it,” a man’s deep voice called out from the darkness, just beyond their lit, intimate setting.

  “Ah, I forgot to introduce my other guest. I knew we were missing someone. Come on in,” the doctor said gleefully. “Don’t be shy. We’re all friends here.”

  Ember didn’t recognize the handsome man who stepped from the shadows, not at first, but then she heard Delia’s gasp as the captain rose abruptly from the table.

  “What’s he doing here?” she demanded. “He should be locked up in whatever passes for a dungeon here and the key thrown into the lagoon.”

  “I’ll thank you to treat my guests respectfully,” the doctor said sharply. “Captain Graydon, you’ll be sitting between the young witch and myself.”

  The man who came forward was dressed as impeccably as Dev, though as soon as he sat down, he pulled at the sash around his neck, slipping it off, and unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt, exposing his tanned throat.

  Dinner was served, beginning with a warm fish soup accompanied by pumpkin-buttered toast. When Finney took a bite of the toast, Jack’s pumpkin flickered franticly. Finney looked at the pumpkin, then at the bread, and mumbled his apologies, before setting down the toast and picking up his spoon.

  Next were courses of pheasant; salty, green sea beans; and something Ember thought tasted like boar. Then a large platter holding a beast with multiple arms and a bulbous head was presented. The purple-pink meat delicately carved and placed on her plate made Ember hesitate. “Is it a fish?”

  “Octopus,” Dev said, grinning. “The little cousin of the kraken.”

  Ember and Jack were cautious, especially when the doctor bragged that the various cheeses Dev was enjoying had been made from the milk harvested from a wide assortment of marine mammals. The werewolf captain devoured everything set in front of him, almost without tasting.

  When he wasn’t eating, or swallowing his beverage in great gulps, Graydon’s burning eyes invariably drifted to a disinterested Delia.

  Ember tried to break the tension. “Doctor, please tell us about your work.”

  “Oh, are you an aspiring student like your young friend?” he asked genially. “Perhaps you could join in the laboratory tomorrow as well.”

  “That sounds delightful.”

  “Wonderful!” He gave Ember a beatific smile. “As for my work, you must have seen many of my creations on the way to the island.”

  “Yes,” Ember replied. “All those fish. They’re your doing?”

  “They are. I’ve been trying to fuse the animate with the inanimate.”

  “Are you attempting to protect them?” she asked. “Like dressing them in a suit of armor?”

  “Not at all. Though that is a happy side effect.” He lifted his fork to his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, then set it down and continued, “Oh, dear. To abridge a lifetime of research and experimentation into one simple concept is a most frustrating task.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and then explained, “All sentient life has a common nemesis, a villain that murmurs softly in the beginning but whose voice becomes more powerful as the days pass, until all you can hear is his cry. It is a seed of evil that I’ve sought to eradicate.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Ember said, setting down her goblet.

  “The enemy I speak of is death,” the doctor said. “Let me ask you: If there was a way to capture the essence of life, to hold it in one’s hand, and then to give it the gift of eternity, would you do it?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Ember stammered. “I suppose I’m not the most qualified at this table to answer your question.”

  “Indeed? How about you, Jack. Of us all, you have benefited the most from my research.”

  “Have I?”

  “Why, it was my research that made being a lantern possible.”

  Jack’s knife clattered to the table. “You must be mistaken,” Jack said. “My mentor, Rune, conscripted me many of your lifetimes ago.”

  “Ah, that’s where you are mistaken, young man. I am four-thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine years old, give or take a few
days.”

  “Surely you jest,” Ember said.

  “I do not.”

  She frowned. “Then you must not be human, though you certainly look it.”

  He ignored that comment. “Let me direct you all back to my original question. If you held the very key to everlasting life in your hand and the door stood before you, ready to open and reveal all the secrets of the eternities, would you be brave enough to unlock it and step through?”

  “No,” Jack said abruptly, tossing down his napkin. “There are some things we aren’t meant to know; some people so villainous, the world is better for their deaths.”

  “But what if you could select those to give the gift of immortality, determining it by, say, what you see in their hearts?”

  Jack froze. He could do exactly that. “It wouldn’t matter,” he said. “The so-called gift of your research has set me up in a life of servitude.”

  “It’s remarkable to me that you resent this. Would you have preferred death by disease, by gibbet, by war? You’ve been held apart from these things, become a watcher. You are much, much more than the sum of what you would have been.”

  “Perhaps. But maybe the purpose of life is to experience those things, however fleeting. I’ll never know now what my life might have been.”

  “Well then.” The doctor smiled. “I can understand your feelings. When I first performed a ramification, I myself was hesitant and wondered the same things you did. But a man of my station must maintain a certain insouciance regarding his creations; otherwise he’d go mad.”

  Ember wondered if perhaps the good doctor was already mad.

  “All I ask,” the doctor said, “is that you keep in mind that all creations, all advances, all inventions, come with a price. They can be used for good or they can be used for evil. But in my philosophy, mine is not to determine politics or to decide if a certain advance should be created. Mine is to determine if it could be created. There’s no use in debating the morals when I don’t even know if something will work.”

  The doctor sat back in his chair, his fingers threaded together over his broad belly. “Now, enough talk of serious things,” he said jovially. “Yegor? Bring out the after-dinner tea.”

  Once the servants cleared away the dinner plates, the doctor leaned on the table with his elbows, cupped his hands together, and rested his weak chin upon them. He glanced first at Delia and then at Graydon. “I think it’s time we cleared the air a bit, don’t you?” The doctor paused, dressing his tea. When he was satisfied with his brew, he said, “The good captain has been playing the double agent as of late.”

  “Double agent?” Delia’s eyes jerked up. “For whom?”

  Scooping up a flaky tart, the doctor popped it into his mouth and chewed slowly while everyone waited. “The lemon tarts are excellent!” He nudged the plate over to Ember. “Do try one. The secret ingredient is an egg harvested from Nestor’s former mate. They make the fluffiest curd, the most delicate meringue. Of course, she died recently, of a vivisection gone wrong. Ah, well.”

  Ember’s face turned pale and she shook her head; the doctor took another tart. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Captain Graydon. Our good captain has been playing the part of a spy for the Lord of the Otherworld, when in fact he is my emissary and has been feeding the man false information for me.”

  “B-but,” Delia sputtered. “But why?”

  Captain Graydon sighed, worked his jaw, and said the one word the doctor wanted him to say. Looking up at Delia with red-rimmed eyes, he muttered, “Frank.”

  “Frank?” Delia repeated. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  Tossing his napkin on the table, Graydon sat back in his chair, clearly uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation. “The good doctor is the one responsible for saving Frank’s life on more than one occasion,” he said.

  “Yes, of course, but we traded for that.”

  Graydon shook his head. “The cost was much more than you knew. Frank’s heart alone was worth more than the Phantom Airbus. There was no way to repay him, especially after…” His words trailed off.

  Moving on to his second dessert, the doctor popped a spoonful of thick pudding into his mouth, the spoon upside down as he watched the interchange gleefully. “Go on. Tell her the rest.”

  “Frank…wasn’t the only one the doctor fixed.”

  “But who…?”

  The doctor laughed.

  The werewolf’s eyes turned silver and he growled sharply at Farragut. When he looked back at Delia, the light in his eyes dimmed.

  Delia stopped, then said, “No. Tell me it’s not true.”

  “It is. Do you recall the encounter with the frigate carrying a cargo of nets and power cells? You were injured.” Graydon paused. “I never told you that the doctor saved you.”

  “Yes. It was a rather brilliant surgical maneuver on my part, if you don’t mind my boasting. If you feel carefully around the scar tissue at the base of your skull, my dear, you’ll feel the edges of a small metal plate about the size of a coin.”

  Delia’s hand crept up beneath her hairline, and she gasped when her fingers discovered the plate the doctor described. “What…what did you do to me?” she demanded.

  “Well, that’s a rather complicated answer. In brief, I revived your dead brain.”

  “I…I died?”

  “Oh yes, very much so. To summarize, I managed to capture the spark of your life left in your healing vampiric bones with an ember before it departed. Then I used my research with Frank and the skills I’ve gained in creating lanterns, and now, my lovely vampiress, you are the first truly immortal creature I’ve ever fashioned. Congratulations!”

  The doctor began clapping and the servants standing around clapped with him. His enthusiasm waned as the rest of the party sat there dumbfounded.

  “I don’t understand,” the doctor said. “I would think you’d find this a cause for celebration.”

  “I…I’m a monster!” Delia said.

  The doctor dropped his napkin as Dev put his arm around his sister.

  “No, dear. Not at all,” the doctor replied. “You are a miracle. A merging of animate and inanimate.” He pounded the table. “Besides, I despise the term ‘monster.’ Are we not all monsters at heart? Who are we to judge others so harshly? What you are is a rare creature indeed, and one close to my heart.”

  “Yes. So close you put in a fail-safe,” Graydon accused with a snarl.

  The doctor pursed his lips with irritation. “It’s nothing, I assure you. Just a little switch in case something went wrong.”

  “Something could go wrong?” Delia murmured with renewed alarm.

  At the same time, Dev cried, “What switch?”

  Graydon answered, his face miserable. “If I didn’t cooperate, he threatened to throw the circuit breaker, effectively turning her brain off. She’d die instantly.”

  Dev stood abruptly, throwing back his chair. “You are the monster! How dare you play with people’s lives this way!”

  “Well, technically, she wasn’t really ‘people’ any longer, was she? Your dear sister was a corpse. Perhaps you should consider that fact before you go around throwing querulous accusations.”

  Delia sat back in her chair, her face slack. Her eyes met Graydon’s, and in them she saw all his self-hatred, all the compromises he’d had to make just to keep her alive.

  The doctor scooted back his chair. “I’m afraid this accusatory turn in the conversation isn’t quite what I was hoping for. As such, my appetite has soured. If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll turn in for the night. I suggest you all do the same.”

  “And if we leave?” Dev threatened.

  “Oh, your cooperation is assured one way or another. As Captain Graydon so eloquently averred, my thumb literally rests on the pulse point of the lovely Delia’s life. Now that all the cards have been laid upon the table, as it were, it’s up to a
ll of you to determine if you will enjoy your time here or consider it an incarceration.”

  He drew his mouth up into a cupid’s bow. “I’ve found in the many, many, many years I’ve been alive, that happiness often depends on one’s attitude. You’ll have until the morning to think about it. Please do finish your tea. Yegor and the others will escort you back to your rooms when you are done.” He patted his neatly combed hair, turned, and exited, leaving the group at the table astonished and unmoving.

  Strangely enough, it was Finney who was the first to speak. He scratched his thin nose and pronounced, “I say we cooperate. We’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

  Ember held her teacup in her hands, the drink had long since gone cold. “Can…can we go home, Jack?”

  Dev couldn’t abandon his sister, but he could help Jack escape with Ember. It would give him some comfort to know that at least she’d gotten out alive. He waited to hear Jack’s answer too, hoping the lantern had some ideas.

  The lantern shook his head. “I have no way to get us off the island. My pumpkin can float, but as you saw before, it could barely hold Finney’s weight.” He turned to Delia. “What about repairs to the submersible?”

  Graydon replied when she looked too stunned to do so. “I’m afraid we wouldn’t get too far. The doctor has complete control of Nestor. If the doctor doesn’t want you leaving the island, you won’t.”

  “You…you did all this, turned spy, for me?” Delia said to Graydon.

  The werewolf got up and knelt next to Delia’s chair, gripping the armrest. “It started with Frank,” he said. “I already owed the doctor so much, and all he asked in return was that I run little errands, gather some things he wanted. But he kept upping the game, and after he fixed you, I knew we’d be doing his bidding for the rest of our days. I thought I could at least save you from my fate if you thought I was dead. I would have told you on the submersible but he…he listens.”

  “Oh, Graydon,” Delia said, tears welling up in her eyes.