My reflection caught in the mirror, just a glimmer of a passing expression. Some part of me was sorry to see him leave. I still cared about him, and that made me angriest of all. Angry because he knew that what he was doing was wrong, yet he was still loyal to my father. It surely hadn’t been the mirror I wanted to shatter, but Father’s spell on him.
Alice dipped the towel into the copper pot. She dabbed my brow, gently. “He’s a good man, miss. He means well.” Her eyes were alight.
I knew that look. She was in love with him.
The trickle of water ran down my face and tickled my ears. It made sense, I supposed. He was the only young man without a hoof or claw on the island. And he was handsome. Oh, was he handsome. I felt my face getting warm and blamed it on the steam from the copper pot.
“Your getting lost gave the doctor quite a scare,” Alice said softly, dabbing at my neck. She was a gentle, pretty thing. Had I been ignoring something obvious? An odd feeling crept over me, that maybe her feelings toward Montgomery might be returned. I suddenly felt like an idiot. I’d thought he felt something for me. He’d practically told me as much; he almost kissed me. . . . Had I been exaggerating his affection in my mind, when it was really someone else who had his heart?
“His creatures gave me a scare,” I muttered, my thoughts elsewhere. The lavender mingled with my breath, infusing my body. It was meant to calm me, but I found it choking. “Did you know about them?”
Alice ran the towel down the sides of my neck, over the bridge of my nose, the curve of my chin. “Yes, miss. We all know.”
“It’s madness. Humans made from animals.”
“It’s the way of the island.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
The towel paused on my neckline. Her lip twitched. “Most things scare me, miss.”
She began cleaning under my fingernails with a metal file. The caked dirt didn’t bother me, but she went after it with a vengeance.
“He thinks he’s God,” I said. She didn’t stop scrubbing. The file pressed at the sensitive skin under my nails, making them tingle. “But he’s insane.”
Her hand jerked, and the file dug into my skin. Blood appeared in the hollow under the nail. I can’t say why, but I started laughing. The more the blood flowed, the more I laughed, until I felt like a madwoman. Alice squeezed the towel around it, her eyes wide.
“You should rest, miss. You still aren’t well.”
The laughter died on my lips. I pulled my hand back, licked away the blood the towel didn’t get. It tasted rich, like iron. “Where are the others? Where’s my father?”
“The salon, miss.”
I sat up, throwing a dressing gown over my chemise, and hurried across the courtyard barefoot.
I INTERRUPTED A SULLEN tea in the salon. A few dried-out plain cakes rested untouched on the coffee table. The tea looked cold. Montgomery stood when I entered, but Father waved him back down. I glanced at Edward. No visible broken bones. At least Father hadn’t drowned him for that punch in the jaw.
“Are you feeling—?” Montgomery said, but I cut him off.
“To hell with how I’m feeling.” I folded my arms, staring at Father. “I want an explanation.”
To my satisfaction, Father closed his book. Apparently profanity had a way of making men listen. The clock ticked, slowly. Father nodded toward the leather armchair. I sank into it, gripping the armrests. Montgomery hung back near the bookshelves. Close enough to listen, far enough to distance himself.
“You think me a monster,” Father began. “Or a madman. Though I assure you, the research Montgomery and I conduct here is quite the contrary. We are pioneering the science of manipulating living forms.”
“Butchery, you mean,” I said. My gaze flickered to Montgomery, challenging him.
Father didn’t flinch. “I can’t control how a handful of ignorant boors label it.”
“And the creature on your operating table?” I snapped. “What label would it use?”
“It doesn’t think in those concepts, Juliet. It was merely a panther, used to hunting. Instead of craving flesh, it will now gather fruit and live in a society with others of its kind. I gave it intelligence. Reason.”
“Impossible. No surgery can do that.”
“My technique is not limited to the physical form. The brain, as well, can benefit from the surgical process. It’s a simple matter of mapping the mind, learning what to tweak, to stimulate, to cut out. It requires special instruments and infinitesimal patience, of course.” Father took a sip of tea.
I briefly wondered where cruelty resided in the brain. Whether you could cut it out with a scalpel. I glanced behind me, where Montgomery pretended to read a book. Had he ever tried to stop my father? Was he a prisoner here, or a willing participant?
As if he could read my thoughts, he slammed the book shut and shoved it onto a shelf. His sleeve tore on a loose nail. He pounded his balled fist on the nail as if his anger could hammer it down.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
Father smiled thinly. “The proof is right here. Balthasar, won’t you come here for a moment?”
Balthasar shuffled into the room, his hands enveloping the teakettle. Father motioned to a chair. Balthasar sat down, blinking nervously. Across the room, Montgomery’s attention focused on us. A flicker passed over his face, a memory maybe, and he smacked the shelf so hard the books rattled. Edward glanced up at the noise, but Montgomery turned and left through the door.
Coward, I thought, leaving Balthasar to face my father alone.
“Now, take Balthasar.” Father’s voice pulled me back. “One of my finer creations, even able to pass among the streets of London, though admittedly somewhat unusual with the odd slanting forehead and profusion of body hair. He speaks. He thinks. He’s capable of compassion. Why, he even carried a garden slug outside this morning so the chickens wouldn’t eat it. Didn’t you?”
Balthasar nodded.
“Tell me, Juliet, would you call this man an abomination?”
Balthasar grinned. He thought he was pleasing us. He had no notion that Father was talking about his own horrible origin. I remembered that Balthasar was the one who’d taken care of the little sloth on the Curitiba. He’d cried softly when I played Chopin on the piano.
“No,” I said gently. Then my resolve hardened. “But I can’t call him a man, either.”
“Nevertheless, a man he is,” Father argued. “A man carved and wrought from animal flesh. Don’t act so horrified, Juliet. It is merely surgery. You are no doubt familiar with some of the more common practices. Setting broken bones, amputations, stitching ruptured skin back together?”
“I am,” I answered cautiously.
“No one questions the hand of a doctor performing such procedures. No one calls it butchery—it is science, and no different from what transpires behind the door of my own laboratory. For it is surgery I perform. Grafting of skin, setting of bones. A more complex scale, mind you. There is a most fascinating procedure, you know, I have only recently perfected, wherein I separate the sternum . . .”
His explanations continued. Examples, details, complications of his work. They made my throat go dry and my mind whirl. He had really done it.
My father had played God and won.
I had so many questions, but the rush of them caught in my throat. How long did the grafting take to set? Why did he choose the human form? What did a heart split open and sewn back together look like? I shocked myself with my hunger to know.
Edward was strangely quiet, shocked by the horror of it, as I should have been. But as much as I knew I should be repulsed, my curiosity burned so brightly it made my humanity flicker and dim.
Father continued. “Balthasar, for example. He is part dog and part bear.” He traced an imaginary line along the bridge of Balthasar’s nose. “You can see the canine influence in his jaw placement, but examine these ears. Ursine.”
Montgomery’s figure filled the doorway, and my heartbeat sped. He knelt by the bookshelf with a hammer in hand. Thwack. Thwack. Each strike of his hammer made me cringe.
Thwack. Edward leaned forward, somehow able to ignore the hammering. “But what about scars?” Edward asked. “What about broken bones? Your creations don’t show any signs of surgery.”
“A happy accident of my banishment. The island’s isolation means there is almost no disease here. A body can heal in a matter of days if there is no risk of infection. Quite remarkable. I daresay many of my attempts in London failed solely from the polluted city air.” He drew in a lungful to prove his point.
Thwack. The nail drove deeper, as if Montgomery was driving it into my very heart. How hard was it to fix a loose nail? He hit it again and again, determined to set that bookshelf straight. Determined to do something right, after so much wrong.
I pressed the heel of my hand to the aching space between my ribs.
“But what about the pain?” I whispered. Balthasar’s grin faded. From the corner of my eye, I saw the hammer pause in Montgomery’s hand.
Father scoffed and took another sip of tea. “Pain is merely a signal to the brain. Like the urge to sneeze. Uncomfortable, but tolerable.”
I swallowed down something hard and bitter. “You use anesthesia, right?”
“Can’t. It interferes with the vivisection. Causes the body to reject new material. Anyway, animals are used to pain. It’s a formative part of their lives. Birth of offspring, fighting over prey, competing for a mate. In fact, pain can be an effective tool. When I am finished with them, they are abnormally docile creatures, through no intention of my own. The pain drives the fight out of them, you see.”
Montgomery slammed the hammer against the nail one final time, hard enough to crack the wood. A shiver raced up my spine, punctuating the horror of what Father was saying. He tortured these beasts with as little disregard for their well-being as if they were straw dummies. I narrowed my eyes, wondering if Father would feel any differently if it was a human instead of an animal on his table.
I wasn’t sure he would.
Montgomery thrust the hammer into his back pocket. I caught sight of Alice in the doorway. She must have been there long enough to hear at least a little, because her face was white. Montgomery took her hand and led her away.
“What is your intention in all this, Doctor?” Edward asked, with a surprisingly steady voice.
Father folded his hands. “I am in pursuit of the ideal living form. Just like all of us, wouldn’t you say? The same reason we choose mates and procreate. We want to create something better than ourselves. Perfection. To me, perfection is a being with the reason of man but the natural innocence of children—or animals. I have come so close to achieving it. You have no idea how close. I thought, once . . .” His black eyes gleamed at Edward. “Well, it failed in the end, as they all have failed. It wasn’t always humans I tried to create. I started with smaller things. Rats. Birds. Just tweaking their shape, minor alterations. But I wasn’t satisfied. I kept creating, kept carving flesh. I’ve yet to attain perfection.” He sighed deeply, then waved a hand in Balthasar’s general direction. “Montgomery tends to them—these failures. Teaches them English, basic skills, trains the more intelligent ones to work for us here in the compound. Administers their treatments.”
“Treatments?” I asked.
Father held his cup for Balthasar to pour more tea. A drip spilled onto his linen pants, and he waved Balthasar away, annoyed. “Yes, treatments,” he said absently, dabbing at the drip with a napkin. “We give them a serum to keep the tissue from rejecting its new form. Without it they revert to their original state. It’s another fail-safe, you see. If anything goes wrong, we stop their treatments, and they return to being cows and sheep and whatever other harmless animals they came from.”