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The house appeared in the trees like something from a fairy tale. Lying in wait and ready to devour us. Sharply angled roofs cut like teeth against the sky. Everything was pointed—the windows, the doors, even the wrought-iron gates that slowly swung open to admit us.
I instinctively knew this house was a predator. But I was clever like a rabbit, fast and smart and tiny. I took Madame Frankenstein’s hand and beamed up at her.
“Oh,” she said, always surprised when she remembered me. She smiled, stroking my hair. “You will like it here. It will be good for Victor. Better. Better for us all.”
I was taken to a room by one of the three servants they kept. The four posters of the bed echoed the lines of lead through the windowpanes, all of them like bars in a cage. But the mattress was soft and the blankets warm. Thus every small animal is lulled into security.
In the mornings when I awoke, I always spent a few precious seconds in bed with my eyes squeezed shut. I remembered the feeling of an empty stomach, the blows of angry fists, the fear and the cold, and always, always the hunger. I held on to that until I could open my eyes and smile.
I had been traded to the Frankensteins for a few coins, and lived in fear that they, too, would sell me. By their grace I lived, and so I did all in my power to keep their love. Perhaps they would have tolerated some disobedience, but I would not risk it. Not ever.
Victor liked me, but he was the child. Madame Frankenstein hardly seemed capable of getting out of bed most days. I could not depend on her kindness to sustain me. And Judge Frankenstein had never so much as addressed me, treating my presence in their company with the same indifferent indulgence he might have had his wife taken a notion to bring in a stray dog.
I needed to be something they would love. And so when I got out of bed, I left behind anything I wanted and slipped into sweetness as softly as I slipped into my warm socks.
Victor was odd. But I had only my caretaker’s feral children to compare him to. Victor never bit me, never stole food from me, never held my head beneath the lake until I saw stars in the darkness coming to claim me. He did watch me carefully, as though testing my reactions. But I was more careful than he was, and never showed anything but the sweetest love and adoration.
It was after our first few quiet weeks in the house by the lake that I understood, finally, the fear I had seen ghosting across his mother’s and father’s faces sometimes when they looked at him.
I had been getting ready in my room and was pulling on my shoes when I heard the screaming.
My first instinct was to hide. There was a spot in my wardrobe that looked too small for a body, but I had fit myself neatly into it just to test it out. My window also opened, and I could scamper out, down the trellis, and be hidden in the trees in no time.
But that was not what people in beautiful houses did. And if I wanted to stay here, I could not fall back on my old ways.
I crept out of my room and down the hall, then padded silently down the stairs. By now I recognized Victor’s voice, though it was twisted by rage in a way I had never heard. It was coming from the library, a room where I was not allowed.
I paused outside, then pushed the door open.
Victor stood with his back to me, in the middle of a whirlwind of destruction. Torn and shredded books encircled him. His chest heaved, his narrow shoulders shuddering as he screamed with a sound more animal than human. In his hand, he clutched a letter opener.
On the other side of the room, his parents stood, their backs to the wall, faces frozen in fear.
I could still choose to leave.
But Judge Frankenstein looked at me. He never looked at me. That day, there was desperate pleading in his eyes. And the heavy weight of expectation, as well.
Instinct took over. I had freed animals caught in traps. This felt the same, somehow. Humming low and deep in my throat, I approached Victor slowly. I reached up and gently stroked the back of his neck, the hum turning into a half-remembered lullaby. He froze, his frenzied breaths catching and then calming. I continued stroking the back of his neck, working my way around him until we were face to face. I looked up into his eyes, which were wide, the pupils dilated.
“Hello,” I said. I smiled at him.
He regarded me with that furrowed brow. I moved my hand from the back of his neck to his forehead, smoothing away his tension. “Elizabeth,” he said. He looked down at our feet rather than facing the destruction he had wrought.
I took the letter opener from his hand and set it down on a table. Then, holding his now-free hand, I said, “We should have a picnic.”
He nodded, still breathing too hard. I turned him toward the door. As we left the room, I glanced over my shoulder to see the abject relief and gratitude on his parents’ faces.
He had not hurt anything, not really, but he had succeeded in cementing my place in their family. I might have been his, but he was mine. After that day we were truly inseparable.
* * *
—
“He needs me, too,” I said.
“What?” Justine asked, pausing in front of a house with a dreary gray door.
I shook my head. “Look, there!” Across the street was a bookshop. It squatted beneath an overhanging residence that left the windows in perpetual shadow.
