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“What were you doing, Victor?” I whispered.
A clattering noise surprised me, and I whipped around. My bare hand brushed the side of the table, giving me another shock like the door handle had. I cried out, stepping away. My arm was numb. Though I could command it to move, I could not feel the movements.
Terrified, I searched for the source of the sound. Again! This time, of sharp things scratching at a surface. A flurry of movement, black darker than the shadowy corners of the room. I lifted my arms to defend myself from—
A bird. Some misshapen carrion thing, scratching and pecking at a massive trunk that took up nearly the length of the wall on the side closest to the riverfront. The bird must have gotten in through the roof opening.
Cross with it for scaring me—and with myself for being so easily frightened—I reached down for the nearest thing on the floor to throw.
My fingers closed around a long knife unlike any I had seen. It was shaped like a surgeon’s scalpel, though no surgeon would need a scalpel this large. Other points of metal among the glass on the floor winked invitations for exploration. A saw, too small for wood. Clamps. The wickedly sharp and absurdly long metal tips of needles, glass vials attached to them broken and jagged.
The bird cawed darkly, a sound like laughter.
What was in the trunk?
* * *
—
It was the fall before the first winter I would spend cocooned inside with the Frankensteins. The leaves were so scarlet that even the light had a crimson tinge. Birds circled overhead: those that were leaving and those that were hardy enough to survive the long dark of the mountain winter.
Victor and I were walking the paths we had made in the undergrowth when we heard a desperate thrashing.
We crept toward the noise, both of us silent without agreeing to be so. Victor and I often functioned that way—I could respond to his needs without being told. Some sense, some careful attunement, always guided me.
I gasped when we found the source of the commotion. A deer, far bigger than either of us, lay on its side. Its visible eye rolled wildly, chest heaving as it panted. One of its legs was twisted at an unnatural angle. The deer struggled once to rise. I held my breath, hoping, but it crashed back to the forest floor and lay still save its desperate breaths and an odd keening sound. Was it some instinctive, unconscious noise? Or was the deer actually crying?
“What could have happened?” I asked.
Victor shook his head. His hand, which had grasped mine, slowly released. I could not take my eyes away from the deer until Victor spoke. The trembling determination in his tone pulled all my attention.
“We cannot let this chance pass,” he said.
“What chance?” I saw only the wounded thing in front of us. “Do you want to help it?”
“There is no helping it. It will die.”
I did not want it to be true, but he was right. Even I knew that if prey animals could not run, they could not survive. And this deer could not so much as stand. It would slowly starve to death lying on the cold forest floor, covered by the falling leaves.
“What should we do?” I whispered. I looked around for a large rock. As much as I hated to even consider it, I knew that the kindest thing we could do was end its suffering. It never occurred to me to run to the house for help. The deer was ours, our responsibility.
“We should study it.” Victor leaned closer, laying his hand on the deer’s flank.
I did not want to do that again. Not ever. But I mournfully supposed that once the deer was dead, it would not much care what was done with its body. And as always, Victor’s happiness was my first priority.
I nodded, misery siphoning away the afternoon’s happiness like the winter cold slowly sucking the color from the trees. “I will find a rock we can use to kill it.”
Victor shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Where he had gotten it, I had no idea. We were not allowed knives, and yet Victor nearly always had one. “It will be better to study while it is still alive. How else can we learn anything?”
His hands shook as he lowered the knife; he looked sad, but more than that, he looked angry. He almost vibrated with intensity, and all my instincts were to soothe him. To distract him from this. But I did not know how to calm him, whether I should calm him at all.
Then the knife went in. It was as though that thing I saw sometimes beneath Victor’s surface, struggling to get out, had been released with the first cut. He sighed, and his hands steadied. He no longer looked afraid, or angry, or sad. He looked focused.
He did not stop. I did not stop him.
Red leaves. Red knife. Red hands.
But white dresses, always.
