AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A growing anxiety gripped me with viselike intensity. I had not imagined the monster in the woods. And Victor had seen it, too. He did not say—he could not say! But if the monster had been here…
William.
No wonder Victor had been so certain of Justine’s innocence! I hated and pitied him in equal measure. I had hidden my own suspicions to avoid revealing secrets. And my suspicions were of an actual man. Who could stand before a judge and jury and claim a monster murdered the child? Of course he could not speak the truth. Even knowing his genius as I did, I, too, had thought Victor mad upon seeing his notes. I had burned down a building to keep the world from judging him.
And if I felt guilt, I could not imagine how he must have felt. Because if I was right, if there was a monster, I knew its origin. Why it had found us here. Why it had hurt us, of all the people in the world.
Had it been following me this whole time? I remembered the thing in the chute as I burned the building. The open door. I had nearly killed it then; I was certain of it. Would to God I had been successful!
How it had found me at the boardinghouse, I could not—
The card! I had made cards of my address at the boardinghouse. One had fallen out on the doorway of Victor’s laboratory, and in my haste I had not picked it up. Could a beast read, when so many men could not? If it could, I had led the monster right to me.
And then it had followed me back here.
Victor might have created it, but I had brought it to our home. And now Victor had gone away, alone, into the mountains. With a pistol. He was trying to end this, to protect us all. But I had seen the monster. Victor was no match for it.
I would lose my Victor, too. It was more than I could bear. I grabbed a cloak—Mary’s, another reminder of Ingolstadt and all the tragedy it had rained down upon our heads—took the sharpest knife from the kitchen, and rushed to the path that led from our home to the mountain trails.
I did not pause to question myself. I knew I could still be wrong. Prayed for it, even. Prayed I would find Victor alone in the mountains. That my head injury was leading me to absurd and even laughable conclusions. That, in my desire for revenge, I was making a monster where only an unknown man had acted.
I did not care. I would not risk it.
The monster—if it existed—would never take a loved one from me again.
* * *
—
It was bitingly cold in spite of the summer sun. The farther into the mountains we went, the closer we grew to the glacial plains. Huge sheets of ice covered miles, ancient and so compacted that the cracks shone deepest blue. The terrain was treacherous and slick, capable of claiming unwary hikers. Victor and I had been forbidden to venture this far when we were children.
But we were no longer children. I was drawing near to fifteen, Victor and Henry almost seventeen. Justine, with us a month now, had turned seventeen the day before. Though she had tried to keep her birthday quiet, I would not hear of spending the whole week as we always did. After pleading with Madame Frankenstein, I received permission for a special day trip to the glaciers.
We rose before dawn, setting out a company of four friends. Henry and Justine got along well. Though Justine was quiet and shy, Henry’s ease with happy conversation drew her out until they were laughing.
I considered their dynamic with appraising thoughtfulness, always with an eye on the future.
Victor walked fast and steady, as though the day trip were something to be accomplished rather than enjoyed. I laughed at him, taking his hand and skipping merrily beside him until he shook his head in exasperation. But I had managed to tease a smile from him, and his manner lightened.
The journey through the valleys to the glaciers took all morning and into the afternoon. We stopped frequently to admire pretty cascades, to nibble some of the food we had packed, or to rest. The day was as beautiful as any I had lived. The blue of the sky, the
deeper blue of the glaciers, the sheer size of the mountains and scope of their majesty, allowed me, too, to step outside my constant worry and simply be. I truly understood for the first time the meaning of the word sublime.
Though we were supposed to return home by evening, we lingered, everyone loath to abandon the fun and freedom of our excursion.
It was a mistake. The light left faster than we had anticipated, and watching it go, we knew we could not navigate the treacherous glacial plain in the dark.
“There!” Justine pointed. A dark shape slumped against the white of the plain. We crossed to it, slipping and sliding. Though we should have been worried, we could not quite manage it. I felt safe with Victor and Henry and Justine. I knew we would be fine.
The shape turned out to be an old shack, the purpose of which we could not guess. But inside was a dusty pile of wood and a dented stove. Delighted with our stroke of luck—providence, as Justine declared it—we settled in for the night.
None of us slept. We sat, shoulder to shoulder, our legs stretched out across the floor nearly touching the opposite wall. Justine was to my left, Victor to my right, Henry to his. I was in the middle of the three people I loved best.
The only three people I loved at all, if I was being honest.
The night was cold and long and still somehow the brightest and warmest I had ever spent.
In the morning we stumbled down from the mountain, hungry and giddy with lack of sleep, laughing over our misadventure. It had been a day without fear, a day without study. A day without pretending. I would carry that day in my heart, locked up tightly where nothing else could touch it.
