“Not as such, no.”
“He said he could make children, when God did not see fit to bless us with them in the normal manner. He said that if God had not wanted us to force the hand of nature, He would not have equipped His most favored creations so, with clever hands and even more clever minds. I agreed. I was a good wife. I was devoted, pious, willing to yield in all ways to my husband’s desires. When he came to me with the needle in his hand, I yielded to that as well.”
Hal said nothing. Her words were soft, too quiet for Martin or Sophia to overhear—although he had no doubt many of the wolflings were listening, with their hearing that exceeded anything known to man. Perhaps telling a tale of a monster bothered her less when her audience was made up of similar creatures.
“Nine months he treated me as an extension of his private laboratory, and when the pain of labor gripped me, I felt only relief. One way or another, this trial was coming to an end. I had been good. I had been faithful. God would reward me with a child, and Michael would lose interest, moving on—as he always did—to some new challenge.”
Annie turned to watch Adeline, now rolling on the ground with several of the wolfling pups, her throat convulsing in silent laughter. Sometimes being Adeline’s mother was like watching her child through a pane of thick glass, shutting out all sound, forcing her to learn the small refinements of her physicality. It must have been much easier to be the parent to a child that could make wishes known with whimpers and with sighs. She couldn’t imagine it would have been any more rewarding.
“It didn’t happen that way, did it?” asked Hal. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
“No. I suppose parenthood never does, though, does it? You go in expecting a fairy tale, a perfect family, children that never make messes or disobey, a spouse who adores you and treats you kindly, and instead, you get something real. Good or ill, it exists. It is what it is. It’s what you have to live with.”
“What happened?”
“I had my daughters.” The plural felt like a rock in her throat, something she had to strain to push past her lips. In the end, she spat it out, and she did not look at Hal’s face, for fear of what she’d find there. “They were a … a bezoar of flesh, all tangled together, tied so tightly that it seemed like there couldn’t possibly be two of them. They were a single child with two heads, somehow, and they were monstrous, and they were mine. I would have kept them as they were. I would have loved them as they were. Truly.”
She could say that now, but would she have meant it then, in the long-gone lifetime where she had been a pampered house pet of a woman, kept and cosseted and eternally yielding to her husband? Michael had been the one who yearned for children. Michael had been the one who prepared the treatments, who slid the syringes into the tight skin of her belly, murmuring of heirs and honor. Michael had been the maker of monsters, and she had been nothing more than his lab.
She remembered the sight of her little girls bound together, a roiling ball of kicking legs and wailing mouths. She remembered recoiling, horrified by the thought that this thing had been living inside her body, fattening itself like a tick on her blood and marrow. She remembered the relief when Michael had ordered it swept up and toted away, down to his laboratory, where she wouldn’t have to look on it.
All the excuses in the world—all the tears, the sleepless nights, the efforts to make amends for the moment when she had first beheld her children—wouldn’t make up for the fact that when she had seen them, she had screamed. She had rejected them. The first thing Adeline had ever known from her mother was rejection.
“My husband saw that I was frightened, and he took them from me,” she said, voice calm as it had ever been, giving no sign of the turmoil happening beneath the surface. “He said he would fix them. He said he could undo what nature had done—as if nature had any part in what went on in that house. As if nature would dare. We were a house of horrors, sir, and nothing that happened under our roof had anything to do with nature, or indeed, with the graces of God.”
“Your daughter is hale of body and straight of limb. Save for her silence, I see no outward signs of affliction. Only the kindness of monsters betrays anything of truth in your story.”
“He took them,” said Annie again. “Down the stairs, into his lab, while I was a prisoner of my own weakness, bound to my bed by the trauma I had endured. Even there, I was more fortunate than some. I had my ladies’ maids with me, to care for me and help me recover. I had my own room, no chores to do, no duties but recuperation … and he had my daughters. My husband had our children, and there was nothing I could do to save them.”
Had she truly wanted to? That was the question that had nagged her for years, would doubtless haunt her until she died. Had she truly wanted to rescue the children her eyes had barely recognized as human, or had she been hoping that he would make them disappear, letting them fade quietly into the graveyard occupied by all his failed experiments?
Surely, if she had really wanted them to be saved, she would have stirred from her bed sooner, rather than dreaming away a night and a day in a drug-induced haze while her body struggled to knit itself back together. Surely, if she had truly intended to do right by her children, she would have found the strength to move.
But the sun had gone down on the second night, and she had risen from her bed, and she had gone to the stairs, hadn’t she? She had opened the door; she had descended, down into the darkness where her husband’s wishes reigned supreme, even more than they did in the house above, into the place where there was no other god but him, save perhaps for Hellstromme, who ruled over all works done in his name. Her legs had still been weak. Her sex had still been aching like it had been burnt from the friction of giving birth. She had wanted nothing more in the world than to crawl back into her bed and close her eyes against the realities of her life. And still she had descended the stairs, and walked into a nightmare.
Annie took a breath. “I went to confront him, to ask … to ask if our children lived. I didn’t even know that they were daughters, not then. I expected to be told that they had been too malformed to survive, that God in His wisdom had taken them back to Heaven, where they could rest, untormented by the sins of this world. Instead, I found them laid out upon two separate slabs in his laboratory. He…”
She stopped as words failed her. She had never been a particularly loquacious woman, nor was this a story she had told many times aloud. She carried it with her always, the words like stones in her heart, each of them polished by memory, until they shone like terrible jewels denied the light.
Finally, dully, she said, “He had cut them apart. There were two girls contained within the snarl, you see, conjoined, tangled together, but close enough to complete that they would both have lived, had they been left to their own devices. Michael took his scalpels and his ideals, and he used them to slice at our daughters, separating them.”
“Is that not what you would have wanted? You said you were afraid.”
“Of course I was afraid! Everyone fears what they don’t understand. You fear the wolflings. I fear the wood. Fear is natural. But I wasn’t the only one who was afraid. Michael was afraid, too. Afraid that someone would carry word that his wife had given birth to a monster to someone who might hear it, and relay it to his master. The good Dr. Hellstromme, under whose grace Deseret should flourish.” She made no effort to conceal the bitterness in her voice. “Had he taken the time to study our girls, he might still have decided to cut. He was always a proud man. He always thought he knew best, regardless of the situation. He didn’t take the time. He simply grabbed his scalpels, and he cut, and cut, and cut, until he had two little girls where one bezoar had been, and he called it good.”
Annie watched Adeline playing, watched the way the little girl rolled and jumped, easy within her own body. The scars were barely visible anymore, and only to people—like her mother—who knew where to look for them.
“Miss Pearl?”
“They weren’t complete.”
She turned back to Hal. “Each of them was missing something. The … other girl was missing more than Adeline. Perhaps that’s why he liked her better. He saw her as something he could perfect and refine, while Adeline was something he could use.”
“Use?”
“For spare parts.” Annie tilted her head back, until she wasn’t looking at Hal, or Adeline, or anything but the distant, uncaring moon. The moon, she was sure, would not judge her. “There’s a scar down the middle of her throat. It’s barely a hair now. You’d have to get closer than she’d allow to find so much as its ghost. But when she was born, she had the power to scream, and now she has only silence. He gave her voice to her sister as a birthday gift, and never saw that he might be doing either of them ill by slicing them open. They were his children, after all.”
“But how—”
“He was a scientist.” How bitter that word tasted in her mouth; how cruel. How cold. “He had the proper tools, the proper techniques. He delighted in them. Spoke of steam, and mercury, and the miracles of ghost rock, like all those things mattered more than our children. He named the daughter he favored ‘Annabelle,’ after his mother, and said that he would make her a being without flaw, the final proof that he had been right in his efforts. He named the daughter he didn’t favor ‘Pearl,’ because he intended to cut out her heart and nestle it in her sister’s chest like a jewel, as soon as they were both strong enough. I grabbed her and I ran, and I changed her name to something she could keep, that had nothing of him in it.”
Hal stared at her for a moment, attempting to formulate his response. Finally, he asked, “What about your other daughter?”
“I’m sorry. I suppose I was less than clear. She had no heart.” Annie lowered her eyes from the sky, focusing them on Hal. “They had one between them, and a heart is not a voice, to be so easily cut away and given to another. A heart takes preparation. A heart takes time. When I left with my Delly, her sister was being kept alive by a trinket Michael had built in his workshop, some cunning little thing powered by ghost rock and steam and spite.”
“I see.” Hal shook his head. “This is all more than you should have needed to endure, and you have my sympathies for all of it. But how does this bring us here, to a little girl roiling with beasts as if they were her favorite playmates?”
“He made them. Not with his body: with his science. He had them for days before I realized I needed to run. Adeline has never been well. Her lungs are weak. The incision he made when he took her voice has healed on the outside, but the inside remains raw; sometimes it becomes inflamed, and I must boil water and pray that she spits up all the pus, rather than drowning in it. I took her to a barber once, to have her bled. What came out was blood, yes, and yet. It was laced with strands of silver, like mercury, and it stank like ghost rock. Nothing should be able to live with that in their veins. Adeline does.”
“So you think…”
“If she is beloved of monsters, it’s because they recognize something of themselves in her. She is my little girl. She is her father’s daughter. I simply have to pray that I have run far enough, fast enough, for the first to matter more than the second. But whatever else she is or may become, she is a product of the world we’ve made, and yes. She is a monster.” Annie stood, brushing the pine needles from her skirt before she called, “Delly, come here, darling.”
Adeline looked up, setting the wolfling pup she had been cradling back on the ground before running to her mother. She looked up, eyes wide and curious, and waited.
“We need to return to the circus,” said Annie. “Mr. Blackstone will be terribly worried about us by now, and Sophia is unwell. She needs her bed, and her rest. Do your new friends remember the way back to The Clearing?”
‘They don’t like people places,’ Adeline signed, frowning. ‘Too many men.’
“What’s she saying?” demanded Hal.
“That the wolflings dislike going too near large settlements, because there are too many people there.”
“Too many people with guns, she means,” said Hal. “The wolflings are killers.”
Adeline frowned at him, signing, ‘They eat because they are hungry. Hungry things are allowed to eat. It’s not their fault if what they eat is people like you.’
“Adeline, that’s no way to speak to someone who’s helping us.”
Adeline focused her attention back on her mother. ‘Why not? He says bad things about my friends. I should be allowed to say what I want. He’s stupid anyway. He can’t understand me.’
“Adeline.” Annie’s voice was the crack of a whip. “We do not talk that way about our allies. Apologize at once.”
Sensing that she had gone too far, Adeline winced before nodding, turning to Hal, and making a gesture with her right hand.
“That means she’s sorry,” said Annie.
“No apology needed; I don’t even know what she’s sorry for,” said Hal.
“If the wolflings can understand her, I can’t assume you don’t,” said Annie. “Delly, please, can you ask your friends if they can show us the way home? The woods are too dangerous for us to make the trip alone, but we need to get back. We’ve already been away too long.”
‘Yes, Mama,’ Adeline signed contritely, and ran off to the wolflings.
Annie sighed, shaking her head with the utmost fondness, and walked to where Sophia and Martin sat, still pressed together like they feared the world wanted nothing more than the chance at cleaving them apart.
“Can you walk, dear?” she asked, focusing on Sophia.
“If she can’t walk, I can carry her,” said Martin.
“You’re injured as well,” said Annie. “We have to be realistic.”
“Meaning what?” asked Martin. His expression shifted, growing darker, warier.
Annie sighed. “I’m not going to suggest leaving anyone behind. Wipe that thought from your mind. We’ve already done that tonight, and it’s not going to happen again. But if she can’t walk, we’ll need to cut her a crutch, and we’ll need to wait for the sun to rise before we try to navigate these woods.”
“How much longer can it be until sunrise?” asked Sophia.
Annie looked up. The moon leered down at her, not seeming to have moved an inch across the sky since she had walked into the woods to find her daughter. “Out here? It seems it could be forever. We cannot count on the morning coming to save us.”
“I can walk,” said Sophia. She stood, leaning on Martin as he hurried to brace her. “I want to go home.”
Home. What a fascinating word that was. Annie smiled a little as she nodded and stepped back, giving them room. “Adeline is negotiating with the wolflings.”
Martin hesitated. “Ma’am, you know … you know that it’s not normal for little girls to talk with monsters like she does.”
“We’re circus folk, Martin,” said Annie. “Nothing about us has ever been normal.”
He looked surprised. Then he laughed. “I suppose that’s not something I can argue with,” he said. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“No thanks necessary,” she said. “We’re family.” She turned and walked back to Hal, who watched her approach without comment. When she was close enough, she asked, “Will you come with us?”
“I don’t live there anymore,” he said. “These woods, they’re what I know.”
“These woods, and their history,” said Annie. “We could be walking into a trap, or worse. If the townspeople know about the wendigo, they may be intending to set the rest of us up as a sacrifice, something to buy them passage through to the other side of the winter.”
“Most of those people are already wendigo in their hearts,” said Hal. “There’s no kindness left there, nor mercy for a traveler. You would be better off striking out for the border. Some soul that still knows what it is to be human would offer you aid along the way, I’m sure.”
“And if they didn’t? Or even if they did, how could we live with ourselves knowing that we’d left our friends, our loved ones, to
be destroyed? This wood has already taken too much from my family. I can’t leave anyone else behind.” With a pang, Annie realized Adeline didn’t know about Tranquility. She had no idea how to tell her daughter that the big cat—her protector since infancy, her nursemaid and playmate—was gone. It would break Adeline’s heart, as it had already broken Annie’s.
“I’m not your savior.”
“I don’t need you to be. I just need you to be the man who helps to bring us out of the woods before we’re lost forever. Please.”
Adeline came running back to her mother, a large wolfling pacing by her side. Hal gave the white-furred creature an uneasy look, which the wolfling met unflinchingly before nudging the girl with its muzzle. She gave one of her soundless giggles, her face contorting in laughter that no one could hear.
“Will they help us, then, dearest?” asked Annie.
Adeline nodded before signing, ‘They won’t go all the way, but they’ll go far enough to be sure the hungry ones don’t take us. Mama, what’s a hungry one?’
“I’ll tell you later,” said Annie. She looked back to Hal. “The wolflings—what you would call monsters—will help us. Will you do the same, sir?”
“I owe you a debt,” said Hal. “You gave my Poppy peace. That’s the only reason I’m doing this. You understand.”
“I do, sir,” said Annie, and smiled, because everything was going to be all right.
Chapter Nineteen
When they reached the edge of the forest—Annie supporting Sophia, whose leg had given out some time before, while Martin and Hal carried the rifles and watched the woods for signs of trouble—the wolflings melted back into the trees like they had never been there in the first place. Annie looked back, trying to see them through the shadows. They were white, so white it almost hurt her eyes, and yet they were utterly gone, predators to the last.
Adeline, bundled against her mother’s hip on the side where Sophia did not rest, raised one hand in a doleful farewell.