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“He’s dead,” said Victor. He and Elizabeth Harlander were standing stranded in the empty foyer of the tower.
She stared for a moment. “My uncle?”
“Yes.” He paused, but she deserved the truth. “He was dying.”
“I knew, but he –”
“He told you?” He’d thought Harlander too much the gentleman to tell a lady about such things.
“No! But there were signs…”
None that Victor had noticed. Obviously a medical man should have paid more attention.
Elizabeth had sighed and sunk into thought. “How did it happen?”
Victor didn’t blink. “He fell.”
Silence.
“An accident,” he blurted. A simple version of the truth, rather than a murky one. “There was nothing to be done.”
“I understand,” she said. Her head was lowered now, and her expression obscured by her lovely hair and veil.
Victor hadn’t realised his brother was there as well, having followed Elizabeth in – until William stepped closer and pronounced, “A blessing, then.”
“A mixed one!” Victor retorted. Surely that was what William had meant to say.
“A blessing,” William repeated, “if you were deprived of the means to fix him.”
Astonishing! Victor looked from William to Elizabeth, and back again. He had thought her too fine and deep a creature for young William – but he wondered now if he had underestimated his brother.
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“Can’t you see his worth?”
Victor didn’t even glance at the Creature in its chains, but stumbled over his first answer, then voiced his second. “Perhaps… through your eyes…”
“He is not a child, but he is not grown either. What did you expect? Treat him kindly, and he will learn.” She leant forward to emphasise her point. “Give him time to learn.”
The Creature tilted its head as if carefully considering Victor. Did it even realise what they were talking about?
“What first, then?” Victor asked her. “Where does one start with…?” and he gestured, indicating this. This failure. This mess.
“Language,” Elizabeth replied, as if any fool would know. “Talk with him. Read to him. Teach him his letters.”
Victor sighed. The task seemed even more challenging than creating it in the first place.
“I will begin,” Elizabeth offered, “but only if you make an equal effort with him, Victor.”
“You can begin,” he faintly agreed.
She was exasperated. “What did you expect he would be? A fully-grown man with speech and abilities and knowledge of a world he’s only just woken to?”
Silence.
“Where did your mother start with you?”
He grimaced. Surely William had explained that their beloved mother was not a matter for trivial conversation. Victor stood, and headed for the stairs to climb out of the dreary damp basement.
He was aware that Elizabeth went to sit beside the Creature, slipping a book out of her pocket. Victor had seen her consulting it before: an illustrated guide to insects, arranged alphabetically.
“This is the letter A,” Elizabeth said to the Creature. “A is for apple and acorn and – this drawing, do you see? – this is an ant, and this an alderfly…”
“A,” the Creature echoed. “This an ant.”
Victor fled to his room.
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He was still there, a day or more later, staring sullenly out at the light shimmering across the surface of the water.
There was a knock at the door, and after a moment William walked in, not waiting to be invited. “We need the key,” he announced.
Silence.
“The key to his shackles,” William continued, in quite reasonable tones as if he had grown and they’d become equals. “Victor, you know we must bring him upstairs. Whatever else he is, he’s a human being.”
“Is it, though?” Victor asked, his voice creaky with disuse.
“We can argue definitions another time. Where are the keys, Victor?”
He gestured towards the bureau, and William found them soon enough.
“Thank you, brother.” William paused in the doorway, and turned back to him. “I was glad, you know. That you didn’t try to fix Mr Harlander.”
“He was beyond fixing.”
“Even so.”
“He wanted me to –” But Victor couldn’t say it, not to William. The barefaced selfishness of the man… Appalling.
A nod, as if William understood something of all this, anyway. “Even so.”
And he was gone, and the door had quietly closed – with Victor abandoned on this side of it.
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When Victor came down again, he found the three of them gathered around what used to be a dining table. They were all sitting on chairs, though the Creature hadn’t quite mastered this civilised habit.
“Welcome, Victor,” said William, getting up. “How long is it since you’ve dined? Take a seat.”
Victor sat at the most distant place from the others, and William came back with a glass of red wine and a platter of bread, cheese, and cold cuts of beef. Despite himself, Victor began eating in a most uncivilised manner.
Elizabeth whispered something to the Creature, who looked aslant at Victor and eventually said, “Welcome.”
Victor lifted a brow. One properly formed and appropriate word, and he was supposed to be impressed.
Another encouraging whisper, and the Creature announced, “I am learning ABCs.”
Both brows lifted, and Victor sat back. Surprise burst out of him in a laugh.
“Elizabeth am teaching me.”
“All right, all right,” Victor cried. “Enough. Your point is made.”
Elizabeth and the Creature exchanged happy looks, obviously pleased with themselves. William relaxed more comfortably in his chair, lazily regarding Victor as he began eating again.
The language lessons continued, with Elizabeth writing out an alphabet and the Creature clumsily echoing her.
Victor couldn’t help but notice that the Creature’s fingers were too stiff to gracefully use the pencil. “I’ll show you some exercises,” he said, quickly demonstrating. “I used them to keep my hands supple. It will help you form your words.”
Elizabeth looked at him, frankly and openly. “Thank you, brother.”
And the Creature said, “Thank you, Victor.”
He grinned – or grimaced – and waved off their thanks, before taking up the wine to help wash down his repast.
William hadn’t moved, but was smiling with a hint of complaisance. “Victor,” he murmured, “you used to scare me… You were the stuff of my nightmares!”
Victor stared at his brother.
“But perhaps no longer.”
Astonishing!
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