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Elizabeth had long believed crickets made the most beautiful music, their songs crafted with a natural spontaneity that made human choruses seem overly rehearsed in comparison, their calls and responses born of an instinct too raw to be equaled by inanimate orchestra strings. She leaned into the night to listen. She had opened her window because she could not sleep, and a chilly breeze grazed her cheek on its way into the room. She watched after the wind.
Still reeling from the discovery of Victor’s stunning triumph over death, she was more convinced than ever that anything was possible. She fancied the breeze might be a spirit. A curious, gentle sort of ghost who was merely passing through in search of its partially recycled body.
Elizabeth turned away from the window to search behind her. There was no further movement, no sound beyond the harmonious crickets outside. She sighed, admonishing her own imagination, and went to retrieve a hairbrush she had left out on the nightstand beside her bed.
Her hair was loose, flowing unimpeded down her back. It was not very tangled. She had brushed it an hour or so earlier, just before her initial unsuccessful attempt at sleep. Still, she was soothed by the process of neatening it. The bristles massaged her scalp and tugged pleasantly all the way down to the ends, which she had permitted to grow well past her waist.
She liked having it unpinned. Unkempt. Free.
She willed the ritual to relax her, shutting her eyes, focusing on the feel of the brush and the movement of her hair. And the absolute silence.
Her brow furrowed. She opened her eyes. Why had the crickets gone quiet?
There was a low oath, almost lost on the whisper of the night air. And then an unmistakable, hoarse, halting voice. “Victor!” The name seemed to be bitten in two, forced through clenched teeth. “Vic-tor…”
Elizabeth jumped half out of her skin at the clatter of her hairbrush striking the wooden floor and realized only then that she had dropped it. She raced to the window and peered out at the grounds. She did not believe he would be there, despite what she had heard. She had seen where Victor kept him—the night seemed colder as she pictured the holding cell—and did not think even a whole and healthy man could have escaped such ironclad restraints.
Nevertheless, there he was, a bone-white, impressively gigantic figure, lumbering away from the tower, staggering upon the Earth. He did not seem to know which direction he was headed. His progress was erratic, his footsteps excessively large and his long legs stiff. Elizabeth could not help but to liken his unpracticed gait to the first, spindly-limbed ventures of a newborn colt.
The image was endearing. For a moment, she considered doing nothing. She could continue to stand at the window and observe his escape. Her interest in insects had begun as pure observation. Before she had known the empowering pleasure of casting a net and possessing a butterfly, she had loved to sit back and watch.
It was truly fascinating to witness a creature going about its usual business in its natural environment, particularly when that creature had next to nothing in common with humans, especially when the world was enormous and brutal and the creature was so fragile and small. In the beating of an insect’s wings, Elizabeth saw a triumph so unlikely as to be magical. So easily it might be crushed. Yet it continued not merely to live but to fly.
Victor’s creature had no usual business, no natural environment. His head spun jerkily upon his neck, as though his senses were under attack. He looked down, then sideways, then up. His chin lifted higher and higher, and whatever his intentions, he stopped drifting from the laboratory that had birthed him and stood frozen as he beheld the limitlessness of the sky.
Elizabeth’s heart went out to him, and she followed it. She did not go after him with any intention to stop him. She merely wished to share in his completely unsatiated curiosity. She longed to peer through him as one does a lens on a microscope, to see the familiar and ordinary transformed into something entirely new.
“Wait!” She rushed to him, her nightgown gathered in her fists. She had neglected to put on a robe, and she loved that this shirking of modesty did not matter, would be meaningless and unnoticed by him.
He knew no customs by which to measure or confine her. With him, as in nature, she had no prescribed, proper part to play. She simply was.
Still, her urgency, if not her state of dress, seemed to alarm him. His eyes widened, and he attempted to drift more quickly away, though this only worsened his poor balance. His foot caught in an irregular dip in the ground. He grunted in wordless surprise. He curled inward, bent elbows and knees shrinking him as he fell.
“Oh! I’m sorry.” Elizabeth caught up and knelt beside him. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Are you all right?”
Victor’s creature looked up at her, cocking his head as her intonation rose slightly to indicate the question. He glanced from her to himself and back again, then, at length, shifted. But not to rise. Merely to mimic her crouch.
Now that she was not pursuing him, now that she had halted by his side, he seemed content to remain where he was. He was not attempting to get away anymore.
“Did you come out for a walk?” She posed another question and smiled when his head again twisted curiously, canting this time to the other side. “Couldn’t you sleep? I couldn’t. Sometimes, walking helps calm me enough to sleep, but I usually stay inside after dark.”
“Vic-tor…” He breathed, enunciating with great effort, his jaw giving way only by degrees and his grayish lips barely flexing.
Elizabeth grinned, wanting him to know that she saw and appreciated the effort, even as she privately wondered at the cruel restrictions imposed by dead flesh. Would he ever improve? Was Victor conducting any tests?
“Yes,” she said, “I know Victor often goes without rest too. Probably longer than he should.”
He watched her in silence. His stare did not hold to her eyes but explored the entirety of her face. He spent equal time taking in each of her features, as though each was some sort of conundrum, a piece of a puzzle he could not yet intuitively envision whole.
Elizabeth’s skin prickled. It was a cool night. If she was honest, it was a cool night… and she was not entirely comfortable assuming the position of the insect on the other side of the glass. It felt exposing, being the one being so detachedly and carefully observed.
“Well.” She cleared her throat and straightened, rising matter-of-factly to her feet. She pointed up as a means to divert his attention. “What do you make of the sky? Were you star-gazing? That’s a very popular pastime, you know.”
He did not follow her finger. It was only when she turned her own face skyward that she finally felt the weight of his focus ease off.
“The stars are beautiful, aren’t they? Shame we can’t see them during the day. It’s just that the sun’s so bright—”
Victor’s creature stood, drawing himself up to his full height.
Elizabeth lost her train of thought, the words she had been about to say scattering out of reach. She was struck by many things. The sheer immensity of him, the impossibility of him, the angry sutures that visually divided him into pieces even as they held him together.
He exhaled and reached up, extending his arms over his head, as if it might be possible for him to pluck a star straight from the heavens.
Elizabeth smiled at that. But the sheer ambition of the gesture reminded her of Victor, and her expression froze in place.
She looked around herself, her eye caught by fireflies springing up from the ground. One landed in her hand, and she curled her fingers around it, its tiny searching legs a mere tickle on her palm. She thought of showing the creature the sorts of almost-stars he could truly capture, truly hold.
In the end, she let the firefly go without turning to face him. She knew she would have to lead Victor’s creature back inside, returning him to his cell. And—newly troubled by the memory of the monarch butterfly she and Victor had confined to a small glass case—she had no desire to share anymore prisoners with anything, anyone, else.