“What do I do?” whispered Henry.
“Stay still, stay still,” I hissed. “Elizabeth, the cork!”
She snatched it up from the table. I pulled back the jar’s lid so she could reach inside with her slim hands and jam the cork hard into the inverted top of the vial.
“Thank goodness,” I breathed. Trapped inside, the spirit hungrily twined with Konrad’s hair until it was difficult to tell them apart. Henry’s hands were shaking slightly.
“What’s the best way to put this inside the mud creature?” he asked.
“Let’s do it now while it’s occupied,” I said. The spirit was still ecstatically entangled with Konrad’s hair.
Swiftly we moved to the hole, where Elizabeth knelt and pressed her thumb deep into the center of the little mud creature’s torso.
I seized a small handful of clay, ready. Henry held the stoppered vial against the cavity in the mud man’s chest.
“Look at it,” Elizabeth said, pointing. The spirit had bundled itself and Konrad’s hair into a small compact ball. It pulsed darkly.
“Open and pour,” I told Henry.
He yanked out the cork and shook the vial, and the hair and the spirit rolled out and into the mud creature. Instantly I pushed some clay over the top, sealing the cavity. Elizabeth added a little more, smoothing it. Then we pulled back our hands and just stared.
It was only mud, just a sad little mud baby made by children.
“Will this work?” Elizabeth whispered.
“Yes,” I said fervently.
After a few minutes we left the cottage, secured the door with a padlock, and started the walk back to the château, all our hopes and fears carried silently within us.
* * *
We’d just entered the main hall, our hands still damp from washing them at the stable pump, when Dr. Lesage appeared, coming down the main staircase.
“How’s Mother?” I asked.
“Oh, her spirits seem improved today. She said she had a nice chat with you earlier.”
“May we visit her?” Elizabeth asked.
“She’s taking the rest she needs right now,” said the doctor. “Don’t look so grave, Miss Lavenza. She has no disease of the body. Time will be her cure, I have no doubt.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said Elizabeth.
The doctor turned to me. “And I’m glad to catch you before I leave, young sir. Your parents wanted me to have a quick look at you.”
“But I’m not ill,” I blurted, and regretted it, for I’d sounded almost guilty.
“I merely want to examine your hand,” the doctor said with a reassuring smile. “Your father said he still sees you wince from time to time. Is it giving you pain?”
Elizabeth and Henry left us. We went into the empty dining room, and I sat by the window while the doctor bent his head to examine the ugly stumps of my severed fingers. His forehead bore liver spots, and there was dandruff among his thinning hair. He seemed older than I remembered. His hands were pleasantly warm, and I felt my shoulders relax.
“The wounds are healing well. There is no sign of infection or disease.”
“It was never the wounds that hurt,” I told him.
“No. You feel the pain where the fingers once were, yes?”
I nodded.
“And the pain, how is it?”
“It comes and goes.”
“It is not so unusual as you might think. I have heard of cases where the severed limb continues to give phantom pain for some time. The body remembers its injury.”
“Time will be my cure too, then,” I said. “Mother hasn’t been worrying about me, has she?”
“No, no,” he said. “How is your sleep?”
I almost smiled. If he only knew how deeply I had lately slept—as deep as death itself.
“Fine,” I said.
His elderly eyes regarded me kindly. “I’m not concerned only about your hand, Victor. Your grief is another matter.”
I looked out the window. I did not want to appear weak. I did not want to give anything away.
“I have no doubt,” he said, “that you will heal. But there are things that might speed it. You appear to me pale and rundown. Your father says you’ve been skulking about the house.”
“I’ve just been out for a long walk,” I protested.
“Excellent. I recommend more of the same. Summer seems not ready to leave us quite yet, and I advise you to take full advantage of it. Daily outings. Plenty of fresh air. Walk. Ride. Row. Sail. Take your meat bloodier. And I will leave you an opiate, with instructions to take it only sparingly, and for no longer than three weeks. It will ease your pain, and help you sleep.”
“My sleep is—” And I stopped myself with a sigh.
“Good,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I’ll let your father know we’ve spoken, and remind him to keep you out of doors!”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said with a smile, for he didn’t know how well his prescription would aid my plans.
* * *
The next morning, after delivering a brief lesson, Father released Elizabeth, Henry, and me to the outdoors, with firm instructions to exert ourselves and breathe deeply. Cook had packed us an enormous picnic hamper, and we set off on foot in the direction of the far pasture. The day, as the doctor had predicted, was truly beautiful, a return to summer.
Henry and I, the hamper between us, perspired lightly in the early October sun as we hurried to keep up with Elizabeth. Throughout our morning lecture it had taken all my effort to concentrate on Father’s words, and Elizabeth had seemed so agitated, I’d feared Father would notice.
No one spoke, though my own head was noisy with hopes and questions about what awaited us inside the cottage. When we reached it, I pulled the key from my pocket and hoped no one saw the slight tremble in my fingers.
What will I behold on the other side of this door?
I pushed it wide. The place was completely silent, though filled with a strange, expectant humidity. Elizabeth and Henry moved inside, already lighting lanterns. I closed the door behind me, and the serrated shadows of saws and shovels leapt about the walls like goblins.
The huge worktable blocked our view of the hole we’d dug, and as we walked around the table, gooseflesh prickled up my arms. Step by step we drew closer, our lanterns high. In the swinging light I made out a dark lump at the bottom of the hole. We kneeled.
Right away I saw this was no mere lump. It was bigger, unmistakably bigger, and it had changed entirely. What we had fashioned yesterday with our hands—a muddy, plumped-up gingerbread man—had transformed itself into the fully formed shape of a baby.
“It’s working,” I whispered.
“He’s flipped himself over,” said Elizabeth.
Already to her it was he. I was mute with wonder, staring. It had moved. We had formed it and left it on its back, and it had moved on its own. Many times I’d seen William sleep just like this, on his stomach, knees drawn up, rump raised in the air.
“It’s miraculous,” whispered Henry.
Its face was turned from us. Its body was mud-colored, chafed in places. I noticed the straight, knobbed line of its spine, its tiny feet and toes. We hadn’t fashioned those toes. They had developed overnight of their own accord.
Henry and I turned to each other, shaking our heads in awe. I looked now at the hairless head, which seemed large in comparison with the rest of its body.
“Is it normal?” I asked. “The size of the head?”
“Of course,” said Elizabeth. “Babies’ heads always seem larger than the rest of them. But I’m going to turn him over. I’m worried he can’t breathe properly with his face in the dirt like that.”
“What makes you think it needs to breathe?” I asked.
She looked over at me in surprise. “Of course he needs to breathe.”
“I’m not sure it’s properly alive,” I said, recalling the searing torrent of images from the cave writing. Had the mud man breathed,
even as it had grown?
Elizabeth reached down with her hands.
“Wait, wait!” I said. “You shouldn’t touch it!”
Elizabeth sighed impatiently. “Why ever not?”
“In the images I saw it was never touched. It…” I couldn’t put it into words, the sense that the mud body was a thing of the earth and neither needed nor wanted human intervention. “I just think…”
But I was too late, for Elizabeth had already reached down and taken gentle hold of the mud creature. I felt myself tense as her skin touched its skin. One hand supported its head and neck as she tenderly turned it onto its back.
“He’s warm,” she breathed. “And the skin feels like real skin.”
I’d expected her only to adjust its position, but she lifted it clear out of the hole and cradled it against her body.
Once more, unaccountably, I tensed. “Elizabeth, you should put him down.”
Blissfully ignoring me, she said, “Look at him, you two. Just look at him.”
For the first time I saw its face. Its finger-poke eyes had become serenely closed eyelids. The pinch of mud that had been its nose was now a smooth button with two delicate nostrils. The mouth that had been hastily traced with a fingernail was now a sweet bow-shaped pair of lips, parted slightly.
I willed my shoulders to drop, my stomach to unclench. Why had I not wanted Elizabeth to touch it? Was I afraid it would break? Was I afraid of what I might see in its face?
I looked down to its chest. At the place where we’d buried Konrad’s hair twined with the butterfly spirit, there was a faint blemish, like scar tissue.
The chest flinched once, then again and again, rhythmically.
A heartbeat!
Last summer in my makeshift dungeon laboratory, when I’d made my first alchemical substances, I’d felt a surge of accomplishment and pride, but that was nothing compared to the fevered exhilaration I now experienced. I’d helped create this with my bare hands. But even so, a rogue thought shouldered its way into my head.
I’ve helped create a rival for Elizabeth’s affections. Am I insane?
I watched, mesmerized. Was it breathing or not? And then it came, a slow gentle rise of the chest, and with the exhalation a supremely contented sigh issued from its little mouth.
With sheer delight Elizabeth beamed at us.
“It’s working,” she said. “It’s Konrad, growing.”
“Do you see what this means?” I exclaimed. “That butterfly spirit, it must be some kind of vital spark, the stuff of life itself! We’ve used it to create life!”
“Will it just sleep and sleep as it grows?” Henry asked.
“That seemed to be the way,” I replied.
I had the strangest sensation, watching Elizabeth hold it, seeing the raw love and tenderness in her eyes. She would never look at me like that. Perhaps she’d never even looked at Konrad quite like that. This was something else, something I remembered seeing on Mother’s face when William and Ernest were babies. And then, with a small shiver, I wondered if this made me the father of this mud creature.
Elizabeth and I had made this odd baby together, both our hands shaping him in the earth. Eyes, nose, mouth, heart. We’d fashioned it from the clay. What a strange little family we were.
Its nostrils flared as it drew in breath.
“Does it look like Konrad?” I asked.
She gave a soft laugh. “Can’t you see it?”
“No.”
“You don’t even recognize yourself, then,” she said in gentle mockery.
As though I’d inhaled some strange ether, I was suddenly aware of Elizabeth’s potent new womanliness, and it caused a hungry stirring in me. My body hadn’t forgotten how she’d pressed herself against me in the spirit world. I looked at the mud creature still cradled in her arms.
“You should put it down,” I told her.
Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow. “You just don’t like me holding him. Admit it! Only Victor’s allowed to be the center of attention.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It needs to be in the earth.”
“Does he really? Or are you just making that up?”
I tried to rein in my temper, never easy at the best of times. “I was the one who read the cave writing. And I’m telling you, the mud man was never touched, and it stayed in the ground the whole time.”
Disconsolate, she looked at the hole in the floor. “It seems too cruel.”
More gently I said, “It can’t grow otherwise.”
I gave a small jerk of surprise as the creature’s little arms flexed suddenly. Its head wobbled from side to side, its eyelids squeezed tighter, and its mouth turned down with displeasure.
“It’s waking,” I hissed. “Put it down, now!”
Elizabeth hesitated, and I angrily reached out to take it. But she held it tighter against her.
“He’s hungry, Victor. Look!”
It was blindly nuzzling against her blouse.
“You can’t feed it,” I said irritably, for I found the sight both embarrassing and arousing. “It doesn’t need food.”
“Clearly he does,” said Elizabeth, for the creature was even more agitated now, and from its mouth came a small unearthly cry. I’d heard many babies cry in my life, and each one was uniquely different, but there was something about this sound that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, a keening rattle, like the wind blowing through naked branches.
“Poor little thing. He’s parched!” Elizabeth said. “There’s milk in the hamper. Hold him a moment, Victor.”
“This wouldn’t have happened,” I muttered, “if you’d put it back sooner.”
“Just take him,” she said, and I was acutely aware that I did not want to hold it. I’d held William many times and knew how to do it properly, but the moment this mud creature was in my arms, it began to wail. I felt its little body tense, and its limbs flailed about in fury. Its eyes remained closed, for which I was strangely grateful. No doubt it would urinate all over me shortly.
“Ah, Victor, he has your temper,” commented Henry wryly. “What a surprise.”
“Care to hold it?” I snapped.
Henry hesitated for a moment, eyes wide, and then surprised me by nodding. I gratefully deposited the thrashing thing into his arms, and stood back to enjoy Henry’s suffering. He had no siblings, no experience dandling babies and jollying them along as I’d had. But the moment the mud creature left my arms, its wails quieted. Henry held it well, I must admit, snugly against his chest, swaying it gently from side to side while mumbling something that sounded like Shoo-ba-labba-shoo-ba-labba-shoo-shoo.
“‘Shoo-ba-labba-shoo-shoo’?” I said mockingly.
“I don’t know where it came from,” he replied a bit sheepishly. “Perhaps my mother sang it to me.”
“It did the trick,” Elizabeth said, shooting me a withering look as she returned with a jar of milk. “You have a father’s touch, Henry.”
The pleasure at this compliment blazed from Henry’s face like a beacon. Elizabeth unscrewed the jar of milk, dipped a rag into it, and then pushed a sodden corner between the creature’s lips. It grunted and proceeded to suck hungrily. While Henry held it, Elizabeth fed it until its lips grew lazy and its body limp.
In silence I watched this whole scene, and then noted the way Elizabeth smiled up at Henry, how Henry smiled back, as if they’d just shared something profound and immensely satisfying.
“It’s asleep,” I said tersely. “It needs to go back now.”
Biting her lip, Elizabeth looked down at the hole. “At least let me put a diaper on him.”
“You brought a diaper?” I asked.
“And a blanket.”
I sighed. “Honestly.”
“He might get cold,” she protested. “He’s just a little baby. How can you be so heartless?”
“There’s no point pinning on a diaper,” I said. “It’ll be too small for him within hours. It’ll only hurt him.”
“Oh,” she s
aid. “I suppose you’re right. May I?” she said to Henry, reaching out for the baby. She took it carefully in her arms, smiling. Then, with great reluctance, she placed it back in the hole. Even I had to admit it seemed a pitiful sight. Henry must have gone to the hamper for the blanket, and he gently tucked it around the baby.
“Is it even safe to leave him here?” she asked worriedly.
“Yes. No harm will come to it.” I closed my eyes to better remember the images from the cave. “Even animals wouldn’t go near it. They were… afraid.”
She still knelt by the hole. “Maybe we should bring him inside the château.”
I looked down at her in horror. “We can’t risk it! Someone’ll see!”
“But what if he wakes up and cries?” She looked truly distressed. “I’d want to be there to comfort him.”
“It woke only because we disturbed it.” I scratched at my forehead, feeling somehow that we’d made a mistake, but it couldn’t be undone now. “All it’s meant to do is sleep and grow. It doesn’t need food. It doesn’t need us.”
“Why do you keep calling him ‘it’?” she demanded angrily. “This is your brother, Victor.”
Not yet, I thought.
“We’ll come and check on… him… tomorrow,” I told her placatingly. “And every day. He’ll be fine. I promise.”
I offered her my hand to help her up, and she took it.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said with an apologetic smile. “I’m just a bit… overwhelmed by all this.”
I gave her hand a quick squeeze, and she squeezed back before releasing me. “Tonight we’ll have to return to the spirit world to tell Konrad all is well,” Henry said.
I looked at him, saw his eagerness, and grinned. I was glad I wasn’t alone in craving the spirit world. In Elizabeth’s face I saw hesitation.
“You must come,” I said to her. “It’ll ease Konrad’s mind. Time moves so strangely there. It might seem to him an age has passed and we’ve abandoned him.”
This melted her hesitation. “Yes, all right. Tonight, then.”
And we left the cottage, and our strange sleeping mud creation.