On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (39 page)

My mother, beautiful and serene, is there beside me, her touch loving and careful. She is the source of the humming, the melody some foreign lullaby that calms me despite my inability to move my body. She pulls a pair of goggles down over her eyes, and there are gloves on her slender hands. She pushes aside more cloth, and my vision blurs again, the room spinning.

She has a set of small, strange tools on a tray beside her, and she is using them on me, somehow, in a way that I cannot quite make out from this angle. My heartbeat is loud as a metal drum, and there is a whirring of gears and clacking of cogs.

I am suddenly afraid, for I do not understand what I see with my own eyes, but then the fever takes me into blackness once more.

Then I awake, and I am whole and well, with no trace of fever, no sign of any surgery upon my form, and my mind is full of questions.

I have had this recurring dream since I was a child, but it is not the first thing I remember. If I am to tell this tale, I ought to start from the beginning of my life.

I was once an orphan, brought to be the ward of a well-off couple when my poor Italian foster family could no longer afford to keep me. This fine couple, whose name was Frankenstein, told me that I was the daughter of a German lady and a Milanese nobleman, an illegitimate child and the cause of my mother’s death.

For as long as I could remember, my new parents determined that I would one day wed my foster brother, whom I have called ‘cousin’ all my life. He and I were playmates as children, the best of friends, and it did not seem unusual that we should one day be man and wife.

Despite my rise from destitution to comfort, from abandoned to loved, I had always understood my own existence to be average in every way. I was comfortable and happy, and there was nothing strange or out of the ordinary about me or my adopted family.

Oh, the lies we tell to protect the ones we love!

After my adoption by the Frankensteins, my childhood was very much a warm and happy one. My dear cousin Victor was a deeply inquisitive, quiet, intelligent soul. We were constant companions, and I often found my own curiosity piqued by his. He revealed unto me endless wonders of the world and its habits, and we explored the way children do: fearlessly and often, without stopping to rest. We spoke of stars and mountains, rivers and caverns, of flame and electricity, of steam and iron.

Victor was fascinated by the progress of invention, and I found myself often peering over his shoulder at things he studied, curious in ways of my own. More than anything, however, I loved his passion, the gleam in his eyes that spoke of rushing, fathomless thoughts too quick for even his own tongue to keep up.

I suppose I always knew he would be a scientist of some sort; a scholar, definitely. His father wished for a doctor, or lawyer, and indeed, my Victor could have achieved all this and more. But, Victor wanted the thrill of discovery, the sleepless nights of research and experimentation. He wanted a more difficult path.

Victor always got what he wanted.

When we were still quite young, I contracted an illness, that which went by the name of scarlet fever. I was quarantined in my chambers upon diagnosis, to suffer it through or be taken to the arms of God, and my adoptive mother was barred from caring for me as she so wished, on the chance she might contract the fever too.

I remember little of this time spent in dim firelight, rolling in the sheets in a haze of heat and weakness and worry. And then I woke to find my mother there, feeding me soup and giving me water to drink, and dampening my brow with a cool cloth.

“But Mother,” said I, fearful, “the doctor said you could catch my fever!”

“Better to catch your fever, my angel, than let you suffer alone,” said she, then continued to care for me as bravely as any soldier on the front lines of a war.

Again, I dipped into dreamless, fuzzy sleep, and was lost for a time in darkness and warmth. Once, I thought I opened my eyes and saw my mother there, bent over my abdomen with gloves and spectacles on, using a tiny set of metal tools to fix something, like a surgeon. I slept again in confusion.

When I woke again, my mother was there, looking weak and tired herself. I felt somewhat better. The little tools and gloves and spectacles of magnification were nowhere to be seen. I wished to ask her why I had seen these things, but had not the courage to do so, lest I be seen as mad.

“You will get well now, my Elizabeth,” said my mother, smiling distantly. “Your fever has broken and you will mend.”

“Are you well? Have you had the fever, Mother?” My voice was filled with dread, but she only smiled.

“I am still here, am I not? We have so much to do together,” she added. Then, she drifted off to sleep in her chair.

But my mother did catch the fever from me, and though my strength and appetites quickly returned to me, a healthy pink to my cheeks, she grew pale and weak and warm to the touch. When she was confined to bed, I could not bear to leave the room, for fear of losing her, as she had nearly lost me.

When she was at her weakest, she held my hands in hers and lay on her side in bed, smiling at me. I felt full of emotion and fear and worry, but she calmed me as she always had with her steady eyes and gentle hands.

“I have lost one mother,” I said. “I do not want to lose another. Please get well again.” She squeezed my hands. “Illness is unfair, but you should rejoice, Elizabeth, for you will never be ill again and all will be well.”

“How can you know this?” I wondered, perplexed by her words.

My mother’s reply was one I did not expect or quite understand, at first. She told me that she had given of herself to make me whole, and ensured that I would never fall prey to sickness again, and that it had, by some turn of events, made her ill, too.

“But I need you,” I protested. “I cannot let you die this way for saving me.”

“But death for a loved one is not a death wasted,” my mother said, gently. “And Victor needs you. Without you, he will be lost. Always remember that, Elizabeth.”

When Victor was summoned to join us, that our mother might say her goodbyes, he was anxious and pale as any son who fears for his mother. She held our hands in hers and smiled bravely.

“It is my wish and that of your father, that when you two come of age you should be wed. You are meant for each other. Keep each other safe and happy, that’s all I ask, and your father will be comforted.”

When she died, our father mourned deeply, as did we all, for she was beloved in our household and our town. Victor and I sat in the garden in our mourning clothes, watching the wind in the grass and the clouds passing quickly overhead; a storm was doubtless on its way.

“She went peacefully,” I said gently. “She wasn’t angry or upset. That’s good isn’t it?”

Victor said nothing for a while, but I could see the familiar gleam in his eyes, full of thought and pressing need.

“We shall miss her,” he said. His chin quivered a moment, then was still.

“Yes, but we have each other. We shall always have each other, Victor. I shall always be here for you.”

“I know you will. But you will stay here, and I shall be going away to school.” When he spoke, his voice had lost its childlike bounce and fervor, and now withheld a tremble of determination, unusual in a child our age.

“Will you study medicine or law?”

“Both, I should think. And science. There are so many questions, Elizabeth, and I must answer them all.”

“You will be brilliant at whatever you do. And you will come back to me, and all will be well.”

From our mother’s death, I had no wishes but to serve and help the family. I acted as mother and sister and daughter. I was a well-mannered young woman as I grew older, selfless and as kind as I could be to anyone and everyone I crossed paths with. I took over much of the house management, and was well used to the care and keeping of our rooms.

When Victor went off to school, we said a hopeful, but teary, goodbye. When his coach disappeared down the road, I felt a peculiar pang in my chest. For the first time, I wished I was going with him, and learning all the things he would learn. But it was not my place, and so I continued to exist in the small world of our home, waiting for his return, and writing him letters from time to time.

I never thought about the fever dream of my mother with the tools again—not until I found the letters. I was airing out the cupboards in her private rooms which had been locked by the house staff since her death.

My mother’s room felt like just another room in the house, for years had passed, and I was older. I missed her daily, but taking on her responsibilities had helped me to see my place as I grew into adulthood.

This day was different from my usual cleaning routine. Something caught the toe of my shoe while I crossed the room, and I stumbled. On investigation, I discovered that the offending object was the corner of a loose board in the floor. Without hesitation, I knelt and began to pry it out, curious to see what had caused it to come loose.

In the hole beneath the board was a cloth packet, tied with string.

I reached down and pulled it free, and after a moment, decided to unwrap it. The old, stiff cloth peeled away heavily to reveal a leather journal and a stack of letters in envelopes. Most were sealed, many unaddressed. Two were addressed to me, but the second of these had the heading “On Your Wedding Day.”

I opened the first.

My dear angel Elizabeth,

If you are reading this, then I am gone, and I must yield unto you a part of my deepest self, and reveal several things which may come as rather a shock to you. You must not reveal any of this information to your Victor or to my husband, your father. If you cannot promise me these things, you must hereby burn these letters and bury the journal in the soil. There is no shame in this, my dear one, but if you choose to read on, you must be strong, for all our sakes. Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone you are, Elizabeth, and from your state and mine shall never be parted, bliss or woe, no matter what happens.

I paused in my reading. This was most unprecedented. But even as I pondered the meaning of this, the vision of my fever dream, my mother in spectacles and accoutered like a surgeon over my prone form, sprang before my eyes.

There was no way about it but to read on, know the unknown, and keep my mother’s secrets.

When my mother was a young girl, she wrote in her careful, sweeping hand, she and her family, called Beaufort, encountered a small company of gypsies on the road to Paris. The gypsies had broken a wagon wheel, and it was such that my mother’s mother longed to hurry by without stopping.

But my mother’s father was a kind gentleman, and he ordered the coachman to slow warily and ask if the little ragged family was well or if they required assistance. Mrs. Beaufort insisted that this was a certain invitation for trouble and robbery, but Mr. Beaufort refused to hear her.

It was such that the gypsies were not of ungrateful stock. The patriarch of their patchwork family doffed his cap and thanked the gentleman kindly for his offer.

“Our wheel has broken, monsieur,” announced the gypsy man, “and we can go no further. We are too far from town and my wife is with child. We cannot walk.”

He gestured to the woman, seated on the slanted wagon, her belly round and full. She had a sad, knowing look about her, and when Mrs. Beaufort peered out the coach window to see with her own eyes, the gypsy woman sat up straighter.

“Your own daughter, madame,” pleaded the gypsy woman suddenly, reaching out to her. “She is your life’s light, your only joy. You would do anything to see her comfortable and happy.”

Mrs. Beaufort was doubtful, for she feared that there would be dishonesty behind the sentiment, but the pregnant woman seemed gentle and true, despite her destitution.

“If your servant assists us,” said the gypsy man, “I will offer a few coins to spare, although it isn’t much to the likes of you. But my wife, she tells fortunes.”

There was then an obligatory squabble between my mother’s parents regarding the legitimacy of the offer. Mr. Beaufort, in his infinite kindness, agreed to let one of their servants step down from the coach and assist the attachment of a new wheel to the gypsies’ wagon. When the deed was done, Mrs. Beaufort held out her hand from the window, saying, “Very well, read my palm.”

The gypsy woman slowly came alongside the coach, and squinted at the palm proffered to her. “You will have your heart’s desires,” she said, “but it is not your fortune I am meant to tell, madame. It is hers.”

“Whose?” demanded Mrs. Beaufort.

“Your daughter’s.”

At this point, my mother, a polite girl of eight, stood up inside the coach and peered out the window at the gypsy with curiosity. The gypsy woman smiled at the little girl.

“Your mind exceeds your heritage, child,” said the woman kindly, “and your accomplishments will be grand and extraordinary, though few will credit them to you. Do not be disheartened by this, for your own son someday will be an extraordinary mind, too. His dreams will see fruition, but it will be at a terrible price which cannot be avoided.”