1799- Arctic Circle
The Creature looked out over the frozen landscape, wondering what was so great about this pole that people would die in the attempt to find it. He was first person to reach the pole, something Captain Walton had only dreamed of. The Creature had told Walton he was leaving to immolate himself, on a great funeral pyre. He had made it a mile from the ship when it dawned on him that a pyre was impossible, so far from true land. But the Creature continued towards the pole. He had heard tales of a good land free of ice, and felt the search worthwhile. But the stars didn't lie, and he was as far north as possible on this sphere known as the earth.
Standing literally on top of the world, the pointlessness of his life crushed down upon him. For the past two years, his life had been fueled by hatred and revenge. But now the creator was dead, and the creation held no value to anyone else. He wandered west, not realizing it. The Creature needed a purpose, like all others. He wandered for days, the isolation taking its toll. He was like a moving catatonic, not taking notice of his surroundings. Then, the white bear attacked.
It was a large male, and an angry one. The Creature snapped out of his fugue, and adrenaline began to course through his body. The bear leapt at him, and the Creature just missed being crushed by its bulk. It swiped at the Creature, opening gashes on his chest. The Creature threw himself at the beast, engaging it in a titanic wrestling match. The two fought for quite a while, before the Creature managed to flip the bear over on its back. It was helpless, and too weak to right itself. A moment's pity washed over the Creature, before he remembered that it was a matter of survival. With one powerful arm, the Creature snapped the bear's neck. Overcome by the exhaustion, he collapsed on the ice.
The Creature awoke to see faces looking down on him. They were wrapped in furs, and had yellowish skin and narrow eyes. They vaguely reminded him of the peoples he had seen while leading his creator across central Asia. As he moved to stand up, they cringed in fear, but didn't run. The Europeans had seemed short to him, but these people were almost the size of children in comparison. They had dogsleds with them and spears. They were hunters. He could hear them whispering among themselves, and saw them gesture at the corpse of the bear, and then at him.
The Creature looked at the corpse of the bear, then back again at these strange people. He understood. His height and the killing of the bear had infused them with a type of awe, but also made them suspicious of his presence. They weren't sure whether he was a god or demon. The people discussed the situation for quite a while, and the Creature waited. With nothing to do but think, he tried to discern who these people were. He then remembered when he was watching Walton's ship that he had heard the captain mention a people called "Esquimaux," who had learned to survive in the Arctic areas north of the Americas.
They quieted, and a hunter let one of his dogs approach the Creature. It did so willingly, and even laid its paw on his hand. This seemed to settle the debate, and the men prepared their sleds for departure. One of them gestured to the Creature, indicating that he was to come with them. He didn't see much point in refusing, and rode standing up on one of the sleds behind the driver. The Creature was apprehensive at what awaited him.
The landscape changed as the sleds progressed. The Creature could see rock protruding above the ice, indicating that they had reached true land and left the icy ocean behind. They eventually turned to a more southwesterly direction and the Creature could see unfrozen seas to his left. He realized that the hunters must have been desperate to have traveled so far north. The group had several seals on the sleds, as well as the white bear's carcass.
The hunting party reached their home village around sunset, and the Creature's curiosity was piqued by what he saw. The dwellings were cabins constructed from what appeared to be driftwood. This resourcefulness impressed the Creature, who had never even heard of such a shelter. The women and children came out from the cabins to greet the men, but were shocked by the Creature's appearance. The men explained what had happened in hushed tones, and the women began to view him with awe.
That night at the village gathering the white bear was skinned, and its hide was given to the Creature as a prize. The Creature accepted the pelt and calmly backed away from the fire. He remained in the shadows, remembering his first encounters with large groups of people, feeling it was best to stay on the fringe of this new community.
A piercing screech echoed out over the village. The Esquimaux cringed in fear and fled to their dwellings. The Creature had never heard such a sound before, from man or animal. He had never feared any animal, but this new sound filled him with dread. It passed quickly, but the Creature thought about that sound for a long while.
Weeks passed, and the Creature stayed in the village. He remained apart from the group, but had gained a better grasp of their language by listening to them. He wasn't exactly a master of the dialect, but the Creature could now understand some words and use them in conjunction with hand signals in order to crudely communicate. The Creature could now somewhat understand the stories the men told around the fire. His favorite was the one about Sedna, thrown by her father into the icy sea only to live on as the goddess of sea creatures. He felt a connection with this deity, cast off by their parent only to thrive in the wilderness.
But no stories were ever told about that shrieking the Creature had heard on his first night in the village. He asked an elder once about the noise, but the old man only quivered in fear and refused to talk. No one else would speak to the Creature about it, and the most he heard was when one of the hunters muttered something that sounded like "evil" to him, although he couldn't be sure of the translation.
The Creature decided to find information on his own, and took to exploring this new landmass. He didn't find much, but what he found justified the fears of the small community. He once found odd shaped tracks in the snow that he couldn't define, and bizarre scratches on the surfaces of rocks, but they led nowhere and answered nothing. Finally, after exploring for a few days, he found the corpse of a white bear that had been torn to pieces and gnawed upon. Whatever haunted this place was no fantasy or superstition dreamed up by frightened people, but a very real threat. The Creature headed back to the village, draped in his bear skin.
When the Creature returned to the village, it was after sunset, and all the families had returned to their cabins. He headed for his own crude dwelling that he had built on the village's edge. The peaceful quiet of nighttime had always soothed the Creature, but the day's discoveries had made him feel uneasy in the darkness for the first time since his "childhood." He was hurrying towards his hovel when he heard the shriek again, followed by a man's scream. The unseen terror was somewhere in the village.
The Creature froze for a minute, and then ran in the direction the sound had come from. He cautiously approached the cabin belonging to one of the men who found him. All was now silent, but for the terrible sounds of sucking and crunching coming from within. The Creature peered inside the entrance, and what he saw filled him with pure terror, something he hadn't felt since those scary and confusing moments when his eyes first opened in Ingolstadt.
Blood covered the ground inside the cabin. The poor man was completely torn apart, similar to but far worse than the dismembered bear. But that wasn't what frightened the Creature. He had killed men himself, although never this barbarically. The thing that had done this was still there, chewing on one of the man's limbs. The Creature had been called "monster" and "filthy demon" by his creator, but now he beheld something that truly fit those terms. The thing was almost totally impossible to describe. It seemed to be a pulpy mass covered in feelers. The only definite shape it had was in its leathery wings and five pointed star-like head.
It sat there busily eating, not noticing the paralyzed Creature in the doorway. A whimper came from the back of the cabin, and the thing turned to see its victim's teenage daughter quivering in fear. Sensing an easy target, it moved in for the kill. This snapped the Creature out of his paralysis. He couldn't stand by and watch this thing kill another innocent person. As little as he cared for the human race, he was fully prepared to die defending one of them.
The Creature let out a fierce cry, and leapt upon the monstrous beast. It shrieked in surprise and clawed at the Creature, managing to grab and tear off a piece of his coat. The beast touched a feeler to the Creature's head, and his mind was filled with visions of a great city, a journey north, a finally a feeling of intense cold that seemed to last forever. His mind bursting with sensory input, the Creature let go of the beast, and it flew away into the night. The Creature's mind was in overdrive, and he collapsed from the stress.
The Beast had never encountered something like this before, not even in the glory days of the great city when its people were supreme rulers of this world. It had seen many strange things, in the city and elsewhere, but this being was entirely unique. The scent was similar to a human's, but something didn't fit. Thinking all the while, the Beast returned to its lair, a shallow cave miles from the human village. It wasn't until then that it noticed what was in its claws. The Beast had torn a pocket off the strange thing's clothing in the struggle. It threw the pocket down, and a packet of papers fell out. The writing was unintelligible to the Beast, but the accompanying sketches made things plain to it. It felt ecstatic. Years had passed while the Beast took out its anger at being buried alive in the ice on the locals and wildlife, years since it had a true goal or purpose. Now the Beast was determined to capture this strange man and … It did not know what would happen after that.
The Creature awoke four days later, wrapped in blankets. The deceased man's daughter, who had cared for him during his swoon, was sitting next to him. He sat up, and tried to comprehend what had happened, but he was still too shaken from the experience to think straight. The girl moved to get him some food. It was then that the Creature first noticed the missing portion of his coat. The right pocket was missing, as was its contents. The Creature bolted from the cabin.
That thing had Frankenstein's notes!
The Creature waited. It had been weeks since he had awakened, and no developments had occurred. Perhaps the beast had not been as intelligent as he had assumed it was, but the visions it had given him left no doubt of that. This thing would realize what it taken, and would return, of that the Creature had no doubt. He was determined to remain vigilant, and not be taken by surprise when the inevitable happened. No more of these people would die, if the Creature could help it.
The dead man's daughter had become his shadow, following him wherever he went. Her home had been shunned by the village, and she was left with nowhere to live, so the Creature let her inhabit his ramshackle hut with him. At first she would cringe at the sight of him, but as the weeks passed, the cringing grew less, and eventually she could look him in the eye without so much as blinking. They became constant companions.
The Creature was uncertain of how to handle this situation. Every contact he had with man or woman had ended in tears, screams, or death. Even Frankenstein had refused him a wife, and what did that say about his own nature, his own murderousness? The Creature feared that he was destined to be a pariah, destined to wander. He would leave this place after that thing was taken care of.
The strange man-thing never noticed that the Beast had been watching him during those quiet weeks. It had decided to wait, and not make its presence known in the village. Instead, it reconnoitered the village, keeping an eye on the man-thing from the shadows. The Beast still had no idea what it would do with it, but it would think of something. Its race was known for its ingenuity. It watched constantly, and took notice of the budding relationship between its quarry and the girl. The Beast knew what to do.
Then, one night, the Creature was awakened from his sleep by the sound of screaming. He jumped up and sprang into action, only to see the girl being dragged out of the hut by the monstrosity that had killed her father. The Creature gave chase, but the thing took to the skies on its wings and outdistanced him. He got his bearings; the beast had flown west, towards higher ground. He continued his pursuit in that direction.
As before, the beast itself had left no visible tracks, but on the third day of the pursuit, the Creature found a sign. A few strands of the girl's hair were left on a rock. No doubt, the beast wanted to be followed. The Creature proceeded with caution, taking steps to avoid any traps that may have been set along the way.
The hunt continued for several days, and the Creature found more signs left along the path to point him in the proper direction. A few more strands of hair here, a few pieces of bone from the girl's necklace there, they all guided the Creature's path. The Creature climbed up cliffs, and crossed frozen plateaus, until the signs stopped a few feet from an icy cave. He stopped, and thought things over.
The Beast was pleased with how things had progressed. Everything had gone according, and now it could smell its quarry just outside the cave, frozen in indecision. It turned to the bait it had snagged so skillfully, and ran a feeler over the unconscious girl's face. It had left her unharmed, but had kept her catatonic for the time being. There was no point in killing its only bargaining chip. She would leave alive, her friend wouldn't leave at all. The Beast moved to wake her up.
The Creature entered the cave, and came face to face with the Beast. The girl was lying on the cave floor, awakening from the trance she had been put in. She ran to the Creature, who gestured for her to leave the cave. After convincing the girl to go, the Creature faced his adversary. It made some guttural noises, which could only be its speech. The Beast moved a tentacle towards the Creature, trying to snag his foot and put him in a trance. The Creature dodged the attack, and leapt straight at the abomination. He tore its wings off first, making sure it couldn't fly away. He also just barely avoided a lunge from the beast's head, which crashed into the cave wall, making the icicles on the ceiling shake back and forth. The Creature took notice of this, and attacked the cave walls himself. Repeated body slams and kicks knocked the icicles loose, and they impaled the beast in multiple places, pinning it to the ground. The part that could still move was the head, which was still snapping its jaws in frustration. The Creature calmly walked over, and crushed the head with a single, mighty stomp.
The Creature emerged from the cave to find the girl waiting for him. She threw her arms around him, and in a gesture of affection, touched her nose to his. The Creature finally accepted her, and returned the gesture. They made the long journey back to the village, and when they finally returned, the Creature was greeted as a conquering hero. Eventually, they abandoned the hut for a dwelling more suited for the new village chief. They lived together in happiness, and in time, so did their children. The Creature had once asked his creator for a mate, but the creator had denied him that. What had once been refused had now been earned, and the Creature was finally happy.