"Do you remember how to read?" Victor asks.
She doesn't answer; she isn't certain.
He drags a hand over his face, spider-thin fingers passing to reveal red-rimmed eyes and sallow cheeks. "If you are to participate in proper society, then it is imperative that you read," he tells her impatiently. "We must renew your education at once."
Some unmarked passage of time later, Victor returns to her with a box, an old wooden thing that smells of dirt and tobacco. Dry and musty and sweet. He opens it with the lid to her, hinges whining from disuse, so she cannot see the rest of its contents. A rustle of paper and clink of glass and a moment later, he withdraws a stack of old cards, yellowed and fox-soft around the edges. He removes the parcel carefully, almost reverently, fingers reaching into deep places.
Holding one card in front of her face, one emblazoned with a letter in scarlet—and she wonders at that, if it's a coincidence, surely there are so many different colors for a letter to be—he locks his eyes to hers.
"Now," he breathes. "Can you tell me a word that starts with 'A'?"
She marvels at the frailty of other bodies. Other bodies; not hers. They're so easily broken. She is not.
Tracing one finger down the man's chest, she draws a path of stark white amongst the red. She thinks of a river winding through the forest. A nighttime cobblestone street made slick and shining through the rain and lamplight. She cuts a trail like chalk and when she brings her finger to her mouth, she tastes iron, salt, penny-copper.
"Animal," she murmurs.
"I can't imagine mathematics will be terribly important for you," Victor says to her, not unkindly, "but I suppose you should know the basics."
"If you say so," she says, her voice soft, her eyes round, her lips turned upward into the shape of a smile.
His grin is truer than hers, weak and watery though it may be. He hasn't got a hunter's smile. But he thinks he has a hunter's heart.
"We shall begin with the building blocks of addition and subtraction," he says, and out from the cigar-box he pulls out a worn leather satchel, pouring from it five glass marbles gone cloudy and dull. He holds them out for her to see, five tiny worlds held in the mercy of his soft hand. "How many?" he asks.
"Five," she replies dutifully.
Victor nods. "Very good."
Nimble fingers reach into his palm to pluck. Four marbles disappear, clicking quietly back into the leather bag. He holds his hand out flat to show what remains of his onslaught.
"And now?" he asks.
God, their screaming was loud. It still hurts her ears, ringing in them long after the cacophony has left the air. She strolls through the house and comforts herself with softer sounds instead, the swish of her skirt over the hardwood floors, the whisper of her fingers on the wallpaper, the quiet clicks of a grandfather clock, the whimper of a boy...
She stops. The noise was so quiet, she almost could have imagined it. She might have. God knows she's imagined enough in the night.
But she thinks back to the photo on the mantelpiece, and she realizes.
She retraces her steps, her footfalls muffled by carpet richer than she ever could have hoped to touch, before. She strolls back up stairs, down hallways, past flickering gas lights and mahogany doors and paintings with their subjects smeared red. She doesn't stop until she reaches the entry to the study, where two bodies are strewn amongst torn linens and broken wineglasses in a tableau of her own design. It will be quite a nasty mess for the maid to find when the rest of the family returns.
A boy weeps over his cousins, too broken by the sound of his own tears to recognize her presence until it's too late. She kneels before him, pressing two fingers gently under his chin, raising his face toward hers.
Fear glistens in his eyes. He is younger than the other two. But he is old enough. Old enough to labor in a shipyard, anyway.
"One," she says.
"Why do you want to know?" Victor asks.
She ducks her head shyly. "I want to know about the things that interest you."
He chuckles. "Perhaps a bit of science would do," he concedes. "You won't understand any of it, mind, but you'll be far more interesting with something semi-substantial in your head."
"You think I'm not good enough," she replies quietly.
He doesn't look up from his book, so he doesn't see the anger knit in the wrinkles of her brow. "Of course you're good enough," he argues, distracted. "You're beautiful, aren't you?"
She doesn't reply. It wouldn't make a difference if she did. His head is too addled by cotton and morphine and the stink of his own brilliance to take note of anything that happens in front of him. So assured of his own genius he thinks he would spot anything wrong from a mile away.
(He didn't spot it in the basement, in the stairwell, in his own bed. Maybe he should abandon the telescope for a pair of spectacles instead.)
"I'm researching magnetics," Victor tells her. "The attractive and repulsive relationships between objects as a product of the motion of electric charge. In ancient India, surgeons used magnetics as part of their medicinal practice. Some of their theories are still applicable today."
"Is that how you made me?" she asks.
He startles, looking up at his book for the first time. "What?"
"Is that how you helped me?" she corrects.
Is that wariness in his eyes? She curses herself for her lack of subtlety. His finger slots between the pages of his book like he's about to close it.
"It's just—it all seems so strange to me," she says, fluttering the fans of her eyelashes like she used to do so long ago, in another country, another lifetime. "Almost like magic."
Victor chuckles, tension melting from the brittle lines of his jaw and his shoulders. "No magic," he tells her. "Just simple science."
Reaching a trembling hand out toward her (it's just the smallest tremor, been a few hours since his last dose, after all), he strokes her arm, his knuckle sharp through the thin cotton of her blouse. She has to force herself not to recoil at his touch.
"The laws of two bodies attracted to each other through a different kind of gravity," he nearly whispers. "That's all."
His eyes draw back up to hers. "Do you understand?"
She watches them from across the street, looks on as the two of them inspect the wares of a vendor hawking trinkets. She's almost surprised they don't see her—rather, that he doesn't smell her—but then again, she supposes that death will do that to you. Cure your consumption and rewrite your accent and change you at the most fundamental level. She's not even sure how much of her is left anymore.
But at least a small piece of her is lodged in the heart of the man across the street.
Ethan grins at the woman on his arm, the woman they met outside the theatre that night. Vanessa, she thinks her name is. And doesn't that just burn. There is no pitying gaze in Vanessa's eyes or patronizing smile on her lips, not this time, not when there isn't some poor dying waif around for her to judge, but those expressions left an imprint behind. A scar.
It is unfathomable that Ethan would be attracted to such a woman. Unforgiveable.
(She wonders if Vanessa is "good enough," if anyone complains of the things in her head.)
It isn't that she's unpleasant to look at. Hers is a cold beauty, but a beauty nonetheless. Hair dark as ebony, skin white as snow, lips a blood ruby red. Vanessa is a gothic fairytale brought to life, gossamer-delicate with shadows in her eyes. But there is nothing about her that should prompt Ethan to laugh at her words, or whisper in her ear, or wind his fingers around hers. Across the street, her fists clench in her gloves, leather squeaking against leather, her own hands empty.
She has lost so much, and here Ethan is, giving the last of her treasures away. This piece of him rightfully belongs to her. Is nothing of hers safe?
Anger prompts her to step off the curb; rage propels her across the street. Her heart pounds in her ears and the noise of the bustling London crowd fades away. She doesn't know what she's going to do, only that it's going to be bloody.
Nothing can stop her except the sound of one word.
"Brona," she hears Ethan's voice over the sound of her blood roaring.
Her steps falter and her feet stop and her heart along with them. Has she been noticed?
Ethan reaches down into the worn velvet of the jewelry-vendor's display, and his hand returns to view with something gold in it. It's a tiny statuette, once-garish colors now tarnished and faded with age and use. The statuette depicts a man with a halo above his head and a staff in one hand.
"What did you say?" Vanessa asks in her impossibly perfect voice.
Shaking his head, Ethan turns to the vendor. "Who is this?" he asks.
The elder man squints at the statue through wire-rimmed glasses. "That'd be St. Jude, sir," he explains. "Faithful servant and friend of Jesus, patron of hopeless cases and of things almost despaired of. I can pack 'im up all nice-like for a penny."
"Please do," Ethan says. He tosses the vendor the statue and a few coins, significantly more than the vendor asked for. The old man salutes him with a grin.
"Are you turning into a magpie," Vanessa asks, turning away to look at something prettier and newer, "or is this some hitherto-unknown stroke of sentimentality?"
Ethan smiles. Almost absentmindedly, like he's done it so many times that he doesn't think twice about doing it now, he draws something out from under his shirt. It's an old locket, nothing special, unfashionably plain save for the figure of a saint embossed on the front.
She watches from a safe distance, and if she didn't know any better, she would think that tears prickled at the edges of her eyes.
"Something like that," Ethan says, his thumb running over the locket-front.
Their package wrapped and their transaction complete, the two of them pull back together, arms entwining as they set off down the street. She looks after them as they walk, eyes following Ethan as he smiles and laughs. She can't quite describe why, but she feels a terrible urge to follow him, to demand his attention, to scream that she's alive and she's real, to tell him she misses him, to throw her arms around his neck and press a kiss to his jaw and feel his pulse bleat life beneath her lips and talk about—
"Love," she whispers.