The Monster's Wife(78)

“Can’t credit the doctor lying. Why should he? May lost her life to those monsters and her bones won’t rest until the pair of them are brought to justice.” He straightened and walked over to the ashes. “Look here, a fire.” He kicked the ashes. He was so close, one step more and he’d see her.

“Bones won’t rest, eh? You babbling about the sea ghost your nephews chased after?” The fair man ran his hand through his hair and laughed. “The ghost with slime hanging from her locks? Now I know you’re drunk. Come on man.” He pulled Stuart’s arm. “Let us take the boat out now, before the sky turns black.”

Stuart took one last look at the cave. For a moment his eyes seemed to rest on Oona. Some hidden part of her willed him to see her, the real her, to come and tell her she wasn’t any kind of fiend, but his lost love. It was her heart that wanted it, May’s heart that had loved Stuart. She felt it still with the sense of how good it would feel to be kissed and held close and taken home.

Stuart shook his head and turned around. He followed Andrew outside. Wind caught their talk and threw it booming at the rocks. Then they were gone. Oona let out a ragged breath. Her eyes stung. She sank down. It wasn’t too late to go after them. But if she did and they shouted and threw stones like the others had, she would lose the will to go on.

For a long while after the voices faded, she huddled by the wall of crosses, her forehead pressed against her knees. Can’t credit the doctor lying. What had Adam said last night? Victor. Herr Doktor Frankenstein. The doctor was the one who’d told them to come here. She saw him sitting by candlelight, his deft fingers mending things. A different time, when she was another person, those fingers had touched her breastbone, felt the fault in her heart. He’d sighed and she thought she’d heard him murmur, “What a pity.”

He’d known what was wrong with her. Perhaps he’d even hoped she would die, so he could take her apart and piece her back together. Now he’d told May’s old lover - and her old lover - to come out here and find ‘the monsters’, his monsters. He’d allied himself with the same men who’d beaten him senseless. The other Oona would have wept at knowing that and the tears would have made her feel better. But this Oona was numb, a cold creature lulled by the strange heart beating inside it.

Her back was stiff, her motley skin goose-pimpled by the time she slowly stood and walked outside. The small beach looked bleak in the daytime, the grey sea stretching out cheerlessly until it melted into a slab of slate sky. She picked up a stone and flung it at the waves with a scream, another stone and another, each with a furious cry. A hand clamped over her mouth.

“Hush.”

Oona bit down, thrust her elbow back. A groan. The hand fell from her mouth. She spun around. Adam stood, clutching his gut. His face twisted with rage. He growled and raised his hand. She braced for the blow. His hand dropped and he turned from her.

“Why did you leave me?”

He kept his back to her. “I needed to find more firewood and something for us to eat. I found a good place for us on the far side of those rocks, but the waves are too strong to fish in.”

“Why did you not wake me? Men came. They nearly found me.”

“I thought you would be safe.”

“Victor sent them after us. He told them we were killers.”

Adam turned to face her slowly. His mouth was a narrow line. The scar on his head gleamed like a slowworm in the dull light.

“We must leave this place.”





70


They waded through a roost to find the next cove. Oona’s body was taut and as charged as one of the wires Victor used to bring dead things to life. Each rock they scrambled over seemed like some trick. Seals came up to watch them, eyes dark and curiously human. From the corner of her eye, they looked like men lurking with nets, with knives. Rounding a spill of red stones, they came in view of a curve of white beach.

At the far end of it, two immense black sea stacks rose from the spray. Oona followed Adam across the last of the rocks and onto the beach. The sand that sunk under her toes stretched in a long, silver crescent that ended in the sea stacks. Red cliffs towered behind them, cloaked in mist, and green hills thick with heather rose from the beach. She felt like an ant that had wandered into Eden.

There’d be a snake somewhere. There must be. The whole place was far too open to give them shelter from the men, but Adam seemed not to care. He told her he was going to find wood for a fire and walked away over the sand. She watched his shrinking form clamber over the round stones on the cusp of beach and hill. Then he vanished into the heather.

If he wanted a meal, it was all around them, clinging to the rocks. She turned back to a red rock-pool where mussels and seaweed grew. Swags of sinewy shells came away easily in her new, strong hands. She held up her skirts and dropped them into her dress-lap. The clouds broke as she picked whelks from rock-pools. The sun shone and the sky bloomed cornflower blue. She found a large crab and killed it with a rock between the eyes.

Adam returned with dried ferns, driftwood and a few berries. He squinted at her catch with disgust and piled stones for the fire. She wrapped the shellfish in layers of green weed and baked them on hot stones under the burning sticks. Adam waded into the shallows with a sour look, but when she unwrapped the bundle and he caught the scent of it, he came back and sat down. She handed him a stick and showed him how to poke the meat from the shells, how to crack claws with stones. In the end, he even ate the seaweed. A pair of skuas circled above them, squawking.