The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(76)

“You be careful,” Montgomery told Cachito. “Take care of each other and be smart.”

“I’ll try. But, Montgomery, I’m not sure we can get far,” Cachito said. The hybrids were still finishing packing clothes and wrapping things with twine, moving in and out of the huts, while Montgomery and Cachito spoke. The excitement and nervousness were palpable, and Cachito looked half terrified. “I thought your idea to ambush them was good.”

“And should you be wounded? Or die?”

“Some of us want to fight.”

“You want to fight. Most of the others don’t.”

“Well, you want to fight, too,” Cachito said defensively. “Maybe you even want to die heroically for Loti.”

“Trust me, boy. I’d rather not die soon.”

“You used to want to. And it’s really stupid, Montgomery, to simply send us off like this.”

“We took a vote, remember?”

Cachito grumbled, and Montgomery placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiled. He handed Cachito his old compass and a map.

“My uncle gave it to me as a gift. It’s made of silver, engraved with my initials. See? Now it’s yours. Maybe it’ll help you find the way. At worst, it might be worth something.”

“Montgomery, but it’s your compass.”

“It was. Don’t lose it in a card game. If you do, steal it back. I know I have from time to time.”

Cachito laughed at that. After that there were more preparations and a few matters to be sorted out, but soon enough came the time to walk to the portón and throw open the double doors.

Ramona wept and told Carlota to be a good girl, and Carlota wept, too. But there was no tearful, drawn-out goodbye between Lupe and the girl. Lupe seemed eager to depart and gave Carlota a quick hug before slipping aside.

The hybrids hoisted their belongings—food, clothes, the other supplies they’d scrounged—and they began to walk together. The ones with crippled limbs were at the rear, moving slower, and the younger ones, afflicted with less deformities, at the front. It was a tapestry of glossy and mangy furs, misshapen arms brushing against the dirt, crooked spines. Yet they moved with an odd grace despite the disproportion of their bodies as they went past the gates of Yaxaktun, past the Moorish arch and the two ceiba trees. Past the many enclosures that separated them from the outside, until the last of the hybrids was out of sight. The sun was ending its journey and the land would soon be swathed in darkness. It would hopefully conceal them. In this distant spot visitors and wanderers were few, yet the veil of night would be an extra precaution.

“Lupe hardly said a word to me,” Carlota whispered.

“It’s not always easy to say goodbye. I’m no good at it.”

“Yes, but still…I wish she’d said more. I may never see her again, and she—”

The girl seemed to choke on her words and rushed back inside the house. He closed the doors, barred them, and walked into the house. He found Carlota back at her father’s bedside, as she’d been most of the day, and quietly stepped away. He wasn’t any good with tears, either.

He walked around the empty workers’ huts and stopped to admire the herb garden Ramona and Carlota had carefully assembled. He wondered what would happen to it when no one could tend to it, and he glanced at the hogs and the chickens. He would have to open the gates for them, he’d have to let the horses and the donkeys run free, too, and to open the birdcages in the courtyard. He’d have to do that before Lizalde’s men arrived.

He pictured the courtyard, which now grew lush and beautiful, and imagined it neglected, full of weeds and dead vegetation. He’d liked Yaxaktun. Not because of the doctor, who had his grandiose dreams. Montgomery had smaller dreams he’d casually planted in this soil; the dream of quiet and distance from the world.

Night was thick around them now. Montgomery lit a few lamps. He retreated to the sitting room and listened to the rococo clock ticking before seeking the dome of the starry sky. In the courtyard the fountain gurgled, and he dipped a hand in the water, then rubbed it against the back of his neck, relishing the coolness of the water.

Dear Fanny, he thought. But he could put none of his emotions or thoughts into sentences. For once in his life that familiar mechanism failed him. He was left alone, with nothing to anchor him.

“What are you doing?” Carlota asked.

She’d come up quietly to him, as she often did, and he was not startled. “Wasting time,” he said. “Any change in the doctor’s condition?”

“None. I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, her hands fluttering up, fingers grazing her lips for a second.

“Nothing but wait and hope.”

“I thought of going to the chapel and praying for him. But then I thought God might strike me dead.”

“God is not real.”

“I’d be angrier at your blasphemy, but I’m too tired,” she said.

“Do you want me to watch over the doctor for a bit?” he asked, thinking it couldn’t be easy for her to be sitting by the old man’s bed for hours and hours.

“I need a few minutes and a bit of fresh air,” she paused, her voice low. “I feel like we must speak in whispers, though I don’t understand why.”

“One often does, when someone is ill,” he said, thinking of his mother’s final days. He didn’t know what Elizabeth’s final days had been like. Thoughts of suicide were, perhaps, as much an illness as the tumor that drained their mother’s life.