The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(82)

“Carlota, look at me,” he said, and she raised her eyes to him. “I’ve met monsters. They weren’t hybrids and they weren’t you.”

“I could kill a man,” she said and held her hands up, examining them carefully. But her fingers were once again the long, elegant fingers of a lady.

“So could I, if he meant me harm.” He placed a hand over her own, brushing her knuckles with his fingertips. “I don’t know how to help you, but you can’t start by hating yourself.”

“You don’t like yourself, Montgomery,” she said accusingly.

He smiled, a lopsided grin. He thought of Elizabeth, dead and gone long ago, and her specter knotted around his heart. He thought of the mistakes he’d made, the crimes of omission he committed, his numerous weaknesses, and the vices he’d nurtured.

“No, I don’t like myself,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve spent a long time loathing myself and trying to accelerate my demise. But you shouldn’t be like me. Take it from someone who knows.”

“I don’t know who I should be. I’m Dr. Moreau’s obedient daughter, and that’s not enough anymore.”

“Fortunately you don’t have to determine everything this instant.”

“I don’t think there’s much time left,” she said. “The Lizaldes said they’d return.”

True enough, but he didn’t feel like exploring that line of thought at this time, so he raised the mug to his lips and sipped the coffee.

“Look,” he said, when he was done and he had wiped his mouth with the back of his hand for wont of a handkerchief, “we can help the others by staying alive and then we’ll see how we fare. If the Lizaldes stay away for a couple more days, perhaps we could try to move the doctor and take the boat.”

“He remains rather frail.”

“But he’s drinking and eating a little, isn’t he?”

“Only soup.”

“That’s one good sign, and he has woken up. The doctor is strong. I don’t think this malady is going to kill him.”

“You really think we’d be able to take him away?”

Montgomery wasn’t really sure of anything, but Moreau was damn stubborn. Besides, he wanted the girl to calm down. She was all nerves and haunted eyes, and he himself wasn’t faring well that day. He wondered if they could make their way to Yalajau. It had once been a den of criminals and filibusters, but that was in the past, elements left to fabricate romantic novels. It was now simply a port. From there one could try to gain passage to Corozal. Once in British territory, they’d be safe.

Of course, this plan required a chain of events that were hardly set in stone.

“I think we’d better pray to that God of yours that we may fare well,” Montgomery said. “And save another prayer for the hybrids.”

“I’ll pray with you, sir, but afterward we should build a stretcher,” Carlota said. “We’ll need it if we are to transport my father.”

“Perhaps you ought to rest,” he said, wary that if they moved Moreau that instant they’d end up dragging a corpse across the jungle.

“You were the one who suggested it.”

True. But it was supposed to be an imaginary palliative. He hadn’t imagined she’d spring into action, though he supposed it might be a good distraction.

“Do you not know how to make one?” Carlota asked.

“Do you?”

“Yes, I’ve read it in a book,” she said, tipping her chin up proudly.

He smiled. “Open it to the right page, then,” he said and thought perhaps this might work after all. He couldn’t ferry all the hybrids across a lagoon, but he might be able to move a single man.





Chapter 27


    Carlota


On the third day after her father was seized with apoplexy they tried to move him and failed.

Their improvised stretcher was made of flour and bean sacks looped around two pieces of wood with rope, with crosspieces nailed to the poles. It was sturdy, and Montgomery and Lupe were strong enough to carry it and the doctor.

But when the time came to move her father, he seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. His face was flushed and his forehead hot to the touch. Carlota administered aconite to lower his blood pressure and sat next to his bed.

Montgomery had joked she should pray, and now she did, bowing her head and lacing her hands together. Lupe and Montgomery watched her with worry. After a few hours her father’s condition improved, and he slept soundly.

It was nighttime. Carlota went back to her room, and Lupe relieved her. When she walked down the hallway she heard Montgomery speaking in his room. Dear Fanny, he said. The door was closed, and he was speaking in a low voice. She shouldn’t have been able to hear him, but she did.

It was strange how her senses seemed to be growing sharper. Perhaps it was the fact that her father was no longer plying her with lithium and whatever other substances he thought might soothe her. Perhaps it was that a process that had started long ago only now fully came to bloom. But that strange dividing line inside her body, the crack that seemed to nestle at the center of her being, now felt deep and solid. A fault line, filled with dread and anger. Weighed with bone-combusting fury, her mouth was ready to open in a snarl.