The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(65)

“A price, you say. A price for what?”

“For love. For you loving me and—” Her voice faltered. “And for my loving you.”

“But you hate me. You just said so.”

She laughed. “Oh, Pellinore. How can a man so intelligent be so utterly dense? Why is John Chanler my husband?”

He did not answer. She moved closer; he still would not look at her.

“John knew the answer to that question,” she said. “And John is not half as bright as you.”

“I can think of a better question. Why are you his wife?”

She struck him across the cheek. He received it with more stoicism than he had when she’d withdrawn her touch. He barely moved.

“I wish you had died there,” she said matter-of-factly.

“You nearly got your wish.”

“Not in Canada. In Vienna. If you had died in Vienna, I could have played the grieving fiancée and prostrated myself upon your premature grave. John would now be happily married to some bird-witted New York socialite, and I would have fallen in love again. I would not be in this hell of loving a man whom I despise, for as long as you walk this earth, I shall love you, Pellinore. As long as you draw breath anywhere—here or ten thousands miles from here—I will love you. I can’t help loving you, so I choose to hate you . . . to make my love bearable.”

“You—You should not—Muriel, there are certain things we should never . . .” For the first time in my memory, the monstrumologist struggled for words. “You should not tell me these things.”

“No, I want you to hear them. I want you to know I still love you. I want you to think about it for the rest of your pitiable life. You abandoned me for a cold and heartless mistress, and on the day Will Henry finally leaves you for good, I want you to think about it, and each day thereafter until you are old and dying alone on your deathbed, until the debt is repaid, unto the final reparation for your cruelty.”

Like a falling man who grabs whatever might be nearby, no matter how flimsy, he said, “Will Henry will never leave me.”

I was back in bed when he opened the bedroom door. Through slitted lids I watched him watch me. The door eased closed. Then it opened again. He said my name. I did not answer. He shut the door.

I heard their voices pick up again. Or thought I did. I was terribly hot suddenly, and my breath was quick. I wondered if I was coming down with a fever. Perhaps it was not voices I heard at all but the echoes of them, the memory made tangible by the Death Worm’s venom. I had retreated to my bedroom when he’d walked her to the door—surely Muriel had gone. I began to sweat. Paranoia . . . delusions . . . burning urine. I ticked them off one by one. Gangrene . . . bleeding. I reached under my nightshirt and gingerly touched my testicles. Had they grown any? How would I know if they had? It was not as if I measured them every morning.

In the outer room the murmuring gently swelled, receded. Closing my eyes, I had the sensation of something slipping, a loosening, like a poorly tied knot unraveling, and the voices undulated in what had been loosed in me, a sensuous undercurrent beneath the surface of the vast sea in which I found myself floating.

The latter poses the greater threat. . . . You’ll be fine one moment, and the next you may be convinced you can fly.

I cannot attest to things my eyes have not seen.

And I do not mean to disparage them.

I know I was not myself; I know in my blood swam the poison.

But in the outer room there were voices and then there were none; there was no closing of the door or the bidding of good night.

In the outer room the voices fall and do not rise again. In the empty space where they had been, a woman lifts her emerald eyes. In them the mirror that defines him, that gives him shape and substance. Without their light his shadow has more substance than he.

What have we given?

He stumbles alone through a broken landscape; the wind whistles in the dry bones; there is no water.

In her eyes, the spring.

What have we given?

He has seen what the yellow eye sees; he has prayed in the abandoned cathedral among the dry bones, kneeling in the ruins; he has heard his name spoken by the high wind, by the dry limbs strumming the sterile air.

He has known these things. He is the monstrumologist. Too long he has been in the desolation.

Now, in her eyes, the abundance.

Some would judge them. I do not. If it was a sin, it was sanctified—the trespass consecrated by the act itself. He met himself in the purity of her eyes and obtained absolution upon her altar.

In the outer room their shadows meet and become one. The starving man eats; he drinks his fill from the pure waters overflowing. Her sweet breath. Her skin golden in the firelight. For a moment, at least, he tastes what his enigmatic mistress, the one for whom he rejected this love, cannot provide. In the abundance of her emerald eyes, Pellinore Warthrop found himself in another human being at last.

FOLIO VI

Reparation

“IN THIS METROPOLIS, LET IT BE UNDERSTOOD, THERE IS NO PUBLIC STREET WHERE THE STRANGER MAY NOT GO SAFELY BY DAY AND BY NIGHT.”

—JACOB RIIS

TWENTY

“A Beautiful Day”

He burst into my room early the next morning bearing a tray burdened with eggs, toast, pancakes, sausages, cranberry muffins, apple cobbler, and orange juice. My startled expression upon this completely unexpected and uncharacteristic display of largess did not go unnoticed. He laughed aloud and placed the tray before me with a flourish; he even snapped the napkin open and arranged it with great formality around my bandaged neck.