Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(37)

DECEMBER 4, 1893

I’ve taken Physalia zollicoffris for myself, and none other.

I may have burned a bridge or two while I was at it.

At present, I am torn between horror and delight, outrageous hope and astonished despair; but this was how it has to be, isn’t it? Everything has been leading up to this eventual outcome, every single step. From the moment I received the sample, sealed up tight in that jar . . . every motion, every gesture, every note, and every word have accumulated into a mighty force, culminating with the match I struck this evening.

What a day. How can I recall it, or reconcile it with my life? My sanity? Am I in danger of losing either one? Both? I fear there are none qualified to render judgment at this point. None but the siphonophore itself, and it tells me plenty.

It? No.

Them, perhaps—but at the risk of saying something preposterous, I almost feel like the specimen is a she. Ridiculous, when addressing a plural entity with no construct of binary gender such as humans ascribe . . . but then again, there’s a three-person God in heaven, or so we are often reminded. And I’ve never heard Him referred to with any pronoun but the masculine.

He is God.

She is Siphonophore.

They both are One, but also Legion.

Which is either blasphemy or the utmost truth, and I’m ill-prepared to offer an opinion either way.

We follow the ones who call us, and She has given me greater direction than any invisible sky-ghost ever bothered or dared. So I know Whom I will obey.





? ? ?


I am not offloading my actions upon Her, though I do fervently believe that She has endorsed my behavior and gazed favorably upon it. Everything I’ve done these last few weeks has been for Her, in order to please and protect Her. She knows this, and She approves.

But I assume all responsibility for what I’ve done. These were my choices. My decisions. My courses of action. My bridges to render unto ash.





? ? ?


I stood in the lab, with Physalia zollicoffris in a jar on the counter. It was the same jar in which She’d arrived, though it’d since been cleaned and aired, sterilized and polished. She deserves no less.

I was thinking about how She seemed somewhat smaller than when I’d first laid eyes upon Her, sprawled out and stinking, apparently dead and pickled. At that time, She’d appeared big enough to fill the whole chemistry sink, perhaps to overflowing, except that no, that can’t be true. She arrived in this jar, a mason jar of the oversized variety—perhaps it holds half a gallon, at most. She cannot be any bigger than that.

But . . . whereas before She occupied every square inch of space . . . filling the glass like a liquid, seeping and spilling and filling the area with Her bulk . . . now I can see emptiness between the creases and folds. I’ve replaced the liquid with ordinary salt water, a brine that felt more appropriate somehow than whatever chemical had kept Her secured during transport; but that wouldn’t have caused Her to shrink. No, if anything it should’ve made Her stronger, fed Her, made Her feel more at home.

I hope I haven’t made a terrible mistake.

No, I haven’t done any such thing. She reassures me.





? ? ?


   That must sound strange. Well, it is strange.

   She tells me things. She warms me.





? ? ?


But I was looking at the jar, and its precious contents. And outside in the hall I heard Dr. Greer mumbling something or another—I didn’t quite catch it, but it was something about me, and my suspension. Maybe he was saying it ought to become permanent, or maybe he was saying I ought to be reinstated. Really, I have no idea. I heard my name, and a reference to my office, and an idly voiced question that might have been so simple as a casual wondering about where I was, right that moment.

I thought about opening the door and announcing myself, then changed my mind. I resolved instead to listen at the door, or I must have resolved that, because I found myself standing there, my cheek pressed to the wood, my ear flat against the crack where the panel and the jamb connect.

I felt a slight breeze on my skin, for the building is old and it has settled, here and there. Its angles are not always perpendicular, and its floors are not always straight. Its ceilings sometimes leak. Its windows sometimes crack with age, or the weight of a building becoming comfortable on its foundations.

The floor beneath me vibrated, as if the men on the other side were bouncing up and down like unruly children in bed. But they were not. I listened, and their voices were steady. I still could not understand them.

I pulled my head away and shook it, then repositioned myself and tried again.

But they were speaking another language, nattering on in words that were mere syllables hurled and punched, and it was nonsense, all of it. Once I heard my name. Twice I heard my name, and then a laugh.

I looked back toward my specimen, my Lady.

My laboratory had grown dark. A storm had coagulated overhead, or it must have been the case, because the clouds were shimmering gray out through the window. Or . . . no. I couldn’t see the sky from there. It must have been a sheet of water, cascading where the gutters have rotted through, making the world outside look so much like a filthy aquarium.

The gaslight flickered and went out. Except that I hadn’t turned it on, had I?