“Can you see it?” I bellowed.
“Yes, it’s on your back now. Try to stand still, Victor!” Elizabeth said, drawing closer.
I felt their jars buffeting me as they tried to catch the thing.
“I’ve got it!” cried Elizabeth as she drove the jar into the small of my back with such force that I yowled in pain. “It’s caught! Henry, where’s the lid!”
“Here, here!” he said.
I watched over my shoulder as Elizabeth very swiftly tipped the jar away from my skin, slipped the lid over the top, and screwed furiously.
“There!” she cried triumphantly.
My relief was immense, and yet immediately, bizarrely, I also thought:
I want it back. Now.
I felt a stab of pain return to my hand. Forgetting my nakedness, I turned to look at the thing, battering itself against the glass in vain.
Henry cleared his throat. “Victor, you need clothes.”
Elizabeth, I noticed, seemed to have no trouble with my nakedness and merely smiled, her gaze level with mine, holding out my underpants.
After I’d hurriedly dressed, I grabbed the jar and held it to the sunlight to better get a look at the little fiend. With no shadow to offer it refuge, the thing hurled itself hysterically about the jar, and I feared the glass would shatter.
“This is no normal animal,” I said. “Where is its head, its limbs? It changes shape every second!”
As if exhausted, it retreated into a corner and made itself as small as possible, a dense black ink splotch.
“It’s getting fainter!” said Elizabeth.
“I think you’re right,” Henry agreed.
The thing was fraying at the edges, unraveling into smoky tendrils.
“The sunlight harms it,” I murmured.
“Let it die!” Henry said.
As it continued to diffuse, it became butterfly-shaped, and I caught, just for a moment, a glimpse of miraculous colors on its wings.
“Wait!” Immediately I sheltered the glass jar with my body, and then wrapped a napkin around it.
“What’re you doing?” said Henry.
“It’s one of the butterflies! From the spirit world!”
“But how?” Elizabeth demanded.
“The one that was helping me in the caves. It must’ve come out with me. It came out with me!”
Very slowly Henry said, “How could something from the world of the dead come into ours?”
I looked into the jar. Protected from the sun, the creature had composed itself and regained some of its intense blackness. It poured itself around the inside of the glass. I inhaled sharply. It was unmistakable.
“Do you know what this is?” I said, grinning up at the other two. “This is the last ingredient we need to grow Konrad.”
CHAPTER 8
I touched the handle of Konrad’s bedchamber, leaned my forehead against the wood. A deep breath, and then I entered and shut the door soundlessly behind me. It was almost completely dark, for the curtains were drawn tight, with only a faint penumbra of light around them.
For a moment I imagined the other world beyond this one, the one in which Konrad resided. Briefly the room seemed to shimmer, about to reveal itself to me in all its guises through history, but then it solidified into the undeniable truth of here and now.
We hadn’t changed anything in his bedchamber. No one could face it, not yet, that final resignation. And if this endeavor of mine was successful, there’d be no need of it.
I needed some part of Konrad. Neither Elizabeth, nor Henry, nor I had been able to contemplate venturing to his crypt and desecrating his body. But then I’d realized we wouldn’t have to. The cave writings had told me that all that was required was some part of him that had once been living. Surely it wouldn’t matter how large or small.
On his chest of drawers I found his brush, and from the bristles I began to pull as many of his hairs as I could.
I heard the bedchamber door slowly opening, and I whirled, the brush still clutched guiltily in my hands.
On the threshold stood my mother, a hand lifted to stifle a scream.
“Konrad?” she gasped.
“Mother, it’s me, Victor. I’m so sorry to startle you.”
I rushed over to her, pocketing the brush, and helped her to the nearest chair. She was still in her night robe, even though it was near noon.
“I mistook you…” It took her a moment to regain her breath.
I didn’t like to look upon her, for my beautiful mother’s cheeks were hollowed, and her normally lively eyes dulled.
“Let me help you back to your bedchamber,” I said.
“Your father thinks it only makes me worse to come here, but I need to. I still need to. And you do too, clearly.”
She took my maimed hand and placed it between hers. Her skin had a papery feel to it, her bones and tendons more prominent than I recalled. I was terribly worried about her but dared not say anything. Voicing my fears aloud would, somehow, make them far too real and frightening.
“Does it still pain you, your hand?” she asked.
“Not very much at all,” I lied.
She looked about the darkened room. “Almost every night I dream of him. And sometimes we talk. What I would give for just one more real conversation.”
Before I could stop myself, I said, “If I could bring him back for you, I would.”
“I know, Victor. You try so hard.”
“Father thinks-”
“Your father thinks you’re rash and headstrong, but he told me he’d never known anyone show such love and devotion to a sibling.”
“He said that to you?”
She nodded. “Every day I’m thankful for you, and Elizabeth, and William and Ernest, and one day I won’t wear this grief so heavily, but that day… seems a very long way away.”
I kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her. “You should rest,” I said.
“All I do is rest,” she replied wearily, and then formed her face into a brave smile. “Are you taking Konrad’s hairbrush as a keepsake?”
I swallowed uneasily. “Yes. I want it for my own.”
And I need it, to bring him back, for all of us.
The work cottage stood on the farthest reach of our property, at the edge of an unused pasture that bordered forest. Beyond the crude door was a dirt floor, plank walls, no windows-a place to give laborers shelter in bad weather, a place for unused stone and fence posts, shovels and rusting saws.
On the crude wooden table we placed the lanterns we’d lit, and closed the door. Carefully I set down the jar containing the butterfly spirit. It had spent a day and night in my room, carefully hidden, like some strange insect a guilty boy keeps from his mother. It swam along the inside of the glass, then grew legs and scuttled about, then
