I nodded.
“And the pain, how is it?”
“It comes and goes.”
“It is not so unusual as you might think. I have heard of cases where the severed limb continues to give phantom pain for some time. The body remembers its injury.”
“Time will be my cure too, then,” I said. “Mother hasn’t been worrying about me, has she?”
“No, no,” he said. “How is your sleep?”
I almost smiled. If he only knew how deeply I had lately slept-as deep as death itself.
“Fine,” I said.
His elderly eyes regarded me kindly. “I’m not concerned only about your hand, Victor. Your grief is another matter.”
I looked out the window. I did not want to appear weak. I did not want to give anything away.
“I have no doubt,” he said, “that you will heal. But there are things that might speed it. You appear to me pale and rundown. Your father says you’ve been skulking about the house.”
“I’ve just been out for a long walk,” I protested.
“Excellent. I recommend more of the same. Summer seems not ready to leave us quite yet, and I advise you to take full advantage of it. Daily outings. Plenty of fresh air. Walk. Ride. Row. Sail. Take your meat bloodier. And I will leave you an opiate, with instructions to take it only sparingly, and for no longer than three weeks. It will ease your pain, and help you sleep.”
“My sleep is-” And I stopped myself with a sigh.
“Good,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I’ll let your father know we’ve spoken, and remind him to keep you out of doors!”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said with a smile, for he didn’t know how well his prescription would aid my plans.
The next morning, after delivering a brief lesson, Father released Elizabeth, Henry, and me to the outdoors, with firm instructions to exert ourselves and breathe deeply. Cook had packed us an enormous picnic hamper, and we set off on foot in the direction of the far pasture. The day, as the doctor had predicted, was truly beautiful, a return to summer.
Henry and I, the hamper between us, perspired lightly in the early October sun as we hurried to keep up with Elizabeth. Throughout our morning lecture it had taken all my effort to concentrate on Father’s words, and Elizabeth had seemed so agitated, I’d feared Father would notice.
No one spoke, though my own head was noisy with hopes and questions about what awaited us inside the cottage. When we reached it, I pulled the key from my pocket and hoped no one saw the slight tremble in my fingers.
What will I behold on the other side of this door?
I pushed it wide. The place was completely silent, though filled with a strange, expectant humidity. Elizabeth and Henry moved inside, already lighting lanterns. I closed the door behind me, and the serrated shadows of saws and shovels leapt about the walls like goblins.
The huge worktable blocked our view of the hole we’d dug, and as we walked around the table, gooseflesh prickled up my arms. Step by step we drew closer, our lanterns high. In the swinging light I made out a dark lump at the bottom of the hole. We kneeled.
Right away I saw this was no mere lump. It was bigger, unmistakably bigger, and it had changed entirely. What we had fashioned yesterday with our hands-a muddy, plumped-up gingerbread man-had transformed itself into the fully formed shape of a baby.
“It’s working,” I whispered.
“He’s flipped himself over,” said Elizabeth.
Already to her it was he. I was mute with wonder, staring. It had moved. We had formed it and left it on its back, and it had moved on its own. Many times I’d seen William sleep just like this, on his stomach, knees drawn up, rump raised in the air.
“It’s miraculous,” whispered Henry.
Its face was turned from us. Its body was mud-colored, chafed in places. I noticed the straight, knobbed line of its spine, its tiny feet and toes. We hadn’t fashioned those toes. They had developed overnight of their own accord.
Henry and I turned to each other, shaking our heads in awe. I looked now at the hairless head, which seemed large in comparison with the rest of its body.
“Is it normal?” I asked. “The size of the head?”
“Of course,” said Elizabeth. “Babies’ heads always seem larger than the rest of them. But I’m going to turn him over. I’m worried he can’t breathe properly with his face in the dirt like that.”
“What makes you think it needs to breathe?” I asked.
She looked over at me in surprise. “Of course he needs to breathe.”
“I’m not sure it’s properly alive,” I said, recalling the searing torrent of images from the cave writing. Had the mud man breathed, even as it had grown?
Elizabeth reached down with her hands.
“Wait, wait!” I said. “You shouldn’t touch it!”
Elizabeth sighed impatiently. “Why ever not?”
“In the images I saw it was never touched. It…” I couldn’t put it into words, the sense that the mud body was a thing of the earth and neither needed nor wanted human intervention. “I just think…”
But I was too late, for Elizabeth had already reached down and taken gentle hold of the mud creature. I felt myself tense as her skin touched its skin. One hand supported its head and neck as she tenderly turned it onto its back.
“He’s warm,” she breathed. “And the skin feels like real skin.”
I’d expected her only to adjust its position, but she lifted it clear out of the hole and cradled it against her body.
Once more, unaccountably, I tensed. “Elizabeth, you should put him down.”
Blissfully ignoring me, she said, “Look at him, you two. Just look at him.”
For the first time I saw its face. Its finger-poke eyes had become serenely closed eyelids. The pinch of mud that had been its nose was now a smooth button with two delicate nostrils. The mouth that had been hastily traced with a fingernail was now a sweet bow-shaped pair of lips, parted slightly.
I willed my shoulders to drop, my stomach to unclench. Why had I not wanted Elizabeth to touch it? Was I afraid it would break? Was I afraid of what I might see in its face?
I looked down to its chest. At the place where we’d buried Konrad’s hair twined with the butterfly spirit, there was a faint blemish, like scar tissue.
The chest flinched once, then again and again, rhythmically.
A heartbeat!
Last summer in my makeshift dungeon laboratory, when I’d made my first alchemical substances, I’d felt a surge of accomplishment and pride, but that was nothing compared to the fevered exhilaration I now experienced. I’d helped create this with my bare hands. But even so, a rogue thought shouldered its way into my head.
I’ve helped create a rival for Elizabeth’s affections. Am I insane?
I watched, mesmerized. Was it breathing or not? And then it came, a slow gentle rise of the chest, and with the exhalation a supremely contented sigh issued from its little mouth.
With sheer delight Elizabeth beamed at us.
“It’s working,” she said. “It’s Konrad, growing.”
“Do you see what this means?” I exclaimed. “That butterfly spirit, it must be some kind of vital spark, the stuff of life itself! We’ve used it to create life!”
“Will it just sleep and sleep as it grows?” Henry asked.
“That seemed to be the way,” I replied.
I had the strangest sensation, watching Elizabeth hold it, seeing the raw love and tenderness in her eyes. She would never look at me like that. Perhaps she’d never even looked at Konrad quite like that. This was
