The Isle of Blood (Monstrumologist)

I want to go, Father. Will you take me there, to the Isle of Bliss?

It’s a very, very long way from here, Will.

I don’t care. We’ll find a ship of a thousand sails to carry us there.

Oh, now, those ships are very difficult to come by.

You found one.

Yes, I did. I did find that ship.

“I was laid up for two weeks—the wound had become infected—slipping in and out of delirium, and all the while your father was by my side. At one point, though, I saw Hilal sitting besidee, dimly, as if through a veil or mist, and I knew to the marrow of my bones that I had come to the lip of the stage, as it were. I was not surprised to see him sitting there, and I was not in the least afraid. I was actually happy to see him. He asked me what I wanted. ‘What do you want, Sheikh Pellinore Warthrop? Ask and it will be done.’

“And of all the things I might have asked, I asked him to tell me a joke. And he did, and the devil of it is, I can’t recall it now. It still bothers me. It was a very funny joke. My difficulty is that I have no memory for jokes. My mind does not tend in that direction.”

He was playing with the knot around his wrist. His wan smile faded, and suddenly he was angry—intensely angry.

“It is… unacceptable. Intolerable. I will not tolerate it, do you understand? You are forbidden to die. You did not will your parents’ death; you did not ask to come here—it is not your debt; you should not have to pay.”

Here, here, now. Do not cry. You’re still very young. You’ll have years and years to find it. Until then I shall be the ship of a thousand sails. Climb aboard me back, me matey, and I shall bear thee to that fabled isle!

“I will not suffer you to die,” he said fiercely. “Your father died because of me, and I cannot afford your death too. The debt will crush me. If you go down, Will Henry, you will drag me down with you.” Tugging on the rope.

I see it, Father! The Isle of Bliss. It burns like the sun in the black water.

“Enough!” he cried. “I forbid you to leave me. Now snap to, get up, stop this foolishness. I have saved you. So snap to, you stupid, stupid boy.”

He brought back the hand connected to mine and slapped me hard across the cheek.

“Snap to, Will Henry!” Smack!“Snap to, Will Henry!” Smack! “Snap to, Will Henry!” Smack, smack, smack!

“Would you live?” he shouted. “Then, choose to live. Choose to live!”

Gasping, he fell back toward the chair; the rope connecting us yanked on his arm. Roaring his frustration, he pulled his wrist free of the knot and flung the rope onto my body.

He was spent. All fear, all anger, all guilt, all shame, all pride—gone. He felt nothing; he was empty. Perhaps God waits for us to be empty, so he may fill us with himself.

I say this, because next the monstrumologist said this:

“Please, do not leave me, Will Henry. I would not survive it. You were nearly right. What Mr. Kendall was, I am always on the brink of becoming. And you—I do not pretend to understand how or even why— but you pull me back from the precipice. You are the one.… You are the one thing that keeps me human.”

You are the one thing that keeps me human.

In the months that followed—well, years to be completely accurate—the monstrumologist never wavered in his disavowal of saying those words. I must have been delirious; he never said anything like it; or, my favorite, he said something entirely different and I misheard him. This was more like the Pellinore Warthrop I had come to know, and somehow I preferred the familiar version. It was predictable and therefore comforting. My mother, as devout as any New England woman of Puritan stock, loved to speak of the days “when the lion lies down with the lamb.” Though I understand the theology behind it, the image does not bring me peace; it makes me feel sorry for the lion. It strips him of his essence, the fundamental part of his being. A lion that doesn’t behave as a lion is not a lion. It isn’t even the lion’s opposite. It’s a mockery of a lion.

And Pellinore Warthrop, like that lion—or its Creator!—is not mocked.

“I do not deny affirming what I have often said, Will Henry, and that is that, in general, your services have proven more indispensable than not. I have never pretended otherwise. I believe in acknowledging debts where debts are owed. One must take care, however, not to extrapolate anything… well, excessive from it, for lack of a better word.”

And then he would brusquely change the subject.

I forbid you to leave me.

It seemed quite sudden to me, my acquiescence to his demand. One moment I could see myself and see him and see the room—and more, much more. I saw… everything. I saw our house on Harrington Lane; I saw our town of New Jerusalem; I saw New England. I saw oceans and continents and the earth spinning round the sun. I saw the moons of Jupiter and the Milky Way and the unfathomable depths of space. I saw the entire universe. I held it in the palm of my hand.

And the next moment I was in the bed, my head splitting, my left hand throbbing. And Warthrop was sound asleep in the chair beside me. I cleared my throat; my mouth was desert-dry.

He came awake at once, a wild look in his eyes, as if he were seeing a ghost.