Maurice, too had known such a home, a home where the hand that fed him was the one that also hurt him. He had lived it. And then, there were countless others. Others for whom no one ever spoke.
Like Mary, who, while plucked from an orphanage and given a dignified profession, was brutalised by her mother. Unknown to Mary, her real mother was a certain Louise March, a ‘fallen woman’, who’d once tried to murder the bastard child in her womb before she was prevented. Her infant had been taken away to an orphanage. With the help of influential friends, Louise had changed her name to Mrs. Jane Cleary and managed to evade being sent to a penal colony. She found and adopted Mary whom she beat mercilessly whenever fear and tension within her rose to unbearable levels.
Maurice walked to the edge of Regent Park, where he hoped to meet Madeleine. He had now become a lone figure in the blooming expense of Regent Park. His thoughts so absorbed him that he became unaware of the crowds. And it was strange, for in his mind, he had completely disappeared and nothing could touch him.
All the trauma Aaron had inflicted upon Ovee had gifted it with a sense for recognising this same pain in others. Yes, thought Maurice, we were the same. I don’t know how, but it knew this.
Ovee was caged in a torturous existence, yet it had survived, feeding on Calista’s love until her murder.
Upon avenging Calista, it could have left itself to die. Yet it grew restless in its last days. It went hunting, perhaps for more rats. It ransacked the kitchen, the many rooms of Alexandra Hall… it shape-shifted, like a colourful illusion. In despair, it returned to Calista’s bedroom, absorbing the last of her love…the last of her energy. Ellen had even seen it pressed against Calista’s window and believed it was a face…
The days passed, and Ovee weakened.
Yet something kept it alive in that last week, aroused its curiosity, sustained it, and awakened in it something new.
That something was Maurice.
The day had come when, nearing death, it had employed the last of its strength to overpower Louise March and save Maurice’s life.
Maurice smiled. Ovee wished to save me.
He felt a warm comfort as he recalled what had taken place five years ago in Alexandra Hall’s cellar. The violence no longer haunted him. In its stead was a nurturing caress, a gentle reminder that he was far from alone; for Ovee had seen through him; it had recognised the wounds in him and understood everything he had once lived.
And whereas there were many who saw and did nothing, Ovee had used its dying breath to save his life.
Maurice believed this with all his heart, and he repeated it to himself now, as he would, for many years to come. It was a simple thought, but to him, it meant everything.
Author’s Note
It is my sincere hope that you may only discover this Author’s Note upon having fully read the mystery. Why spoil a surprise?
This story takes place in a sort of dark age, for it precedes three core events of the last centuries.
The first event arises soon after London revealed the world’s first aquatic vivarium in 1853. It is the normalisation of the word, aquarium, and this pond’s growing use in scientific research. Thanks to the ingenuity of Mrs. Jeannette Power, who it must be said, never met an Aaron Nightingale during her 1837 visit to England, and to her creation of the Power cage, observation of ocean life has greatly evolved, even if so much remains unknown.
The second notable event was the advent of publications which depicted this secret abyss – this ocean underworld that so captivates the human mind – and the literature’s intense focus on a certain creature: Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea (1866), Jules Verne’s 20000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), H.G. Wells’ The Sea Raiders (1896), and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of the Cthulhu (1928).
These tales were published when the ocean world was a daunting, less understood realm; its creatures, even lesser known. We were long past the idea hatched by Aristotle that the creature I named Ovee, in this story, was stupid. But we were terrified of it, and of its related species. It was a period when literature fired the imagination wherever science had not yet offered facts.
My novel exists in that mental space, a time when an Ovee is a horrifying prospect.
As for Aaron Nightingale, he is an imagined scientific pioneer dabbling in Power cages. As the story would have it, he is also cruel and his methods are far-fetched. He represents curiosity gone wrong, but what I admired about him is that his work on cephalopods pre-dates the fantastique literature we know. Like his counterparts of the early 19th century, he is oblivious to our future conception of an Ovee. He is inspired by marine biologists of his time, including Forbes and Cuvier. He looks up to Aristotle, takes advice from Jeannette Power and on the esoteric front, he is a believer in Franz Anton Mesmer’s animal magnetism.
And what of the third, more recent event? It is the 21st century surge in discoveries concerning that creature, Ovee. With it, comes our growing humility in the face of a being we’ve only begun to fathom and from which we yet have much to learn. And so a blend of love and awe for this creature sparked the idea for the book in your hands.
Even after years of fascination for it, there was so much I did not know. For what do we really know, even today? For my
