Oisín McGann: Ancient Appetites

Nate felt as if the air had been drained from his lungs. 'Are you sure?' he gasped in disbelief. It was immediately replaced by suspicion. 'Who declared him dead? Has Doctor Warburton examined him?'

'Yes, sir. I'm afraid there can be no doubt. There… there was extensive damage to the body. There was no chance of recovery. The family are being gathered. Master Roberto will be confirmed as the new Heir after the funeral.'

No member of the Wildenstern family could be confirmed dead until one of the family doctors had examined the corpse. With the Wildensterns' special physiology, the opinions of ordinary doctors could not be trusted. Nate twisted the rings on his fingers. Gerald's hand squeezed his shoulder. He barely felt it.

'I'm sorry, Nate.' He heard his cousin's voice as if from a distance. 'It's the damnedest luck.'

'Are they sure it was an accident?' he demanded.

'Yes, sir. He was with two friends, and was being watched by more people from below. Master Marcus was climbing ahead of the other two when he fell.'

Because of the peculiar traditions of the Wildenstern family, every accident was treated with suspicion. One could never be absolutely sure.

Nate stood there, saying nothing for some time.

'I want to be on my own,' he announced at last, handing his backpack to his manservant. 'Clancy, you go back with Gerald. Tell them I'll be along later.'

And with that, he kicked his heel against the velocycle's side. Snarling eagerly, Flash's wheels gouged holes in the turf and they set off down the hillside. It took only minutes to descend to the bottom and cross a rough stretch of ground, plunging through a stream and scrambling up onto the forest track, spitting mud and pebbles in their wake. Instead of heading down to the road at the bottom of the valley, Nate turned left and raced deeper into the forest.

Marcus was dead. It made no sense. A man like Marcus did not die in some freak accident. His elder brother was the kind of figure that people told stories about, the type of man everyone wanted to have as a friend. He was everything Nate wished he could be. Uncommonly clever, witty, generous and good-natured. Blessed with a natural sense of style, he cut a dashing figure at parties, but was equally at ease in the wild country; when it came to seeking adventure, he had the heart of a Hon.

And he was dead.

Marcus was… had been the Heir, groomed from birth to be the future head of the family. He shouldn't even have been in the country. His place was in America now, where the family carried out most of its business. He had come back for a holiday, and to see his kin.

And now Roberto would be Heir to the massive fortune. Poor Berto; he wouldn't take the news well. Like Nate, he had no interest in the family business. A warm-hearted, social animal, he was happiest amongst his friends, or immersing himself in poetry and music.

Nate rode the forest roads for nearly an hour, and then slowed the engimal as the track in front of him withered to a narrow trail in the glow of Flash's eyes. He had no idea where he was going. Bringing the velocycle to a halt, he climbed off, confident now that the creature would not wander. Gazing down at it, he ran his hands over its back, remembering the letter he had received from Gerald; the one where his cousin had explained why he thought this beast wanted to be tamed.

Gerald had been studying a new work by a man named Charles Darwin, called The Origin of Species. This man, Darwin, claimed that animals were not created in six days along with the Earth as described in the Bible, but had in fact evolved over time, through a process he called 'natural selection'. Gerald said this was not the first time somebody had proposed the idea, but Darwin had put forward such a thorough and convincing case, he had thrown the world of science into turmoil. And Gerald believed that it could mean the end of religion as they knew it by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Darwin's supporters went on to say what he had not dared – that mankind too had evolved and was in fact descended from apes. This didn't go down too well either, and caused much consternation in polite society across the civilized world.

The church had, of course, denounced him as a heretic, despite the fact that he was a devout Christian. They also pointed to engimals as a failing in his logic. These creatures – named for their engine-like internal organs – had long been held as arbitrary, divine creations, because they were clearly machines, and yet were for all intents and purposes alive. Their flesh could heal to some degree, but they could not reproduce like animals, so they had to have been created somehow, and yet their physiology – their mechanics – were beyond human understanding. These creatures had not evolved; something or someone had made them, and this offered the most obvious challenge to Darwin's reasoning.

Yes, Darwin conceded in his book, engimals seemed not to have been shaped by their environment, and since any given species of engimal did not seem confined to one geographical area, like marsupials in Australia, or the giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands, it supported a further theory of his. That they were made by a civilization before that of Man; one which had disappeared before the beginning of recorded history.

This was truly the de rigueur topic of conversation at parties, and the cause of much frothing at the pulpit. And Gerald was hooked. He knew that while engimals had been tamed throughout history, the breaking of these animals had been carried out as if they were actually born wild. The more he studied their shapes, forms and behaviours, the more he became convinced that they were merely feral – that they had been built to perform some function for a master, and had happened to escape captivity, living out the rest of their lives in the wilderness.

Like a farrier judging a horse, Nathaniel ran his fingertips over the creature's curves, feeling the weathered metal, the myriad scrapes in the ceramic, the joints and hinges, the muscular shock absorbers. Its sides were hot from the exercise, and its breath plumed in pale vapour against the dark air. It bulged with power.

Gerald theorized that serving a function for a master should be a natural state for these machines. It only remained to find out what each engimal's function was, and place it in a situation where it would be compelled to carry it out. From drawings of the Beast of Glenmalure, it was clear to him that, like other velocycles, this creature was made to be ridden. Its back was slightly bowed as if to fit a saddle, much like a horse's, and its horns were the perfect shape for handlebars, almost like a bicycle. If it had brake levers, like others of its species, that would be the final proof. All Gerald needed was someone who would be brave, reckless and foolish enough to try and get on this thing's back and stay there long enough for it to remember its true purpose in life.

So he had put pen to paper and presented his thoughts to his cousin, who was away chasing wild engimals around the Dark Continent.

Nathaniel stroked the beast's back and its engine purred. There had been times on the long voyage home when he had doubted himself. With few distractions aboard for a virile young man, he had been troubled by nightmares of injury and failure. There had been every chance that he would ridicule himself, and be maimed or killed in the process. Not wanting to present himself at the house until after the hunt, he had Gerald meet him at the docks and he had booked into a hotel. Two days later, they had the information they needed, and they had set off into the hills.

But now the Beast of Glenmalure was his. And he had been denied his triumphant arrival home atop his prize by the ill-timed demise of his big brother. Even in death, Marcus had stolen his glory.