Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

It was he who taught her to shoot, to read the books in Moreau’s collection. As she learned, he answered all of her questions, first about the island, then about the world from which we had been isolated, and finally about Moreau’s research. If we had been rescued then, I think he would have taken her with him. I imagined her scarred face, her long brown limbs, in an English drawing room. But it seemed to me, sometimes, that she had a preference for my company. And sometimes at night I would imagine her as I had first seen her, rising from the sea like Aphrodite, fresh from her kill.

Once, sitting in the boat, she said to me, “Prendick, how large is your country?”

“Much larger than this island, but smaller than some countries.”

“Like India?”

“Yes, like India. Damn Montgomery. What has he been telling you?”

“That your English queen is the Empress of India. How could a country as small as yours conquer a country as large as India?”

“We had guns.”

“Ah, yes, guns.” She looked at her own complacently. “So, like on this island, it was a matter of guns and whips.”

“No!” I tossed a fish with bright orange scales into the basket. “It was a matter of civilization.”

“I see,” she said. “You taught them to walk upright and wear clothes and worship the English queen. I would like to see this English queen of yours. She must have a long whip.”

What were the Beast Men doing all this time? With the control that Moreau had exercised over them gone, they reverted to their natural behaviors. The predators formed a pack, with Nero, the Hyena-Swine, at its head. They moved to the other side of the island. The others stayed in the village, with Gladstone, the Sayer of the Law, to organize what vestiges of government they retained and Adolphus, the Dog Man, to organize their defense. Septimus, the jabbering Ape Man who had been the first Beast Man I had met in my initial flight from Moreau, attempted to create a new religion for them, with various Big Thinks and Little Thinks, but the others would have none of it. Montgomery thought that we should give them guns, but I refused. His sympathy for them angered me. Let them all perish, I thought, and let the earth be cleansed of Moreau’s work.

So we went on for several months. It was, I later realized, a period of calm between the killing of Moreau and what came after.

She walked through the garden, stopping once to touch a lily with her gloved hands. “Your native English flowers,” she said, “have many admirers. But have you seen anything more beautiful than this? The original bulb was brought generations ago from the slopes of the Himalayas. It flourishes in your English soil.”

“Where did you learn botany?” I asked her.

She did not answer, but walked ahead of me, over the fields, up the hill, so quickly that I had difficulty keeping up with her. At the top of the hill, we looked down on the valley, with its English village sleeping under the gray sky.

“Would you like to hear what happened after you abandoned me on the island?”

I nodded. I looked at her again, sidelong. What had she done, to become what she was? She had a way of moving her hands when she spoke that was charming, almost Italian, although no woman could have had her fluidity of movement. Her grace was inhuman.

“I lived in the cave we had shared. I kept track of the time, as you had taught me. I had a gun, but no bullets, and anyway there were only a few of his creatures left on the island. You think that I cannot say his name, but I can—Moreau, the Beast Master. It was burned into my brain, remember? Doubtless it will be the last word I say before I die. But that will not be for a long while yet.

“You wrote that the Beast Men reverted to their animal state. What a liar you are, my husband! You know that would have been an anatomical impossibility. But you do not want your English public to know that after Montgomery’s death, after the supplies were gone, you feasted on men. Oh, they had the snouts of pigs, or they jabbered like apes, but they cried out as men before you shot them. Do you remember when you shot and ate Adolphus, your Dog Man, whom you had hunted with, and who had curled up at your feet during the night?

I looked down at the valley. She was bringing them all back, the memories. My hands were shaking. I lifted them to my mouth, as though they could help with the wave of nausea that threatened to engulf me.

“They were animals.”

“So too, if your friend Professor Huxley is right, are you an animal. As am I. You are startled. Why? Because I mentioned Huxley? I have done more things than you can imagine, since I left the island. I too have taken a class with Professor Huxley, whom you described so often. Your descriptions of his examinations served me well. He thought, of course, that the questions I asked him after his lectures were theoretical. He was delighted, he told me, to find such a scientific mind in a young lady. He did not know that I had been created by a biologist. I cut my teeth, as you might say, on the biological sciences. Or had my teeth cut on them.”

During our time together on the island, after the death of Montgomery, I taught her about the origin and history of life on earth. We looked at geological formations, examined and cataloged what we found in the tidal pools, or the birds that roosted on the island. There were no species native to the island higher than a sea-turtle that laid its eggs there, but we studied the anatomy of the Beast Men we shot, discussing their peculiarities. I explained to her what Moreau had joined together, how pig had been joined to dog, or wolf had been joined to bear. I even, eloquently as I thought then, showed her what Moreau must have intended, where the beast became the man.

“You feasted on them too.”

“They were my natural prey. If I had still been the animal Montgomery bought in a market in Argentina, I would have hunted them without thought, without scruple. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For months, I was alone. I reverted, not in appearance but in behavior. I hunted at night, ripped open my prey, ate it raw. After I thought all of Moreau’s creations were gone, I lived on what I could find in the tidal pools—fish when I could catch them, clams that I smashed open on the stones. I dug for turtle eggs. I was half starved when the Scorpion came. There was nothing left on the island but some rabbits and a Pig Man that had somehow managed to escape me, and rats that I could not catch in my weakened state. They would have devoured me eventually.

“It was searching for the remains of the Ipecacuanha . The captain took particular care of me. He thought I was an Englishwoman who had been captured by pirates, and brutally treated. I have to thank you, Edward, for teaching me to speak so correctly! I did not realize, when I imitated your accent, that I was learning to sound like a lady. Montgomery’s cruder accent would not have suited me so well. I told the captain that I had lost my memory. He took me to Tasmania, where the Governor treated me kindly, and a collection was taken up for me. Imagine all those Englishmen and women, donating money so that I could return home, to England! It was a great deal of money, enough for my voyage to England and a surgeon, a very good surgeon, to complete what Moreau had left undone.

“After the surgery, I had no more money, and money is necessary in this civilized world of yours. But I found that men will pay money for the company of a beautiful woman. And I am beautiful, am I not, Edward? I should be grateful to the Beast Master. I was his masterpiece.”