Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

She smiled, and I did not like it. Her canines were still longer than they should have been. Sometimes, when we lay together, she had bitten me. I wanted to believe she had done so by accident, but had she?

“And so I began to study. In this England of yours, a woman cannot attend universities, but she can attend scientific lectures. She can read at the British Museum. And if she is beautiful, she can ask as many questions as she wishes, and important men are flattered by her interest. I would venture, Edward, that I am now more knowledgeable about biology than you are. I intend to put that knowledge to use. But I need your help. I have come here,” her hand swept to indicate the hills around us, the birds that were flying above, the clouds floating against the gray sky, “with the most vulgar of motives. I require money. You see, I have a particular project in mind. The surgeon who repaired me, who erased the scars that Moreau had left, is a Russian émigré, a Jew driven out of his country by religious persecution. How fond your species is of persecutions! For two years I have worked with him, learning everything he could teach me. I am now, he has been generous enough to say, even more skilled than he is. Your women who are agitating for the vote believe that they should have professions other than marriage. I too wish to have a profession. I propose to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a vivisector.”

I stared at her. Gazing over the hills, with the wind whipping her skirts back and tossing her veil, she looked like the figurehead on the prow of a ship. But where was she headed? Moreau’s work had brought us once to disaster. Was she now truly planning to continue what he had begun?

After his death, the more peaceable Beast Men had developed the habit of coming to the enclosure to trade what they grew in their gardens for our flour and salt. Twice a week they came, crowding into the enclosure, like an English market crossed with a menagerie, or a Renaissance painting of some level of Dante’s Inferno.

Montgomery should have noticed that Nero and the Wolf-Bear Tiberius had entered the enclosure. M’Ling should have been guarding the gate, but his attention was elsewhere. The Beast Men had begun adopting our vices, for which Montgomery was in no small measure to blame. He had taught them the use of tobacco, which he traded for food, and to pass the time he had whittled a pair of dice, with which they gambled for onions, turtle eggs, whatever the Beast Men had brought to trade. That morning, M’Ling was gambling with the Beast Men.

“Why does she carry a whip?” I heard the shout and went to the window. I usually avoided these market days. I still found it disconcerting to be in the company of so many of Moreau’s creations.

Montgomery stood by the door of the storeroom, which held our barrels of tobacco, flour, biscuits, salted meat. Next to him stood Catherine, dressed as he was, with a gun in her holster and a whip tucked into her belt. All around stood the Beast Men with the goods that they had brought, and in the back, close to the gate, stood the Hyena-Swine.

“She is one of us, one of the made. Why does she carry a gun? Why does she carry a whip? Let her join her own people.”

The Beast Men stood, staring, and I could see the inquisitive look in their eyes.

“Why does she not come to us?” said Catullus, the Satyr. “We have few females. Why does she not come to live in our huts, and work in our gardens, like the other females?”

“Yes,” said the Ape Man. “Let her live with us, with us, with us! She can be my mate.”

Then others spoke and said that she could be their mate as well.

I could see Montgomery looking puzzled. He had been up late drinking, the night before, and was still nursing a hangover. He could not understand this rebellion among the usually peaceable Beast Men. From where he stood, he could not see the Hyena-Swine.

I could see Catherine’s hand on her gun.

The Beast Men began arguing among themselves, each claiming her. Moreau had never made enough Beast Women, and they were constantly trying to lure the ones they had away from each other. One pushed another. Soon there would be a fight.

I stepped through the doorway, into the enclosure.

“The Master, who has gone to live among the stars, and watches you from above, has intended her for another purpose. She will not be any of your mates. She will be without a mate, but will bear a child that will perpetuate your race. That is the purpose for which he has created her. She will be the mother of a new race of men. Bow to her, who is dedicated to such a high purpose!”

They stared at me.

“Bow!” I said, raising my gun. I could see the Hyena-Swine slinking through the gate.

One by one, reluctantly, they inclined their heads.

“Hail to the Holy Mother,” said the Ape Man. He had always been sillier than the rest.

“Well then,” I said. “You may continue to trade. There will be no punishment today, despite your disobedience.”

That night, Montgomery lit the bonfire. He lit it every night. If there was a ship sailing within sight of the island, we did not want it to miss us. Sometimes the Beast Men came and danced by the light of the bonfire. “A regular corroboree,” Montgomery called it.

“Catherine,” he called, after the fire was lit. I could see him standing in the enclosure, with the full moon behind him, larger than it ever is in England. “Come to the dance. There’s a regular crowd of them tonight.”

“Not tonight,” she answered. “Tonight I wish to speak with Edward.”

“Damn Edward. Come on, Catherine.” I realized that he had already started drinking, or perhaps had never stopped.

I did not hear her answer, but he shouted, “All right then, damn you!” And then I heard the gate crash shut.

“He’s gone,” she said a moment later, standing in my doorway.

“What did you want to speak to me about?”

She came closer. She had a smell about her, not unpleasant but particularly, I thought, feline.

“Do you think he had a purpose for me?”

“Who?”

“Moreau. You can see that I’m made—differently from the others. My hands—he must have taken particular care.”

Her hands were on my shoulders. I could feel her claws through my shirt.

“Am I not well made, Edward?”

I looked down into her eyes, dark in the darkness. I don’t know what possessed me. “You are—divinely made.”

Where my shirt was open, she licked my chest, then my neck. She was almost as tall as I was. I could not help remembering Moreau’s neck, torn open.

He had done his work well. Standing on an English hillside, watching her with her veil blown back by the wind, I shuddered at the memory of her brown thighs, with a down on them softer than the hair of any woman.

She smiled at me, and despite my sweater and mackintosh, I felt cold.

We were lying together in a tangle of sheets when we heard the shot.

“Get your gun,” she said.

We ran out, me in my trousers, she in Montgomery’s shirt. As we passed the storeroom, she disappeared suddenly, then reappeared with an ammunition belt over her shoulder.

On the beach, around the bonfire, Beast Men were dancing. There was a throb in the air, and after a moment I realized that it was a drum. Someone—it looked like the Sayer of the Law—was keeping time while the Beast Men turned and leaped and shook their hands in the air, and shouted each in his own way—some like the grunting of a pig, some like the barking of a dog, one caterwauling. I will never forget that sight, watching from the shadowed dunes while the Beast Men capered together and the Puma Woman stood, with her gun in her hand, the ammunition belt slung over her shoulder, at my side.