I JERKED UP FROM the porch floor, searching the jungle. An eerie feeling of watching eyes crept over me. The island was full of life, and yet I saw none of it. The living things here had a way of creeping silently, like ghosts, keeping to the shadows, whispering. The spaces between the leaves could hold all kinds of dangers.
I snatched the walking stick and jumped off the porch, wincing as my tender bare soles connected with the ground. I hurried to the edge of the clearing. Sweat poured down my neck, pooling in the space between my breasts. Ahead, the grass bent from someone recently having passed through. An insect trilled behind me. The jungle watched my every move.
I turned and cut across the clearing, following the direction of the dogs’ barking. Tall blades of grass slashed at my skirt. Through breaks in the trees I could see the volcano plume, but there should have been a second column of smoke from the compound’s chimney. Either the fire wasn’t going or I was too far away. I decided to circle the island until I found a road. The terrain flattened gradually as I neared the coast, but I hit a patch of dense brambles. My walking stick became a machete. At least beating back the vines gave me a distraction from not knowing which way to go. And not knowing if Edward was all right.
He might be wandering the island, lost like me. I know about the scandal, he’d said. But if that was so, why hadn’t he said anything earlier? Why had he agreed to come if he knew my father was a madman?
I beat back another bramble with my walking stick. Edward Prince was as difficult to figure out as the twists and turns in the jungle labyrinth. Every direction looked the same. Big, woolly vines clung to the trunks of many-armed trees. Brambles tangled like a wild horse’s mane.
A cry sounded in the distance, and a bolt of fear propelled me forward into a run. The three-toed creature was still out there—man or beast or murderer, I didn’t know. Maybe watching, even now. Waiting for nightfall. Following my steps like a phantom. The faster I ran, the greater the fear swelled. I wiped slick sweat off my forehead but more took its place. I started sprinting, faster and faster, until I crashed into a copse of leafy stalks. When I fought my way through, I found myself next to a small, winding stream.
I sank on the bank. The thump of my pulse was deafening. A bird warbled, and then another. But no phantom pursuer crashed through the jungle behind me. My breath slowed.
I splashed water on my burning face and lay back on the moss and leaves, letting my lungs fill with air. Nothing about the island was predictable. It was as alive as a person, full of whims and lies and contradictions. I didn’t know what to trust. Each snap sounded like a pursuer. Every half-trampled path led to nothing. How could I even trust my own instincts? They had led me to the island to test some theory—some desperate hope—that the world had been wrong about my father.
My instincts had been wrong.
My vision was blurry and my head pounded—I’d missed my injection that morning. I wiped my face and noticed a streak of red on my arm. Blood bubbled from the thorn scratches. I touched my forehead, my cheeks, my neck. Blood stuck to my skin like tar. I’d become prey to the island but, as in my dream, I felt no pain. Only a fascination with the webs of slashes and bloody marks on my body. I was sliding, slipping away from humanity.
Had my father slid the same way?
Something fast and damp darted across my hand. I sat up with a shriek. Across the stream, something flashed again, then closer, moving incredibly fast. It was about the size of a rat but of an odd fleshy color. The longer I sat still, the more creatures appeared, slinking around on the other side of the stream. I bent forward slowly to take a drink, cupping the water in my hands, and looked up to find one standing on its hind legs on a rock, head cocked. I gasped. Not afraid, just bewildered. I’d never seen anything like it. It was a little smaller than a rat, furless, with a face like a snapping turtle. The thing squawked and disappeared back into the foliage. For a few moments, not a single leaf rustled.
Biologists discovered new species all the time, but these rats seemed unnatural somehow. My thoughts were so consumed that I hardly noticed that the water had turned a dark tint like rust. The little creatures congregated on the other stream bank, leaping and chattering.
“What are you so excited about?” I muttered, wading over to them. The creatures scattered, revealing a mauled chunk of flesh and fur—one of the rabbits I’d set free. I jolted in surprise. It was ripped apart but uneaten. Blood still trickled into the stream.
A recent kill.
Something much bigger than the rat things was responsible. Maybe something with three claws, big enough to kill the islanders. I scurried to the opposite bank, tunneling into a thicket of bamboo to hide. The ratlike creatures vanished. The jungle filled with the trickling sound of water and the ever-present calls of birds. Slowly, I made out two voices.
Arguing.
The voices had a strange, rough lilt, like Balthazar’s. Thou shalt not crawl in the dirt, I remembered him saying. Thou shalt not kill other men. The voices of islanders, which meant they were likely loyal to my father and could take me to the compound. But something held me back. There was no proof the murderer was a wild animal. It wouldn’t be hard for a man to disguise knife wounds to look like claw marks.
I crept closer, silently.
“He says, Caesar,” one of them said.
“Shalt not eat flesh. Shalt not eat flesh. Nonsense,” another answered.
My chest pressed to the rotting leaves. Between the twisted roots, I made out two figures with their backs to me. Islanders for sure. They shuffled as they argued, making quick, awkward movements. The underbrush hid their bottom halves, so I couldn’t see if they were barefoot or count the number of toes.
Through the screen of leaves I could tell one of the men was about Balthazar’s size, perhaps even larger, with matted black hair and a canvas jacket like Montgomery’s. The other was smaller, with a dingy white shirt. His straw-colored hair was gathered messily at the nape of his neck. These men were even more malformed than the servants at the compound. I reached into my pocket for the shears, just in case.
“Shalt not eat flesh,” the large one grunted, motioning to something in the other’s hand. I saw a flash of white—the rabbit’s head. A drop of sweat rolled down my face. Montgomery had said they didn’t eat meat, but ripping a rabbit in half didn’t sound like the actions of a vegetarian. “Shalt not kill,” he added.
These men were not my allies, that was clear. But it was too risky to creep back to the stream. All it took was one snap of a branch to give me away.
The blond one growled and waved the rabbit head around. “Nonsense! Nonsense!” He walked more gracefully than the other. His nimble, quick movements reminded me of the panther on the Curitiba, pacing, pacing, tensed to spring at any moment. The bigger man lumbered as if he wasn’t used to his own feet. They continued arguing.
As terrified as I was, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. One of Darwin’s books talked about a link between animals and humans, even suggested we came from some primordial animal-like form. These men could be holdovers, evidence of Darwin’s theories. Yet I couldn’t forget the same odd twist of limb on Father’s operating table. So were they creatures from Darwin’s theories—or my father’s laboratory? The idea hit me with a stab of pain between the eyes. If my crazy idea was right, if Father was creating creatures out of the caged animals … No. Such things weren’t possible.
I felt a sharp prick on my leg and held in a gasp. An ant must have gotten under my skirt. Well, I’d just have to let it bite me. But then something larger moved—a lump the size of my fist, crawling up my leg, making the fabric roll like a wave. Something smooth, like a fleshy hand, brushed against the bare skin of my thigh.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I shook the skirt frantically until one of the little rat beasts fell out. It scurried away and disappeared under a rotting log. My hands were still shaking. Then I remembered the men and hugged the ground again. Ahead, the smaller man had turned and keenly watched my thicket.
My stomach leapt to my throat. I didn’t know if he’d seen me. In any case, I could clearly see their faces now, and they were horrible to look at. The dark-haired man had Balthazar’s same bearlike protruding jaw, though more slovenly, with a tooth the size of my thumb sticking out of his bottom lip.
The blond man’s face was equally strange, yet I couldn’t look away. His skin was covered in fine yellow hair with faint brown markings. His piercing eyes were set deep below a heavy brow. His nose was wide but flat, giving him a powerful, leonine look. Pointed incisors gleamed as he wrinkled his nose to sniff the air.
My breath caught. So this was what Montgomery had been so afraid of. The guns, the worried glances into the jungle. He and Father were frightened of these creatures.
The blond man looked directly toward my hiding spot. His companion snorted and began to speak, but the small one silenced him with a paw on his arm. He stared at me like a hunter, nose flaring, eyes narrowed. And then he grabbed the black-haired man’s jacket and pulled him sharply away into the trees. In a second, all trace of them had vanished.
It was some time before I could think clearly again. Dusk had fallen and the forest was shrouded with haze. The men might have looped back and could be stalking me even now. If they were there, watching, waiting, there wasn’t anything I could do about it but keep moving. Shakily, I made my way to the stream. Finding a safe place to spend the night seemed impossible.
As I followed the stream deeper into the island, I heard the sound of falling water. A clearing opened ahead. Moonlight reflected on a waterfall tumbling into a deep pool. After I’d spent so long in the dark tunnel of the trees, the moonlight shone with a silver tint that made everything dreamlike. There was something odd about the waterfall, something extra luminous, as though it glowed from within. A rocky bank hugged the falls, and I carefully climbed it, feet slipping on the slick rocks. The roar of the water was deafening. I made it to an outcropping, balancing unsteadily on the pitched rock.
There was a gap behind the falls, just wide enough for a person to slip through. I peered inside. The red glow of flames met me.
“Is that fire?” I muttered. But two hands thrust from behind the waterfall, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled me through the screen of water.