PAPA USED TO read to Ernesta and me every night before bed. One of Nessie’s favorite books was a collection of short stories—fairy tales, really—that Papa would read aloud to us long after the age we outgrew them. Of all the stories, Papa loved “The Boy-Monster” the best, but Nessie always tried to get him to skip it. There was no kissing in that story.
Usually Papa did nothing but read the story and tell us good night. But I remember one night that was different. “In the deep, dark woods,” Papa said, his voice sonorous. Every story in the book started with those words. “There lived a boy who was a monster.”
“And everyone hated him and then he died and no one cared because he was a monster, the end,” Ernesta said. “Can’t we read anything else?”
“No. This is my favorite story of all time.” I stuck my tongue out at her.
Papa lowered the book, giving Nessie a quizzical look. “Is that what you think this story is about?” he asked.
Nessie had this way of cocking her eyebrow and glaring at someone that usually made the kids our age cower in fear. But Papa just wrinkled his nose at her and tapped her lightly on the head with the book. “‘The Boy-Monster’ isn’t about a boy who’s a monster,” he said. “It’s not about a monster at all.”
Nessie rolled her eyes, but I said, “So what’s the story about, then?”
“The other people in the forest. They’re the real monsters.” Papa flipped the book’s pages to the illustration in the middle of the story. It showed a shadow of something hulking, with horns and fur, but the picture’s main focus was a group of people—mostly children but several adults—all shouting at the monster just beyond the page, pointing their fingers and sneering at him. One person held a stone, his arm cocked to hurl it at the monster. A woodcutter gripped her axe, her jaw set with steely determination.
“The monster isn’t real,” Papa said. “You both get that, right?”
I leaned up in bed, staring at the picture on the page. Of course the monster was real. I could see his shadow.
Papa subtly adjusted the book so I could see it better, but he spoke to both of us. “The monster is just someone who’s different. That’s why there’s no picture of him in the book. Because we make monsters of men by our imaginations alone.”
“He’s different because he has horns and claws and fangs and eats people,” Nessie pointed out.
“Where in the story does it say that?” Papa challenged. He dropped the book on Nessie’s bed and nudged it closer to her when she didn’t pick it up.
I ran through the story in my head. Certainly the villagers and people in the forest called the boy a monster and said he did terrible things, but in the story itself, he didn’t actually do anything bad. He stole bread, not a child, to eat, and only because he was cold and hungry. Nowhere in the story did the boy have fangs or horns or claws—only the hint of them in the shadowy illustration.
The only reason I had thought the story was about a monster was because of the title and the way the other characters described the boy. Was that all it took to make a monster? A label and the accusations of others?
“The story is a lesson,” Papa said, taking the book from Nessie and closing it. “All stories are. Not like in your textbooks during class, but lessons on how to be human.”
Nessie laughed. “Good thing I’m a natural,” she said, flicking her braid over her shoulder.
“Even if the boy were a monster,” Papa continued, “imagine how the story would be different if the villagers hadn’t been so scared.”
“You can’t turn off fear,” I said. My voice was softer than Nessie’s, because Nessie was never scared of anything.
“I think you can,” Papa said.
I know now that he was right. You can burn fear away after every nightmare you’ve ever had comes true.
Papa patted the book and then stood up. “Treating someone with fear when they are merely different from you is one of the worst things you can do. Perhaps the only thing worse than fear is apathy. Fear makes us do horrible things to people. Apathy makes us allow horrible things to happen to them. When we act in fear—or when we don’t act out of apathy—that is when we become the monster.”
The first thing I heard when I woke up in the morning were the whispers of my revenants, who had stood in silent guard all night long, informing me that the ships still surrounded the island.
I was the monster now, no matter what Papa had said.
And it was time for me to invoke some fear. Or, at least, more of it. A bitter smile curved my lips. That was why they were here, after all. Men, when afraid, lashed out. They needed to remind me—they needed to remind themselves—that they were not scared of my undead army.
And I needed to remind them that they should be.
Outside, a few of the living people who’d stayed with their raised dead were shivering in the early morning light.
“They’re local,” Dannix told me when I approached. He stood near his son, Ronan, who was stationed at the top of the steps in front of the big mahogany doors leading into the quarantine hospital. Ernesta stayed silently by my side. The rest of my revenants spanned the perimeter of the island.
When I didn’t answer him, Dannix said, pointing, “Those are fishing boats. They’ve got markings from the cliff villages.”
It was true, although these southern villages were hardly worthy of the label. They were more akin to a cluster of transient men and women who lived primarily on their boats, only occasionally dwelling in the shacks beneath the cliffs to the southern side of the island.
“I thought the Emperor might come to arrest you,” Dannix continued in a low voice. “But these are not the Emperor’s men. They’re from Lunar Island. They’re our people.”
“I don’t have a people,” I said. I stopped having a people the day they picked up stones and drove me and my sister back into our house, trapping us inside with the rotting, plague-ridden corpses of my parents.
I reached out with my mind to the ten nearest revenants. Go, I ordered them, knowing that they understood my intention.
“Hey!” Dannix shouted as Ronan followed the other revenants silently down the steps toward the red lacquered boat I had acquired from the Emperor’s men weeks ago.
“Go inside if you can’t bear to watch,” I said in a cold voice, and Dannix silenced. I could feel his apprehension swirling around him like mist, but I ignored him, watching my revenants instead. They hurried down the steps, boarding the Emperor’s boat. Within moments, they were sailing toward the smaller fishing boats, cutting through the cold gray waves like a blade.
A high-pitched whistle blared. A signal to the other ships. My revenants watching at the back of the island let me know that the ships there were heading to the front. Eleven boats against my one. Forty or so sailors against my ten.
It was hardly a fair fight. My smile curved deeper.
Before the reinforcements from the back could reach my red ship, it had drawn beside the closest fishing boats. Distantly, I could hear the fishermen shouting at my revenants, warning them to stay back. My ship cut closer. The fishing boats did not have cannons or defense, but the men lit torches and hurled them toward the red ship.
Let it burn, I told my revenants in my mind. My body was a tightly coiled spring. I would do nothing. I would let these men destroy themselves.
The revenants on the deck stood still as flames leapt across the wood, each one of them staring down a different fishing boat.
And then the fire reached the black powder for the cannons.
The Emperor’s boat exploded in a deafening burst of red and yellow and orange. Heavy black smoke billowed over the ship, the stench so acrid I could smell it from where I stood at the top of the stairs. The boat cracked in half, timbers splintering, and my revenants, limp like dolls, were catapulted into the air before smashing against the waves and sinking down, down, down. Over the reverberating sound of the crackling, burning boards I could hear the men on the fishing boats cheering as my beautiful red warship sank beneath the cold water of the bay.
“No!” Dannix gasped, his eyes searching the wreckage.
“Peace,” I said, somewhat impatiently.
“But my son—!”
“You cannot kill what is already dead.”
Dannix’s mouth snapped shut, his teeth clacking together.
Ronan, Dannix’s boy, was one of the first to crest the debris-ridden waves. His head bobbed out of the dark water, and he started to swim to the closest ship. I bit my lip in anticipation, eagerly scanning the water. My revenants’ hands reached up from the waves, digging their fingers into the wood of the nearest ship, dragging their bodies up.
Sailors on the other boats started shouting and pointing as my undead crawled like cursed spiders over the hull of the first ship. The sailors aboard the chosen vessel screamed, throwing objects down in an attempt to dislodge the revenants crawling closer and closer to their deck. One man swept a lit torch down, hoping to divert my undead, but instead, the black-tar-sealed wood caught fire, flames licking down to the water.
My revenants pulled themselves over the railing, landing on the deck of the first boat, water streaming from their bodies, the droplets turning to steam as the fire spread.
The sailors leapt into the water, ignoring the dangers of the sinking red warship, the splintering debris, the fire smoking at the water’s lip. The water churned as they swam furiously toward the other boats. Their panic drove them to frenzy when my revenants followed them into the water, but they were swimming back to me, not chasing the sailors.
By the time Ronan and the others mounted the steps, my warship had sunk beneath the waves and the fishing boat was alight with flames. It would be gone soon enough.
Two ships sacrificed for one message. Still, effective. I hoped.