Whitney FI’s Reviews > Our Hideous Progeny > Status Update

The silence that hung between Henry and me as we sat together on the bench outside the inspector's office was - like the velvet drapery in the Sutherland family drawing room - long, heavy, and entirely unpleasant.

I looked away. There it was, that ache again - but I had weighed it already, carefully, and painstakingly, against the weight of the life in my hands, and it had come out wanting. I shook my head. It will not have been for nothing, I wanted to cry - no matter what happens - don't you see? Because it is already worth something. Even in the dark. Even if no one loves it but me.

I loved it. From the moment I first met its strange and terrible eyes, I loved it. Perhaps it was hypocritical of me yet again to love such a thing when I hadn't truly loved any of the others -not even that first, ill-fated mouse- but I could not help it. As I sat and felt the thrum of its frantic heart beneath my fingers, the weight of its life in my hands, I nearly wept with joy. It was a wonder. It was alive.

It was a noble creature really; larger than I had thought it would be, with a kind of grace that not even death could strip away. Even though most every scholar in the field of natural history dismissed the theory of transmutation, it held a special place within my heart. It was a miraculous notion that we all perhaps originated from the same simple seed, shifting and changing over countless millennia.

How utterly, reprehensibly unfair it was that after all this time I still bore the marks, his fingerprints pressed into me like candle wax, while he went on unburnt.

She met my eye at last, the dim light of the hallway illuminating the look of quiet despair on her face -- and that is when I knew. It had been a lie, of course. She did not even know how to forgive herself.

"That was it, wasn't it?" I whispered, startled at how loud my own voice seemed in the silence. I had never expected the aftermath of a miracle to be so ordinary.

From this point, there would be no more dreaming. It was time to turn our theories to flesh and blood.

I suppose that is why it often makes me sad to read about history, or even natural history, as you do; I cannot help but think of everyone whose tale cannot fit in one book, those poor creatures who remain lost or forgotten. Do you think that one day, some Mary of the future will sketch our bones and wonder what we might have been in life?

And I suppose, in fairness, there must have been something of the gambler in me too. For despite how much I longed to think myself a sensible and rational soul, I had sat and penned that letter, wagering all I had left on the chance that he would agree to my proposal. Perhaps I meant to drown after all, I remember thinking, worrying at my lip until I tasted blood. But if I do, at least it'll have been by my own hand.