Such Wicked Intent

by Kenneth Oppel

  The butterfly does not flutter away but remains poised upon my hand, wings folding and opening serenely.

  I touch my hand to the page again, and once more a torrent of knowledge fills me. Hurriedly I turn the pages, sweeping my fingers across entire paragraphs at a time, my eyes scarcely focused on the book but rather on the chamber of my own mind, where all this arcane knowledge is presenting itself to me.

  “You’re going too fast, Victor,” I hear Elizabeth say, as from another room. “You’ll miss something.”

  “There’s nothing of use here,” I say, shoving the book from me and grabbing another. Greek, Latin, Aramaic, lost dialects, I surge through all of them one after another.

  I look up briefly. Henry and Elizabeth are both watching me strangely.

  “It’s the butterfly, isn’t it?” Henry says.

  I nod in amazement. “It’s helping me read more quickly, like some new form of energy that speeds my mind.”

  “How do you know you aren’t deceiving yourself?”

  Yet he holds out his finger and clicks his tongue, as if summoning a cat. The butterfly, however, does not leave me.

  “Well, we all want one now,” Elizabeth says with a laugh.

  “It’s unbelievable,” I murmur, and with my empowered hand I inhale another book’s contents in a matter of seconds, and toss it to the floor.

  “All nonsense,” I say. “I wouldn’t trust any of it.”

  Across the room Konrad says, “How can you tell? All these books are filled with arcane spells and incantations. Why is one any less reliable than another?”

  “The butterfly. It seems to know what I seek, and helps me sift the gold from the dross. But there’s no gold, not here. There’s something else,” I say, surprising myself.

  “What do you mean?” Henry demands.

  “Something I, we, should be looking for.”

  “A different book?” Konrad wants to know.

  “It’s hidden somewhere. I’ll know when I see it….”

  The butterfly flies from my finger, and I give a cry of dismay. “Not yet!”

  Henry immediately reaches out to lure it to him, but it avoids both our hands and settles instead on my temple, and in that same instant I see an arrangement of strange symbols in my head. I hardly dare breathe.

  “I know these,” I mutter, closing my eyes, concentrating harder. They’re not symbols upon a page but cut into stone. Abruptly I stand.

  “Where are you going?” Elizabeth demands.

  The butterfly still rests on my temple, and I don’t want to lose it. “There’s writing in the caves.”

  “What caves?” Konrad exclaims in frustration.

  “Ah,” I say, “we forgot to tell you. We Frankensteins have the caves of an ancient culture under our château.”

  “Are you mad?” I hear Konrad call out as I hurry down the stairs.

  “No, it’s true,” says Elizabeth, following me. “Come see. It’s remarkable.”

  “Anything else I should know about?” Konrad asks, exasperated. “In the few weeks I’ve been dead?”

  I hurry to the bottom of the stairs and peer down into the fake well. I take hold of the ladder jutting up from the depths and swing myself onto its rungs.

  “It was never a well?” Konrad asks in amazement as I climb down.

  I reach bottom. The giant horses painted on the wall have an even greater force and dynamism, as if at any moment their muscular flanks will heave, their hooves kick up a cloud of grit. With my hand I reach up to make sure the butterfly is still poised on my head, but stop myself—I can sense it’s there, can feel the quiet, potent power it’s ready to bestow upon me.

  Elizabeth is first to arrive. She looks about the cavern, but instead of wonder on her face, I see unease.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  I shake my head, bewildered.

  “She’s right,” says Henry, stepping down and making room for Konrad to descend. “There’s a vile atmosphere it didn’t have before.”

  “That sounds like the old Henry,” I say. “You can always wait in the library, if you like.”

  “Don’t be an ass, Victor,” my brother says as he looks about the cavern. I notice his saber is in his belt. “There’s something not right about this place.”

  Truly I feel no sense of foreboding, only a fierce impatience. “They’re just ancient, dank caves.”

  “No. There’s something down here,” says Konrad.

  “Yes, something we need.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” my twin says, his hand on his hilt.

  I think of the ominous sounds he’s heard from deep within the house. But fear does not touch me.

  “All of you,” I say, “you have too much valor to hang back now! And we have nothing to fear.” I look at Henry and Elizabeth. “We’re the living! Light and heat pour off us. Nothing can harm us here! Trust me.”

  With some reluctance they follow me through the high-vaulted galleries and chambers. This journey is a far cry from the first one we made in the real world, when we were giddy with the wondrous bestiary galloping across the walls. Now we proceed more warily. There are times when, from the corner of my eye, the luminous animals seem to move—a quick dip of the head, an eye flashing with predatory light.

  When we reach the image of the saber-toothed tiger, Henry points to the nearby line of symbols we discovered before on the wall. “Are these the ones you mean?” he asks.

  I swallow and, full of hope, put my hand to them. The pads of my fingers trace their sharp contours, and before my mind’s eye the dashes and circles swiftly, miraculously, shape themselves into language.

  I exhale. “No. This isn’t what I want. It’s just an account of a hunt, a tally of kills. There must be more writing somewhere.”

  “This is as far as we went,” Elizabeth says, looking at the branching of the passageway.

  A cool pulse of knowledge travels through my temple. “I know the way,” I tell her, already walking on ahead.

  “Wait,” says Henry. “Do we have time for this?”

  I fish about in my pocket and pull out the spirit clock. “Not even half a revolution. Catch!” I toss the clock at Henry. “You can be the timekeeper, Henry, since I can tell you don’t trust me.”

  “What if we get lost down here?” he demands, catching me firmly by the sleeve.

  In all the time I’ve known him, I don’t think he’s ever tried to restrain me, and I don’t like it. I jerk my arm free.

  “I said I know the way.”

  “Your butterfly will guide us, I suppose,” he says. “And what if it decides to fly away; what then?”

  I search about on the floor, staring hard, until I find an ancient piece of charcoal. I snatch it up and slash an X on the wall.

  “There. We have our turning marked.”

  “The house changes,” says Elizabeth. “We’ve both seen it happen.”

  “Not these caves,” I say with utter certainty. “They’ve been the same since time began. There’s nothing to change.”

  I start walking again. Thrice more the passageway branches, and I mark each one. The wall paintings become less frequent, and I’m scarcely aware of them, drawn deeper by supernatural instinct.

  “There’s only a quarter revolution of the clock left,” Henry says behind me.

  “Victor,” Konrad says, “you’re going too far. You’ll have trouble getting back to your bodies in time.”

  “Almost there,” I say. And I’m right, for the passage abruptly opens out into a high-domed cavern.

  “Good Lord,” Henry exhales.

  I am staring up at it too, a crude but vast image drawn in bold black lines. It stands tall on two legs, has a head, and an outstretched arm from which emanates jagged lines that convey immense power.

  “Is it a man?” Konrad asks from behind us.

  “What else could it be?” says Elizabeth.

  “How odd, though,” remarks Hen
ry, “that the animal pictures are so realistic but this one is… so primitive.”

  As I stare at it, I think of the painting in the Bellerive church—Jesus standing over Lazarus.

  “Look here!” I cry, for underneath the image is a vast text of strange lines and dots and shapes. “This is the book! A book in stone.”

  From far away a noise unlike any I’ve ever heard comes wafting into the cavern—a quick, fevered series of gasps, and then a slow moan that dissipates like the last vapor of breath.

  “That is the sound!” Konrad cries. His sword is suddenly drawn, his eyes fixed on a passageway that slants downward so steeply that it is more like a chute. “It came from down there!”

  “What in God’s name was it?” Henry says.

  “Something forgotten by God,” Elizabeth whispers. “It sounds like a soul in torment.”

  “A bit dramatic, don’t you think?” I say with a snort. “A portal to hell just below our house?”

  Henry forces out a nervous chuckle. “Yes, that might be a bit ambitious, even for the Frankensteins.”

  Only silence wells up from the steep passageway now. I walk closer. Unlike the others, I feel no fear, no presence of evil. I taste only power. I want to see what’s down there.

  But my gaze, as if gently directed by forces beyond me, turns back to the writing on the cave wall.

  “Whatever’s down there is a long way away, and no concern to us,” I say. “This text is what we came for.”

  “Be quick about it, please,” says Henry, his eyes still fixed on the passageway.

  As I near the wall, the butterfly lifts from my temple and settles on my hand, and I put my fingers to the symbols. Behind my eyes I feel a great pressure building, words and images and ideas assembling themselves, and then in a blinding torrent I see—

  A body lying on the earth, its flesh corrupted. I see the legs of many living men encircling the body, standing over it. I hear their rough voices joining in a chant. Some kind of scythe comes down and severs the foot at the ankle. I feel my stomach rise. I see things in little bursts of light. Blades dividing the body again and again, and then—

  Pain blooms through my head, and with a cry I pull back my hand.

  “Victor!” I hear Konrad call out behind me. “Are you all right?”

  “It comes so hard and fast…” I wince, pushing through the pain. “It’s like pictures in my head.”

  “Stop this!” Elizabeth implores me.

  “No. There’s more.”

  I thrust my hand against the wall, and suddenly it’s as though it is welded there, and I see—

  A severed foot cast into a long damp hole like a grave. Someone kneels beside it and carefully unties an animal bladder. From the opening scuttles something darker than shadow. At first I think it’s a beetle, but the shape is more fluid, altogether more disturbing. The human steps back as the shadow leaps onto the severed foot, burrowing hungrily into the rotted flesh—

  I stagger back once more, retching.

  Henry has his hand on my shoulder. “Victor, you need to—”

  “No!”

  “Our time’s running out!” he shouts at me, holding out the clock. I squint at it in disbelief, for the leg has nearly made a full revolution. Surely not so much time has passed. I hold it to my ear.

  Tick… Tick… tick….

  I don’t understand. It has slipped back into its normal tempo, but I don’t have the energy or concentration to grapple with it right now. I need all my faculties to complete the stone translation.

  “I must finish,” I gasp. “I’m almost done!” I put my fingers to the wall, and—

  A pair of human hands reaches into the damp hole and covers the severed foot swiftly and completely with mud, and adds still more, patting it into a rounded shape, little bumps that can be only arms, legs, a head. A stick makes two pricks for eyes.

  “Victor, what do you see?” Elizabeth demands, but I block her out and return to the searing image before my mind’s eye.

  Light sweeps over the little mud man, as though the sun were racing through the sky, and then darkness, soon chased away by the light. I am dizzy watching, time speeded up. The little mud man trembles and begins to grow, the torso elongating, gaining definition, and muddy features appearing on the face.

  Animals draw close, sniff, and cringe back. A feral cat’s hackles rise; rats squeal and turn away. Nothing will go close to it, inert and defenseless as it is.

  Faster and faster the creature grows, looking more human by the second. His skin is no longer muddy but the color and texture of proper flesh. And then, stretched on the ground is a man, the very same man I first saw dead and decaying—but now whole, reborn.

  His eyes open.

  I fall back from the wall as if pushed, and land hard on the ground.

  “Victor, are you all right?” Elizabeth is asking. She reaches toward me but then stops, as though remembering what happened when our flesh last touched.

  “What did you see?” she asks.

  “Our time’s very nearly up!” says Henry urgently, extending his hand to me. Gratefully I take it, and he hauls me swiftly to my feet. I touch my head, which throbs like an overworked muscle.

  “Go!” says Konrad. “Don’t wait for me!”

  From the steep passage comes another distant moan, and I turn once more in its direction, drawn.

  “Now, Victor!” Elizabeth says, and I take the lead back toward the entrance. I smile, suddenly giddy. I feel as though I’m bounding through a dream. I gallop past stags and bulls, ibexes and horses. I smirk at the crouching tiger.

  “Slow down,” Elizabeth tells me sharply. “We’re leaving Konrad too far behind.”

  Heedless of my supernatural speed I turn to see my twin in the distance and can’t help laughing, for I remember all our childhood races where he outstripped me, and now he cannot even hope to keep up with me.

  “Our time’s almost out,” I reply, noting that I’m not even out of breath.

  “And whose fault is that?” Henry says, just behind me.

  “We’re fine!” I say, my mind still throbbing with the cave writing. The things I’ve seen.

  “He might get lost!” Elizabeth says.

  “We blaze a trail of light for him,” I retort, “and we’ve marked the turnings.”

  She stumbles on a rock, and I reach out to take her hand. It’s impulsive, yet I also know full well what I’m doing, and even before my fingers close around her wrist, our eyes meet, and I feel desire spark between us, see it in her face, like a hunger.

  But Henry catches her first, steadying her.

  I exhale in disappointment, and then anger, and start to reach out for her again, when I hear Konrad calling out, closer now.

  “I said don’t wait for me!”

  And we begin running again, though at a pace that allows my twin to keep up. When we reach the ladder, Henry says, “The claw’s tapping the glass! What happens now?”

  “We still have time,” I assure him.

  I feel my body in the real world tugging me back toward it. There is no arguing with it. I swiftly climb the rungs.

  “Victor!” Konrad calls out to me from below. “Did you find what you wanted? Tell me what you saw!”

  “I found it,” I tell him over my shoulder with a triumphant smile. “The way to bring you back.”

  CHAPTER 7

  A CRITICAL INGREDIENT

  THE WAY YOU TELL IT,” SAID HENRY, “IT SOUNDS A BIT LIKE THE Egyptian cult of Osiris.”

  We were on the water, bathed in sunlight, sailing close to the wind on the twenty-footer. The day had dawned with all the warmth and promise of a summer morning, and after our lessons and lunch, we’d had our cook pack a picnic hamper, and we’d taken the boat out. At the tiller, leaving the château in our wake, I’d finally had the chance to tell them in full detail what the writing on the cave walls had shown me.

  “Someone murdered Osiris,” Henry continued, “I forget who, and cut his body into f
ourteen pieces and scattered them. His family found the pieces and buried them, and he came back to life as the god of the underworld.”

  “A myth,” said Elizabeth. “How do we know these cave writings are any different? They were made by primitive, superstitious people. Do you really think they knew how to bring people back to life?”

  “Ah,” I said, “they didn’t bring him back to life. That’s what’s so interesting. They grew him a new body. Prepare to come about, please.”

  I pushed the tiller hard over. At the front of the cockpit, Elizabeth and Henry busied themselves with the foresail. Henry, never the most confident mariner, was sure-footed now and winched in his sheet with a confidence I’d never seen before. And Elizabeth, I couldn’t help noticing, seemed to have regained the weight and bloom she’d lost in the past few weeks. There was enticing color in her cheeks and a new luster in her windblown hair.

  The boom swung overhead, and the mainsail filled with a satisfying whoomph. I adjusted the tiller and turned my face into the breeze, inhaling happily. From the moment I’d woken this morning, I’d felt remarkably well—bursting with energy. Hopeful, even. For the first time since Konrad’s death, I’d actually wanted to get up and face the day. And I hadn’t yet had a single jolt of pain in my maimed right hand.

  It seemed our visit to the spirit world had helped all of us in some way.

  “A body part and a bit of mud,” said Elizabeth reflectively.

  “Surely creating life can’t be so simple,” Henry added, pushing his spectacles back on his nose but looking at me with a hint of challenge.

  Elizabeth surprised me with her quick reply. “Is it so different from the way God created Adam, fashioning him from the mud?”

  “Well, no,” Henry said. “But you’re also forgetting the black liquid Victor described. That was one of the ingredients.”

  “It wasn’t liquid,” I said. My mind still felt seared by the ancient words and images, as though I’d stared too long at the sun. “What came out of that sac was alive. It didn’t just flow; it moved of its own will.”

  “Right,” said Henry, “so all we need is mud, a body part, and a magical liquid we don’t have.”