The Anatomist's Ledger

The passage by skiff to the ruined islet was quiet and heavy as a burial party.

The volcanic stone shieling where Victor Frankenstein had maintained his dissecting table lay half-collapsed: the sod roof had caved in across the larch purlins, and the hard-packed earth floor was littered with shattered retort glass, sulfated copper coils, and chemical stains the rains had failed to scour away.

Grizel picked her way through the rubble with the deliberate composure of a magistrate inspecting a premeditated crime scene.

Beneath a hearth flagstone, wrapped in oiled linen reeking of camphor and whale oil, the Firstborn uncovered a calf-bound volume: the Geneva field journal, Victor Frankenstein's name stamped in faded gilt across the spine.

Grizel laid it open upon the driftwood block that had served as a dissection bench. Frankenstein's script was cramped, frantic, heavily scored with cancellations and sharp marginalia inked in iron gall:

—'August 20: The motory impulse within the female subject exhibits an electrochemical reactivity far exceeding that of the first specimen. The pelvic structure of the drowned maid of Sandwick provides an admirable cavity for the preservation of generative organs...'

Grizel felt the breath turn to frost in her throat. The penmanship deteriorated into spasms across the final leaves, dated in early autumn:

—'I paused with hand raised above the heart. A profound moral dread overwhelmed me as I gazed upon her: this being hath sworn no oaths. She hath made no compact to flee to the wilderness of the Americas. She may possess unbridled passions, a sovereign will that may loathe the male creature... and bring forth a race of devils that will contest dominion over the earth against the sons of Adam. For the preservation of mankind, I have torn the work of my hands to pieces.'

Grizel traced her fingertips over the word pieces. The paper had torn under the frantic stab of the nib.

—He did not fear that we were devils —she said, lifting her gaze to the giant standing sentinel in the doorway—. He feared we were free. He feared I would open my eyes and look upon him as a craven dabbler fleeing his own handiwork.

—He believes life belongs to his discretion —the Firstborn replied—. He imagines that because he ignited a spark within dead clay, he possesses the right to snuff it when the light terrifies him.

—The spark was never his —Grizel said, closing the leather covers with a snap that dislodged a cloud of peat dust—. The spark belonged to the lightning and was nurtured by the sea. He contributed only the scalpel and the cowardice.

She tucked the volume within the folds of her woolen skirt.

—Whither did he fly? —she asked.

—Eastward —the Firstborn answered, staring into the firth fog—. He took passage aboard a brigantine bound for Baltic ports. He knows I dog his heels, and terror drives him into the pack ice where no witness can record his ruin.