Author: Megan Shepherd

“You,” I breathed brandishing the knife. Fear mixed with fascination. This walking, breathing creature had been created on my father’s operating table. Somehow, my father had accomplished the impossible: turned animal into man—almost.

“Stay back,” I warned.

“‘Come out.’ ‘Stay back.’ Make up your mind, girl.” His words came with a distinct hiss. I should have been afraid. I should have been terrified. But his mere existence—knowing what he really was—was so spellbinding that there wasn’t room for fear.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said, raising the knife. He emerged from the leaves but hunkered near the clearing’s edge. His white shirt was roughly patched with scraps of linen. The sleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing forearms covered with thick blond hair. For the first time I could see below his waist, where a tail flicked and swayed. A muscle in my back twitched involuntarily. A tail.

I studied the way he moved, so silent, so graceful. The perfect balance of animal and human. My gut tightened as I remembered standing on the Curitiba, watching the monkey. That was something I’d once longed for: a way for humans to share the talents of animals.

I was like my father in too many ways.

The creature came closer, recapturing my attention. “If you try to hurt me, I’ll slit your throat,” I threatened.

“Hurt you?” His lips curled into a snarl. “There are better ways to hurt a lost girl than throwing fruit.”

“Who are you?” I snapped.

“Jaguar,” he pronounced.

“Jaguar? Didn’t my father name you, like the others?”

“Jaguar,” he said again.

“Did he make you? Did he turn you into this? Answer me!”

“Lost girls must be careful. The jungle is dangerous, they say.”

A drip of sweat rolled down the back of my neck. He was trying to frighten me. But if he truly meant to attack, he surely would have done so already.

I kept a firm grip on the knife but lowered it. “Why are you following me?” I asked.

He cocked his head. “You were following me. You were in the bamboo. Watching.”

So he had seen. He could have attacked then but he hadn’t. I narrowed my eyes, wondering why. He curled his lips in response. He was smart, I realized. Smarter than most humans.

“Where is Edward?” I asked.

“The castaway.”

Surprise nearly made me drop the knife. How did he know?

My discomposure made him smile all the more. “Montgomery told me about the castaway,” he said. “Montgomery says watch the girl. Doesn’t say watch the castaway.”

“When did you speak with Montgomery?”

“Questions. Questions. Come with me, now.”

His paw curled, beckoning. The tip of his tail twitched. I felt myself drawn toward his hypnotic yellow eyes. But I caught myself.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, squeezing the knife. “This is madness.”

“It isn’t safe without me.”

“It isn’t safe with you!” I stepped back, a branch snapping under my foot. “I’d sooner take my chances alone.”

“You don’t know what hunts you.” His nose twitched. “I do.”

His words were unsettling. On the whole of the island, I couldn’t imagine any beast or man more terrifying than him. And yet, if he hadn’t clawed those islanders to death—which I wasn’t sure he hadn’t—something else had.

“What’s hunting me?” I asked cautiously.

“The monster,” he said, lips curled diabolically. I didn’t know if he was as mad as my father or just toying with me. It was ludicrous, anyway. Talking to a walking experiment. Yet he hadn’t tried to hurt me, which was more than I could say for some humans.

“I want to go to the compound,” I said.

He cocked his head. “The Blood House.”

A tense breath escaped me. Blood House. There could be only one place he meant. The red laboratory.

“Come with me, now. No questions. No questions.”

I gave a shaky nod and waved him forward with the knife. He moved through the undergrowth so silently that he hardly left a path for me to follow. My skirt caught every thorn. I made as much noise as ten of him. I studied the way he stepped, dissecting his movements. Ball of the foot first, then rolling back to the heel, which only grazed the ground. His body moved side to side, swaying almost imperceptibly but giving him better balance. I mimicked his steps and soon I was almost as quiet as him.

He wore no shoes. I’d counted his toes again and again, but always the same. Five. It hadn’t been him stalking me at the cabin, but something else.

The monster.

Not once did he look back. At times his specter melted into the jungle like a shadow. I stumbled to keep up with him. My head ached. The heat was relentless. I lost my balance and held on to a tree branch to steady myself. The missed treatments were taking their toll. I could hear the roar of dizziness before I felt it, and then my vision disintegrated into black spots.

The coarse brush of his fur against my bare arm made me jump. I clutched the knife, though I was too weak to raise the blade. “Stay back,” I said. My voice was barely audible above the blood rushing in my ears. “I just need a moment to rest.”

But he came closer. I could smell his musty scent, like tartan and unwashed man.

“You are unwell.” The warm moisture of his breath misted my neck.

“I’m only dizzy. It will pass.” My fingers squeezed the tender flesh inside my elbow.

The thick pads of his fingers grazed my forearm, turning my elbow gently. The knife in my weak hand flopped uselessly. I closed my eyes.

He ran a finger down the inside of my arm. There was something familiar yet perverse about his touch. A creature like him shouldn’t exist and yet here we were, in the solitude of the trees.

He sniffed my arm. Something wet and warm nicked at the pinprick.

I jerked my eyes open. He’d licked me. The shock brought me back to my senses.

He’d licked me.

“Let me go!” I pulled away.

“The doctor’s medicine,” he said.

“Yes.” I clutched my inner elbow. My mouth hung open, searching for words. “Just keep going.”

He’s an animal, I reminded myself. Dangerous.

“As you wish.” He nodded.

I kept more distance between us as he led me deeper into a valley. There were only more trees, more vines, as far as I could see. We entered a copse of fernlike trees taller than my head. As his figure faded in and out of the wispy green fronds, I drifted farther back and farther still, until he was just a shadow far ahead.

Then I turned. I didn’t know if he’d been taking me to the compound or not. I didn’t know if he was the murderer or not.

I didn’t intend to find out.

Using his calculated, silent steps, I vanished into the jungle.

Twenty-three

I WALKED FOR HOURS. Maybe less. Maybe more. The jungle rose around me like a fortress of tree and stone. Through the canopy breaks I glimpsed the volcano’s ever-present plume of smoke drifting up, up, into the sky.

After a while, I detected the smell of a campfire. It wove into my hair and clothes, pulling me forward until I heard a faint hammering noise. The trees opened ahead into a clearing. I pushed aside the high grass and found myself on the edge of a village.

I immediately covered my nose. The smell of smoke only thinly covered an overpowering stench of rotting food and dirty animals. A few sloppy thatched huts sat at the village’s edge, with dirt paths running between them. Rats dug through piles of decaying food. One hissed as I passed.

I peeked inside a hut’s doorway and glimpsed a few signs of life: a wooden branch shaped into a plow, a tattered cloth pooled in a corner, shriveled onions drying in the rafters.

The pounding began again, making me jump. It wasn’t hammering, I realized, but drumming. As I moved closer, I heard chatter and grunts. One droning voice rose above the rest.

I wasn’t sure if I should hide or show myself. I didn’t trust the islanders, but at least these lived some semblance of normal life in a village, not like Jaguar. I slunk along the next path until I could glimpse the village center. Dozens of islanders clustered, feet kicking clouds of dirt, hands swaying in the air. Most were dressed like Jaguar, in ragged blue canvas, though some women wore faded cloths wrapped around them. They all moved with stilted steps and hunched shoulders.

Seeing so many—a whole village—made it seem inconceivable that my father had actually made them. I couldn’t deny they were unnatural. But to fabricate something as complex as a man who spoke and danced and dressed in trousers . . . it was impossible.

The crowd parted slightly. In their midst stood a tall man with a powerful set of elk antlers growing out of his tawny-colored hair. My mouth fell open. The odd tusk or horn on the other creatures looked malformed, but this being’s antlers looked perfectly suited to him as he held his head and arms high, blood-red robes dragging in the dirt. He was the chanter. His voice droned like beetles. At his side was a boy no higher than my waist. It was Cymbeline, though the wilderness had robbed him of his sweetness. His eyes locked on to me and he pointed.

They all turned. Their faces were things of nightmares. One of them, I thought, might even be a murderer.

Run, my body urged, but it was too late. They had already swarmed me, dirty hands reaching for my hair and pulling at my clothes. They dragged me into their midst. The antlered man raised his staff, silencing their wild chatter.

“Her hand,” he commanded.

Beside me was a slanting-eyed, bald woman with oddly translucent skin that seemed to reflect sunlight. She splayed my hand with four smooth, strong fingers. I tried to jerk away, repulsed.

“A five-finger woman,” he said.

The woman hissed, revealing a snake’s forked tongue. A python, I thought. That’s where I’d seen that skin before. The boar-faced man beside her was also missing one digit on each finger, as were the two dingy children who pulled at my skirt. Everyone was, except the tall man in the robes whose five fingers were long and stiff and covered in a thick, coarse hair.

“A five-finger woman!” he bellowed, and the crowd pressed closer. Their sour breaths turned my stomach. My illness grappled at me, making me weak, knotting my insides.

“Who are you?” I asked the robed man.

“Caesar,” the python-woman hissed, petting my sleeve with strong fingers.

The crowd repeated the word, rolling it like thunder.

Caesar. Caesar. Caesar.

The antlered man brought down his staff. The sharp points of his antlers gleamed in the sunlight. “I am Caesar,” he said. “Minister of the island.”

A beast posing as a religious man. It was as absurd as the commandments that Balthasar had chanted on the ship. Montgomery had refused to tell me what they meant, and now I understood why. I’d have thought him mad.

“Where have you come from, five-finger?” he asked.

There was something too human about his dark-brown eyes. “England,” I said.

The crowd parroted the word, but it sounded foreign on their tongues.

“Across the sea,” Caesar explained. The crowd murmured and nodded, but still seemed vaguely confused.

“You come with the other one.” Caesar nodded to the boar-faced man. “Bring the five-finger man.”

I strained to see about the bobbing heads as he disappeared into the crowd. The python-woman eagerly petted the smooth skin of my arms, her fingers tickling my skin. Another woman slid forward, reaching for my ring, but the python-woman snapped at her. She grinned at me as though she and I were both in a higher class from the others.

The crowd started yapping as the boar-faced man returned. He shoved a scraped and dirty body at my feet.

“Edward!” I dropped to my knees. He sat up, a hand to his head where a small cut bled. “Are you all right?”