Fibulae

“I can explain,” I said quickly.

“And why—” Elizabeth’s voice was getting higher now. “Why is there a moth. In her mouth. Why can I see a moth in her mouth, Victor?”

“She’s hungry?” I offered weakly.

“No, no… Perchance those are not the right questions. The most pertinent question is… Where did she come from?”

“I’ve… made her,” I confessed.

My best friend looked at me with the composure of a looming cobra. “Victor. Darling. Light of my childhood. You’ve made… a person?”

“Yes,” I said cautiously.

“A very large person.”

“Yes. She’s large because it was easier to work with larger parts.”

“Who appears to be glowing.”

“The bioluminescence helped with the design of her—”

“And pregnant.”

“She… She’s not pregnant. She… ate all of my specimens last night while I slept. Her stomach is designed to stretch to contain more—” I began, struggling to keep a blush from my face.

“Victor.” Elizabeth held up one finger. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to think very carefully before answering.” She smoothed her riding skirt in a gesture she made when buying time to think. “What is your scheme here?”

“I haven’t—”

“Wrong answer.” Elizabeth’s voice was sharp like a sword now. “Try again. What is your scheme for the nary-eight-foot glowing woman you’ve created in your father’s house, using what I can only assume are extremely illegal methods, that will cause a scandal of biblical proportions if anyone outside this room discovers her existence?”

“I was focused on the creation process—”

“Were you.” Not a question. Elizabeth moved closer, boots crunching on broken glass. “So you’ve spent—how long? Months? No… Years?—working on this extraordinary achievement, and you never once thought: ‘Perhaps I should consider what happens after she’s alive?’”

“Well—”

“Did you think about where she would sleep? What she would eat? How you’d explain her to the servants, to your father, to anyone who might see a huge, luminous woman in our home?” Elizabeth’s voice thundered. “Did you think about her, Victor? About what her life would be like?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. I really didn’t have an answer.

Calypso, sensing tension, made a soft questioning sound. Then, she stepped to my side and wrapped herself around me, possibly to defend me from my best friend’s glare and sharp words.

“That’s what I thought.” Elizabeth turned to Calypso, and her expression softened immediately. “Hello, darling. I’m Elizabeth. I’m terribly sorry you’ve been brought into this world by someone with the planning skills of a concussed squirrel.”

“Elizabeth—” I protested.

“Hush.” She grabbed a sheet and slowly moved closer to Calypso, who tilted her head curiously. “You’re beautiful, in an unsettling way. Those eyes—gods, those eyes. Victor, why are her eyes so yellow?”

“Owl eyes. Tapetum lucidum,” I explained. “Like a cat’s. Better night vision, and—”

“And deeply unnerving.” Even while looking critical Elizabeth was incredibly calm, wielding her soft smile, usually reserved for curious, little things. Injured birds, stray kittens and apparently reanimated women. “May I?” She reached toward Calypso slowly.

Calypso looked at her hand, then at me as if seeking confirmation of safety, then back at Elizabeth’s hand. Slowly, carefully, she reached out and touched Elizabeth’s fingers.

“Oh,” Elizabeth breathed. “I can see through your hand. I can see my own fingers through your hand. That’s…” She laughed, slightly hysterical. “That’s absolutely mad.”

Calypso made a pleased sound and took Elizabeth’s whole hand in hers, examining it with the same obsession she’d shown the moth. Turning it over, watching the tendons move, the blood pulse beneath the skin.

“She’s curious,” I said. “Everything is new to her. She’s learning what people are—”

Elizabeth sighed, not paying attention to me.

She grabbed, tore off and draped a window curtain over the colony-girl and tied it closed, trying to make her look marginally less immodest. Then, she patiently let Calypso explore her fingers. “Hello, sweet thing. You’re in quite a predicament, aren’t you? Born into a world that won’t know what to make of you.”

Calypso vocalized “Aaaahhhh.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly. “She’s trying to speak?”

“She doesn’t have language skills yet,” I explained. “But she’s learning. She knows her name now… I think. It’s Calypso.”

“From the Odyssey.” Elizabeth nodded slowly. “How literary of you, Victor.” Her tone was very dry. “I see the narrative logic. You’re in a crisis because you now have a dire obligation to care for someone you’ve made.”

“I’m not in crisis—”

“You absolutely are.” Elizabeth turned to me, still holding Calypso’s hand. “You’re terrified and lost. I can see it all over your face. You’ve made… someone truly extraordinary and you have no idea what to do with her.”

She was right. Of course she was right. Elizabeth was always right about such things.

Calypso, delighted by having discovered a new playmate, pulled Elizabeth closer. She then leaned down and pressed her forehead against Elizabeth’s, that same gesture of affection she’d shown me and Henry.

“Oh!” Elizabeth froze. “She’s very… forward, isn’t she?”

“She experiences the world through touch,” I explained. “It’s how she learns. How she connects. Her body has far more senses than a human.”

“Like a child.” Elizabeth’s voice softened even further. “She’s a child in a giant’s body.” She pulled back to look at Calypso’s face. “You poor thing. What has he done to you?”

Calypso smiled eerily and made her happy humming sound.

“We need to clean this up. Now. Your father’s breakfast will be ending soon, and if he comes up here and finds—” Elisabeth gestured at everything. “This. We’re all done for.”

“We?” Henry finally spoke up from his corner.

“Yes, Henry, we.” Elizabeth released Calypso’s hand and picked up a fallen broom. “Because I’m apparently the only one of you with any sense of self-preservation.”

“She just ate a moth,” Henry commented. “I’m quite concerned she’s going to eat me or you next.”

“She ate a lot of things. Specimens, cadavers, moths.” I said. “Her body is immortal, constantly energized by the electric eel organelles and requires a lot more nutrients than a human.”

Elizabeth nervously looked at Calypso, who was licking her lips happily. “Darling, we’re assuredly going to need to work on your table manners. Among other things.”

Calypso made a questioning sound and pointed at the ceiling, where another moth had appeared.

“No,” Elizabeth said firmly. “No more moths. We’re going to find you proper food. Food that doesn’t flutter.” She turned to me. “She needs to eat actual food, Victor. Not specimens.”

“I haven’t had the time to—” I let out.

“Of course you hadn’t.” Elizabeth thrust the broom at me. “Help clean. Now. Henry, stop looking traumatized and help too. We have perhaps a few hours time before our father runs out of patience and sends the servants to investigate what mayhem transpired here during the night.”

“That’s not enough time to clean up all of this,” Henry protested.

“Then we work quickly.” Elizabeth rapidly began gathering scattered specimen jars. “Calypso, sweetheart, can you pick up that cabinet? The big wooden thing? Put it back where it belongs? Like this? See?”

Calypso moved swiftly, lifting the heavy cabinet as if it weighed nothing. She positioned it carefully back against the wall, then looked at Elizabeth for approval.

“Perfect. Good girl. So helpful!” Elizabeth’s tone was ever-so-kindly and encouraging. “Now the broken glass—no, don’t touch that, you’ll cut yourself.”

“Her dermis is thicker and more elastic than that of a human and she regenerates,” I explained. “Like a starfish. Even if she gets cut in half she’ll most likely be fine.”

“Of course she does.” Elizabeth pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why wouldn’t she? That would be far too normal.” She grabbed a dustpan. “We’re cleaning now and having a very long conversation about this later. A very long conversation about consequences and planning and not creating life without considering the ramifications.”

“I understand,” I said meekly.

“Do you?” Elizabeth looked at me sharply. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve created a woman who can’t die, can’t hide, and can’t exist in normal society. And you have no plan for protecting her.”

Again, she was painfully right.

A cloud of shame hovered over me for my indiscretions. I indeed had no idea how to protect my creation. To most people she would be an abomination, a wild creature without paperwork, without rights.

Calypso made a happy gurgling sound and started gathering scattered papers, trying to help.

“We’re keeping her,” Elizabeth announced suddenly. “We are going to raise her right.”

“We… are?” I repeated, preoccupied with considerations of how I could possibly grant Calypso human rights.

“Obviously!” Elizabeth stated with a pitch of exasperation. “We can’t exactly send her back. And I won’t let you hide her away like some shameful secret.” She looked at Calypso, who was stacking papers into neat piles. “She’s a person. Strange, colorful, glowing, tailed, moth-eating person. But a person nonetheless.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“Don’t thank me yet.” Elizabeth attacked a formaldehyde stain with a rag. “We still have to figure out how to explain a seven-foot woman to your father. And the servants. And eventually, the rest of Geneva when someone inevitably spots her glowing through a window.”

“One problem at a time?” I suggested.

“Yes. Starting with this disaster.” She straightened up, surveying the laboratory. “Henry, you take the left side. Victor, the right. Calypso, darling—” She smiled at the massive woman. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing wonderfully.”

Calypso beamed and redoubled her cleaning efforts.

Behind me, I heard Henry mutter, “We’re all going to hang for this.”

“None of that, Henry. Grab a mop will you?” Elizabeth fiercely plowed on like a thoroughbred racing horse. Because that’s what my adopted sister did. She cleaned up my messes and saved me from myself.

Even when the mess was a tailed, manufactured woman-colony.

…

I was halfway through explaining the principles of cellular immortality to Elizabeth when she held up one hand.

“Victor. Stop.”

“But I was just about to tell you of the immortal Meduza—”

“Yes, yes. You’ve already wilted my ears off about your wonderfully immortal Medusa over the past three years,” She gestured at Calypso, who was holding onto me with one hand while pawing at my black, messy, curly hair with the other, making soft cooing sounds. “I am more concerned about the fact that your creation is currently obsessed with grooming you, and we need to make her presentable before your father discovers her. A window curtain will not do.”

“Right. Yes.” I tried to detach Calypso’s hands from my side. She made a distressed sound and clung on harder. “That currently seems to be… proving difficult.”

“I can see that.” Elizabeth surveyed things. “She needs better clothes. She needs to be clean. And she desperately needs to learn that not everything she finds interesting goes in her mouth.” She watched as Calypso attempted to taste my cravat. “Victor, go to the kitchens. Bring back bread, meat, cheese, fruit—anything substantial. Lots of it.”

“I don’t think that I can leave. She’s following me everywhere.” I demonstrated by trying to step away. Calypso immediately pulled me back, making anxious chittering noises. “It must be a type of an imprinting. She thinks I’m—”

“Her mother. Yes, I see that.” Elizabeth’s lips twitched. “How does it feel to be a new mother, Victor?”

“Elizabeth, this isn’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny.” She moved closer, studying Calypso’s grip on me. “Yes. She’s rather… Obsessively attached.”

Calypso, noticing Elizabeth’s proximity, reached out with one massive hand and pulled her closer too. Now she had both of us trapped in her embrace, humming contentedly.

“Well,” Elizabeth let out, muffled against Calypso’s shoulder. “This is quite cozy.”

“Yep,” I said flatly.

“Mmmmm!” Calypso agreed, nuzzling the top of my head.

Henry, who had been watching our smothering from a safe distance, cleared his throat. “Should I get the food then?”

“Yes, Henry, please,” Elizabeth managed, trying to extract herself. “Bring everything Cook will give you. Tell her it’s for a… a breakfast party. For the three of us and a guest. Because we’re celebrating. Something. Anything.”

“What are we celebrating?” Henry asked weakly.

“Victor’s descent into madness? Or maybe his liberation of his vast marine collection? I don’t know,” Elizabeth suggested. “Just go!”

Henry fled with great vigor.

Elizabeth finally managed to pry herself free from Calypso’s embrace. “Right. We’re doing this the difficult way, then.” She raised her voice slightly. “Calypso, darling, look at me.”

Calypso turned her luminous eyes toward Elizabeth while ceaselessly maintaining her death grip on my torso.

“Good girl. Now, I need to make you beautiful. Very beautiful. Like—Like me. See?” She gestured at a painting on a wall depicting a 1770s picnic. “Like… the ladies in paintings. Pretty dresses, styled hair, all of that. Would you like that?”

“Aaahhh?” Calypso sounded somewhat interested but didn’t release me.

“However, to make you beautiful, I need supplies. Water for washing, clothes for wearing, powder for your face. All in my room. Downstairs.” Elizabeth pointed at the door. “Far away.”

Calypso’s grip tightened. “Nnnnn!”

“No, Victor won’t disappear. He’ll stay… with you.” Elizabeth stated. “The servants will bring everything here. But I’ll need to go tell them what to fetch, and…” She looked at Calypso, then at me.

Elizabeth began moving toward the door. “Victor, you will remain here with her. Keep her calm. Keep her quiet. And for heaven’s sake, do stop her from eating anything else that used to be alive.”

“How long will that take?”

“Twenty minutes. Perhaps thirty.” She paused at the door. “Try not to let her eat you.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but she was already gone, fluttering down the stairwell.

I looked up at Calypso, who was looking down at me with round, gold eyes.

“So,” I said. “Just us, then.”

The human colony moved around me, bear claws clicking ominously on the floor.