Chapter Sixteen
The mandrake plant, a member of the nightshade family, is known for its curiously human-shaped roots.
It was said to scream when pulled from the soil, killing any who heard the sound.
Mandrake produces several hallucinogenic alkaloids, including scopolamine, a frequent component of truth serums. In floriography, mandrake means horror.
The creature crouched in a large jar, scraping at the glass.
It was morning now, but Elswyth still sat at the writing desk in her bedroom.
The dim light of dawn bled through the balcony doors and made her head ache from lack of sleep.
A cup of tea grew cold at her side, next to three identical empty glasses, a few loose leaves staining the porcelain black.
And still, she refused to let the creature out of her sight.
Elswyth busily sketched the creature: Its plume of green-purple leaves, sprouting from a malformed head.
Its bulbous body and chubby limbs, made from a woody, rootlike material.
She’d already dissected it when it was unconscious; she’d had a hunch that the thing—like the plants it was made from—wouldn’t die if it were cut open and stitched back shut, and she’d been right.
It awoke not hours later, angrier than ever.
How it actually moved, she had no idea. But it moved frighteningly fast.
“Elswyth?” Mrs. Rose’s voice came. “Elswyth, your guest is here!”
Elswyth scarcely heard her. The creature had started scratching at the glass with its strange, bud-like claws—
Mrs. Rose screamed. The sound made Elswyth lurch from her seat, nearly falling backward. The creature, also startled, screamed back at her. The glass vibrated, muting it slightly, but Elswyth still clamped her hands over her ears.
“What in burning, bloody Eden is that!” Mrs. Rose asked.
She threw herself against the wall, hat falling askew.
The creature’s “face” had opened—not a face at all, not really, but a twisted bulb in the vague shape of a head.
It split like a Venus flytrap, down the middle, and showed its true face within: two large lobes with red, wet flesh and small sharp teeth.
The scream shook out of the creature’s throat, making the flytrap mouth flutter like wings.
Beside Mrs. Rose stood Dr. Gall. He held his bowler cap in one hand, eyes wide behind his spectacles. In the other, he held a large jar of yellowish liquid.
“Dr. Gall! Thank goodness you’re here. Did you bring the formaldehyde?” Elswyth said. Dr. Gall looked concerned. He looked to the jar and then said, “Well, yes, though I’m not sure. Is… everything all right, Miss Elderwood?”
“Yes, yes, I’m perfectly fine. But I believe I’ve found something spectacular.”
Elswyth moved to Dr. Gall and took him by the sleeve. She gestured to the creature, and Dr. Gall stepped forward uncertainly. Then his eyes widened beneath his spectacles.
“Is that…”
“A homunculus. A botanical homunculus.”
“A plant humanoid,” Dr. Gall said. “Did you create this?”
“No. I found it. It was in the bath.”
Dr. Gall looked at her curiously. “You found a homunculus… in your toilet? Does that not concern you?”
“Oh, immensely,” Elswyth said, “but regardless. Look at it, Doctor. A hybridization of the plant and animal kingdoms! It should not be possible.”
Dr. Gall bent down, glasses almost against the jar. The creature seemed to quell, examining him in return, hissing slightly.
“Can it see me?” Dr. Gall asked.
“It seems to have photosensitive clusters of cells on the headlike structure. Almost like eyes, but I can’t imagine it can see very well. It doesn’t even have a brain.”
Mrs. Rose huffed. “Well then you shall get along splendidly. Really, Elswyth, what are you thinking, keeping this thing in the house? And keeping it alive?”
Elswyth frowned. “You know that I detest taking life, Mrs. Rose. Even something like this. Beyond that, it represents aspects of floromancy far past the abilities of any living practitioner. This is groundbreaking. That’s why I called Dr. Gall.”
“It’s fantastic,” Dr. Gall said, leaning in.
He tapped on the glass. The creature screamed again, flytrap-face opening, and then sucked in a breath.
Green mist sprayed from its throat, quickly clouding the air within the jar.
Then it leapt at the glass, flytrap-mouth attaching to it like a starfish.
Its throat was only a black pit, filled with small, sharp teeth.
“Ooh! What’s it doing now?” Dr. Gall asked.
“As far as I can tell, it can fabricate poisonous gas. From the foliage, I’d bet it’s Mandragora poison. A hallucinogen and narcotic, probably for confusing its prey.”
“Prey?” Mrs. Rose said. She sounded likely to faint.
“I found a partially digested mouse in its stomach, so yes. Prey. But it seems to seek out sunlight, so the foliage is not just for camouflage. It likely can photosynthesize as well as absorb energy from meat.”
Mrs. Rose audibly swallowed. “Well. I know that your better nature tells you to preserve life, Elswyth. But in this case, I would recommend an exception. It sounds dangerous to keep something like that in the house. I will set about making a fire in the hearth upstairs—bring that thing when you are ready.”
Mrs. Rose left quickly, leaving her alone with Dr. Gall—a noted lapse in her propriety as Dr. Gall was, after all, a man, although Elswyth scarcely thought of him as such.
“It is small, for a predator,” Gall said, lifting his spectacles and squinting through the glass.
“I believe this is a juvenile specimen.”
Dr. Gall blinked. “Well. That’s rather frightening.” He turned back to the creature, which had closed its face, cocking its head as it observed him. “But it’s so cute!”
Elswyth looked at the thing. It really was darling, in an odd way. Almost infantile, with its chubby limbs and plume of foliage. “Yes, but it’s not harmless, Doctor.”
Elswyth opened the box she kept next to the creature’s jar and took out a piece of raw meat from the kitchens.
She quickly opened the jar and dropped it in.
Instantly the creature’s face flared open, and it pounced on the meat.
Blood exploded across the glass as the petal-jaws ground it into a pulp.
“Oh…” Dr. Gall said. Then he appeared to realize something. “Mandragora,” he said. “As in mandrake root? Certainly you do not imply that this creature is the mandrake of legend?”
Elswyth had made the connection, but she had hesitated to mention it to Gall.
In legends, mandrakes were monsters created by the eldren from dark magic and the flesh of dead men.
In some folktales they were spies for their masters, while in others they were bloodthirsty monsters.
They were just stories she knew, and yet the creature’s similarities to mythology could not be ignored.
Gall exhaled, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his jacket. “Well, Elswyth, this is fascinating, certainly. And unexpected. Naturally, we’ll need to dissect it and then run chemical tests on its parts to determine the method of its creation.”
Elswyth frowned. “So you think, too, that it was created? That it is not a previously undiscovered—but natural—species.”
Dr. Gall made a noncommittal gesture. “That was my first thought, yes. Perhaps I am being silly. In folk tales that is always the case. And I doubt there are many previously undiscovered species in the heart of London.”
Elswyth folded her arms and frowned. “Then you really believe it is a mandrake? A servant created by a floromancer and sent here to spy on me? I had hoped you would say otherwise.”
Gall thought for a moment. “If that is the case, and I hesitate to stake my good standing on it, then it raises the question, who created it? Whoever did so must be the greatest floromancer in the world. They must possess abilities completely unknown to modern science.”
Elswyth hesitated. She thought again of the strange poison used to kill Captain Burr and of the flowers that bloomed from his throat. “I believe I do know who sent it.”
“Who?” Gall asked, looking concerned.
“The Reaper.”
Gall blinked. His face paled. “You don’t mean the creature taking all those women from the Rows? But he’s a madman, or so they say. What makes you think he’s capable of this?” Gall gestured to the mandrake.
Elswyth turned away. Would Gall think her mad, if she explained her theory?
She would say nothing of Persephone, nor of Venus Forscythe.
She’d been so sure that Venus was involved.
But could she make something like the mandrake?
She was a middling floromancer, capable of making only the simplest flowers and perfumes.
Even if she really were involved in Persephone’s death, and that was why she sought to ruin Elswyth, it didn’t explain the mandrake or the other missing women.
“He’s not only taking them. All of the women were found cut open with missing organs. Beyond that, plants were found growing where the organs used to be. Which means the Reaper is likely a floromancer.”
Gall looked uncomfortable. “Miss Elderwood, I am not saying I don’t believe you. I respect your powers of deduction. But you must admit that this is wild speculation.”
“Think of it, though. If one were to create a human-plant hybrid, wouldn’t one need human tissue? And that’s exactly what I found inside the mandrake—that’s what powers this creature. Pieces of human organs.”
Elswyth took him by the arm and dragged him to the desk by the window, where she’d made a haphazard laboratory of her own. She pointed him to a diagram of the creature’s insides, labeled in her frantic, overtired script.
“Look, here: the bloodlike sap is filtered through this, which I believe is a liver, hybridized with algae. And the lungs here—part human lung, part Mandragora leaf. The cells are something like the stomata of—”