Chapter 31
Chapter
We found a small ichthyosaur in one of the dustier storage rooms of Palmanaeus. It wasn’t one of mine; my complete ichthyosaurs were all the monstrous variety, stretching five meters or more. But none of those would fit in our tank.
Henry loosened the collar of his shirt and rolled his sleeves, panting. He’d carried the fossil slab all the way from Palmanaeus.
“It isn’t that heavy,” he’d scoffed when I suggested he ask a page for assistance. So I had to laugh as he mopped the sweat from his brow.
He chuckled sheepishly. “It’s very warm in here.”
The ichthyosaur skeleton was still embedded in stone. But the fossilist had done a thorough job, and I felt fairly certain we had ninety-five percent of the bones.
I knelt beside it on the floor, my heart stuttering. Henry knelt across from me.
“Are you ready?” his voice was husky. My mouth was dry. I nodded and brushed my fingers over the skull.
There it was. The spark of life.
My hands shook as I ran them down the curving spine. My thoughts went still, and quiet, now flooded with images of the sea—the crashing waves and the warm water on powerful flanks, tiny fish darting in the shallows.
But something was different. Wrong.
I gritted my teeth, trying again. Diving into the flickering images of sea and stone and coral.
But whatever the thread of life was made of, it slipped out of my grasp. As if it were just out of reach.
“I can’t…grab hold…” I mumbled, and my vision started to blur.
“Mary!”
Henry threw himself across the stone slab. I slid, limp, against his chest. The magic vanished as my fingers twitched, leaving a newly carved hollow in my stomach.
“I’m sorry.” My voice was slurred, and my hands weren’t cooperating. Everything sounded very far away—except for Henry’s heart, pounding under my ear. “I don’t know what happened. Why it didn’t work.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “All power has limitations. It’s no shame on you. We’ll simply focus on the little ones.”
“But—”
“Hush.” His arm tightened around my waist. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
What a damnable man, I thought, and closed my eyes, letting my breathing steady to the rhythm of his.
I protested weakly, but Henry forbade any more resurrection attempts for the day. So after I was recovered, we walked back to Palmanaeus House for an afternoon of research instead.
I assumed Henry would go to his own office, but instead he followed me to mine. He settled into the dark-blue chair by the window and pulled a book from his satchel—Occidental Cults and Rituals—and crossed an ankle over his knee.
I’d always preferred to work alone, but somehow Henry’s presence didn’t annoy me. It was even comforting, rather than obnoxious, to hear his steady breathing and the crinkle of paper as he turned pages.
Ajax cawed unhappily through the wall, the cry like a hook in my ribs, breaking my concentration. The squawk was followed by male voices—cries of alarm.
He probably tried to bite someone again, I thought, my lips twitching with a smile.
“Do you remember the day we met?” Henry’s voice was so soft, I wasn’t sure I’d even heard correctly until he continued. “It was on the beach. You’d found an ichthyosaur.”
The muscles between my shoulder blades pulled tight. “I remember.”
“I was looking for you. Did you know that?” He chuckled. “I’d been bothering Mother for weeks at that point, ever since they sent me home from school. She told me to go outside, to get some fresh air and leave her alone.
“I was wandering around down by the seawall, just kicking rocks. One of them was strange. It had an imprint of a bivalve. The lines were so clear. A sailor hauling in fish saw me studying it. ‘There’s a girl,’ he told me.
‘Odd. But about your age. She finds lots of those things on the beach. Sells them for coin. If you want to see more of ’em.
Name’s Mary.’ Or something like that. And then the man went back to his catch. He didn’t even wait for me to respond.”
Henry’s fingers tapped idly on the page of his book. His eyes were distant.
“That man changed my life. Isn’t that strange?
He’s probably never thought again of the boy with the seashell.
But I was curious. I walked out on the beach, the way the man had pointed.
And eventually, sure enough, there you were.
You were kneeling in the sand, digging away with such single-minded purpose at this dark-brown skull.
I could see the pit of the eye, and the jawbone.
Like a monster. Your dress was soaked from the knees down.
“You looked up at me with this annoyed scowl, as if I’d interrupted you. Which I suppose I had.
“But I was fascinated. From the moment I first saw you, I was fascinated.”
It was like his words and the memory had cast a spell, and I was afraid that if I moved, or blinked, or even looked away, it would break.
Henry broke it himself. He cleared his throat and looked down at the book in his lap.
“I’m headed out of town for a few days,” he said quickly. “It’s been some time since I’ve checked on operations at Glasswater Mill. I should go and see how things are progressing with the Loom.”
“Of course,” I said lightly, but my heart dropped. How long? I was bursting to ask. And, worse, so much worse: Take me with you.
Henry wasted no time; he was gone within the hour. But he left me the keys to the London flat.
So the next day I walked through thick morning fog from Palmanaeus to Henry’s to continue the work alone.
The butler greeted me with a drawn face the moment he opened the door. My stomach sank. “What’s wrong?”
He exhaled. “Come and see for yourself.”
I followed him upstairs to one of the tank-storage rooms.
My dread deepened when I caught the eye of one of the pages we’d hired to care for the revived specimens. The young man stood in the corner near the salamander tank, wringing his hands. His eyes were glassy. He shook his head.
I raced to the tank, pressing my hands against the glass and peering inside. Dread clawed at my chest and slithered into my throat as I caught sight of the still, tender bodies, and had to tear my eyes away.
“No.” My knees nearly buckled. “Please. No.”
“They were gone when I arrived. I swear it, Miss Anning.”
I reached in and lifted one of them from their mossy bed, stroking with tender fingers.
The black-olive eyes were dim and lifeless, and the skin was dry and cold.
I sank to the floor, my pale-green dress pooling around me, and I stared at the tiny, stiff creature in my palm.
All my powers were useless. The salamander was no longer a fossil. It was a body. A corpse. It was gone.
And the poor salamanders were only the start.
It was one of the belemnites next. I found it the following morning, floating lifeless at the top of its tank.
And on Tuesday afternoon, one of the smaller ammonites passed, and I discovered three dead sea snails—one of which had vanished completely.
I could only assume the others had scavenged its remains.
Early Wednesday morning, a trilobite died, simply stopped in its tracks, as its many legs suddenly stilled.
That’s when the quiet worry, which I’d been trying to dismiss, burst into true fear.
Something was wrong. With the creatures. Or me. Or my magic. Maybe all the resurrections were temporary. Maybe—
By that point I was already running back to Palmanaeus House, my skirts clutched so indecently that a gaggle of street youths whistled as I raced past.
If it had just been the snails, I wouldn’t have worried. But the others were long-lived creatures. They should have had years and years left.
I flew up the stairs, ignoring the startled pair of geomagicians forced to scurry out of my way. I flung the door open, my heartbeat pounding in my throat.
Ajax chirped and scurried toward me in his awkward gait.
I sank to my knees and folded myself around his body, still half in the doorway. I pressed my cheek to his, inhaling the musky animal scent. Relief softened my hands, warmed my palms as I stroked his head. Ajax was fine. He was alive.
“Can I help you, Miss Anning?” The voice dripped annoyance.
I looked up, the scene taking shape. There were four men in the room, and eight raised eyebrows.
Three geomagicians. Jonas Finch, Adam Harrelson, and Matthew Turner—an expert on Crinoidea I’d been hoping to impress.
And the zookeeper. Mr. Burton. Burton had bits of bloody meat in his leather glove. It must be feeding time.
Burton spoke again, as if I were very simple. “Is there something you need?”
My cheeks flushed. I pulled my face away from Ajax with as much dignity as I could muster.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” I stood, smoothing my skirts to avoid their eyes. “I—” Ajax flapped his wings and hopped. He wanted to be picked up. I bit my lip, resisting the urge to do so. I’d made a fool of myself and couldn’t even tell them why. But I had to say something.
“I missed him.” I winced as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
Burton sneered, but Jonas Finch smiled indulgently. He was Buckland’s age, an erosion specialist with a fondness for good wine. “My wife is the same about her little dog. Percival. Damn thing bites at my ankles, but Etta won’t hear a word against him.”
“A tender heart is a credit to any woman,” Turner said, and I wanted to melt into the floor.
I inclined my head. Ajax squawked for my attention, but I didn’t glance down. “My apologies for having disturbed you, gentlemen.”
I hurried from the room, forcing myself not to look back at Ajax, even as I heard a flutter of wings and a pained yelp that suggested Ajax had bitten someone again.
I stalked back to Henry’s house, cursing myself. I’d gotten worked up over nothing, and now I’d have a reputation as a soft-hearted, sentimental woman no better than Finch’s wife with her little dog.
Of course Ajax was fine. It had to be an environmental issue. The creatures’ diet, maybe, or their water quality. We certainly couldn’t replicate Jurassic conditions in a glass tank.