“You must harden yourself,” he told me sternly. “Monstrumology is not butterfly collecting. If you are to stay with me, you must become accustomed to such things. And worse.” “Am I to stay with you, sir?” His gaze cut down to my bones. I wanted to look away; I could not look away. “What is your desire?” My bottom lip quivered. “I have nowhere else to go.” “Do not pity yourself, Will Henry,” he said, the man whose own self-pity rose to operatic heights. “There is no room in science for pity or grief or any sentimental thing.” And the child answered, “I’m not a scientist.” To which the man
...more
