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“While I saw the destruction of the tree as nature’s beauty, Victor saw power—power to light up the night and banish darkness, power to end a centuries-old life in a single strike—that he cannot control or access. And nothing bothers Victor more than something he cannot control.”
Words and stories were tools to elicit the desired reactions in others, and I was an expert craftswoman.
When I could not be outside, during the depths of winter or in the afternoons when Victor returned, I studied his schoolwork or looked at paintings and read poetry. It delighted the Frankensteins. They saw it as evidence of my good breeding that at such a young age I was so attuned to the arts. But really, it was a way of escaping back into the wilderness when I was trapped inside.
I have never seen questions such as his, and doubt I ever will again. He was on the path to either genius or lunacy.”
We had been inseparable for years, such that I did not know where he ended and I began.
I would lie silent and still, like a corpse, as he studied me. His careful, delicate hands explored all the bones and tendons, the muscles and tracings of veins that make up a person. “But where is Elizabeth?” he would ask, his ear against my heart. “Which part makes you?” I had no answer, and neither did he.
Victor had left, possessed by the need to defeat death, and without me here to temper his obsessions, he had descended to hellish depths.
Someday death will claim you. And I will not allow it.” His eyes narrowed, and his voice trembled with fury and determination. “You are mine, Elizabeth Lavenza, and nothing will take you from me. Not even death.”
“Oh, I like you, Elizabeth Lavenza. I like you very much. I am a little bit afraid of you, but I think that makes me like you more.
“I have been stuck in the business of books for so long, I forgot how much fun being a part of a story can be.”
Though my situation was obviously worse, Henry was also a prisoner to other people’s expectations. His life had been mapped out for him from the day he was born: he would follow his father into business, expanding their family holdings.
Elizabeth, I think you could convince Winter to leave early and give all his territory to Spring if only you could talk to him.”
I sought to puncture heaven and instead discovered hell.”
“Men are always doing things without thinking of how they will affect others. It is a woman’s heart that is big enough to hold another’s feelings.
There was something to be said for children after all. There was a deeply restoring and restful happiness watching a creature like William discover the world. He was all curiosity and joy. There was no fear or anxiety in him.
I curse you for ever creating man, only to let him destroy the most innocent among us, over and over and over again!”
His crimes were pride and ambition, stepping beyond the boundaries God set for the world. How did one punish those?
You have never truly seen me, have never seen what I am capable of. You looked only for fault, only for weakness. The unimaginable heights of my genius, unrivaled, unrestrained, have made you nervous and petty. You would have me gentled. You would have me do nothing with my life but provide you with more money to feed your own appetites and pleasures.
I had wanted to wed as a means to kill a monster. All my plans had centered on spending my wedding night in a fight for my own life, and for Victor’s, as well. I had never once considered a wedding night on which we were safe and relatively free.
All my work, all my sacrifice, has been for a single purpose: I am going to defy death. I am going to steal the spark of creation from it, to make life eternal, untouchable by corruption.
They had stripped us of everything we were taught made us women, and then told us we were mad.
Perhaps that was why Victor was so desperate to imitate life with his own twisted version. He had never been able to feel things as deeply as he should; he had been raised in a home where everything was pretense and no one spoke the truth. Not even me. I had accused Victor of creating a monster, but I had done the same.
“I have just escaped from the asylum where you trapped me, have come here with the express purpose of killing you, and you want me to change my clothes?
All our rituals as humans seemed to revolve around birth and death—marriage being the exception, though my wedding had been a ritual intimately connected to death, given my choice of partner.
“If it makes you feel any better, I understand how you could have thought so highly of him and been blind to his true nature. His mind truly is remarkable.”
“It was not his mind I loved. It was his esteem for me. He valued me when no one else did. And I thought it made me special, that he loved only me. I should have realized that his inability to love anyone else just meant something was wrong with him.”
