She stared up at the rows of misshapen skulls, at tight-packed coils of hair, calcified tumors, and other strange things she did not know the name of. What was best? What would fit? The skull in Abigail had not been right, had been out of place. And for Renton, the hair made no sense. But there—a burl of wood, a knot of root that had grown inside some vessel, that had curled back upon itself. That. It looked almost the same as Renton’s bowel.
He waited for her on the landing. The stench of him hit her again in a fresh wave, then faded, transmuted to something heady. Enticing. She smelled benzoin, antiseptic, attar of rose. The scents of a magician, of a surgical patient.
Jane held out the knot of wood in offering. Renton reached out one arm and touched it, a silent blessing.
She led him into her bedroom, then the washroom. The tub was just long enough for him to lay down inside. Jane had only one set of hands, and no retractors to help bare his viscera. The work was messy. But it focused her, shut out the panic and steadied her hands. His abdomen was filled with a wet, dark slurry. His flesh seemed to fade in and out of reality as she worked, heavy and clinging one minute, a doll made of ephemeral silk the next.
She had no water to rinse the wound, so she used brandy left by Hunt, filling her tub with fumes and filth. She placed the knot of wood where the twisted section of bowel had been, then filled the rest of Renton’s abdomen with bog moss and grave loam, saving only a small fraction for herself.
He did not speak until she had taken the needle and begun to stitch him up.
“You are monstrous,” he said.
She flinched and pulled thread through the ragged edge of the torn hole with more force than she intended. It split the delicate flesh. “How so?”
“You do not weep or scream. You did not weep or scream when Augustine Lawrence split me open, either.”
“You are not real,” she said.
“Am I not?”
She looked up at him then, hands still holding his flesh together. “You are not a man.” She hesitated. “Not anymore, at least. Where are you, when you aren’t here?”
He considered, or waited, silent and still. Jane set a few more stitches. Her work was unsteady, childlike. Her hands shook.
“There is a world beyond this one,” he said at last. “Very different, and very far away.”
“The world of the dead?” she asked.
“Of many things,” Renton said. “Of things long gone from this world.”
A shiver went through her. “And when you died? What was there?”
“Pain,” Renton said. “Pain, and knowledge. I played at magic, and I died. I died, and I knew magic.”
“Can you teach me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Renton did not smile. He also did not frown, or laugh, or say no. “Finish your work,” he said.
She placed the last few stitches. She cinched the thread tight. Standing, she helped him from the tub. His stomach shifted as he climbed out, but her stitches held. He looked down at himself, filthy but whole.
“It is almost dawn,” he said. “Show me your ritual.”
She bound him up in her old nightgown, so that he would not drip along the floor. She left him standing at the top of the stairs as she went to retrieve the next hen’s egg and a fresh candle. As she drew out her original circle in chalk and cemented it in salt, she looked up at him, willing him to say something. To correct her. To enlighten her.
He was still as death.
Shame began to creep in at the edges. Renton did not look away. He watched as she muttered to herself, as she painted herself with oils, as she playacted something she did not understand. Power tingled in her fingertips, coursed through her veins, but it felt sour. Can you see it? she thought, gaze boring into Renton’s. It’s real. It’s real, isn’t it?
He did not respond.
She did not want him to see this, she realized. She did not want anybody to see this. This ritual, this magic, was wrong. It led to a man tearing open his abdomen because he had perverted his own body. It led to ghosts walking the halls.
She wanted to shout, to scream, to throw him out of the room. But if she spoke any but the prescribed words, would it break the ritual? She could not ask, could not risk it, and though the circle stood firm between her and Renton, she felt exposed. Vulnerable. Naked. Flayed.
Renton stood by, unmoving, watchful.
Her voice trembled and cracked as she said, “The thin shell protects the potential within from harm; it cannot survive unaided, in the way that the grown mind protects the unprepared soul from the expansion of the universe without.” Philosophical poetry. Wishful wanderings. Not science, not logic. She swallowed, cheeks burning, eyes burning. “But the shell must finally give way; the mind must blossom and allow that which lives within to breathe in its birthright.” The words blurred. The power in her was distant now. All she felt was shame.