Page 4 of Her Creation

His hair was as black as the sea beneath us, flopped over his eyes in long, frozen clumps. Skin nearly translucent, tinged a sickly gray—though bathed in the moonlight, everyone’s skin was cloaked in a bluish-silver.

The man turned his head. Scars littered his beardless face and neck. There was something mildly handsome about him despite the wild appearance. Deep goldenrod-yellow eyes locked with mine for a brief second before they moved about, quickly taking in the ship.

I gasped at the sight of his odd-colored eyes, and a shot of icy air filled my throat and chest so painfully I coughed. Never in my life had I seen eyes of that color. One look and you could see the world had shunned him. He looked to be halfway to death already.

The others must have gotten that sense, for when I met them below deck, they placed the man on my cot and hurried away as if they would catch the same fate. Only Captain Sheamus and Mick remained behind. There wasn’t enough space in the small closet-made-room for me to enter with the others, so I waited in the doorway and watched their silhouettes dance from the small tallow candle they had lit.

“How did you end up here, sir? What ship have you come from?” Captain Sheamus peppered the groaning man with questions.

“You don’t look so good, lad,” offered Mick. “My girl—Miss Bulkley, there you stand. Get the man a tot of grog, would you?”

I lifted the bottle and the few supplies the captain had ordered me to grab. My nerves lurched when I felt the man’s yellow eyes snap to me with sudden alertness.

“There she is; the man just needs to be warmed up!” said the captain. His enthusiastic words ricocheted off the walls of the tight space. Something in the way his eyes had landed on me made me feel like I was a target instead of a nurse; I didn’t wish to be either.

The captain peppered him with more questions that were met with incoherent groans or such silence that I wondered if he even spoke the same language.

I poured a bit of the cloudy-brown grog into a cup and stepped in, eager to ask him my own questions but prepared to hear nothing, as so far he had only grunted and groaned.

Mick moved out of the way, but my shoulder accidentally jabbed into the captain’s when he continued to stare at the man. Eventually, he took a step back, away from the bed, so I could hand him the cup.

Up close, he was horrid looking, like a monster made from the night. There was something about him that caused me to recoil and reject him as though he were not the same species as me. Below the horrible feeling, though, and beneath all the scars and uncomfortable pallor of skin, his sharp jawline, prominent cheekbones, and ridged nose held the clean lines of Apollo or the Borghese Gladiator—but with the darkness of Fuseli’s Satan. Still, there was a repugnance about him that made me uncomfortable—something I’d never experienced before.

Scars—so many of them—marred his handsome, even godlike, features. His shirt had opened slightly to reveal his neck and collarbone on one side. Before he shifted and his shirt readjusted, I glimpsed his skin—in patches, large and small, of various colors; almost none seemed to match. Had he had a different disposition, I think he might have reminded me of a calico cat. I forced myself to steady when his hand, gnarled with what looked like burns, took the cup from my hands. He lifted it to his lips and drained the liquid before handing the empty wooden cup back to me. All the while, his yellow eyes watched me without even a blink.

“What in God’s name has happened to you?” Dr. Brox whispered next to me as he took in the man’s scars. I’d been so fixated and unnerved by the man’s stare that I had not noticed the doctor had entered.

Attempting to regain my bearings, I glanced around the dimly lit room, still feeling the stranger’s stare on my face.

“Why is the woman aboard your ship?”

Everyone in the room stilled at the assertive timbre. The brig itself seemed to freeze for a moment. The man’s voice was low and deep with slight hints of an accent that I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe Russian? But it didn’t have the same heavy undertones as I’d heard from my grandfather’s Russian acquaintances. It was smooth and thick with curls of smoke and the threat of ancient curses.

Words sat in my throat and refused to leave.

After a moment of surprised silence, Mick answered. “You are aboard the Prometheus. We are currently on an exploratory expedition sent by the British Admiralty’s Hydrographic Office.” Mick cleared his throat. “Miss Clara Bulkley is the mission’s cartographer. Dr. Brox here is the medical adviser.”

Even in the shadows, I felt his cold yellow eyes return to me.

Captain Sheamus took a step forward. “I am Captain—”

“Is this true?” the man inquired. When his glare returned to me, it seemed softer, though I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it.

I straightened my posture. “Yes, I am the mission’s cartographer. We are here to look at the land you washed ashore on.” I spoke quietly, struggling to push my words out or to meet his imposing glare. It wasn’t exactly a threatening stare, but it definitely was not an appreciative one.

“Her grandfather is the mission’s director,” Dr. Brox added as if my answer needed further explanation.

My eyes left the stranger to glare at the old man’s profile.

“Tell us how you ended up here,” the captain demanded. I could see he was losing patience, the stranger’s lack of answers irritating him.

“Whaler went down,” the man stated before he let out a raspy breath and his eyes flickered closed.

Everyone in the room exchanged nervous glances.

“Let’s get the wet shirt off and have a look at these wounds,” said Dr. Brox.

The man remained unresponsive, so Mick stepped in and assisted the doctor in removing his shirt. I had turned to stare at the back of the door, but the doctor’s sudden swearing got the better of my curiosity, and I turned around to see the man lying unconscious, his full chest and abdomen exposed.