“Slide it down the stairs. Let water flow in —”
The basin bumped down the steps and onto the platform. Yves knelt beside it, unwrapping the net that surrounded it. Overcome by her curiosity, Marie-Josèphe hastened to join him. The silk of her underskirt rustled against the polished laboratory floor, with a sound as soft and smooth as if she were crossing the marble of the Hall of Mirrors.
Before she reached the cage, the tent’s curtains moved aside again. A worker carried a basket of fresh fish and seaweed to the cage, dropped it, and fled. Other workers hauled in ice and a barrel of sawdust.
Her curiosity thwarted, Marie-Josèphe returned to Yves’ specimen. She wanted to open its shroud, but thought better of revealing the creature to the tired, frightened workmen.
“You two, cover the bundle with ice, then cover the ice with sawdust. The rest of you, fetch Father de la Croix’s equipment from the wagons.”
They obeyed, moving the specimen gingerly, for it reeked of preserving spirits and corruption.
Yves will have to carry out his dissection quickly, Marie-Josèphe said to herself. Or he’ll have nothing left to dissect but rotten meat on a skeleton.
Marie-Josèphe had grown used to the smell during years of helping her brother with his explorations and experiments. It bothered her not at all. But the workers breathed in short unhappy gasps, occasionally glancing, frightened, toward Yves and the groaning sea monster.
The workers covered the laboratory table with insulating sawdust.
“Bring more ice every day,” Marie-Josèphe said. “You understand — it’s very important.”
One of the workers bowed. “Yes, mamselle, M. de Chrétien has ordered it.”
“You may retire.”
They fled the tent, repelled by the dead smell and by the live sea monster’s crying.
The melancholy song drew Marie-Josèphe closer. Yves’ workers tilted the basin off the platform. Water trickled into it.
Marie-Josèphe hurried to the Fountain.
“Yves, let me see —”
As Yves loosened the canvas restraints, the grinding and creaking of the water pumps shook the night. The fountain nozzles gurgled, groaned, and gushed water.
Apollo’s fountain spouted water in the shape of a fleur-de-lys. At its zenith, the central stream splashed the tent peak. Droplets rained down on Apollo’s chariot, dimpled the pool’s surface, and spattered the sea monster. The creature screamed and thrashed and slapped Yves with its tails. Yves staggered backward.
“Turn off the fountain!” Yves shouted.
Snarling, the creature struggled free of the basin. Yves jumped away, evading the sea monster’s teeth and claws and tails. The workers ran to do Yves’ bidding.
The creature lurched away and tumbled into the water, escaping into its prison in the Fountain of Apollo.
Marie-Josèphe caught Yves’ arm. A ripple broke against his foot and flowed around the soles of his boots, as if he walked on water. Water soaked the hem of his cassock.
My brother walks on water, Marie-Josèphe thought with a smile. He ought to be able to keep his clothing dry!
The fountains spurted high, then gushed half as high, then bubbled in their nozzles.
The fleur-de-lys wilted. The creaking of the pumps abruptly ceased. No ripple, not even bubbles, marked the surface of the pool.
Yves wiped his sleeve across his face. Marie-Josèphe, standing two steps above him, almost reached his height. She laid her hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“You’ve succeeded,” she said.
“I hope so.”
Marie-Josèphe leaned forward and peered into the water. A dark shape lay beneath the surface, obscured by the reflections of candlelight.
“It’s alive now,” Yves said. “How long it will survive...” His worried voice trailed off.
“It need not live long,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I want to see it — Call it to you!”
“It won’t come to me. It’s a beast, it doesn’t understand me.”
“My cat understands,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Didn’t you train it, all those weeks at sea?”
“I had no time to train it.” Yves scowled. “It wouldn’t eat — I had to force-feed it.”
He folded his arms, glaring at the bright water. The sea monster drifted, silent and still.
“But I fulfilled His Majesty’s wishes. I’ve done what no one has done in four hundred years. I’ve brought a living sea monster to land.”
Marie-Josèphe leaned closer to the water, straining to see. The creature was long, and sleek, longer and more slender than the dolphins that cavorted off the beach in Martinique. Its tangled hair swirled around its head.
“Whoever heard of a fish with hair?” she exclaimed.
“It’s no fish,” Yves said. “It breathes air. If it doesn’t breathe soon —”
He crossed the rim of the fountain and stepped to the ground. Marie-Josèphe stayed where she was, gazing at the monster.