Orpheus and the Pearl & Nevermore Read Online Free PDF

lacks all bodily fluids, such as stomach acids. We have partly
solved this with gullet stones.”
    This time Catherine couldn’t keep the
retching down to the pit of her stomach, and she audibly gagged.
Again, it was one thing to have to get over the unnaturalness or
hideousness of the situation. But the indignities to which the poor
woman was constantly subjected made her gag instinctively and
sympathetically. “Gullet stones?”
    Dr. Wallston had lapsed into the enjoyment
of clinical details and analysis that often make doctors go on
about things that should demand respect or tact, and not
fascination or excitement. “Yes, as in birds. Surely you know…”
    Catherine could not help her glare, nor her
rising tone. “I know what gullet stones are, Dr. Wallston! I’m not
some neophyte who chats with people on the couch, who practices the
‘talking cure,’ because I couldn’t master anatomy or biology! I was
expressing surprise that you fed your wife rocks, for God’s sake!
It’s as though you’ve turned her into some lower order of creature
so she could continue her savage, bestial feasts. And all of this
brought on by her being made into some unnatural monstrosity,
through no choice of her own, I might add.” She paused and calmed
slightly. “I’m sorry, I’m not judging you. It’s just some of the
details are particularly horrible and difficult to accept. I will
do my best to look at them dispassionately and help her.”
    He hung his head. “Again, I know. You have
to understand, once she was revived, there was nothing I could do
but think of ways to continue her existence. I couldn’t very well
just stop administering the chemicals and let her die again. It
would be like murder. And I couldn’t stand to lose her again.”
    They both heard the clank of Mrs. Wallston
opening the hatch. Dr. Wallston went to stand next to the door
through which she would next pass. It opened, and she stepped into
the hall. “Victoria,” Dr. Wallston said, meekly. “I told you
someone would be arriving to help with your treatment. This is Dr.
MacGuire. She comes highly recommended.”
    Mrs. Wallston was wearing a long white
dress. It billowed out hugely from her small frame, both in the
skirts and in the gauzy sleeves. Her hair was neatly put up. In
life it surely would’ve accented her fine features and fair
complexion with an enormous shock of shining, glowing yellow, but
in death everything was nearly the same exhausted shade, like an
overexposed photograph in which one can barely make out the details
or contours. And her eyes. They had clearly been a stunning pale
blue, but without moisture they could neither glisten, nor shine,
nor flash, so they were as dull as if they were made of unglazed
porcelain. They had the same fair hue and matte finish as a robin’s
egg. Catherine could not stop gazing into them, their soulless
beauty was so mesmerizing.
    Mrs. Wallston tilted her head down and
cocked an eyebrow. There was the same growl as Catherine had heard
the previous night, before the laryngeal resonance resolved itself
into human speech. “Recommended, Percy? Recommended for what, pray
tell? With a name like that, and young as she is, I can’t imagine
it’s for anything other than a maid, and I don’t need a maid, as
you well know.” Mrs. Wallston smiled, but with gums the color of
lard and no joy behind the expression, it was not very becoming.
“Although decked out like that, do you have something else in mind?
Stable boy? Perhaps you’re taking up falconry or jousting,
Percy?”
    Catherine knew she had instantly flushed way
past crimson at the insults, but there was no avoiding it. Dr.
Wallston tried to overlook his wife’s monstrous rudeness. “I need
the help of another doctor, Victoria.”
    “ And you couldn’t bear to
have one of your male colleagues see what you’ve done to me, Percy?
Couldn’t bear to have them see my freakish body, or my ruined mind?
And what? I’m supposed to bare my soul to