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What option did I have?

I smiled up at him, giving him the look that always soothed him so he could function. He let out a breath of relief, his eyes lighting. He still needed me. He would always need me. And some part of me still responded to that.

I had no means to kill him. But perhaps, after he had taken me, I could devise something. I smiled more sweetly still, and he leaned down to kiss me. I could not stop myself from jerking away from his hateful lips.

My movement dislodged the crate, my momentum carrying me backward into the hole in the ice.

The shock was immediate and overwhelming. Panic bubbled up like my br

eath as I struggled to orient myself and find the hole. I had to get out!

A hand grabbed for me, grasping blindly through the icy water. The hand that had reached out to me as a child, that had pulled me from my misery and into a life of a different kind of captivity. The hand that, guided by his brilliant mind, could accomplish delicate and sensitive operations that defied the fundamental laws of life and death.

The hand that would take my body and make it his own.

Victor would save me. And I wanted to live! Desperately. As I always had. For one moment I let myself consider it.

But if I lived, I would still die, and I would never have control of myself again.

I took his hand, and then I pulled with all my might. Victor, unused to meeting resistance from me, tumbled into the hole. He flailed, turning toward me in the blue depths. His eyebrows were drawn together in surprise and confusion.

I reached out and smoothed them, smiling. Victor would never hurt anyone again. I had saved them, and I had saved myself.

He struggled for the surface, searching for the hole. But he had not taken off all his furs. They were weights, dragging him down. I wrapped my arms around him, embracing him and sinking with him until he stopped moving. The water around me, deepest blue, turned from cold to burning heat and then peaceful nothingness.

I opened my arms to release Victor. His fingers, tangled in my hair, finally broke free. He spiraled down, staring up at me in surprise, until the black depths claimed him. I floated, weightless and finally, truly free.

And then, alone but not scared, I closed my eyes.

Taught by the heav’nly Muse to venture down

The dark descent, and up to reascend…

THERE WAS NOTHING.

And then a shock so great it yanked me free of the hold of eternity, pulsing pain to every sleeping nerve until I felt and saw the brilliant white that claimed me and forced me back.

I took a breath.

I opened my eyes. I did not know this room, this place. I did not know anything. I felt panic rising, until a cool hand rested on my cheek. Mary stared down at me, smiling through her tears. Adam loomed next to her, his tortured face alive with hope. “Welcome back, Elizabeth Frankenstein,” she said.

I was free. And…

“I am alive,” I whispered.

* * *

—

I am alive.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Two hundred years ago, a teenage girl sat down and created science fiction.

She did it on a dare. The coolest thing I ever did on a dare was ask my now-husband out. Which, granted, changed my world. Mary Shelley? Changed the whole world.

Rarely does a story come along that reshapes the public imagination in such a startling and notable way. The fact that we are still talking about Frankenstein, studying it, remaking it, speaks volumes to the questions Mary Shelley asked. Because it isn’t the answers in stories that are interesting—it’s the questions.