Read Online This Monstrous Thing by Mackenzi Lee - Free Book Online Page B

Rather than risk being caught trying to sneak over the border, we went through Basel, a port city on the Rhine, and crossed from there into Germany. The border took hours to get through, and when the patrol finally reached our wagon, there was enough banging and knocking about to make me stop breathing. “If they open the coffin, just lie very still,” Clémence had advised me. “Most men won’t bother the dead.”
    But we made it through without incident, and passed into the German Confederation. Clockwork regulationsweren’t as strict here, but I was still a wanted man without papers, and I kept a sharp eye out for trouble. Every cart or pedestrian we passed had me ducking out of sight and wishing for some better defense than hiding.
    As we trudged along the snowy country roads, Depace sang tuneless Christmas carols that the wind carried back to us. Clémence and I spoke very little. The morning after we left Geneva, I got my first good look at her in the light. She was dead thin and pale, made paler by her brilliant blond hair, which I realized was properly white now that I saw it in the sunshine. Her eyes were blue as Lake Geneva, and her best smile was no more than a smirk, so it felt as though she was always sneering at me. It reminded me a bit of Oliver, and I had to swallow that hot guilt back yet again.
    All the traveling in silence left me little to do but fret over whether I’d done the right thing in leaving him, until I thought I might go mad with it. I hated myself for abandoning him, and hated myself more for that small piece of me that was relieved for having an excuse to go. I hadn’t been away from Oliver for two years. Leaving still had its hooks in, but a part of me—a dark and wretched part—felt free.
    Bavaria was all gray rolling hills and ghostly forests, with black pines that dropped snow on us from above and bare cedars wrapped in thorny mistletoe. We plodded across it for two days beyond the border before Ingolstadt appeared on the road signs. I was shattered from all thetravel and the constant worry about being caught, but my exhaustion faded as the houses spotting the hills began to multiply and the white spire of the university approached on the horizon.
    There were no guards at the city limits—something that I once would have given no thought to, but after three years in Geneva it seemed a wonder. Clémence climbed onto the driver’s seat to talk with Depace, leaving me to stare out the back of the wagon at the copper-capped buildings passing by.
    Ingolstadt was a small town, and the mechanization that had shaped Geneva had hardly touched it. There were no clockwork carriages or cogged omnibuses. No looming clock tower or industrial torches to illuminate the night. No prowling policemen either, and I spotted a few men with mechanical arms and legs walking unveiled. No one crossed to the other side of the street to avoid them or spit on them as they passed. Perhaps not a paradise, and not full equality—I didn’t think the world would ever reach that point—but Ingolstadt could be close. It felt for the first time since we’d left Geneva like the danger had truly passed, and I could breathe again.
    The university sat in the town’s center—a monument to which every other building seemed to bow. Clémence directed Depace to stop at the gate; then she hopped down and I clambered after her, my spine cracking loudly as I stretched. We stuck out sorely among the studentscrossing campus, wrapped up in velvet cloaks and amber furs, but if we got curious looks, I didn’t notice. I was too busy staring openmouthed at the stonework, the stained glass, the tapestries that lined the walls of the colonnades. I felt the pull again—the want I’d nursed since childhood, to study here with Geisler—so strong it hurt. I tried to imagine myself as a student, swapping test scores with mates as we crossed the snowy courtyard to the next lecture, but as hard as I squinted, I couldn’t do it.