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The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie

Blackstone Publishingerschienen am01.07.2023
Luckily for humanity, scientist Marie Curie applied her brilliant mind and indomitable spirit to expanding the frontiers of science, but what if she had instead drifted toward the darkness?

At the cusp of between child- and adulthood, at the crossroads between science and superstition, a teen Marie Curie faces the factual and the fantastic in this fabulous collection of stories that inspire, delight, and ask the question: What if she had used her talents for diabolical purposes?

The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie includes twenty short stories and poems by award-winning writers including New York Times bestselling authors Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Jane Yolen, Alethea Kontis, and Jonathan Maberry, among others.mehr

Produkt

KlappentextLuckily for humanity, scientist Marie Curie applied her brilliant mind and indomitable spirit to expanding the frontiers of science, but what if she had instead drifted toward the darkness?

At the cusp of between child- and adulthood, at the crossroads between science and superstition, a teen Marie Curie faces the factual and the fantastic in this fabulous collection of stories that inspire, delight, and ask the question: What if she had used her talents for diabolical purposes?

The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie includes twenty short stories and poems by award-winning writers including New York Times bestselling authors Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Jane Yolen, Alethea Kontis, and Jonathan Maberry, among others.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781665047050
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Erscheinungsjahr2023
Erscheinungsdatum01.07.2023
Seiten100 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse3681
Artikel-Nr.11466894
Rubriken
Genre9200

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



Uncrowned
Kings
by
Seanan McGuire

It is easier to watch over one hundred fleas than one young girl.

-Polish proverb.

1876

They buried Zosia yesterday.

She never hurt anyone in her life, which was barely long enough to serve as a sentence, much less a story; she was born, she lived, she loved her family, she got sick, and she left in the night, hand in hand with tall, fair Death, the woman in white and the girl in gray walking away into the streets of Warsaw, leaving her weary, worn-out body
behind.

It wasn t right. Mama and Papa said that it was God s will working through the world, but Maria couldn t see how God s will wasn t an affront to His own creation if he thought killing a fifteen-year-old girl was somehow the right and kindly thing to do. As if it were just. Zosia had been bright and sweet and kind. She had been of an age when her eyes trended toward the boys in their parish, and when her cheeks flared red if one of them brushed her hand in passing at the market or commented on her hair ribbons. She had been old enough to fall in love if God s will hadn t ordered her to wait until marriage or if she hadn t been so bound and determined to be a good, obedient daughter and bring neither attention nor shame to her family name.

Instead, she had brought bills from the physic, treatments that were not enough to save her, and sleepless nights for all of them when her coughing stole sleep away. Maria was ashamed to remember how weary she had been, so angry at her oldest sister, as if Zosia had somehow chosen her illness, had chosen to keep her family awake as she wheezed and struggled for each and every breath.

By the end the coughing had been a welcome confirmation that Zosia was still alive. The doctors had stopped taking Papa s money two days before, saying that it would be a crime in thought if not in deed to let him continue to pay when they already knew they couldn t save her. He wept more when they pressed the bills back into his hand than when the coughing had finally, horribly, mercifully, brutally come to an end.

Maria had been lying awake when Zosia had finally stopped coughing. She had almost drifted off to sleep by the time her mother s scream split the air into two tidy halves: the world in which she had an eldest sister named Zosia, stubborn, sensitive, tender, terrible, and all the things an eldest sister ought to be to be worthy of the title, and the world in which BronisÅawa was now the eldest of them and always would be. Bronia was an excellent sister, and Maria loved her fiercely, but she wasn t meant to be the eldest. She was meant to have someone to set herself against, someone to serve as a magnifying lens for her own brilliance and to sharpen her the way she, Józio, and Hela, sharpened Maria. Without Zosia, how would Bronia ever be sharpened as she was meant to be? How would she shine?

How would any of them shine? Maria had lain in the dark, consumed by the sound of her mother s screams and by the weight of her own grief which had seemed so big it would devour the world. She had known two things to go with the two halves of the world. She no longer had a Zosia to hold and love and call her very own; and someone would have to pay for this. She would find a way to make someone pay for this. She would see Zosia avenged if it was the last thing she did.

After Zosia s death, the priest had come to the house to see the body and talk in low, hushed tones with Maria s father, not noticing the young girl with the tight-drawn face who watched them from the corner of the room, motionless, as if she were a part of the furnishings. Her mother had walked through the day like a ghost herself, covering mirrors and opening windows, following the old traditions before the priest could arrive and tell them that God had everything well in hand. It wasn t worth the argument.

Her mother said that God had things well in hand, but there was still virtue to following the rituals they knew so well, the ones that had been passed down from parent to child for generations. God might want Zosia home with Him in the mansions of Heaven, but would He open all the windows between her spirit and the heights of his domain? Or was that something so small that He would leave it to the people He had created, trusting them to do what needed doing?

God had a plan. Everyone said so. But if a dog died in the street and no one hauled it away, it would bloat and rot where it lay, and maggots would pick the flesh from its bones, and the hand of God would never come down to lift it into the sky. Zosia was not a dead dog. But if a dead dog might require some intervention by human hands, it only made sense for a dead child to require the same.

So the house had been prepared before the priest s arrival. He had come to murmur softly to Maria s parents, their voices low to keep the eager ears of children from drinking in forbidden knowledge. Maria held her tongue until the moment she saw her mother sway, knees buckling, dropping her to the floor. Then, and only then, Maria had rushed forward, glaring at the priest, who had down looked at the little girl in silent assessment.

What did you say? Her demand had been loud enough to crack the air, forming another divide in the world. The world before Maria had raised her voice to a man of God and the world that existed after.

Her father took a step back, eyes wide, clearly too surprised to speak.

The priest looked down at her with infinite patience, not a flicker of frustration in his placid face, and in that moment, she hated him, and it, more than she could possibly have said. She wanted to hook her fingers into claws and scratch at his smooth, rounded cheeks, which had never been hollowed with hunger, never pocked with frost or sickness of any kind. He was too perfect to have suffered, and how could a man who d never known anything but the kind of plenty that could inspire a voluntary vow of privation. She had never been able to understand how priests could pledge to have less so that the Church, which already owned the world, could have more. Maybe they could do it because, for all their pledges and promises, they remained the richest men in Warsaw. Their stomachs were always full, even if their pockets were empty.

That is its own form of wealth, to know that if you stumble, the people will catch you, and that if you leap, God will be there to stop you from hitting the ground. And she hated him for that wealth, hated him so much it felt as if his answer must not matter because she would hate him all the same.

And he looked at her with those kindly eyes, with that kindly face, and said, I told her that had she not allowed an ungodly man to room in her home, with her children, her Zosia would not have fallen ill, nor been taken from us so quickly.

Her mother gave an agonized wail, like the cry of a seabird with a broken wing, and Maria knew hatred like she had never known before in her short life. She narrowed her eyes, and she glared at the priest so fiercely that if she had believed in Hell-and she was increasingly sure that she didn t believe in Hell in the least; if God had wanted them to suffer eternally, He would simply have made life an eternal state, and never allowed them any hope of Heaven-she would have been consigned there in an instant.

And had the Church not set the tithes so high, we might have had the money to support ourselves without the taking of lodgers, she said, voice sharp, and stepped away from him.

He met her anger with an expression of deep sympathy. You are a child, he said. You know not what you say.

Maria, said her mother, keening finally coming to an end. Maria, behave. Do not vex the priest.

Maria shot a scandalized glance at her mother, who would take this man s side after he had said such a horribly unforgivable thing to her. Then she slumped, stepped back, and said, The house is prepared for the mourning period. I know it s inappropriate for me to go out and play right now, but may I go and tell Zosia s friends of her passing? They ll be waiting for her by the fountain.

Go, go, said her mother, willing to ignore the possibility that Maria would break her mourning with levity if it meant that she was no longer antagonizing the priest.

Maria turned and fled.

Bronia was waiting by the door. She looked over with interest as Maria approached and frowned when she saw her little sister taking her coat down from its hook. There was only a year between them, but from the vaunted height of ten years old, BronisÅawa felt as if it was her duty to protect the baby of the family from the dangers of the wide, wild world.

What are you doing? she asked, voice low out of respect for the priest, who was only a room away, and might take normal volume for impudence. You know we mustn t go out to play until the Pusta Noc is done.

As if three days of mourning could possibly be enough for them to cry all the tears that Zosia deserved. Three days mourning, and then the funeral, and then Zosia forever in the ground, under a headstone that would say Zosia SkÅodowska and two dates, with none of the years between. Her favorite food, the little songs she sang when she tied her shoes, the way she brushed her hair, the crushes she harbored, and the hopes that she hid; they d all go with her, and no one would put them on her headstone.

The thought was enough to make Maria s stomach...

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