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By Root 641 0

whose thirty-two panels could be arranged in any order and create billions of combinations, though they were virtually indistinguishable from one another). Edmund’s gambling debts, diagnosed satyriasis, and well-known addiction to nitrous oxide, vulgarly known as laughing gas, had closed to him the doors of a respectable career in the Arts, and it was behind a large handlebar moustache and Parseval-type pudenda that the poor prodigal son concealed his notoriety. He had never fallen in love with anyone before Myrtle, the pure, unsoiled, incorruptible Myrtle. He had to rescue her or destroy himself. And he was the one who found her under the blackened remains of Igor Plastisine, and loaded her on his back.

Edmund took Myrtle to the useless blue ruins of the Heaven and Hell Hospital, where she was recognized by one of her servants, Olaf Jansen, who, following Isabella’s intuition and orders, as well as—allegedly—the telepathic promptings of the strange marsupial pet offered to her by Douglas Norton, had come to New Venice in the hope of fetching her back to Crocker Land. But the passionate Elphinstone would not leave her side, and in order to ensure a modicum of discretion from him, Jansen had no option but to bring Edmund to the island as well, before it was too late to save Myrtle. When they arrived at the crystal castle after a long, exhausting trip, Myrtle was so deeply comatose that most doctors would probably have declared her dead. But Elphinstone was not a doctor. He was a man in love and he believed in the power of his feelings to bring his sleeping beauty back to life. Isabella was too shocked and sad, and perhaps too steeped herself in the supernatural, to oppose Elphinstone’s commitment and single-mindedness. For days and weeks, he took care of Myrtle in a secluded tower of the castle, read books to her and played her heart-wrenching music on Isabella’s glasharmonica, bathed and oiled her and shocked her with an electric generator the islanders had found on a wrecked whaler. Though she was not brought back to life by such dedication, she was eventually found to be pregnant, even though her pulse was imperceptible, and her breath left no blur on a mirror.

Isabella, learning the news, cast Elphinstone out of the castle, making him so desperate that she had to resort to the physical strength and firepower of the meek Crockerlanders to keep him away. Edmund lingered outside, lying in the snow and howling through the fog during the whole seven days of his endless agony. He never lived to see his premature orphans, two little mirror images of each other, being borne out of the womb of their motionless mother. At the sight of such a wonder, the Islanders knelt down in awe, and Isabella, who had a noble heart, gave the children the name of their father; a man, after all, whose love had been stronger than death.

“That was a sad story,” said Gabriel to the twins, as they walked in front of him down a narrow corridor, crystal candelabras in hand. Reginald shrugged his shoulders, forcing Geraldine to do the same. They reminded Gabriel of those little figures cut out of folded paper and then unfolded to show a string of gingerbread-man shapes.

“We have not lived it,” said the boy. “It is other people’s memories.”

“It was losing grandmother Isabella that was the real blow,” added Geraldine. “She took such wonderful care of us.”

“I hear she is still around and has quite a haunting presence,” said Gabriel.

Geraldine turned toward Gabriel and smiled, while Reginald explained.

“Oh, you must mean our mother, Myrtle. She is the one with that ability, not Grandmother. But she certainly resembled Grandmother Isabella when she was young.”

“Isn’t she very pretty? I wish we were as pretty,” added Geraldine, a bit coquettishly, thought Gabriel.

He looked at the nape of her neck and discovered he felt an insistent desire to kiss it, faintly accompanied by the more obscure and unsettling urge to bite her ponytail. But with Reginald around, in his little black Lord Fauntleroy costume, that kind of privacy was, of course, impossible.