Deprived of my liberty, I became like a wild animal caged in a zoo. Lucien finally came to visit on the second day of my incarceration, apologizing for my compromised condition and promising my freedom as soon as we had left the island.

“What did you learn about the ship’s captain?”

“He left the island a week ago on the same ship that brought us here.”

“And what is its destination?”

“Marseille.”

My worst fears were realized. I would have to leave the island. I would have to make another crossing. I would have to return to France. I would have to attend to the monster of my making.

I opened my eyes in my sixth body and blinked several times. Through the window, the oceanic Iowa prairie through which the train was whistling was drenched in the golden light of dusk. Madame Édmonde sat before me, her body rocking with the motions of the train. Her face was marked with that stupefied expression I had come to know so well: the look of a fish that has just been taken out of the sea, no longer flopping about but simply wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as if it cannot quite grasp the strange turn of events that has befallen it. Only, with the scars on her face, it was a strange, monstrous fish she resembled, a fish from the darkest depths of the ocean.

No one is harder to mesmerize than a mesmerist. It was only near the end of my story that I felt the resistance in Balthazar loosen a fraction, and the possibility of a crossing finally open. The change was almost imperceptible, but there it was: as I recounted my story, looking him directly in the eye all the while, I felt that familiar swelling of desire, that peculiar wanderlust of a soul wishing to escape its prison, which we all feel at one time or another, especially when captivated by the charms of a storyteller.

Now, here she was, no longer me but rather inhabited by that young man’s wonderstruck spirit. Édmonde’s mouth opened and closed slowly. I leaned forward to try to catch what, if anything, she was saying. After a moment, I heard it. It was unmistakable. “Behold!” she whispered, “Behold! Behold!…”

Go here.

Hippolyte Balthazar

Born 1876

First crossing 1900

Second crossing 1917

Died 1917

“HE TOLD ME he loved me and wanted to marry me.”