One of the passages in Frankenstein Isaac liked best was the moment when the monster came to full understanding. Isaac liked the quotation so much he’d written out the words and pinned them to the wall of his bedroom so he could read them over and over.

Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock.

It had not been a happy moment for the monster, learning what he truly was. Learning that he was different.

Isaac had always known he was different. He’d known it that day his grandfather had lost him, when they’d walked by the graveyard in Josefov on a dusky evening, and Isaac had been scared out of his wits, and suddenly, his grandfather was calling his name and searching the streets even though Isaac was there, right there, frozen in silence, but still there.

And that day at school when he was sitting outside reading and Carl had run past and snatched his book straight out of Isaac’s hands and then ridiculed him for reading “baby stories” as Isaac yelled, “They’re fairy tales.” When the other boys joined in the bullying and Isaac watched his book tossed from hand to hand, and he was shoved so hard against the wall he couldn’t breathe, he wished he could disappear, and then the boys stopped in confusion, staring straight through Isaac as if they couldn’t see him.

And, of course, the hum. That hum he’d felt long before now.

He’d felt it in the silent pine forests above his grandfather’s cottage when he was out alone one summer afternoon and was sure he saw eyes in the underbrush.

He’d felt it each time he entered the Old-New Synagogue and placed his hand on the plaster wall.

That hum, that vibration, ran right through him.

Go ahead and call it magic. Isaac Wolf now realized he was able to hear it, to feel it, and he had been able to for a long, long time. Magic was a part of who he was.

But so were they, if his parents were right. The monsters he’d seen in the hut and in the ring of stones. They would find him. They came with deepest dark. His parents had sent him to Rookskill with information buried in a casket that also had, at least once, opened a window to them.

For now, maybe he was safe here, in this castle with its wards and children who were learning to use magic—to help the Brits win the war—but he still had to understand who they were and what they wanted.

And maybe it was truly important to discover the usefulness of his so-called gift, whatever it was, and how he could control it.

How Isaac Wolf could control magic.

CHAPTER 15

Ralph Baines

From 1919 to 1942