Only a Monster (33 page)

She smiled tentatively. “I'm Joan.”

“I remember,” he said.

The Lius remember.
Joan shouldn't have felt as shaken as she did. She stared at him.

Jamie gestured toward the garden beyond the walkway. “Shall we go for a walk?” He offered his umbrella to her.

Joan found her voice. “It's not that bad out.”

“I know, but . . .” Jamie looked up at the gloomy sky. “I don't much like the wet.”

Joan remembered him as a boy, bare feet splashing in the lake.
He loves the water
, Tom had said. What had happened to him as a captive? Whatever it was, he seemed changed in this timeline. The clear-eyed boy who'd painted fish by the lake had been replaced by a man with a wary but polite demeanor.

He held the umbrella solicitously over Joan as well as himself as they walked, even when she protested that she didn't mind the rain.

They took the path around the old orangery. Through its arched windows, Joan could see people preparing for an event, setting tables with shining silverware and flower arrangements. In Joan's memories, there'd been potted orange trees in this part of the garden—outside in summer, to be put back inside the orangery in winter.

“I don't remember much,” Jamie said. “The Liu power only gives me fragments of the other timeline.”

Looking at his gloved hands, his coat, Joan wondered. “What
do
you remember?” she asked.

“I remember that the hero was real.”

Joan heard her breath shudder out, half relief and half pain. Just hearing someone else speak of him felt like a broken taboo.

“I'm sorry,” Jamie said. “I know what he was to you.”

“I had to do it,” Joan whispered. “My family . . .” She swallowed. “I had to.”

They passed the summer ballroom. Joan kept her eyes on the path, afraid to see sympathy in Jamie's face. There were rosebushes here, a little overgrown.

“I know,” Jamie said gently. Joan heard him breathe in and out. “I remember my captivity,” he said, and Joan's heart twisted, remembering the boy he'd been. She turned back to him.

“Does Tom know?”

Jamie shook his head. “When I left home today, he was painting the boat. Green paint all over him.” For just a moment, as he spoke of Tom, there were no shadows in his eyes. He looked almost like his younger self. “Tom's happy in this timeline,” he said. “I have you to thank for that.”

How do you Lius stand it?
Joan wanted to ask him.
How do you stand remembering when no one else does?
But she could see how Jamie stood it. The same way she was going to have to. He just bore it.

“Thanks to you too,” she reminded him. “You got that message to us. You told us the hero was made.”

“Did I?” Jamie sounded uncertain.

He didn't remember, Joan realized. A strange loneliness washed over her. She thought about the day they'd all gone to see him. Her, Aaron, Ruth, and Tom, sitting by the pond. She remembered how warm the sun had been. How glad she'd been that they were all there with her. Whatever differences they'd started out with, they'd been a kind of team in the end.

But Aaron would never remember that day, and neither would Ruth or Tom. Not even Jamie remembered it all.

“I don't remember leaving a message, but . . .” Jamie hesitated. His gloved hand was tight on the stem of the umbrella. “I know she's still out there. The woman who took me captive.”

The woman who'd made the hero. Did she remember what she'd done, Joan wondered. Did she know what Joan had done?

Whether she did or not,
Joan
knew.

“It's different this time,” she promised Jamie. “If she comes back, we'll be waiting.”

Jamie didn't exactly look reassured, but he met Joan's eyes and nodded. He tested the air with one gloved hand and pulled the umbrella down. The rain had stopped.

They stood there together, watching the sky clear. There
were ruins here by the path, crumbling brick arches covered in ivy. These ruins had been in the previous timeline too, the remains of some long-forgotten structure.

Joan looked beyond them to the house. From this angle, she could see scars on the brick walls where the west wing had been. From this angle, she could see how much of the house had survived: twenty-two bombs in one night, and these walls were still standing.

There was a little blue appearing now between the clouds. The sun was coming out. Joan lifted her head to feel it.

So much heart and work went into this book, and I'm so grateful to everyone who helped to bring it into the world.

Thank you so much to my family for your endless encouragement, love, and support: Dad and Jun, thank you for your help with translations and names; Ben, thank you for brainstorming with me and coming up with ideas for the powers; Lee Chin, Moses, Wennie, and Nina, thank you for all your encouragement over the years.

Thank you too to the friends who were there from the beginning. This book started at a dinner where we all discovered that we'd been thinking about writing a book. It's been amazing to see so many wonderful books written since that night—and I'm sure there'll be many more to come. Thank you to Bea Thyer for being the best host that night as always; to C. S. Pacat for all the years and years of amazing brainstorming sessions, problem-solving, and manuscript swaps (this book couldn't have been written without you!); and to Shelley Parker-Chan, I'm so happy that we're on this journey together—who would have thought we really could make our dreams come true! Thank
you too to Anna Cowan for the many great writing sessions and chats, and for your insightful feedback over the years.

To my lovely and brilliant Clarion class of 2015, I couldn't have written the first draft without the kick-start of our 300-words-a-day pact. You all inspire me—Jess Barber, adrienne maree brown, Zack Brown, Pip Coen, Bernie Cox, Rose Hartley (thank you for hosting lovely writing retreats and for your great feedback on the draft!), Nathan Hillstrom, Becca Jordan, Travis Lyons, Evan Mallon, Eugene Ramos, Mike Reid, Lilliam Rivera, Sara Saab, Dayna Smith, Melanie West, and Tiffany Wilson. I miss you all, and I wish I were reading your stories right now.

Thank you so, so much to my wonderful agent, Tracey Adams, and the whole team at Adams Literary—Josh Adams and Anna Munger. Tracey, you changed my life with one phone call, and you've done more for this book than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.

Christabel McKinley, thank you so much for sharing the book in the UK and Australia—I appreciate all your hard work and enthusiastic support so much. Thank you also to Stephen Moore and all the other associates.

At HarperCollins in the US, huge, huge thanks to my fantastic editor Kristen Pettit, and to Clare Vaughn and the whole brilliant team. I so appreciate your insightful edits, your vision, and all your support. Special thanks to the production editors, Caitlin Lonning and Alexandra Rakaczki; the designers, Jessie Gang and Alison Klapthor; the cover artist, Eevien Tan; the
production managers, Meghan Pettit and Allison Brown; the marketing director, Sabrina Abballe; and the publicist, Lauren Levite. I'm so proud of the book we all created together. You've made it so much more than I had imagined it could be.

At Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, thank you so much to my wonderful editor Molly Powell, and to Callie Robertson, Kate Keehan, Lydia Blagden, the cover artist Kelly Chong, and to the whole amazing team for all your great work and your vision for the book. Heartfelt thanks, as well, to the wonderful Anissa and everyone at FairyLoot. Working with you—and Hodder & Stoughton—to create the gorgeous FairyLoot special edition has been a dream come true.

At Allen & Unwin in Australia, thank you to the whole amazing team—Kate Whitfield, Jodie Webster, Eva Mills, Sandra Nobes, Liz Kemp—and everyone else who has worked on the book. I'm so grateful for all you've done. It's wonderful to have such a fantastic local publisher and local support.

Huge thanks also to the teams at Eksmo in Russia, Penguin Random House in Spain, Piper in Germany, and Vulkan in Serbia.

I'm also immensely grateful to all my friends at Education Services Australia—I couldn't have written this book without your support and encouragement. Thank you especially to my podmates, Alison Laming, Susan Trompenaars, and Jessica Boland, who were there every day, for every step of my writing journey—from the boring stuff to the stressful stuff to the fun and exciting stuff. I appreciate your support so much. Thank
you as well to Kelly Nissen and Noni Morrissey (thank you for believing that this was going to happen long before I believed it!). To Emma Durbridge, Madeleine Daniel, Stacey Hattensen, and Tilka Brown, thank you for all the writing chats. To Jill Taylor, thank you for teaching me so much. To Libby Tuckerman, thank you for giving me such flexible work hours—I wouldn't have been able to finish this book without your support.

Thank you to Naomi Novik for showing me that publishing a book was possible and that maybe I could do it one day too. Naomi, I'll never forget seeing Temeraire in a bookshop for the first time and thinking,
I know the author of that! I know someone who wrote a book!
Thank you for all your help and enthusiasm over the years. Thank you too to Francesca Coppa and Gina Paterson for teaching me so much about writing. I still use those lessons in everything I write. Thank you to Zen Cho for being a sounding board for last-minute peace-of-mind checks. And thank you to Diana Fox for fixing the beginning of the book. You were 100 percent right about the solution.

To Warren Leonard, thank you for understanding the book so completely and for getting to know it inside out—as well as I do. All your fantastic questions pinpointed plot holes and helped me to resolve and strengthen the worldbuilding and the backstory.

To Liana Skrzypczak and Bec Miller, thank you for our many wonderful writing sessions and chats on all those weekends.

To the lovely and talented Pandas writing group—Elaine
Cuyegkeng, Kat Clay, Aidan Doyle, Likhain, Emma Osborne, Sophie Yorkston, and Suzanne Willis—thank you for the dinners and crits.

To Alex Hong (I miss your writing!) and Melissa Siah, thank you for keeping me company in my research by going on the Lost Palace tour with me on a drizzly London evening.

To the Friends of Holland Park, thank you for taking the time to give me a wonderful tour of Holland House and Holland Park.

To Sarah Rees Brennan, thank you so much for all your encouragement. Eliza Tiernan, thank you for the support when I was on submission (and the genius donut strategy). Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff, and Astrid Scholte, thank you for generously sharing your knowledge and experience with a debut. I appreciate it so much. Tashie Bhuiyan, thank you for being an encouraging and welcoming face after my book deal was announced.

To the Clarion 2015 instructors and administrators: Chris Barzak, Saladin Ahmed, Jim Kelly, Karen Joy Fowler, Margo Lanagan, Maureen McHugh, and Shelley Streeby. I learned so much from you in those amazing six weeks. I wish I could do it all over again.

To the Life at Springfield writing workshop (Kinchem Hegedus, instructors Karen Joy Fowler and Nike Sulway, and all the participants): thank you for reading an early version of the prologue and chapter one and providing great feedback.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional
Custodians of the lands on which I wrote much of this book, and to pay my respect to their Elders, past, present, and emerging: the Bunurong and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation.

Photo by C. S. Pacat

VANESSA LEN
is an Australian author of Chinese-Malaysian and Maltese heritage. An educational editor, she has worked on everything from language learning programs to STEM resources to professional learning for teachers. Vanessa is a graduate of the Clarion Workshop in San Diego, and she lives in Melbourne.
Only a Monster
is Vanessa's first novel, and you can visit her online at
www.vanessalen.com
.

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