Found among his effects, December 1871

January 17th, 1871

I write this while events are fresh in memory, though my hands shake and my heart labors in my chest. Three weeks have passed since Miss Chalmers walked into the water at midnight. I did not expect to see her again. I did not expect her to return.

But she did.

The night was January 15th, bitter cold, ice forming across the fens. I heard something at my door—scraping, wet, breathing wrong. When I opened it, lamplight fell upon a form that defied immediate comprehension. Skin mottled in patterns that seemed to shift in the flickering glow. Gills flapping uselessly along neck and ribs. Vertical pupils contracting in the light.

But I knew those eyes. I knew the intelligence behind them.

I spoke her name as a question, and relief transformed her altered face into something I could recognize as fully human despite the changes wrought upon her.

She could speak—her voice changed, resonating wrong, clearly painful. But she could communicate. She asked for my help. Said that everything was wrong. That she was trapped. That all of them were trapped. That she needed my help to end this.

I brought her inside, filled my washing basin. She submerged her face and I watched those gills—terrible in their beauty, beautiful in their function—work properly for the first time. She could not survive long in air—perhaps an hour at most before her transformed body would fail completely.

We had so little time.

She tried to explain between submersions, lifting her face from the water to speak for a minute or two before the air became too much and she had to breathe water again. The brides are conscious, she told me. Suffering. Immortal. The eldest has endured forty-nine years. Lady Soames must die. The pattern must end.

She needed help. She needed fire, explosives, coordination.

She needed me.

I am sixty-three years old. My heart fails more each day. The physician in Cambridge gave me months at most. I have been witness to thirty rituals, helpless, grieving, placing stones for women I could not save.

She was offering me what I never dared hope for: the chance to act.

I told her I would help.

But we both realized immediately: we could not plan everything in one night. She was dying in the air, skin splitting, gills bleeding. I was exhausted, chest aching. And the work she described—acquiring materials, coordinating an attack, recruiting the other brides—this would take time. Months perhaps. And I had to do all of this without Jarvis or the other household staff noticing. Let alone Lady Soames.

How could we communicate across such a span? She could not surface often without killing herself. I could not descend to her world.

Dawn was approaching. She had to return to the water. We agreed only this: she would surface again when she could. We would find a way.

I helped her back to the boat landing. My hand on her shoulder—changed though it was, still her shoulder, still deserving of human touch and human respect.

She slipped into the water and was gone.

January 28th, 1871

I have been thinking constantly about the problem of communication. Miss Chalmers cannot survive long enough on the surface for detailed planning. I cannot ask her to risk death each time she needs to convey information or receive instruction.

But I believe I have found a solution.

This afternoon I went to the village and purchased materials: oilcloth of the sort used for covering boats, leather cord, and a lead fishing weight. I have fashioned a waterproof package—oilcloth wrapped multiple times and sealed with tar, weighted so it will sink but not so heavy she cannot retrieve it. Inside I have placed paper, several pencils wrapped in more oilcloth, and a letter explaining my design.

The package is small enough for her to carry. Waterproof enough to protect the contents. Heavy enough to remain where I place it rather than floating away.

Tonight, I took it to the boat landing. There is a particular stone—the third from the northern end—beneath which the water is perhaps five feet deep even in winter. I weighted the package and placed it there, tied with cord to the stone's base so current will not carry it away.

In my letter I explained: she should leave her written communications here. I will check daily. I will respond in kind. We can exchange information without requiring her to surface except briefly, just long enough to retrieve and deposit the package. Minutes instead of hours. Far less risk to her transformed body.

I do not know if she will find it. I do not know if she can read English easily anymore, or write it. But I must try.

My chest pained me considerably on the walk back to the cottage. I sat for a full hour before I could breathe easily again. The physician's timeline may be optimistic.

But if this works—if we can communicate across the barrier of water and air—then perhaps we have time enough after all.

February 14th, 1871

She found it.

I checked the boat landing this morning as I have every morning for the past two weeks. The package was gone from beneath its stone. In its place, secured with the same cord, the package returned—heavier than when I left it.

Inside were my materials, carefully re-wrapped, and three pages of writing.

Her handwriting is recognizably hers, though formed with obvious difficulty. The letters are shaky, uncertain, words occasionally crossed out and rewritten, some passages blotted where water seeped through despite the oil cloth. But it is legible. She can write. Her mind remains, fighting to express itself through a body adapted to an alien element.

She thanked me for the system. She can surface for three to five minutes, she wrote, long enough to retrieve the package, read, and respond without sustaining serious damage to her gills and skin. I have given them time, she said. A way forward.

Then she began to explain what I need to know, though the explanation was halting, difficult to follow in places where her English faltered. All thirty brides retain some consciousness, though the degree varies. Some have dissolved over decades into something less than full awareness. But most remain trapped, knowing what they were, unable to become it again, unable to die.

Seven have agreed to help her, she wrote. The eldest—transformed in 1821, forty-nine years ago—agreed immediately. Seven women who remember being human. Seven who want death more than they fear pain.

Fire can destroy them. She has seen evidence in the underwater city. Their immortal flesh succumbs to flame.

December 21st, 1871, she wrote. One year from her own transformation. The winter solstice, when surfacing will be easier for them.

I must acquire oil, explosives, anything that will burn. She will provide more instruction in future communications.

I have written my response and returned the package tonight. I told her I would do everything she asks. I told her about my heart condition—she should know I may not survive until December. But I can prepare. I can document everything.

Tomorrow I will begin.

February 22nd, 1871

The second package arrived yesterday. Her handwriting was somewhat steadier, though still marked by difficulty. She is teaching herself to write again, I think, relearning what the transformation has taken from her.

She explained more about the underwater world—though the explanation was fragmentary, as if the concepts resist translation into English. The city is built of limestone and coral and something else, she wrote. Something that might be the entity's own substance. There are chambers for breeding, currently empty but clearly purposeful.

The entity wants them to reproduce. To spread the pattern.

This will not happen, she wrote with surprising force. The underlining nearly tore through the damp paper.

She explained what we must do. The limestone passages must be collapsed. The entity cannot be killed—it is too vast, exists partially in dimensions she cannot describe. But it can be trapped. Sealed away from the surface.

I have begun acquiring materials as she requested. Oil from the mill in small quantities. Powder from contacts at the quarry. Everything must be gradual, careful, raising no suspicion from anyone at Hearthorne.

March 3rd, 1871

We have exchanged six packages now. The system works beautifully. Each morning and evening I check the boat landing. Sometimes the package has been retrieved and returned, sometimes it remains undisturbed for a day or two.

Her letters are growing longer, more detailed. She is describing the recruitment of the other brides, the difficulty of convincing some, the immediate agreement of others. The eldest bride, she wrote, communicated simply: FINALLY.

I notice her handwriting improving with each exchange. The shakiness is less pronounced. Fewer words crossed out. Sentences more complete. She wrote in her last letter that the act of writing in English, of thinking toward our shared purpose, is helping her maintain the language. That it is a struggle but a necessary one.

I find this remarkable. That the work of planning rebellion is helping preserve her humanity. That resistance itself can be healing.

My cottage has had to become an arsenal. Oil barrels hidden in the root cellar. Powder stored in waterproof containers. Fuses and cord wrapped in oilcloth. I am documenting everything in multiple copies, hiding them in different locations. If my heart fails before December, the plan must survive me. Although, I have no one to replace me. May God steady my heart and hand.

The work exhausts me, but I feel stronger than the physician predicted. Purpose sustains what medicine cannot.

March 29th, 1871

Today's package contained a question that shook me: Do I think she is still human?

She wrote that she struggles with this constantly. Her body is entirely transformed. Her thoughts occur increasingly in the underwater language. She must force herself to remember English words. Sometimes simple things—spoon, lamp, bread—escape her entirely. She remembers the concepts but not the names.

Is she still herself, she asked, or merely something that remembers being her?

I sat for a long time before responding. I wrote that the question itself proved her humanity. That doubt, self-reflection, the examination of one's own existence, these are profound human acts. That her transformed body does not determine her humanity. That she chose to surface despite agony. Chose to ask for help. Chose to fight. These are human choices.

I told her I have never seen her as anything but human. Changed, yes. Suffering, yes. But human, nonetheless. Desperately, essentially human.

I hope my words brought some comfort. I do not know if they can reach across the distance of water and transformation.

But I tried.

April 17th, 1871

Her recent letters have described the difficulty of recruitment. Some brides are too dissolved to understand. Some still believe the entity's promises. Some fear retribution. But seven have committed fully. She describes them in her communications, their histories, their suffering, their determination.

A bride from 1867 who remembers her sister's face. One from 1861 who wants revenge. The eldest, who has been waiting forty-nine years for someone to fight back.

Her writing continues to improve markedly. The sentences flow more naturally now. Complex thoughts expressed with increasing clarity. She wrote that the act of planning our rebellion, of communicating daily in English, of thinking toward human purposes—all of this is helping her maintain herself. The work is a balm, she said, to her fractured sense of self.

I am struck by this. That the conspiracy we build together is giving her back pieces of what was taken. That writing to me daily is preserving the woman she was.

I told her about my progress with the materials. Sufficient oil now to burn Hearthorne completely. The explosives are more challenging—I need precise amounts, proper placement. But I am learning. I have time yet.

May 8th, 1871

I saw the physician in Cambridge yesterday. He examined me with obvious perplexity. My heart condition has not improved, he said, but neither has it worsened as he expected. He predicted I would be bedridden by now. Instead, I walked to his surgery without assistance.

He asked what I have been doing differently. I told him I have found purpose. That I have work that requires completion.

He said purpose can sometimes sustain the body beyond medical expectation. That patients with something unfinished often survive longer than medicine predicts.

He does not know how right he is.

I will live until December if I must. I will see this through.

May 20th, 1871

Today's package contained news that changes everything.

Her letter was longer than usual, the handwriting forceful, urgent. Lady Soames has placed advertisements, I had informed her. Not in local papers—in the London papers, in the nursing journals. Specifically targeting young women with medical training. Preference for graduates of Florence Nightingale's training program.

She recognized the phrasing immediately. Nearly identical to the advertisement that brought her to Hearthorne one year ago.

Lady Soames is recruiting the thirty-first bride.

At the bottom of her letter, underlined three times, she had written simply:

NOT ANOTHER NURSE. THIS ENDS.

I sat with this knowledge for a long time. We are not planning an abstract rebellion anymore. We are now racing to save a specific woman's life. Some young nurse—twenty-three, twenty-four years old, freshly graduated, eager for employment—will read that advertisement. Will write to Lady Soames. Will be invited, will travel to Hearthorne, will walk into the water at midnight on December 21st.

Unless we stop it.

I wrote back immediately. “We will save her” I told Miss Chalmers. Whoever this woman is, wherever she is right now, she will never arrive at Hearthorne. Lady Soames will be dead. Hearthorne will be ash. The passages will be sealed.

The pattern ends before it can claim her.

May 28th, 1871

The packages arrive more frequently now. Sometimes twice in a single day. Her writing has transformed almost completely—where her first letters in February were shaky and uncertain, now they are clear, forceful, burning with purpose. She is planning in detail. Coordinating with the other brides. Thinking through every aspect of the attack.

She writes that the act of resistance is helping her maintain her humanity. That writing in English daily, thinking toward purposes she chose, planning rebellion—all of this is preserving what the transformation sought to destroy.

I see it in her letters. Each one is more articulate than the last. Each one more clearly the work of the educated woman who arrived at Hearthorne one year ago.

We have perhaps six months before Lady Soames selects her next victim. Perhaps until November before the ritual preparations begin. We must be ready.

The materials are nearly complete. I have enough oil to burn the manor completely. Enough powder to collapse the three main passages. Fuses, timing mechanisms, incendiaries—Jarvis has no knowledge of my preparations as he rarely leaves the household proper. But I live in fear of being found out or betrayed innocently enough by another of the staff. I have told no one of my actions, but I cannot think it will continue to go unnoticed.

If my heart fails tomorrow, the plan survives.

But I will not fail tomorrow. I have work yet to do.

June 1st, 1871

This morning's package contained a single sentence, written in a hand I barely recognize as the shaky script from February:

"The work we do together is keeping me human, Ben. Thank you."

I sat at the boat landing for a long time after reading it. The sun was rising over the fens. Thirty memorial stones stood silent witness. And somewhere in the deep below, a woman who was transformed against her will was fighting to remain herself.

Purpose sustains us both, I think. Her humanity preserved by rebellion. My life extended by shared work toward a common end.

December 21st, 1871. Six months and twenty days.

The pattern ends. We end it together.