exposed to view. The mouth was thin and wide, like that of a lizard, and, to my horror, there were rows of sharp teeth in her mouth, as if she were born to devour all that came near. The forehead was large, with a distinct ridge over the eyes, and her ears were shaped in a fashion most unnatural. While the head was overdeveloped, the body was shriveled and insubstantial, weak and small. The chest and stomach were covered in a coat of thick hair that, as the nurse washed the blood away, revealed itself to be white. The arms and legs were normal in appearance, and the sex clearly formed between her legs, but her feet were of a most strange shape. And her skin! It was so white, so thin, so unnatural. After the blood had been washed away, I could not help but trace my finger over the skin of her chest. Through it, I saw muscle and bone and veins.
I felt no desire to hold my child, but I reached out to take a small, bizarre foot in the palm of my hand. It was warm, soft, just as one would expect to find the flesh of a baby. My heart folded into a tight package, one that would never open. I could not love this creature.
Vita didn’t cry or whimper. While her eyes were fixed upon me as I touched the deformed foot, she did not pull away. It seemed she was assessing me with the same scrutiny that I assessed her.
It was then that I turned to the midwife and asked a question I would often repeat: “Tell me, what in the name of God is it?”
“It is a monster,” Ambrose pronounced, when he visited the northeast tower some days after the birth. I had dismissed the servants and led him to the baby. He looked her over, saw what I had seen, and said, “Leave it to the wolves now, before it grows bigger.”
“Is it possible that you are so cruel as to kill your own child?” I asked.
“We would show mercy to kill it now, before it grows stronger. We cannot allow it to live. Can you imagine bringing this into the family? It is impossible.”
I thought of Isabelle of Savoy, my husband’s ancestor, and her reputation for crime and infamy. Perhaps such was the Montebianco blood. “God would not forgive us if we should murder this child.”
“This is not a child,” Ambrose said, looking at the fur, which had by that time spread over most of Vita’s body, leaving only the head, the hands, and the feet fleshy. “This is a beast. If the villagers discover her existence, we will be burned out of Nevenero.”
“But look. Do you see? She is little threat. She was born weak.” I turned the baby over on its stomach to show Ambrose the spine. The creature’s skin had not closed over the column of bones. At birth, there had been a milky trail of raw muscle. The midwife had sewn her closed, leaving a long line of black stitches from buttocks to neck. “She will not live long, being so malformed,” I said. I believed this, as I believed in God’s mercy.
“Let us pray that it dies soon,” Ambrose said, looking away from the child with disdain. “We cannot have the devil living here among us.”
For the first time, I felt a flare of maternal feeling. This poor, wretched creature might be monstrous, but she had come from my body. She was, despite everything, a Montebianco. When my husband accused me of keeping a demon, I responded:
“If she is a devil, what does that make us?”
Ambrose settled his eyes upon me. He knew very well of what I spoke. We had always ignored the stories of madness and deformity that appeared in the Montebianco lineage after the time of Leopold. We believed the misfortunes of his ancestry to be inconsequential. Now, with this child, we could not deny them any longer. Vita had emerged as proof of his terrible heritage.
“She is sickly,” he said at last. “Surely, she will expire soon.”
“And if she survives,” I whispered, turning her over on her back so that her large blue eyes fixed upon me, “I will keep her. I will protect her.”
“And who will protect you?” Ambrose said. When I did not reply, he walked to the door. As he left, he turned and said, “As Lucifer came to curse his creator, this beast will turn against its