Calista Read online

  Author’s Note

  It is my sincere hope that you may only discover this Author’s Note upon having fully read the mystery. Why spoil a surprise?

  This story takes place in a sort of dark age, for it precedes three core events of the last centuries.

  The first event arises soon after London revealed the world’s first aquatic vivarium in 1853. It is the normalisation of the word, aquarium, and this pond’s growing use in scientific research. Thanks to the ingenuity of Mrs. Jeannette Power, who it must be said, never met an Aaron Nightingale during her 1837 visit to England, and to her creation of the Power cage, observation of ocean life has greatly evolved, even if so much remains unknown.

  The second notable event was the advent of publications which depicted this secret abyss – this ocean underworld that so captivates the human mind – and the literature’s intense focus on a certain creature: Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea (1866), Jules Verne’s 20000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), H.G. Wells’ The Sea Raiders (1896), and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of the Cthulhu (1928).

  These tales were published when the ocean world was a daunting, less understood realm; its creatures, even lesser known. We were long past the idea hatched by Aristotle that the creature I named Ovee, in this story, was stupid. But we were terrified of it, and of its related species. It was a period when literature fired the imagination wherever science had not yet offered facts.

  My novel exists in that mental space, a time when an Ovee is a horrifying prospect.

  As for Aaron Nightingale, he is an imagined scientific pioneer dabbling in Power cages. As the story would have it, he is also cruel and his methods are far-fetched. He represents curiosity gone wrong, but what I admired about him is that his work on cephalopods pre-dates the fantastique literature we know. Like his counterparts of the early 19th century, he is oblivious to our future conception of an Ovee. He is inspired by marine biologists of his time, including Forbes and Cuvier. He looks up to Aristotle, takes advice from Jeannette Power and on the esoteric front, he is a believer in Franz Anton Mesmer’s animal magnetism.

  And what of the third, more recent event? It is the 21st century surge in discoveries concerning that creature, Ovee. With it, comes our growing humility in the face of a being we’ve only begun to fathom and from which we yet have much to learn. And so a blend of love and awe for this creature sparked the idea for the book in your hands.

  Even after years of fascination for it, there was so much I did not know. For what do we really know, even today? For my conception of Ovee’s intelligence throughout the story, I was informed by latest scientific research on its senescence, its ability to live outside water for limited periods depending on air moisture, to change form and color as part of its camouflage, its remarkable aptitude for learning and recognising symbols, its ability to recognise human faces, to solve a cognitive test designed for young children, to make use of tools, to devise tricks that will lure a prey, and last, its unique ability to modify its RNA – its DNA template – in its own lifetime, to reflect the demands of its environment.

  There might be more to come, but this is the Ovee we know today. To introduce it in a 19th century English mansion gave me a thrill. How would occupants of this house react to its intelligence? Would they project a ghost onto it, perhaps? At the start, I had not set out to create a ghost story but a spirit became the only plausible notion in the mind of my characters.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Laura Rahme is a French-Australian historical novelist of Lebanese, French and Vietnamese descent. She grew up in Senegal, France and Australia. A lover of mathematics and physics, she never imagined she would one day write novels. While living in Brisbane, she gained an Honours bachelor degree in Aerospace Avionics from the Queensland University of Technology then later, an Honours degree with a double major in Psychology and a single major in Media Studies from the University of Queensland. With a twenty-year career in information technology, she earned a living as a software engineer, and digital business analyst.

  Her first historical novel, THE MING STORYTELLERS (2012) is set during China’s Early Ming dynasty. Her second novel, THE MASCHERARI: A NOVEL OF VENICE (2014) is an epistolary occult mystery set in 15th century Venice. This was followed by the gothic thriller, JULIEN’S TERROR (2017) which spans the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods.

  CALISTA is her fourth novel.

  Laura lives with her husband in Brittany, France.