CHAPTER 1
The rail station was very new, the paint still bright on the lettering that readSILER STATION. An enormous cloth banner proclaimed that it wasHOME OF THE WORLD-FAMOUS CHATHAM RABBIT. I stepped off the train, clutching the cardboard suitcase that held all my worldly possessions, and wondered what, exactly, was special about the rabbit.
Unusually colored fur? Immense size? Third eye in the middle of the forehead?
Activity swirled around me as men hastily unloaded freight from the train cars. There was only one small passenger car, and I had been the only person to disembark, so I moved to one side, looking for the person who had come to meet me. My employer had sent the train ticket, and while I did not expect him to come himself, presumably he would have sent someone to collect me.
I craned my neck, but did not see any likely candidates. The anxiety that I had kept at bay threatened to rise up into my throat and I told it sternly to get back down where it belonged.There is nowhere here to wait. Perhaps they have only just seen the train arrive, and are coming now.
You have been here for less than five minutes. There is no reason to assume that anything has gone wrong.
The sky overhead was a blue watercolor wash, the clouds picked out in white gouache against it. Some skies look hard, but a Southern sky is usually soft, almost thready. If you pressed against it, you’d expect it to yield like cloth, or a soft network of roots. The upper edge was just starting to darken a little, asecond wash of color to indicate that the afternoon was growing late.
From the station platform, I could see a warehouse and what looked like a general store. A mill poked up from the surrounding countryside, but once the town proper ended, there was nothing but a sea of thick trees in every direction.
A half dozen small boys came pelting up the station steps and rushed the passenger car’s windows. They were all brandishing furry objects, which were… yes, those were indeed dead rabbits. From what I could tell, they were the usual color and had the usual number of eyes. “Chatham rabbit!” a small boy shouted into the passenger car, waving a limp body in the air. “World-famous! Only three cents!”
My fellow passengers on the train from Wilmington had all been reasonably polite, and the worst of them—a middle-aged man passionately in love with both President Cleveland and the sound of his own voice—still didn’t deserve having rabbit carcasses waved at him. I wondered if I should intervene.
One of the boys glanced over at me, sized me up as unlikely to be prosperous enough for a dead rabbit, and turned back to the windows. While I’d had students that age, they had all been girls, and I wasn’t entirely certain of my ability to enforce discipline on strange boys. I abandoned the passengers to their long-eared fate and looked around again for my employer’s representative.
It’s been almost ten minutes now. Has something gone wrong?
(he thought better of hiring you and didn’t bother to send a letter)
(he died and nobody knows you’re coming and you’ll have to turn around and go back)
Stop that,I ordered myself.You’re catastrophizing again. They’ve just been delayed. Or possibly the doctor lives right by the station and if you ask for directions, it’s a five-minute walk.
This seemed possible. I shifted my handbag on my shoulderand approached the small station office, where an exasperated-looking man with a pocket watch was muttering to himself, or perhaps to the watch.
“Pardon me,” I said. “Can you direct me to the home of Dr. Halder?”
He blinked at me. Apparently, whatever he’d expected me to say, it wasn’t that. “Halder?”
“Dr. Matthias Halder, yes.”
The stationmaster rubbed his hand through his thinning hair. If I were painting him, I would use layered washes of red across his face, and a few thin lines of umber for his hair. “Halder lives south of here. About ten miles, give or take. Outside of Goldston.”
Ten miles!My heart sank. Surely Dr. Halder didn’t expect me to walk there? But there was no sign of anyone coming to greet me either.
(he doesn’t expect you because he decided not to hire you, you came all this way for nothing)
“What do you want with Halder, anyway?” I felt the stationmaster’s eyes flick over me curiously. At thirty-three years old, I made an unlikely chambermaid, and no one would expect a doctor to have a female colleague.What does that leave? Distant relative? Mail-order bride?
“He’s hired me as an assistant,” I said. “I thought he’d send someone to meet me, but perhaps I was wrong.”
“Doubt he even thought of it,” said the stationmaster bluntly. “Old Halder’s not one for practical details.”
I sighed. Naturalists, in my experience, tended to be that way. My father would have stopped in the middle of a burning forest if he happened to spot a rare orchid, and if he was ever on time for a meeting, it was purely by accident.
Well. It was substantially after noon already. If I started walking now, assuming I didn’t get lost, it would still be dark by thetime I got to Dr. Halder’s. And I’d be footsore and sweaty and covered in road dust, which was not the impression I wanted to make on my new employer.
Still, there was no help for it. I had less than a dollar wrapped in my handkerchief, which were all my funds in the world, and even if I was willing to squander money hiring a coach, Siler Station did not look like the sort of town that had coaches simply lined up and waiting.
I hefted my suitcase. It was extremely heavy, although most of that weight was my sketchbooks and paints. I had only a single change of clothes and an extra pair of shoes. I would rather have my arms give out than abandon my sketchbooks, and it seemed unwise to leave my shoes.Footsore, sweaty, covered in road dust, and listing to one side because my back has given out from lugging my suitcase. Also late. This impression gets better and better.
“Could you give me specific directions?” I asked. “It appears I have a walk ahead of me.”
