I went back to the studio in a thoughtful frame of mind.All of a piece… hmm.I thought of the story Jackson had told me about those bodies found in the woods, strung up and drained of their blood, and wondered what exactly Ma Kersey might have been able to add to it.
“Doctor?”
“Eh?” Halder looked up from his work, clearly annoyed at being disturbed. “What do you want?”
I left the door ajar behind me, feeling the need for an escape route. “I’m afraid I’ve run into a problem with theCuterebraillustrations.”
The corners of the doctor’s mouth drew down. “What problem?”
“It’sCuterebra approximata.”
“The deer mouse botfly,” said Halder. “What about it?”
“I can’t find a specimen in the library.”
“What?!” He rose halfway to his feet and I took a step back, startled. “What do you mean, you can’t find it? It’s in there! Are you blind?”
I swallowed, my mouth dry. I had gone through every drawer that ended in -C, hunting for it, but had found nothing, not even an unlabeled specimen that looked vaguely like a botfly. “It is not in with the rest of theCuterebras,” I said, in as neutral a voice as I could manage.
“Of course it is,” he snapped, pushing back from his desk. He brushed past me, moving more quickly than I had ever seen him move, and stormed toward the library.
I had placed the tray of botflies on the table. Halder went to it and looked down, breathing hard. Surely the walk could not have exhausted him so much? Was he so angry?
This is it, this is where he fires you, you should have checked again, he’ll point right at it…
But he did not. Instead he stared down at the case, his fingertips moving over the glass. “Oh,” he said, in a much different voice. If it had been anyone but Halder, I’d have said he sounded sheepish. “Damn it all. The carpet beetles got that one.”
I winced. Entomology may not be my strong suit, but every naturalist has heard of carpet beetles. They will happily devour clothes and bedding, but they positivelyadoretaxidermy. One of my father’s rivals had lost half his collection to them. “He didn’t deserve that,” Father had said, even though he loathed the man in a cordial academic fashion. “Nobody deserves that.”
I could only imagine the havoc the beetles might wreak in a collection such as this one. I winced. “You had carpet beetles?”
“About a year ago,” he said, almost absently. “Normally I’d have caught it earlier, but I had other things on my mind.” He shook himself. “Base the illustration on the life studies, then.”
“Errr…” I swallowed again, worry giving way to confusion. “I haven’t done any life studies ofapproximata, Doctor.”
He swung around and stared at me. His eyes seemed oddly cloudy behind the enormous lenses. “No,” he said slowly. “No, what am I thinking? Notyou.” His gaze sharpened. “Wait here,” he snapped, and stumped out of the room again.
I waited, baffled, beside the case of botflies. Like the one that I had caught, they were all thick-bodied, fuzzy creatures, looking halfway between a fly and a bumblebee. Deceptively fluffy and innocent for something that would burrow under your skin and drink your vital fluids. Some had deep red eyes, others black. I had used colored pencil to get a properly grainy look on the compound eyes. Most likely that detail would not come out in the actual plates made from my illustrations, but that was beyond my control.
Halder returned with another folio, much thicker than the one he had shown me before. He thrust it at me, and I took it, startled. “In there,” he said, sounding irritable. “There’s sketches of it. Draw from those.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He stared at me broodingly. I wondered if he was actually seeing me, or if his mind was still on the carpet beetles that had devoured his specimens. Then he sniffed, turned on his heel, and stalked away.
I spread the contents of the folio out on the table. They were sketches, bound together with loops of string punched through one side. As I had already guessed, they belonged to my predecessor.
Insects marched and flew across the pages in an endlessparade, notes written in the margins in a small, feminine hand. Perhaps forty pages in all, the sketches ranging from quick gesture drawings to extremely detailed studies. I found the original sketches for the carrion beetle that had so impressed me, and a dozen more besides, for illustrations either never completed or that I had not seen.
Will you think less of me if I say that I was oddly relieved? The sketches were very good, but they did not have the almost supernatural quality that her paintings did. I could look at these drawings beside my own and not feel like an imposter.
The greatest gift, however, was not this boost to my confidence, nor even the studies for the deer mouse botfly, which I found near the end of the folio.
No, it was a hasty sketch of a bee, with a line pointing to a segment labeled “metathorax.” Thebackmostsection of the thorax.
If the artist had been in front of me, I would have thrown my arms around her, kissed her cheeks, and called her sister. As it was, I slumped against the table, feeling wrung out with sudden relief. “Thank you,” I said to my absent predecessor. “Thank you, thank you,thank you.”
The light was starting to fade. I returned the botflies to their drawer, took the sketches, and went to back to the studio. I felt the previous resident’s presence in the room, as always, but this time, thinking of metathoraxes, I didn’t mind at all.
