“There is no excuse for such nepotism,” I offered, even though it sounded to me like Halder mostly resented the fact that he hadn’t been invited.
“Entirely correct, Miss Wilson.” He shoved his spectacles up his nose. “Nevertheless, Ishallbe vindicated. I have learned things about parasites that will revolutionize the field, and someday, the world shall wonder at it.”
I bowed my head in acknowledgment. Halder waved an irritable hand and I slipped away, feeling as if I’d run a mile in uncomfortable shoes. I had, of necessity, gotten used to being yelled at in the last few years. Headmistress Silverton had a tongue like a greenbrier whip. But in her defense, it was usually for actual reasons, even if they were extremely minor. She had never accused me of spying on her.
Then again, naturalists are far more paranoid, as a group, about their work being stolen than headmistresses are. It is not as if one can copy a dozen schoolgirls and beat the originals to publication.
I shook my head and went back to painting maggots, telling myself that there was nothing unusual about Halder’s paranoia, and almost,almostsucceeding.
I stayed up later than usual that night. Even after I blew out the candle, I sat in the dark studio, staring out the window, where the year’s first fireflies were beginning to call to each other in voices of flickering light.
Normally watching fireflies made me unaccountably happy, as if I were a small child again. Now I just felt weary and hopeless. Halder’s anger must have shaken me more than I expected. Why?
You got comfortable. He was pleased with your work and youstarted to think you were safe. But all it takes is an angry whim and you’ll be gone, out the door, onto the street.
The trees outside were Payne’s gray with hints of ultramarine where the moon touched them, the shadows almost black. Black pigment is usually a poor choice for painting shadows. It flattens them out, and shadows are rarely flat. They’re deep and layered and there are hints of shapes in them, things to catch your eye and make you wonder what’s there, and if maybe it’s looking back at you.
My cousin says he seen one…Sally’s story about blood thieves kept running through my mind. But it had been three years, Jackson said. And they’d caught the blood thieves and staked them through the heart and buried them out near Bynum. Miles away. The only thing outside worth worrying about was that possibly rabid raccoon, and it was almost certainly dead by now. By the time they wander around acting strange in daylight, they aren’t long for this world.
The shadows in the studio were thickening. I glanced over my shoulder, then looked resolutely away. The whitewashed walls were bright in the moonlight, but darkness had pooled along the floor, at the foot of the bookcases, and grew like a stain behind the wooden chest in the corner. My sense of intruding in a stranger’s room was stronger than ever.
It wasn’t my room, was it? It belonged to some other woman that Halder had employed. Had he driven her away with his temper? Had he fired her? Was she destitute somewhere, or had she washed up at a girls’ school, teaching watercolors, not for love or skill but because watercolors were something that young ladies were supposed to learn, like music and deportment?
I realized that I was close to crying and bit my knuckle, angry at myself.Don’t let the old bastard get to you. Mrs. Kent warned you what he was like.
Yes, and she’d warned me not to think he’d marry me either.The thought wrung a laugh from me. God! I’d sooner wed theCuterebra.
I pinched the bridge of my nose until the feel of impending tears had been driven away.Don’t be ridiculous. Do you think good scientific illustrators fall out of trees? It took Halder a year to replace your predecessor. He won’t be in a hurry to replace you.
I didn’t know if that was true or not. What I did know was that Halder did not seem to like anything that upset the routine of his days. Mrs. Kent said he always ate the same breakfast at the same time.
The frogs were calling. I picked out chorus, bronze, and one tree frog calling,HNEEEEEEE!in a high, nasal whine that drew a reluctant smile from me. I propped my chin on my hand, staring into the dark.
One of the fireflies drew my eye. It somehow seemed to be blinking wrong.
Wait,isthat a firefly? The frequency seems erratic.
It took me a moment to realize that I was seeing a light in the woods, and what I had mistaken for blinks was the shadow as it moved through the intervening trees.
I watched it, baffled. Mrs. Kent? But it was going in the opposite direction of the Kents’ house. I racked my brain for a possible destination. Jackson had told me there was a stream back there, but I hadn’t ever visited it. And I already knew Sally didn’t go home.
The Devil walks these woods at night, Phelps had said. Did I believe that?
No, I didn’t believe it. The Devil, if He existed, lived in the hearts of men.And anyway, I doubt Satan needs to carry a light.There was the old story about Stingy Jack, who wandered between heaven and hell, carrying a lit coal in a turnip, but I had significant doubts that an immortal Irishman was loose in the Chatham woods. And I really didn’t believe in blood thieves,who were probably cougars anyway, and cougars definitely didn’t carry lights. Which meant that there was a real human out there on the property doing… something. But what?
I couldn’t think of many good reasons for someone to wander around the woods in the dark. Halder might go checking for nighttime insects, I supposed, but surely Halder was asleep by now. Searching for a lost animal? Could one of Mrs. Kent’s chickens have wandered off?
Well, it was none of my business, of course.Ihad no reason to go wandering through the woods at night.
An unexpected pang of relief went through me at that thought. I zeroed in on that feeling, isolating it and pinning it to a card like one of the beetles downstairs.Why am I relieved? I can’t actually bescaredof the woods, can I?
I had spent half my life wandering through the Carolina woods. When I was seven years old, I caught a copperhead and brought it to show my father. The woods weremine, not like property but like family. I certainly wasn’t going to be put off from them by a religious zealot’s ranting about the Devil, or Jackson’s stories about blood thieves or cougars or whatever they were supposed to be. I was most definitelynotscared.
The light paused for a moment, then moved on.
Possibly if I had already undressed, I would have decided that I didn’t have anything to prove. But I had only taken off one boot, and it was the work of a moment to shove my foot back in and hurry downstairs.
The back door was latched from the inside. Not Mrs. Kent, then. I dithered for a moment about continuing on, but curiosity has always been my besetting sin. I unlatched the door and slipped out.
