Chapter 11 Trust #2
“I wish we could. Consider how that would appear. Two odd people warning of odd things in the midst of investigations into strange deaths. There have been warrants for my arrest before. No great obstacle, but still a nuisance and a potential hindrance to our work as well as to Ms. Dancer.”
Green made a mental note to ask follow-up questions about Valentina’s outlaw past at a more appropriate time.
“Moreover,” she continued, “what would you warn them to do? Keep a lookout for an invisible threat that we ourselves don’t fully understand? I don’t see how they could move all the horses by nightfall. No, their best protection now is our vigilance.”
“And…what do we do if we see the wolf…or the fawn attacking? Are we supposed to, I don’t know, kill it?”
Valentina sniffed.
“No. Wildlife mitigation, I believe, is the modern terminology. We annoy it. We chase it off. We determine what it wants and remove the attraction. My apprentice, intelligence means options. It means we don’t have to make the brutal, ill-advised decision to kill off a part of the world we neither own nor comprehend. We mitigate the risk.”
“That makes sense, but what if it decides to mitigate us right back?”
Valentina shrugged.
“We adapt. Perhaps we flee and regroup. Perhaps we neutralize its ability to do harm. It is natural to fear the unknown, but what world are we shaping if we attempt to destroy anything that we view as a potential risk? Empathy and curiosity take more courage than blunt force, but it is the wiser long-term path.”
“I get it. But it also sounds like the more dangerous path.”
“Indeed. Dangerous and worthwhile.”
“And if we become the next victims?”
“Orion Station will see to it that other cryptonaturalists continue our investigation. Examine your motivations. If your principles always align with the safest path, can it truly be said that you have any principles beyond self-preservation?”
The horned wolf’s muzzle pressed in through the silence following Valentina’s question, shattering it in a rain of glass.
“That feels like a question that has different answers depending on where you are sitting and what is trying to kill you.”
“Does it? Perhaps. But this is not the first time I have risked my body to protect a principle. It gets easier with practice.”
She patted his arm and stood.
“Now, I have some preparations to make. While I do, I want you to read something.”
“Study? Now? Really?”
“You have an hour. I have my tasks. You have yours.”
Valentina ushered Green to a chair and selected a thick rust-colored binder.
“Begin with this one,” she said. “It is a journal by a cryptonaturalist who began her career in 1948. Clara Rodriguez.”
“Is that…the same Clara who left the message?”
“It is. She also held your current position as my apprentice, many years ago.”
“Many years ago? Um, Teacher, I’ve been meaning to ask. If you don’t mind. May I ask your age?”
“You may, later. Now, focus on this.”
She tapped the book.
“It is full of useful information and the insights deepen as she becomes more experienced. She isn’t a bad role model to meet early in your studies. Many in our field would likely tell you it would have been better to encounter her before me.”
Green opened the book. It was a three-ring binder full of typed pages and handwritten notes. He flipped through the pages. Some were dog-eared. Some were coffee stained. Some were covered with whited-out corrections and a few were redacted with black marker.
It was an intimate thing. It was someone else’s life. He turned to the first page. It had been typed on an old-fashioned typewriter.
Valentina walked away without another word.
Green read.
[Transcribed from original document by L. R. Rodriguez]
September 12, 1948
Where to begin?
Everything changed two weeks ago when young Jonathan Herkimer turned his afternoon math lesson into a game of hide and seek. He darted from the room with a giggle as I rummaged for my lesson plan.
I wasn’t cross. A good tutor knows to build in time for a bit of mischief and, honestly, I wasn’t terribly interested in the lesson myself.
I heard him dash into the study and found him beneath his grandfather’s prodigious desk. Atop the blotter was a sight that took my breath. There were half a dozen detailed, annotated drawings and diagrams of tractor-sized lizards roaming the prairie.
I nearly fainted.
It wasn’t the shock of seeing such outlandish creatures. It was the shock of familiarity, the shock of a secret stolen from my mind and displayed on the desk of a man I hardly knew.
Jonathan looked up at me from his hiding place with uncommon concern on his young face.
No doubt I looked as if someone had just walked over my grave.
He marched himself back to his desk without another word.
I hardly remember the rest of our tutoring session, only a specter of tension pacing the room like a tiger and Jonathan stealing surreptitious glances at me while completing his assignments.
How can I describe my relationship with the lizards in those drawings?
As a child, when I told my uncles about great, thorny lizards bigger than horses grazing the fields near Stoneburner’s Feedstore, they laughed. So I laughed. I was seven and I knew already that their laughter wasn’t to be trusted. In our house, mirth and anger were always scheming together.
I knew those lizards could look just like tumbled stone or slip beneath the turf like a diving frog as fast as you could say “button,” but how could you miss seeing them?
You couldn’t.
So, I was mad or damned and in practical terms I wasn’t sure which was worse. There were always cautionary tales about wayward women in other families. The sanitarium. The nunnery. Places you were put to be forgotten. Oubliettes the menfolk could pretend were a kindness.
I know there are households who smile at whimsy and think kindly on their children’s imaginary playmates.
I know it in the way I know the north pole exists or the dark side of the moon.
The knowledge is academic. In my family, we didn’t talk of whimsy.
We talked of lingering scars from the dust bowl.
We talked of the abandoned homestead. Uncle Juan told grim stories about shoveling grit from the kitchen with a wheat scoop and the way the air would be haunted with static sparks.
My family cursed the adage “rain will follow the plow” and doubly cursed themselves for ever thinking it trustworthy.
My choice was obvious. Deception. Avoidance. So, I didn’t mention the giant lizards. Nor the zebra ants. Nor the golden dragonflies with eyes like silver coins.
If you were a child, you could speak of such things. Once. Perhaps twice. No more than that.
If you drew pictures of them, you had better draw them a bit different every time. Add a horn here. Add some wings there.
And now I had found the sorts of drawings I would never dare to make sitting out in the open on Robert Herkimer’s desk. I had stumbled into an ambush, my forbidden subject lying in wait where I would least expect it.
What did I know of Mr. Herkimer? He was the patriarch of his family.
He paid me to tutor his grandson. According to local lore, Robert Herkimer had made his fortune “away” doing “God knows what.” He didn’t seem to participate in any industry and it was the height of mystery why the Herkimers had settled in Eastern Kansas at all.
My afternoon lessons with Jonathan ended as the grandfather clock in the hall chimed thrice.
I dismissed him and remained, stone-still, studying the fringe on the rug and feeling as if my body was mineralizing into stone.
I heard Jonathan stamp down the stairs, racing to join his mother in the garden.
The minutes stretched. I sat, frozen with indecision, knowing it was too dangerous to mention the drawings to Mr. Herkimer.
At the same time, I desperately craved outside confirmation that my odd observations were not evidence of some cancerous madness that had been swelling within me since childhood.
I couldn’t mention it to him.
I simply couldn’t.
The risk far outweighed the reward.
The smell of cigar smoke drifted into the room, bringing with it the news that my employer had arrived home.
I didn’t want to be forced to fabricate an excuse to justify why I had remained in the house.
It was time to go. I could think on my predicament that evening, formulate a plan.
First, I needed to escape and recover from my shock.
With a bit of luck, I could slip from the house unnoticed.
Luck failed me.
I passed Mr. Herkimer in the hall. This shouldn’t have been much of an obstacle as the man rarely looked directly at me. Unfortunately, my tongue rebelled against my better judgment and the words spilled out.
“Mr. Herkimer, those lizard drawings on your desk. Have you seen the creatures?”
I practically shouted it at him.
I was mortified.
He raised an eyebrow, then calmly asked me to follow him to his study.
He asked me to sit. He closed the door. I knew he would terminate my employment.
I was wondering if somehow I had also broken the law.
He would ruin me. I reasoned that I could scarcely imagine the ways in which a person like Robert Herkimer might exact revenge for my audacity in bringing such madness into his home.
He sat across from me at his desk, fiddled with his gray walrus mustache, and fixed me with an unreadable look. I think that image of him will remain vivid and indelible in my mind forever.
He tapped his desktop, then slid several drawings toward me.
“Clara,” he said, “are you telling me that you’ve seen these animals?”
I panicked and tried to backtrack. It was no use. Even with years of practice carefully omitting information, if asked a direct question, I’m a terrible liar.
“Well, I didn’t mean to suggest that they were real. I meant…are they from a picture book?”