Chapter 11 Trust #3
Robert smiled kindly. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him look pleased before that moment. Then, he said the words that changed everything.
“Clara, they are quite real and I have indeed seen them. Have you?”
My eyes filled with tears.
“Yes. My God, yes. I see them all the time.”
He grinned like the Cheshire Cat and clapped his hands.
“Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful,” he said.
The following week was absurd.
Mr. Herkimer kept me on the payroll, but hired a new tutor for Jonathan. In fact, he offered me a pay increase to leave my other tutoring posts, but I have a reputation to consider and have, as of yet, declined the offer.
He also asked me to call him Robert. I’m still getting used to that. I protested that it might look strange in public and he said that he gave up appearing conventional long ago. I wish I had that luxury.
In the last two weeks…the things I’ve seen defy description.
He showed me a dizzying array of impossible curios, housed in the secret attic.
A feather the size of a canoe. A pinecone that radiates endless heat.
A small shrew-like thing made of living springs, gears, and cogs.
Each time I perceived and expressed appreciation for the wonders in Mr. Herkimer’s collection, his opinion of me seemed to grow.
This morning, we did an unimaginable thing. We went and observed my thorny lizards together. He calls them “Prairie Monitors.”
What a truly odd experience to discuss one’s imaginary childhood companions with another. It felt like thinking of an image and having a stranger fish it from my skull and describe it to me.
Part of me is elated about all this. Part of me thinks this must mean I truly have slipped over the edge.
Mr. Herkimer says that seeing these creatures makes me uniquely suited for his line of work. He told me about his teacher, a gentleman in Boston, and his teacher’s teacher, a Cree woman in Quebec. He says that there are experts in this obscure field all across the globe.
I don’t know what to make of it.
I just know, this morning, speaking aloud to another human being in the presence of those miraculous lizards, I felt wholly myself in a way I am still struggling to define.
Perhaps this journal will help me in that task.
Mr. Herkimer tells me I have a talent for pseudozoology and cryptonature. He tells me that this talent is a blessing. I hope, one day, that I will feel the same.
Still, my fear whispers to me and I cannot help but worry he is gathering evidence against me, though if he wished me harm he certainly wouldn’t need a contrivance as elaborate as this. I know that doesn’t make sense, but fear sprouted in the soil of experience isn’t easy to uproot.
Hopefully, these writings will be a future treasure to me and I do not hear these words read back to me as part of some court proceedings.
In the margin, Valentina had written: V. Blackwood Journal 488, PG 56.
Green was eager to dive into Valentina’s journals, but he couldn’t quite pull himself away from Clara. She was floundering and he knew the feeling. He wanted to see her find her feet and get up onto dry land before he had to go spend an uncertain night in the dark woods. He read on.
She did indeed find her footing, absorbing all Robert Herkimer had to teach and voraciously adding to the global body of cryptonaturalist knowledge with her own meticulous observations.
He began skipping ahead, skimming entries.
There were portions Green understood well enough, like Clara’s detailed descriptions of one prairie monitor’s surprisingly friendly interactions with white-tailed deer.
And there were sections he didn’t understand at all, like Clara’s many frustrations with using linear language to describe nonlinear insect behaviors.
As the journals progressed, they became more inscrutable, but this was itself a lesson. Green watched Clara transition from bewildered, to enthralled, to immersed. It could be done. It was an uplifting thought.
He was preparing to check on Valentina’s preparations when an unexpected development occurred in the text. Clara discovered that Robert Herkimer was what she called a “poacher.”
She had been investigating the sharply declining population of her beloved prairie monitors and her findings pointed back to her own teacher. She confronted him and he made no secret of it.
Not only was he unrepentant, he scolded Clara for harboring childish views about nature.
“We are predators, Clara. What about our place in the natural order? And what of us specifically, those of us who can naturally perceive this deeper level of God’s world? Do we spit in the eye of providence or do we gratefully accept the precious harvest made available to us chosen few?”
Robert was selling trophies to oligarchs and princes, fashionable mystics among the super-rich, and wealthy cults with endless avarice for hoarding precious oddities.
He peddled the idea that only the most spiritually sensitive or magically gifted buyer could even perceive this preserved claw or that necklace strung with cryptid molars.
A single prairie monitor, butchered and preserved, would fetch a small fortune on markets too secret for names.
“We must do something to fund you sitting in a tree all day watching zebra ants, mustn’t we? There won’t be much time for scientific inquiry if you choose to tutor or farm for your living.”
He felt Valentina standing next to him and looked up.
“Poor Clara,” Green said.
Valentina looked down at the page.
“Ah, that entry. A pivotal shift and not just for Clara.”
“How do you mean?”
Valentina paused to collect her memories.
“Mr. Green, you are joining a professional organization and a community of experts and enthusiasts.
The cryptonaturalists. Our branch of study has had many names, many factions, and has never before known the cohesiveness it knows now.
The world has become a more connected, more communicative place.
“Clara rightly perceived a failure of imagination and morality on the part of her teacher, but Robert Herkimer’s practices were not terribly rare among cryptonaturalists of earlier times.
Lucrative expeditions to hunt a yeti or travel writers selling curios to decorate the parlors of the wealthy. Very common.”
Valentina glanced up at a nearby shelf holding a jar of water vapor that occasionally coalesced into a jagged tooth.
“Clara brought the issue to a head in the mainstream of cryptonaturalist society.
She astutely pointed out that we cannot possibly know the complex ecological impact of removing even a single cryptid from the world, creatures with populations often numbering in single digits, but with outsized roles to play in natural cycles well beyond our understanding.
“Robert Herkimer attempted to blacklist Clara from cryptonaturalist circles, but he failed. The fair-minded among us could see the obvious sense in her position. Clara found new mentors and new homes that were eager to host her talents, but she would not let the issue of poaching rest.”
Green nodded, recalling his earlier question about killing the wolf.
“Eventually…later than you might hope…the global community of cryptonaturalists outlawed poaching and ostracized any members who practiced it. Well, openly practiced it.”
“How’d that go?”
Valentina sniffed.
“There have been arguments. Even some fights. Some cryptonaturalists are allied with dangerous creatures who take mutual-defense pacts rather seriously. There have been a handful of ugly incidents. But, all in all, Clara’s work led to a better, more thoughtful, more unified community.”
“But why did you ask me to start with this book? I was expecting more, I don’t know, basic procedures and facts. Maybe something to help prepare me for our job tonight. This is more…personality.”
“Exactly, Mr. Green. Facts are just facts. They are inert. Unshaped clay. Facts do not contain inherent significance. Facts, in short, do not make meaning. People make meaning, sculpting it from the raw substance of facts. ‘Personality,’ as you put it. In any discipline, if the goal is to collect information, it is worth asking some basic philosophical questions first. Questions like, why bother? Why should I care about this set of data? What is this information for? Why spend our limited life minutes on this? Robert Herkimer had his answer. Clara Rodriguez had a much different answer.”
Green pondered. It was a big question.
“May I ask what your answer is?” Green asked.
Valentina looked around her library.
“I agree with Clara, though I have made some of Robert Herkimer’s mistakes in the past. I have had a very long time to make mistakes. Have you read any of my journals yet, Mr. Green?”
“Not a journal exactly. You…left a notebook in the cabin. I read some of it the night with the rag moth. There was a letter to someone named Ivan. I’m sorry. I don’t suppose I should have read that.”
“Ah. No, that’s not one of my indexed journals for a reason, but I don’t particularly mind. I am not terribly shy these days. Not much of interest for you, though, in a sentimental letter to my past.”
“Yeah. About that. And the thing you said earlier about Clara. That letter to Ivan was dated from the 1930s and referred to a long time ago.”
“Yes.”
“So, yeah, exactly how old are you? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Valentina smiled.
“I don’t mind, but I’ll propose a trade. It’s a trade of trust. Truthfully, I had it in mind when I asked you to read Clara’s journal.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“I’ll answer your question honestly and in return you’ll answer a personal question about yourself honestly. Agreed?”
“Sure. Why not? Agreed.”
“I am 512 years old. As near as I can guess, that is.”
Green began to smile and then the smile melted away. She was not joking.
“How?”