III.
With King in his arms, Carl passes Hall of Gems and Hall of Jades, detours around the molten core of Moving Earth, and enters Plants of the World. A long, dimly-lit corridor stretches before him, lined on both sides with glass-fronted mahogany cases. To his left looms the Cannonball Tree; to his right the Monkey Ladder, its dimpled pods trembling as he passes, his tread heavy with the weight of King. Now and then he glances into a case to check the condition of a spray of leaves or a tender blossom, though there is no need; they are as perfect now as when they were made fifty years ago. From time to time he sets King down and opens the door of a case, reaching in to gather a few ripe fruits or to pluck an insect from a twig.
Carl rounds the corner from the rain forest into the temperate deciduous zone and sees, at the far end of the hall, the glowing green realm of Spring. Behind a wide expanse of glass a fresh April sky arcs over a woodland glade. The ground is lush with unfurling ferns. A grove of young sugar maples rises at the right, boughs shrouded by a haze of infant leaves. At the foot of the glade a stream flows, strewn with glossy lily pads, its surface lightly pocked by the pads of water striders.
Carl nears Spring and sets King down on the floor next to his waiting family, first glancing back down the corridor toward the security desk, though the night watchman’s snores are clearly audible in the quiet. Carl has circumvented the security office each night for the last month, moving back and forth from his workshop. Though its entrance is now obscured behind the walls of Dinomania!, the room had remained undisturbed in his long absence, tools and chemicals intact though thick with dust, lock unchanged.
Moving to the side of the case, he unlatches the door and steps into Spring, carefully avoiding the freshly-glazed resin of the stream. He reaches a finger up to test the surface of the sky for dryness, balancing with his other hand against the refinished bark of a slender maple. Glancing up at the bulbs behind the sky, he adjusts the angle of a branch so that its leaves may better reflect the light, and tilts the head of a finch perching on a twig. He looks all around him once more, then steps out of the case.
Carl lifts Prince and carries him into Spring, placing him in his normal position at the left rear, hooves fitting snugly into their slots in the stream. He places Queenie and Blossom at the right, on their bed of moss under the maples. King enters last to stand at the front just behind the glass, gazing out. Carl sets him down and smooths a wayward patch of reconditioned fur on his flank, careful not to brush against the fragile velvet of his antlers. He stands back and observes each renewed detail. Prince’s muzzle, dry and cracked a few days before, now gleams with a healthy sheen. Queenie’s freshened neck now bends in a smooth curve toward Blossom, who raises her head to nuzzle her mother. Carl peers closely at Blossom’s hide. He leans toward the back corner of the case and selects a can of white paint and a small brush from a box filled with bottles and tools. Kneeling before Blossom, he opens the can, dips his brush and applies its tip to a few faded dapples on her back, then returns can and brush to the corner.
He stands, reaches in his trousers pocket, and bends to scatter a handful of tree frogs on the lily pads of the stream. From the other pocket he draws the ripe pupa of a swallowtail butterfly and turns to tuck it in a notch of the youngest maple, above Blossom’s head.
He steps out of the case, closes the door, turns and looks up.
“Delia, dearest, you grow tired; rest there, under the Dutch Elm. But first open your hand; I have a small gift for you.”
II.
Delia holds a Black-Throated Blue Warbler. Its wings fold in the curve of her left palm, its beak points back to her, exposing the breast. The clear white down around the straight cut from throat to belly lifts in a slight breeze from the window. She runs a finger around the inside of the sueded skin, checking for lingering parasite parts or bits of gravel, then pushes small sheets of soft tissue paper into the cupped form, pressing it gently into the tapering legs, the cavity of the head, tilting the body to catch the light so that she can see into its corners. She looks down at her breast and chooses a needle from the group stuck through the starched cotton, a thin flat-headed needle that will not tear the skin. She threads the needle with cat-gut and joins the cut edges with small neat stitches, smoothing the feathers over the seam. She must bring her face very close to the bird’s body to keep the stitches straight. The faint scent of formaldehyde rises; she reels a little. Replaced among its companions, the warbler’s newly rounded form rocks from side to side in the breeze. She presses gently on its breast, flattening it slightly so that it lies still.
Delia lifts her head from her work and breathes in the smell of fresh-cut wood and wet varnish, watching the workmen come and go; Spring opens in less than a month, and there is much left to do. She turns on her stool and looks at the boxes and crates that surround her, some stacked on her worktable, some standing on the floor. She pulls one large flat box close and leans in to check the condition of the wax leaves that lay inside, each separated from its neighbor by a thin wooden partition to preserve its shape. She has made the leaves during the winter evenings in her studio at home, while Carl has been away with his team, collecting. She pours warmed paraffin into the ceramic molds that Carl ships back, cast from the leaves of saplings in the Michigan woods. Tomorrow she will begin to attach the leaves to the trees of Spring. She lifts one from the box and holds it up to the light: each tender vein is clearly inscribed in the cool milky wax. Every evening she gathers the new leaves and stacks them near the stove in the bedroom to keep them warm, but not so close as to melt them. They become brittle and sometimes break when left in the cold studio; though it is late March, the nights are still frosty. Each night as Delia drops off to sleep she hears King in the shed behind the house, bumping his antlers against the tin walls.
Delia turns from the leaves and looks into the deep wooden crate that arrived from the woods yesterday. Fresh birds rest on square beds of new green grass, cut from the soil under the selected bird’s favorite branch, the patch on which the collector sets his snare. When the bird drops down to dip its beak for insects in the cool soil of early evening, it steps through the loop of delicate wire, strong enough to hold it immobile until the collector comes with his chemicals to finish the job, leaving the body unmarred. The wire cuts into the snared leg, forming a lighter ring, a thin pink line among the scales.
She lifts the last layer of little graves from the crate to find the bottom, where loose feathers have found their way down during the voyage, ready to be shed regardless of the birds’ early end. Feathers of every hue lift and spin in the space still fragrant with spring grass, but none the particular shade of the warbler in her hand, a vivid twilight blue. She turns instead to the just-stuffed warbler and plucks the longest feather from the fan of its tail, spreading the feathers that remain to restore the tail’s symmetry. She cuts the fresh quill with a penknife, angling the blade into the shaft to make a clean point that will pull ink smoothly.
Her head tucked close to the small tag before her, she dips the pen and begins to write in a script so small a wren might read it, noting the peculiarities of this particular bird, the slight deviations from the strict uniformity desired by the Institute. Each bird bears the tag that was tied in the field, genus, species, sex indicated in black looping script, the line wavering where the collector’s hand slipped on the edge of the clipboard.
This bird is the most nearly perfect she has seen. She turns it in her hands and observes again the flawless oval of dense black that marks its throat, curving to encircle the eyes; through the round openings the white tissue swells. Against the light from the window she sees that the bird’s beak remains slightly open; she parts it with her fingers and finds a small ripe mulberry caught there. She pulls it out carefully and puts it in her mouth.
I.
Delia falls back laughing and Carl leans to kiss her, smoothing the hair away from her face and out into the grass, reaching to snap sprigs of violets and jonquils from the green around her head and threading them through her hair. He leans on one elbow and looks down at her, shadows her eyes with his hand against the dappled light filtering through the trees. They hear the stream bubbling over stones and through reeds, the soft hiss of the wind moving through the saplings, then a splash, and when they look up a buck stands in the stream. He raises his head, dripping, from the moving stream.
