Nature Doctor
NATURE DOCTOR
Effie thumbed through the uneven edges of the frayed tome in her spindly, freckled hands. The red leather cover had intricate brandings of broad-leafed trees, vines and clinging epiphytes, and outlandish flowers. Suddenly pensive, she sat down cross-legged on the attic's dusty floor.
She was delicate by nature, but the spine still cracked as her hands revealed the book's insides. Effies eyes - bronze in the growing sunrise peeking through the eave windows - widened as her curiosity and interest grew. They hopped and skipped with inreasing speed across the hand-scrawled pages. When sated, she leafed to the next page, instantly reawakening her hunger.
Her uncle must have been a nature doctor. Effie couldn't think of another way to describe the person who would make such a book as this. Here: a paragraph explaining the perfect growing conditions for raising orchids; there, a hand-drawn rendition of a dissected pitcher plant. A persimmon, neatly quartered and rendered in an exploded view. Someone had lightly dusted some rouge or other pink pigment directly onto the page, lending a spot of colour to an otherwise inked-black-on-ivory surface.
About halfway through the book, animals began to appear. These were creatures Effie had never heard about, let alone seen in the flesh. The ridiculously long nose and floppy ears of the pachyderm dazzled her, as did the giant bat with its flared nose and saucer-like eyes. She saw the armadillo, and surmised that this is what a porcupine must look like with all its spines cut off.
"What's that'cha got there, little missy?" Effie's mother Dorothy asked after ascending the stairs. Effie looked up for an instant, startled, then back to her current page.
"Uncle Hezekiah's book," she responded. "Ain't never seen nothin' like these before--"
"Dorothy plucked the book from Effie's hands like it was a biscuit someone had dropped in the coals of the fireplace. After a moment of skimming the pages and realizing its content, Dorothy returned it to her daughter's lap.
"I haven't ever seen anything like these before," Dorothy gently corrected her.
"Where I need to go to see things like this?" Effie asked. "Where's Uncle Hez now?"
"You have to travel south a long, long ways, Ephesia," answered her mother. "We haven't seen your Uncle in many a year."
"What's a palm tree for?" Effie had flitted back to the first few pages of the journal, rapt with the prospect of these marvelous specimens actually existing somewhere. Somewhere Effie could go, and look at them with her own two eyes.
"Time to put that away now, Ephesia," clipped Dorothy. "Fetch that scarf like I told you to. There's cows to be milked."
Effie's eyes lingered on the exotic illustration until she slowly closed the red leather-bound book.