barricade, no soldiers, not even a flag.
By arrangement with the local university, a van was waiting. To Osprey's great surprise, his driver was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She had skin like dark fruit, and brilliant red lipstick. 'You are the butterfly man?' she asked. Her accent was like a musical gift.
'Osprey,' he stammered.
'It's hot,' she said. 'I brought you a Coca-Cola.' She offered him a bottle. Hers was beaded with condensation. Lipstick circled the tip.
While she drove, he learned her name. She was an economics student. 'Why are you
chasing the mariposa?' she asked. Mariposa was the Mexican term for the monarch butterfly.
'It's my life,' he answered.
'Your whole life?'
'From childhood. Butterflies. I was drawn by their movements and colors. And their names. Painted Ladies! Red Admirals! Question Marks! Ever since, I've followed them. Wherever the mariposas migrate, I go with them.'
Her smile made his heart squeeze.
They passed a shantytown overlooking the river. 'You go south,' she said, 'they go north. Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Hondurans. And my own people, too.'
'They'll try to cross over tonight?' Osprey asked. He looked past their white cotton pants and decaying tennis shoes and cheap sunglasses to glean hints of ancient tribes, Mayan, Aztec, Olmec. Once upon a time, their ancestors might have been warriors or kings. Now they were paupers, driftwood aiming for land.
'They kill themselves trying to leave their origins. How can they resist?'
Osprey glanced across the Rio Grande's coil of brown, poisoned water at the butt side of America. Heated to mirage, the buildings and billboards and power lines did seem to offer hope – provided you could factor out the necklace of razor wire glittering in the middle distance, and the sparkle of binoculars and video lenses overseeing the passage. The van continued along the river.
'Where are you going?' she asked.
'To the highlands around Mexico City. They roost in the mountain fir stands through the winter. In the spring they'll return this way to lay their eggs.'
'I mean today, Mr Osprey.'
'Today. Yes.' He fumbled with his maps.
She stopped suddenly. They had reached a place overcome by orange and black wings. 'Incredible,' Ada murmured.
'It's their rest stop for the night,' Osprey said. 'Tomorrow they'll be gone. They travel fifty miles every day. In another month, all of the masses of monarchs will reach their roost.'
'They don't fly at night?'
'They can't see in the darkness.' He opened the van door. 'I may take an hour,' he apologized. 'Perhaps you should return later.'
'I'll wait for you, Mr Osprey. Take your time. When you're finished, we can have dinner, if you'd like.'
If I'd like? Dazed, Osprey took his rucksack and gently closed the door behind him. Remembering his purpose, he headed west into the sinking sun. His inquiry dealt with the monarchs' age-old migration path. Danaus plexippus laid its eggs in North America, then died. The young emerged with no parents to guide it, and yet each year flew thousands of miles along the same ancestral route to the same destination in Mexico. How could this be? How could a creature that weighed less than half a gram have a memory? Surely memory weighed something. What was memory? There was no bottom to the mystery for Osprey. Year after year, he collected them alive. While they wintered, he studied them in his laboratory.
Osprey unzipped his daypack and took out a bundle of folded white boxes, the same kind that Chinese food comes in. He assembled twelve, leaving their tops open. His task was simple. He approached a cluster of hundreds, held a box out, and two or three alighted inside. He closed the box.
After forty minutes, Osprey had eleven boxes dangling by their wire handles from a string around his neck. Hurrying, badly distracted by the girl in the van, he trotted across a sagging depression toward the final cluster. The depression gave way. With monarchs clinging to his arms and head, he plunged through a hole in the ground.
The fall registered as a clatter of rocks, then sudden darkness.
Consciousness returned in bits. Osprey struggled to take stock. He was in pain, but could move. The hole was very deep, or else night had arrived. Luckily he hadn't lost his rucksack. He opened it and found his flashlight.
The beam was a source of both comfort and distress. He found himself lying at the pit of a limestone sinkhole, battered but unbroken. There was no sign of the hole he'd fallen through. And his landing had crushed several boxes of his beloved monarchs. For a moment, that was more defeating than the fall itself.
'Hello,' he called out several times. There was no one down here to hear him, but Osprey hoped his voice might carry through the hole somewhere overhead. Perhaps the Mexican woman would be looking for him. He had a momentary fantasy that she might fall through the hole and they could be trapped together for a night or two. At any rate, there was no response.
Finally he pulled himself together, stood up, dusted himself off, and got on with trying to find an exit. The sinkhole was cavernous, its walls riddled with tubular openings. He poked his light into a few, thinking one of them must surely lead to the surface. He chose the largest.
The tube snaked sideways. At first he was able to crawl on his knees. But it narrowed, forcing him to leave his day-pack. At last he was reduced to muscling forward on elbows and belly, careful to scoot his flashlight and the remaining five boxes of live butterflies ahead of him.
The porous walls kept tearing his clothing and hooking his trouser cuffs. The rock cut his arms. He knocked his head, and sweat stung his eyes. He was going to emerge in tatters, reeking, farcical. So much for dinner, he thought.
The tube grew tighter. A wave of claustrophobia took his breath. What if he got wedged inside this place? Trapped alive! He calmed himself. There was no room to turn around, of course. He could only hope the artery led somewhere more reasonable.
After an awkward, ten-foot wrestling match, with both arms above his head and pushing mightily with his toes, Osprey emerged into a larger tunnel.
His spirits soared. A faint footpath was worn into the rock. All he had to do was follow it out. 'Hello,' he called to his left and right. He heard a slight rattling noise in the distance. 'Hello?' he tried again. The noise stopped. Seismic goblins, he shrugged, and started off in the opposite direction.
Another hour passed, and still the path had not led him out. Osprey was tired, aching, and hungry. Finally he decided to reverse course and explore the path's other end. The trail went up and down, then came to a series of forks he hadn't seen before. He went one way, then another, with increasing frustration. At last he reached a tubular opening similar to the one that had brought him here. On the chance it might return him to the original chamber, Osprey set his butterflies and light on the ledge and crawled inside.
He'd gotten only a short distance when, to his great annoyance, the rock snagged his ankle again. He yanked to free himself, but the ankle stayed caught. He tried to see behind him, but his body filled the opening.
That was when he felt the tube move. It seemed to slip forward an inch or so, though he knew it was his body sliding backward. The disturbing thing was, he hadn't moved a muscle.
Now he felt a second motion, this time a tug at his ankle. It was no longer possible to blame the rock for catching his cuff. This was something organic. He could feel it getting a better grip on his leg. The animal, whatever it was, suddenly began pulling him back.
Osprey desperately tried holding on to the rock, but it was like falling down a slippery chimney. His
