ran! They say she even marched over the Alps with Hannibal’s army in 218 BC. Then, some years ago, a hunter shot her.”
Grunt showed us a picture of an older woman who looked like she’d just gotten back from an African safari, seated in a bizarre chair made of horns.
“I don’t understand,” said Emma, peering at the photo. “Where’s
Ca’ab Magda?”
“Being sat upon,” said Addison. “The hunter fashioned her horns into a chair.”
Emma nearly dropped the album. “That’s disgusting!”
“If that’s her,” said Enoch, tapping the photo, “then what’s buried here?”
“The chair,” said Addison. “What a pitiful waste of a peculiar life.”
“This burying ground is filled with stories like Magda’s,” Addison said. “Miss Wren meant this menagerie to be an ark, but gradually it’s become a tomb.”
“Like all our loops,” said Enoch. “Like peculiardom itself. A failed experiment.”
“ ‘This place is dying,’ Miss Wren often said.” Addison’s voice rose in imitation of her. “ ‘And I am nothing but the overseer of its long funeral!’ ”
Addison’s eyes glistened, remembering her, but just as quickly went hard again. “She was very theatrical.”
“Please don’t refer to our ymbryne in the past tense,” Deirdre said.
“Is,” he said. “Sorry.
“They hunted you,” said Emma, her voice wavering with emotion. “Stuffed you and put you in zoos.”
“Just like the hunters did in Cuthbert’s story,” said Olive.
“Yes,” said Addison. “Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.”
“But there was no Cuthbert,” said Olive, beginning to understand. “No giant. Just a bird.”
