Effigy Read Online Free Page A

hind legs at the hip. She strips every scrap of muscle before setting the heavy bones aside.
    She feels almost entirely herself now. Only a ghost of unease remains, and then only when her gaze slips sideways to touch on the female’s creamy paw.
    There remains but one task to be performed before she can roll the male’s carcass to the edge of the workbench and let it fall. Closing her fingers around the handle of the saw, Dorrie drags it toward her over the bloodied bench. After a moment’s pause, she draws it softly across the back of the wolf’s skull, marking out the cut. A burst of effort and the brain will show. It never ceases to amaze her, the power of those fine metallic teeth when married to her own thin arm.

    Standing alone in the little silkhouse, Ruth inhales deeply, closing her eyes. The place smells of forest. Resin seeps from the rough log walls, and from the planks beneath her feet. A green perfume lingers over the worm beds, mulberry leaves still verdant, still refreshing to the nose. The lavender she threw down yesterday heightens the atmosphere discreetly, like harebells at the foot of an oak. The silkworms themselves supply the odour of life—a gentle funk somehow evocative of insect, animal and bird.
    In their feeding, the worms make a low music of water upon leaves. At two weeks old, they mimic a gentle rain. As they grow, so too will the force of their downpour.
    Ruth opens her eyes. A shaft of daylight, thinned by the trees beyond the window, shows up a whirl of motes. She contemplates her own hand against a bed of juvenile worms. Fifteen days ago they emerged from vein-coloured eggs too tiny to handle; today they’re half the length of her forefinger. A fortnight more and they’ll be the finger’s equal. It will be all she can do to keep them fed in those final days—she’ll be run ragged. Such good little eaters. It’s tempting to pick one up and raise it to her lips, bestow the reward of a kiss. Instead, she nestles a fingertip in among them. They accept its presence, continue feeding without cease.

    Dorrie takes special care in sewing up the mother wolf’s bullet hole. It’s a tricky turn, just there, behind the ear. The male was no trouble—a clean shot through the chest where the fur stood thick and dark. The hole fit nicely into her ventral cut. The pups wereeven easier. Two of the skulls showed cracks, but none was dented, let alone crushed. The small pelts came away whole.
    The salted skin eats at her finger pads, but fine work such as this doesn’t allow for gloves. In any case she’s accustomed to working through pain. Pushing her needle into the bullet hole’s verge, she draws the silk thread taut, a lone stitch already minimizing the tear. Her sister-wife’s product is both strong and fine.
    You let me know if that’s a good weight
.
    Ruth delivered the first of many spools to the old barn not long after Dorrie came to live at the ranch. It took months for the second wife to beg a favour in return. Or not beg. In fact, Dorrie’s fairly certain the request was never spoken aloud. She can recall only Ruth’s hand reaching into her apron pocket, producing a fat caterpillar gone still.
    “He wouldn’t like it,” Dorrie said after a moment.
    Ruth treated her to a soft smile. “I should think it would be a challenge, a pleasure to you.”
    Dorrie felt a jabbing sensation in her chest. The thrill of having one’s nature even partly understood.
A challenge. A pleasure
. She held out an upturned hand.
    Major Greene clearly held the preservation of insects to be a lesser art. He also held, however, that the true professional must be able to handle any specimen he is presented with, and so he had included a slim chapter on the subject toward the back pages of his invaluable treatise—between “Collection and Preparation of Eggs, Bird and Reptile” and “Essential Materials and Tools.”
    The bulk of the section dealt with mounting winged specimens, but at length Dorrie