An Apple for the Creature

A week later, I heard word that Delphia had passed. No relatives nearby to care for the baby, and no one stepped in to take claim. I waited, to be sure, and then went down into the valley to take the girl. I did not ask. I held out my arms, and there was something in the way those folk looked at me, something I’d never seen before except when they looked at Ruth, but I supposed I finally had her eyes.

I took the child in, but the only doll I made for her was stitched for play, with a needle from her father’s hand.

Things would be different, I promised.

All for sympathy for the bones.

Low School RHYS BOWEN

Rhys Bowen currently writes two historical mystery series: the Molly Murphy novels, featuring a feisty Irish immigrant sleuth in 1900s New York City, and the lighter, funnier Royal Spyness series about Lady Georgiana, thirty-fifth in line to the British throne in the 1930s. Rhys’s books have received many award nominations and she has won thirteen major awards, including Agatha, Anthony and Macavity as well as Reader’s Choice for Best Mystery Series. Her books are definitely traditional mysteries so she loves writing short stories where she can reveal her inner dark and evil side. Rhys is a transplanted Brit, now dividing her time between California and Arizona, where she goes to escape the harsh California winters.

“Where are your two number-two pencils, properly sharpened?”

I looked up at a man who had a face like a skeleton—sunken eyes, skin stretched over cheekbones, thin humorless mouth. His glasses were perched on the end of a long nose and he was almost bald, too, completing the skeletonlike effect. He was wearing a grayish-white, short-sleeved button-down shirt with ink stains around the pocket, and a tie onto which egg had dripped at some stage. The word schoolteacher formed in my mind at the same moment that he repeated the question.

“Your two number-two pencils? Properly sharpened?” He paused, those colorless sunken eyes staring at me now with distaste. “You do have your two number-two pencils, properly sharpened, I hope?”

I patted my side, then looked around me. “I don’t seem to have brought a purse.”

He made the sort of tut-tutting noise I’d only read about before and gave a big dramatic sigh. “Not a good start to our first day, is it? The instruction sheet clearly told you that two number-two pencils would be required and that they should be properly sharpened as there is no sharpener available in the examination room.”

“I don’t think I received . . .” I stammered. “I don’t remember receiving any kind of instruction sheet.”

“Everybody is sent the instruction sheet in preparation for their first day,” the man said. “Clearly you chose to disregard the instructions. I shall have to report this to Ms. Fer.”

“Ms. Fur?”

“Our principal. And no, it is not spelled fur like the animal’s hair. It is Fer from the Latin ‘to do’ or ‘to make,’ as I’m sure you know, being a student of the subject.”

I nodded.

“I’m afraid Ms. Fer will not be pleased. Oh, dear me, no. We expect everyone here to obey the instructions to the letter.”

I shrugged. “Well, I’m sorry but I don’t remember receiving any instruction sheet. I guess it must have been lost in the mail. And I can’t make pencils appear out of thin air.”

He reached into his shirt pocket. “As it happens, I do have a pencil I can lend you, just for today,” he said. “To help you out this once. Until you know the ropes. But I expect it to be returned immediately after the examination, you understand. And don’t break the point because there is no way to sharpen it in the examination room.”

I stared at his pocket, blinked, then stared some more because I could have sworn there had been no pencil sticking out of that pocket before but now there appeared to be several. He handed it to me solemnly, as if he were bestowing a great gift. Then he glanced at his watch. “You’d better hurry. Showing up late for the examination is something that wouldn’t be so easily forgiven. Go on. Off you go.”

“Where is the exam room?” I asked. My heart was racing now.