The Book of Lost Things [58]
But the room was dominated by two great oak tables, so huge that they must have been assembled within the house itself, piece by piece. They were stained with blood, and from where he lay David could see chains and manacles on them, and leather restraints. To one side of the tables was a rack of knives, blades, and surgical tools, all clearly old but kept sharp and clean. Above the tables hung an array of metal and glass tubes on ornate frames, half of them as thin as needles, the others as thick as David’s arm.
Bottles of all shapes and sizes, some filled with clear liquid while the rest had been used to store body parts, stood on shelves. One bottle was filled almost to the top with eyeballs. They seemed alive to David, as though being wrenched from their sockets had not deprived them of the capacity to see. Another contained a woman’s hand, a gold ring upon its wedding finger, red varnish flaking slowly from its nails. A third contained half a brain, its inner workings exposed and marked by colored pins.
And there were worse things than those, oh, much worse…
He heard footsteps approaching. The hunter stood over him, the hood now lowered and the scarf removed to reveal the face beneath. It was the face of a woman. Her skin was ruddy and unadorned, her mouth slim and unsmiling. Her hair was tied loosely upon her head. It was black and white and silver, like the fur of a badger. While David watched, she released her tresses, so that they fell in an avalanche across her shoulders and down her back. She knelt and gripped David’s face with her right hand, turning his head back and forth as she examined his skull. She then released his face and tested his neck, and the muscles in his arms and legs.
“You’ll do,” she said, more to herself than to David, and then she left him to lie upon the floor while she worked on the head of the deer-girl. She did not say another word to him until her work was complete, many hours later. She raised David and placed him upon a low chair before displaying to him the fruits of her labors.
The deer-girl’s head had been mounted upon a piece of dark wood. Her hair had been washed and spread out on the block, held in place by a thin glue. Her eyes had been removed and replaced with ovals of green and black glass. Her skin had been coated with a waxy substance to preserve it, and her head made a hollow sound when the huntress rapped upon it with her knuckles.
“She’s pretty, don’t you think?” said the huntress.
David shook his head but said nothing. This girl had had a name once. She’d had a mother and father, maybe sisters and brothers. She would have played and loved and been loved in return. She might have grown up and given birth to children of her own. Now all of that was lost.
“You disagree?” asked the huntress. “Perhaps you feel sorry for her. But think: in years to come she would have grown old and ugly. Men would have used her. Children would have burst forth from her. Her teeth would have rotted from her head, her skin would have wrinkled and aged, and her hair would have grown thin and white. Now, she will always be a child, and she will always be beautiful.”
The huntress leaned forward. She touched her hand to David’s cheek, and for the first time she smiled. “And soon, you too will be like her.”
David twisted his head away.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”
“I am a hunter,” she replied simply. “A hunter must hunt.”
“But she was a little girl,” said David. “A girl with the body of an animal, but still a girl. I heard her speak. She was frightened. And then you killed her.”
The huntress stroked the deer-girl’s hair.
“Yes,” she said, softly. “She lasted longer than I expected. She was more cunning than I thought. Perhaps a fox’s body might have been more appropriate, but it is