Page 159 of Bone Year

I pick up the pen and write what I smell, what I hear, what I taste through her, what her hands feel as she pads across the floor of the exam room. I write quickly. It feels less like solving a test and more like taking dictation from a friend.

When I finish, I have six items on the parchment.

I open my eyes.

I knock on the door.

The door opens.

Nestor is standing exactly where I left him. Poppy is on the bench. He looks at me.

“How many.”

“Six.”

He extends his hand.

I give him the parchment.

He reads it. Without speaking, he crosses to the cabinet on the right side of the room. He opens it, lifts out a tin from the top shelf, and shakes it. A small scuffling sound rises from inside. He sets it back on the shelf.

He bends, runs his hand under the bench Poppy is sitting on, and pulls out a small wooden block fastened with two iron nails and sets it on the counter.

He turns to a high shelf above the gurneys and lifts down a small dish. The water in it catches the light. He pulls a piece of red velvet from behind the leg of his chair. He opens the top-right drawer of the cabinet on the other side of the room and lifts out a glass vial, half full of a dark liquid. He sets each object on the counter as he goes.

When he is done, he looks up.

His eyes track to the ceiling above the cabinet behind his chair.

The spider is exactly where Poppy showed me it was.

He lowers his eyes to her.

“Miss Rose.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“I have administered this exercise for twenty-one years.”

“Yes,” I say nervously.

“In twenty-one years, three students have identified all six objects. None of them did it in under three minutes.”

I don’t know what to say. He didn’t give me any context before, and I didn’t think it was that hard. Maybe I should have taken longer. I peek over at Poppy, but she’s calm while I am a mess of nerves.

He sets the parchment down on the counter beside the objects. He removes his spectacles and folds them and looks at me without them. His eyes are sharper than I have ever seen them.

“Miss Rose, what are you?”

I chew on the inside of my cheek having no idea how to answer that.

“I don’t know, sir.”

He looks at me for a long beat.

“I believe you,” he says quietly. “That doesn’t change the fact that you are something.”

“Please don’t tell anyone.”