The Garden Path #BattleTheBeast

"We still have no idea how Dr. Nitram caught it." Ecila squints at the huge, pinned moth and thumbs one corner of its glass coffin. She wears tight blue rubber gloves reminiscent of dentists or baggage handlers.

A batwing of black hair obscures one quadrant of Ecila's face, making her bony intelligence more mysterious. "You seem familiar," Quentin blurts.

Her brow staples into a decisive negative. "I'd love to discover the method Dr. Nitram used." Ecila picks up a brass magnifier and holds it over the moth. "See those wings? They're pristine. Hardly a scale out of place. It's impossible to capture such perfect specimens."

He leans over the glass case, flanked by a field journal with a stained leather cover. The most incongruous object on Ecila's desk is a fanciful clock, its face set into the trunk of a ceramic oak tree. 

"What kind of moth is it?" Quentin gabbles, wanting to extend the interview. He's been lucky to get into the spirit room, a hidden corner of the Unnatural History Museum. 

They're surrounded by bottled specimens coiled in alcohol tincture: scorpions, serpents, lizards, fetal pigs. Along one wall, a squid undulates in cloudy liquid held in a long and narrow tank. The room is named for chemicals holding those oily creatures: preservatives and alcohol. 

Spirits. The Spirit Room.

"The species is Urashima Taro." Ecila brushes the glass again with her furtive, tender, blue touch. "It was named after a Japanese fisherman in a story. He visited an undersea palace and, when he returned..."

"... he found three hundred years had elapsed." Quentin already knows the tale.

For the first time, Ecila regards him. It's as though he's just appeared inside her reality like a fabled fisher from the past. "Did you ever see one of those infinity pictures?" she asks. "Where a boy reads a book, and the cover shows a boy reading a book, and if you look closely there's another boy."

"Who is also reading a book," Quentin supplies. "Yeah."

"Yes. Dr. Nitram believed Urashima Taro moths could splinter time so you relive a moment, except each relapse is minimized. It's like walking down a garden path with a mirror at the other end. You enter the mirror and do it again, and there's another path and another mirror, except each time the journey shortens into infinity." Her cheeks are pale against the shocking black of her hair. "If you think about it, every other trip down the path would be backwards."

"Do you think that can really happen?"

"What?" Ecila shivers. "Of course not. He must have heard the story in his childhood."

"Or her childhood."

She seems to measure him. "Dr. Nitram is a man."

Is. So the guy's alive in this iteration. Quentin takes a deep breath, counts his heartbeats, and points to the journal. "Could I take a look?" 

Ecila nods. Her blue hands open the book and caress the contents, riffling past illustrations and observations and...

Quentin cups her elbow. "There. Can I see that page?" When she shrugs, he bends over the doctor's crabbed writing. A series of hand movements are inked into margin, drawn with the color of dried blood.

This is the Nitram's spell for catching moths without nets or chloroform. Quentin feels sweat prickle at his neckline, excitement that shatters when the clock chimes within its china nest of leaves.

"Noon already," Ecila declares. "Our time's up."

He stutters and asks if she's hungry. There's a cafeteria downstairs, a place where they can eat stale sandwiches. The gesture might buy Quentin a few more precious minutes.