Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & Read Online Free PDF Page B

stamped. And then, suddenly she heard another sound. A muffled cacophony that grew louder as she listened. She heaved herself off the bed and threw herself into the main room, where the cabinet, that solid, heavy oak, shuddered as if in an earthquake.
    She flung open the doors, pulled open the drawers, grabbed up her skirts, and piled all the inhabitants into the makeshift carryall.
    They whirred, clicked, chirred and rattled till she dumped the whole teeming mass of them on the bed. Each crawled in its own way to Werner and took up its own position, and did whatever it chose to do. Within a minute, he was covered with an industrious army of little moving objects. Within five minutes, he opened his eyes ... and smiled. First at his beautiful Gretina, and then, with a weakly bent head, around the room. He lifted his hands to touch each little machine lightly, but they were busy, and he didn't interrupt.
    The stone woman leant over and kissed his warming forehead. The stone man grasped his hand in a gentle grip, weakly returned. And then, ducking through the doorways, they let themselves out of the apartment and made their way as quietly as they could back to their positions at the entrance.
    "Werner," Gretina began. "My starlight. You are all I need. I am so sor—"
    The little creatures worked on, ignoring inconsequentials.
    Werner was so tired. Still, he needed to remember to someday talk to Gretina about this ... this miracle. She only ever had thoughts for one thing at a time, and now that one thing was her Werner. She accepted the miracle, while his mind kept telling him of its logical unreality. Werner's thoughts whirled round and round until they were lost in sleep.
    Dawn threw its grey light into the room where Werner slept, still in his guard's clothes, Gretina still in her dress beside him. As the mechanical creatures quietened, a faint cheep could be heard, then a sort of indignant squawk. Then a kind of rattling flap. Then a scruffly crunch, and a scratch-plop-scratch. But Gretina and Werner slept so soundly they heard nothing.
    ~
    Sometime around Christmas, a visiting professor asked to examine a particular piece, a fossil of a bird from China. But it was on display. Wasn't it? It must have been loaned, but to which institution? There must have been an oversight in documentation somewhere. No one could remember what had happened to it. Very embarrassing.
    The curator insisted that the documentation was perfect, and the object must have been stolen.
    The guards swore that nothing irregular had ever occurred under their noses. The police had their own theories about absent-minded professorial staff in the museum, but launched an investigation since they could not do otherwise. In their job of uncovering nothing, they made a routine visit to the retired guard nicknamed "Klokwerk," because the director said this boring but persnickety man could maybe be of some help.
    But the human automaton was clearly broken. "So long ago it feels," he said. "I just guarded the exhibits. Never looked in the cases. Excuse me. Gretina, did I take my pills?"
    The two inspectors drained their coffee cups, made polite thank-yous and left, relieved to escape the sad apartment where that lonely couple were "living" out their years. He, torn from the excitement of a working life, now stuck at home fiddling with mechanical junk strewn all over the dining table, while his ugly wife knitted, some weird bird perched on her shoulder, trilling and cackling, and clothed—the inspectors laughed at this diversion, as they yearned for a real case—in a cloak, like a monk with only its beak sticking out. A cloak of fine wool, patterned with stars.

The Eel
    The eel appeared on the third year of the drought, when the creek was so low that the swimming hole grew a green velvet lining of algae.
    It was winter, and even though the water was cold, there were no flies to swat, so it was a pleasant time to pick over the mica-flecked stones in the exposed