The Scent Keeper(6)

I pulled my face back, and there was the smell of the old Sitka spruce, the damp moss and winter. I put my nose to the paper. Cabin.

The new scent-papers weren’t blank at all.



* * *



I raced back to the clearing, already pulling the paper from my pocket. But when I entered the cabin, it was empty. My father must have gone on a foraging expedition.

All the better. I could test my theory before I told him. I raised the scent-paper to my nose. There was the cabin, exactly as it had been in the forest. Perfect. I put the paper back in my pocket. I breathed in.

The smell of the actual cabin was no longer what was on the paper, I realized. We’d lost an apple tree the year before and the logs were finally dry enough to use as fuel. The scent of apple wood is a particular one, sweet and round, impossible to mistake. We hadn’t been burning it earlier, but it was in the stove now, its fragrance like a song. I breathed in, then exhaled and held up the square to my nose. There was no mistaking it—paper and cabin were no longer the same.

I went over to the lower rows of drawers and opened one at random. Hands trembling, I broke the green-wax seal of the bottle within.

This is for science, I told myself.

I pulled out the scent-paper, making a dark nest with my hands to focus my inhalation. The fragrance was slightly different. I opened another bottle and then another. I breathed in variations in wood smoke, smelled clams both fresh and dry, the scent of freshly gathered apples. Mud from my shoes and the smell of autumn leaves in the rain. The differences had been there all along, but I had been distracted, waiting for an entirely new world—a shift into an unknown realm. What was on those papers was far more mysterious.

Memory.



* * *



I melted the green wax as I had seen my father do, resealing the bottles. My work wasn’t as good as his, and I hoped that he wouldn’t pull them out of their drawers anytime soon.

When he returned I was waiting, sitting in the chair by the woodstove.

“I know what they are,” I said triumphantly.

“What are you talking about?”

“The scent-papers.”

My father was taking off his hat and coat, so I couldn’t see his face.

“They’re memories,” I said.

My father stopped, his coat half hung up on the rack.

“What makes you think that?” he asked in his curious-scientist voice.

“Well,” I began, and he turned to listen, his face neutral, then interested, nodding attentively as I related each step of my process.

“Well done, little lark,” he said when I was finished. “I’m proud of you.”

I inhaled his words and kept them deep inside. They made me want to stay there where it was warm. But I had another question. I’d been thinking about it ever since I figured out what the scent-papers were.

“Are those Jack’s, then?” I pointed toward the fantastical scents in the upper rows of drawers.

My father looked startled, then nodded.

“Yes,” he said.

“Will he ever come back for them?” I asked.

My father turned to look at the wall of drawers.

“No,” he said. “It’s our job to protect them now.”

Protect them from what? I wondered. There was only us on the island. I started to ask my father what he meant, but he had already gone back outside, getting more wood for the fire.





THE GIFT


All I could think about from then on was becoming a scent hunter. If the red-wax scent-papers were memories, Jack’s memories, then that meant there were extraordinary worlds beyond the boundaries of our island, and scent hunters who explored them in a way no one else could. I didn’t know if I’d ever get out there, but I wanted to be ready.

“Teach me to be like Jack,” I said to my father. He paused, and for a moment I saw a sad quiet in his eyes, but then he ruffled my hair.

“All right, little lark,” he said. “Get your jacket.”

We went out into the middle of our clearing. In front of us, the vegetable garden lay dormant, ready for winter; the chickens clucked quietly in their coop nearby. Beyond them, the woods waited, full of possibilities. My father stood still for a moment.

“Okay,” he said. “Find me a new egg. But keep your eyes closed.”

“In the chicken coop?” I was still looking hopefully out at the trees.

“That’s where the eggs are.” He smiled.

A chicken coop seemed far too ordinary for a scent hunter, but I closed my eyes and allowed the world to be overtaken by sounds. The clucking of the chickens, the little puffs of their conversations. The sound of a squirrel’s tiny claws scrabbling up a tree. A winter wren, its song clear and sweet. Then I heard the latch on the chicken coop lift, and my father ushered me inside.

“Breathe in,” he said. “Remember, just a shallow one first.”

I let the air into my nose, like the lap of a low tide. I smelled the sharp tang of chicken manure, the memory of summer in the dried grass.

“Now,” my father said, “forget your nose. Open the back of your mind. Listen to the story.”

I inhaled again, slow and deep, and felt the smells flood my head, so full and three-dimensional I could almost wander among them. I could smell the water in its bowl, not quite fresh, and the busy, ruffled odors of the chickens as they moved about, searching for a place to settle. I waited, pondering what a new egg would smell like. My mind started to wander, letting in the scent of the damp earth outside, the smoke slipping from our chimney. Then I pulled myself back to the task at hand. Jack would pay attention. So would I.