Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand

stooped to pick up something on the floor. A leaf, Daniel thought at first; but then she straightened and held it out to him. He cupped his hands to receive it.
    A moth. “Is it alive?” he asked.
    â€œNot anymore.”
    It had blade-shaped wings, dusky blue-green; a crimson-furred thorax; faceted green eyes. Gently he touched its thorax, soft as down, then drew his hand to his face, sniffing tentatively. “That’s weird. It smells like—apples?” He looked at Larkin. “Where did it come from?”
    â€œFrom away.” She took it from him, walked over to the vase, and nestled the moth within the dead roses. There were others, green moths like handfuls of leaves scattered among the flowers. “They come here by mistake, they get trapped, and then they can’t get out. I wish I could help them,” she added, and gave him a stricken look.
    â€œWell, gee. I’m really sorry it’s dead. Was it—are they—rare?”
    â€œOh, no. They used to be very common.”
    She turned and tugged off her anorak, draping it over the edge of the taboret. She was wearing the same clothes as last night, only with a long black scarf looped around her neck. She shook her head vigorously, and her thick hair sprang out, the way a fern straightens after a heavy rain. Daniel took off his leather jacket and set it on the floor beside the taboret, glanced again at the brass plaque on the wall behind it.
    â€œThat’s kind of weird,” he said, frowning as he tried to recall his altar-boy Latin. “‘It is fair to obtain knowledge, even from the enemy.’ Sort of an extreme motto for a folklore society.”
    Larkin shrugged. “Oh, back then people believed there was a system for understanding everything—they just could never agree what the system was. These people thought it was folklore.”
    â€œFairy tales?”
    â€œNo. More like folk memories. They were scientific, in their own way—they had a sort of Darwinian approach, always looking for a single source for their stories.”
    â€œWell, that’s what I’m doing.”
    â€œYes.” The rain-washed light gave her skin a foxglove shimmer that made her green eyes glow spectrally. “That’s why I thought you’d like coming here. Everything is upstairs, just mind your head.”
    She turned, indicating he should follow her into a corridor, immediately ducked through a low doorway, and began to climb a narrow flight of steps.
    â€œSo is that what you are?” said Daniel. “A folklorist?”
    â€œNo.” She pushed open a door and walked into a small room, wood-paneled and dim, its single round window overlooking the courtyard. There was no furniture save a plain wooden map chest. “I told you, Daniel. I’m not anything.”
    She looked at him with that strange covert gaze, as though she were peering at him through a gap in a curtain, then knelt beside the map chest and began tugging at its bottom drawer. “Damn, it’s always stuck.”
    Rain slashed at the window. The air around them felt chill and close; it smelled of dust and old books, though there were no books that Daniel could see, nothing but the wooden chest. He watched, silent, as Larkin struggled with the drawer; he fought the urge to step closer, to kneel beside her and feel his own hands on the worn drawer pulls, the dusty wooden floor beneath his knees and this woman beside him.
    â€œOh, come on, please, please . . .” she muttered.
    He felt a tremor of excitement, but not at the thought of seeing the sketches. A dreamy anticipation, like opening night of his high school play, when he suddenly stepped out onto the stage and discovered that he did, after all, know his lines, knew where to stand and when to move, knew everyone around him, all those half-shadowed figures he’d never really paid attention to before—he knew them all, knew their names and what they