The Collector and the Caretaker

My name is Theo Finch. I am twelve years old, and I keep dead things in glass jars on my windowsill. The jars line up like soldiers. My prized finds are—five beetle shells arranged by size, one field mouse skeleton I put together with tweezers and glue, three bird skulls with different shaped beaks.

I dislike the smell of cafeteria meat, the sound of my mother's phone calls with the school counselor, and the way other kids watch me when I examine things on the playground. I like the weight of my specimen box in my backpack, the silence of my bedroom with the door locked, and the satisfaction of mounting a new find.

Everyone else thinks there's something wrong with me. I've often thought that if I were born in a different time, they might have labelled me a naturalist instead of a problem. Last Tuesday, Mrs. Halsey sent a note home after she found a perfectly preserved cicada shell in my math notebook.

This afternoon walking home from school I spotted a dead squirrel on the ground ahead of me. My heart quickened at the sight of its unmoving fur and I knelt beside it. It lay on the edge of the stone path leading to the Waverly Mansion's gardens, its small body curled as if sleeping. No blood on its fur, no marks or wounds anywhere. The tail was still full and perfect. Exactly what I needed for my collection.

I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my collection kit: plastic gloves, a ziplock bag, and small notebook. The iron gates of the Waverly property stood behind me, their twisted metal bars casting shadows across the squirrel and my hands. Nobody ever came here except mail carriers. Kids stayed away from the mansion because of all the stories—lights moving in empty rooms, gardens that grew too well apparently without anyone to take care of them. I pulled on my gloves and held open the plastic bag.

"Stop that," a voice ordered from behind the gate. "Put it back."

My shoulders tensed as I turned around. A girl about my age was watching through the bars. Black hair in a tight braid. Dirt smudged on her cheek. Garden scissors clutched in her hand like a weapon.

I quickly stuffed the bag back into my backpack. "It's already dead. What does it matter?"

She pushed open the gate with a loud squeak of rusty metal. "It matters because it belongs to the gardens." She stepped onto the path, still holding the scissors in her dirt-covered gloves. "And you're trying to take it."

"Nobody can own a dead squirrel. It's not a pet or anything."

"I don't own it." She came closer, eyes narrowed. "The gardens do. Everything that dies on Waverly grounds stays on Waverly grounds. That's my grandmother's rule."

"That's weird."

"Says the boy putting dead animals in plastic bags." She lowered the scissors. "What's your name?"

"Theo. And I collect specimens, not just dead animals."

"Specimens." She said the word slowly, like she was trying it out. "I'm Ellis. My grandmother takes care of this place, and I'm learning how to do it too."

"I didn't know anybody lived here."

"Most people don't." She looked me over, tilting her head. "Why do you want the squirrel?"

The familiar tight feeling came to my throat, the same one I got whenever someone asked about my collection. "I keep them and study them. For science."

"Science," she repeated, not exactly doubting me but not believing me either. "And what has science taught you about squirrels so far?"

My face got hot. "That their skulls break easier than birds'. That their teeth never stop growing their whole lives. That the muscles in their back legs—"

"So you cut them open," she interrupted. "To see how they work."

"Sometimes. Or I keep them whole." Why am I even explaining myself to her? I should just leave and find some other specimen to collect.

Ellis seemed to think about this, then lowered her scissors completely. "We don't cut them open. We put them back where they belong." She nodded toward the mansion grounds. "Want to see?"

My curiosity sparked up unexpectedly. Nobody ever went into the Waverly Mansion. Kids dared each other to touch the gates or look through the bars at night, but that was it. "See what?"

"What we do with them. Our special way of burying them." She gave a small smile at the look on my face. "Not like that. It's not anything... weird. Well, not the kind of weird you're thinking."

This whole thing was already plenty weird. But she hadn't run away screaming or called me names, and she seemed okay with dead animals too. "Will your grandmother be mad if I come in?"

"She's the one who taught me to watch for people who are interested in the grounds. Grandma’s always said some people are meant to come here."

"I wasn't 'meant' to go anywhere. I was just walking home from school."

"And yet you stopped for the squirrel, right where I could see you."

A shiver ran up my arms that had nothing to do with the cool air. "That's just chance."

Ellis bent down and gently picked up the squirrel from the path, holding it carefully in her gloved hands. "Grandmother says there's no such thing as chance." She turned toward the gate. "Coming?"

I followed her through the iron gate, which closed behind us with a loud clang that made me jump. Beyond the thick hedges, the grounds looked nothing like I expected. Instead of being wild and overgrown, every part was perfectly taken care of—bushes cut into neat shapes, flower beds arranged in swirling patterns, vegetable gardens with plants tied neatly to wooden stakes.

The mansion stood at the end of the stone path, three stories tall with old bricks and narrow windows. But Ellis didn't take me to the main house. She led me along a smaller path that curved through the gardens toward a small stone cottage almost hidden under a huge oak tree.

"Grandmother," Ellis called as we got closer, still carrying the squirrel carefully, "I found someone at the gate."

My stomach knotted up. Adults always reacted worse than kids to my "hobby." The best I could hope for was them suggesting therapy. The worst was them calling my mom.

The cottage door opened, letting out a smell of dried plants and fresh dirt. A woman stepped out—tall and thin, with a streak of white running through her black braid. Deep wrinkles lined her face around eyes that matched the gray sky above. "Did you now?" She looked right at me. "And what were you doing at our gate, young man?"

My mouth felt dry. "I found a squirrel. On the path outside." I didn't want to admit I'd been about to take it.

"He collects dead animals," Ellis explained, holding up the squirrel for her grandmother to see. "For science, he says."

I looked down at my shoes, waiting for the lecture I knew was coming.

"Does he?" The old woman's voice didn't give away what she was thinking. "And what kind of science needs dead squirrels?"

"I study how different animals are built," I said, remembering words from my library books. "And how to group them."

"Ahh, comparative anatomy," the old woman said.

"He knows about their teeth," Ellis added. "How they never stop growing."

The old woman thought about this for a moment. "Learning without purpose isn't complete." She motioned to Ellis. "Show him where it belongs, then bring him inside. It's going to rain soon."

I blinked, surprised. No lecture? No disgusted looks?

"This way," Ellis said, leading me behind the cottage to where the gardens looked wilder. "We need to find the right spot."

"The right spot for what?"

Ellis knelt beside a bush covered with small white flowers. "For putting it back into the cycle." She placed the squirrel carefully on the ground and pulled a small garden trowel from her pocket. "Every animal that dies here has its special place. Did you know squirrels plant thousands of trees they never eat from? They bury more nuts than they can ever find again."

"That's just because they forget, not because they're trying to plant trees," I corrected.

Ellis started digging, the trowel cutting easily through the dark dirt. "It doesn't matter why they do it. What matters is what happens." She nodded for me to kneel beside her. "The gardens don't care if the squirrel meant to plant the oak tree, just that the tree grew."

I crouched next to her. "So you bury every dead thing you find here? Like some kind of animal graveyard?"

"Not exactly. We're putting them back. They ate from the gardens while they were alive, and when they die, they help the gardens grow."

"That's just composting."

She smiled for the first time—small but real. "There's more to it than that." When the hole was deep enough, she placed the squirrel inside very gently. "This bush blooms in the middle of winter when nothing else does. Grandmother says it needs special things to grow when it shouldn't be able to."

"Plant food from the rotting body," I suggested.

"That and other things." She paused, then pulled a small cloth bag from her pocket and sprinkled what looked like dried plants and seed shells over the squirrel. "Each animal gives something different back to the soil."

I leaned in for a closer look. "What's that stuff?"

"Offerings. To show respect." She glanced toward the cottage. "Grandmother could explain it better. She knows all the old ways of doing this."

I felt a raindrop hit my cheek, then another. "Old ways of what?"

Ellis started filling in the hole, her movements smooth like she'd done this many times before. "Keeping everything balanced. That's what taking care of this place means—making sure there's balance between living and dying, what gets taken and what gets put back." She pressed the dirt flat with her gloved hands. "Without death, new things can't grow. Without giving back what you take, the soil dries up."

"Is that why the gardens here look so good? Because of how you bury things?"

"The burials are part of it. But mostly it's because my family has taken care of this place for a long time." She stood up, brushing dirt from her knees as the rain started falling harder. "My grandmother's grandmother's grandmother started doing things this way. Every caretaker since then has kept it going."

"So you're going to be the caretaker when you grow up?"

Something changed in her face—a tightness around her eyes. "That's what Grandmother says I'll be." She looked toward the cottage. "We should go inside. She’s gonna want to talk to you."

"I should probably go home. It's raining, and my mom will be worried."

"Just for a few minutes. Please? I never get to... I mean, I don't get to show people what we do here."

The hope in her voice caught me off guard. Was she lonely here?

"Fine. But just for a few minutes."

The cottage interior was a single room with a stone fireplace at one end and walls lined with wooden shelves. Every surface held some form of preserved plant life—dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, seeds sorted into labeled jars, roots and bulbs in wooden boxes. A large wooden table dominated the center, covered with notebooks, tools, and small fabric pouches.

"Sit," the old woman instructed, gesturing to a chair beside the fire. "Ellis, fetch the tea."

I perched uncomfortably on the edge of the chair. The room smelled of earth and green things and wood smoke—not unpleasant, but utterly foreign to my world of classroom disinfectant and my mother's lemon furniture polish.

The old woman sat across from me, her hands—gnarled like tree roots—resting on her knees. "So you collect the dead."

The bluntness of her statement made me flinch. "Not... not like that. I study them."

"And what have you learned?"

Not the question I expected. "How things fit together. How bones connect. How different animals are designed for different purposes."

"Design suggests a designer." Her gray eyes narrowed. "Is that what you believe?"

"No. Evolution designs through selection and adaptation."

"Mmm." The sound was neither agreement nor disagreement. "And what do you do with them after you've learned their secrets?"

"Keep them. In jars or display boxes."

"Removed from the cycle."

"What cycle?"

Ellis returned with three steaming mugs, placing one before me. "Life to death to life again," she explained, sitting beside her grandmother. "That's what we maintain here."

The old woman leaned forward. "Every specimen in your jar is one that cannot return what it took in life. The chain breaks. The pattern frays."

"They're just small things. Insects, mostly."

"Small things feed the whole." She sipped her tea. "And someone with your interest in death's design should appreciate their purpose beyond your shelf."

"If no one studied them, we wouldn't understand how they work."

"True enough." She nodded slightly. "But study doesn't require possession. Knowledge doesn't require ownership." She gestured around the cottage. "Here, we study through participation. Through return, not removal."

"I don't understand."

The old woman stood suddenly. "Ellis, show him the journals."

Ellis moved to a shelf and removed three leather-bound books. She placed them on the table and opened the top one, revealing pages densely covered with handwriting and intricate drawings—diagrams of roots systems, sketches of insects and birds, maps of what appeared to be the Waverly grounds with symbols marking different areas.

"The garden's memory," Ellis explained. "Everything that lives and dies here gets recorded. What it took, what it gave back."

I leafed through the pages, fascination battling skepticism. The level of detail was astonishing—generations of observations about growth patterns, soil composition, relationships between different plants and the animals that fed on them. It was scientific in its precision, but the language was strange, full of references to balances and returns and cycles. These people were watching the same things I studied, but seeing them completely differently.

Yet they were saying my collections are somehow... interrupting something important? The scientist in me wanted evidence, but something else too—something I rarely acknowledged. The scientist in me wanted to believe in these deeper patterns.

"You have a careful eye," the old woman observed. "Ellis needs someone to help with the records. Her hands are better suited to the soil than the pen."

"You want me to help? With this?"

"You collect to learn. We return to sustain. Perhaps there's room for both." She glanced at Ellis. "If you're willing to consider that your specimens might serve a purpose beyond your shelves."

I closed the journal, my fingers lingering on its worn cover. "I could... maybe help with the records. And learn about your methods." I swallowed hard. "But I'd still want to study them before... before they go back."

The old woman's smile was slight but genuine. "Study doesn't require ownership. Come tomorrow after school. We'll see if the gardens accept your presence."

"Accept my presence?"

"Not everyone is suited to this work," Ellis explained. "The gardens have their own way of choosing."

"That sounds... mysterious."

"Less mysterious than scientific," the old woman said. "Aptitude reveals itself through practice, not talk. Come tomorrow, and we'll see."

"Okay." I wasn't sure what I was agreeing to, exactly, but the chance to access these records—to learn whatever techniques made these gardens thrive—was too intriguing to refuse. And Ellis looked so hopeful, as if my agreement meant something beyond simple assistance.

Ellis walked me to the gate as the rain lightened to a fine mist. "Thank you," she said, unlocking the heavy iron latch. "Grandmother doesn't invite just anyone."

"Why me, then?" No one had ever sought out my company before, especially not after learning about my collection habits.

"Because you see what others miss. Dead things have stories. You already know that." She pushed the gate open. "Most people look away."

Something warm unfurled in my chest—understanding, recognition. "Most people think it's weird. To be interested in dead things."

"It is weird," she said with a small smile. "But so are gardens that bloom in winter, and people who talk to squirrels before they bury them."

I made my way home through streets slick with rain, my empty specimen bag still in my backpack.

For years I'd gathered the forgotten, the discarded, the dead—placing each in its glass prison on my windowsill where the sun illuminated every delicate structure. It almost seems like another reality to think that behind the Waverly gates, death was not something to capture and preserve, but something to honor and return.

In my jars, time stops. In Ellis's gardens, it continues its spiral.

I still like my quiet bedroom and the weight of my specimen box, but I find myself wondering about cycles and returns, about knowledge without possession, about hands in soil instead of latex gloves. About a girl who didn't flinch when I mentioned collecting dead things. About belonging to a pattern larger than my shelves could ever contain.