The summer heat and stretching long days slithered beneath the cool curtain of autumn before I heard from Hayes again. I remember sitting in my office, watching the pumpkin tones of the leaves mingle with copper brown already on the ground as I waited for our conference call to populate. Some cypress holdouts were starting to yellow on the stalwart branches of the trees bordering the building. They defied the crimson tones of euonymus bushes that burned in the evening light alongside the bronze of waning forsythia. Hayes voice chirped across the intercom with its delicate, careful pronunciations interlaced with hesitant pauses as my eyes traced the path of squirrels lunging from limb to limb below.


Our patient had taken well to the treatment and was eager to resume treatment. The dismal progress growing the hand had been alleviated, in part, by the use of multiple samples. The miniscule ridges and minutia of a functional hand remained defiant to our scaffolding techniques. Adequate sampling, though would permit us to pick and choose pieces to use. While Hayes and Oscar ruminated over the selection of photographs I’d sent, I scratched the side of my wrist in quiet. The discussion made me unpleasantly itchy. My eyes scanned the piles of tarnished gold and copper littering the feet of the forest outside. What blind selection criteria guided meandering hands plucking leaves off branches in arms-length? Rubbing the soft tissue between my fingers, I recalled the often occasion of idly tugging at holly bristle while walking to and from the office, only to discard the crumpled waxy flesh before entering the car. Tightening my gaze shut, I let the weathered leather of finger pads glide over my snout to push across my eyelids. I was expecting another deviation from our gantt chart when Hayes extended an invitation to visit his Pennsylvanian estate. A number of investors were going to be present and perhaps I would be interested in broadening my contact lists.


Several weeks later I found myself in a rental navigating a cranberry bog while a flustered GPS tried to place me somewhere in Vermont. Ground too moist to permit the invasion of frost had contented itself with draping land in a chilly mist that condensed on every possible object and hung with a dispersive weight that scattered my headlights, spitting glare back at me. Written directions read by phone LED delivered me across partially consumed roads to an intimidating brick walled manor house boarded by a corroded icon fence. Teal tones and rust red aimed muted, blunt spears to the sky as mounted lights pierced the fog over meticulously-manicured lawn. A gate house hosted the tired vigilance of a long security guard who checked my ID before permitting me entry to the opulence beyond.


Hardwood floors cushioned my feet with a reassuring firmness that was sorely absent on the mushy soil outside and the smoky chatter of various conversations hung like vocal vapor in the wide halls as a red-jacketed ram of an usher guided me along. The clip clop of his hooves marched with a practiced clatter as he delivered me through portrait decorated halls. Tapestry in scale, their eyes cascaded over me dismissively. Equines of distinct Marwari tonality, draped in everything ceremonial bridles to monocles perched proudly – puffed out chests heaving out an air of superiority. I was glad to escape their suffocating gaze and into the main ballroom of sorts. It was a board domain, with vaulted ceilings and carpeted floor that devoured the treading announcement of the each of the usher’s cloven hooved tread. A litany of linen lined tables decorated a sea of suits and ruminant buisnessfolk –islands in the stream of wool and leather hides that flowed like a continual current between their prospective seats and an open bar. My eyes scanned from long muzzled face to horned headed figure under a mask of disappointment. Bleating, retreating conversations shuffled aside at my approach as I went immediately to the bar to indulge in a long island.


Conversing with the hoof-clad is a difficult experience. You must keep your lips locked when you smile and you cannot hunch forward to listen in a loud room. The slightest hint of ivory on your muzzle is enough to change opinions. Horizontal slats of eyes scan your face constantly and flutter across your finger tips with wary attention to your claws. You must repeat yourself often to be fully understood. Perhaps you may wish to draw closer to your conversational pattern so that they can more accurately read your gestures and intentions – but to do so results in a backpedaling or a hostile change of stance. Their personal space is reserved for stamping out of emphasis and exaggerated gestures of the tail and arm. It strains to continue conversation beyond introductions. I’m always quick to hand out my card to carry on more intricate discussions over email.


It was somewhere between here and there when I was trying to navigate my way outside for a smoke break when Hayes found me. His long crimson overcoat blazed along a scarlet shirt and his breath smelt of tart cranberry steeped liquor. He inquired as to the trip and thoughts on the manor. I lied and said both were excellent – staving off the ache for nicotine with the promise of more intimate introductions to his clientele. Most of those blue and gold ZeeTee cards had probably migrated to the trash alongside plastic wine glasses already. Our conversation dragged across two hallways as he led us away from the ballroom and instead towards an expansive study as he mused about the importance of our project. Though I will confess my attention became sharply divided – pulling my gaze along the ménage of art lining the walls.


Masks. Extensive and expansive – a collection of alien faces wrought from leather and gilded cloth. Ivory smiles of indeterminate origin played in light. Wicked jesters reveling in the punch line of some extraordinary joke, while tarnished grimaces glared down from their coiled frames of brass. Silver stitching bound together flaps of ornate leatherwork whose overlapping criss-cross meshed together like organic basket weave. In places they hung like the beautifully embroidered strands of some artificial mane – in others they coiled around like stitched together serpents – hissing their craft into the rigid woodcuts and bone carvings they inhabited. The heavy hulk of a yaks rack, burdened with overlaid gold, caught in the light – a dull glittering through a hoarfrost of scarcely disturbed dust from an age untouched. My gaze dragged across the room, unable to keep from hanging upon their eternal expressions. Perpetual perches, staring out towards the centerpiece of the room where Hayes stood in silence, allowing me to soak in the purported majesty of the display.

“Do you like it? It’s one of a kind, I assure you,” Hayes inquired, as the pallid light of the case played across his muzzle. Carrot-orange gaze burning with an inferno of thought as that stare pressed its weight across me. Reading. Waiting.


I didn’t have to put on much of a show for him, though. Mounted upright was the white-washed albino pelt of a morphic lion. Unlike the masks, with their intermeshed metal and jewels and silk and bright fabric flesh, there could be no dispute as to its authenticity. Weathering from a lifetime of toil wreathed the course leather pads of its hands. Fur hung delicately from a preserved hide whose frame was pock marked with a litany of minor scratches become scars. Fine textured folds of flesh whose fine texture could only be the result of repeat injury and healing. A mane stained by a drizzling of red, immortalizing an injury with an ink that nothing short of a dehairing could absolve. Absent eyes poured their vision forward in frozen neutrality – the whole figure hunched in some stifled strained pose by its supports. I felt stiff just meeting that obsidian void of a stare.


“It is ah.. impressive,” I settled upon, looking away from Hayes to one of the many masks. The wide muzzled cackle of a coyote seemed to chuckle at my discomfort, cobalt stripes contorted in hideous mirth.


“It is impressive, isn’t it? I figured you would appreciate my collection, Dr. Fluttertail,” Hayes continued, sauntering over with muffled clops of his hoof-falls to lay hand on my shoulder. The cranberry tart of his breath accompanied his astringent logic, “As you can see I have an affinity for appearances. We are, after all, only what people make of us. Cultivation of an image shapes what you are inside. Expectation becomes reality.”


“This project is important to me. You’ve seen already what it did for Andrea. I want to see that for my daughter. I want to see it for the world. I want people to shape what they are by their own whims. Why should we suffer heinous hand of fate and its capacious dice?”


I balked at the suggestion. We were having trouble putting together fingers and toes. He wanted whole replacement limb sleeves. Entire pelts. “William, this is an issue of scale – not science. You can’t just print skin out. You’ve seen the pictures. You know the limitations,” I trailed off as his grin neutralized into a tuck of displeasure.


“You’re trying to do something impressive as well, Doctor,” he continued, turning us both towards the mounted lion as his stringy tail flicked behind him, “Your finger is on the pulse of potential. You vie to make nature capitulate its secrets. You would distill truths beyond imagination if they would just let you do so without interference.”

“I’ll ensure you’re seen as someone who can. That no one has any doubts that you are worthy of ascending that pedestal you ache to stand upon. Consider it, will you?”


He left me standing there as I eyed the lion in the case. I had come here to secure my reputation, and watched business cards bend against the fickle fingertips of investors. Their eyes traced my lips but never for the sake of the words I offered. Apprehension poisoned facts with unjustified uncertainty. It was a primal sort of doubt. A question of the unknown and the outsider. It was a horse of a different color. One that bucked and brayed, whose whickering snicker resounded with the derision and dismissal of every peer who’d refused to give me their ear and eye that had adverted itself from my presentations in search of a cellphone more interesting. Its capacious canter threatened to trample over the garden I had toiled and tilled to cultivate my career.


And here in my lap had been dropped a saddle.

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Absolutely astounding image done by  korbin
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Chapter 1 – Acquisitions

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