The Curious Cabinet of Eleanor Olson: Part 1
The first time Eleanor Olson opened her fabulous cabinet to Daniel Poor he was a boy of 7 and newly orphaned.
In an act of graciousness and charity the Esteemed City of Lucky Bai had seen to it that the many thousands of starving, terrified children of the neighboring war torn state be given into foster homes for a more cultured upbringing and education. Many of the children either sent by desperate parents or by mission houses for the orphaned came to have happy lives. Adopted into families and given citizenship. As they grew these fortunate ones would take on trades and usher in a prodigious economic boom to Lucky Bai. In the future many would look back on what they called the Delivered Generation and hail it as one of the most excellent political moves of the city's then leaders.
So it was that Daniel Poor was delivered to Eleanor Olson's doorstep, weeping, terrified and barefoot. The mission house he had been sent from was horribly short on funding and supplies. His case worker hadn't been able to find a pair of shoes in his size.
Eleanor Olson stood on the top step to her immense manse and looked down on the dirty little boy who was to be her charge with an unreadable face. She leaned on her cane of carved mahogany and agate, uttered a sigh that could have been of vague annoyance. Daniel clung and snotted into the skirts of the matronly mission worker.
"Awfully sorry, Madame Olson." The mission worker managed to pull him off of her apron. "Just lost his family a bit ago. He's only a little scared..."
"Of course." Said Eleanor Olson.
She extended a hand. The mission worker pushed Daniel up the marble steps. He bit his tiny fists and cried harder. Eleanor Olson took him by the shoulder as the mission worker stepped back, bowed and scurried away.
Eleanor Olson steered Daniel into the doorway of her home that yawned like the mouth of some starving, terrible beast. When the ancient door clicked shut behind them Daniel thought he may never see the sun again.
She turned to look at him. The choking, tattered little boy and the slender woman who walked with a limp, who's face was just beginning to show signs of the years faced each other. The silence broken only by his sobs. He looked back at her with enormous, wet eyes. She blinked slowly. He hiccuped.
"Daniel," Said Eleanor Olson. "Would you like to see some bees?"
The tears started anew. No. No, he did not want to see any bees. Never the less she pulled his hand away from his face and lead him by it to a sealed set of double doors carved with elegant lions only a little way down the gloomy hall.
Daniel wept and wept and wept as if it would some how stop her slow persistent tug. It didn't. He was hauled closer to the snarling carved lions with their arched backs. Why did it seem to him as if this whole house was full of sharp teeth?
Eleanor Olson turned the brass handle of the door and pushed it open. Daniel made a noise between a whimper and a squeal at the first creak of the door's hinge. He clutched Eleanor Olson's hand tightly because in lieu of his mother's it was the only thing left to hold onto. His eyes were squeezed shut at she guided him over the threshold and into the unknown that would be the rest of his days.
But then light. Light and warmth so unexpected he could not help but open his eyes. Through the glaze of his bewildered child's tears the glow of the high golden lamps made it as if he'd stepped into a rich honey comb.
He blinked the water away and saw them. Long, flat cabinets filled with winged jewels. Bee's and wasps and hornets and all manner of stinging insects pinned to soft creamy paper behind sheets of polished glass.
"These are my bees, Daniel" Said Eleanor Olson and swept one of her long elegant arms across the breadth of the massive room and it's floor to ceiling cabinets. "From every forest and field I've collected one of each."
She guided him through each cabinet, each specimen and for every name she had a different story. By the time they had circled the room to another somewhat smaller door at the end of the hall his tears had stopped and so had his breath. But from wonder this time and not from fear.
"Ahh. And this one." Eleanor Olson stopped in front of a single pedestal that stood apart from the other cabinets. On top of the pedestal was a bell jar and in that bell jar was the largest hornet Daniel Poor had seen in his life or in pictures. It was the size of his spread hand, banded with black and riotous yellow and on it's thorax a bright curl of blue.
Daniel pressed his fingers to the glass of the jar without thinking and quickly snatched them back in fear of reprisal. There was no mark on the glass.
"The Vesper Wasp." Eleanor Olson continued in her smooth, dry voice. "They build nests in the gum trees about an hour east of Lucky Bai. They have the most deadly of venom. This is the first insect I ever collected."
Eleanor Olson leaned her cane against the pedestal, lifted the bell jar from the pinned hornet and urged Daniel to lean in for a closer look.
"I thought they were beautiful when I saw them as a girl at one of the chapel picnics outside of the city. A boy who liked me thought to impress me by catching one. I found him dead on my doorstep in the evening with this wasp clutched in his fist. It had stung him to death."
Daniel looked up from the Vesper Wasp to Eleanor Olson. She placed a hand on his dark head.
"If that boy had lived I would have said to him 'I am very impressed'."
Eleanor Olson placed the bell jar back in it's place.
"Every collection begins somewhere." She said and took him by the hand again to lead him out into the main hall.
"Did you like that room, Daniel Poor?" Eleanor Olson asked.
Daniel nodded and sniffed.
"My estate is very large and I have many rooms, many collections." Eleanor Olson let go of his hand and flicked commanding fingers at the shadowed curtains in the hall. A veiled serving woman appeared from the gathered dark. "Be strong, learn my lessons well and I will show you more. Be even stronger and even smarter and I may show you everything."
The veiled serving woman stepped forward and took Daniel Poor's hand. The serving woman's hand was cool and grey.
"But for now it is late and supper will be ready shortly. Fidileaus will show you to your room."
Eleanor Olson left him there with the veiled serving maid and leaning heavily on her mahogany and agate cane, limped in the cavernous recesses of her mansion to go about her business.
Whatever business that may have been.
And that was the first time Eleanor Olson opened her fabulous cabinet to Daniel Poor.