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necessity. Think windy pastures with only cliffs and sheep to gaze at.
    I was all but ready to consider delving again into the dangerous waters of matrimony when I suddenly received a grave letter not only informing me of the death of Reverend Plimpton (choked to death by butterflies in his throat) but also with his death, the scratching of his original plans to open another mission for me. I still remember that rainy day. The entire city was silver and iron. It was on that very afternoon that a letter from my former Yale professor would arrive. No doubt pitying me as an orphan and widower in need of monastic solace, he informed me that a certain Chinese luminary named Yip Han was searching for a scholar to tutor the young emperor of the Qing Dynasty. Professor Archer had written a glowing letter pointing out my outstanding qualities and unblemished academic achievements under his own tutelage, sans my bout with insanity. The moment I tore the letter open, I could almost feel Annabelle’s shriek of delight. Again and again she was the very one pulling all the strings, making the least possible person write letters for the least qualified candidate.
    A meeting took place near New Haven. Mr. Han, the first Mandarin Yalie, sent by the palace to study modern science, had eventually fallen into the trap of Connecticut and married into the rather prominent family of Catherine Kellogg, producing a brood of modified Chinakins in snow white Connecticut. Mr. Han commented that he would have been the best teacher to teach the emperor Western things,but a subtle gesture—pointing at his short hair—told it all. He had forsaken their most telling token of loyalty to the Royal Court, cutting off his pigtail. A return home would be improper, to say the least.
    An annual fee was talked about, fifteen hundred lian of silver, a thing that came rather as a surprise to me for I would have paid my own way to be inside the palace. Mr. Han, at the end of our talk, informed me that a decision would be arrived at after he had seen all the candidates. But a rare butterfly, a purple emperor, suddenly appeared near his window. He, an avid butterfly collector, chased into the courtyard, abandoning his talk with me, his net in hand. When he returned, beaming happily, the position was readily offered to me. It was a sign, he said, though later he wrote to say that the butterfly mysteriously disappeared from his collection without a trace.
    I took this as a call for me to charge into our destiny. I dashed about trying to prepare for the journey of my life. After all, I was the last Pickens, and I could see no point in my future where I would be returning to this metropolis. There was only
going, going
, and
going
that I heard in my heart. Not a
ding
of coming back. The hunt for Annabelle’s incarnation was the only bugle call I heeded. The voyage was more sacred than my own worthless life and the mission holier than all the gods melted together.
    I put the house up for sale. An initial enthusiasm was dampened by my dogged refusal to let in the prospects for fear of their seeing what I saw—the resident butterflies. My unbending rule was mistaken—as a broker wouldwhisper—as a sign that it was not only cursed but indeed haunted as speculated in society. It scared away a ruddy-faced English family, a social climbing French couple, and a scion of a Jewish banking family, all looking for a house with a fashionable address.
    There were also stocks to sell. Mother had substantial stock holdings in a few aluminum concerns, the sale of which, unbeknownst to me, could tip a certain corporate balance among feuding families. Naturally, I was first the object of much nagging ingratiation and later, with my cold indifference, of heinous threats of bodily harm.
    The tenderest care was given to the disposal of Mother’s portraits of her gardenias, a girlish hobby dating back to her Smith days. I had grown up among easels of her favorite blooms, lumpy imitations on