Penny watched Fraser work the blade with the precision of a surgeon and the delicacy of a lover. She’d never seen such a large animal skinned before, and was both squeamish and fascinated. It made no difference to the stag whether Fraser mounted its head or not, destined as it had always been for the butcher. But vegetarian Penny was still sad for its death, for its once graceful body now dangling from the gallows. She was still shocked when, after flaying down as far as he could, Fraser severed the stag’s head with a meat saw. He used the antlers as handles, struggling to thump his gory prize onto the workbench. The deer had been dead long enough for rigor mortis to stem the free flow of blood, though it still congealed in occasional resinous pools. Fraser idly scraped them away.
‘A head,’ he said, ‘should be skinned all in one piece, including the ears, eyelids and lips.’
He sawed across the top of the skull, using a screwdriver to prise stubborn skin from the base of one antler. Next, he made a cut along the neck, intersecting the first incision. When he sliced the ears, he expertly left them attached to the skin. Penny murmured in admiration, then grimaced as Fraser removed the eye and jammed his forefinger deep into the empty socket.
‘The skin grows close to the skull here, Penelope,’ he said without looking up. ‘Which makes the eyelids tricky. But if you poke your finger into the back of the eye … just so … you’ll feel where skin meets bone.’ Penny held her breath. ‘Done. Now for the nose.’ Fraser’s blade pierced the soft muzzle. This time he used his thumb, shoved hard into the deer’s mouth, felt for the bulge and cut around it. Fraser deftly slit the lips and removed the fleshy interior, miraculously leaving the thin dark skin attached to the head. ‘Save as much of the lips as you can. You’ll need them later.’
He finished by splitting the nostrils, separating flesh and cartilage as he went. ‘Fingers crossed.’ With meticulous care Fraser peeled hide from head, inside out and all in one piece. The bloody skull remaining bore no resemblance to the noble-eyed, velvet-muzzled stag of an hour ago. With gaping sockets, flayed face and an incongruous crown of blood-spattered antlers, the head looked like something straight out of a horror movie.
‘I tried to skin a wombat head last week and made a complete hash of it,’ said Penny. ‘If only I’d known that trick with your finger.’
‘I have lots of tricks I could show you,’ said Fraser, winking.
Penny lightly punched his arm. ‘Behave yourself and show me how to do the ears.’
Fraser made two cuts and turned each ear inside out. ‘Get the salt.’
As Penny reached for a jar on the top shelf, the earth rumbled.
‘Here comes another one,’ said Fraser.
The floor shifted beneath their feet, windows rattled and shelves shuddered. Penny caught the salt jar as it fell. Furniture clattered. The studio creaked and groaned, then everything was still again.
Six weeks ago, a violent quake had rocked Hills End. Houses shook. Windows broke. The verandah of the Royal Hotel collapsed, along with half a dozen inebriated patrons. Since then, a series of aftershocks had plagued the town.
Penny retrieved a screwdriver that had rolled off the table. ‘Did that first quake cause you any problems?’
‘It certainly did. It spilled a perfectly good glass of red.’
‘Down your mine, I mean.’
‘Nothing that can’t be fixed,’ said Fraser. ‘Earthquakes happen.’
Penny gave Fraser a searching look. ‘Matt says that blasting down the mine triggered the earthquake.’
‘Does he? Well, I can assure you that Matt is quite wrong.’
Penny wasn’t convinced. Plenty of people in Hills End blamed the mine.
A flicker of something like sadness crossed Fraser’s usually impassive face. ‘Tell me, Penelope, are you going to stand around and recite the gospel according to Matthew or shall we get on with it?’
‘Get on with it,’ said Penny.
Fraser nodded approval. He opened the salt jar, coated the stag’s head and placed it in an empty sink to drain. He then washed his hands and arms in a basin of hot, sudsy water.
‘Now, what do you have for me?’ he said to Penny as he dried his hands. She pointed to a sack on the floor by the door, and Fraser opened it with an appreciative sigh. He covered an empty work table with thick layers of newspaper, and then lifted the limp body of the eagle. ‘When did this bird die?’
‘Last night.’ Penny showed Fraser its shattered, swollen left wing. ‘He didn’t respond to antibiotics. It’s happening a lot lately – wildlife just not healing.’ She could have said more, but bit her tongue. Matt wasn’t the only one who held Fraser’s forestry practices responsible for the odd spike in ailing animals. Their vet did too, and some of the farmers, those with unusually high numbers of aborted and deformed lambs. They blamed herbicides like atrazine and triazine, sprayed from helicopters to prepare clear-fell sites for pine plantations. Herbicides banned in Europe for their links to birth defects and cancer.
Fraser examined the eagle’s gunshot wound. ‘I think we can disguise this under the feathers.’
‘What about his missing talon?’
‘Thermoset resin claws are most lifelike.’ Fraser fixed his hawk-like gaze on her. ‘Does Matthew know you’ve brought this bird here?’
Penny couldn’t meet his eyes. She’d lied to Matt that morning. A day talking to school groups, she’d said. ‘He thinks the vet cremated it. But I couldn’t let that happen, Fraser. I just couldn’t …’
Fraser held up his hand. ‘Thanks to you, this splendid eagle will live forever in the hearts and minds of all who view him.’ Fraser stroked the tawny head. ‘An immortal ambassador for his kind. A bird of such beauty, such rarity.’
‘Matt wouldn’t agree,’ said Penny.
‘My son is a stubborn fool, like his father,’ said Fraser. ‘Worse, he has a hero complex. Where is he today? Capturing a ring of international poachers? Single-handedly replanting an entire forest? More likely reading the riot act to some poor tourist who took a wrong turn.’
Sometimes Penny hated Fraser, but he was like Matt in so many ways. His tongue protruded ever so slightly when he concentrated. He could hold opinions in dogged defiance of reason. They were both handsome, despite Roman noses and thin mouths. Fraser still had a full head of hair, now tinged with grey. Would Matt look as distinguished at sixty? But Matt certainly didn’t have his father’s arrogance, nor his sharp tongue. Fraser took such pleasure in finding fault. ‘Matt’s taking a scientist on a tour of the devil traps,’ she said. ‘He won’t be back until late.’
‘We have some hours then. Shall we begin?’
Penny hesitated. ‘I haven’t done a bird before.’
‘Birds are the easiest of all,’ said Fraser. ‘They have such thin skins. You can mount a bird in one day, even a large raptor like this, and then leave it to cure on the model.’
‘I don’t have a model,’ said Penny.
Fraser disappeared into the next room and returned with a polyurethane eagle form under one arm. ‘He’s bigger than I imagined, but I suspect we can build this up with some cottonwool.’ From a drawer, Fraser produced a knife and a box of borax. He laid the eagle on its back and handed Penny a needle and thread. ‘Sew up that wound before we start.’
Penny took a deep breath and began.