The Signature of All Things

seem so blunt and obvious. Do you understand what I am saying? Do you know how the bigger, showier flowers can look at times like dumb, drooling fools—the way they bob about with their mouths agape, appearing so stunned and helpless?”
    “I congratulate you, Miss Whittaker. You have just described the orchid family to perfection.”
    She gasped and put her hands to her mouth. “I’ve offended you!”
    But Mr. Pike was smiling. “Not in the least. I am teasing you. I have never defended the intelligence of an orchid, and I never shall. I do love them, but I confess that they do not seem particularly bright—not by your standards of description. But I am much enjoying listening to somebody defend the intelligence of moss! It feels as though you are writing a character reference in their defense.”
    “Somebody must defend them, Mr. Pike! For they have been so overlooked, and they have such a noble character! In fact, I find the miniature world to be a gift of disguised greatness, and therefore an honor to study.”
    Ambrose Pike didn’t seem to find any of this dull. When they arrived at the boulders, he had dozens of questions for Alma, and he put his face so close to the moss colonies that it appeared as though his beard was growing out of the stones. He listened with care as she explained each variety, and discussed her burgeoning theories of transmutation. Perhaps she spoke overly long. Her mother would have said so. Even as she spoke, Alma feared that she was about to throw this poor man into pure tedium. But he was so welcoming! She felt herself set loose as she spilled forth ideas from her long-overbrimming vaults of private thoughts. There is only so long that a person can keep her enthusiasms locked away within her heart before she longs toshare it with a fellow soul, and Alma had many decades of thoughts much overdue for sharing.
    Very soon Mr. Pike had thrown himself on the ground so that he could peer under the lip of a larger boulder and examine the moss beds that were hidden in those secret shelves. His long legs flopped out from beneath the rock as he enthused. Alma thought she had never been so pleased in her life. She had always wanted to show this to somebody.
    “So here is my question to you, Miss Whittaker,” he called from under the rock ledge. “What is the true nature of your moss colonies? They have mastered the trick, as you say, of appearing modest and mild. Yet from what you tell me, they possess considerable faculties. Are they friendly pioneers, your mosses? Or are they hostile marauders?”
    “Farmers or pirates, do you mean?” Alma asked.
    “Exactly.”
    “I cannot say for certain,” Alma said. “Perhaps a bit of both. I wonder that to myself all the time. It may take me another twenty-five years or so to learn.”
    “I admire your patience,” he said, at last rolling out from under the rock and stretching casually across the grass. As she would come to know Ambrose Pike better over time, she would learn that he was a great one for throwing himself down wherever and whenever he wanted to rest. He would even collapse happily on a carpet in a formal drawing room if the mood struck—particularly if he was enjoying his thoughts and the conversation. The world was his divan. There was such a freedom in it. Alma could not imagine ever feeling so free. On this day, while he sprawled, she sat carefully on a nearby rock.
    Mr. Pike was considerably older, Alma could see now, than he had initially appeared. Well, naturally he was—there was no way he could have created such a vast body of work had he been so young as he first seemed. It was only his enthusiastic posture and his brisk walking pace that made him resemble a university student from a distance. That, and his humble brown attire—the very uniform of an impecunious young scholar. Up close, though, one could see his age—especially as he lay in the sun, flopped across the grass without his hat on. His face was faintly lined, tanned and freckled by years of weather, and the sandy hair at his temples was turning gray. Alma would have put him at thirty-five years old, or maybe thirty-six. More than ten years younger than she, but still, no child.
    “What profound reward you must glean from studying the world so closely,” Ambrose went on. “Too many people turn away from small wonders, I find. There is so much more potency to be found in detail than in generalities, but most souls cannot train themselves to sit