Duloo reached into the far dark reaches of the cabinet and pulled out a rectangular metal tin about a foot square. The colorful Cyrillic lettering on the lid of the tin meant nothing to Olivia but the pictures of iced cookies gave her a clue as to its original use. After all this it was hardly likely that Duloo was handing her stale cookies.
“I collected these from the Ice Horse and saved them as I was instructed by Andrei Moiseyev,” Duloo said. “He told me to save them for the day his son would come in search of him, but now it seems he will never come and that you will know what to do.”
Duloo bowed slightly, almost ceremonially, as he handed the tin to Olivia. She thought of the risks the man had taken to collect whatever was in the tin and the watchful waiting he patiently endured to finally fulfill Andrei’s wishes. The tin, in contrast to its colorful decoration, felt dense and heavy in her hands. She felt a mixture of sadness that Alexis was not the one holding his fathers legacy and excitement over the fact that whatever was in the tin may hold the key to unraveling the mystery of the dying cranes.
She sat down on the huge dusty old couch that took most of the common room of Duloos cabin. She balanced the tin on her knees and began to work the lid, pulling on the rolled ridge along the bottom, wedging her fingers in to get leverage to pull it up and fraction of an inch on one side, rotate, a fraction of an inch on the other side, rotate. Each begrudging movement of the lid on one side seemed to be countered by it falling or wedging on the other side. The process wasn’t helped by the shaking in her hands. Finally she got one corner up to the top of the body and was able to get a finger underneath and pull the lid off.
The tin was filled with yellowed, lined paper. On the top sheet, written in French, the opening sentence read, “This is the story of Lev Shulman”. She rustled through the pages stopping to read the first lines. As far as she could tell there were perhaps a hundred or more of pages similar to the first but with different names – Vladimir Andronov, Vitus Jablonski – they went on and on. It was dizzying.
She plunged her hands to the bottom and felt a packet. She pulled up the individual sheets and an envelope crudely constructed from scraps of paper lay there. The two words scrawled on the front in the same hand as all the other sheets were, “Alexis Moiseyev”.
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This is just great! You really tease out the tension, letting Olivia take her time getting that tin open. I read the whole thing in a rush. And even without knowing much of the story, there's already the sense that all that tension is going to pay off. Terrific job!
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