Read Online The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet - Free Book Online

right?
    â€œNonsense, of course,” said Maya’s father. “Old wives’ tale.”
    And then he went on to say more about viscosity and crystalline structures , but Maya’s mind was elsewhere—she was standing again before that cabinet, and watching the shimmering earths in their bottles. There was something hypnotic about that image, like a mad doctor’s swinging watch in a bad old film. And yet that was the part of the visit to the crazy old cousin de Fourcroy that she had been unable to say anything about, when she was telling her parents the story.
    Sets for an opera about a long-ago scientist (and his sheep and his guinea pig)! Her parents had enjoyed that, it’s true. And her father had definitely heard of Lavoisier.
    â€œFather of modern chemistry!” he said. “Didn’t know he’d lost his head, though. Very famous guy. Conservation of matter, right, Maya?”
    Maya’s father had a disconcerting way of assuming you’d been listening very hard in every science class you ever had.
    â€œUm,” said Maya. “Sure.”
    â€œJust means nothing goes totally poof ,” said her father. “A pretty basic idea, you’d think, but the consequences—”
    â€œPoor old man,” said Maya’s mother, accidentally interrupting. But she was obviously thinking of Henri-Pierre de Fourcroy, and not of the poor headless Lavoisier. And then she had to pause for a moment to cough.
    That was when Maya’s father surprised them all. He
had been rummaging around in his pockets, looking through his wallet. Now he held up a little card and waved it in the air like a flag.
    â€œAha!” he said, looking very pleased with himself indeed. “Sure enough: Fourcroy ! Now, how about that?”
    â€œHow about what?” said Maya’s mother. “What’s that thing you’re brandishing about?”
    A business card, very simply engraved:
    HENRI DE FOURCROY, DIRECTOR
SOCIETY OF PHILOSOPHICAL CHEMISTRY
    Maya’s stomach took a strange, slow ride toward her toes.
    â€œYou remember him,” said Maya’s father. “He came to see us, that very first day.”
    â€œOh, yes, with the sunglasses,” said her mother. “Attractive young man. And so he’s another Fourcroy! I guess they must be everywhere. Maya?”
    Sometimes an unexpected surprise can have a sort of narrowing effect on the universe, like a funnel. Maya was peering down this funnel at that name, and her mind was running in feverish little circles: Fourcroy! The Society! That cabinet! Fourcroy!
    â€œBut why didn’t you tell me he was a Fourcroy?” she said to her dad.
    â€œGood golly,” said her father. “Was it important? I forgot all about it myself.”
    â€œMaybe we’re even related to him,” said her mother, giving Maya a reassuring pat on the arm. “You did say we’re related somehow to the other one, the old fellow, didn’t you? Here, let’s see what we can do—”
    She had been working on a drawing, so her sketchbook was right there at hand. That was what Maya’s mother was like: always a project underway. Even back when she was very sick, she had kept a notebook near her bed all the time, in case a picture got into her head and wouldn’t leave.
    So now Maya and her mother scribbled out a rough family tree, with lots of question marks hanging from its branches. In the end they figured that this old Fourcroy was maybe their second cousin, twice removed. Nothing closer than that, even if his grandmother had been a Lavirotte. For the other Fourcroy, the young fellow from the Société, there was no obvious spot on the branches anywhere.
    It wasn’t a very bushy tree. The American shoot went as far as James and Maya, but there were no first cousins around to thicken things for them.
    And a great branching of the French side came to a forlorn end in Cousin Louise.
    â€œThat