“In the Museum of Unseen Places” by Marsh Hlavka

There is a light in the collection hall. The curator left it burning.

The rest of the staff departed hours ago, leaving the exhibition rooms and preparatory labs shuttered and silent. In the center of the hall, a lone drafting table glows under a dozen lamps. The map on the table depicts a coastline speckled with harbors. A sketched route arches northward across the blank inland expanse. Once there were roads there. They have long since been erased.

The curator sits back from the drafting table, holding a jar to the light.

There is a green snake coiled inside the jar, oddly translucent in the diffraction of the liquid. A tag dangles from the lid. The curator rereads it, though they’ve already committed it to memory.

Specimen #363-227. Frilled Grass Snake. Annotated 29th August, Year 82, by Z. K., collection staff.

This specimen was collected on the annual survey of the Delta, conducted by the Harborside Natural History Museum, under the Harborside Guard. The collector has become lost.

The curator had found the specimen misfiled with the coastal grass snakes. They’d left it out while they worked, meaning to replace it when they were done. But the route is drawn, the equipment packed, the preparations made.

The curator gets up from their seat, takes the jar and a lamp from the table, and starts down the long central aisle.

The collection hall is so vast that the lamps at the drafting table fail the vaulted ceiling and the raised gallery along the walls. The curator lights their way as they walk. They haven’t visited the gallery since their return; it wouldn’t be looked well on. But when they stand at the foot of the staircase, the narrow spiral feels familiar, in the fugitive way of things they knew before becoming lost.

The curator glances back over their shoulder, although their vision is blotted by the lamplight. They listen carefully.

The museum remains silent.

They start to climb.

Up on the landing, low cabinets fan outward. The curator steps off the staircase and, looking around curiously, stops to close a half-open drawer full of crisp report pages. They light the lamps to either side of the stairway. They look down at the snake in its jar. They reread the tag.

Then they raise the lamp, and the wall above them surges in the light: arching cases, racing ladders, racks of lamps and wicks and candles, standing lanterns tall as trees, years and years of work and study. In the swinging lamplight, a million eye-lights flash, a million glass jars gleam. The creatures of the Delta are named and numbered, lit inside.

The curator stands and stares.

When they can bring themself to examine the cases more closely, they spot a bare ring in the dust on one shelf. They replace the snake, with a small sigh of relief, amid the rest of the specimens collected in Year 82.

They start toward the stairway. Then they pause, and look back along the gallery. There is nearly a century of shelves, filled with specimens they don’t remember. And they are—they listen again—alone.

Following the wisp of familiarity that guided them up the staircase, they take hold of the nearest ladder and begin to walk. The wheels of the ladder shriek, and they fight the urge to douse their lamp.

At the shelves containing the specimens of Year 77, they light the nearest lamps and begin to pick through each tag. Pale shadows spill across the floor. They look carefully, as though they don’t know what they’re searching for.

A bat stuffed with rushes rests on one shelf, preserved tidily, if amateurishly. The wings are gossamer, improbably fine. Chips of glass glitter in the eyes. The curator recognizes the initials dashed off on the corner of the tag: the eager A, the curled R, the name they haven’t used in a year.

They hold the tag to the light.

Specimen #124-078. Cloud-winged Bat. Annotated 30th August, Year 77, by A. R., collection staff.

Collected on the annual survey of the Delta by N. E., collection staff. It was found in the grassland six miles north-northeast of Harborside, on the side of an old dirt road. It’s probably from here, not from a saltation.

But all of this is still so fascinating—all the different places in the saltations, the specimens the museum’s collected ever since the saltations started, the history, the research, because we know almost nothing about the Delta—I’m really, really glad I’m here. I never got to study the Delta before! The Guard gave us housing on the other side of the square, but I pretty much live here anyway, since it’s the only place I can do this work. And everyone else is just as invested as I am.

In a couple years, when I have seniority, I’ll even go on the surveys. Some of the other new staff are really excited about it—Zivia, who I met the first day, says exploring the Delta is her dream. I think I’m still a little apprehensive. But I’ll do it if it helps us make new discoveries.

Maybe I shouldn’t write so much in these annotations, since it all stays in the collection. Right? Oops.

The curator fixes the text in their memory. It’s easy; their own handwriting is familiar.

Over their career, they must have written dozens of annotations to the specimens from the Delta. They’ve looked for their work in the main collection, but they can’t be seen with anything they made before. They haven’t found anything until now.

And they will leave for the Delta in the morning.

The curator takes an ink pen from their pocket. They pause to fold up the cuffs of their loose shirt; it was issued to them a year ago, and fits frustratingly poorly. In the remaining space on the tag, they begin to write in tiny, perfect script.

Annotated 19th August, Year 84, by the curator.

That sounds like me. It’s different, younger, but it sounds like me. And it’s my handwriting.

I’m leaving on the survey tomorrow. Nearly a year since I got lost on the last one. I remember seeing the outpost in the distance. I staggered out of the sun and wind and stopped at the door. I went through my pockets and memorized my identification papers before the Guard could repossess them. The maps and notes told me that I had been on the annual collection survey into the Delta.

And I had gotten lost—that was obvious, because I didn’t remember anything clearly before that morning. Like waking up from a dream, but the dream is your whole life. I knew the outpost was an outpost, but I didn’t remember seeing it, although we would’ve passed it the week before.

There were six of us. Zivia and I were the only ones who came back. The rest are still in the saltations, the other places. We were lucky by comparison—the saltations only touched us.

She lost five years. I lost what I’m told was twenty-four. She went to work at the Guard archives, and I came back to the museum. As the only remaining senior staff, I became the curator.

So: a year of memorizing everything. A year of conversations with Zivia, though I shouldn’t admit that. A year of remaking myself. I can’t be the person I used to be, not anymore.

I’m leaving on the survey tomorrow.

The rest of the collection is examined and organized. This part isn’t. It’s just preserved. Of course nothing is lost in the museum—we make sure nothing is lost. The Delta specimens are stored on the gallery to make room for the coastal species and reduce the temptation to explore inland. And to let us heal from the losses. Which is the wisest choice, I suppose.

But we still preserve them. So everything I wrote should be here, even if everything else has been erased.

The curator, having run out of room to write, puts the bat and its tag back in place. They move to the next shelf, lined with the specimens from the survey of Year 78, and light the standing lamp. They rock the ladder into place and start to climb.

Several rungs up, something catches their eye.

It’s a seahawk, posed with four coffee-colored wings spread wide. Its feathers are perfectly aligned and gleaming despite the dust. Its eyes are closed, as though asleep.

They don’t remember it, but it has been described to them.

The curator turns over the paper tag tied to its foot and starts to read.

Specimen #045-127. Bifurcate Fish Hawk. Annotated 10th September, Year 78, by A. R., collection staff.

Collected on the annual survey of the Delta by I. M., collection staff. It was found in the grassland two miles northwest of Harborside. Ijeoma says she saw it flying over them when they were trying to evacuate from that desert saltation that came in. The seahawk was getting weaker, and then it folded its wings and fell. She had to split up from the team to get it. The curator says the saltation almost caught her. But she brought the seahawk back, and I’m preserving it. I couldn’t just leave it.

The seahawk was sort of a mess—I think it was starving. And Ijeoma didn’t get to stop to pack it up, because the curator doesn’t want to reward risk-taking, so some of the feathers are broken. It took me a few days to preserve it, because I had to help with all the other specimens first. But now it’s done, and I’m pretty proud! There’s all sorts of weird things in the Delta, but this might be the weirdest thing I’ve ever worked on myself. Definitely a target of future study.

The curator looks at the fish hawk again. The feathers are clean and gleaming. The wings flare in perfect paired arcs. The chest swells with rushes.

It’s good work. Even now, with years of practice, they’d be hard-pressed to preserve a specimen this well. Long hours in the preparatory room, under the mirrored lamps.

They begin to write again.

Annotated 19th August, Year 84, by the curator.

Zivia told me about this one. “You were proud of the seahawk,” she said, across the table at Sun Grove Coffeehouse—the building with the red door on the eastern quay. Coffee was Zivia’s suggestion after we returned. She had a favorite table, hidden in the shade at the back of the shop.

“You put hours into it,” she explained, when I asked her how she knew I was proud of my work. “It was a mess when you brought it in. I think Ijeoma found it? Sorry, that’s one of the last months I really remember. Everything gets fuzzy around November 78.” She sipped at her coffee. I remember the shape of her hand clutching the mug. “You were pretty insistent that you wanted to prepare it, even though no one thought it was worth keeping, because we’d never seen something like that before. But I think you said you didn’t want to just let it go.”

“Thank you. I wasn’t sure…”

Zivia waved me off. “It’s not like you could be.”

We had an understanding. I looked up specimens and described the museum halls so that she could compare them against her memories. She told me who I had been, even though that person is out of reach. It was Zivia who bought me dark coffee with sugar and reminded me that it was what I always drank. I probably should have asked her more.

But there are the specimens and the annotations. I’ve had to make myself a new life, but nothing gets lost in the museum. Part of me is still here.

The curator rereads what they’ve written. They replace the tag, climb down, and drag the ladder to the next year’s shelf. Once the standing lamps are lit, they scale the ladder again.

The specimens of Year 79 shine in the lamplight. Translucent shadows of jars pool on the shelves. The curator picks through tags and selects a packet of seeds. A pressed flower is pasted to the front; it’s bizarrely whorled, curling in on itself like a spiral staircase. An annotation runs in even lines on the back of the packet.

Specimen #773-200. Blue Stairflower seeds. Annotated 2nd September, Year 79, by A. R.

Collected on the annual survey of the Delta by a member of the collection staff who is now lost. The collector stopped in the middle of a field of flowers and picked the seeds, very carefully, without breaking the hulls. She gave them to Leo to carry, since he was in charge of all the flowering plants. That’s why we got these seeds back.

Leo said the last time he saw her was before the saltation on the fifth day. It was a shrub forest, too dense to walk through. She’d gone off looking for something, like she went for the seahawk, so she could’ve been anywhere. The saltation was moving south and they had to stay on the road to get ahead of it.

Losses happen on the surveys. It’s the risk we all accept.

I just miss her.

But she’d be glad her specimens survived. Like those shells, and the fish hawk. We can’t put her name on them, since she’s lost, but we can keep the knowledge. I think she’d like that.

The curator adds the date and their title beneath the previous annotation.

They look at it, before they start to write, for a little while.

Annotated 19th August, Year 84, by the curator.

Usually the surveys came back safely, and no one was lost. Zivia told me there hadn’t been any losses for a while, as far as she remembered.

But people get lost every day, if you count every city on the coast. Someone from Harborside gets lost probably once a month. It might be more. The Guard wants the lost to be able to start their lives over if they make it back, so it isn’t announced, and we don’t acknowledge it. But we notice if someone’s gone.

You can see the saltations in the sky on a clear day—perfect bands of rain and sun and snow flowing past each other. Kids dare each other to get close. Zivia told me she ran in on a dare. Some people harvest plants, ice, fresh water. Scouts get lost, but they know the risks. We did, too.

I wonder if there’s an annotation like this about Zivia, or me. Or any of the others.

I’m not going to look, though. I don’t want to read it, with my old name, from someone who remembers perfectly.

The curator replaces the packet of seeds on its shelf, aligning the corners with the imprint in the dust. They climb down and shift the ladder forward. There are more lamps mounted on the next set of shelves, but the curator leaves them dark.

They find the dry shell of a crab the size of their hand on a lower shelf. It’s been hollowed out, and posed with its claws folded together. A coiling, barbed tail juts oddly from its back. The curator can tell that it’s theirs from the perfect angle of the barb and the shine of the paper-thin shell.

Specimen #598-104. Scorpion Crab. Annotated August 28th, Year 80, by A. R.

Collected on the annual survey of the Delta by L. W., collection staff. It was found four miles northwest from the coast, in a grassland environment. L. W. didn’t notice a saltation passing him, because he was looking at a weird flower, but became lost by approximately three months. It was probably extremely similar to the coast, since nobody visually detected it. This similarity may account for the minor amount of loss.

I’m glad Leo’s back okay. We’ve left his name on this specimen, since he’s not entirely lost. He was a little off-balance at first, but he’s doing better now.

And hearing him talk about it is making me think about an exhibit on the Delta again. The exhibits in the public wing are just about the coastal plants and animals, and a bit about the history of Harborside since the saltations started and everyone left the Delta. But I think we should have more on the Delta itself. Maybe specimens from saltations, compared to the coastal ones, and some maps of saltations the scouts have seen. I know we aren’t supposed to draw attention to the Delta, and the curator rejected my idea, but we’d be able to do something useful with these specimens. I think that’d be worth it.

The curator begins to write, rapidly, as though their response could turn to dust and drift away. Black ink leaks from the nib of their pen.

Annotated 19th August, Year 84, by the curator.

Zivia told me about that idea when we were talking about specimens she remembered. There had been a chimaera, a carcass found on the survey of Year 78, and I had preserved it pouncing on its prey.

“The old curator liked the mount of the chimaera,” Zivia said. “I think that was what made you suggest displaying it. You had this whole plan—you were designing an exhibit with specimens from the saltations.”

“There isn’t anything like that in the public exhibits. Did I ever finish it?”

“You did, but the curator denied it. She said it was against Guard policy. You took it a lot better than we thought you would.” Zivia peered at me in the dim light of the coffeehouse. “It seems like you’re more upset about it this time.”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure if I was upset.

“It seems like a good idea,” Zivia said. She sipped her coffee, and added, “Now that you’re curator, you could make that choice.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s against Guard policy,” I said, “and I’m lost. I can’t make myself known like that.”

I probably shouldn’t be writing this down. Not that it matters, since she isn’t here to care.

I visited the public wing when I came back. We never built that exhibit. I understand why we couldn’t. We’re meant to keep people out of the Delta, so that no one gets lost. And I don’t remember what it feels like to lose someone, but I wouldn’t wish this silence in my head on anyone else.

The curator sets the crab back on the shelf. They climb down, squinting against the glare of the lamps, and shove the ladder to the next year.

On a higher shelf, a wooden case stands out, propped so the glass face catches the light. No two of the butterflies inside are the same: specimens with conjoined or multiplied wings, specimens with translucent skin, specimens with clusters of eyes. Each is positioned tidily and pinned in perfect salute. The curator is familiar, by now, with their own work.

Specimen #511-467 – 511-491. Butterflies (individually labeled). Annotated 28th August, Year 81, by A. R., collection staff.

Collected on the annual survey of the Delta by A. R., collection staff. These butterflies were caught in the grassland ten miles north-northeast from Harborside, on the afternoon of 24th August, Year 81. There were a variety of tall grasses and flowers in the area, identified in survey logs by A. R.

This one’s mine! I went on my first survey this year! Zivia and I both have seniority now. It went perfectly—no one got lost, and we collected so many specimens. We had great weather, too, bright and sunny every day.

We just got back this morning. Everybody’s been working nonstop to preserve everything—I’ve been pinning these butterflies all afternoon. Actually, everyone left an hour ago, but I wasn’t done, so I’m just hoping Ziv saved me dinner.

I was still nervous about actually going into the Delta, but she was so excited. And it’s all to help Harborside and the Guard, in a way that’ll be remembered. That’s what we want, I guess. That’s why we join the museum and the Guard, so we can preserve that memory. And now I’m part of it too.

The curator sinks into the ladder, and leans their cheek against a rung, as though an embrace.

The hall is silent.

After a moment, they straighten and begin to write.

Annotated 19th August, Year 84, by the curator.

We all come to the Guard for a reason. The museum staff, the memory specialists, the cartographers, the archivists, the scouts—we’re all curious, we all want to help, we all want to be remembered. Well, everyone wants that. But those are our reasons.

Then we preserve our work in the collection hall, on shelves that no one else sees, or up in this gallery, where we aren’t supposed to go. And then we’re told that it’s remembered.

Zivia has family, but they don’t speak to her in the street. They’re all five years older than she remembers, and she doesn’t know who her cousin married, where her sister’s gone.

But it was good, wasn’t it? We learned things and found things. That was all I wanted—that is all I want.

I didn’t know I called her Ziv.

The curator pushes the ladder onward to the collection of Year 82. They do not light the lamps. The shadows enfold them as they climb.

On an upper shelf, there is a section of a branching plant with tiny white flowers sprouting from its fronds. It is pressed between panes of glass and set in a wooden frame. The curator picks up the tag and begins to read.

Specimen #909-310. Lacy Air Plant. Annotated 30th August, Year 82, by A. R., collection staff.

This specimen was collected by someone who is now lost. It originates from a saltation, which was a cool, misty forest.

I can’t stop thinking about the look on his face when he realized. We were collecting specimens and we split up to cover more ground, even though we couldn’t see each other in the fog. But we saw the trees go past us. All our notes and papers blew away, and we just ran. When the saltation settled, we looked around at each other, and our count came up short.

And then he walked out of the forest with this plant in his hand. He’d found it growing on a tree branch, he said. Then he introduced himself, and asked who we were.

We made it out. He’s been declared lost. Nobody’s seen him—we won’t, unless he decides to come back to the collection.

But we have his specimens. We have his work. I keep telling myself that. That’s how we’ll remember him. Nothing is lost in the museum.

The curator begins to write. They start slowly, and then their hand slips over and over, flooding dark ink from the pen.

Annotated 19th August, Year 84, by the curator.

I don’t know who that’s supposed to be about.

I could probably figure it out by process of elimination. It might have been the flower collector. But his name isn’t here. He’s not here.

Zivia tried to tell me, the night she left.

She found me here, in the collection hall, just as I was putting out the lamps for the night. We were alone. Her voice was clear in the darkness, and when I asked why she was here, she said she was leaving.

“I’m going up the coast,” she said. “I’ll stay on the shore so I don’t get lost. I didn’t tell anyone I’m leaving. So if you wanted to come with me… you could.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Is there somewhere you want to go? I have maps. We can go anywhere.”

“But why?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I don’t,” I said.

“I found this,” she said, and showed me a slip of paper, pressed flat and covered in script. “I hid myself notes in my room, and I didn’t find them until now. We were both going to leave after the expedition last year.” And then we had forgotten. “It says you left yourself something, too, but you hid it somewhere in the collection.”

“I’ve never found anything.”

“But you see it, don’t you? It’s even more obvious now that I’m back. The Guard doesn’t care,” Zivia told me. “Not about any of us. They tell us we’ll be remembered and then they hide our work away. Nobody’s supposed to go into the Delta, and when we don’t give up wanting to, they bring us in and lock the doors. Maybe it really was for safety at the beginning, but now we just disappear. Haven’t you noticed no one talks about Ijeoma anymore? Or Naran, or Leo—” She stopped. “I guess you wouldn’t have.”

“But our work stays,” I told her. “Nothing gets lost in the museum. We can’t be forgotten.” I reached out for her. “You could come back, if you wanted—”

“That wouldn’t change anything,” Zivia said. She took my hand, very gently, and I understood that it was only the prerequisite to letting go.

“You don’t know,” I said. “Outside the museum—we don’t know who we were, before. Don’t you want to know?”

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Zivia said. “It could have, if they let us try. But they didn’t.”

I clung to her in the dark.

She told me where she was going—I shouldn’t write it down. I shouldn’t write any of this, but she’s already gone.

She went out of the hall. It was a long way, and I watched until the door closed behind her, blotting out the sound.

I lit the lamps. I worked all night.

The curator replaces the plant, suspended in its frame.

To their right, there is one last column of shelves lined with specimens, like every year before. The collection of Year 83 is the only one that the curator finds truly familiar.

They shift the ladder over. Its wheels fall into place against the stoppers. They begin to climb past barren shelves.

They recognize some items: a ribbonlike lizard, a whorled fungus, a vial of tiny insects. They glimpsed the specimens in their pack, in the sun-scorched yard of the scouting outpost. It has been nearly a year. It has been their only year.

They reach for the next rung and find only empty air.

The curator looks around. They are at the top of the ladder, far above the gallery and the lamplight. The highest shelf is bare, except for a small jar pushed into a corner. It would be invisible from below. Someone would have to be looking for it to find it.

They lift it to their eyes. In the dim light, a dozen fish rock with the motion of the jar. Mirrored scales glitter. The curator almost catches the shape of their face in the shifting mass, and then the fish drift apart.

The curator looks at the fish for a long time, atop the ladder in the dark.

Finally, they turn over the tag.

Specimen #424-568 – 424-582. Minnows. Annotated 19th August, Year 83, by A. R., collection staff.

This specimen isn’t from the Delta. I just needed somewhere to write something down. I’m hoping I can hide it in this year’s collection. If nothing goes wrong, I can just move it back, and if something goes wrong, no one will find it.

Zivia and I are both going on the expedition tomorrow. The curator’s leading it, and Reza, Selu, and Naran are coming. We’ll be fine. But I want to get a few things down.

I just can’t think of anything.

I should write down things I’d want to remember, or to know—but how do I fit all that on a tag? Should I write about people or places? Should I write about the museum, or my favorite coffeehouse, or my greatest dreams?

I’m wasting space wondering. Here’s the important part. I have spent my adult life working for the Guard, maintaining the museum collection. Every summer there’s an expedition into the Delta, out into the saltations, and I’m about to go on my third, and I’m starting to think I shouldn’t. I want to, of course—we know so little about the Delta. It’s fascinating. It’s important.

But if I get lost, there won’t be anything left of me. The specimens are preserved, but we’re forgotten, just like everyone else. The Guard protects our work, but not us. The museum isn’t ours. All we get to keep is what we save for ourselves.

I don’t want to forget that Zivia and I are thinking about leaving.

And my favorite coffeehouse is Sun Grove. We go there every week.

They cradle the jar in their hand. The fishes’ eyes gleam, pricks of light in the darkness. They turn atop the ladder.

They look down.

Beneath their feet, the shelves plunge into brilliant, burning light. The specimens on the gallery are illuminated by the lamps they had lit, themself, before. And beyond the gallery, the collection hall yawns open on the shining field of shelves and aisles. At the center, where they sat and planned the survey, the drafting table blazes like a sun.

To the curator, high in the dark air, it seems very small.

The walls of the collection hall are invisible in the dim light. They can imagine descending to the floor, turning, and walking forever.

But the light burns below them, illuminating the records and blotting out the vastness of the night.

The curator cradles the jar of minnows against their chest, and they climb downward.

They blow out the lamps on the gallery and descend the staircase, then weave back through the collection, putting out the rest as they go. At the drafting table, they put out every lamp but one. They set down the jar of minnows and, in the last of the light, add an annotation to the tag.

Annotated 19th August, Year 84, by the curator.

I resign my position as curator of the Harborside Natural History Museum, effective immediately.

Nothing is lost in this collection; this annotation will stand. As Zivia told me: you have to decide how you want to be remembered. I’m going to find her. We’ll remember each other when I get there.

Leave the lamps dark. You won’t find us here.

They place the jar on the drafting table. They blow out the lamp.

In the sudden, perfect night, they recall what they have committed to memory: the corridors of the museum, and the streets of Harborside, and the shoreline beyond.

They set off into the unbounded darkness.

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Marsh Hlavka is a field ecologist, museum specimen preparator, and writer of speculative fiction. Find them @othermarshes on Twitter.

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