“That came later,” August said. “The peacock is an ancient bird, as are the myths that have followed it. Long ago, it was thought that every time the peacock awoke, it cried out in fear, because it dreamed that it had lost its beauty.”

“Sounds like pride to me.” Xandria picked up August’s pad and began to review his notes.

August studied the initial I, which stood like a colossal pillar on the electronic image of the Gutenberg page. Inside the pillar of the I were four distinct sections: on the bottom, the Garden of Eden with its antediluvian occupants, Adam and Eve; next, an ocean, brimming with life; growing from that, a forest full of four-legged creatures, big and small; and finally, a wise, old man, his face beaming with its own inner light.

“There’s so much,” August said to himself, trying to figure out where to start. He chose Adam and Eve. The image was typical: they were naked and unashamed, a pre-Fall representation. The two wildlife settings didn’t provide much more. The fish were in a classic motif. The wildlife frolicking in the forest gave August some hope, but nothing seemed to jump out at him. “Why am I not seeing it?”

“Maybe you’re looking too hard,” Xandria offered, setting down the notepad.

August put his hands up by the sides of his head, creating a set of blinders. He focused. He focused hard. Nothing.

“I was serious,” Xandria said. “Let your subconscious do the leap, not your mind. You’ll never find it if you keep looking directly at it.”

“Please don’t distract me. I’m trying to—”

The world evaporated. August lost himself in the illumination. He was in the forest with the animals, mucking about in the damp soil, wet with weeds and moss. He stood next to the deer, next to the leader, the buck. But what did they call it back then? A hart. This was a hart. The hart of the story. He counted the points on the hart’s antlers. There were seven, an important symbolic number. It meant perfection. This was a perfect hart.

August looked deeper, stretched further. The hart was concerned. Why? August followed the hart’s eyes to its cavorting young only a short distance away. But the distance was significant, because something was between them. A wolf.

“Physiologus,” August said.

“Excuse me?”

“There was a book called the Physiologus, similar to the Bestiaire. Back when I was an archaeobibliologist, we used it like a reference book. The Physiologus was the ancient church’s symbology standard. It made repeated mention of the hart.”

“Heart?”

“H-A-R-T. Hart. A deer. Or a stag, really. In the image second from the top, you’ll see the hart, anxious about this wolf that separates him from his children.”

“Nature isn’t pretty, is it?”