Summary

Now living in London and studying at the Royal Academy of Music, Edwin tries to figure out how he can bring the authentic feathers he has collected at home in the United States over the border to England so he can continue fly tying. He tries to find new feathers by looking in antique shops for Victorian-era hats but it is a challenge and an impossible expense to rebuild the collection of materials he spent years amassing. He keeps thinking about the birds in the vault and not on display at the Natural History Museum that he heard about from Couturier and decides that he needs "to see the greatest collection in the world" (87). After learning that the collection is open to researchers and artists by appointment, Edwin poses as a friend of a fictional academic tasked with photographing the birds in the...