He took a clean sheet of paper and drew a simple diagram: a circle for a body, and lines sticking out that were broken into segments—like a ladder cut into pieces.

“First,” Grandfather said, “watch it move. Count the legs.”

“You’ve found something good,” the old man said, pulling out a thick magnifying lens on a swiveling arm. “But you look confused. Let’s ask the beetle itself.”

The sun had barely cleared the lip of the garden wall when Leo found it. A jewel, no bigger than his pinky nail, crawled across the cracked mud of the strawberry patch. Its shell was a polished, iridescent green, like a drop of molten metal that had somehow grown legs.