Page 27 of Geoffrey the Very Strange
"Ah. Weather pattern disruption sounds bad." Aspic chose a flat rock outside the cave entrance and offered Geoffrey one of the hand pies. Chicken, by the scent. "You banish the rain and there might be a drought?"
"Maybe." Geoffrey mumbled around his first bite, obviously too hungry to be polite. "Or call a windstorm pushing away clouds. Not something you do for convivial."
Convenience, presumably. There. A single-word misstep was better.Hooray for chicken pie. "Do you want me to go after dinner and let you work?"
Geoffrey's expression turned shy. "Would you like to see the work? I think we're close to something."
Necromancy wasn't Aspic's favorite thing, but he couldn't lie to himself and say he wasn't curious. "I'd love to see your experiments."
"Good." Geoffrey stared at his now-empty hands as if he couldn't believe he'd finished already. "That was delicious. Mrs. Pickle's?"
"Yes. She insisted. Please, have another. The ones on the right are the meat ones."
Cecil had the corner of a pastry, Sundrop received bits of grasshopper pie from Aspic, and within a shockingly small amount of time, they'd eaten all of Mrs. Pickle's baked goods.
"The problem with eating after forgetting to," Geoffrey said as he leaned his head on Aspic's shoulder, "is that when you finish, you want a nap."
"You could? I'd wake you in an hour."
Geoffrey staggered up, waving a hand in negation. "Not yet. Sunburst pattern next. I have a good feeling about this one."
The basket stayed in the storage room—no introducing extra variables into the room—and when Aspic asked if he wasn't also an extra variable, Geoffrey carefully took measurements and put him in the corner by the shell containers, declaring that the wards should keep any magic interference from occurring.
Quiet as a mole, since quite honestly, Aspic knew from experience that mice in the walls weren't at all quiet, he watched in fascination as Geoffrey drew his sunburst pattern on the altar stone and Cecil fetched the requested clamshells for the first trial. With tender care, Geoffrey placed a sadly deceased brown bunny—the victim of a fallen branch, Aspic was relieved to hear—in the center of the sunburst before he set the clamshells at the salient points of the sunburst.
Several consultations of the huge magic tome on the desk and subsequent shell adjustments later, Geoffrey drew a yew wand from his robe pocket. He raised the wand, his sharp focus making it obvious that no one else was in the room for Geoffrey, just him and the rabbit, as he began to chant:
"Essa pecca tomaltine
Meri tulind eglantine
Kula klami leviska
Hanni kainen osma!"
Nothing. Not a twitch. Geoffrey showed no signs of discouragement, though. He nodded, made a note on his charts, and called out to Cecil, "With the limestone pieces now."
Again, the combination failed, and again, Geoffrey simply moved on to the next. Aspic found his dedication and his doggedness simply breathtaking. Maybe it shouldn't have been. Maybe this level of single-mindedness bordered on madness. For Aspic, it was an astounding ballet of determination.
He'd become mesmerized, sometimes forgetting to breathe, when Geoffrey returned to the clam-and-limestone combination and added mussel shells as the next element. Once more, Geoffrey raised his wand; once more, he spoke the incantation in that language Aspic couldn't begin to identify. Once more, they all leaned forward in anticipation when Geoffrey finished.
Nothing.
Aspic's shoulders sagged. While Geoffrey wasn't discouraged, he certainly was. He hadn't realized how invested in his little necromancer's success he was until that moment.
"All right, Cecil." Geoffrey prepared to plow right on. "Mussels off. Murexes on."
Cecil flowed up to the altar to begin removing the indicated shells and stopped, whispering, "Boss. Wait. Look."
Had the rabbit twitched? Aspic leaned forward just a hair for a better look.Yes. Her ear.
"Hold. No one move," Geoffrey ordered softly.
On the altar, the rabbit kicked her hind legs and sat up so suddenly they all reared back. She sat still, taking in her surroundings with frightened eyes, twitching her nose and whiskers. In a flurry of paws, she executed a mighty leap from the stone table and raced from the laboratory with her white tail held high as a danger flag.
"It worked," Geoffrey breathed out. "It worked!" He dashed over and took Aspic's head between his hands to plant a hard kiss on his lips. "Itworked!"
Aspic hugged him tight. "It did. Gods below, Geoffrey. You're amazing."
