Page 32 of Geoffrey the Very Strange
Geoffrey leaned over the counter far enough that his feet came off the floor and found Twinkle trying to pull a burlap sack off a shelf. He lifted sack and fairy onto the counter ,where she huffed and put her short, yellow hair to rights.
"This sad-looking thing's the save-me sack. It'll tell us where the thing you need is." She folded back the neck of the sack and wrinkled her nose. "Give me a sec."
More cussing and muttering ensued as Twinkle crawled into the sack up to her curly-toed slippers and rooted around until she cried, "Aha!" She emerged mussed, dusty, but triumphant, with a folded slip of paper half as big as herself that she proceeded to unfold on the counter and stomp flat.
"So, okay. We have to go to the library. Follow me."
"Ah." Geoffrey pointed to the shelves near the counter. "Aren't the books out here?"
With a smile that looked like it could cut steel, Twinkle repeated through clenched teeth, "We have to go to thelibrary. Followme, please."
She led them to an enormous door behind the counter, then had to wait while Aspic opened it for her. This definitely made her angry again, since she flounced fairy dust all over Aspic's arm as she flew through. The door opened onto a long hallway lined with swords. Lots and lots of swords, some of them battered, some gleaming and sharp, some that gave off an eerie glow, and one that was clearly possessed that whistled at them as they passed by.
"I'll have you fucking melted down, Stormquick!" Twinkle glared at the black-hilted menace.
"Oh, I wasn't whistling at you, honey," the sword answered. "That was for the hot-pink demon boy with you."
Her tone took on a hint of menace. "Leave the customers alone, you perv. I'll tell Marden."
The sword, not shockingly, since Marden had to have been the wizard from before, shut up, and they went on their way without further incident. The hallway grew dimmer as they trudged on, with Twinkle providing most of the illumination, and Geoffrey wondered if the hall might be infinite. The inside of the store, entirely too large for the space it occupied in Merseton, was on a separate plane already, so perhaps. He just hoped their journey wasn't infinite. They didn't have that sort of luxury of time.
Finally, they stopped at a door. An exceptionally small door about half Aspic's height. This one Twinkle opened without assistance and flew inside, leaving them to crouch and squeeze through as best they could. Aspic caught his horns on the top of the doorframe, and Sundroptsheeredin an alarmed way until he crawled through instead of walking.
The room itself was magnificent: well-lit, though the source of illumination wasn't visible, free of dust and damp. Marble floors met walls of polished granite, and the gleaming oak shelves, several Geoffreys high, marched on into the far distance.
"I could live here," Geoffrey said with a sigh.
"Yeah, well, we don't allow vagrants," Twinkle grumbled as she led them down the shelves. "Unless you're a fucking sebel beetle. Then you get to live here rent-free. Which I don't think is fair. I could do the same thing as a sebel beetle, butIdon't get to live here."
She stopped at a shelf that looked like all the others to Geoffrey. Maybe she'd been counting them off as they went. Muttering under her breath, Twinkle flew up to the top shelf and retrieved something Geoffrey couldn't make out at a distance. When she came back down, she presented him with a tiny box no wider than his palm.
"There you go, bub."
"There I go, what?"
She tapped the box lid. "That's your item. What you need. The sack is never wrong."
"It's tiny." Aspic's expression couldn't have been more dubious.
"Yep." She undid the tiny clasp and opened the lid. "World's smallest book."
The box did contain an absurdly small book. Geoffrey would need tweezers to turn the pages. The cover had a title. Even when he squinted, it was too small to read. "I'm not—"
"The sack. Is. Never. Wrong," Twinkle grated out. "Do you want the damn thing that's gonna save you or not?"
"Yes. We want it," Aspic said hurriedly. "We'll figure it out, my dear. It's the one thing. Somehow."
Geoffrey nodded, and Twinkle's glow brightened.
"Come on, then. Let's get this settled up and hustle you out of here."
She flew toward the library door, leaving them to scramble after her. Geoffrey lost sight of her several times, though once in the hallway of swords, it would've been difficult to lose their way. It was just one straight hallway, after all. Though maybe it wasn't always.
He shoved that thought into a dark corner but still let out a sigh of relief when they emerged back in the front room of the shop.
"Where did she go?" he asked Aspic when he couldn't find their fairy clerk.
Aspic pointed to the sack, which still sat on the counter and once again sported tiny, wriggling yellow shoes at its neck. Twinkle emerged, blowing the hair out of her eyes with a second slip of paper.
