Part Three - Kitsune Chaos
With a groan of relief, Franklin rested his weighty burden on the steel benchtop, dusted off his palms, and inspected the old timber crate for any external signs of damage.
This had to be it--the inventory he'd spent three days researching and the last ninety minutes hunting for in the archeology department's disorganized archive.
Time and errant rodents had chewed off any tags or identifying labels, but somehow, deep in his gut, Franklin knew this was the big kahuna of his academic career.
"Holy shit, you're digging out more crap?" An annoyed voice grumped. Daphne glared irritation at him from her workbench opposite. "We've got plenty to check and catalog without you adding to the pile, Frank."
With an internal sigh, the post-grad student picked up a handy crowbar and waved it at the crate before replying in his best instructional tone.
"I'll have you know, dearest Daphne, that this diamond in the rough holds the key to my landmark study pertaining to spiritualism and magic of Shinto origin. The research will be groundbreaking--a seminal work, for sure."
"I'm not your dearest
anything,
Frank." She spat, stamping a booted foot. "And the only seminal work you'll ever produce will be into a fucking Kleenex."
"And I don't care to be Frank, Daphne." He quipped back dryly. "The name is Franklin, as I keep telling you."
Damn, it was tough working with some people.
Sure, Daphne was hot, in that rebellious biker chick kinda way--with her lean athletic frame, perky fun-sized breasts, distractingly tight ass, and long legs stuffed into stylishly distressed skinny jeans and a vintage indie rock baby tee. But her perpetual resting bitch-face and porcupine demeanor broadcasted fuck-off-and-die vibes on all frequencies.
She probably wore those chunky Doc Martins for curb-stomping undergrads and kicking puppies during off-hours.
Even as she glowered pure vitriol at him, Franklin had to admire Daphne's perfectly angular face. High cheekbones that could cut glass and intense champaign-colored eyes were set beneath pencil-thin brows and a straight midnight pixie cut with side-swept bangs. As a loud and proud lesbian, she was aiming for butch but fell squarely into sexy punk babe territory as far as he was concerned.
Not that it mattered. She'd made her orientation clear on day dot, and as an enlightened modern male, Franklin had sequestered any feelings of one-sided attraction securely in his spank bank.
"Can we not fight, please? We're all in the same boat here."
That was Bernadette. Bernie to her friends. She was a mousy ginger wearing horn-rimmed glasses and her misguided attempts at boho fashion, which equated to frumpy thrift-store shirts, baggy floral-print tops, and too many crochet shawls to weigh down her stooped shoulders.
She currently held an intricate tangle of scarlet ropes, and a violet crystal monocle glowed over one chartreuse eye behind her prescription lenses.
"Sorry, Bernie." Franklin apologized, resting the crowbar on his shoulder. He got along well with the Wallflower. "What you got there? Anything good?"
The sad truth was that with the Celestial Conjunction and the return of the Fae, archeology was a dying field.
Why bother unearthing shards of primitive pottery and postulating over this find or that, when an antediluvian immortal who'd been around for that particular period could give you a first-hand account?
Verbatim even. Turned out that noble Fae possessed eidetic memory.
Franklin had seen a video online of a high elf reciting Romanus the Usurper's address to the imperial senate circa 470 AD in the original Latin.
So, while the history department at Madison U was going gang-busters, the bone-diggers were reduced to pawing over scraps in their brand-new basement digs where they could gather dust along with the rest of their bygone relics.
It wasn't all bad. Suddenly, those buried artifacts from extinct civilizations possessed potential value. Were they pre-divergence magical artifacts or merely cargo cult imitations from ages past?
The faculty head, Professor Hostler, must have placed money on the former. Why else would they all be offered extra credit to sift through the University's backlog of ancient bricker-brack--several decades' worth of forgotten archeological discoveries--to check for traces of cosmic mojo?
"I don't know, maybe?" Bernadette wrapped the red silk cords around her fingers and squinted. "These enchanted monocles aren't getting a clear reading. I don't think they're the best tool for the job."
Small surprise given the department's drastic funding cuts and the glamorous subterranean relocation. Since the Celestial Conjunction last century, the modern world had gone gaga for magic. Academia had embraced it, and now spellcraft made up a significant chunk of Madison U's curriculum.
The new courses also took up limited lab space previously occupied by more scientific fields of study. That was fine with the higher-ups. They probably figured that archeologists
liked
dark, windowless places.
"The Prof probably bought them at a discount arcanum." Franklin sighed, slipping on his own crystal eyeglass. "Here, let me take a gander."
The principle behind the damnable lens was simple: any object holding a magical charge should sparkle as though coated in body glitter. The problem that Professor Hostler
hadn't
accounted for was the amount of arcane voltage the tool was calibrated to detect.
As far as Franklin could tell, if an artifact weren't thrumming like a nuclear reactor, the monocle wouldn't pick up shit.
"I'm not sure," He conceded, rolling the ropes between his fingers. There were gold caps on the ends. "There may be a very faint glimmer. Add it to the 'Undecided' box."
They worked on a three-box sorting system: Nada, Undecided, and Jackpot. Nada was heaped full of flint arrowheads, soapstone tablets, Celtic woodcarvings, bronze-age tools, and more.
Undecided held a small basalt effigy of the sun god; Tonatiuh, a clay pot containing a desiccated... something, a feathery headdress of unknown origins, and now a tangle of remarkably soft silk ropes.
Jackpot remained depressingly empty.
"With that crisis concluded..." Franklin began before the cracking of rending timber interrupted him. "What the hell?!"
He spun to see Daphne wrenching his crate apart with the back of a claw hammer. Iron nails shrieked as she violently disassembled the wooden lid and sides with manic glee.
"So this is your big breakthrough, hotshot?" She cackled, gesturing at broken fragments of a stone animal held in shape by packing tape. Curling paper strips were stuck to the flanks and muzzle. "A busted statue of a dog? Now for the litmus test." Her monocle glowed briefly. "Nope, not a single sparkle. A huge waste of time. Just like you, loser. Fan-fucking-tastic. I'm going for a smoke."
Franklin gaped as she tossed the hammer aside and clomped up the stairs. It clattered across the cold, cement floor. Rushing to his workbench, he examined the two-foot-tall sculpture for damage.
Well,
more
damage, anyway. The poor thing was fractured as hell.
"Are you okay, Franklin?" Bernadette's voice was quiet but still echoed in the ensuing silence. "I'm sorry about Daphne. I'd report her, but she's dating the professor's teaching assistant Micah, and--"
"It's not a dog," he said defensively, gently resting a palm between two pointed ears. It's a fox--a Japanese kitsune spirit, to be exact. Count the tails."
There were, indeed, several stone appendages sprouting from the canine's rear, etched in a likeness of fur.
"How can you be certain?" The short redhead sounded dubious. "The Chinese have similar legends of many-tailed fox demons named
Huli Jing
and the Koreans called them
Kumiho..."
"It's a kitsune. An Inari shrine guardian." Franklin growled through gritted teeth, angrily tearing off the scraps of paper. "And. I. Can. Fix. Her."
They crumbled at a touch, tingling his fingertips with pins and needles. Almost inaudible feminine laughter and a whiff of cherry blossom passed unheeded by the two preoccupied students.
________________
"Resin. You're going to use resin to glue the statue back together. I'm not sure that's a good idea, Franklin."
"Not just resin. Resin and gold. Like the Japanese art of
kintsugi,
but without the tricky lacquer. It'll work, and if it doesn't, special solvents can dissolve the epoxy without damaging the stone."
They'd carefully removed the packing tape and cleaned the broken stone of fine particulate matter with paint brushes. The fox statue was fractured into three main sections with smaller chunks carefully laid out like puzzle pieces on the workbench.
Bernie's expression was skeptical, bleached bone-white by the unforgiving fluorescent lighting, but Franklin pressed on regardless.
Something about the shrine guardian spoke to his soul like nothing else since his starry-eyed undergraduate days when he'd harbored dreams of being the next Howard Carter--fantasizing of unearthing the next great discovery and wowing the unappreciative masses with treasures long lost.
"Gold, seriously? The department budget is so tight Professor Hostler won't shell out an air freshener, much less for proper equipment." Bernadette wiggled her cheap Home Depot paintbrush as an example. "Where the heck will you find cash to purchase that sort of bling? It's rather expensive last I checked."
"Not
