The Geomagician

Chapter 1

Every fossil is a miracle. All living things—regno animalium et vegetabilium—eventually die, and the vast majority of these, swallowed by earth or exposed to the elements, fall, in the end, to dust. That’s a rather romantic summary of the messy business of decomposition, but the point is, few organisms escape that fate. Any that do are one in a million.

That’s what I wanted to say to the tourist with the yellow dress, when she muttered to her husband, “But they’re just seashells.”

I bit my tongue. My rent was two months overdue, and these were the first customers in almost as long.

So instead of giving a lecture about death and decay as I wanted, I set down the crinoid fossil I was cleaning and came round the counter.

“The disks in the case to your left are actually ichthyosaur vertebrae.”

I tried to smile; Lucy always said I was too surly with customers. “Ichthyosaurs looked something like ugly, fat dolphins, we think, but with the jaws of a crocodile.”

Even I heard the pride in my voice as I gestured to the plaster cast of an ichthyosaur skeleton, framed and mounted on the wall behind my counter.

That was my first great find. I was twelve years old the summer I found the skull, half-buried. It took me another year to find the rest: the curving spine, the strange flippers, the humped back. Over my mother’s protests, I arranged it on our dining room table, piecing the monster back together with skill guided by instinct. I sold the specimen for twenty-three pounds to my mentor, William Buckland.

That ichthyosaur was the very first found in England. The discovery, and the furious scholarship in its wake, had made the careers of half the geomagicians in England.

It always cut like a knife to think of the gentlemen scholars in their wood-paneled studies, surrounded by shelves of books I could never afford, drafting society papers by lamplight—writing about my finds. Only Buckland ever even mentioned my name.

And Henry.

The reminder was a betrayal, and I scowled at the traitorous thought.

Fine. And Henry.

Henry Stanton, for all his many, many flaws, did cite my name when he discussed my discoveries. Though that certainly didn’t outweigh his other transgressions.

The tourist husband picked up one of the round, concave stone disks, weighing it in his palm.

“They make excellent reliqs,” I said quickly. “Good storage capacity in one that size.”

The wife frowned. “They’re awfully plain-looking. Do you have any of the swirling ones?” She traced a spiral in the air.

“Ammonites. Yes.”

I walked her to the case. Ammonites were my bestseller with women. Men tended to prefer bones from ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs. Belemnites—long, bullet-shaped shells that once housed ancient squids—could go either way. They always looked nice on a chain.

My ammonites were arranged in rows, from smallest to largest, on a bed of felted wool. I couldn’t afford the velvet that geomagicians preferred for their personal collections.

“I do have several larger ones, if you’re interested.” I pointed across the shop, to the cabinet where I kept rarer finds—partial skeletons, or, say, ammonites too large to wear as a reliq, but that would look lovely on display in a rich woman’s home.

The woman looked at me properly for the first time, her eyebrows climbing.

I flushed, seeing myself as she must: plain-faced and beak-nosed, my brown skirts mud-streaked and my hair in a black tangle of a crooked bun. She touched her cheek, and I mirrored the gesture. I’d wiped my face after hunting this morning, but clearly not well enough.

I scrubbed with the heel of my hand.

“Other side,” she said gently, and I scowled, turning back to my counter.

“Let me know if I can help you with anything else.”



As the wife browsed, I worked furiously at the crinoid stem, chipping dried mud from the grooves, then brushing and blowing it loose.

I’d hunted more than three hours this morning, wading through clay-thick mud and searching the slippery limestone cliffs for any sign of fossils. But all I found were the usual little ones—belemnites and small ammonites, mollusk and bivalve shells. The seashells, as she called them. They were miracles. Really, they were. But miracles couldn’t pay Mr. Bolington when he came tomorrow and demanded the rent I owed.

If it were summer, and not dreary, dawdling April, Lyme Regis would be crawling with tourists eager to take the sea air. I would set up my table out front, and sell at a markup most tourists wouldn’t question. But locals know better. You could stub your toe on an ichthyosaur vertebra—verteberries, we called them as children—and hardly bother to stop. Lyme Regis is probably the only place in England where even the poor have fossil reliqs to collect their magic.

What I needed was a skull. I could sell a good skull to a collector and cover the March and April rent on the store and flat, plus part of May’s. I would have to go out hunting again, after I closed the shop.

“Ahem.”

I jumped. The husband was leaning against my work-counter, his elbow slung casually over the lip.

“I studied with Buckland, you know. At Oxford.”

I set down my pick.

I’d known William Buckland most of my life. My father came early to fossil hunting; some reliquemist discovered fossils held magic even better than gold or gems, and soon educated men arrived in Lyme Regis in search of fossils to sell to the slickers. The Geomagical Society of London was founded soon after, dually chartered to study the emerging field of geomagic, and to supply reliquemists with fossils for enchantment.

Father closed his carpentry business—which was never much of a success anyway—and devoted himself full time to fossil hunting. He sold to Buckland many times, and after he died, the professor bought from me instead.

Buckland still came to Lyme Regis several times a year so that we could hunt fossils together. He was a capable searcher, with good instincts and a sharp eye, and he never complained about the cold rain or his muddied boots the way some of the other geomagicians did.

I adored and admired William Buckland in equal measure, but right now, I was furious with him.

“Did he send you, then?” I narrowed my eyes as I shuffled through my stack of papers. I waved the letter before his face. “It wasn’t enough to write it? Buckland thought he had to send some lackey to try and soothe my pride? You’re not even an actual geomagician, are you? You didn’t recognize the plesiosaur fin over there; I saw you walk right past it without a glance. And yet Buckland sent you?”

The man stammered. He’d backed up during my tirade, and his wife rushed over to take his hand.

“Miss Anning,” the man said stiffly, frowning, “I haven’t spoken to William Buckland in three years.”

I dropped my waving arm. “Oh. Oh, dear.”

“You are correct. I am not a geomagician. I am a barrister. And I only meant to tell you that I learned of your shop from the professor. Buckland told all his students that if we wanted to buy the best fossils in England, we ought to visit Anning’s Fossil Depot, in Lyme Regis. Come, darling. We can buy you that ammonite somewhere else.”

His wife sniffed, nose up, and looped her arm through his.

“Wait, please, I’m sorry—”

The bells on the door jangled merrily as it slammed shut behind them.