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Mattholomule was having a new kind of weekend, one spent doing things other than locking himself up in his room or taking some odd job to make ends meet. Honestly, his past few weekends have been strange. The weirdest part isn’t the graveyard, the probably a ghost illusionist who disappears as silently as he appears, or the fact that he hasn’t been attacked by a stray magical creature. The weirdest part of this is how Gus is so insistent on treating him as if he’s one of his stupidly nice friends.
“Mattholomule, you’ve really gotten better at construction magic,” Gus gushed as they stood in front of the Looking Glass Graveyard. “You even fixed the sign up.”
Maybe Gus was being a bit too nice, but having someone praise his work for once felt good. The sign was a bit lopsided, but at least he managed to match the original lettering. As long as the sign didn't crush them both, Mattholomule would consider it a victory. Plus, the Keeper seemed to like it just fine.
“I guess you did fine too, squirt,” Mattholomule said. “Though I think the pitfall, deadly spikes, and fire combination might be a bit too much.”
As if on cue, a stray leaf gently floated to the ground a few feet from Mattholomule. A giant pit opened up casting the leaf airborne again. Several large spikes all impaled the leaf from different angles. To top it all off, the fire glyphs on the spikes burst into flames, burning the leaf into a crisp.
“Aw man, I’ll need Luz to help me with the fire glyphs again,” Gus sighed as the spikes retracted back into the ground.
Mattholomule watched the ashes of the leaf blow away in the wind.
“The fire glyphs are overkill.”
“We’ve gotta stop anyone who wants to rob the Looking Glass Graveyard, dead or alive,” Gus said, pumping his fist cheerfully.
Mattholomule’s lips pressed into a fine line and shook his head silently.
“Traumatized or alive,” Gus corrected with an equally cheerful fist pump.
“Sure,” Mattholomule shrugged. “Though we should find a way to tell who wants to come here for the history and who comes here for the Galderstones. We can’t blast nerds like you to pieces just because they actually like history or something.”
Mattholomule felt his breath leave his body when Gus grabbed his shoulders and began shaking him. Even when he stopped shaking him, Gus still kept his hands on Mattholomule’s shoulders. The brat even had the audacity to cast him a bright smile. Mattholomule wasn’t sure why it made his skin crawl, maybe his time as Bria’s stooge made him allergic to mushy optimism and friendship. Or maybe it was just Gus’ fault for being. . . Gus.
Augustus. Gus. The witch who still had his hands on Mattholomule’s shoulders as if it wasn’t weird to do this with your former rival.
Though the graveyard always managed to have a foggy chill, Mattholomule felt his cheeks get a bit warm.
“Of course, we can’t punish those who want to learn,” Gus said. “History is so tragic, yet so alluring.”
“Whatever, dweeb,” Mattholomule’s face felt weird, touching another person this much felt weird. “We’re done for today, let’s just go home.”
“Oh yeah, it is getting pretty late. We did good work today,” Gus removed his hands from Mattholomule’s shoulders to hold one in front of him, as if he were about to start waving but stopped short.
“High-five!”
Mattholomule stared blankly down at Gus’ outstretched hand, and back to his wide smile. Gus was practically bouncing on his toes and his eyes sparkled. Not one to be caught off guard, Mattholomule decided to improvise to the best of his ability. Sure he wasn’t a power hungry jerk like before, mostly, but he still knew how to weasel his way out of awkward and embarrassing situations. He wasn’t as book smart as Gus, but he’s pretty sure he can figure out this “high-five” thing.
With a smirk, Mattholomule drew a spell circle which summoned five hands made of stone from the ground. They immediately began slapping the ground in front of them, shaking the ground slightly. .
“Not sure how that defensive technique is gonna work, but it sure was fun,” Mattholomule placed his hands on his hips, his smirk only getting wider. “Yeah, I can get into these high-fives.”
Mattholomule held onto his prideful stance until Gus started laughing. Then his cheeks started flushing for a different reason from before.
“What?” Mattholomule asked, crossing his arms with a scowl.
“No, Mattholomule,” Gus chuckled, “it’s a human thing Luz taught me. It’s a thing humans do when they do a good job.”
“A human thing?” Mattholomule perked up.
“Yeah, let me teach you how to do it. First, put your hand like this in front of you,” Gus said, demonstrating his weird frozen wave.
As silly as it looked, Mattholomule followed Gus’ lead.
“Good, then you bring your hand up to mine.”
Mattholomule brought his hand and placed it against Gus’. The other boy’s hands were pretty soft, probably because he had at least a dozen illusions of himself workin for him or the fact that the human was content to kick any dangers in the face. His hands were probably covered in calluses from his jobs and working with stone.
He patiently awaited for further instructions, though for some reason Gus had gone silent. Growing impatient, Mattholomule lightly stomped on Gus’ foot. He looked up, damn biased witch puberty, at Gus’ face, which had gone completely still.
“Well? What’s the next step, squirt?”
“O-oh, right, next step,” Gus squeaked as he looked anywhere else but at Mattholomule. “Alright, let’s go! Next step!”
Gus waved his other hand around the air, as if he had flags that weren’t there. His high-fiving hand remained as stiff as it was before.
“We still haven’t done anything.” Mattholomule said, he idly brushed his bangs out of his face. “It’s okay if you forgot, as if a little twerp like you would know something about humans that I don’t.”
“I didn’t forget,” Gus said. “I was just thinking.”
“Anyway, Augustus, how long do we have to hold our hands together like this?” Mattholomule asked.
“You know what,” Gus pulled his hand away, “it’s just easier if I just showed you.”
Gus drew a spell circle and on his palm appeared little Gus and Mattholomule illusions. They each held out a hand and slapped them together. Instead of holding them together, the moment of contact was quick. It was kind of like a clap, except two people did it.
“Oh, I get it,” Mattholomule said. “Now I wanna try it again, the right way.”
“Alright! Let’s go. Say high-five besties on three. One! Two!” Gus said, returning to his normal cheerful self.
“I’m not saying that,” Mattholomule said, though Gus either didn’t or chose not to hear him.
“Three! High-five besties!” Gus cheered.
“High-five acquaintances,” Mattholomule muttered.
Their hands slapped together as they did the weird human high-five, which actually was kind of nice even if it only lasted a second. Mattholomule stared at his hand, feeling it tingle a bit from the impact.
“Augustus, I wanna do that again! Ah! I just did an actual human thing!” Mattholomule, holding his high-fiving hand as if it had been magically transformed.
It was so amazing. Humans were so amazing. If that human girl came to the Boiling Isles, maybe Mattholomule could go to the human realm and do real human things. Do a high-five with actual humans! Figure out how human magicians learned magic while most humans couldn’t. See actual copies of the human objects he made fa-
Mattholomule caught himself and cleared his throat a bit. He let out a short breath and smoothed out his bangs.
“I guess that was interesting, for a stupid human thing.”
“Mattholomule, you like human things, don’t you?” Gus looked as if he had caught the scoop of the era, smugness came off him in waves.
“Pfft, no,” Mattholomule grumbled, “that was just a ploy to steal your club from you.”
“You can’t trick me, Luz told me that your human object labels were actually correct,” Gus playfully patted Mattholomule’s shoulder. “Your cellular phone almost fooled me! It was amazing!”
“Whatever,” Mattholomule scoffed and stomped on Gus’ foot again, “just show me the high-five thing again.”
The two boys spent several dedicated moments just practicing high-fiving. At one point, Gus made a chain of illusions that all simultaneously high-fived at the same time. Mattholomule even attempted a mini statue to commemorate their first high-five. Their faces looked a bit jumbled and their hands were abnormally large, but Gus gushed over it nonetheless. He didn’t even notice that Mattholomule had made himself a bit taller.
“Hey Mattholomule, can I keep this?” Gus asked, holding onto the statue as if it were a baby.
“Why would you want that crummy thing,” Mattholomule replied. “Gimme that thing, I’m gonna throw it somewhere into the brush.”
“What?” Gus shifted his body to protect it. “This is your creation, you can’t just get rid of it willy nilly.”
If Gus didn’t look so legitimately upset, Mattholomule would have pointed out how Gus threatened his own illusions on a regular basis. Plus, saying words right now felt pretty difficult. Maybe someone slipped him a silencing potion or something.
Even though he was on the construction track, most of his magic was pretty horrible. At least with construction he could make something with a shape. Most of the teachers at Glandus called him a lost hope. Yet Gus, the most brilliant witch he had ever met, was asking him for his creation.
Was it the irony that was making him feel a bit sick?
“So, does that silence mean I can keep it?” Gus asked.
“Sure,” Mattholomule muttered as he pulled his hood over his head.
“Thanks!” Gus carefully placed the statue into his bag.
Mattholomule contemplated casting another giant pit in the ground spell just so he can jump into it then cover himself up with stone again. He would live the rest of his life there, away from Gus’ annoying kindness.
“By the way, do you want to come over to my house for dinner? We’re having ghost pepper chili, black-eye peas, and ribs. After dinner we can work on your idea about differentiating fellow scholars and dangerous graverobbers.”
No no no no no no. Mattholomule definitely needs to cast that giant pit spell. Or maybe throw Gus in one and leave him there. Or maybe both of them need to be thrown into pits. Separate holes, as far away from each other as possible.
Gus leaned forward a bit to whisper in Mattholomule’s ear.
“Maybe we can even read a few issues of Tween Bo$$ together. Don’t you want to read about human braces?”
Maybe a few weeks ago, Mattholomule would have thought Gus was plotting something. The classic “come over to my house!” that ended in humiliation and a couple bruises. Even Luz, who probably hasn’t completely forgiven him, treats him kindly. Gus has all the reason in the world to assert his dominance over a weaker witch.
Nobody on the Boiling Isles could be this nice.
There’s got to be a catch.
But Gus has been annoyingly insistent on calling Mattholomule his friend and smiling at him as if his presence made his day better. He wasn’t sure if getting that much positive attention was something he could get used to. It wasn’t that being around Gus was uncomfortable, it was just that it was too comfortable.
“Fine, I’ll tell my family,” Mattholomule brushed his bangs back again, collecting himself.
“Awesome, this is going to be so much fun!” Gus said.
“Yeah, I guess it will be.”
“Alright! Maybe one day we can even have a human themed sleepover!”
“Pfft, don’t get ahead of yourself, pipsqueak,” Mattholomule playfully slapped Gus on the back as he walked past.
Honestly, Mattholomule still wasn’t sure what he did to deserve such a pleasant weekend, but maybe these graveyard outings with Gus might be fine after all.