This all led her to explaining the various kinds of joints, and how a necromancer could mimic them. Doubting eyes opened wide at the range of options, and the understanding that form and function were often linked in a necromancer's art. That the ribs could act not just to protect, but as bellows to increased the heat of the boiler startled them, until she explained that fanning a flame and breathing were very similar. Each took air, forcing it into the chest cavity, where most, but not all, necromancers placed the boilers.
The discussions went on as each group was set their task, to create the beast. As Elisa told them, while the guard version she demonstrated to them all on was one way to make the beasts, other uses could be there, from towing wagons or plows not self powered already to riding, digging, and many other uses. When one student mentioned the cutting down of trees, and asked how steam could do that as well, like the beavers they were creating had when their specimen lived, more ideas jumped around, just like in any good shop or school. Elisa smiled a lot that day, proud of her students, and the minds they used without as many preconceptions as her eastern counterparts overcame to be masters and journeymen in the craft.
"Looking at this bone, again, we see the marks of teeth, so we know that some sort of other creature chewed on this carcass before it became covered with the thin layer of ash. Now, noting that our band of ash is so large, and fell in many layers, what else can we deduce from this?" Elisa was using the notes on the dig to expand a bit during the time everyone was taking the measurements and working with the bone for the making of the molds to expand on the whole field.
One of the girls spoke up first. "Well, that the ash came like winter snows, in bursts over time."
"Yes." The change in the youths from tenative to inquisitive was remarkable to her. And very heartening. "If we were to give the samples of the various layers to an alchemist, perhaps, we might even find out more about the eruptions. Such as the types of rock, and even perhaps the volcano it came from." She took out her spectacles, and began listing some of the known eruptions in ancient times, and even the more recent ones. With depth of ash fall at locations known for reliable measurements.
"Miss Elisa? Could the ash be all one volcano? See these bone marks, I know them, I find them in bison we know live in the smoking lands, or who suffered in the season of great fires when the smoke covered the land all summer and fall." More impressive, and the only reason Elisa knew this answer is she asked a vetrinarian lived in Akron about the bone deformities.
"Yes, it is possible. In fact, I think we could say the fossils in the upper layers turned out to be the hardier specimens, as they lasted longer." She took a deep breath. "Looking at this, I think we should begin sampling the ash layer the beasts are in, and the one below, as well as making cores of the area, lifting out complete samples of the ash in profile to study the layers once frozen in glass." She paused, "I think its time to send to some other group to assist us as well. Our dig team found a few more fossils today, so we will need several more specialist, and I hope, but cannot promise, that they will accept apprentices from the tribe." She gave the class a long look, meeting the eyes of those who raised their heads. "Most Masters would tell you they never release an apprentice, but if any of you find a better, stronger calling and a master to take you into that art, let me know. I will let you go to grow more, just asking you remember what I teach as well, and be fair to you former classmates."
The laughter was a bit tense, though a few eyes became more thoughtful, as if seeing where she really steered the class, to a combined arts approach. The youth had seen other digs, and the fights between the members of the arts, both in between the various guilds, and infighting with guilds. Several digs were abandoned by their workers over those very battles, leaving new skeletons to join the old ones lying under sun, blown dirt and eventually grass.
Elisa saw the nods in the few eyes that followed her meaning, that one should be open to the work of all disciplines to cooperate in building their knowledge. Not to repeat those battles they had seen over territory and rights, but to share all things towards a better way of working as teams of differing knowledge. Her Masters and colleagues would despise her for this, but it was her parent's legacy, and she intended to spread the wealth of knowledge they had amassed out, while promoting others to join hands in research across the borders of the arts as well.
Then the steam whistle on her wagon sounded, as Ivan called lunch break for all. The students all stored their tools carefully, for that was one thing Elisa was a task master on, and two begged others to bring them a meal back, as they created their first plaster casting of a thigh bone for casting parts from. Elisa was warmed at how her crew worked together, forgoing the rivalries so far that tore apart the once tight first year groups in her own studies back east. Oh, they would come, the rivalries, but she tried now to make them good natured and friendly ones, not the cut throat things of the east.
Elisa stayed a while, watching over the making of the pair working with the plaster, trying not to hover over them the way her casting master teacher had, but not be inattentive. It took skill not to break pieces of the fossils as they opened it, but this stage could be just as bad. Plaster in a crack, no matter how small, would expand as it dried, destroying both the cast and the bone. Which could, on key bones that fitted in a specific way, be ruinous to the project.
Ivan's metal claw held out a plate of sausages, sauerkraut, potates and corn from a nearby Sioux farm village. "Relax, they have touch. and that bone is very sound. You and I must do right foreleg though. Many cracks. Need to show them right way for those problems." He waved the plate again, his good hand holding his own. "Do not make me drop plate of food by bleeding out all my steam."
Elisa smiled, taking the plate gently, and walking to her own table. She kept silverware in a drawer there now, eating lunch, and sometimes her dinner on the cottonwood planks, with writings and plans around her plate. Papers were also beginning to fill the small shelf on the wall behind her chair. Plans for the beast on the table now, plans for the mammoths, and now maps, sketches and other ideas for things from Ivan's new finds, two separate kinds of ancient bone crunching dogs, a camel, some horses of various kinds, and the newest find, the one sheet Ivan pulled from a pocket, setting his plate to join her.
"A rhino? We have a rhino? Dear God, which kind?" Elisa whispered it, hoping not to inspire another wave of worry in the camp over more attacks from others besides Night Ivory. Rhino horn, even the fossil kind, was in high demand in many places and for many uses, from tonics and potions to knife handles and other ornamentation.
To have such a find here boded well. Rhinos rarely moved around solitarily, the beasts even in the ancient times, was a herd beast. When lone fossils were found, it was often in hunt sites, sans the horn if man had been there, or scattered bits washed from a deposit. Or the rare lone male, but she was sure by the twinkle in Ivan's eye there was more than one.
"Da, debeitsa, many rhinos, a thunder of them indeed. The river ones, short and fat. Big horns, and intact. One looks to be a babe that was nursing at time it and mother died." That pair, if lifted intact, and images taken by the daguerreotypist would yield a fortune from any museum back east. Ivan knew they had the find of a life time.
And now Elisa smiled, tasting the food, good German food from a new lady in town, who did not wish to be in competition with Eats Plums, but work for her. The two were getting along great, combining their arts into something great. The town would survive, just on the fame of the cafe alone many felt. The dig, and its wonders, that left many things to be decided. Outside the call of "Tatanka! Tatanka!" came. The hunters had spotted bison, and that was a good thiing, for meat was getting harder to find locally, though some deer appeared down by the Elkhorn from time to time.
Smiling, Elisa relaxed, knowing it was indeed a good day.
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