Page 87 of Search for the Lost

Aspin ventured a guess. “Buy a bigger pie safe?”

Leo shook his head. “Don't be silly; there isn't room for five elephants in a pie safe.”

The witch doubled over in laughter, narrowly missing hitting her head on the table. “Elephants! In a pie safe!” Her face was turning purple, and there was steam coming out of her ears.

“Go, Leo, go!” Crispin whispered. Leo’s hand found his and squeezed.

Aspin and Cypher collapsed in paroxysms of laughter.

His eyes narrowing, Leo went for the kill.

“How do you shoot a blue elephant?”

No one at the table was eating anymore.

“How?” Cypher threw it out there.

“With a blue elephant shotgun! How do you shoot a yellow elephant?”

“With a yellow elephant shotgun?” Even Aspin was getting into it.

“No, silly.” Leo was clearly relishing this. “Have you ever seen a yellow elephant?”

Everyone guffawed, chittered, or shrieked, and Nonna Strega’s howl ascended into a range that only dogs and wolves could hear.

Indeed, the WOLF-mice flattened their ears against their little skulls and put their little paws over their heads.

“How do you shoot a red elephant?”

Minkis chittered, which was a startling sound coming from a little boy with blueberry stains on nine of his ten human fingers. “Red elephant shotgun?”

Leo tousled his chestnut hair and shook his head. “Nope. You squeeze his trunk shut until he turns blue, and then shoot him with the blue elephant shotgun!”

The witch was coming apart at the seams, literally, with steam leaking out from her clothing, inflating it like a blow-up doll, but she kept on laughing. “More…” she gasped, reaching a steaming claw out toward him. “More!”

Leo flashed Crispin a wicked grin. “How do you shoot a purple elephant?”

Everyone stared at him blankly. Crispin had never been prouder of his person.

“Paint him red, then squeeze his trunk shut until he turns blue. Then⁠—”

“Shoot him with the blue elephant shotgun!” The room shouted in unison.

The witch was beaming, more beatifically happy than Crispin had ever seen anyone—except maybe some of his mother’s “clients” stumbling out of the bower after an eternal night with Her Majesty. And Leo, a few times, after a particularly energetic round of getting to know one another.

She floated up into the air, her arms outstretched, steam pouring out of her ears and nose and other orifices at a furious pace. Her mouth opened, and steam poured from there as well, sounding like a teakettle left on the stove a wee bit too long.

“Blue elephant shotgun!” It sounded like an epiphany.

Then her eyes popped, her face crumbled away, and her whole body shriveled up in one final howl of laughter, blowing out almost every candle in the room.

The steam cut off abruptly, and her clothing fell to the floor in a tangled heap. The plate of pastries disappeared in a puff of white steam, as did the horrible, heavy feeling in the pit of Crispin’s stomach.

He threw his arms around his love. “You did it! Leo, you did it!”

Leo blinked, looking regretfully at the space where the platter had been. “I did, didn’t I?”

Aspin held out his hand. “I’ll never say another bad thing about you again, brother-in-law to be. At least, not to your face.”