Across the Great Barrier

CHAPTER 17

CHAMP AND THE PROFESSOR AND I JUST SAT STARING AT THE CREEK while Wash stretched. The creek was filling rapidly with muddy water, but it didn’t look like too much, too fast. The front side of the landslide had a long, sloping channel carved through it about three or four feet wide, starting just below the level of the lake and running down into the newly re-formed creek. The water rushed and swirled around rocks and trees, but it wasn’t coming through quite strong enough to sweep them away. It looked like it would be a particularly nasty set of rapids, if you were in a boat.

“What did you do?” Professor Torgeson croaked as Wash came over to us. “That’s … What did you do?”

Wash gave her an extra-wide grin. “It’s a mite hard to explain in Avrupan terms,” he said. “The best way I can think to put it is that I invited the water that had backed up to soak into the dam and do what it would eventually do, anyway, only faster. Then when I had as much done as I wanted, I asked it to stop.”

“Asked it to stop,” the professor said faintly. “But —”

“But the creek is still eating away at the landslide,” Champ said, pointing. “If it wears through too fast, the rest of the dam will go.”

“It won’t,” Wash said. “Though even if it did, things wouldn’t be as bad now as they would be in a few months, when four or five times as much water was backed up.”

“How can you be sure?” Champ demanded.

“It was Miss Eff’s idea. There’s magic in flowing water. Once I got the water flowing through the blockage, I coaxed a little of its magic into the dam. That earth is set to stay put for a while. If I did it right, the water will wear a new channel and empty the lake, but slowly.”

“If you did it right?” the professor repeated.

“I’ll keep an eye on it for the rest of the day, just in case,” Wash promised. “And I’ll give it a good looking over tomorrow morning. That’s plenty long enough to see the signs, if there’s a problem. But I think all Promised Land needs to worry about now is Daybat Creek running a little high and a little muddy for a year or two.”

The professor had a lot of questions, but the more Wash tried to answer them, the more questions she seemed to have. Finally, he told her politely that she’d do better to write to one of the professors of Aphrikan magic down at Triskelion University, as they were more accustomed to explaining. Then he took a two-hour nap, and after that he went back down to check on the dam.

I didn’t say much through the discussion. It was clear from the way Champ kept sticking his oar in that he’d seen and understood a lot more of what Wash was doing than I had. It didn’t sit right that a boy two years younger than me was so much better at world-sensing, even if he’d probably been learning Aphrikan magic his whole life long. I decided right then to study up, even if doing world-sensing in the grub-ravaged areas was unpleasant.

Wash didn’t find any problems with the creek or the dam, that afternoon nor next morning. As soon as he said it was clear, we started packing up the camp. The professor and Champ had a few words over all the statue pieces the professor wanted to bring back with us. Champ said there were too many, and they’d be too heavy for the horses, but the professor said we’d already picked out the best ones and she didn’t want to leave any more behind.

Finally, Wash put his foot down. “Champ won’t be coming with us any farther than Promised Land,” he pointed out. “We’ll have one less horse to carry whatever we take. I expect you can fit a few more rocks in the saddlebags if you took out some of those specimens you’ve been collecting.”

“These are specimens,” the professor said firmly. “Possibly even more so than you think.”

“I thought it was plants and animals you were collecting,” Champ said. “Not statues.”

Professor Torgeson got a stubborn look on her face for a minute, then sighed. “These are not statues,” she said.

“They surely do look like statues to me,” Champ said. “Broken ones.”

The professor shook her head. “They aren’t carved; even under a magnifying glass, there are no tool marks. And look here.” She pulled out the magnifying glass and grabbed one of the rocks. “You can see every hair individually. Look at the way they lie — they’re not straight and neat when you get this close, even though they look that way without the glass.”

We all looked. She was right. They looked like real hairs, too, not just lines scratched into wood or stone like most of the statues I’d seen.

“No artist in the world could create that kind of detail,” Professor Torgeson said. “There are no tools that will carve that finely, and no spells, either. And there are hundreds of these here, from all kinds of animals, and every one I’ve studied has that level of detail. But this is the real key.”

She flipped the stone over, so that we could see the broken-off surface. It looked to have cracked off nice and smooth, until she held the magnifying glass over it. Then we could see faint lines. Champ’s eyes widened. “That looks like …”

“Blood vessels,” the professor said, nodding. “On the inside of the stone. They go all the way through; I broke off a corner of one to make sure. Bones, too. I’m almost afraid to get these back to the college and find out what they look like under a microscope.”

“Nobody could do that,” Champ said with conviction.

“But if they aren’t statues …” I didn’t finish the sentence. It was pretty obvious what the professor thought, because we all thought it, too, after seeing blood vessels and bones inside solid rock. I just didn’t want to hear her actually say it.

“Just so,” the professor said, like she didn’t want to say it out loud, either. She hesitated, then went on. “Old Scandia has legends of creatures that would turn to stone if sunlight touched them. That can’t be what happened here; we’ve found too many different species, and too many that aren’t magical at all. It could be something similar, though — something about this place, perhaps. That’s why I want to bring as many different specimens as we can, so we can find out what they have in common.”

Champ yelped. “Something about this place turned all these animals to stone? And you let us camp here?”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Professor Torgeson said reprovingly. “It’s one possible theory, that’s all.”

“Seems like the obvious explanation to me,” Champ muttered. “And I still don’t think we should be camping here.”

“Whatever did this, it happened long ago,” Professor Torgeson said reassuringly. “Centuries, probably. None of the specimens is of recent origin. And we aren’t even sure yet that the stones are … were animals at all, much less how they got this way. Fossil bones have been found in other places; it’s quite possible that these creatures were converted to stone after their deaths, by some natural process we do not yet understand.”

I could tell by the way she said it that she didn’t really believe what she was saying. I thought about the snarling expression on the stone squirrel’s face, and decided I didn’t really believe it, either.

“It’s a right interesting problem,” Wash said after a minute. “But interesting or not, we still don’t have room for every bit you’ve set aside.”

The professor rolled her eyes but nodded. “I knew this would happen,” she grumbled. “I told Jeffries we needed more than one pack animal. Oh, very well, I’ll go through everything one last time. But if Jeffries complains when we get back, I’m sending him to you.”

The professor took Wash’s words greatly to heart, because she ended up only choosing one satchelful of the best pieces. Champ was pleased that the squirrel’s head he’d found was one. So was my barn swallow. She took the piece she said was from an ice dragon, too, but she said she’d leave it at Promised Land. It was too large to haul all the way to Mill City, and the professor didn’t think it would be as interesting to anyone else right off, the way the squirrel and the barn swallow would.

Champ and I each took one of the stones ourselves, as mementos. His was another paw, from something considerably larger than a squirrel that Wash couldn’t identify. I took a small bird that looked like it had been caught in mid-flight. The head and parts of the wings had broken off, or I think the professor would have taken it instead of my barn swallow.

Getting back to Promised Land didn’t seem like as much of a chore as getting out to the dam had been. We dropped Champ off with Mrs. Turner and Mr. Ajani, and told them what we’d found and what Wash had done about it. Mr. Ajani asked some questions about the spell Wash had used, and he gave me an approving look when Wash said I’d been the one to think of using the magic of the creek itself. Mrs. Turner looked skeptical, but she didn’t say anything.

Wash told them to keep a close eye on the water level in the creek, and maybe check on the dam again in a few days. Then Professor Torgeson told them about the stones and advised them to be extra careful if they meant to stay long anywhere around the landslide. Even if we hadn’t had any difficulties, we still didn’t know what had happened there, and it was best not to take chances. Also, the historical excavators would want everything left exactly as it was, or at least as much as possible. Mrs. Turner looked a bit miffed, especially by the comment on the excavators, but Mr. Ajani just said that anyone they sent would certainly take care, and that was that.

We stayed the night in Promised Land and went on the next day. We had to ride longer and harder than we’d planned in order to make up all the time we’d lost, and even then, it quickly became plain that we weren’t going to be able to survey the whole circuit the way the college had planned. Professor Torgeson wasn’t best pleased, but Wash just shrugged and said he’d have been more surprised if we’d been able to stick to the schedule.

For the rest of the trip, I practiced world-sensing faithfully every morning. It worked just the way it had when I was watching Wash do the spell at Daybat Creek. When I first started, I’d get a splitting headache, but if I kept at it for a minute, the headache went away, and the only problem was the mildly unpleasant sensation of the grub-devastated land. It got even easier when we finally turned east and left the area that the grubs and mirror bugs had destroyed. Even the headache stopped. And then, three nights before we reached the ferry, I had another dream.

Like the flying dream, it was sharp and clear, and the clarity lingered even after I woke. I dreamed I was standing on the bank of the Mammoth River. It was a clear night, and the stars were bright overhead. I could see Mill City on the far shore, faintly outlined against the sky, but where I stood was only wilderness. West Landing was gone, and so was the shimmer of the Great Barrier Spell that should have hung over the middle of the river. Everything was dark and still.

I felt a breath of wind and saw a light on the opposite bank. As the light moved toward me, I saw that it was a log raft with a waist-high railing around the edge. But the logs weren’t logs of wood; each one was a different spell, shaped into a log. The boards that made up the railing were more spells, and likewise every nail that held it all together. The glow of the spells brightened as the raft came closer, until I could hardly stand to look at it.

At last the raft bumped gently against the bank, right where I stood. A gate in the rail swung open, and I stepped on board. The end of the raft where I stood sank lower in the water, then lifted a little. The raft began to move again, back toward the city on the far shore. I felt sad and excited at the same time; sad for what I was leaving and excited by what I was going back to.

Halfway across the river, the raft stopped moving and began to sink. I hit at the railing, trying to break it and release its magic so that the raft would surface and take me safe to shore, but it was too strong. The water crept up to my knees, then my waist. The raft sank completely, and I floundered in the dark until the deep current pulled me down. I woke in a cold sweat, just before I drowned.

I didn’t sleep well for the rest of the night, and I wasn’t good for much the next day. I was careless enough with the professor’s specimen case that she ended up giving me a good scold, and I had to force myself to do my world-sensing practice. I was surprised when it worked the same as always; I’d been expecting more headaches or an upset stomach or something.

Two nights later, on the night before we reached the ferry, I had the dream again. It was exactly the same: the silent river, the glowing spell-raft, the passage halfway across, the raft sinking. I jerked awake in my bedroll, gasping.

Once I’d calmed down a little, I started in on wondering why I’d had the exact same dream twice. I’d heard of folks who believed all sorts of things about regular dreams — that they were messages from people who’d died, or that they were visions of the past, or symbols of the future. If people could believe all that about ordinary, muddled-up dreams, I figured it was possible that the dream I’d been having was more than just a plain old dream. I didn’t know how to check on it, though it did occur to me that if I had the same dream again, I ought to make real sure I never climbed out onto that raft.

Wash rousted us out early in the morning so that we could all get cleaned up in West Landing before we crossed back to Mill City. He said he didn’t mind turning up a bit shaggy himself, but he wasn’t about to face my mother or Professor Jeffries with me looking like a ragamuffin. Professor Torgeson laughed and nodded; next thing I knew, Wash had sent us off to a ladies’ hairdresser while he went to the barbershop.

I was more uneasy at crossing back over the Mammoth River than I’d ever been before, but it was an entirely uneventful trip. We didn’t even have any problem getting the professor’s specimens through the Great Barrier Spell, though I’d expected that the few magical plants and insects we’d collected would be a problem at the least. Wash saw us back to Professor Jeffries at the college, then took himself off to the Settlement Office. I stayed most of the afternoon, helping Professor Torgeson unpack and sort all the specimens she’d brought back.

When I finally got home, Mama had made a welcome-back dinner that couldn’t have been fancier if I’d been gone ten years. She’d made Nan and her husband come for it, even though she only found out at the last minute when I was for sure going to be home. She’d have had Jack and Rennie, too, if they’d been anywhere in reach.

It was nice to be fussed over, and nicer still to sleep in a proper bed again. I was surprised by how fast I got used to being home. I fell right back into my old routine, working for Professor Jeffries and Professor Torgeson most of the day and then coming home to do chores. It almost felt as if I hadn’t been away, except for the little broken stone bird on my nightstand. And then, a month after we got back, I had the dream again.

This time, when the raft touched the shore at my feet and the little gate swung open, I backed away. For a long moment, the raft just sat there, and then it sank all at once, boom. The dark river swooshed in to cover where the raft had been. And then the riverbank collapsed under me, and once again I was sinking in the cold, dark water.

My head went under, but I didn’t wake up the way I had before. I opened my eyes and saw the raft, glowing in the depths below me. I knew I couldn’t get back to the surface, so I swam down toward the raft instead.

As I drew near, I saw a braided silver rope as big around as my thumb floating toward me. At the far end of the rope, the three strands of the braid separated. One was tied to the raft; the other two strands went off into the dark depths of the river, and I couldn’t see where they ended.

Part of me wanted to grab hold of the silver rope, and part of me was afraid of what might happen if I did, and all of me was running out of air and time. I woke up before I died or decided what to do, though at least I wasn’t in a panic the way I’d been the last two times.

I still didn’t know what to make of the dreams. I couldn’t see talking to Mama or Papa about them, and William and Lan were both still out East. Wash was back out in the settlements, checking on some of the ones we hadn’t visited.

That left Professor Torgeson, but even after spending over three months with her in the West, I felt a little shy of speaking with her. I didn’t have much in the way of other choices, though, so after two days of dithering, I went to her office late in the afternoon when I was done working for Professor Jeffries.