Across the Great Barrier

CHAPTER 18

PROFESSOR TORGESON’S OFFICE WAS A NARROW LITTLE ROOM IN A back corner of the house that the college had used to hold science classes when it was just starting up, before they got the first two-story classroom building built. Her desk, two chairs, and a bookcase used up every bit of space there was, so she’d found a long wooden table somewhere and stuck it just outside her door to hold all the specimens we’d brought back. When I got to her office, she was standing over the table, fiddling with a skinny, rectangular glass jar and looking harried.

“Eff!” she said in tones of relief when she saw me. “You’re just the person I need. I’ve run out of long-term holding jars, and some of these specimens will begin to deteriorate soon if they’re not moved to some semblance of proper storage. Would you mind checking with Dean Farley to find out whether there are any ordinary containers around that will hold a medium-long-term enchantment? Even if they only hold the spells a month or two, it’ll save these materials long enough for us to get more jars shipped in from the East.”

“Of course, Professor,” I said, and went off to see if I could catch the dean. I didn’t find him, but I did run into Professor Graham, who said he thought there were some glass containers in the cellar. They turned out to be canning jars with lids too old to be used for canning food, but when I showed them to Professor Torgeson, she said they’d work admirably for temporary specimen storage, as long as nobody banged them around.

“Has Professor Jeffries taught you the spell for preserving samples?” she asked me.

“No, Professor,” I said.

“I’ll teach you, then. Enchanting all these jars will go much faster with two of us working. You know the general storage spell?”

I nodded hesitantly. “They taught that in second year of upper school.” I didn’t add that I hadn’t ever made it work until I started pushing at my spells with Aphrikan magic. I’d been casting it fine at home as part of my chores since then.

“The sample-preserving spell is based on that one, but it’s more advanced — much more specific, and considerably stronger. You shouldn’t have any trouble learning it.”

“I guess,” I said doubtfully.

“It’s a bit fiddly, but not actually difficult,” she assured me. “Like this.” She showed me how to set up the work area, and what the hand motion was, and told me the chant. She was right; it was fiddly. The three white feathers had to be exactly in position, and they had to be laid down first, so that I had to take extra care with every movement I made after that so as not to shift them while I drew the circle around them. The timing of the passes and the chant had to be exact, too — no speeding or slowing the pace. But the motions weren’t hard, just a flat-palmed wave three times over the jar and the feathers in the circle, and the chant wasn’t a tongue-twister. Mostly, you just had to pay attention and be careful.

“Now you try it,” the professor said after she’d enchanted the first jar and walked me through.

I stepped up to the corner of the table. I cleared the work space, then reset everything and drew the circle. Out of habit, I started up my Aphrikan world-sensing and the Hijero-Cathayan concentration exercise that Miss Ochiba had taught me, so I could tweak the magic of the spell directly if it started to go wrong.

I felt a little uncomfortable when I noticed what I was doing. Ever since our first crossing of the Great Barrier Spell back at the start of summer, when Wash had noticed me tweaking the calming spell on my horse, I’d been trying to do all my Avrupan magic properly, without using Aphrikan magic to prop it up if it went wrong. But I hadn’t had much call to do Avrupan spells during our time out in the settlements, and since I’d been home, I’d only been working household spells that I knew pretty well already and didn’t have much need to prop up. I told myself I was just worried about learning a new spell because I’d been using the Aphrikan and Hijero-Cathayan magic to help learn all through my last year at upper school.

Then I had to put my worrying out of my mind, because I had to pay attention to the actual spell casting. At first, it went fine. I could sense the spell rising up around the little jar, slow and steady, like making a box by balancing jackstraws on each other one at a time.

And then the box started wobbling. Without thinking, I pushed at it, trying to put it back in balance, but that only made the wobble worse. In another second, the whole structure of magic collapsed, leaving three burned feathers and an ordinary, unspelled jar sitting in the middle of the table.

Professor Torgeson didn’t seem disturbed. “I did say it was fiddly,” she told me. “It took me four tries to get it to stick, the first time. Try again.”

She fetched more feathers while I cleaned up the work space, and I tried again. This time, I hadn’t even finished the first hand pass before the spell caved in. Professor Torgeson just handed me some more feathers.

By my eighth try, the professor was frowning slightly and I was getting frustrated. I hadn’t tried to tweak the spell since my first try, but I was so annoyed by this time that when I saw the magic starting to break down again, I couldn’t stand it. I made a mental circle around the outside of the box made of magic, like cupping my two hands around it, and held it all in place.

For a few seconds, I thought it would work. The canning jar I was working on started to glow, and Professor Torgeson smiled. Then the spell collapsed inward. There was a bright flash, and when our eyes cleared, the professor and I were staring at a puddle of glass where the canning jar had been. The top of the table was charred black for two inches around the glass, and the feathers were little smears of ash.

“Well,” said Professor Torgeson after a minute. “I’ve never seen that happen before.”

“I’m sorry, Professor,” I said in a low tone. “I just … I never have been much good with Avrupan magic. I think you’d better enchant all the jars yourself.”

“What?” The professor tore her eyes away from the puddle. “Nonsense! You just overloaded the spell. Though I’ve never seen quite so much of an overload before.” She looked at me with a considering expression. “Your twin brother is some sort of prodigy, isn’t he?” She put just the faintest extra emphasis on twin.

“Lan’s a double-seventh son,” I said. “I’m … not.” William and Wash and Miss Ochiba had spent a long time convincing me that being a thirteenth child didn’t make me evil or unchancy, and I mostly believed it myself now, but I was still leery of telling other people. I’d had too much unpleasantness in my life from people who truly did think I was bad luck, and I didn’t relish risking more if I didn’t have need.

Professor Torgeson didn’t let it go, though. “Yes, yes, I can see that you aren’t a son,” she said. “But what are you?”

I sighed. “I’m the older twin, and I’m a seventh daughter,” I told her. “Not a double-seventh daughter, though.”

“Pity,” the professor said absently. “I don’t recall ever hearing of a pair of twin double-sevens. I expect they’d be something exceptional, if they ever happened. Still, a pair of twins where one is a seventh and the other a double-seventh is quite remarkable. It might well explain the amount of power you put into that spell.”

“I —”

“Frustration no doubt had a fair bit to do with it, too,” the professor went on. She tilted her head, studying the table once more. “Why don’t you see if you can scare up a pair of work gloves and a cleaning knife? We can’t leave this as it is.”

I found a pair of work gloves in the kitchen, but I had to go all the way over to the laboratory building for the cleaning knife. When I got back, Professor Torgeson had cleared off the other end of the table and was busy enchanting canning jars. I scraped and pried at the puddle of glass until it came free from the table, then took it out to the waste bin.

Professor Torgeson looked up as I returned. “Ready to try again?” she asked, nodding toward the table. She’d already set up the feathers and the canning jar. All that remained was to cast the spell.

I gaped at her. “You want me to try again? After that?” I waved at the charred spot on the table.

“Of course,” Professor Torgeson said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “If you don’t try again, you’ll never learn the spell.”

“But —”

“You aren’t frustrated now, and attitude has a good deal to do with spell work. Go on, now.”

I was so surprised that I did what she said, without using Aphrikan magic or anything. The spell still didn’t work, but at least the canning jar didn’t melt.

“Again,” Professor Torgeson commanded.

“In a minute, please, Professor,” I said, staring at the work space. It had been so long since I’d cast an Avrupan spell without using Aphrikan magic to help that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Almost, but not quite — and the sample-preserving spell felt different from what I remembered. It needed something, some balance point … and then I remembered what it felt like to do the Aphrikan world-sensing. Like building with jackstraws, one at a time, I thought. Only I couldn’t build a straw box and keep up the world-sensing at the same time.

Slowly and carefully, I cast the spell again. This time, I didn’t use any world-sensing, but I concentrated on the feel of the spell itself. In the back of my mind, I pictured putting jackstraws on top of each other, one by one, very gently so as not to knock anything loose.

I spoke the last word as my hand completed the final pass. For just a second, I thought I’d failed again … and then the canning jar glowed, bright but not blinding. The glow faded, and I looked at the professor without even trying to keep from grinning. “I did it!”

“That you did,” Professor Torgeson said. “And a good job, too.” She plucked the jar out from the feathers and replaced it with another one. “Again.”

It took me three tries (it really was a fiddly spell), but I did it. She made me do five more jars before she was satisfied that I could keep it up; then she stacked all the unenchanted jars in the indent of the table where we could both reach them, and took herself down to the other end to do some spell casting of her own.

It took the two of us quite a while to finish, and I never did tell the professor about my strange dreams. I was late getting home to dinner. I didn’t pay much heed to the scolding Mama and Allie gave me, though I knew I deserved it. I was too busy thinking about the way Professor Torgeson had made me keep trying that spell, even after I melted the canning jar. When I was in upper school, no one ever made me redo my spells once they’d gone badly wrong.

But Professor Torgeson hadn’t just made me try again right away, I thought. She’d sent me off to get cleanup tools, and made me clean up first. She’d given me a little time, but not so much that I’d talk myself into a funk over having melted the jar.

The other thing that occurred to me was that I’d been using Aphrikan magic all wrong for near on to a year now. I hadn’t really been trying to work my Avrupan spells right — well, I’d been trying to the first time I cast them, but I hadn’t been using my Aphrikan world sense to see what I’d done wrong so I could do it the right way on my next try. I’d only ever just watched to see when the magic started going wrong, so I could shove it back into place. And since I never bothered to figure out why things went wrong, I’d make the same mistakes the next time I cast the spell. No wonder I couldn’t do Avrupan spells properly!

On the other hand, I’d had a lot of trouble with Avrupan magic before I ever started using Aphrikan magic to force my spells to work. I thought about that all evening, but it wasn’t until I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, that I finally figured out why.

I’d never thought of my problems with Avrupan magic as mistakes that I could learn to fix.

First, for years, I’d thought all my troubles were because I was an unlucky thirteenth child. On top of that, I’d been so afraid of what I might do if I went bad that I stopped ever really trying to learn Avrupan magic. Once I found out that I could do spells after all, and stopped really believing that being thirteenth-born was the reason for my problems, I was so used to messing up that I kept right on doing it without thinking. And when I found out that Aphrikan world-sensing could force my spells to work, that’s all I’d used it for.

I thought some more. Professor Torgeson had said that the sample-preserving spell was based on the general storage spell, and I’d thought I could make it work the same way I’d been making the general storage spell work. But I’d never really learned how to cast the general storage spell properly, without Aphrikan magic.

I sat up. The house was dark and quiet. I thought about waiting until morning, but I wanted to know if I was right. I slid out of bed, and the wooden pendant Wash had given me thumped against my breastbone.

I snuck down the hall to the linen cupboard and canceled the storage spell. There wasn’t much chance of moths getting into the blankets this late in the year, though there was still a month or two before Mama would have to get them out to put on the beds. Holding my breath, I cast the storage spell.

It didn’t work the first time, or the second, but on my third try I felt the magic click into place just the way it was supposed to.

I did a little jig in the hallway in my bare feet, and then crept back to my room. Halfway there, I pulled up short. Part of why I’d had such a hard time learning Professor Torgeson’s spell was that I hadn’t known the everyday spell it was based on. I’d proven that I could learn it after all, but it was just one spell. I hadn’t learned any of the basic Avrupan spells, not really, not since Miss Ochiba had left and I’d started upper school. I was going to have to learn all of them all over again.

I trudged the rest of the way to my room. Four years’ worth of spells was a lot. On the other hand, I already knew all the theory, and I’d gotten most of them to work by pushing them around with Aphrikan magic, so really, all I had to do was try them a couple of times without Aphrikan magic. Probably.

As I climbed back into bed, I resolved to try. I felt a little tingle from Wash’s pendant as I snuggled down to sleep, just a brush across my skin, really. And then I was dreaming again, the same drowning dream I’d had twice before. Once more, I saw the glowing raft come toward me through the night; once more I tried to back away and felt the ground beneath me give as the raft sank; once more I swam through the murky water toward the golden glow. This time, though, I took firm hold of the braided silver rope as soon as I could reach it and started pulling myself toward the raft.

The raft vanished. I paused for a second, then kept pulling myself along. There had to be something at the other end of the rope, whether it was the raft or not. I had nearly reached the spot where the braid had unraveled into three separate strands when everything around me went blindingly white.

Next thing I knew, I was standing in a forest. I took a deep breath. It looked like one of the grub-killed woods we’d seen in the West, all bare trees and silence. I was scared, but nowhere near as scared as I’d been when I’d thought I was drowning.

I still had my hands tight around the silver rope, only it wasn’t a rope anymore. I had just one strand of the braid. The other two had disappeared. The strand I held ran off into the forest in front of me. I turned around, but I didn’t see it anywhere behind me. When I looked down at my hands, I realized that the strand vanished half a foot behind my fingers. As I moved my hands forward along the strand, the back part disappeared six inches past my grip. I wondered what would happen if I dropped it, but I wasn’t about to try it to find out.

I tugged, but nothing happened. Either there was too much cord to pull toward me, or it was fastened to something too far away for me to see. I sighed. I didn’t want to stay where I was, and I really, really didn’t want to go wandering around this wood without a direction. That only left one choice.

I slid my hands along the silver cord and started walking.