Thirteenth Child

CHAPTER 22

LAN AND WILLIAM AND I DIDN’T WASTE ANY TIME TELLING PROFESSOR Jeffries about Lan’s guess. I thought for sure somebody else must have noticed the same thing, but nobody had. Right away they started looking for the old River Forest settlement magician. Unfortunately, it turned out that the reason the settlement had collapsed was because their magician had died of a fever, and they’d been wiped out by a herd of woolly rhinoceroses before the Settlement Office sent a replacement.

Papa spent the next week wobbling between being proud enough of Lan to bust his suspenders and being mad enough at the Settlement Office to spit railroad spikes. Mr. Harrison made a terrible fuss over how long it had taken the college to figure out that there might be old spells at the Rationalist settlement, and never mind that his office had more maps and better ones, since they were the ones who handed out the settlement allotments. He sent people from his office over to the college labs and workrooms every day, and even came over himself a few times, until President Grey told him the visits were disrupting the college and wouldn’t be allowed any longer. That only helped a little, though, because right away he switched to peppering us with notes full of demands and suggestions.

We all ignored Mr. Harrison’s notes as best we could, and got on with our work. Everybody knew we didn’t have much time before the grubs emerged from their pupae as beetles, and if they kept on spreading, they’d be all the way to the Gulf of Amerigo in another two years, leaving nothing at all of the farm settlements west of the Mammoth River. So the college didn’t want to waste any time getting a group out to the Rationalist settlement to see why they didn’t have grubs, when everyone around them did.

The trouble was the Rationalists. The ones in Mill City flatly refused to let any magicians go out to their settlement. It took nearly the whole first week to get them to agree that if the people in the settlement itself were willing to let some magicians in, maybe it would be all right. Then the college had to negotiate with the settlement, which took even more time.

“I don’t understand those people,” Professor Graham said to Papa one evening. Professor Graham and William had been coming to dinner fairly often since the whole muddle began, because it was the only time they could be sure of talking without interruptions. “Don’t they understand how important this is?”

“They don’t like magic,” Lan said calmly. “Or magicians. That’s more important than anything else, to them.”

“It’s not that they don’t like it, exactly,” William said. “They think it’s a weakness to depend on it. At least, that’s what Brant Wilson said, when we used to argue while he was visiting Miss Rothmer.”

“They really wanted to prove people don’t need settlement spells to survive in the West,” I said. “I bet they’re pretty unhappy, hearing that they’re maybe doing so well because of some old settlement spells. We haven’t heard from Rennie since that came out.”

Papa set down his fork and pursed his lips. Then he looked at Professor Graham. “You know, Anthony, we may have been approaching these folks the wrong way.”

“Wrong way?” Professor Graham snorted. “We’ve told them what we need and why. The rational thing to do would be to stop all this pussyfooting around and let us do the investigation.”

“Even Rationalists are people first,” Papa said. “They don’t want to be proven wrong, and having taken a position, it’s as hard for them to back down under pressure as it would be for anyone else. But if we can find some way for them to save face…”

“Such as?”

“I haven’t seen my daughter in a good five years,” Papa said. “Nor met my grandsons. If we present this to the Rationalists as a family visit first, and an investigation second, perhaps they’ll be more agreeable.”

Professor Graham was skeptical, but no more so than usual, and by the end of the evening, he’d agreed it was worth a try. He and Papa put it to the college representative next morning, and within three days, they had the answer they wanted. The Rationalists agreed to let Papa and some other friends and family members come out to visit Rennie, with the understanding that while he was there, he could spend some time looking into the possibility that there were still spells around from the earlier settlement.

Things moved pretty quickly after that. There wasn’t even a lot of arguing over who to send; everyone was in a hurry to be off, and there weren’t that many possibilities anyway. Papa would go, of course, and Lan, because even if he was only eighteen, he was a double-seventh son and the Rationalists couldn’t object to Rennie’s brother coming to visit. Professor Graham wanted to go, but Dean Farley told him straight-out that they needed someone with a sight more tact, so he sent William as his representative. Professor Jeffries was going, and to my complete astonishment, he asked if I could come along, too, as his assistant.

Papa and Mama weren’t too keen on the notion at first, but they warmed up to it pretty fast. Papa was pleased because Professor Jeffries said I’d been doing such good work at the menagerie. Mama thought a little longer, then said that she’d go herself if she was up to it, but since she wasn’t, it’d be good for Rennie to see at least one of her sisters along with all the menfolk.

And then, just when everything looked like being finished, Mr. Harrison announced that because of the critical situation in the settlements, he would be coming along to observe firsthand. Professor Graham nearly had a fit, and nobody else was happy about it, either, but there wasn’t much anyone could do to stop him.

“It might actually be useful to have him,” Papa said once everyone had calmed down. “The Rationalists could change their minds at the last minute and decide they don’t want magicians in their settlement, but they can’t keep out the head of the Settlement Office even if their three years are up and the land is all theirs.”

“You’re too inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt, Rothmer,” Professor Graham said. “The day Harrison does anything useful will be the day ice dragons turn vegetarian and start hunting for coconuts in the Arctic Circle.”

Professor Jeffries made a noise like he’d swallowed something down the wrong pipe.

“The question is, what’s Mr. Harrison after?” William said thoughtfully. “He’s been in charge of the Settlement Office for a good ten years, and I’ve never heard of him going west of the Mammoth River even once. Why now?”

“He’s up to something,” Professor Graham said, nodding. He looked at Papa and Professor Jeffries. “Perhaps I should come with you after all.”

I went back to packing supplies, while everybody else pointed out to Professor Graham all the reasons why it would be a bad idea for him to come along. He took it pretty well, considering, but I couldn’t help wondering if maybe he was right. For someone as straightforward as he was, Professor Graham was surely good at seeing all the twisty ways other people played politics.

Thanks to Mr. Harrison, we left Mill City a day later than Papa had planned. We met at the north ferry landing, three miles from our house. Robbie and Mama came to see us off, and Professor Graham arrived with William a few minutes later. Mr. Harrison was so late that we nearly started without him, never mind the fuss he’d have made. The wagon and the horses had been loaded on the ferry for nearly an hour when he finally showed up, driving a light two-wheeled buggy with a rack on the back bulging with packages and bandboxes. Right off he made a fuss about starting immediately, as if it wasn’t his fault we were so behind schedule.

The head boatman looked at the buggy, spat, and told Mr. Harrison in no uncertain terms that only a fool would take a buggy like that over the Mammoth River.

“Nonsense,” Mr. Harrison snapped. “The settlement lands are my business, and I know my business well.”

“Suit yourself,” the boatman said, shrugging. “It’ll just break down five miles out and have to be hauled right back.”

It took another half hour to get Mr. Harrison’s horse and buggy loaded on the ferry, but finally we got underway. I stood in the back of the ferry and waved to Mama and Robbie. I felt scared and excited both. I’d been so busy getting ready for the trip that I’d hardly thought about seeing Rennie and Brant again. After five years, I wasn’t as cross with Rennie for running off and messing up Diane’s wedding, but I wasn’t sure I’d forgiven her, either. I didn’t know what I’d say to her. I had a suspicion that Lan felt the same way, though we’d never really talked about it.

Halfway across the river, the head boatman rang the big bell at the front of the ferry to warn everyone that we were starting to pass through the Great Barrier Spell. Then for good measure he yelled, “Sit down and brace!”

I turned. Up close, the Great Barrier Spell was more than just a hazy shifting in the air. Thousands of tiny rainbows flickered and flowed in all directions, marking the surface of an otherwise invisible curtain. The front end of the ferry was almost up to it, and I grabbed the railing just in time.

The ferry hit the barrier spell with a bump, as if it had struck a rock. It hung there for a moment, then slowly moved into the spell. The horses lurched and tried to spook in spite of the calming spells Professor Jeffries had cast on them before we left the dock. I couldn’t blame them. It was unsettling, watching the front end of the ferry ripple and go all shimmery while the rest of the boat stayed solid and normal. Watching the shimmers creep along the deck toward me was even more unsettling.

My skin tingled as the shimmer reached me. Without thinking about it, I relaxed and looked at the rippling air the way Miss Ochiba had taught me. The feelings Miss Ochiba called “sensing the world” flooded in. William and I had gotten plenty of practice sensing the normal spells around the menagerie during that last year, and if I’d thought about it, I’d have expected the Great Barrier Spell to feel just like them, only larger and stronger.

It didn’t. Oh, it was large and strong, no question, but it wasn’t strong the way Papa’s spells were strong. It was strong the way an ancient oak tree is strong, and large like looking for the end of the sky at night. I could feel pieces that fit together the way Avrupan magicians do team spells, but they all flowed together into one thing, the way Hijero–Cathayan magic does. And under and over and around it was the steady, endless coursing of the river and the magic that followed the river, supporting and powering the spell the way steam powers a railroad engine.

All of that magic was looking right back at me, almost like it was checking to see whether I was something dangerous that shouldn’t be let through. The glitter in the air got thicker around me. I flinched, but there was no getting away from it. I tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t. I felt like I was drowning.

Then we were through. The shimmering, sparkling air retreated toward the back of the ferry, and I could breathe again. I collapsed all in a heap on the deck of the ferry with my hands clamped tight to the railing over my head. I took a great gulp of air, and then another. I felt like I’d run all the way home from school, twice. After a minute, I forced my fingers open and wiped them against my skirts. I shoved myself up so I wasn’t so much of a heap, and then I just sat there.

The boatmen all jumped up and went back to work right away as if nothing unusual had happened. Papa and Professor Jeffries weren’t quite so quick, but they’d both been through the barrier spell every time they made a trip to the frontier. They stood up a second later and started reinforcing the calming spells on the horses. Mr. Harrison was still sitting on the deck looking stunned. When I saw that, I picked myself up fully, though I still felt a little wobbly. I wasn’t going to let Mr. Harrison get ahead of me, even if nobody else noticed.

Lan stood looking back at the barrier spell, with his hands clamped to the ferryboat rail as tight as mine had been and his feet spread like he was bracing himself. William was up against the cabin wall, breathing hard. After a minute or two, he pushed off from the wall and dusted his pants, then came over to me.

“Wow,” he said. “That was…wow.”

I nodded. I didn’t have to ask what he meant; he’d been part of Miss Ochiba’s Aphrikan magic class as long as I had, and if we hadn’t felt quite exactly the same thing, it’d for sure been close enough.

He gave me a sharp look. “You all right?”

I nodded again. “I just wasn’t expecting it to be like that, is all.”

William looked like he wanted to say more, but if he did, he thought better of it. Right then Lan came up, looking halfway poleaxed and shaking his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears. “How the—how did they do that?” he said.

“Yeah,” William said. “The theories don’t seem particularly likely, do they? Not the ones in my textbooks, anyway.”

“I thought Mr. Franklin and President Jefferson wrote down how they did it,” I said.

The boys looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “They did, sort of,” Lan said. “But Benjamin Franklin was a self-educated double-seventh son, and a lot of his spells he made up on his own. Some of his descriptions aren’t very informative. And it’s practically certain that he improvised a lot when it came to actually working the spell.”

“And Thomas Jefferson never could remember that most other magicians hadn’t read four thousand or so books the way he had,” William said. “And even if they had, sorting out all the references he thought were obvious is going to take scholars years and years.”

Lan nodded. “We spent a month in magic theory class last year arguing over whether ‘the adaptation of MacReady’s transformation sequence using the principles described by Hamid al-Rashid’ meant the Colin MacReady who wrote a treatise on physical transformation spells or the Leon MacReady who worked out how to apply mathematical transformations to magic, and whether it was the thirteenth-century Hamid al-Rashid from North Aphrika or the one from Byzantium in the early 1700s. We never did decide, and we never got around to figuring out how any of them applied to the spell at all.”

“Oh,” I said. We’d studied the Great Barrier Spell in my magic theory class, too, but we hadn’t read the actual descriptions Mr. Franklin and President Jefferson had left, only talked about them.

Lan shook his head again. “I’m going to help with the horses,” he said. “That, I can handle. Coming?”

“Too many cooks,” William said. “Besides, you think better when you’re doing something; I think better when I’m staring into space. And I want to think for a while.”

“Humbug,” Lan said. “You just say that because it gets you out of work.”

William grinned and shrugged. Lan bopped his shoulder in passing and went forward. Despite what he’d said, I thought William would follow him, but he stayed right next to me, leaning on the rail in companionable silence, for the whole rest of the crossing.