Thirteenth Child

CHAPTER 27

TALKING TO WASH DIDN’T TURN OUT TO BE AS EASY AS I THOUGHT. First there was breakfast to make, which meant rousting out Wash and the boys so Rennie and I would have room to move around the stove. Then Professor Jeffries arrived right after breakfast to start setting things up to look for the old settlement spells.

“What on earth are you doing?” Rennie demanded when Lan and William showed up with the first of the supply boxes from the wagon.

Papa glanced at Brant, then explained about the old settlement spells and finding out what was keeping the grubs away from the Oak River settlement.

Rennie scowled. “That’s nonsense,” she said. “We’ve had grubs and beetles here, just like everywhere else. You should have asked about it first, before you came on a wild-goose chase.”

“What’s that?” Professor Jeffries said. He frowned at Wash. “I thought Oak River was clear of those grubs!”

Wash shrugged. “I haven’t found any, passing through, and you saw the difference in damage for yourself on the trip here. But if Mrs. Wilson has seen some, I expect they were here. Some of them, anyway.”

That got Professor Jeffries so interested that he almost forgot about setting up the detection spells. He wanted to go out looking for grubs right away, and it took Papa reminding him that all the grubs were pupating into beetles right at the moment to settle him down some. Then Wash suggested that he and Brant and Lan and William go out and try to find some of the pupae for the professor to study. Wash said he knew just the sorts of places to look, even if there weren’t as many grubs around Oak River as there were in other places.

Professor Jeffries agreed that looking at the actual pupae might be very useful, especially since they should be just about ready for the beetles to come out. Papa was dubious about the whole thing, at first. He didn’t like the idea of letting the boys outside the settlement when there weren’t any spells to keep the wildlife off. But Brant told him the settlers hadn’t found it as dangerous as everyone said, and Wash promised to keep an extra eye on them (which made Lan and William very cross, as they felt quite old enough to keep an eye on themselves). Finally Papa let them go. So the boys and Wash all left, and Papa and Professor Jeffries went back to setting up their spell.

Rennie wasn’t too happy about what Papa and Professor Jeffries were doing. She said she had enough trouble with the neighbors on account of being a magician’s daughter, without Papa and everybody doing actual spells. I thought that was awfully two-faced of her, when she was doing all sorts of spells on the sly herself. I almost told her so, but she caught me frowning at the fly-block netting and closed her mouth with a snap, so I didn’t have to say anything after all.

Setting up the detection spells was a long and fiddly business. In order to keep the spell casting to a minimum and not upset the Rationalists too much, Papa and the other magicians from the college had decided not to do things in stages, the way they usually did. Instead, they’d wrapped everything up into one big spell that was supposed to do everything at once—detect the residue of the old settlement spells, find the places where it was strongest, collect as much information as possible about it, and analyze the information to find out how they were different from normal settlement spells.

That meant every element of all those spells had to be balanced and combined into a new spell. Papa said that what they’d done was a big step forward that would help magicians all over with combining spells, once they’d tested it a few more times and gotten some of the bugs out, but for now it was a cranky, fussy, delicate bit of magic.

Mr. Harrison was another big problem. He arrived around mid-morning, and right away wanted to know where Lan was. He got really angry when he found out that Lan was off hunting for pupae and beetles instead of working on the detection spell.

“It is foolish for you to waste such valuable talent on something anyone could do,” he said. “Digging for beetles? Bah! And the risk—the wildlife—”

“I’m quite confident that Brant and Mr. Morris will take good care of my son,” Papa said.

“Your son is a double-seventh son!” Mr. Harrison retorted. “Surely the power he has would be of enormous use here.”

“This spell requires skill and finesse, not power,” Professor Jeffries put in. “As you’d know if you’d read any of the reports the college sent you. Or understood them.”

Mr. Harrison scowled. “A double-seventh son has luck as well as power,” he pointed out.

“I think my luck will be quite sufficient,” Papa said in a dry tone.

“Your…oh.” You could just see the moment when Mr. Harrison realized that if Lan was a double-seventh son, Papa had to be a seventh son. I don’t think that it had occurred to him before.

Mr. Harrison subsided at last, still muttering. Papa and Professor Jeffries finished setting up the spell while Rennie and I finished the household chores. Rennie did most of the housework herself, with baby Lewis in tow, while I watched out for Albert and Seren. The little ones were a handful and then some, but at least it was a change from the chores I had at home. Still, I couldn’t help wishing that I was out with the boys, hunting pupae.

Right around mid-afternoon, Papa and the professor finished laying out the materials for the spell. I didn’t get to see them cast it, because I was outside with the childings. When we came back in, Papa and Professor Jeffries and Mr. Harrison were in the middle of another argument, and Rennie was glowering at all three of them.

“What is it?” I asked Rennie in a low voice.

“Their precious spell didn’t work,” Rennie said bitterly. “Or maybe it worked but didn’t find anything. They can’t decide. So they’re going to try it again tomorrow.”

I just looked at her. Thinking about it, I could see why the spell casting bothered her. Even if she’d been doing everything exactly the way all the Rationalists wanted, Papa’s magic was bound to make some of them suspicious. And it was Rennie who’d have to deal with them; we would be gone in a few days, but she had to live here.

On the other hand, I’d seen the bare hills and fields where the grubs had been. Rennie hadn’t. So she didn’t realize how bad things were, other places, or how important it was to find some way to stop the grubs.

The argument went on and on. Just when it seemed that Mr. Harrison was going to start yelling, there were noises outside. A minute later, Wash and Brant and the boys came in.

“Is that the detection-spell setup?” Lan asked, making a beeline for the table with the measuring sticks and detection meters all over it. “Did you cast it while we were away?”

“Did you find any pupae?” Professor Jeffries asked.

“Everyone except Lan,” Wash said. He held up a small covered bucket.

Lan gave him a dirty look. “I found plenty of cases, but they were all empty. And the only bugs where I was looking were those mirror-winged things. Not the beetles we were hunting for.”

“That’s very odd,” the professor said, frowning. “Were you looking in a different area from everyone else?”

“No,” Lan said. He sounded cross.

“Nobody found very many,” William said. “We only got about twenty among us, all day, and maybe five or six beetles. You just didn’t have any luck today, that’s all.”

Mr. Harrison gave William a strange look. “There, you see?” he said to the professor. “I told you it was a waste of talent to send this young man out on a pointless bug-hunt.”

Professor Jeffries didn’t even hear him. He had his little black notebook out, and was flipping through the pages, muttering. He looked up at Wash. “How many pupae, exactly? From how large an area?”

“We didn’t stop to take a count,” Wash said. “And we did spot checks on a three-foot square; among us, we probably covered about a quarter acre.”

“Well, let’s count them, then.” The professor took the bucket from Wash, opened the cover, and spilled the contents out onto the table. Rennie made a noise of protest. Professor Jeffries looked up with a puzzled expression that changed to sheepish when he saw Rennie frowning at her dinner table. “Beg pardon, Mrs. Wilson. We’ll clean up in a jiffy as soon as we’ve counted these.”

Rennie sniffed, and for once I didn’t blame her one bit. Bugs all over the dining table, and nearly time for dinner! If Professor Jeffries had been family, I’d have given him a good scolding right then, and never mind the company.

Professor Jeffries didn’t notice Rennie’s sniff or my expression. He was frowning down at the little pile of pupa cases. Something bright was moving slowly among them. “Mr. Morris, why did you bring two mirror bugs along with these others?” the professor asked.

“I didn’t.” Wash gave Lan and William a stern look. Lan looked indignant; William just shook his head.

“Then how did they get in here?” The professor stirred the pupae with his forefinger. Even from several feet away, I could see several dull green beetles crawling among them, along with the two—no, three—mirror bugs. “Look, there’s another one.”

“What are those things?” Brant asked, leaning forward with interest. “I’ve never seen one before.”

Lan scowled. “I did not put any mirror bugs in that pail!” he said, marching over to the table. “I didn’t put anything in that pail!” He pointed angrily at one of the crawling beetles, the tip of his finger barely an inch away from it. “Wash and William found all the pupae, and Brant caught all of those—”

There was a small popping noise, and the long green beetle Lan was pointing at turned into a mirror bug. Lan stopped talking and gaped at it. So did everyone else. Then there were more popping noises. Four of the pupae that were closest to Lan’s finger broke wide open, and a mirror bug crawled out of each one. The change kept spreading, the way popcorn goes when it starts popping—first one kernel, then two, then four or five, then everything all at once. In another minute, there was nothing left on the table except mirror bugs and empty pupa cases.

“Well, that explains why you couldn’t find anything but empty cases,” Professor Jeffries said after a long silence.

“But why did they change?” William said.

“Obviously, it’s the magic of a double-seventh son,” Mr. Harrison said, sounding as if he was talking to a room full of idiots.

Lan looked disgusted. “Don’t be ridic—I mean, I don’t think that’s possible, Mr. Harrison. I wasn’t casting any spells.”

“No,” Wash said slowly, “but still, there may be something to the idea.”

“May be?” Mr. Harrison said indignantly. “Of course there is! You all saw it yourselves.”

“But what did we see, exactly?” Papa murmured. He was looking at the mirror bugs with an intense expression. “Jeffries, have you seen anything like this before?”

“Not in a natural insect,” Professor Jeffries said immediately. “But these have clearly been misclassified. This creature appears to have a five-stage life cycle, rather than the four stages that are usual with insects. The interesting thing is that the mirror-bug stage is the only obviously magical one, and that it could develop from the wingless-beetle stage as well as directly from the pupae. That is not—”

All at once, half the mirror bugs stopped crawling around the table and took off. Most of them flew straight at Lan, who yelled and batted at them. The others zoomed around the room, sparkling whenever the light hit them and banging into things.

“Get those bugs out of my house!” Rennie yelled. She reached for the fly swatter, but Papa stopped her.

“We’ll take care of it, Rennie,” he said. He looked up and muttered a shoo-fly spell, the one he used at home to clear the flies out of a room after someone left the door open.

But instead of flying out the door, all of the mirror bugs—including the ones on the table and the ones that had been buzzing around Lan—zeroed straight in on Papa. He looked quite startled, but he didn’t bat them away the way Lan had. He let them light on his coat and then walked slowly toward the door, just as if he’d planned it that way. The mirror bugs clung to his shoulders and arms without trying to fly off, and a minute later, he had them all outside.

Rennie gave a sigh of relief and picked up a cleaning rag to wipe down the table. Wash got there first; he scooped all the empty pupae back into the bucket, picked up the bucket lid, and headed out the door after Papa. After a second, everyone but Rennie followed.

Outside, Wash was picking mirror bugs off of Papa’s shoulders and slipping them into the covered pail. “Hold on a minute,” Professor Jeffries said. “I want to test something.”

He held out his hand, and Wash passed over the bucket. Professor Jeffries frowned for a minute, then took a nickel from his pocket. He flipped the nickel into the air and called out the spell for keeping something moving. The nickel hung in the air, spinning faster and faster. All the rest of the mirror bugs launched themselves from Papa’s shoulders at the nickel and latched onto it, forming a glittering ball the size of a baby’s fist. There was a rattle from the bucket as the bugs inside hit the lid, trying to get out. Professor Jeffries slid the lid back without ever taking his eyes off the spinning ball of mirror bugs, and the bugs from the bucket whizzed up to join the others.

The ball spun slower and slower, sending silvery flashes of light in all directions. After a few seconds, it started to sink toward the ground. Professor Jeffries held up the bucket and gasped the closing word of the spell. The ball of mirror bugs dropped into the bucket with a soft rustle. The professor slid the lid into place and sat down on the steps with a plop, like all the energy had gone out of him.

“What sort of nonsense was that?” Mr. Harrison demanded.

“So they’re attracted to magic, even after they’ve changed,” Papa said to Professor Jeffries, completely ignoring Mr. Harrison.

“And they absorb it,” Professor Jeffries said. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “They were sucking up power faster than I could feed it into that spell, though fortunately not by much. Which no doubt explains their attraction to you, young man,” he added, nodding at Lan.

“But I wasn’t casting any spells,” Lan objected.

“Neither was anyone else,” William pointed out. “As soon as someone did, all the mirror bugs went for the spell. But before that—”

“Lan was the strongest source of magic in the area,” Papa said. He frowned slightly. “The question is, does the change from beetle to mirror bug occur based on the strength of the magic available, or on the amount?”

“We’ll have to find some more pupae to test,” Professor Jeffries said. “But I’ll wager it’s the amount of magic available that’s the critical factor, and strength just speeds up the transformation.”

“It’s too late to find any more tonight, I’m afraid,” Brant said.

Mr. Harrison broke in to huff about wasting time on mirror bugs when it was the grubs that were the problem, which irritated everyone and led to another argument that kept on right through to dinner.

I went back to helping Rennie with the housework, but even having three childings to look after didn’t stop me turning over everything in my mind. And the more it turned, the more worried I got.

The pupae and beetles absorbed magic and popped into mirror bugs. The mirror bugs absorbed even more magic, enough to make Professor Jeffries tired after just a few minutes. There hadn’t been very many mirror bugs to begin with, but the longer there were lots of beetles around the normal settlements, absorbing magic from their spells, the more mirror bugs there would be. And all of them would be soaking up magic from the settlement spells.

What would happen when there were so many mirror bugs that the settlement magicians couldn’t keep their protective spells up anymore?