Thirteenth Child

CHAPTER 30

APHRIKAN MAGIC DOESN’T TAKE A LOT OF POWER, AND IT DOESN’T take a lot of ingredients. You don’t have to memorize gestures or chants. You just look at whatever you want to cast the spell on, in as many ways as you can think of, until you have an understanding of it, and then you sort of nudge whatever magic is already there, so it moves the way you want it to.

What Aphrikan magic takes is timing. Also practice, which is how you learn to get the seeing and the timing right. I’d been studying and practicing Aphrikan magic for nearly eight years, and for the last five, it had been the only magic I could get to work for me. Eight years wasn’t enough to do anything that would take a lot of power or make a big change in something, but it was plenty enough time to get good at things that just needed a little bit of a push to make them happen anyway.

Straightening out the little twist in the mirror bugs’ magic, the one that kept the beetles from absorbing magic from the mirror bugs, didn’t take much more than a nudge.

The carpet of beetles seethed. The cloud of mirror bugs trembled and began to die as the crawling beetles absorbed more and more of their magic. It spread fast, like setting fire to the corner of a sheet of paper—first there’s just a small flame in the corner, then it spreads up one edge, and then suddenly the whole page is aflame, turning black and curling, and you have to drop it or singe your fingers.

Mirror bugs dropped out of the sky like silver rain. New mirror bugs rained upward as the crawling beetles popped and took off, then fell in turn as the beetles farther out absorbed their magic. It didn’t take long for the cycle to spread outward from the settlement in an expanding ring. All I had to do was keep holding that little twist straight, so that the beetles could absorb magic from the mirror bugs.

Beside me, William yelled in surprise. “Eff! What are you doing?”

“Killing bugs,” I said. I couldn’t explain more without losing my concentration.

At first it was easy. The magic in natural things doesn’t come one-thing-at-a-time, like it does with people. Oh, each mirror bug had its own little bit of mirror bug magic, but the magic itself was still all one thing, the way a river is all one thing even though it’s made up of lots of buckets and cups and drops of water. Normally, that overall mirror bug magic would be stretched thin and hard to feel, but with so many mirror bugs all in one place, it was concentrated and easy to sense.

But as the mirror bugs close to the settlement died and were replaced by new mirror bugs farther out, it got harder to hold on to their magic. I had to reach farther and farther, and in all directions at once. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, like trying to hold a full bucket of water head-high at arm’s length with nothing to brace against, but I knew I had to keep at it. I had to be sure that all the beetles heading for the settlement died, or the whole mess would start up again as soon as the next wave of them arrived. I wasn’t sure I could do this a second time. I wasn’t sure it would work a second time.

So I hung on, feeding my spell with determination and anger and all the magic I had bottled up inside me. Soon the ring of changing beetles and mirror bugs was nearly a quarter mile from the settlement. Outside the ring, beetles crawled steadily forward to meet it. Inside, the ground was covered in dead mirror bugs. They were heaped over a foot high around the walls of the settlement, but where I stood, they were only an inch or so deep. I could feel my hold on the mirror bug magic starting to slip, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the spell going much longer.

And then I heard Wash’s voice, and William’s, talking next to me. A minute later, a hand touched my shoulder. “Miss Rothmer, have you ever done a spell hand-off?” Wash asked.

I nodded.

“I see what you’re doing. Pass it to me,” Wash said.

I’d never handed off a spell like this one before, but I didn’t have time to worry that it might not work. By the time it came to me that I might not be able to do it, I’d already done it. Wash had the spell, and I was just standing next to him, feeling shaky and gasping like I’d been running.

Wash’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Graham,” he said, and I felt William reach out and take part of the spell from Wash. Then Wash said, “Miss Rothmer, this would be a sight easier if the settlement could drop those protective spells for a bit.”

I nodded and ran for the gates of the settlement, crunching and sliding on dead mirror bugs with every step. I’d gotten about halfway there when the gates opened cautiously and someone peered out. I shouted up to the bewildered stranger to tell Lan to stop the protective spells, but he just stood there. Then from behind him I heard Papa’s voice yelling, “Eff? Eff, what are—”

“Tell Lan to shut off the protective spells!” I shouted again. “Wash says!” I was dizzy and nearly out of breath, and I didn’t know what I was going to do if they didn’t listen. I couldn’t shout an explanation up the rest of the hill.

But Papa took one look at the dead mirror bugs and Wash and William concentrating like mad, and started yelling. A few seconds later, I felt the protective spell around the settlement collapse. As soon as it did, the ring of mirror bugs started moving outward faster and faster, and in less than five minutes it was all over.

With those extra-strong settlement spells gone, the beetles quit crawling toward the settlement and started milling around at random, the way they normally would. All they had left to pull magic from were the mirror bugs, and it seems that without that little twist in the mirror bug magic, the beetles were really, really good at sucking out mirror bug magic. It stands to reason, I suppose. They were different stages of the same creature, after all.

Wash and William held the untwisting spell until the chain reaction of beetles to mirror bugs petered out about two miles from the settlement. They figured out the distance later, by where they ran out of dead mirror bugs all over the ground.

All of us—me and Lan and Wash and William and Papa and Professor Jeffries and the settlement magician and a bunch of settlers who knew enough magic to have gotten roped into helping when the mirror bugs showed up—were pretty well exhausted. The settlement folks treated us real well, and didn’t even make a fuss about getting their protective spells back up. Mr. Harrison did, though, until Papa made him be quiet.

The first thing Papa did when everyone started feeling a bit better was to get all of us together to piece together exactly what had happened and write an account of it before anyone forgot anything important.

What started it all off was the settlement magician’s experiments. He’d had some ideas about increasing the power of the settlement spells, so that one magician could hold them over a larger area, but he hadn’t worked the theory out right. Instead of expanding the protective spells, he’d made them give out.

That was when the settlement sent for Papa and Professor Jeffries. They’d taken one look at the magician’s ideas and gotten all excited, because whatever he’d come up with was a brand-new way of working. Papa and the professor worked out where he’d gone wrong, and when they restored the spells, they used the new method.

The trouble was that the new settlement spell was so much more powerful than the old one that all the beetles in the ground around the settlement popped into mirror bugs right away, and all the beetles that were farther away started crawling toward the settlement in order to get close enough to suck up enough magic so they could pop into mirror bugs, too. By the time anyone realized what was happening, there were already so many mirror bugs and beetles around the settlement that they’d have sucked the magic and the life out of everyone inside as soon as the protective spells failed.

So they had to keep the protective spells going, but the protective spells were what was drawing the beetles and mirror bugs in and causing the problem. And of course, the more beetles and mirror bugs showed up, the harder it was to keep the protective spells going. Papa got Lan and the settlement magician and anyone who knew any magic at all to help hold the protective spells, while he and Professor Jeffries tried to find a way to lower the power in the settlement spell (so it wouldn’t attract the beetles anymore) without actually having to drop it and recast it.

Lan had decided all on his own to try to reach me. Papa wasn’t any too pleased when he heard that, though he had to admit it had turned out well. Lan’s idea was that if someone outside the settlement could squash or burn enough of the bugs and beetles, it would be safe to lower the protective spells. He hadn’t really had a clear idea just how many of them there were.

Then Wash and William and I told our part, and Wash explained how the twist in the mirror bug magic worked. Papa and the professor got excited all over again, and started in right away to calculate how to build it into the settlement spells.

Meantime, Lan just sat and looked at me. Finally he said, “You found out all this about how the bugs work?”

I nodded.

“How?”

“I told you,” I said. “It was world-sensing and the concentration technique and being mad as anything, all mixed together. Near as I can figure, anyway.”

Lan grunted. Right about then, the settlement magician asked me what I meant, and I got all tangled up in explaining because he didn’t know anything about Aphrikan or Hijero–Cathayan magic at all. I didn’t start to understand what had Lan bothered until later, when we all got out into the settlement.

Turns out, the settlement folk had decided that I was the heroine who’d saved the day. Oh, they were plenty pleased with Wash and William and Lan, but I was the one they all wanted to see and talk to and praise. It got real embarrassing in less time than you might think. On top of that, it put Lan into a terrible temper. Up until then, he’d always been the one to be looked up to and admired for magic and spells, and he didn’t much like playing second fiddle. A couple of times, I tried telling people what a bang-up job he’d done, holding off the mirror bugs, but it was no help. Everyone admitted he’d done a good job, then went right back to making a fuss over me.

Papa didn’t really notice what was going on. He was too busy working out new settlement spells that wouldn’t attract the beetles or make them pop into mirror bugs. Meantime, Wash and Professor Jeffries worked up a neat little trap that would do just what I’d done to the mirror bugs around the settlement, only on a smaller and less dangerous scale. They started with a power spell to draw the beetles in and start them popping into mirror bugs, and then switched it into a spell that untwisted the mirror bug magic to start the chain reaction. It took them a couple of days to get the power level right, but in the end they had a tidy little spell that would clear the beetles out of a couple of fields at a time in about half an hour. They planned to use higher power levels on the hills and bluffs and in the woodlands where there weren’t any people.

As soon as Papa had the new settlement spells designed, Wash left. He didn’t want to waste any time getting the spells and the beetle traps out to the other settlements. I did finally get a chance to talk to him before he left, though not for long.

“I wanted to give this back,” I told him, holding out the wooden pendant. “And thank you for letting me use it.”

Wash didn’t move to take it. He just looked at me with a little smile on his face. “Now, why would you want to do that, Miss Rothmer?”

“It’s too valuable for you to just be giving it away,” I said. “You need it when you’re out riding circuit, don’t you? And—and I think I don’t need it anymore.”

His smile broadened, but he still didn’t move to take back the charm. “I’m right pleased to hear that, Miss Rothmer, but that pendant only moves one way. Teacher to student.”

I could feel my eyes getting wide. “Teacher?”

“That’s what the conjureman who taught me said when he gave it to me, though truth be told he had even less time to spend with me than I’ve spent with you. It’s not the time that matters.” He nodded at the pendant. “You keep that, Miss Rothmer, until you find the right one to pass it to. You’ll know. Meantime, you keep on studying it, and see what you can learn.”

“I—” My hand closed around the pendant. Slowly, I nodded. “I will. And I’m right honored, Mr. Morris.”

“Wash,” he corrected me.

I stared at him for a minute, then grinned. “If you’re Wash, then I’m Eff. If I’m your student.”

Wash looked startled. I expected him to grin back after a minute, but instead he nodded solemnly. “Eff.”

I looked at him a minute more, then hung the pendant around my neck again, and went along to see him off. I didn’t feel as sad as I’d expected at his leaving. I was sure I’d see him again sometime, and in the meanwhile there’d be the notes he sent to Professor Jeffries.

I didn’t feel sad at all when Mr. Harrison left. About two days after we’d cleared out the mirror bugs, he found a group heading back toward the river and talked them into taking him with them. None of us were sorry to see him go, though William and Lan wondered aloud whether he’d have trouble waiting for Papa and the professor when the rest of us got back. There wasn’t anything to be done about it, though, and in the end, he was the one who had the trouble. About a month after we all got back to Mill City, word came from the Frontier Management Department in Washington that they wanted Mr. Harrison to come East to answer some questions, and that was the last we saw of him.

Seems that the settlers and settlements had been complaining about the way he managed things for quite some time, and that trip he took with us was the last straw for a lot of them. What really did it, though, was the way he’d acted at Oak River.

It seems the Rationalists were pretty well-thought-of in Washington, and when Mr. Lewis told them some of the things Mr. Harrison had said and done, they demanded that the Frontier Management Department do something about him, and not just a reprimand, either.

So Mr. Harrison lost his job, and it was a while before they sent anybody new to manage the Settlement Office. Papa looked pleased when he heard, but he never said anything. Professor Jeffries harumphed and said that it’d likely be a lot easier to get the new settlement spells spread around without Harrison interfering. Lan and William whooped like loons, and I was pretty happy about it myself. But that was a lot later.

Between the new settlement spells and the trap that Wash and the professor worked out, a lot of the settlements got their fields free of beetles by summer’s end. That meant no grubs the next spring, so things could get back to normal for the settlers. Better than normal, some ways; the grubs and beetles had cleared a lot of land that would have taken the settlers years to do on their own, and they’d gotten rid of a lot of weeds, too, so crops that year were extra good. But that was later, too.

What with one thing and another, we stayed at the settlement for nearly a week after Mr. Harrison left. By the time we started back to Mill City, I was glad to get away. Lan was still grumpy, and I’d about had my fill of strangers coming up to me on the street to gush about how I’d saved them all. A simple “thank you” would have been plenty.

Leaving didn’t help as much as I’d thought. The settlement had sent messengers to all the nearby settlements as soon as they could, to spread the word about the beetles and the mirror bugs soaking up magic. Of course, they’d told the whole story, including the part about me being a heroine. And those settlements sent the word on to others. So all the way home, every settlement we passed wanted Papa to stop and teach the new spells to their settlement magicians, and while Papa was teaching, all the settlers fussed over me.

William thought it was funny.

“It’s about time you got some attention,” he told me. “And you deserve it.”

“You and Lan deserve just as much,” I said. “And I’d rather you had it than me. I don’t like it.”

“It’s good for you,” he said heartlessly. Then he grinned. “And it’s good for Lan, too.”

I sniffed. “Why does everything that’s good for you have to be unpleasant?”

William just laughed.

“At least it’s almost over,” I said as all of us rode through West Landing toward the ferry at last. “Everything will get back to normal when we get home.”

“You think so?” William said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and gave me a sidelong look, the one that meant he was so sure you were wrong that he could just wait and let you find out for yourself the hard way.

I looked at him for a minute and then grinned. I had the feeling that “normal” had changed some after all that had happened in the past month, but I wasn’t going to let on even that much. It would just make him smug.

“I’m sure of it,” I said firmly.