Thirteenth Child (22 page)

Behind me, I heard a low whistle of surprise. Stiffly, I turned my head. Lan and William and even Mr. Harrison were staring just as hard at the fields as I’d been. Hearing about the damage the grubs did was different from actually seeing it. Papa frowned. “This far already,” he muttered.

We rode in silence for nearly another hour through the creepy, dead landscape. We passed another tinytown off to one side, but we didn’t stop. The wagonrest was several miles farther on, an empty palisade area built around a well. The Settlement Office set them up so that settlers who were traveling out to their allotments would have a safe stopping place that wouldn’t put a strain on the already established settlements. As we drove up to the palisade, the gate swung open. Professor Jeffries rode forward.

“Welcome at last, Professor,” said a deep rumbly voice from the darkness inside. “You all are a bit behind time. I was just pondering whether to head out to look for you.”

“Wash!” I said.

CHAPTER 24

I
T WAS
W
ASH, ALL RIGHT
. H
IS HAIR WAS CONSIDERABLY LONGER
than I remembered, and his beard wasn’t so neat, but that was only to be expected when he’d been out riding circuit for two or three months. Professor Jeffries introduced him to Papa and Mr. Harrison and Lan, but when he got to William and me, Wash smiled broadly and said, “I remember Miss Rothmer fine, and Mr. Graham, too, though it’s been a while.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to come yourself, Mr. Morris,” Professor Jeffries said with a glance at Mr. Harrison. “Your work—”

“Well, now, you haven’t seen the state the settlements are in out on the edge of the frontier,” Wash said. “They need help, and fast. And I figure the fastest way for me to get an answer out to them is to be there when you all work it out.” He shook his head, and added, “Besides, I need supplies. I ran out of coffee a couple of weeks back.”

“We have coffee,” I said. “It was right at the top of Papa’s list, and I packed it up myself. I can make up a pot right now, if you like.”

“Miss Rothmer, your father is a wise man,” Wash said. “And you are an angel straight from heaven.”

Papa smiled. “I’ve never known a guide who didn’t appreciate a little extra coffee.”

So I made coffee while everyone else buckled down to setting up camp. Wash had already cast the protective spells to keep the wildlife away, and even started a cookfire, so all that was really left to do was pitch the tents and lay out the bedrolls. Wash didn’t have a tent. He said he wasn’t accustomed to bothering with one in fine weather. When the boys heard that, they decided to sleep out under the wagon. They said they wanted to see what it was like, but I thought they just wanted to get out of putting up another tent.

While we worked, Wash asked about our trip out. He didn’t make any comment about Mr. Harrison’s buggy, but he said we’d been lucky on the last part. Where the grubs had eaten all the grass and grain and leaves, there was no food for the small animals, like mice and squirrels and birds, so they died or moved on. That left no food for the larger animals, and some of them had gotten hungry enough to attack travelers and even settlements in spite of the protective spells.

“That wasn’t luck,” Mr. Harrison said. “That was having a double-seventh son working the spell for us.” Papa frowned when he said that, and Lan looked uncomfortable, but neither of them said anything.

Over dinner, Papa and Professor Jeffries and Wash talked about the grubs and how things were in the Far Western settlements. Wash said the thing that was the biggest puzzlement was how the grubs spread so fast. Mr. Harrison said that it wasn’t the grubs that spread, it was the beetles that they turned into, and Professor Jeffries pointed out rather tartly that while that might be so, the beetles didn’t have wings and couldn’t crawl very far. And even beetles with wings didn’t usually spread over a hundred miles in a single year.

Wash said it was certain-sure that something odd was going on, because the grubs weren’t the only odd new critters that had been showing up in the Far Western settlements. That got Professor Jeffries’s attention right away, and Papa’s, too. Wash gave them a list of new wildlife he’d been seeing, including a new kind of cinderdweller, some antelopes with curly horns, a bear-like scavenger that seemed to avoid areas with magic in them, and some fat round beetles with wings like mirrors.

“I remember those,” I said, and everyone looked at me. “You sent a sample one to Professor Jeffries the first year I was helping out at the menagerie.”

“There are more of them now,” Wash said. “It’s a puzzlement what they eat, since the grubs and the striped beetles have cleared out everything in most of the places I’ve found them. But the mirror bugs don’t do any damage, and they aren’t around for long, that I’ve seen, so I haven’t paid them much mind. I’d like to take time to study them, but with things as they are…” He shrugged.

Professor Jeffries frowned. “We need more observers,” he said. “Permanent ones, not just occasional expeditions like McNeil’s. We could have had a year’s warning about these grubs, at least, if there’d been someone out beyond the settlements.”

That started Papa and Mr. Harrison and Professor Jeffries arguing over whether such a thing was even possible. It wasn’t like there were a lot of folks who’d ever gone west of the far frontier and made it back. Wash just sat back with a small smile and sipped at his coffee.

It didn’t take me too long to get tired of listening to the argument, and I could see that the menfolk would go on ‘til the fire burned out and never mind the washing up. So I slipped away, filled the tin wash bucket from the well, and set it by the fire to heat. Nobody noticed except Wash and William. Wash gave me an approving nod, and William got up and followed me back to the well. He offered to haul the second bucket of water up for me, which I was pleased to accept, but I could see he had more on his mind than being gentlemanly. So I didn’t grab the bucket and head back to the fire straight off. I waited, but he just stood there frowning.

Finally I tired of waiting. “What is it?” I asked.

William sighed and shoved his eyeglasses up on his nose. “What was that about, this afternoon?”

“What was what about?” I said.

“That thing you did. First you started leaking magic all over, and then you sucked it all in and sat on it so hard that I wouldn’t have been able to tell you were even there if I hadn’t actually looked with my eyes instead of my magic sensing. What was going on?”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t you go telling me you don’t know,” William interrupted. “For it’s plain as day you do know.”

“I don’t know all of it,” I said, wrapping both arms around myself hard. “I just—remember how much trouble I used to have casting spells in our regular classes?”

William’s eyebrows drew together, but he nodded.

“Well, it got worse after you left. The spells didn’t just fizzle out; they exploded. And then other people started having trouble casting spells when I was around. It’s my fault, I know it. So when Papa and Lan had trouble this afternoon—”

“I see.”

“I shouldn’t have come,” I said. “I should have known better.”

“Why do you always do this?” William burst out. I stared at him, which only seemed to make him madder. “Why do you always blame yourself for everything that goes wrong?”

“I—”
I’m a thirteenth child.
The words stuck in my throat. I didn’t think anymore that William would believe I was evil because of it, not really—but what if I was wrong? And I was sure he’d be disappointed and furious that I hadn’t told him before.

William kept right on, like he didn’t expect me to come out with an answer. “Have you talked to anyone about this…notion that you’re somehow affecting other people’s magic?”

“N-not exactly,” I said. “When I started having trouble at school, Papa said it wasn’t surprising. He said that with twins, when one has lots of power, sometimes the other doesn’t have much. And since Lan—”

William snorted. “Lan’s a double-seventh son. He has plenty of magic without soaking up extra from you, and besides, you’re the elder twin. If anyone was going to walk off with an extra share of magic, it should have been you.”

“But—”

“But, nothing,” William said flatly. “You have plenty of magic. If you didn’t, how could you be interfering with anyone else’s spells? If that’s what you
are
doing, which I doubt.” He shoved his glasses up again and sighed. “You’re going to fuss about this for the rest of the trip, aren’t you? And nothing I say will make any difference.”

William frowned into the bucket for at least a minute, while I tried to think of something to say. I didn’t rightly see how I could promise not to worry, though I felt a lot better than I had before William started yelling at me.

“I know,” he said. “We’ll experiment. I’ll cast some spells, and you can try to muck with them, and we’ll see what happens.”

“I have to do the washing up first,” I said. “And besides, I haven’t ever tried to—to muck with someone else’s spells on purpose. It just happens when I’m close by. And what if I do something to the protective spells on the wagonrest?”

“You can sit close by while I work spells, then,” William said. “The protective spells…that’s a good point.” His eyes narrowed, and then he smiled. “Mr. Morris cast the spells on the wagonrest; we’ll get him to help. He knows Aphrikan magic, so he can watch what you’re doing, and he’ll be the first to notice if anything starts affecting his spells. I’ll ask him while you’re washing up, all right?”

“All right,” I said reluctantly. “But if you want him to help, you’d better remember to call him Wash.”

When William and I got back to the fire, Papa and Professor Jeffries and Mr. Harrison were still arguing. I collected the tin plates we’d eaten from. As I dumped them in the wash pan, three tin cups landed on top. I looked up to find Lan standing over me with a worn-looking dishcloth in one hand. “That’s everything, for now,” he said, gesturing at the cups. “Papa and the others are still using theirs. Wash or dry?”

“I’ll wash,” I said.

We worked in silence for a minute or two. Then Lan said a little too casually, “What were you and William talking about for so long?”

I looked at him, startled. It hadn’t seemed long to me. “The way the spells worked on the way here,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Lan, when you cast the protective spell this afternoon, did you notice anything odd?”

“Odd?” Lan paused in his dish wiping. “Odd how?”

“Like—like the spell starting to fizzle,” I said. “Or—or being hard to cast.”

“No,” he said. “Well, not to begin with. It got harder to keep the spell going after a while, but that’s just because I haven’t had much practice keeping spells going for so long. It’s more work than I thought.”

“You’re west of the Great Barrier Spell now,” Wash’s voice said from behind us, and we both jumped. “Even in the settled places, things are different here, and they get more so the farther on you go.”

“Why?” Lan asked.

Wash shrugged easily. “It’s how things are. You spend much time out here, you’ll see for yourself.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Lan said crossly. “The Great Barrier Spell is just a big magic wall. It doesn’t change anything on either side.”

“Magic itself doesn’t make sense, if you think on it,” Wash said. “Why should burning two sprigs of rosemary and chanting some words make a silver mirror reflect what someone looked like ten or twenty years earlier? Why should spinning a gold disk on a chain keep the wildlife off for hours or days? What works, works, but there’s not much rhyme or reason back of it that I’ve ever seen.”

“There most certainly is!” Lan said. “They’ve known all about it since the Renaissance. Cantel’s Theory of Reciprocity—”

“Ah, yes, the foundation of Avrupan magic,” Wash said. “One of the foundations, anyway. But there are other points of view.”

I gave Wash a startled look. He sounded just like Miss Ochiba. Except he also sounded like he was needling Lan on purpose, and Miss Ochiba never would have done that.

Lan seemed startled, too. Then his eyes narrowed and he said, “You mean Aphrikan and Hijero–Cathayan magic? You could be right. I’m afraid I haven’t studied either in any depth yet, so I couldn’t say.” He sounded rather stiff.

Wash chuckled. “There’s a good start,” he said. “Now, as long as you keep an eye on what’s really in front of you, instead of what you expect to be in front of you or wish was in front of you, you’ll do.” He glanced across the fire, to where Mr. Harrison, Papa, and Professor Jeffries were still talking. Then he turned to me. “Speaking of keeping an eye out, Mr. Graham tells me you’d like to do some experimenting, Miss Rothmer.”

That got Lan’s attention right enough, and next thing I knew, the four of us were over on the far side of the wagonrest, with William and Lan taking turns at spell exercises while Wash and I looked on. Or rather, while I watched them and Wash studied me. It didn’t take long for William and Lan to make a contest out of what they were doing, picking more and more elaborate spells to show off with.

I was tense to begin with, but neither of them seemed to be having any trouble with their spell casting, so after a while I started to relax. After the first couple of spells, most of the things they did were new to me—things they’d learned off at school in the East. Every so often, one of them would come up with a spell the other hadn’t learned, and they’d have to stop and talk about it.

Somewhere in the middle, Papa, Professor Jeffries, and Mr. Harrison came over and joined us. By then it was full dark, and Lan and William had started in on fireworks spells. I half expected Papa to correct Lan point by point when his starbursts came out lopsided, but he just smiled and said it was a good thing for Lan to get some practice. Then William talked Papa and the professor into doing some spells, and in the end all four of them did Washington crossing the Delaware, just as if it was the Fourth of July. William did the flag, and even remembered that it should only have thirteen stars. Professor Jeffries did the boat and the river, with chunks of ice floating everywhere. Papa did George Washington and his men rowing, and Lan did Robert Carradine casting the light spell ahead of the boat for everyone to follow and floating the cannon alongside. Then Papa said that was enough for one night, especially after the day we’d had, and everyone went off to bed.

I glanced over at Wash, who was nearly invisible in the dark. He didn’t move or say anything, so I went off to my tent. I thought nothing had happened, but early the next morning Wash came around while I was making coffee and handed me a whorl of wood about the size of a robin’s egg. A hole had been drilled into one side for a long leather cord. The wood itself had been smoothed on the surface, and polished to a silky shine between the twists and turns where it curled around itself. I could feel magic in it, but I couldn’t tell what the magic was supposed to do. I looked up at Wash.

“You asked for my help last night, Miss Rothmer,” he said. “That’s about the best help I can give you, time being.”