Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede
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 Jef
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.
CHAPTER 23
THE FERRY TO THE WEST BANK OF THE MAMMOTH RIVER HAD BEEN operating long enough to grow itself a sizable town around its landing point. Near the landing, the dirt streets were lined with big square shipping buildings, and all up and down the riverbank were docks for the flatboats that carried grain and timber down the Mammoth to New Orleans. The streets were double-wide to suit farm wagons, which made it easy to see farther in, along the roofed boardwalk that led from the docks to the storefronts. The oldest buildings, near the ferry head, were built of mortared fieldstone, but nearly everything else was whitewashed clapboard. West Landing was smaller and dustier than Mill City, but at first look, pretty much the same.
At second look, you saw that most of the folks on the boardwalk wore long tan-colored dusters over home-sewn calico or muslin shirts, and that almost all of the men wore gun belts. There were hardly any carriages, and the buggies were sturdier. All of the vehicles, from carriages to farm wagons, had a rifle rack next to the driver’s seat, and most of the racks were filled. And every so often the wagons or the horses or one of the buildings had the slightly hazy look that meant someone had cast a personal shielding spell around it.
We got a lot of curious looks as we unloaded our gear from the ferry, mostly on account of Mr. Harrison’s buggy and bandboxes. Some of the westbankers lounging on the boardwalk hollered advice as the buggy came off the gangplank, most of it uncomplimentary, which was another thing that didn’t happen much in Mill City. Mr. Harrison frowned when they started up, but he didn’t answer back, which showed he had some sense after all.
With the late start from Mill City and the difficulties unloading Mr. Harrison’s buggy, we didn’t leave the ferry head until near noon. Papa drove the wagon and I sat beside him, Mr. Harrison drove his buggy, and everybody else rode. All the way through West Landing, people yelled advice and comments at us. The boys were a bit miffed, at first, and Mr. Harrison scowled ferociously, but Papa and Professor Jeffries just waved cheerfully.
A couple of folks yelled something about guides or maps, and once a long-faced fellow on a big gray gelding rode up to the wagon and asked Papa if he wanted to hire him. “No,” Papa said. “But thanks for the offer.”
“Begging your pardon, but it looks to me like you folks are heading for one of the settlements,” the rider said. “And it’s plain you don’t realize what the trip will be like. You need a guide, sir, even if you don’t think you do.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Papa said mildly. “I’ll admit that some of our party are green as grass, but Professor Jeffries and I have both been west of the river more than once.”
“Ah,” the man said. “Professor, is it? And magicians as well, no doubt.”
“No doubt at all,” Papa said. “Between us, I think we’ll have no trouble making it as far as the Littlewood wagonrest, and we have a guide meeting us there. So we’ve no need of your services.”
“Can’t blame a man for trying,” the rider said. “Good day to you, Professor. Ma’am.” He touched the brim of his hat to me and rode off.
I watched him go, and then said, “Papa, you never said anything about a guide before.”
“Didn’t I?” Papa glanced at me and smiled. “Probably because I took it for granted. And because Professor Jeffries made the arrangements this time. It’s nothing to worry about. Even settlers who’ve lived here for years hire guides when they’re going somewhere outside their usual stomping ground.”
I didn’t find that as reassuring as Papa meant it to be, but I didn’t get overly exercised about it because I was busy wondering whether Professor Jeffries had asked Wash to be our guide. I finally decided he wouldn’t have, because Wash already had plenty of work to do out on the far frontier and wouldn’t want to come all this way east just to escort us. But maybe he’d asked Wash to recommend somebody. That made me smile. Anybody Wash recommended would be interesting to talk to.
The storefronts lining the street gave way to houses, and then, abruptly, to open land. Papa told me that most folks didn’t want to build any farther from the river than they had to, on account of the Great Barrier Spell making most people feel safer, even if they were on the wrong side of it. That didn’t make much sense to me, and I said so. It’s not like most wildlife would give enough warning for everyone to jump in a boat and cross back. Papa said it wasn’t a magically sound position, but people’s feelings didn’t always have much to do with logic, and building near the river didn’t hurt anyone.
Outside of West Landing, the road changed from packed dirt to rutted dirt, and the ride got bumpier and bumpier. Papa kept the wagon to one side, where the ruts mostly weren’t so bad, and when things got rough he kept the team moving steady and I held on hard to the running board. Mr. Harrison crossed back and forth across the road, looking for the smoothest places, and of course every time he crossed the ruts in the middle, his buggy lurched and bounced. He had to stop three or four times to pick up bandboxes that jounced right out of their ropes and fell off. Finally, on one particularly bad section, the buggy lurched down a rut with a great crack, and didn’t come back up.
Mr. Harrison whipped his horse, but it did no good. The buggy didn’t move. Professor Jeffries turned around and frowned. “Hey, Harrison! Stop belaboring that horse. You’ve broken an axle; the Great Blue Ox couldn’t haul that thing any farther.”
Mr. Harrison got off two or three good cusses before he remembered me and stopped. He put up his whip and climbed down from the buggy to look at the damage, while Papa pulled the wagon to a halt. It was pretty clear even from where we stood that the buggy wouldn’t be going anywhere for a good long while. The front wheels were splayed out until the floor of the buggy nearly scraped the ground, and one splintery end of the broken axle had jammed solid into the side of the rut.
“How far do you think we’ve come from West Landing?” William asked as he and Lan pulled up alongside the wagon.
“About three and a half miles,” Papa said. “Why?”
The boys looked at each other, and Lan smirked. “I win,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have if he hadn’t kept zigzagging all over the road like that,” William replied.
Right about then Mr. Harrison yelled for everyone to come help unload his buggy. Papa and Professor Jeffries exchanged looks, and then Papa handed me the reins of the wagon. “I’ll be back in a minute, Eff,” he said.
As Papa walked back toward Mr. Harrison, William started to dismount, but Lan put out a hand to stop him. “What?” William said.
“Papa didn’t say for anyone else to come with,” Lan said.
William stared at Lan for a minute, then looked at me. I nodded. William looked after Papa with a very thoughtful expression.
Papa and Mr. Harrison had quite a talk, though none of us could hear any details from where we were. In the end, Mr. Harrison rearranged his boxes himself, and picked out a few things to pack on his buggy horse, while Papa came back and sat on the wagon, waiting. After a bit, William commented that things might go faster if someone helped, but Papa said we had to wait for someone to come along the road anyway, someone local who could report the broken buggy and arrange for it to be picked up and maybe mended. Lan said we should just leave Mr. Harrison to it, but that made Papa frown.
“This is the west bank, Lan,” he
The words sent a little shiver down my spine, and I looked around. Just like West Landing, it didn’t seem too different from the countryside east of the river, at first. Fields of soybeans and alfalfa and northern wheat stretched off on either side of the road, broken up by occasional ponds and wood lots. Off to the south was a steep ridge covered in scrubby trees. But the only buildings anywhere near were a couple of toolsheds tucked in the near corners of the fields, hazy with protective spells.
I looked again, and saw a clump of houses and barns in the distance to the south, surrounded by a palisade wall. East of the river, they’d have been strung out along the road, each house in the center of its own fields.
By the time Mr. Harrison got his boxes rearranged and repacked to his liking, Papa had unbent enough to let the boys help him move the buggy to the side of the road. Once that was done, Professor Jeffries pointed out that we’d never get to the Littlewood wagonrest by nightfall if we waited around much longer, and Lan said we could just as well report the broken buggy when we got to the next tinytown, couldn’t we? So Mr. Harrison tied his buggy horse to the back of the wagon and crowded onto the seat with Papa and me, and we set off again.
Three on the wagon seat was too many, especially when two of them were Papa and Mr. Harrison being cross at each other. Even without the bouncing, it would have been a very uncomfortable ride.
We reached the first tinytown about an hour later. It stood on a low hill beside the wagon road, with an old log palisade wall circling the houses at the top, and two newer walls making loops around newer houses on either side. Over it all hung the brown haze that was the sign of settlement spells. We turned off the road, and the town sentry opened the gate for us. I tensed as we went through, but the settlement spell didn’t react the way the Great Barrier Spell had. It felt like any other protective spell.