Jinx (9 page)

Jinx slipped into the workroom while Simon was gone, hoping to figure out what Simon was up to. He saw Dame Glammer’s knotted polka-dot kerchief up on the highest shelf. Jinx remembered Simon tucking it into his pocket as they left her house after that mysterious talk about root magic. Jinx scrambled up onto the workbench. He reached out for the bundle, but his hand was blocked a few inches away from it. He tried reaching from the top, and from behind. It was as if there was an invisible glass dome surrounding the thing. Simon had put some kind of ward spell around it.

Jinx was sure if he could have reached the kerchief and untied it, he would have found roots.

Root magic’s for things that ought not to see the light of day
, Dame Glammer had said.

The ward spell didn’t stop the cold, dead smell that came from the bundle—or the feeling. It felt like injustice. Like wrongs it was much too late to right. It was an icy, creeping nastiness. Jinx thought about the guilt he’d seen in Simon on the way to Dame Glammer’s house. He jumped down from the workbench.

He noticed a book bound in dark red leather. It was the one Simon had spent so much time consulting lately. Usually Simon didn’t leave it lying around.

Jinx flipped the book open. It was in a language Jinx didn’t know. There was a drawing of a bottle. Sketched inside the bottle was the vague outline of a man.

Jinx turned pages. There were illustrations showing intricate symbols—models for chalk drawings, maybe?

Simon’s shadow fell across the page. Jinx looked up.

“Close that book at once,” said Simon.

Jinx snapped it shut and dropped it hastily on the workbench. He expected Simon to be angry—that was the Simon he knew. But this strange new Simon was something else—worried, Jinx thought. Green clouds of something—fear, maybe? Why on earth would a wizard be afraid?

Simon snatched up the book, stuck it into his robe pocket, and left. There was still no anger around his head. Just that weird, rather frightening worry.

Days went by, and then weeks. The book was never left lying around where Jinx could find it again.

Something had changed in Simon. Jinx wasn’t sure if it was because of the roots or because of the spell Simon was getting ready to do. Dame Glammer was wrong—Jinx couldn’t read minds. Minds weren’t like books. They shifted around all the time.

And anyway, everyone could see what was right in front of their faces, surely—the white, implacable wall of Simon’s determination to get this new spell done, the pink stabs of worry that he wouldn’t be able to do it or that it would go wrong. And battering against the white wall was Sophie, with her own brown-blue worry about Simon.

“You’ve changed,” she said. “It’s the Urwald. This place is getting to you.”

“It’s not the Urwald. I’m very busy right now.”

“Why are you cleaning the workshop?” said Sophie.

“Because it needs doing,” said Simon.

“But you never clean your workshop,” said Sophie.

And he wasn’t really doing it now, Jinx thought. Or only a little bit. Jinx was doing most of the work, of course.

“It’s my workshop,” said Simon. “I can clean it if I want. I don’t need to explain everything I do to you.”

This sounded like typical Simon-and-Sophie squabbling, and it didn’t worry Jinx much. The wall around Simon, that worried him more. Usually the wall was much farther inside Simon, and it was kept up to protect him from everyone else, not from Sophie. Jinx worked a dust rag around a pile of books on the floor. The dust crawled up his nose and made him sneeze. An offended spider hurried away.

“You’re doing something different,” said Sophie. “It’s some kind of big spell that you haven’t done before, isn’t it?”

“You don’t want to know anything about magic, so why are you asking?” said Simon, not looking at her.

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” said Sophie, turning to go.

“Good. Don’t.”

A pale shudder of hurt went through the room. “You think I’m in the way,” said Sophie, her voice shaking.

“You’re always in the way,” Simon snapped. But his thoughts didn’t go with his words at all. Jinx was confused.

“He doesn’t mean it, Sophie,” Jinx heard himself saying.

“You mind your own business!” said Simon.

“It is my business.”

“No, Jinx, it’s not,” said Sophie. “Simon, if we could discuss this somewhere—”

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

“He doesn’t mean it!” Jinx couldn’t stop himself from talking. “He hates himself for saying it. I don’t know why he’s saying it.”

Simon wheeled on Jinx. “Get out of here right now!”

“No, don’t go, Jinx. I’ll go,” said Sophie. Her face was pale.

“Yes, do,” said Simon.

She left, and it felt as if something in the room tore in two.

Jinx felt horrible. He heard Sophie’s footsteps go to the end of the corridor and then keep going—she had passed through the stone wall. Jinx went on dusting the pile of books, although all the dust had transferred itself to his rag or the inside of his nose now. He liked Sophie and he was furious at Simon for being mean to her. He wished he could run after her and tell her that something strange was going on in Simon’s head, that for some reason the new spell that he was working on was so important to him … no, that wasn’t it either. It had to do with the guilt, didn’t it? There was something wrong with this spell, some reason Simon didn’t want Sophie to know about it.

There was a dismal green cloud around Simon that seemed to be making his eyes water.

“I said get out of here.”

Jinx threw down his dust rag and got out of there.

The workroom was spotless. Everything was off the floor and workbench and up on shelves. Everything had been dusted and scrubbed. The room felt cold, mostly because of Simon. Simon didn’t snap at Jinx again—he hardly said anything to him. Sophie hadn’t come back, of course. Jinx didn’t think she would ever come back.

Jinx and Simon set up four braziers in the corners of the room, and then Simon began chalking symbols on the floor. He kept looking at the red leather-bound book as he did this. It took days. Once Jinx accidentally stepped on a symbol that looked rather like a winged fox. Simon shot him an ice-cold gaze that made Jinx want to go put his coat on.

Finally the figures were done. Simon began brewing a potion over a brazier. Jinx sat on the high stool, which he had gotten to by stepping very carefully in between the chalked figures, and watched. A licorice smell came from the potion, and then a sweet smell like apple blossoms. Once a cat came into the room, and Simon fixed it with the same glare he’d given Jinx.

The cat shook its front paws disdainfully and turned and stalked out again, its tail held high.

Sophie’s right, Jinx thought. Simon has changed. He thought of times Simon had been kind to him—making pumpkin pie because he knew Jinx liked it, and not letting the witches cackle at him too much, and occasionally checking to see whether Jinx had enough socks. And making that gold aviot charm to keep Jinx safe.

Maybe when this spell was finished, the old Simon would come back again. Jinx would do whatever he could to make that happen.

“Take this bottle and wash it as clean as you possibly can.”

Jinx made his way gingerly among the chalk markings. He went out to the kitchen and put a kettle of water on the fire. Ordinarily he would have just dropped the green bottle right into it. But he was afraid of damaging it. The old Simon didn’t care much if Jinx broke things, but this new Simon probably would.

When the water was hot, he scrubbed the bottle with a bottle brush, and with sand, and with soap, and then rinsed it. He rubbed it with a towel and then took it outside and held it up to the sunlight to make sure there wasn’t a spot or a smear anywhere on it.

Then he took it back to the workroom and set it down in front of Simon, who said nothing.

Jinx went back to the kitchen to look for something to eat. He had finished eating everything Simon had cooked, and Simon hadn’t eaten anything at all since Sophie had left.

Jinx cut up some squash, pumpkin, and onions, and plunked them into boiling water. He let it stew awhile. It tasted of nothing. He put some salt in. He added a handful of cinnamon.

He tasted it. It wasn’t very good. He added some sugarplum syrup.

It tasted awful, but he ate a little.

Then he dished some up for Simon. But Simon didn’t even look up when Jinx put the bowl on the workbench. Jinx pushed it toward him.

“I think we’re ready to start,” said Simon. “First we need to light a fire under each of those braziers in the corners.”

Simon had never said “we” about a spell before. Jinx ought to have been flattered, but he wasn’t. There was something wrong about this spell.

“M-maybe I’ll just go into the kitchen and get out of your way.”

“No, I need your help,” said Simon. “Take a coal with the tongs and go and light the braziers.”

Jinx took the brass tongs and selected a glowing red coal from the dish on the workbench. As he carried it across the room, the glow and the hot smell filled his senses. There was tinder placed among the charcoal in each brazier, ready to catch. Over each one sat a pan filled with dried herbs, the potion Simon had been brewing, and a handful of twisted, evil-smelling black roots—they had to be the ones from Dame Glammer’s kerchief.

As Jinx went from one fire to the next, very slowly and carefully so as not to step on the chalk figures, steam and smoke twisted into the middle of the room, forming a four-branched arch over his head. Jinx’s legs began to feel heavy—it was hard to control them and not to step on the chalk. He had a sense of not really being there, of being somewhere else. He was slowly floating away from his body. He could see himself now, from above, looking small and silly. He lit the last fire. The tongs and coal fell from his hands.

Now he moved toward the center of the room—why was he doing that? Oh, Simon must have told him to. The room was rumbling with stone-heavy waves of sound that must have been Simon’s voice. Jinx couldn’t understand what Simon was saying, but he knew he was supposed to be in the center of the room, right here, in this jagged diagram, where the lines met—

He watched his body collapse. It lay there like a rag doll, limbs sprawling uselessly.

Simon’s voice rumbled through the air again, and then the wizard jumped up—that is, it took him a century or so to do it, so it wasn’t really jumping—and ran toward Jinx as slowly as if he’d been moving through solid stone.

Jinx wasn’t really interested in that. He had floated to the ceiling and he wanted to float farther, but something was stopping him. It was immensely annoying. Jinx looked up, thinking it must be the ceiling that was in his way, but the stone ceiling was gone. Instead there was a great dome of black sky above him, dotted with fire-bright stars, millions of stars.

Jinx had never seen the sky like this before. You couldn’t in the Urwald. There was a dim silver line, a great circle where the sky met the earth, and he felt an intense longing to go to the line and touch it. Desperately he tried to float higher. But he couldn’t. Something was holding him back. Maybe his body. Maybe Simon.

Not really wanting to, he looked down again. Simon was kneeling beside the crumpled body. His hands were laid flat on Jinx’s chest. The wizard trembled with concentration.

Then he straightened, holding a golden ball of light cupped in his hands.

From above, Jinx watched curiously as Simon stood up and stepped over to his workbench, cradling the ball of light.

The green bottle Jinx had scrubbed earlier—hadn’t he? It was so hard to remember now—was heating over a candle flame. Simon set the ball as gently as he could on the open bottle neck. It balanced, jiggling, for a moment, and then with a
thwoop
sound the golden ball swooped into the bottle.

Quickly Simon corked the bottle, then walked back to Jinx’s body.

Jinx turned around to look at the great night dome of sky again, feeling he could almost fly into it, if only Simon would let him.

Then Simon knelt down by the body on the floor and laid a gentle hand on Jinx’s forehead. Horribly, Jinx felt himself being drawn downward, inexorably, back into his own body. He struggled, but it was no use. The ceiling reappeared above Jinx, stone and impenetrable—the sky was gone. Jinx began to sink. He slid into his abandoned body and knew no more.

J
inx woke up. He was on the floor before the summer fireplace, covered in itchy blankets. He was too warm. He shoved the blankets aside.

Instantly Simon knelt down beside him. “Are you all right?”

And Jinx had the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

Simon put a hand on his shoulder. “Jinx? Say something, Jinx.”

Jinx couldn’t figure out what was wrong. But whatever it was, it was wronger than it had ever been before.

“Let me get you some water.”

Jinx sat up. He stared at the beads of water on the copper dipper Simon brought him. Then he took the dipper in his hands, shakily, and drank. The water tasted of stone and copper. He drank all the water and wanted more. He would get up and get it. If he could figure out how to get up. It was as if he’d lost one of his senses.