Thirteenth Child (21 page)

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

T
HE FERRY TO THE WEST BANK OF THE
M
AMMOTH
R
IVER 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 said sternly. “No matter how difficult a man is, and no matter how safe it seems, you don’t leave him alone out here.”

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.

Inside, the buildings were crammed together tighter than the row houses on the north side of Helvan Shores. I asked Papa about it later, and he said that keeping everything close together made it easier on the settlement magicians, because they didn’t have to stretch their spells so far. Even the streets were narrow. We had to leave the wagon just inside the gate and walk, which made Mr. Harrison complain some more.

Papa had been to the town before, so it didn’t take as long as it might have to find the blacksmith and make arrangements about the buggy. Nobody was willing to part with a saddle, so Mr. Harrison had to go on sharing the wagon seat. Still, another hour was gone before we were ready to leave. Professor Jeffries was squinting at the sun and muttering, but he didn’t actually object. Papa stopped to speak to him before he swung up on the wagon seat beside me, and the professor’s expression lightened some.

“We need to travel fast,” Papa called as we all rode out through the gates. “Stick close. Wagon first—it’s slowest. Jeffries, you take the back.”

Professor Jeffries reined in his horse and waited for Lan and William to get between him and the wagon. “What is this?” Mr. Harrison demanded.

“They’re going to work a speed-travel spell,” Lan said. “To hurry us up so we’ll get where we’re going by nightfall.” He sounded like he was explaining to a three-year-old, but Mr. Harrison didn’t pick up on his tone.

“But travel spells are factored into normal travel times,” Mr. Harrison said.

William threw him a disgusted look. Everybody knew that travel spells interfere with the protective spell you need when you’re traveling west of the Great Barrier. Nobody in the West used extra travel spells unless they had a really, really good reason. I swallowed hard.

“Lan,” Papa said. “Pick your spot.”

Lan nodded and fell back to ride beside Professor Jeffries, where he could see everyone. I frowned. Even I knew that it only took two people to do a standard fast-travel spell, and that would be Papa and Professor Jeffries. Then I saw that Lan was holding a shiny gold disc about the size of the locket Mama usually wore, and I realized that he was going to cast the protective spell for us. I felt a little better, but only a little. I was pretty sure Lan hadn’t done anything like this before, and power isn’t everything.

Papa handed me the reins and pulled a gyroscope and a pink quartz crystal from his pocket. “Keep us moving straight and steady, Eff,” he told me, and I felt scared and proud that he’d trust me to drive the team while he did his spell casting.

His eyes got that faraway look and I felt the surge as he and Lan and Professor Jeffries all drew power toward themselves to start working. Mr. Harrison started to say something else and William shushed him. Papa said the words and set the gyroscope spinning on the wagon seat. Behind us, I heard Professor Jeffries and Lan reciting their parts.

And then I felt the spells…waver. It wasn’t quite the same as in my magic classes at school, when the people next to me had everything explode, but it was near enough. I gasped and stiffened right up straight. My fingers tightened on the reins and the horses slowed, just for a second. The change made the gyroscope on the wagon seat wobble, and Papa broke off to say, “Easy, Eff.”

“Yes, Papa,” I replied. I forced my fingers to relax. I put all of my attention on driving that wagon. I shut off every bit of magic-sensing I had, and I shut out every sound except the horses’ footfalls and the creak of the wagon wheels. I looked straight ahead, watching the road, though there wasn’t much I could do about the ruts and rocks. Slowly, it got harder to see. The landscape around went all dim and shadowy, as if there was a heavy fog. I realized that Papa’s speed-travel spell had taken hold. A minute later, Papa’s hands took the reins from mine.

I didn’t say anything to him. I knew better; a magician has to concentrate all the time to keep up spells like the speed-traveling one. Besides, I was afraid that if I paid attention to anything besides the horses and the road and not sensing magic, I’d upset the spell. I didn’t know what that would do, but I was sure it wouldn’t be good.

I don’t know how long I sat there trying not to do anything or even think anything. Finally I heard Papa say, “That should do it,” and the light came back.

Cautiously, I looked around. Then I stared. The sun shone low in the sky ahead of us, clear and midsummer-bright. It sent skeleton shadows of the nearly leafless trees crawling across empty fields and dead-brown hills. No birds sang; no squirrels scrabbled up and down the tree trunks. We’d run out of road some while back; I couldn’t even see wheel tracks in the dirt to steer by. The only sounds were the whisper of the wind through bare branches and the creak of our own wagon wheels.