Thirteenth Child (26 page)

“But I wasn’t casting any spells,” Lan objected.

“Neither was anyone else,” William pointed out. “As soon as someone did, all the mirror bugs went for the spell. But before that—”

“Lan was the strongest source of magic in the area,” Papa said. He frowned slightly. “The question is, does the change from beetle to mirror bug occur based on the strength of the magic available, or on the amount?”

“We’ll have to find some more pupae to test,” Professor Jeffries said. “But I’ll wager it’s the amount of magic available that’s the critical factor, and strength just speeds up the transformation.”

“It’s too late to find any more tonight, I’m afraid,” Brant said.

Mr. Harrison broke in to huff about wasting time on mirror bugs when it was the grubs that were the problem, which irritated everyone and led to another argument that kept on right through to dinner.

I went back to helping Rennie with the housework, but even having three childings to look after didn’t stop me turning over everything in my mind. And the more it turned, the more worried I got.

The pupae and beetles absorbed magic and popped into mirror bugs. The mirror bugs absorbed even more magic, enough to make Professor Jeffries tired after just a few minutes. There hadn’t been very many mirror bugs to begin with, but the longer there were lots of beetles around the normal settlements, absorbing magic from their spells, the more mirror bugs there would be. And all of them would be soaking up magic from the settlement spells.

What would happen when there were so many mirror bugs that the settlement magicians couldn’t keep their protective spells up anymore?

CHAPTER 28

T
HE NEXT DAY
, P
ROFESSOR
J
EFFRIES TOOK
B
RANT
, W
ASH, AND
William out to look for more pupae and beetles. Lan stayed with Papa to help redo the detection spell, instead of Professor Jeffries. It didn’t take as long to set up the second time, and it didn’t have any more results than it had the first time. There just weren’t any old settlement spells left for it to detect, Papa said.

Of course, Mr. Harrison didn’t believe it. He said the college must have made a mistake when they designed the spell. Papa told him that in that case, he was welcome to redesign it himself, and arrange for his own people to do the testing. They were going at it hammer and tongs when the professor’s group came back with their bucket of pupae. They’d ridden out to the edges of the Oak River settlement’s allotment this time, and they’d found a lot more pupae and beetles than they had the day before.

Professor Jeffries was extremely pleased with their results. He was even more pleased when Papa told him they couldn’t find any traces of old settlement spells at all, which irritated Mr. Harrison even more. “If there aren’t any spells, what’s keeping those damned grubs away from this settlement?” Mr. Harrison shouted at last.

Rennie looked up, frowning. “Mr. Harrison,” she said coldly. “I don’t care what position you hold; this is my home, and I’ll thank you not to use language like that where my children can hear!”

Mr. Harrison choked, but he must have known he was in the wrong because he apologized right off. When he turned back to Professor Jeffries, he didn’t look so angry and he wasn’t shouting. “Well?” he asked. “What’s keeping the grubs away?”

“Nothing.” Professor Jeffries gave Mr. Harrison one of the smuggest smiles I’d ever seen.

Mr. Harrison scowled uncertainly. Wash grinned. Papa’s eyes narrowed, and then he smiled, too.

“Of course,” he said, nodding at Professor Jeffries. “The beetles are attracted by magic. Oak River uses no magic, and is surrounded by settlements that use a normal number of active spells. As soon as the beetles emerge, they head toward the other settlements, and that’s where most of them lay their eggs for next year’s crop of grubs.”

“Exactly,” Professor Jeffries said. “I’m still not clear where the mirror bugs fit, but that’s what we’re here to look into.” He rubbed his hands.

When Mr. Harrison realized no one was listening to him, he went off in a huff. Papa, Professor Jeffries, Wash, and the boys spent the rest of the day experimenting with the pupae. By evening, they’d established that the pupae and beetles would transform into mirror bugs for any magician, just as Professor Jeffries had thought, and they were working on finding out how strongly the bugs were attracted to magic, from how far away. Papa, William, Lan, and Professor Jeffries were standing in a circle casting spells of different strengths, and Wash and Brant were in the middle with the mirror bugs and the few beetles that were left, counting how many moved in which direction.

All of a sudden, all the bugs and beetles stopped moving. Then the mirror bugs all leaned back on their rear legs and pivoted around, like they were looking for something. One after another, they took off, heading southwest. The beetles headed southwest, too, but they could only crawl. None of them got very far, though; even the flying mirror bugs had barely cleared the edge of the circle before they all dropped back to the ground and walked in little circles for a few seconds. After a minute, they all resumed crawling back toward Papa and the boys.

“Now what’s this about?” Professor Jeffries muttered.

They collected the bugs and beetles and put them back in the buckets for the night, then talked it over all through dinner. Nobody had any real idea what had made the bugs behave that way, though Lan suggested it might have something to do with sunset coming on.

The next morning over breakfast, Papa decided to go bug-hunting with Professor Jeffries and the boys, since there was no point in doing any more spell detecting at the settlement. I was getting more than a mite tired of helping Rennie all the time, though she wasn’t as bossy as I remembered. I wasn’t sure whether the difference was in her or me. Pinning my hair up and letting my hems down hadn’t made so much difference at home, but everyone there had had plenty of time to watch me growing, so it wasn’t so startling a change. Still, however much Rennie had mellowed, I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for another day of housework and childings with no breaks.

So I told Rennie I was going to see everyone off and started down to the settlement gate with them, half hoping to persuade Papa to let me come along. We were hardly halfway there when we heard the ruckus at the gate. We could see four or five men yelling at each other, but we couldn’t make out the reason for the argument until we were right on top of them. Seems there was a new arrival who hadn’t stopped to dismiss his traveling spells, and the Rationalists were well and truly peeved about it. Some of the things the new man was yelling made it pretty clear that he didn’t think much of the Rationalists and their ways, settlement rules or no.

As soon as he saw Papa and Professor Jeffries, the newcomer quit yelling at the gatekeeper and started yelling at us. It took a few minutes to get him settled down enough to make sense. It seemed that the settlement magician two allotments over had been trying something new, and now all the settlement spells had failed. They’d heard that Papa and Professor Jeffries were visiting at Oak River, so they’d sent this fellow to ask if they’d come help put the spells back up.

Of course, Papa and the professor agreed. Papa decided to take Lan along, so he could observe the spell casting. He offered to take William, too, but William said his studies weren’t advanced enough yet for him to get much out of watching, and he’d rather stay behind with Wash and me. Papa consulted with the messenger and told us not to worry if they weren’t back for lunch, and they set off.

We had to explain it all to Mr. Harrison and Mr. Lewis, who came along too late to get in on the planning. Neither of them was too happy. Mr. Harrison just seemed to have a grump on about everything Papa and Professor Jeffries did, and Mr. Lewis was cross about having to put up with Mr. Harrison some more. I was a sight more sympathetic toward Mr. Lewis; after all, he hadn’t really known what he was getting into when he offered to put Mr. Harrison up while we were in Oak River.

Wash, William, and I walked slowly back to Brant and Rennie’s, and on the way I asked Wash about the charm he’d given me. Before he could answer, William jumped in, wanting to know all sorts of things about it, just as if he was one of my older brothers.

“Wash gave it to me,” I said. “After that night at the wagonrest when you and Lan had that illusion-casting contest.”

“It wasn’t a contest,” William objected. Then he frowned and looked at Wash. “You mean there really was something to all Eff’s fussing about making other people’s spells go wrong?”

“You might say that,” Wash replied. “I confess to having a certain curiosity over the whys and wherefores of it, but Miss Rothmer seemed disinclined to account for it.”

They both looked at me. I sighed. I still didn’t want to explain, but I felt like I owed them an answer, even if neither of them had actually asked a question yet. “It’s…it’s because I’m thirteenth-born,” I said, looking down at the toes of my walking boots so I wouldn’t have to see their faces.

There was a long silence. Then, in tones of complete outrage, William said, “
That’s
what you’ve been worried about all this time?”

“Mostly,” I said without looking up.

“That’s—that’s—” He sounded exasperated, and I was pretty sure that only politeness was keeping him from saying “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” And I didn’t think politeness would hold him back much longer.

“It’s not stupid,” I said before he actually got the words out. “It’s—there was—I almost—” I stopped and took a deep breath, and before William could start in again or I could lose my courage, I told both of them the whole thing, all about Uncle Earn and the policeman and moving West and Diane’s wedding and Papa’s tests and the concentration technique Miss Ochiba taught me and the troubles I’d had with magic in the upper school. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” I said, mainly meaning William. “I just…I just couldn’t.”

“If you say so.” This time, William sounded hurt.

“Fear’s a powerful thing,” Wash said in his slow, deep drawl. “Habit is even worse, for most folks. I must say, Miss Rothmer, I’m pleased and proud to be your acquaintance.”

That got my eyes up from my boot tips, right enough. I stared at Wash. William was staring, too, but not like he was surprised. Wash tipped his hat at me and went on, “There’s just one thing more I’d like to know, if you don’t mind. Have you ever considered your situation from any other point of view?”

I didn’t see right off what he meant, but William did. “Besides Avrupan?” he said.

Wash nodded. I looked down again. “Miss Ochiba told me once that being thirteenth-born doesn’t mean the same thing in Aphrikan or Hijero–Cathayan magic. But she didn’t say the Avrupans were wrong about it, either. And anyway, I’m not Aphrikan or Hijero–Cathayan.”

“Honestly, Eff, if that isn’t just like you!” William said. “Where you were born doesn’t make any difference to whether the theory works or not!”

“That’s not as true as you seem to think,” Wash said. “But Miss Rothmer isn’t any more Avrupan than she is Aphrikan or Hijero–Cathayan.” He grinned at my startlement. “You’re Columbian, Miss Rothmer, bred and borne. As is Mr. Graham here, and your talented brother, and even myself, though some might prefer it otherwise.”

“I—” My mouth felt dry, and I had to swallow twice before I could get any words out. “I never thought of that before. But what difference does it make, really?”

“Nobody really knows yet,” Wash said. He tilted his hat back and looked down the street, to where the protective palisade blocked the westward view, and his eyes had a faraway look to them. “We’re still inventing ourselves. But we’re not starting from just one kind of magic, no matter what the folks back East may think. Columbian magic is a mixture and always has been—Avrupan and Aphrikan and Hijero–Cathayan and some traditions that haven’t ever grown large enough to make a theory or a style of magic, plus a few bits folks have just made up for themselves at need, all thrown together.”

“That sounds messy,” I said without thinking.

Wash laughed. “So it is, oftentimes.” He looked down at me, and his expression turned serious. “You’re still inventing yourself, too, Miss Rothmer. You’ve been working your hardest to invent yourself right out of being a magician, and it’s plain to me that if you keep on, you’ll succeed in the end. You’d likely have succeeded already, if your heart had really been in it.”

“But my heart
is
in it!” I objected.

“No, it isn’t,” William said. “Wash is right. You don’t want to stop being a magician. You just want to make sure that you don’t ever use your magic to blow up that uncle of yours, or anybody else, even if they deserve it.”

“It’s the same thing!”

“Oh?” William shoved his glasses up on his nose and glared at me. “So if you stop your magic completely, and then one day you grab a shotgun and use
that
to blow up your uncle or somebody, that’d be just fine with you?”

“No!” I could see where William was going, and I could see he was right, and it upset me almost as much as nearly blowing up Uncle Earn had. I’d known in my heart since my first day in Oak River that I didn’t want to live without magic; I just hadn’t admitted it straight out to myself. Because if I was going to go ahead and be a magician, even just an ordinary everyday magician, how was I going to keep my magic from doing something horrible one day?

William made an angry noise, and I realized I’d said more of that out loud than I’d meant to. Wash just nodded and said, “It’s a puzzlement, Miss Rothmer, and not one you’re alone in having.”

“I—what? What do you mean?”

“You seem to think your magic is a separate thing from you yourself,” Wash said. “Something you can pick up or leave alone, like that shotgun Mr. Graham mentioned a minute ago. But magic is as much a part of you as your voice. What you do with it is your own decision. And you’re not the only magician with a terrible temper, you know.”

“You’re not even the only magician in your own family with a temper,” William muttered, and I knew he was thinking of the time when he was nine and Lan hoisted him in the air.

We’d gotten back to Rennie’s house by then, despite walking slower and slower, and Rennie came out wanting to know why Wash and William had come back instead of going off with Papa and the professor to hunt bugs. So I never got to say anything back to Wash and William about tempers and magic, but I worried at the notion all morning long while I helped Rennie with the weekly washing.

Lan had a temper, sure enough. I’d never gotten round to asking him how he’d felt about magicking William that time, but I could see that it hadn’t slowed him down even a little when it came to being a magician. Thinking on it, the whole reason I’d started yelling back at Uncle Earn was because I could see that Lan was about ready to lose his temper. I’d forgotten that. And Lan hadn’t ever seemed too concerned about misusing his magic by accident, even though he was a double-seventh son and crammed to the rafters with power.

But Lan had been getting special training since before he was old enough to cast spells. And Wash had said something about habit being more powerful than fear. I frowned down at the wash water. Maybe I’d been going about this all the wrong way. I decided to talk to Lan when he got back, and maybe to Papa when we got home to Mill City. I’d have liked to start trying things out right then, but the middle of a Rationalist settlement didn’t seem like the best place to suddenly start experimenting with my magic.

Papa and Lan didn’t make it back for lunch, and they still weren’t back by mid-afternoon when Mr. Harrison came to see what they were doing. Mr. Harrison grumped and fussed at Wash about it, until Wash offered to take him over to the other settlement to check on things. That didn’t sit too well with Mr. Harrison; he wasn’t much inclined to do things himself, if he could get other folks to take care of them, and he was especially unwilling to do any more dangerous traveling, even though we hadn’t had any trouble with the wildlife the whole trip.