Across the Great Barrier fm-2 Page 24

  “You don’t need a preserving spell for stone,” a hard-faced man in front objected.

  “You do if it used to be somebody’s leg and it’s still flesh for about half an inch around the bone down the indent,” Mr. Macleod said grimly. “At least, it is as far as we could tell.”

  Several people in the audience turned green, and Mr. Anderson made a strangled noise. Mr. Macleod shook himself and said, “Yonnie, why don’t you take Nils back to my place and let Martha come on here? You can sit with Olaf. Pierre can tell us anything else we need to know.”

  “What else do we need to know?” someone muttered as Mr. Karlsen and Mr. Anderson left.

  “How to stop the thing, whatever it is,” someone else said.

  “Why did it get all three of the packhorses, but only Olaf’s leg?” the hard-faced man demanded.

  Pierre shrugged. “He was standing behind the horses; perhaps they blocked the spell, so that it only struck his leg. Or perhaps it is because he fell into the water, and that is what saved him. I was not watching closely to see exactly what turned to stone when, you understand.”

  “You said it took down your travel protection spells?” a woman in a blue calico dress asked.

  “But yes,” Pierre replied. “Without a warning or any signal. It was most sudden and mysterious.”

  “I’d call a bunch of spooked horses something of a signal,” Mr. Macleod said dryly.

  “Might be,” Wash put in. “Though it’d help to know exactly why they spooked. And not all of them did spook, right at first, if what Mr. Le Grise says is true.”

  “Of course it is true!” Pierre said indignantly. “I do not lie!”

  “It’s just a turn of phrase, Pierre,” Mr. Macleod said. “Nothing to get peeved about, especially since we’ve more important matters to hand.”

  “We don’t know enough about this critter,” an older man grumbled.

  “You are welcome to go back to the ford and investigate further,” Greasy Pierre said politely. “You cannot miss it; there are three stone packhorses in the middle of the path.”

  “Barely a day’s ride away,” a woman whispered. “What if it comes here?”

  “There’s no reason to think it will,” the hard-faced man snapped. “We’ve been here for three years now. We’d have seen some sign of it before, if it was common. Or the trappers would have.”

  “Perhaps,” Professor Torgeson said reluctantly. “However, there have been indications that some animals that usually live in the unexplored West have been moving eastward over the past four or five years. Possibly longer than that; we don’t have observations from much earlier.”

  “Indications?” the hard-faced man said, narrowing his eyes. “What kind of indications?”

  “Over the past five years, the Settlement Office reports have noted more frequent sightings of unique and unknown animals within settlement territory or within sight of settlements,” the professor said with more assurance. “The number of unusual creatures brought in by trappers such as Mr. Le Grise has also increased by a small but significant amount along the entire length of the Mammoth River during that time.”

  “The Settlement Office has adjusted the protection spells twice in the last five years,” Mr. Macleod commented. “Both times on account of needing to keep out new critters.”

  “Why haven’t we heard of this?” a woman cried angrily.

  “Because it’s my job to handle the settlement spells, not yours,” Mr. Macleod shot back.

  Professor Torgeson cleared her throat. “Be that as it may, it seems at least possible that this incident may, like the mirror bugs, be a case of a previously unknown creature moving in from the wilds of the West.”

  “Why? Why would it come here?”

  “I have no idea,” Professor Torgeson said in her best classroom lecture voice. “There are a great many possibilities, but we do not have enough information to speculate about which of them might be true. There may have been a fire in the Far West that’s driven animals eastward, or some other act of nature. We know little about the country between here and the Grand Bow River, and nothing at all about the unexplored land west of that.”

  I thought of the pride of saber cats we’d killed that shouldn’t have been anything like so far east. I could surely understand why they’d come east, if some creature that turned things to stone was moving in from the Far West. But what would drive a critter east if it could turn things to stone?

  “Why isn’t important at the moment,” said a man who’d been quiet up till then. “Why is for later on, when we can stop worrying over what’s happening and start worrying over how to keep it from happening again. The real question right now is, what can we do about it if this thing that turns people to stone shows up here?”

  “I still say it’s unlikely,” the hard-faced man repeated. “Why would it come farther east after Nils and Pierre here gave it such a scare?”

  “Why not?” the quiet man said. “Better to be ready for trouble that doesn’t come than have trouble arrive when we’re not ready.”

  “There’s another possibility to consider,” Wash said, “and that’s that these critters are more drawn than driven.”

  Half the settlers looked at him with blank expressions.

  “The most recent batch of critters that we know came from the Far West were the mirror bugs,” Wash said. “We still don’t know all the hows and whys, but we do know they were attracted to strong magic. Could be that there’s other critters that are like that.”

  “That’s speculation,” the professor said sharply. “There’s no evidence for it in this case whatsoever.”

  Some of the settlers looked relieved, but then the woman in the blue calico said, “There’s no proof against it, either. And it’s like Christoffer said — better to be ready than not.”

  The talk ran on like that for quite a while. Mr. Macleod let it go without saying much, except when someone’s temper looked to be running a mite high. About all that happened in the end was that the settlers decided to call the stone-making critter a “medusa” after the old Greek stories about the lady with snakes for hair who turned folks into stone with a look. Nobody knew what the critter looked like, though we were pretty sure it wasn’t a lady of any kind, but putting a name to it made folks feel a bit better.

  Eventually, the meeting broke up so people could get back to their everyday tasks, though most everyone who’d planned to head outside the settlement palisade decided it’d be a better day to stay home and fix up something they’d been putting off. Professor Torgeson went off to Mr. Macleod’s place to look at the stone leg and double-check the preservation spells Mr. Macleod and Wash had put on it. She asked if I wanted to join her, but I turned her down.

  Mr. Macleod and Wash set up a roster of folks to reinforce the settlement protection spells, which gave everyone something constructive to do and perked a lot of them right up. I noticed Lan didn’t volunteer to help, which he normally would have, so when the settlers filed out of the longhouse at last, I took him aside to ask about it.

  “The last time I tried helping with settlement spells, it almost got me and everyone else killed,” he said.

  “The last — oh! At the Little Fog settlement two years back,” I said. “But if you hadn’t helped, we wouldn’t have worked out how to stop the mirror bugs.”

  “And if you hadn’t been at Oak River for me to call on, or if you and Wash and William had been a little later getting there, the whole settlement would be dead, and me and Papa along with,” Lan retorted. “You can say ‘what if’ as much as you like; it was still a harebrained thing to do.” He hesitated. “Besides, I think Wash could be right.”

  “About what?”

  “About that medusa thing being like the mirror bugs. Drawn to strong magic,” he explained. “The way it took down the travel protection spells … well, it sounds awfully similar. If it is —” He shivered.

  “If it is, the medusa will be following along after Mr. Anderson and M
r. Le Grise,” I said slowly.

  “Speed travel takes a lot of power,” Lan said, nodding. “And it leaves a trail for at least a day. Even if the medusa can’t move very fast, it’s had plenty of time to get pointed in this direction.”

  “And once it gets close enough, it’ll sense the settlement spells,” I finished. “I can see why you wouldn’t be keen on pumping a lot of extra power into them just now.”

  “Of course, the settlement spells may keep it off, the way they’re supposed to,” Lan said. He didn’t sound any more convinced than I felt.

  “At least there’s only one medusa,” I said after a minute.

  “Probably,” Lan added.

  I nodded very slowly. We were both in a very sober frame of mind when we left the longhouse to see what help we could be.

  CHAPTER 27

  THE WHOLE SETTLEMENT HAD A TENSE AND SOLEMN AIR FOR THE rest of the morning. People gathered in little knots, talking. You could feel the fear growing as everything sank in. Settlers were accustomed to the dangers of the wildlife, but a creature that turned three horses to stone all at once was more than anyone had signed up for.

  What worried people the most was the way the travel protection spells had come down. Mr. Macleod was acting like the settlement spells would stay up, especially since he knew to expect a problem, but most folks could see that he was just trying to reassure people.

  The trouble was, nobody had any good idea what else to do. People came up with notions, of course, but they had no more back of them than hoping. One of the settlers took to carrying a hand mirror with him, because the Greek lady with the snake hair had finally been killed by a man who only ever looked at her in a mirror. As soon as word got out, more than half the settlers went looking for mirrors of their own. One man smashed his big looking glass and offered people the pieces. Lots of folks ended up with cuts from handling the broken glass, and slashes in their clothes, but they still carried them around, even though nobody knew for sure whether they’d help.

  Pretty soon, a few folks started talking of heading back to Mill City “for a few weeks.” Mostly, it was the families with childings doing the talking, but I was still surprised to hear it. Big Bear Lake was three years into its five-year commitment — anyone who left now would be giving up their share for the Settlement Office to reassign.

  Around mid-afternoon, Lan and I were sitting on the ground outside the longhouse when we saw Wash and Professor Torgeson come out of Mr. Macleod’s house. They made a bee-line for Mr. Macleod and started talking a mile a minute. Lan’s eyes narrowed. “You stay here, Eff,” he said. “I’m going to talk to them.”

  He stood up and I stood up with him. He turned and glared at me. “Eff —”

  “I know that look, Lan Rothmer,” I interrupted, “and I’m coming with you, and that’s that.”

  Lan made a face. “I suppose I can’t stop you,” he grumbled, and set off for Wash and the others.

  As we came up on them, the first thing we heard was Mr. Macleod saying, “— not. I can’t let you take a chance like that. Besides, we need you here, to protect the settlement.”

  “No, you don’t,” Wash said. “The settlement protection spells are as strong as may be, and you’ve plenty of people to trade off holding them up so that they’ll stay that way. The next thing to do is to get rid of this medusa critter before it causes more trouble. Waiting here for it to show up doesn’t seem like the best plan to me. And taking chances is a circuit magician’s job.”

  “It’s not a professor’s job!” Mr. Macleod said.

  “Mr. Macleod,” Professor Torgeson said, “I am a Vinlander born and raised, and I’ve spent my time in the wildlands of a summer. Furthermore, my job is to find out more about the petrified animals we’ve been uncovering, and this is a golden opportunity to do so. And finally, it is not within your right to detain me should I wish to leave this settlement. Which, I must tell you, I am feeling more inclined to do the longer you talk.”

  Wash hid a smile behind his hand and pretended to cough. Mr. Macleod sighed. “Professor, ma’am, I don’t — what do you two want?” he said as he saw Lan and me.

  “You’re going to go out hunting the thing that turned the packhorses to stone, aren’t you?” Lan asked Wash.

  Wash nodded, at the same time as Mr. Macleod said, “No, they’re not!”

  “Well, I want to come with,” Lan said.

  I snapped my teeth closed over an objection so fast that I bit my tongue. Telling Lan not to do things only made him stubborner about doing them.

  Professor Torgeson frowned. “Mr. Rothmer, while you are not one of my students, you are in some sense my responsibility. This is not a lark, and I will not allow you to accompany us without a very good reason.”

  “I have a very good reason,” Lan said steadily. “Two, actually. First of all, there’s a good chance this creature absorbs magic, the way the mirror bug beetles did, and I’m the only person here who’s had experience holding protection spells against that kind of drain.”

  “Then you should stay here!” Mr. Macleod said.

  “When was that?” Professor Torgeson said at the same time.

  “Two years ago, at the Little Fog settlement, when my sister figured out how to beat the mirror bugs,” Lan said. “You may have heard about that part. I was inside the settlement, holding the protection spells against all the grubs and mirror bugs, while Eff figured out how to turn their magic back on them.”

  Mr. Macleod’s eyes narrowed. “You held the settlement protection spells? All of them? How?”

  “I held all of them,” Lan replied. “As to how — that’s the other reason I should go along on this hunting trip. I’m the seventh son of a seventh son.”

  “All true,” Wash said. “I was with Miss Eff at the time.” He rubbed his beard in a thoughtful fashion. “It hadn’t occurred to me, Mr. Rothmer, but you have a point. You could be a right handy man to have along.”

  “Sounds to me as if the one you want to take is his sister,” Mr. Macleod growled.

  “Both of us, or neither,” I said, nodding.

  “What? No, Eff, you can’t —”

  “I already said, Lan — both of us, or neither. I let you go off to Little Fog without me last time, and look what happened! Not again.” Which wasn’t exactly fair; I hadn’t particularly wanted to go with him last time, because it was supposed to be just a boring day of fiddling with the broken settlement protection spells at Little Fog and getting them to work properly again. The effect on the grubs and the mirror bugs was something nobody had expected, and it had been a very good thing that I was outside where I could do something about it, once I went chasing after Lan. But I certainly wasn’t going to point any of that out now.

  I especially wasn’t going to point it out when I knew I wasn’t being completely truthful about why I wanted to go with Wash and the others. Oh, I wanted to keep an eye on Lan, right enough, but if the only thing I’d wanted to do was watch out for him, I’d have put my energy into making him stay behind. What I really wanted was to go along, too. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t have anything to prove to myself, the way I had with the saber cat hunt the previous summer, and I knew this would be even more dangerous. We wouldn’t have anything like as many people; the settlement couldn’t spare them, and Wash wouldn’t wait for messengers to recruit folks from nearby settlements. We didn’t even know what we were hunting, much less how long it would take to find.

  Even so, I wanted to go. I looked hopefully at Wash and Professor Torgeson.

  “That seems reasonable,” Professor Torgeson said briskly. “Who else, Mr. Morris? We don’t want too many people, or we’ll move too slowly.”

  “Pierre, if he’ll come,” Wash said. “And if Mr. Macleod can spare us a marksman who’s willing to come, I think that will do.”

  “Wash, you —” Mr. Macleod shook his head. “All right, I can’t stop you. I suppose the only questions left are, what do you need and how soon do you leave?”


  “Tomorrow morning, for leaving,” Wash said. “I don’t much fancy spending the night outside walls when there’s wildlife about that laughs at the travel protections. As to what we need, I was hoping you’d have some suggestions.”

  The two of them walked off, deep in discussion. Professor Torgeson looked at Lan. “Mr. Rothmer —”

  “Yes, I’m sure I want to do this,” Lan broke in. “Just … I’m sure, all right?”

  “I was going to ask about your experience with the mirror bugs,” the professor said mildly. “Mr. Anderson indicated that whatever interfered with his spells was similar to an abrupt blow, but the accounts I’ve heard of the mirror bugs sounded more like a slow draining.”

  “Oh,” Lan said. “I — well, the mirror bugs were small. One at a time, or spread out the way they normally were, they didn’t absorb enough magic for anyone to notice.” He went on describing what had happened at the Little Fog settlement, with the professor asking pointed questions every so often, and I could see some of the stiffness fade out of his shoulders.

  He didn’t expect it to be so easy to get included in the hunt for the medusa creature, I thought. I couldn’t figure out why, though, much less why he’d been so keen to go in the first place. He was up to something, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it once I figured out what it was.

  The news that there was a hunting party being sent out got most of the settlement folks calmed down. There was still some quiet talk of leaving, but it had more the sound of planning for the worst than panic. Some of them even laughed a little at Greasy Pierre’s posturing when he agreed to help hunt for the creature.

  I didn’t sleep too well that night. Growing up in Mill City, and later on working with the professors and coming out to survey the plants around the settlements, had given me a powerful respect for the wildlife of the West, and there was a sight of difference between running afoul of a cloud of mirror bugs or even coming across a pride of saber cats, and going out looking for trouble. But I couldn’t let Lan go alone.