Thirteenth Child Read online

  There was a murmur of approval from the people standing around, and Mr. Harrison seemed to notice them for the first time. “You’re hardly more than a girl!”

  “I turned eighteen last month,” I said.

  “And I believe there’s a good deal more to Miss Rothmer than you’re allowing for,” Wash’s voice said behind me. I turned to find him leading three horses. “I took the liberty of saddling up our horses,” he said to me and William. “Seeing that there may be reason for hurry.”

  “You can’t go with them!” Mr. Harrison shouted. “You work for the North Plains Territory Homestead Claim and Settlement Office, and I’ll fire you if you do!”

  “Well, now, I don’t believe you can rightly do that,” Wash drawled. “My contract is with the Frontier Management Department in Washington, not with the North Plains Territory branch office. Still, if you want to write them a note of complaint, I’m sure they’ll take as much notice as ever they do.”

  William choked on a laugh. “You want help mounting, Eff?”

  I nodded. I hiked my skirts up, thanking my lucky stars that I’d worn full ones, and stepped into his cupped hands. An instant later, I was in the saddle. Wash held the horse while I tucked my petticoats in around my legs to keep from chaffing too much against the saddle. As he and William went to mount, Mr. Harrison yelled, “You can’t just leave me here!”

  “Now that’s a true thing.” Out of the crowd of Rationalists came Mr. Lewis and Brant, leading another riding horse. Mr. Harrison stared at them. Brant walked over and handed him the reins. “You’re not welcome in Oak River any longer, Mr. Harrison,” Mr. Lewis went on sternly. “We’ll see you on your way.”

  “You can’t do this!” Mr. Harrison said. “I’m the head of the North Plains Territory—”

  “—Homestead Claim and Settlement Office,” Mr. Lewis finished for him. “So you’ve been saying these last few days. But we’ve been here five years and earned out our settlement claim.”

  “The only thing you have to offer us is the service of your magicians,” Brant said. “And we’ve no interest in them.”

  “Which is a thing you seem to have a mite of trouble comprehending,” Mr. Lewis said, and I couldn’t help wondering what Mr. Harrison had been doing in Oak River while everyone else had been working on finding out about the beetles. “So be on your way, before we’re moved to be less polite.”

  Mr. Harrison just stood there staring like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Looks as if you’d best come with us, Mr. Harrison,” Wash said.

  “He can come if he likes,” I said, “but I’m not waiting for him.” I nudged my horse with my heels to get him walking toward the gate. I had a tense feeling in my chest and a growing urge for hurry, and I could see that if we let him, Mr. Harrison would talk nonstop for the next two days to keep from having to leave. “Thank you for your hospitality,” I called over my shoulder to Brant and Mr. Lewis. Then we were out of the gate.

  Mr. Harrison didn’t take long catching up, and of course he had plenty more to say. First he wanted Wash to cast the protective spells for traveling right then, even though we were still on the Rationalists’ land. Then he wanted us to stick to the areas that had been cleared and planted, so as to be able to see any wildlife at a good long distance, even though that would have meant going far out of our way. He kept on complaining about this and that until William told him that if he didn’t shut up his mouth, he, William, was going to test out some of the silencing spells Lan had been telling him about.

  Wash already knew where Papa and Lan had gone from the discussion in the morning, and he was familiar enough with that part of the territory to know the quickest route there. He thought that since we were in long-settled territory and moving fast, it’d be safe enough to travel without protection spells, even though Mr. Harrison objected bitterly. We alternated galloping and walking the horses—Mr. Harrison complained about that, too—so it only took us a couple of hours to cover the distance. By late afternoon, we came over the last hill to within sight of the settlement.

  We pulled our horses to a halt and stared. A huge, sparkling cloud of mirror bugs hid the hilltop where the settlement was supposed to be. Some of the bugs were flying, but most of them were heaped up over the walls and the top of the settlement in a huge pile. They looked as if someone had taken an enormous ball and stuck mirrors all over it. The sun glittered and flashed on their wings as they flew and crawled, making it seem like the air was on fire and the ground around the settlement was moving.

  Then I realized that the ground really was moving. Or rather, thousands of dark green beetles were crawling across it toward the settlement and the shiny pile of mirror bugs. If you looked in the right place, you could see little flashes of light as the crawling beetles popped into mirror bugs and joined the swarm around the settlement. It would have been real pretty, if I hadn’t known there were a lot of people inside somewhere, and Papa and Lan among them.

  Mr. Harrison turned white as a sun-bleached sheet. Wash’s face went all stony and grim. William’s eyes widened. “Where’d they all come from?”

  “Anywhere near,” Wash said. He nodded toward the ground, and we all looked down. There were beetles crawling past our horses’ hooves toward the settlement. We were far enough away that they didn’t make a solid layer over the ground, but there were still plenty of them. Mr. Harrison jerked, pulling his reins, and his horse danced sideways.

  “There’s no point in going farther,” he said when he got his horse under control. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

  He’d been saying things like that since before we left Oak River, but looking at the moving carpet of beetles I wondered for a minute if he was right. But William shook his head. “We have to try something. If we don’t, what’ll happen to the people inside the settlement?”

  “It’s just a lot of bugs!” Mr. Harrison shouted. “It’s not as if they’ll eat everyone!”

  “No,” Wash said. “They’ll absorb all the magic from the settlement spells—which I’m near certain are currently being held by a double-seventh son—and then they’ll spread farther east. Toward the Great Barrier.”

  William’s head whipped around to stare at Wash, and I’m sure I looked just as bug-eyed as he did. I hadn’t ever thought of that, but now that Wash had said it, it was obvious. If the beetles could absorb enough magic to make the settlement spells collapse, enough of them might do the same to the Great Barrier Spell. And looking at the mass of beetles around this one settlement, I had to think there’d be enough, sooner or later.

  “Nonsense,” Mr. Harrison said, but he sounded more scared than certain. “They’re just bugs!”

  A line of beetles a foot wide suddenly popped into mirror bugs, starting at the edge of the pile and heading straight as an arrow for us. It petered out halfway across the dead fields, but I still felt a tug, much stronger than I had at Oak River. This close, I could tell it for one of Lan’s spells, only the beetles were soaking up most of it before it could get to me. “Lan’s trying to do something,” I said. “I have to get closer.”

  I kicked my horse into motion and headed down the hill toward the settlement. I kept trying to think of something I could do. My horse squashed beetles with every step, but with so many around and more on the way, the few he killed were nothing like enough to make a difference. Burning them might work, but I couldn’t see how to get them away from the settlement first. And anything magic, they’d just soak up.

  I was getting too worried to think straight, and I knew it. So I took a deep breath, then another, and started counting out the Hijero–Cathayan concentration technique. Mr. Harrison’s whining faded into the drone of insect wings, and my mind settled some. I still didn’t have any idea what to do, but I just knew there had to be something, if I could only figure out the right way to look at the problem. The beetles and the mirror bugs absorbed magic. The magic turned the beetles into mirror bugs, but what happened to the power the mirro
r bugs absorbed?

  My horse slowed and shook his mane uneasily. We had almost reached the cloud of mirror bugs. Sunlight flashed on their wings as they darted in and out of the center, making my horse even more nervous. He pranced sideways, trying to run. As I brought him under control, I felt a surge of magic from the direction of the settlement.

  It was Lan, trying again to reach me. Mirror bugs exploded into the air from around my horse’s hooves as the crawling beetles absorbed the magic and changed. My horse reared, and I slid sideways. I had just enough presence of mind to kick my feet free of the stirrups before I fell completely off.

  I landed in a pile of beetles and my horse ripped the reins from my hands and bolted. The fall and the beetles had broken that brief contact with Lan’s spell. I didn’t think he could get through the beetles, and I knew I couldn’t reach him myself. I didn’t have his power, and anyway my spells always went wrong.

  A dark green beetle crawled over my boot. I didn’t even have the energy to squash it. Behind me, I heard Mr. Harrison shouting for someone to come back at once. A second later, William pulled his horse up next to me and flung himself out of the saddle. “Eff! Are you all right?”

  “It almost worked,” I told him. “Whatever Lan was trying to do, it almost worked. But not quite.”

  “Come on,” he said, dragging me to my feet. “We have to get away.”

  “Away?” I said, puzzled, and then I looked at him properly. His face was pale and he was sweating. Around his feet, several beetles popped into mirror bugs, and he swayed slightly. “The beetles!” I said. “They’re absorbing your magic!”

  “Yes, I know; now come on,” he repeated.

  “But they’re not bothering me,” I said. “And Lan—”

  “We can’t get in,” he said doggedly. “And I can’t think this close. Come on, Eff.”

  “Leave the da—dratted girl and get out of there!” Mr. Harrison yelled, and suddenly I was furious.

  This time, though, the anger didn’t go pouring out the way it had with Uncle Earn, and it didn’t settle back down the way it had earlier at the Oak River settlement. It buzzed all through me like the sound the mirror bugs made, clearing my head. I turned toward the settlement, and the charm Wash gave me swung on its leather cord and thumped gently against my chest.

  A familiar floaty feeling came over me, very like the combination of the Hijero–Cathayan technique and the Aphrikan world-sensing that I’d felt the night I’d tried to study the spells on the charm. Only this time, I wasn’t sensing the spells on the charm. This time, I was feeling the beetles and the mirror bugs and the settlement spells.

  I could see the spells Lan was pouring his magic into, and the way he was reaching out for me. I could see the way the beetles pulled at the magic all around them, even the magic of the mirror bugs. And I could see the little twist in the magic of the mirror bugs that kept the beetles from taking it along with all the other magic. It was a lot like the slippery twist in the magic of the charm Wash had given me, only not so old or complicated.

  I stared into the cloud of mirror bugs, trying to hold on to everything I was sensing. If there was a way to include that twist in the settlement spells, the twist that kept the beetles from absorbing the mirror bugs’ magic, then maybe the beetles wouldn’t be able to absorb magic from the settlement spells, either. But I didn’t know enough magic to do that, and anyway I couldn’t get at the settlement spells. Papa and Professor Jeffries would know, but I couldn’t get to them, either. I couldn’t even get to Lan.

  But I could get at the mirror bugs.

  I smiled, and reached out.

  CHAPTER 30

  APHRIKAN MAGIC DOESN’T TAKE A LOT OF POWER, AND IT DOESN’T take a lot of ingredients. You don’t have to memorize gestures or chants. You just look at whatever you want to cast the spell on, in as many ways as you can think of, until you have an understanding of it, and then you sort of nudge whatever magic is already there, so it moves the way you want it to.

  What Aphrikan magic takes is timing. Also practice, which is how you learn to get the seeing and the timing right. I’d been studying and practicing Aphrikan magic for nearly eight years, and for the last five, it had been the only magic I could get to work for me. Eight years wasn’t enough to do anything that would take a lot of power or make a big change in something, but it was plenty enough time to get good at things that just needed a little bit of a push to make them happen anyway.

  Straightening out the little twist in the mirror bugs’ magic, the one that kept the beetles from absorbing magic from the mirror bugs, didn’t take much more than a nudge.

  The carpet of beetles seethed. The cloud of mirror bugs trembled and began to die as the crawling beetles absorbed more and more of their magic. It spread fast, like setting fire to the corner of a sheet of paper—first there’s just a small flame in the corner, then it spreads up one edge, and then suddenly the whole page is aflame, turning black and curling, and you have to drop it or singe your fingers.

  Mirror bugs dropped out of the sky like silver rain. New mirror bugs rained upward as the crawling beetles popped and took off, then fell in turn as the beetles farther out absorbed their magic. It didn’t take long for the cycle to spread outward from the settlement in an expanding ring. All I had to do was keep holding that little twist straight, so that the beetles could absorb magic from the mirror bugs.

  Beside me, William yelled in surprise. “Eff! What are you doing?”

  “Killing bugs,” I said. I couldn’t explain more without losing my concentration.

  At first it was easy. The magic in natural things doesn’t come one-thing-at-a-time, like it does with people. Oh, each mirror bug had its own little bit of mirror bug magic, but the magic itself was still all one thing, the way a river is all one thing even though it’s made up of lots of buckets and cups and drops of water. Normally, that overall mirror bug magic would be stretched thin and hard to feel, but with so many mirror bugs all in one place, it was concentrated and easy to sense.

  But as the mirror bugs close to the settlement died and were replaced by new mirror bugs farther out, it got harder to hold on to their magic. I had to reach farther and farther, and in all directions at once. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, like trying to hold a full bucket of water head-high at arm’s length with nothing to brace against, but I knew I had to keep at it. I had to be sure that all the beetles heading for the settlement died, or the whole mess would start up again as soon as the next wave of them arrived. I wasn’t sure I could do this a second time. I wasn’t sure it would work a second time.

  So I hung on, feeding my spell with determination and anger and all the magic I had bottled up inside me. Soon the ring of changing beetles and mirror bugs was nearly a quarter mile from the settlement. Outside the ring, beetles crawled steadily forward to meet it. Inside, the ground was covered in dead mirror bugs. They were heaped over a foot high around the walls of the settlement, but where I stood, they were only an inch or so deep. I could feel my hold on the mirror bug magic starting to slip, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the spell going much longer.

  And then I heard Wash’s voice, and William’s, talking next to me. A minute later, a hand touched my shoulder. “Miss Rothmer, have you ever done a spell hand-off?” Wash asked.

  I nodded.

  “I see what you’re doing. Pass it to me,” Wash said.

  I’d never handed off a spell like this one before, but I didn’t have time to worry that it might not work. By the time it came to me that I might not be able to do it, I’d already done it. Wash had the spell, and I was just standing next to him, feeling shaky and gasping like I’d been running.

  Wash’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Graham,” he said, and I felt William reach out and take part of the spell from Wash. Then Wash said, “Miss Rothmer, this would be a sight easier if the settlement could drop those protective spells for a bit.”

  I nodded and ran for the gates of the settlement, crunching and sli
ding on dead mirror bugs with every step. I’d gotten about halfway there when the gates opened cautiously and someone peered out. I shouted up to the bewildered stranger to tell Lan to stop the protective spells, but he just stood there. Then from behind him I heard Papa’s voice yelling, “Eff? Eff, what are—”

  “Tell Lan to shut off the protective spells!” I shouted again. “Wash says!” I was dizzy and nearly out of breath, and I didn’t know what I was going to do if they didn’t listen. I couldn’t shout an explanation up the rest of the hill.

  But Papa took one look at the dead mirror bugs and Wash and William concentrating like mad, and started yelling. A few seconds later, I felt the protective spell around the settlement collapse. As soon as it did, the ring of mirror bugs started moving outward faster and faster, and in less than five minutes it was all over.

  With those extra-strong settlement spells gone, the beetles quit crawling toward the settlement and started milling around at random, the way they normally would. All they had left to pull magic from were the mirror bugs, and it seems that without that little twist in the mirror bug magic, the beetles were really, really good at sucking out mirror bug magic. It stands to reason, I suppose. They were different stages of the same creature, after all.

  Wash and William held the untwisting spell until the chain reaction of beetles to mirror bugs petered out about two miles from the settlement. They figured out the distance later, by where they ran out of dead mirror bugs all over the ground.

  All of us—me and Lan and Wash and William and Papa and Professor Jeffries and the settlement magician and a bunch of settlers who knew enough magic to have gotten roped into helping when the mirror bugs showed up—were pretty well exhausted. The settlement folks treated us real well, and didn’t even make a fuss about getting their protective spells back up. Mr. Harrison did, though, until Papa made him be quiet.

  The first thing Papa did when everyone started feeling a bit better was to get all of us together to piece together exactly what had happened and write an account of it before anyone forgot anything important.