The Far West Read online

  And then I’d go home to Rennie’s childings and Mama’s chores and Allie trying to make rules for everything and everybody. Lan was the only one who ever asked about the medusa lizard or the menagerie. Robbie and my sisters weren’t interested, and Papa didn’t have to ask me because he and Professor Jeffries and Professor Graham always got together to talk at the end of the day, so he’d already heard. And if Mama or Brant wanted to know, they talked to Papa. It was like I was still thirteen and too young to know what I was doing.

  Early in February, the first batch of experts from the Frontier Management Department came out to look at the medusa lizard. There were so many that they couldn’t all fit in Professor Torgeson’s laboratory at the same time, and a lot of them didn’t have anything useful to say. As far as I could see, most of them had talked their way onto the list just so they’d be able to tell folks back home they’d actually seen the lizard.

  “Good riddance,” Professor Torgeson said when they left a week later. “Eff, we’re taking the morning off.”

  “We are? But —”

  “I have an important letter to write. You’re helping.”

  It took us most of the morning to put together the letter she sent to the Frontier Management Department, and I learned a lot about how to be frigidly polite and still leave somebody feeling like they’d been spanked.

  That was Thursday. On Friday, Roger Boden arrived back from Albion. I’d met Roger a little over a year before, when he’d started coming around to help out at the menagerie after taking one of Professor Jeffries’s fall classes. We’d gotten to know each other pretty well, but then he’d had an offer to study advanced magic in Albion that was too good for him not to take. We’d been exchanging letters for the past year, and I’d been looking forward to seeing him again.

  Roger stopped by the house on Saturday afternoon and Mama invited him to stay and have tea. I introduced him to Lan, who’d been away from home when we got acquainted, and to Brant and Rennie and the childings. Lan asked about his studies in Albion and they ended up having a long, energetic talk with Papa and Robbie about magical theory. I was especially glad to see Lan getting all emphatic and waving his arms around to make a point. He hadn’t been that excited about anything in months.

  I wasn’t so sure what to think about Roger. His red-blond hair was a little longer than it had been, and he’d grown a small mustache that made him look older. He’d always seemed solid and reliable, but he was more sure of himself now, and less quiet than he had been. He’d picked up just a hint of an Albion accent, too. He didn’t flirt or pay me any more attention than was courteous, but every so often during that tea, I felt his blue eyes following me for just a little longer than they followed anyone else.

  Mama and Allie must have noticed that extra bit of looking, because the minute he got up to leave, Mama said, “It’s so good to see you again, Mr. Boden, and we haven’t come anywhere near catching up yet. Won’t you stay for supper?”

  “Yes, do,” Allie put in. “You can’t go back to a rooming house meal on your first night home! Tell him, Eff!”

  Rennie frowned slightly, looking from Allie to me and back. I shot Allie a glare, but I didn’t say anything.

  Roger smiled at Mama. “Thank you kindly for the invitation, Mrs. Rothmer, but I really need to get back to my unpacking. I think the trunks must have multiplied on the journey — I swear there are twice as many as I remember sending off.”

  “I’m glad you took the time to stop by,” Papa said. “I enjoyed the discussion.”

  “I’ll admit to an ulterior motive, Professor,” Roger said. “I’m hoping you can make time on Monday to start assessing the work I did in Albion. I’d like to finish my degree this year, and the sooner I know what I still have to take —”

  “Say no more,” Papa said, laughing. “I’ll be in my office at ten thirty in the morning. Bring your papers along then, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Roger nodded. “Thank you, sir. I’ll see you Monday.” He bade us all good evening and left in a flurry of good wishes.

  The minute he was out the door, Allie pounced on me. “Eff! Why didn’t you help us persuade him to stay?”

  “Because she didn’t want to help you make a spectacle of yourself,” Rennie said, frowning. “Honestly, Allie, you can’t run after a fellow so obviously and expect to get anywhere.”

  Allie’s eyes went wide. “But … I’m not … It’s not me, it’s Eff!”

  “What?” Rennie gave her a puzzled look.

  “She thinks Mr. Boden’s sweet on Eff,” Robbie said, snatching the last two cookies from the platter on the table as he left to do his studying.

  Lan paused in the doorway and gave me a startled look. Rennie studied me for a moment, then turned and frowned at Allie. “What were you trying to do, then, ruin her chances?”

  “You can both stop that right this minute,” I said, alarmed. The last thing I needed was for Rennie to decide Roger Boden was courting me; whether she was for it or against it, she’d want to mix in and make things come out her way, and never mind what I thought of it. “Roger came to see Papa.”

  “Right — that’s why Roger spent the whole afternoon staring at you,” Allie said scornfully. “And after a whole year of writing letters between you, too.”

  “I’ve been writing to William for longer than that,” I said, feeling my face go hot. The thought flashed through my mind that if I did marry Roger, I wouldn’t have to come home to Allie’s nagging anymore, and if I could have gone any redder, I would have. “Mr. Boden is a friend, that’s all,” I snapped, hoping to make that picture go out of my head.

  Lan was looking back and forth between us, like he wasn’t sure which of us had the right of things. “Eff, if you like Mr. —”

  “You stay out of this!” I interrupted. “Whether I like him or not is my business, and what I choose to do about it — or not to do about it — is even more my business. And that goes double for the two of you,” I added, turning to Allie and Rennie.

  “‘Choose to do about it’?” Allie snorted. “You’re going to end up an old maid like that professor you work for if you dither around much longer.”

  “There are worse things than being an old maid,” Rennie said softly.

  Allie and I just stared at her for a minute. I remembered how unhappy Rennie had seemed both times I’d been in Oak River, and some of what she’d told me the one time we’d talked about why she ran off with Brant. Still, I’d never expected to have Rennie on my side in this kind of argument.

  “I like Professor Torgeson,” I said finally. “I wouldn’t mind turning out like her. And anyway, I told you already that it’s my business.”

  “Besides, isn’t that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?” Lan put in, tilting his head to study Allie. “You’re three years older than we are. If anyone is getting long in the tooth —”

  “I have plenty of prospects!”

  “You do?” I said. “Well, I’ll certainly remember how to help you out if you ever bring one of them home.”

  “I think you should leave each other alone,” Rennie said firmly. “Eff’s right; it’s her business.” Lan looked at me, then at Allie, and nodded.

  Allie glared at us, but she knew better than to keep up arguing. “You just think hard about what you’re doing, Eff, that’s all,” she said, and went off, leaving Rennie and me to finish clearing up the tea things.

  I was more annoyed with Allie than I’d let on. I’d known what she thought about Roger, but I’d been hoping that she’d forgotten in the year he’d been away. Now she’d gone and gotten Rennie and Lan interested, and even if they were on my side today, there was no saying how long they’d stay that way.

  Sometimes I couldn’t help thinking that the unluckiest thing about being a thirteenth child was having all those older brothers and sisters telling me what to do.

  I didn’t see much of Roger until the middle of the next week. Roger was helping in the menagerie until he gradua
ted in the spring, and I was in the laboratory with Professor Torgeson when he and Professor Jeffries came in on a blast of freezing-cold air. They were both so crusted in snow that you couldn’t tell what color their mufflers were until they started unwinding them and some of the clumps fell off to melt on the floor.

  “I see it’s started snowing out,” Professor Torgeson commented.

  “Since noon, and it’s still coming down hard enough to make an ice dragon happy,” Professor Jeffries replied, carefully shaking out his coat. “You might want to head home early. There’s two inches on the ground already, and if the wind picks up …” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Anyone who’d spent a winter in Mill City knew better than to go out in a blizzard unless there was a dire need. Even in the heart of town it was easy to get disoriented and wander in circles until you froze. Mr. Gallington had lost two toes to frostbite that way a few years back, and everyone said he was lucky to have stumbled against the edge of Mr. Stolz’s store when he did, or he’d have frozen to death.

  “I don’t think it will get that bad,” Roger said, hanging his coat on the hook next to mine. “It doesn’t have the right feel.”

  “You’re a weather magician now, Mr. Boden?” Professor Torgeson raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Not exactly, but I picked up a few things in Albion from Dr. Wencell,” Roger told her. “Weather patterns are closely related to esoteric geomancy, so practically all my projects involved weather in some way. Of course, the weather they get in Albion isn’t anything like ours, since we’re smack in the middle of the continent, but that’s the point — you can tell a great deal from the differences.” He broke off, looking chagrined. “Sorry, Professors. I did my geomancy comprehensives on these cross-connections with the weather, and I tend to get carried away sometimes.”

  Professor Torgeson looked suddenly thoughtful. “Just how much did your geomancy studies encompass, Mr. Boden? Was it all theory, or did you venture into practical applications?”

  “It was supposed to be mostly theory,” Roger said after a minute, “but on an island like that, you can’t help but see plenty of practical examples. The weather changes a lot faster than they think, but they’re so used to it being that way that they take it for granted.”

  “The advantage of an outside perspective,” Professor Jeffries murmured.

  “Just so,” Professor Torgeson said. “Mr. Boden, I wonder if you would be willing to put your skills to use on our medusa lizard?”

  “Me?” Roger’s eyes widened.

  “Oh!” I said at the same time. Roger looked at the professors and then at me. “Professor Torgeson has been wanting to get a geomancer to come and look at the medusa lizard for months,” I explained.

  Geomancy is a really difficult specialization that mixes geology with several kinds of magic, including divination, which means you have to have a talent for it on top of being really intelligent. There are only four or five geomancers in the whole country, and they were all too busy to come running out to Mill City to do a few checks on a medusa lizard, so Professor Torgeson hadn’t even asked for one.

  Professor Torgeson nodded. “Mr. Boden?”

  “Certainly, Professor,” Roger said. “What would you like me to look for?”

  “Point of origin, natural habitat, and history,” Professor Torgeson said. “Beyond that, I’d prefer not to prejudice your findings. What would you like to begin with? Will you need any special supplies?”

  “The claws and feet, please. Or whatever it uses to stand and balance. And if the small rock samples that Professor Olivera uses in the introductory geology class are available, I’d like those, please. A map would make it a lot easier, too, if you have one you don’t mind me marking up.”

  Professor Torgeson nodded to me to get the sample cases that held the parts of the medusa lizard that she’d finished dissecting, and Professor Jeffries went for the rocks. I was only in the storage room for a minute, but when I came out, Professor Torgeson had a medium-sized map of the North Columbian continent lying open at the end of the table, and Roger was sketching an off-center diagram on the tabletop just below it in pale red and green chalk. I watched him for a minute and then said, “Oh! It’s a compass rose.”

  Roger nodded without looking up. “Don’t jiggle the table, or I’ll have to redo it,” he said.

  “Would it be better to align the map to true north, also?” Professor Torgeson asked.

  “No,” Roger said. “This is better, because it gives me two lines to work with. Like having two eyes.”

  “Where do you want the medusa lizard feet?” I asked.

  That got Roger and Professor Torgeson started on a whole long discussion about the medusa lizard and the way it resisted magic and the effect of taking the preservation spell off the bits they were using. By the time Professor Jeffries got back with the rocks, they’d decided that the spells would have to be canceled while Roger cast his own spells. Professor Torgeson did that while Roger laid out the rocks along the edge of the table, so that they made a big circle around the map and the diagram.

  “Ready when you are,” Roger said. Professor Torgeson nodded and handed him the sample jar that held the medusa lizard’s left rear foot. Roger dumped the foot out into the middle of the compass rose and cast the spell.

  A dark brown rock flew from the edge of the table, right over to the lizard’s foot. It hit so hard that it knocked the foot to the edge of the compass rose. Two other rocks wobbled and moved out of line, but only by about an inch. Roger nodded and cast another spell. This time, one of the smallest points of the compass rose, the one that pointed west-west-southwest, turned from pale red to black. The two points on either side of it turned dark gray, and the southernmost one after that went pale gray.

  “There’s the general area of origin,” Roger said. “Mostly west, and a little south, in an area with a lot of igneous rock, and maybe a bit of metamorphic rock, too. Mountains, probably. Looks as if it has a pretty wide range. I’m going to try for habitat next, though it won’t be as accurate as it could be. I don’t have the right samples.”

  Roger brushed the compass rose away and chalked a new diagram in its place. This one looked like two triangles, drawn on top of each other to make a six-pointed star. Roger set the medusa lizard’s foot in the center, then pulled a small case out of his pocket, made of heavy quilted cotton. It was a little larger than the magician’s cases that Papa and Lan used, and when he opened it, I saw that it had an extra section.

  Carefully, Roger took six vials from the extra section of his case and tipped a tiny pinch from each of them into one of the six points of the star. One looked like gray dust, one like grains of sand, three like dried leaves, and one like black powder. Then he backed away and began muttering under his breath.

  For a minute, nothing happened. Then there was a popping sound and flames shot up six inches from four of the star points. I jumped, and so did Professor Jeffries. The flares died back as fast as they’d come, and Roger stepped forward to peer at the star.

  “I was right about the mountains, or maybe foothills,” he announced. “Somewhere with a lot of granite, anyway, and with bedrock very close to the surface. It’s definitely not a plains creature. I can’t tell for sure whether it likes to be above the tree line or not, though, and I certainly can’t tell what sort of forest it prefers. If it prefers forest to open hills.” He sounded a mite disgruntled. “I said I didn’t have the right samples.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Professor Jeffries said. “Just knowing that it’s not native to the plains is very reassuring.”

  “In one way,” Professor Torgeson said dryly. “In another, it’s very unsettling. Just what would make something like this travel all the way out of the Far West to settlement territory, if it prefers mountains to plains?”

  “Perhaps its history will tell us more,” Professor Jeffries said. He looked at Roger and frowned. “If you aren’t too tired?”

  “I’m fine,” Roger said. He p
icked up the brown rock that had knocked into the lizard foot and set it in the middle of the map. He set the two rocks that had wobbled farther out toward the western part of the map, and scooped up the pinches of powder from the unburned points of the star and sprinkled them across the rocks and the map. Then he stretched his left hand out over the table and cast again.

  At first, it didn’t seem that much was happening. Then I saw a small, bright red spot appear on the map, a bit east of the Red River. It looked like right about where we’d shot the two medusa lizards.

  An instant later, Roger collapsed.

  We all hurried forward, but Roger was already sitting up. As he struggled to his feet, Professor Torgeson made an exasperated noise, dragged a chair over, and pushed him into it. I fetched a glass of water and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he told me, and gulped it down like he’d been in the desert for a week.

  When he finished, Professor Torgeson and Professor Jeffries were both glaring at him. “I didn’t mean for you to exhaust yourself!” Professor Torgeson said. “What do you think you were doing? Mapping the whole of the Far West?”

  Roger stared at her for a minute, then dropped his head into his hands. “I forgot,” he said in a muffled voice.

  “Forgot what?” Professor Jeffries asked, straightening up from studying the map.

  “I forgot I was using an undelimited symbol set,” Roger said.

  “It wasn’t the lizard’s magic resistance?”

  “No — well, maybe a little.” Roger lifted his head, looking sheepish. “But the resonance doesn’t pass through the primary focus object; the geologic samples are the real conduits, so the blockage was really inconsequential. The real problem was that I kept waiting for it to finish.”