Thirteenth Child Read online

  CHAPTER 6

  MISS OCHIBA’S CLASS WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE REST OF THE school year. Some of the history was familiar—we’d learned about the Greeks and the Roman Empire the year before—but it all seemed different when we looked at their magic and not just at all the battles and emperors. The parts about Aphrika and Cathay were mostly new, and I found them fascinating, no matter what William said.

  But the best part was what Miss Ochiba called “seeing.” We never knew what day it would happen, or what we’d be asked to do, only that it would involve finding different ways to look at familiar things. We spent one class coming up with different uses for a fork, and another thinking up different ways to get a basket of eggs across a creek without breaking any of them. And one day, we spent the whole class making puns.

  That was what did it, in the end—the puns. Lan and Robbie had been arguing with William off and on all year about Miss Ochiba and the right way to learn magic, and up until that day, they’d looked like winning in the end. There were two of them, and Robbie was old enough to be learning the beginning spells. He got real good at distracting everybody in the middle of an argument by demonstrating how to make a stick float in the air. William was stubborn, but he was slowly wearing down.

  Until the puns. Lan and the other boys loved that class, and they kept on punning long after. Making puns became a game, and then a secret code. And William was no good at it. It drove him near crazy, listening to the others go on and not being able to join in. Then when he was tongue-tied and ready to burst with it, the boys would start in all over again.

  “Hey, William, cat got your tongue?”

  “Maybe he’s horse.”

  “If you’re sick, maybe you should try lion down.”

  “He can’t be feeling that bad; he’s not dragon around.”

  “That sounds more like ewe.”

  “Oh, that pun really sphinx.”

  I don’t think the boys meant any harm; they were just looking for an excuse to start in on a new chain of puns. But it always seemed to come out like picking on William, and that made William go all stubborn and ornery every time. So instead of blowing over, the argument just kept on growing like a snowbank, all winter long.

  And then one day in the early spring, when the little blue starflowers were just coming up around the edges of the coarse patches of snow that still stuck fast wherever large tree trunks or boulders blocked the sun, Robbie came tearing up to the house all muddy and red-faced. I was sweeping the porch because I wanted to be outside in the sun and it was still too cool to just sit, so I saw him coming.

  “Eff!” he yelled. “Get Papa, quick! It’s Lan—” He stopped at the steps, wheezing and too out of breath to talk.

  I dropped the broom and ran inside. Papa was teaching a class, and we weren’t supposed to interrupt for anything, no matter what, but I didn’t care, not if Lan was in the kind of trouble that would make Robbie look so wild-eyed. I just burst in yelling, “Papa! Papa! Something’s happened to Lan!”

  Papa and his five students looked up from a diagram that was spread out on the table in front of them. Papa’s eyes met mine, and then he came right over. “What is it that’s happened?”

  “I don’t know!” I sobbed. “Robbie’s out front—he says to come quick!”

  Papa nodded and brushed past me. The students exchanged glances, and all five of them followed. The last one, a big, soft-spoken man named Gil Mannering, stopped next to me and said, “Lan’s your twin, isn’t he?”

  I nodded. I couldn’t remember anyone putting it like that before; usually, everybody said I was Lan’s twin.

  “You won’t be wanting to wait to find out what’s wrong, then,” he said, half to himself. “Come along.”

  I didn’t wait for any more permission than that. I just followed along.

  When we got out to the porch, Papa was trying to get Robbie settled down enough to make some sense. Robbie just tugged Papa toward the creek. “You have to come quick, Papa! Before he drops him. It’s too high. Hurry!”

  Sense or not, that was enough to start everyone running. I fell behind pretty quick, but Gil saw and came back for me. He didn’t say anything, just scooped me up and carried me off like a sack of flour.

  Robbie led the way toward the fort the boys had built in the windbreak, and then past it a little way to the creek. The creek was swollen right to the top of its banks with meltwater and running fast. Here and there, you could see eddies and foam where the big rocks were, that we used for stepping-stones in the summer when the water was low. Over the sound of the rushing water, we heard voices, and then we arrived.

  Two of the boys from our class at school were standing by the creek, staring upward. A third was dragging a fallen branch out from the bushes toward the bank. Lan stood a little apart, his face white as paper. His hands were clenched into fists, and he was holding them out in front of him like he was trying to raise up a bucket that was too heavy for him. He was staring upward at William, who was floating in the air over the creek, a good twenty feet from the ground, limp as Nan’s old rag doll and moaning softly. Every time Lan’s hands shook, William rose a little higher.

  One of the college students laughed. Papa glared at him, then said quietly, “I’m here, Lan.”

  “Papa!” Lan gasped. “I can’t hold him up much longer, and I can’t get him down.”

  “You’re doing very well,” Papa said calmly. His hands were busy in his pockets, pulling out string and keys and papers. “Just hang on another minute. Mr. Mannering, put a net under that boy right now, and hold it until we have him down. Mr. Jordan, I want a control ward as soon as you can have one up. Mr. Stepka, you handle the shield—I don’t want any backsplash hitting these other children.”

  Papa kept talking, telling each of his students what to do while he laid out the spell that he’d be casting. Normally, I’d have been more than a little interested. Papa didn’t often work magic when the family was near to see. But right then, I was watching Lan and William.

  Everyone else could see that Lan was tiring fast, and that when he ran out of energy, William would drop straight into the swift, treacherous water below. Everyone else could see how hard Lan was trying to keep William up just as long as he could, so that Papa and the others would have a chance to bring him down safely. That’s what they saw, but Lan was my twin, and I saw something else.

  Lan was madder than a wet cat. That was where he’d found the energy to lift William twenty feet high and hold him there; he was feeding the magic with his anger. He’d used up a good part of his mad by then, but he was still mad enough that the angry part of him didn’t really want William to come down safe. He wasn’t just fighting to hold William up. He was fighting himself too.

  I wondered for just a second what William had said or done to make Lan so mad, but there wasn’t time to think about that. I looked up at William, and then down at the banks of the creek. There were plenty of people on our side to catch him, if he moved over a little and didn’t come down too fast; the whole street and half the college seemed to have collected in the few minutes we’d been there. I sidled over to Lan.

  “It’s just old William,” I said softly, not like I was talking to anyone, especially not looking at Lan. “He doesn’t mean half he says, and the other half, he doesn’t know any better. It’s just old William. I bet he’s learned enough of a lesson.”

  I felt something hot and angry wash across my skin, like the heat from a bonfire. I stayed where I was. “It’s just William,” I repeated.

  Lan sighed, and William started to sink. Slowly. Someone on the bank yelled, and Papa shouted some words over the students’ muttering. William glowed blue, as if a soap bubble had suddenly appeared around him. Lan gasped and collapsed in a panting heap. William’s bubble swooped down to the bank, quickly but under control. The bubble vanished. The boys cheered as William dropped the last few inches onto the grass, safe and sound.

  Naturally everyone started demanding explanations. F
irst in line was Professor Graham, William’s father, who’d arrived in time to see the last few minutes. As soon as he was sure William had come to no harm, he demanded to know who was responsible.

  “Lan Rothmer, Professor,” one of Papa’s students told him.

  “Nonsense,” Professor Graham snapped. “He’s had no training, and he’s not even ten yet. He can’t possibly have done such a working.” He looked at the older boys who’d been on the creek bank when we all arrived. “Now, which of you cast that spell?”

  Papa had been checking Lan over, the same way Professor Graham had been checking William, but he heard what the professor said and looked up. “It was Lan, all right, and you have my profoundest apologies, Professor Graham.”

  Professor Graham’s head whipped around and his eyes narrowed. “How?”

  Papa looked down at Lan with a rueful expression. “Lan’s a natural magician. I’ve been thinking that something would break loose soon, but I hadn’t expected anything quite so dramatic. Nor so dangerous.”

  “A natural—you mean you’re a seventh son?”

  Papa nodded.

  “And he’s a seventh son?”

  Papa nodded again.

  Professor Graham blew out a long breath. “I don’t understand why you didn’t mention this before, Professor Rothmer. The training of a natural magician, especially one with such potential power—”

  “—is a topic on which everyone seems willing to express an opinion,” Papa said a trifle sharply. “Sara and I consider it more important to train the man. Apropos of which—” He nudged Lan.

  Lan stepped forward. He still looked pale, but he wasn’t shaking anymore. He wasn’t angry, either. He was scared. “Please, sir, it was me,” he said, and swallowed hard. “We were arguing, and—and I lost my temper, and it just happened. I’m sorry.” He put his chin up and looked at William, who was sitting on the ground, shivering. “I’m sorry, William. I—I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “I see,” Professor Graham said slowly, but he was looking at Papa. After a moment, he switched the look to Lan. “I will accept your apology, young man. And your explanation. I trust, however, that there will not be a repeat of the incident.”

  Lan gulped. “I—I’ll try, sir. I mean, I’ll try not to. But I didn’t do it on purpose, and I’m not sure I know how to keep from doing it.” He looked a little sick as he spoke, and there was a murmur from the other boys on the riverbank. Some of them gave Lan wary looks, and Lan looked even sicker when he saw them.

  “Teaching you how to keep from doing it is my job,” Papa said briskly. “And, no doubt, Professor Graham’s, if he will be kind enough to assist.”

  Professor Graham looked startled, then nodded. “It will be my pleasure.”

  “Now that your abilities have broken loose, it shouldn’t take long for you to learn to control them,” Papa said. “And after such a spectacular beginning, I doubt you’ll be capable of even lighting a lantern for at least a week. By the time you’ve recovered enough for another such performance, you’ll know how to avoid it.” He spoke to Lan, but loudly enough for everyone to hear, and a sigh ran through the crowd as people relaxed.

  Professor Graham’s eyes narrowed again briefly. Then he said, “Let’s get these two home. And no argument from you,” he added to William, who hadn’t even begun to say anything. “If you aren’t exhausted, you ought to be. Come—your mother will be worried.”

  Papa smiled slightly. “And so will yours,” he said to Lan, and took his hand. He and Professor Graham and Lan and William moved off toward the houses, with most of the grown-ups trailing along behind.

  One of the boys who’d been with Lan and Robbie came over to me—Dick Corman, who’d been dragging the branch down the bank when we showed up. “You’re Lan’s twin,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Is he really a double-seven?”

  I nodded again. There was no point in denying it. Maybe there’d been a few people in the crowd who hadn’t put together what Papa and Professor Graham had said, but it wouldn’t be long before the ones who had figured it out enlightened them. By the end of tomorrow, everyone at school would know.

  “Wow,” Dick said, looking after Papa and Lan. He looked back at me. “Does that mean you’re a natural, too? Because you’re his twin?”

  I stared at him. “I don’t know,” I said after a minute. “Nobody’s ever said.”

  “Maybe they don’t know,” Dick said, looking back toward the dwindling crowd. “They like to pretend they know everything there is to know about magic, but they don’t really, or why would they always be talking about research?”

  I tucked that away in my head to think about later, and changed the subject before he started asking too many more questions. “What were you doing with that branch when we came up?”

  To my surprise, he flushed. “I didn’t think Robbie would get back in time. I thought if William dropped in the creek, maybe he could grab hold of the branch and we could pull him out.” He looked at the dark swirling current. “I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

  “At least you were trying to do something,” I said. “Everybody else was just standing there.” I paused. “What did William say to get Lan so mad?”

  Dick started to say something, then stopped and looked in the direction where Papa and everyone had gone.

  “What did he say?” I asked again.

  “William lost his temper first,” Dick said slowly. “Over the puns. He said they didn’t have anything to do with real magic. And then he dared Robbie to float something bigger than that little stick he practices with all the time.”

  “He dared Robbie?” I said.

  Dick nodded. “And then he said that when he turns ten, he’ll be floating plates and bricks and all sorts of things, because he already knows the spells. Lan told him not to talk twaddle, and William told Lan that with the training he was getting in school, he’d never even be good enough to be a drudge magician—that none of your family had any real magical talent, and that your father must know it or he wouldn’t be sending all of you to the day school.”

  “Oh,” I said. Even hearing about it secondhand made me just as mad as Lan had been. No wonder he’d yanked William right up to the treetops like that. For a minute, I was sorry I’d tried to calm Lan down.

  I told Dick thanks and trudged on home, thinking hard the whole way. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Papa what I’d learned, or not. It felt important. But I could also feel a nasty part of me that wanted to tell Papa the whole story in order to get William into trouble, a part that wanted its own revenge on William for what he’d dared to say about Papa and Lan. The evil part of me, I thought. By the time I got back to the house, I’d decided not to give in to it, so I didn’t say anything to Papa at all.

  CHAPTER 7

  THAT SPRING LEADING UP TO MY TENTH BIRTHDAY, WE HAD MORE rain than a mammoth has hair. It rained in slow, steady, daylong streams and in sudden rushes like someone dumping a bucket out. The streets that weren’t paved went ankle-deep in mud or worse, so that taking out a carriage or wagon became something that took care and planning. The few days of sun we had were nothing like enough to dry things out.

  Then, just as school was letting out at last, it dried up and got hot. The churned-up mud took a week to bake nearly as hard as bricks, full of deep cracks that were wide enough to stick your whole finger in. The leaves on the trees curled up, and the grass dried out hard and sharp as pins. Over it all hung the sun and the dust. Not a breath of air stirred.

  Naturally, the boys spent all their time down at the creek. Lan went with them whenever he could get away from his extra magic lessons. Everyone else stayed on the porch, because even Papa’s best spells couldn’t cool the house off enough for comfort in the daytime. Everyone except me, that is.

  I spent my time on the roof, in the hiding place I’d found the summer before. If I didn’t move much, it wasn’t any hotter there than on the porch, and no one could interrupt me
to do chores or errands.

  The day Professor Graham came by, I was on the roof and Mama and Papa were on the porch, having the same conversation they’d had nearly every day since the hot spell started. Mama complained about the heat and the dust and the extra work it made, and Papa said she should think of the settlers, trying to farm when first they couldn’t plant for the rain, and now anything they had gotten in was drying up and blowing away. Mama said if she felt for anyone, it was the settlers’ wives, who had even more dust to deal with than there was in the city. They could go on like that for hours, play-arguing. They’d already been at it long enough to chase Rennie and Nan and Allie off to find someone to visit.

  I wasn’t really listening, just enough so I’d notice if either of them said anything about me. I recognized Professor Graham’s voice when he turned up, and something in it when he and Papa exchanged greetings made me close up my book and pay close attention.

  Papa must have heard it, too, because he didn’t waste much time on socializing. “What brings you over, Professor?” he asked as soon as everyone had finished with their hellos.

  “There’s been another incursion,” Professor Graham said, sounding grim. “Near Braxton, this time. Ten families, wiped out.”

  “Braxton!” Mama gasped. “So close!”

  “It’s a good fifty miles west of the river, Sara,” Papa said mildly.

  “Yes, and there’s no reason to think the Great Barrier is weakening,” Professor Graham put in hastily. “But the lesser spells the settlements have been using just aren’t up to the job of holding back the wildlife.”

  “Not in a year like this one, anyway,” Papa said. “Any word on what it was?”

  “An assorted mob,” Professor Graham said. “A herd of mammoths overran the magician’s barrier and trampled the fences. They’d been stampeded by a mixed pack of Columbian sphinxes and saber cats, and there were scavengers following after—jackals and terror birds, from the sound of it. There were only four survivors.”