Patricia Wrede - Across the Great Barrier

The first thing I noticed was that the spells had changed from what I remembered. I was so surprised that I lost my focus and my concentration both, and had to start over, but at least being surprised woke me up a little.

When I got back on track, I studied the change more carefully. It wasn’t as big a difference as I’d thought. The magic of the pendant was layered. The older magic curled into a knot in the indent, while the rest of the spells wrapped tightly around them. I still couldn’t tell exactly what any of the spells were, but it was plain as day that what had changed was the magic in the outermost layer.

Very cautiously, I poked at the changed places. It was like poking a walnut; nothing happened, except that I got a better sense of the changes. They felt familiar — a little like Lan’s magic, a little like Mama’s … and then it hit me. All the changes felt like my magic.

Without thinking, I sat up in bed, yanked the pendant off, and threw it across the room. I stared into the darkness, breathing like I’d been running and thinking about everything I’d ever thought I knew about that pendant. After a long time, I fished it out from behind the dresser where it had fallen. I still didn’t know what it did, but Wash had given it to me, and I trusted Wash. Trust or not, though, I was tired of not understanding, and so I was determined to study it some more. I didn’t put it on; I just held it in my hands while I did the concentration exercise again.

This time, I tried to look at the other layers of magic, the ones that didn’t feel like mine. Sure enough, each and every one of them felt different. And the magic in the next layer down from mine felt like Wash’s.

I studied the pendant for a good long time. None of the other magic felt like anyone I knew, which wasn’t too surprising. Wash said he’d had the pendant since he was three or four, and I wasn’t likely to have met anyone who’d worn it before he had. Most of the early spells seemed to be Aphrikan magic of one kind or another; there was hardly any Avrupan magic at all until the last couple of layers, and most of the Avrupan-type magic was in the layers that went with me and Wash. That made sense, too, if the magician who’d originally made the pendant was Aphrikan.

The really interesting thing was all the don’t-notice-it spells. They weren’t the oldest magic on the pendant; in fact, the oldest layers weren’t hidden at all. Then, right before the layers started to have bits of Avrupan-style magic in them, there were suddenly a whole lot of spells for keeping things hidden and unnoticed. I spent a while studying them, trying to figure out how they’d been cast, but I’d never been too good at building spells in reverse, and these weren’t like any other kind of magic I’d ever seen or heard tell about.

Finally, I gave up and just sat there with the pendant in my hands, thinking. I laid out in my mind everything I’d learned about it since Wash had given it to me: It was Aphrikan magic, it could draw off a little magic from whoever wore it (and it obviously had), it was passed from teacher to student, it went cold when I was near someone else who wore something like it — I stopped. Something was tickling the back of my brain.

I tried to remember whether the pendant had ever done anything like that at other times. Well, besides heating up when I walked into Lan’s hospital room. Hot and cold, I thought. Has it ever heated up or gone cold before?

And then I had it. Every time I’d woken up from one of those odd dreams, the ones that seemed so clear, I’d been cold. I had connected it with the dreams, not with the pendant, but what if it was more than just the one thing?

It felt right, though I still didn’t have any idea why the pendant might be giving me dreams. Maybe I could get Wash to tell me, now that I’d figured out this much on my own. I snorted. He’d probably just smile and nod and look approving without actually saying anything more, and I’d have to study up some more on my own. I made a face. I was surely giving myself a lot of studying to do, for someone who wasn’t in school any longer.

I set the pendant on the nightstand and lay back, trying to relax. Even so, it was a long time before I fell asleep. I didn’t remember any of my dreams, but I slept better than I ever had in as long as I could remember.

Lan woke up late the next morning, in the middle of all of us visiting. He saw me first and squinted, like he didn’t quite believe his eyes. “Eff?”

“Lan!” Mama’s lips trembled, like she didn’t know whether to smile or cry. I felt tears in my eyes. I’d wanted to believe that he would be all right, ever since I’d poked his magic back where it belonged, but I’d been afraid to believe it until right that minute.

“Mama?” Lan licked his lips. “What are you doing here?” Suddenly, his eyes went wide. “The lake spell! What happened?”

“Lake spell?” Papa said. “I thought you were working on construction scaffolding.”

“Later, Daniel,” Mama said firmly. “Lan, something went wrong with a spell in one of your classes, and you were badly hurt. We’ve been very worried, but you’ll be fine now.”

“What about —” Lan stopped. I could tell he wanted to know something, but was afraid to ask.

“Some of your classmates were injured, but you were the worst of them,” Papa said. He smiled. “Dean Ziegler tells me it was your doing that none of the students were more seriously hurt. I am very proud of you.”

Lan flinched. “Students,” he mumbled. He raised his head, looking scared to death. “And Professor —”

“That’s enough talking for now, Lan,” Mama interrupted. “You need to rest and recover.”

“But —”

“Excuse me,” said a polite and utterly unapologetic voice from the doorway. We turned to find yet another doctor standing there. He scolded us for not having fetched someone the very minute Lan woke up, and sent us all back to the waiting room.

We saw Lan again in the afternoon. He didn’t say much, and when we left, Mama commented that he seemed tired and it was no wonder after all he’d been through.

I didn’t think Lan was tired. I thought he was downcast and worried. I wondered whether they’d told him yet that Professor Warren was dead. The doctors didn’t want to say right off, on account of not wanting to give Lan a bad shock when he was only just recovering, but sooner or later, he’d have to know.

Frank went back to New Amsterdam the next morning; he’d been away from his patients longer than he liked already, and with Lan on the mend, he didn’t need to stay. Miriam stayed with us for another few days. Mostly, we divided our time between visiting at the hospital and writing letters to everyone telling them that Lan was going to be all right. Papa sent a telegram back to Nan and Allie and Robbie, and Frank said he’d let the family in Helvan Shores know when he passed through on his way to the city, but there was still a heap of other folks to let know.

Since I seemed to do most of the writing, I started a letter to William right off. I wrote Roger Boden, too; it hadn’t seemed right to write before, when it would take so long for a letter to get to Albion that by the time he got to worrying everything would be over. I had to put both letters aside a couple of times when Mama thought of someone else who needed to know how Lan was, or to be thanked for inquiring after him. I wrote Roger a straightforward account of everything that had happened, with as much detail as I had about the spell that had gone wrong and the treatments the doctors had used, because I knew he’d be interested in that. William’s letter turned into a long ramble about everything that had happened and what I felt about it, including my worries about Lan and the business with the pendant that I didn’t feel I could tell anyone else. It was the only letter I didn’t mind writing, because it was the only one where I could tell the truth as I saw it.