Patricia Wrede - Thirteenth Child

“Lan,” Papa said. “Pick your spot.”

Lan nodded and fell back to ride beside Professor Jeffries, where he could see everyone. I frowned. Even I knew that it only took two people to do a standard fast-travel spell, and that would be Papa and Professor Jeffries. Then I saw that Lan was holding a shiny gold disc about the size of the locket Mama usually wore, and I realized that he was going to cast the protective spell for us. I felt a little better, but only a little. I was pretty sure Lan hadn’t done anything like this before, and power isn’t everything.

Papa handed me the reins and pulled a gyroscope and a pink quartz crystal from his pocket. “Keep us moving straight and steady, Eff,” he told me, and I felt scared and proud that he’d trust me to drive the team while he did his spell casting.

His eyes got that faraway look and I felt the surge as he and Lan and Professor Jeffries all drew power toward themselves to start working. Mr. Harrison started to say something else and William shushed him. Papa said the words and set the gyroscope spinning on the wagon seat. Behind us, I heard Professor Jeffries and Lan reciting their parts.

And then I felt the spells…waver. It wasn’t quite the same as in my magic classes at school, when the people next to me had everything explode, but it was near enough. I gasped and stiffened right up straight. My fingers tightened on the reins and the horses slowed, just for a second. The change made the gyroscope on the wagon seat wobble, and Papa broke off to say, “Easy, Eff.”

“Yes, Papa,” I replied. I forced my fingers to relax. I put all of my attention on driving that wagon. I shut off every bit of magic-sensing I had, and I shut out every sound except the horses’ footfalls and the creak of the wagon wheels. I looked straight ahead, watching the road, though there wasn’t much I could do about the ruts and rocks. Slowly, it got harder to see. The landscape around went all dim and shadowy, as if there was a heavy fog. I realized that Papa’s speed-travel spell had taken hold. A minute later, Papa’s hands took the reins from mine.

I didn’t say anything to him. I knew better; a magician has to concentrate all the time to keep up spells like the speed-traveling one. Besides, I was afraid that if I paid attention to anything besides the horses and the road and not sensing magic, I’d upset the spell. I didn’t know what that would do, but I was sure it wouldn’t be good.

I don’t know how long I sat there trying not to do anything or even think anything. Finally I heard Papa say, “That should do it,” and the light came back.

Cautiously, I looked around. Then I stared. The sun shone low in the sky ahead of us, clear and midsummer-bright. It sent skeleton shadows of the nearly leafless trees crawling across empty fields and dead-brown hills. No birds sang; no squirrels scrabbled up and down the tree trunks. We’d run out of road some while back; I couldn’t even see wheel tracks in the dirt to steer by. The only sounds were the whisper of the wind through bare branches and the creak of our own wagon wheels.

Behind me, I heard a low whistle of surprise. Stiffly, I turned my head. Lan and William and even Mr. Harrison were staring just as hard at the fields as I’d been. Hearing about the damage the grubs did was different from actually seeing it. Papa frowned. “This far already,” he muttered.

We rode in silence for nearly another hour through the creepy, dead landscape. We passed another tinytown off to one side, but we didn’t stop. The wagonrest was several miles farther on, an empty palisade area built around a well. The Settlement Office set them up so that settlers who were traveling out to their allotments would have a safe stopping place that wouldn’t put a strain on the already established settlements. As we drove up to the palisade, the gate swung open. Professor Jeffries rode forward.

“Welcome at last, Professor,” said a deep rumbly voice from the darkness inside. “You all are a bit behind time. I was just pondering whether to head out to look for you.”

“Wash!” I said.

IT WAS WASH, ALL RIGHT. HIS HAIR WAS CONSIDERABLY LONGER than I remembered, and his beard wasn’t so neat, but that was only to be expected when he’d been out riding circuit for two or three months. Professor Jeffries introduced him to Papa and Mr. Harrison and Lan, but when he got to William and me, Wash smiled broadly and said, “I remember Miss Rothmer fine, and Mr. Graham, too, though it’s been a while.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to come yourself, Mr. Morris,” Professor Jeffries said with a glance at Mr. Harrison. “Your work—”

“Well, now, you haven’t seen the state the settlements are in out on the edge of the frontier,” Wash said. “They need help, and fast. And I figure the fastest way for me to get an answer out to them is to be there when you all work it out.” He shook his head, and added, “Besides, I need supplies. I ran out of coffee a couple of weeks back.”

“We have coffee,” I said. “It was right at the top of Papa’s list, and I packed it up myself. I can make up a pot right now, if you like.”

“Miss Rothmer, your father is a wise man,” Wash said. “And you are an angel straight from heaven.”

Papa smiled. “I’ve never known a guide who didn’t appreciate a little extra coffee.”

So I made coffee while everyone else buckled down to setting up camp. Wash had already cast the protective spells to keep the wildlife away, and even started a cookfire, so all that was really left to do was pitch the tents and lay out the bedrolls. Wash didn’t have a tent. He said he wasn’t accustomed to bothering with one in fine weather. When the boys heard that, they decided to sleep out under the wagon. They said they wanted to see what it was like, but I thought they just wanted to get out of putting up another tent.

While we worked, Wash asked about our trip out. He didn’t make any comment about Mr. Harrison’s buggy, but he said we’d been lucky on the last part. Where the grubs had eaten all the grass and grain and leaves, there was no food for the small animals, like mice and squirrels and birds, so they died or moved on. That left no food for the larger animals, and some of them had gotten hungry enough to attack travelers and even settlements in spite of the protective spells.

“That wasn’t luck,” Mr. Harrison said. “That was having a double-seventh son working the spell for us.” Papa frowned when he said that, and Lan looked uncomfortable, but neither of them said anything.

Over dinner, Papa and Professor Jeffries and Wash talked about the grubs and how things were in the Far Western settlements. Wash said the thing that was the biggest puzzlement was how the grubs spread so fast. Mr. Harrison said that it wasn’t the grubs that spread, it was the beetles that they turned into, and Professor Jeffries pointed out rather tartly that while that might be so, the beetles didn’t have wings and couldn’t crawl very far. And even beetles with wings didn’t usually spread over a hundred miles in a single year.

Wash said it was certain-sure that something odd was going on, because the grubs weren’t the only odd new critters that had been showing up in the Far Western settlements. That got Professor Jeffries’s attention right away, and Papa’s, too. Wash gave them a list of new wildlife he’d been seeing, including a new kind of cinderdweller, some antelopes with curly horns, a bear-like scavenger that seemed to avoid areas with magic in them, and some fat round beetles with wings like mirrors.

“I remember those,” I said, and everyone looked at me. “You sent a sample one to Professor Jeffries the first year I was helping out at the menagerie.”