Across the Great Barrier

CHAPTER 15

MRS. TURNER DIDN’T SEEM TO LIKE THE NOTION OF PROFESSOR Torgeson and me going off to investigate with Wash, but there wasn’t much of anything she could do about it. She tried to talk Wash into bringing a whole group of settlement folks with us, in case we needed help with whatever was blocking the creek, but Wash pointed out that Promised Land couldn’t spare either the men or the horses for just an “in case.”

She did talk him into taking along one extra person — a tall, weedy, cheerful boy about two years younger than me. His full name was George Sergeant Robinson, but everyone called him Champ on account of him winning a shooting contest when he was a childing. He reminded me a lot of my brother Robbie. He brought along a well-worn rifle that his father had used in the Secession War. The first day, he shot a duck for dinner, and didn’t waste even one bullet. Wash thanked him, but said that we’d be best off not starting a cooking fire with so many dead trees all around, and after that Champ left the ducks alone.

Quite a few ducks had been nesting along the banks of Daybat Creek. We saw them poking in the muddy creek bed, looking puzzled, or dozing at the edges where the water should have been. Wash made us stay out of the creek bed, though it would have been easier riding. He said that we didn’t know what had blocked up the creek, and we didn’t know when it would come unblocked, but we for sure knew that we didn’t want to be in the creek bed when the water came roaring back.

Between the two settlements of Promised Land and Adashome, the land was forested and hilly. It wasn’t easy traveling. Away from Promised Land, most of the trees were grub-killed, and we ran into another blow-down on the second morning and had to go around. Champ thought maybe the blow-down was what had blocked up the creek, but when we finally got past it, the creek bed was still dry and we had to keep going.

It took us nearly three days, but we finally reached the source of the problem. We’d just gotten into the Forth Hills, and riding was hard going. The hills were close together, and the creek had narrowed and cut a deep gash through them. We had our choice of riding up the creek bed or climbing the hill and making our way along the top edge of a thirty-foot slope too steep for horses or people.

Wash was still worried about the creek unblocking itself suddenly, so we climbed. The trees and the bad footing made it hard to stay within sight of the creek. We were just past the top of the second big hill, and Champ was worrying out loud that we’d miss our mark, when Wash pulled up.

“I do believe we’ve found the problem,” he said. “Watch that you don’t get too near.”

Champ gave a long whistle, while the professor and I just stared. Right in front of us, half the hill looked to have just collapsed into the creek in a huge mess of mud and dead trees. The creek had backed up behind it in the low spot between hills, but it didn’t have much place to go. The water was only about halfway to the top of the dam, but it had already made itself a small lake.

“What happened?” Professor Torgeson said after a minute.

“Looks like a landslide,” Wash said. “Mr. Ajani said there’s been rain recently —” “A lot of it!” Champ put in.

“— and the grubs ate away all the roots that held the earth in place before.” Wash nodded at the dead trees that surrounded us. “Could be a few more spots like this elsewhere.”

“Like all the blow-downs,” I said, and Wash nodded.

“Well, this looks like a wasted trip,” Champ said cheerfully. “It’ll take a while for all that to fill up, but by next spring the creek will be back, I’m thinking.”

“Maybe,” Wash said in the tone that meant you’d possibly missed seeing something important. “I want a closer look.”

“So do I,” the professor said.

Wash looked around. “Best make camp here, then. We can’t get the horses down, and I’m not leaving these two here without protection spells. These woods may not be as dead as they look.”

Champ scowled like he was insulted, but I thought about the nest of razorquarls we’d almost stumbled over, and nodded.

It wasn’t that simple, of course. Nobody wanted to camp right at the edge of the slope; even if we’d been sure the ground wouldn’t collapse again, we couldn’t count on all the dangerous wildlife being gone. Even if the magical creatures hadn’t come back yet (and we’d already seen signs of the smaller ones), some of the natural ones were just as bad. A hungry family of bears or a pack of timber wolves could trap us against the slope, if they got riled enough to attack.

So we scouted around for a good spot, then spent an hour or thereabouts making it as safe as we could. We had it down to a routine by then — it had been a while since Wash and the professor and I had been able to stay at a wagonrest or settlement every single night, and of course there hadn’t been any ready-made protected areas since we left Promised Land. Champ and I unloaded the horses while the professor cast a couple of close-up protection spells to cover the camp for the night.

Meanwhile, Wash took his rifle and walked out into the forest, circling the area a ways out to look for signs of anything dangerous living in the area. The first night we’d had to camp out, he’d found a skunk’s den less than ten yards out, which was enough to get us to move the campsite even though a regular skunk isn’t exactly a threat to life and limb. I was sure Wash was also doing some longer-range magic, though he didn’t say and I didn’t ask.

This time, Wash came back in half an hour without spotting anything chancy, so we finished stretching a tarpaulin between two trees to sleep under and went looking for stones to line a firepit. Nobody was completely sure that building a fire would be all right, but all of us were sick to death of cold meals, and Wash said that the woods were still damp enough from all the rain that we could risk a small one, if we were determined on it.

Finding rocks was easy, though I’d never seen any like the ones we hauled back to camp. They were grayish white, of all sorts of sizes and shapes, as if an enormous stone tree had shattered into bits. Some of them had rough textures on one side that looked almost like deliberate patterns. The stone itself was hard, but it broke easily if you dropped it or knocked two pieces together. I commented that the rocks seemed odd, but Champ just laughed.

“A lot of those wash down the creek,” he told me. “Just small ones. Miss Blanchard collects them and smashes them up to add to the clay she uses to make pots. She says it makes the clay smooth and shiny, and the pieces come out almost like Cathayan porcelain once they’re fired.”

“That doesn’t make these rocks any less odd,” I said.

“Odd appears to be normal in the West,” Professor Torgeson said in a dry tone. “We’ll take a sample back for the college, though I doubt it’ll be anything new to the geologists.”

By the time we finished setting up camp, it was late enough that we left heading down to the creek for the next morning. The professor was eager to see what plants were coming up along the creek, and if they were different above and below the dammed-up part, but even she wasn’t crazy about the notion of trying to climb back up the slope in the dark.

Next morning, after we’d fed and watered the horses, the four of us made our way down to the dam that was blocking Daybat Creek. It was a tricky business; the whole hillside had sheared away and there were no plants or bushes to grab on to if you slipped. I spent most of the climb down wishing for a rope, or wishing I could have stayed back in camp.

Wash made it to the bottom first. Champ and I were next, almost at the same time. Professor Torgeson was over to the side, about three-quarters down, when we saw her pause and bend over the ground. A minute later, she was scrabbling toward us as fast as ever she could, waving her fist and calling, “Wash! Eff! Look at this!”

I’d never seen her so excited before, not even when we found all the magical plants around the mirror bug traps. She slipped as she reached us, but Wash stepped forward and caught her before she fell into the dam. The professor straightened herself up and caught her breath, then slowly opened her dirty fingers.

Resting in the palm of her hand was one of the grayish white rocks like the ones we’d used to line the firepit — only this one was about two inches long and the exact shape and size of a squirrel’s front paw and forearm. If you looked close, you could even see where two of the claws had broken off.

“Huh,” Champ said after a moment. “Looks like somebody’s been here before us. So?”

“How could that be?” I said. “Nobody’d come all the way out here and bury a broken statue in the middle of a big old hill, especially one that’s been around long enough to grow trees all over it. I don’t see how anyone could do that.”

“Maybe it slid down from the top in the landslide.”

“That is possible,” Professor Torgeson acknowledged. “Though I think it is more likely that it was uncovered when half the hill slid away. If we can find the rest, or even a few more pieces, we may be able to get an historical excavator interested enough to come out and do a proper job.”

“Is it magic, then?” Champ asked.

I reached out to the stone with my world sense, the way I’d been taught, and flinched. That bit of rock was even colder and deader and more drained of magic than the land the mirror bugs had been over. I took a deep breath, and realized that Champ and Wash had flinched right along with me.

“No,” said Wash. “It’s not magic.”

The professor looked at him curiously. “We should try to find the rest of the statue,” she said. “I hope the pieces are still large enough to identify.”

“First things first,” Wash said firmly. “Whatever’s left of that has been sitting there a good long while; it’ll stand sitting a bit longer. I’m more concerned over this dam right at the moment.”

Professor Torgeson nodded reluctantly. She pulled out her handkerchief and wrapped the stone paw carefully, then asked to borrow mine so as to give it a bit more padding. Meantime, Wash and Champ inspected the blockage. Wash even climbed out toward the middle, stopping every now and then to have a closer look down the back side. When he came back, he was frowning mightily.

“The dam seems stable enough for the time being,” he said. “But it won’t last in the long run. Far as I can see, it’s a toss-up whether the creek will carve out a new channel through the landslide or whether the whole dam will give way at once. And if the blockage gives way all at once …”

“That’d be a problem.” Champ looked worried. “Especially if it takes a while before it goes.” He stared out over the lake that was building up behind the blockage.

I could understand why he was worried. Even though most of Mill City was high enough above the Mammoth River that it didn’t have to worry over flooding, there were still problems every few years, and the barges always had difficulty in the spring. I’d heard that some of the millers and bargemen had proposed building a lock and dam near the falls, to get some control of the water level in the river, but nobody wanted to take the chance on it causing a problem with the Great Barrier Spell.

Daybat Creek was a lot smaller than the Mammoth River, but if it filled up to the top of the dam before it cut loose, the fields and homes along the creek were sure to be flooded, at the very least. If the water was strong enough to carry some of the trees along, there’d be even more damage.

“What can we do about it?” Professor Torgeson asked. “We couldn’t dig out a landslide even if we had shovels and the whole of the Promised Land settlement to help.”

“We don’t need to get rid of the whole thing,” Champ said, sounding a little desperate. “Just enough to start a channel through the downfall. The water will take care of the rest. You’re one of those college magicians, aren’t you? Can’t you do something?”

Professor Torgeson sighed. “I’m afraid not. Magic might be some use if we were Cathayan magicians, or a well-trained Avrupan team, or even if one of us was a double-seventh son, but we aren’t.”

“We don’t need to be,” Wash said absently. “The real problem is that there’s nothing to draw on. The mirror bugs soaked up all the power and moved it elsewhere; it’ll be a few years before it comes back this far.”

I wasn’t sure what Wash had in mind, but I could see he was thinking real hard on something. And if what he needed was magic …

“Can you draw on the creek?” I asked.

Wash’s head whipped around to look at me. “Draw on the creek? What gave you that notion?”

“They always said that the power for the Great Barrier Spell comes from the Mammoth River itself,” I said. “Well, and the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence on the north side, but that’s sort of the same thing. This is just a creek that’s backed up into a lake, but it ought to have at least some magic about it.”

“That’s a true thing,” Wash said slowly. He looked down at the dam, then out between the hills. “Professor Torgeson, why don’t you three go hunt for the rest of that statue? I’m going to sit here awhile and think.”

“But what about —” Champ started, then stopped short when Wash held up a hand to shush him.

“This isn’t a thing to do in a tearing hurry, unless there’s a powerful need for it,” Wash told him. “And it doesn’t look much like there’s rain coming on, and the landslide is stable for now. I do believe the dam will hold for a few hours while I think.”

Champ looked down and scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Sorry, Wash.”

Wash nodded and waved us on. The professor gave him a curious look, but she didn’t make any more comments. She just pointed us at the part of the slope where she’d found the stone paw and set us to hunting. She said to gather up anything that looked possible, and we’d sort it out later.

We walked up and down the hill for a while. I wasn’t exactly sure what Professor Torgeson wanted; an awful lot of the gray-white stones looked to me like being part of something, even if they couldn’t all be a squirrel statue. After a few minutes, Champ went down to the landslide and found a branch he could break off. He started digging at the slope with it, while I scrambled up a bit higher.

I’d found a couple of chunks of rock the size of my fist that looked as if they had stone fur on one side when I saw a pointed shape sticking out of the hillside. I leaned forward to grab it. It was stuck pretty firmly in the hard-packed dirt, but eventually I wiggled it free. When I got a good look at it, my jaw dropped.

It was a perfectly formed statue of a barn swallow.