Thirteenth Child

CHAPTER 10

FOR THE REST OF THAT YEAR, AND A GOOD MANY YEARS THEREAFTER, I stopped by Miss Ochiba’s classroom when school was over. For the first few days, it was only me, but then William and Lan noticed that I wasn’t coming directly home after school, and came around to see what was up. Then Miss Ochiba asked some of the other students who’d shown an interest, and all of a sudden we were an extra class.

Lan only came for the first few weeks. What with his regular schooling and the extra lessons he was already getting from Papa and Professor Graham, it was just too much time for him to spare. William kept coming, same as me, which was a surprise. I hadn’t thought he’d care for extra work, especially after all the bad things he’d said about learning Aphrikan magic.

But Miss Ochiba could make almost anything interesting, and she knew a lot about Aphrikan magic. Both of her parents had been conjurefolk. Her mother had been brought to Columbia on one of the slave ships, back before the Secession War, and her father was one of the anti-slavery advocates from the Aphrikan colonies in South Columbia. He’d come north with enough funds to buy a whole shipload of slaves free, then settled down in Pennsylvania with Miss Ochiba’s mother to help the abolitionists in the North. So Miss Ochiba grew up learning first-rate Aphrikan magic from her parents at home while she was learning Avrupan magic at school.

By Christmas, we’d learned the first basic spells in the day class—snuffing candles, stopping a rolling ball without touching it, silencing a specially made squeaky machine—and were beginning to work on things that required more energy and concentration, like lighting the candles and getting the balls rolling in the first place. In our after-school Aphrikan class, we were still doing foundation work, which is like a cross between trying to watch everything around you very closely and trying to meditate quietly inside your head, both at the same time. It was very difficult. Miss Ochiba insisted that we keep trying until we could do it to her satisfaction, but she never said what would satisfy her.

We found out unexpectedly, about three weeks after Christmas. It was a bitter day, clear and sunny, but so cold the snow squeaked underfoot and the air outside hurt to breathe. Most everyone hightailed it for home as soon as the regular classes were finished, because everybody knew it would get colder the later it got, and there’d probably be a nasty wind. That was why there were only four of us in the after-school class that day—Alexei Sokolov, Kristen Olvar, William, and me. I should have gone straight home with Lan, because on extra-cold days Mama still worried about the rheumatic fever coming back, but I hated missing my extra class, no matter what the reason.

Miss Ochiba had us put our chairs in a half circle, and we started in, sitting very still, trying to see everything and not think about anything, to hear Miss Ochiba’s instructions and follow them without really listening. We’d been working for ten or fifteen minutes when my head whipped around toward the window, without me intending it to. An instant later, I realized that everyone else had done the same thing at exactly the same moment.

Something moved across the sky at the upper corner of the window. It looked like a small, dense cloud, but we all knew it wasn’t a cloud. The sun sparkled and flashed from the heart of the “cloud,” and it left a thin white tail behind it for the crosswind to rip to shreds.

“Miss Ochiba,” Alexei said, “what is that?”

“A steam dragon,” Miss Ochiba said calmly. “You cannot see it clearly because the cold air condenses the outer part of the steam around it.”

“But—” said William.

“Hush,” said Miss Ochiba. “Listen.”

In the quiet, we heard the first alarm bell start, and then another, tolling one-two-three-pause, one-two-three-pause. I’d heard the bells a time or two before, but never in the rhythm of the wildlife alarm before.

Kristen shivered, still staring out the window. “How did it get past the Great Barrier?” she whispered.

“It flew over,” William said in a that’s-obvious tone. “Just like the ducks do. The barrier doesn’t go up much higher than the clock tower on the town hall. It—”

My stomach dropped as the white sparkly cloud suddenly dove toward the ground. Miss Ochiba moved in front of the window, but not before the cloud was stripped away by the dragon’s speed and we all got a glimpse of its silver-snake body trailing steam all the way down. The nearest alarm bell lost its rhythm and went into an urgent jangle. I felt something hard and bitter cold run down my side, like the flat of a knife blade left out of doors in winter. I shook my head, and everything around me seemed to whirl around once and then drop into its usual place.

Alexei licked his lips. “Miss Ochiba, what was that?” he asked, and from his tone we all knew that this time he didn’t mean the steam dragon.

“That was your sense of the world, unfolding,” Miss Ochiba replied. “Excellent work, all of you.”

“‘Sense of the world?’“ William said doubtfully. “Because we saw the steam dragon?”

Miss Ochiba’s lips curved in the faintest of smiles. “No, Mr. Graham. Because all of you knew the small cloud you saw was really a steam dragon, because all of you knew that each of your friends was also aware that it was a steam dragon, and because all of you knew those things before the dragon came into sight.”

I saw right off that Miss Ochiba was right. We’d all turned toward the window without thinking, before we could have seen anything outside. Kristen and William even had their backs partly toward the window, and they’d whipped right around with the rest of us.

Kristen and Alexei were nodding, like they were thinking the same as me, but William had a stubborn frown on his face. Miss Ochiba’s smile grew a little more. “You will have plenty of opportunity to test your world sense,” she said to William. “Foundation work is not something you master in one or two tries. You four will move on to circle work, but only three days each week. The other two days, you will continue to do foundation work with the rest of our group. And,” she added with a significant look at Alexei, “you will progress much faster if you also practice on your own, even when you are not working on it here.”

Everyone at school knew that Alexei did as little extra work as ever he could. It was a nine days’ wonder when he joined Miss Ochiba’s after-school class, and I’d heard that some of the older boys had a bet on how long he’d keep coming. But now he only looked thoughtful. “If I practice, can I learn to feel a steam dragon coming from farther away?” he said.

“Yes,” Miss Ochiba said. “I can safely promise that with additional practice, you will increase the distance at which you can sense steam dragons and other creatures. How great an increase will depend on a number of factors, including your native ability, so the skill may not be as useful in the end as you hope.”

“Even a little…” Alexei said under his breath. Then he nodded, once, as if he was making an agreement with her. “I’ll do it.”

“The bells have stopped,” Kristen said.

We all looked at the window, except for Miss Ochiba, but there was nothing to see but sky. “They’ll ring the emergency-over in a moment,” Miss Ochiba said. “I think this will be enough for today, so you may leave as soon as they do.”

William and Alexei immediately started for the coat hooks. William looked back over his shoulder at me. “Come on!” he said. “I’m not going to miss seeing a real steam dragon, just ‘cause you’re slow.”

“Oh!” Kristen said, and shuddered. “You’re not actually going after that thing, are you?”

“Why not?” Alexei demanded. “It can’t have come down very far away, and it’s not like it’ll still be alive. Not once they ring emergency-over.”

“This may be our only chance to get a good look at a real steam dragon,” William added. “Eff, are you coming?”

Truth to tell, I was a lot more of Kristen’s mind than William’s or Alexei’s. Just seeing the steam dragon from the window had given me the shivers. But William was the closest thing to a friend I’d ever had, and I didn’t want him looking at me the way he was looking at Kristen right then. “Hold your horses,” I said. “An extra minute or two won’t matter. That thing was big—they’re not going to cart it off in a hurry.”

“Eff!”

“Go on without me, then,” I said, knowing perfectly well he wouldn’t. “I still want to ask Miss Ochiba some things.”

Miss Ochiba stopped tidying her desk and looked at me expectantly. I swallowed hard. I hadn’t meant to say that straight out until I’d thought a little more. But now I was stuck, so I said, “When the steam dragon came down, I felt real peculiar for a minute. Why was that?”

“Peculiar in exactly what way?” Miss Ochiba asked.

I described the sinking in my stomach and the cold-knife sensation, while Alexei and William left off struggling with their coats and sidled close enough to hear.

Miss Ochiba pursed her lips. “The sensations you felt are quite normal,” she said after a moment. “That is, they are part of your developing world sense. When you begin to know things in this way, your mind tries to fit the new knowledge into old, familiar patterns.”

“Like smelling something funny?” William broke in. “Or hearing a strange noise?”

“Exactly,” Miss Ochiba said. “But the world sense is very ... individual. The exact sensations—and their meanings—are not the same for every practitioner, and it will be better if you all learn for yourselves how to interpret them. It will no doubt feel ‘peculiar’ at first, but it becomes more natural with time and practice.”

“Time and practice, time and practice,” Alexei grumbled. “Isn’t there anything magical we can just do?”

“Sure,” Kristen said. “You can mess up.”

William snickered. Alexei turned angrily, but Kristen said, “Listen! The bells have changed.”

That sent us all scrambling for our coats, and then out the door. The boys went straight toward the area where the steam dragon had fallen, and I trailed along behind. It wasn’t too hard to find. Practically everyone else on the street was heading the same way, especially as we got closer.

A good-sized crowd had collected by the time we found the place, so we never actually got near the dragon. Still, even from the back we could see the bottom half of it draped over the feed store, like a silver fire hose twice as big around as I was. A big strip of snow had melted off the roof on either side, and I heard one of the men say it was a good thing the dragon had come in winter or the buildings would have caught fire.

I didn’t stay long. It was too cold to stand around watching the backs of people’s coats, and I’d already seen more of the dragon than I’d wanted. I couldn’t get away from it, though, because even when I got home, it was all anyone could talk about. When the alarm started, Nan and Allie had been almost home, and Robbie and Jack had already arrived. Robbie was in a temper because Mama hadn’t let him go out to look after the alarm was over. I didn’t tell him I’d actually seen the dragon, even though it was just from a distance. I thought it would only make him cross.

Keeping quiet didn’t help, though, because when Papa and Lan got home, Robbie found out that Papa and Professor Graham had been among the magicians who’d brought the steam dragon down. He started complaining right off, but what really made him pitch a fit was that Lan had been allowed to go along, on account of his double-seven training. Even though Lan hadn’t actually done anything but watch, Robbie was furious. He kept saying that he was two years older than Lan and it wasn’t fair, until Mama sent him to his room for the rest of the evening. He was grumpy for days afterward.

In the end, everyone who wanted to get a good look at the steam dragon had all the chance they wanted, because it took the best part of a week to move its body from the place where it had fallen. Some of the men got it coiled up and mostly out of the street and off the roof before it froze too solid to move, but then the argument started.

Mr. Stolz, who owned the feed store, said that the dragon belonged to him because it had landed mostly on his property. He wanted to sell the body to a circus. The Settlement Office wanted to have it stuffed and mounted and put on display for people who wanted to be settlers, to give them some idea what they’d be in for. The North Plains Territory governor wanted to send it to Washington. And the Northern Plains Riverbank College wanted it to study.

In the end, the college won, since it was the college magicians who’d brought the dragon down before it did more than eat a horse and dent Mr. Stolz’s roof. Also, President Grey convinced everyone that letting the magicians study up on a brand-new, fresh steam dragon would be the best thing for all of them. The Settlement Office went along with it right away, because they thought the magicians might find better ways to deal with the dragons, or at least tell when they were coming in time to get livestock indoors. The hardest one to convince was Mr. Stolz. He’d really wanted that circus money to fix his roof with, but in the end, even he gave in.

So they got four teams of horses and a special flatbed wagon and most of the students and professors and handymen, and moved the frozen steam dragon over to the wildlife experiments building. It was too big to fit inside, so for a while there were crowds of people outside staring at the dragon and the professors working on it. After a bit, though, folks got tired of watching the naturalists climbing around with their measuring sticks and slide rules, and things got quiet again.

After the naturalists finished, the magicians started in. All the college students—and Lan—were in the thick of it. Over half of the magic students were planning to go for settlement magicians or do fieldwork on the wildlife when they graduated, so they were even more excited about having a brand-new steam dragon to study than the professors were.

The college made regular announcements in the paper of what they’d found out, mostly to reassure people. The steam dragon had been a female, probably blown east by a freak storm. None of the settlements west of the barrier had reported attacks or other sightings, so we weren’t likely to be seeing flocks of them come spring. There was some unpleasantness when the weather warmed up and the dragon began to thaw out.

“It’s because we didn’t expect it to go bad and smelly all at once like this,” Lan told Robbie and William and me. “We thought we’d have a couple of weeks when the inside would still be frozen, even though the outside was thawing out. But Papa says that it has enough magic, even dead, to warm up fast all over.”

“Yuck,” Robbie said with considerable relish. “I bet it’ll stink up the whole college. Maybe even half the city. Hey, Eff, your bedroom is on that side of the house. Better not open your window ‘til you’ve had a good sniff of the wind!”

“Don’t be dumb,” Lan told him. “Papa and Professor Graham already have teams of students doing preservation spells on different sections of the body.”

“My father said they couldn’t have the whole neighborhood complaining about the smell,” William confirmed.

“I wish they’d let me help more,” Lan said crossly. “They wouldn’t need such big teams if they let me do one of the preservation spells.”

“Are you doing preservation spells already?” I said, impressed.

“Well, no,” Lan admitted. “But I bet I could if Papa would let me. I sneaked a look at the next study book, and they don’t look that hard.”

“You aren’t thinking of trying them on your own, are you?” I said.

“Of course not,” Lan said loftily. “I know better than that.” He grinned. “Besides, Papa’d know in a minute that it was me. That’s the problem with being a double-seven—nobody else’s magic feels the same, so it’s too easy to get caught.”

I didn’t find that particularly reassuring, but in the end, it wasn’t Lan who got in trouble over the steam dragon—it was Robbie. Late in the spring, when the snakes came out, he went down to the meadow and caught himself a dozen garter snakes. He dipped them in gray milk paint and then told the boys in his class they were baby steam dragons, hatched from eggs the dead steam dragon had laid before the magicians got it. He sold all but two of them for a quarter each before Mrs. Bertelstein came calling on Papa, all indignant because he’d dare let his own son spread such dangerous creatures all over town. She was even more indignant when Papa called Robbie in and made him admit what they really were. Robbie had to pay back all the money, and explain and apologize to all the parents, and on top of that he had extra chores for weeks.

Papa wasn’t so upset by the fake steam dragons as he made out—I heard him telling Dean Farley about it later, and laughing. Mama was upset, though. After Mrs. Bertelstein’s visit, Mama was the one who had to smooth down the neighbors and the other mothers, and while she was plenty good at smoothing, she didn’t much care for having to do it. A week after it all came out about the painted garter snakes, Mama gave Robbie a talking-to. None of the rest of us heard what she said—Mama never yelled, even when she was mad as fire—and Robbie wouldn’t talk about it to anyone afterward, but it must have been something to hear, because Robbie shaped up and didn’t so much as pull the girls’ pigtails in the school yard for nearly a month.