Thirteenth Child

CHAPTER 20

LAN DIDN’T COME HOME AT ALL THE SUMMER WE TURNED SIXTEEN. One of the teachers had arranged some special tutoring for him in advanced elemental recombination, with a professor from the Broadbent University of Pennsylvania who could only do it during those few weeks. Lan’s letter sounded excited, and of course Papa was very pleased. I was sorry that Lan wouldn’t be home, but by then I was used to him being gone, and I was busy at the menagerie.

Around August, Wash started sending samples along with his letters. The first was a small red flower, pressed and dried between two of the sheets; the second was an orange-and-black butterfly whose wings had come off in the mail. None of the samples that followed were alive—they couldn’t have gotten through the barrier spell if they were—and most of them were things the professor didn’t have in his collection. Once there was a big round beetle, the size of a quarter, with mirror-bright wings and a tiny black head. The note Wash sent with it said: Found five of these along a line from Birch Creek to south end of circuit. First time. Mean anything?

Professor Jeffries was excited by the beetle, but he didn’t have anything to tell Wash because no one had ever seen one before. Right away, he sent a message to the settlements south of Wash’s circuit area. One of the magicians there said he’d seen one, but it had flown straight into the protective spell around the settlement and died, so it wasn’t anything to worry about. The professor shook his head when he read that, and said that wasn’t the point, and didn’t those settlement magicians think about anything beyond watching out for the crops? Still grumbling, he put six shiny silver pins in his map and moved on to other things.

That whole year was the happiest I could ever remember being. I was doing well enough in most of my classes to please Papa and Mama. The class in practical spells was the only one I had trouble with, but as long as I could show I’d done the setup and procedure correctly, the teacher would give me enough marks to pass, even if the spell fizzled. I had friends, Rindy and Susan, two boarder girls who would be moving out to settlements when they finished school. Rindy was hoping to pass her teacher examinations the next year, so that her settlement could have a lower-grades school; Susan just wanted all the learning she could get while she had the chance to get some. I had my extra class in Aphrikan magic and my work at the menagerie—even during the winter months, Professor Jeffries found things for me to do.

Best of all, William had talked his father into one more year at the Mill City upper school, before he was to go East to prepare for college. All summer, I hadn’t dared ask when he’d be leaving. And then, there he was on the first day of school. My face must have shown what I was thinking, because he snorted the way his father did when he thought someone was being foolish.

“You,” he said sternly, “are a blithering idiot. Did you really think I wouldn’t tell you if I were leaving?”

“I thought maybe you just didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. “I wouldn’t, if it was me being sent off.”

“I’m not you,” William said. “And I agreed to go. One more year here will be enough.”

“Enough for what?” I asked, but he just shook his head. I was too happy to pester him about it, especially when he’d made it plain that this would be his last year. I didn’t want to break my happiness by thinking too much about that.

William had friends, too, and it wasn’t long before all of us—me, Rindy, Susan, William, and William’s friends Alec and Max—grouped together to do things. We ran the apple bobbing at the school Harvest Festival party, made up a team for the spelling bee, went sleighing and sledding in the woods north of town. We danced together at the early spring square dances, and split the cake Rindy won in the cakewalk at the church sociable in March. By the end of the year, William was sweet on Susan, Alec was courting Rindy like he really meant it, and Max was pretending he liked me, just to keep everything even.

What with friends and school and the menagerie and the Aphrikan magic class and my chores at home, I was busy nearly every minute. The best of it, for me, was that it all felt so normal and ordinary. Even working at the menagerie—most of my classmates worked at some job after school and Saturdays. Sometimes I thought that my life would be completely perfect if only Lan were around, too.

And then it all came apart.

The first hint came in early May. The westernmost settlements began reporting problems—a plague of fat yellow grubs that destroyed the sprouting crops. They were normal insects, not magical ones, and they didn’t seem much bothered by the spells the settlement magicians cast to stop them. They ate everything on or under the ground. Wash’s notes said he’d seen tall trees tip over in a breath of wind because their roots had all been eaten away. Some places, he said, you couldn’t take a step without grubs boiling up after your shoe leather. He had to hang his saddle and bridle well up in the air every night, and he’d taken to using a hammock himself, though he’d been used to a bedroll. The grubs wouldn’t eat him, or any still-alive animal, but they went for the wool in his blankets, and he said once was enough to wake up to a squirming carpet of the things all over him.

The grubs disappeared after a month, as suddenly as they’d come, but by then the damage had been done. The settlers couldn’t even replant enough to get themselves through the winter; they’d have to hunt, or borrow, or send folks back to Mill City for paying jobs, if they could find any.

Susan’s family was from one of the Far West settlements, and in June they sent her word that they would have no cash crop that year because of the grubs. There would be no money to pay for her board and schooling in town, come fall. When she got the letter, Susan cried a little, where only Rindy and I would see. Then she put on a brave face and found work with a seamstress that would pay her board and leave a little extra to send home to her family.

Next, Miss Ochiba told William and me that our last Aphrikan magic class of the year would be our last class, period. “The school board has found someone else to teach magic at the day school,” she said. “The chairman’s sister, I believe.”

“That’s not fair!” William burst out. His face was very red. “They can’t—they shouldn’t—”

“Mr. Graham.” Miss Ochiba’s voice was as cool and level as ever. “That is certainly one way to look at the matter. There are others.”

I stared at Miss Ochiba. For once, I couldn’t think of any other way to see it. William was right. It wasn’t fair.

Miss Ochiba looked at us and smiled gently. “I have been teaching magic at the day school for twelve years,” she said. “It’s high time I did something new.”

“But what?” William said.

“I shall go to my oldest brother in Belletriste,” Miss Ochiba said. “He is head of the Aphrikan Magic Department at Triskelion University, and has asked me several times to take a position there.”

“You’re going away?” I blurted. Then the rest of what she’d said sank in, and I just stared. I’d never thought of Miss Ochiba having a brother somewhere.

“Everything changes,” Miss Ochiba said. “I may not be gone for good. I believe Triskelion is hoping to expand, and my brother is one of those who favors opening a western branch. However, that is only a possibility, and some years in the future. For now, I am afraid you must accustom yourselves.”

We had a very somber class. Neither William nor I paid as much attention as we should have. At the end, Miss Ochiba handed each of us a small blue book instead of the summer assignments she usually gave us. “I am pleased to say that you have both reached a point where you should be able to work on your own—indeed, some would say it is past time you did so. Whether you choose to continue is up to you. If you do, you may find this useful.”

“Oh, Miss Ochiba!” I said, and burst into tears.

Miss Ochiba let me cry for a bit, then handed me a handkerchief. “You may keep that as well,” she told me when I went to hand it back once I’d wiped my face. I almost started crying again.

On the walk home, William was silent for a long time. As we came around the corner and started toward my house, he said, “Well, at least it will be one in the eye for the chairman.”

“What? What are you talking about?” I asked, then added quickly, “From the beginning.” Sometimes William got to having whole conversations in his head, and when they finally started coming out his mouth, he’d just carry on from wherever he’d left off inside. You had to make him back up and start over, or you’d never figure out what he meant.

“Miss Ochiba going to Triskelion University,” William said. “If she’s teaching there, the school board can’t say this new person is a better teacher.”

I nodded. Triskelion University had been founded shortly before the Secession War, and it made a point of teaching all three types of magic. Even though it was so much newer than the other schools that specialized in magic, it was almost as well known as the New Bristol Institute of Magic or Simon Magus College in Pennsylvania. I’d been surprised to hear that Miss Ochiba had brothers, but if she had them, I didn’t find it at all surprising that one of them would be teaching at Triskelion, or that he wanted Miss Ochiba to come teach there, too.

By the end of July, Miss Ochiba was gone, and William was preparing to leave for boarding school. Professor Jeffries, Professor Graham, and Papa were off in the Far West settlements with most of the other college magicians. The grubs, it turned out, hadn’t vanished; they’d just changed into pupae for a few weeks. They emerged in mid-July as round, yellow-and-green-striped beetle-like bugs. They didn’t have any wings, but they crawled like crazy. Anything above ground that the grubs hadn’t eaten, the beetles got, and the settlement spells didn’t work on them any better than they had on the grubs. So the Settlement Office called on the college magicians to find or invent a new spell to take care of the beetles, or at least keep them from spreading farther east.

With Professor Jeffries gone, I didn’t have much to do at the menagerie. Wash was as busy as all the other magicians, so his packets of notes had stopped arriving, and there was no one to look at them anyway. The two students who were caring for the animals didn’t need my help. After a week, I stopped going over. I told myself I’d start again once Professor Jeffries came back.

But Papa, Professor Graham, and Professor Jeffries didn’t come back right away. In late August, just before classes were supposed to start at the college, the basic protective spells at several of the settlements failed. It took all of the magicians another three weeks to get them back up again, and everyone said it was just luck that none of them had any serious problems with the wildlife while the spells were down. All the college magic classes were late starting, and when the college magicians weren’t teaching, they were meeting with people from the Settlement Office and the Farmers’ Society and the governor’s office, as well as writing letters to people back East about the problems with the settlement spells.

Things changed faster and faster. William left for boarding school before his father got back from the settlements. Nan took up with a young man from the mills, whom she’d met at the railroad shipping office, and by Christmas she was wearing a ring and planning her wedding. Allie took the teacher’s exam and went to work at one of the new day schools. Robbie had graduated from the upper school in spring, and everybody expected him to spend a year or two studying, the way Hugh and our older brothers had, and then go East for his schooling. Instead, he surprised everyone by going straight into the Northern Plains Riverbank College.

I felt lonelier than ever. Lan was gone; William was gone; Miss Ochiba was gone. Except for Rindy, my friends from the year before were gone—back in the settlements or working, like Susan—and Rindy was studying grimly for the teacher’s exam and didn’t have time for anything else. For the first time in a long while, I caught myself thinking that maybe Uncle Earn had been right after all, and I was bad luck for everyone I knew.

I had more trouble than ever with my magic classes. By mid-year, my spells weren’t just fizzling anymore—they were going off in little explosions. The teacher shook his head and said it was only to be expected, since the class was moving on to more difficult spells. He told me to just do the set-up and write out the procedure for him, and for a while that worked. But then the people on either side of me started having trouble getting their spells to work, the same way I’d had trouble at first. I knew it was my fault, but I had no idea how to stop it from happening.

Working with the little blue book Miss Ochiba had given us was the one bright spot for me all year. It wasn’t like the lesson books we’d used in the day school or the texts we used in the upper school, and it wasn’t a list of exercises like the ones we’d done in her after-school class. Instead, it was full of stories and tales, some of which didn’t seem to have anything to do with magic at all. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but I still read them over and over.

My favorite ones were the transformation stories, like the one where a frog turned himself into a bird to help a chief’s daughter, or the one where a lion turned into a snake because he’d lied to his wife. I still didn’t see what any of them had to do with Aphrikan magic, though. Until one day, when I was specially cross and frustrated. I’d just read three of the stories over again, and I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere. I dropped the little blue book on the table with a thud, and said out loud, “This is stupid! It’s just a lot of tales.”

As I glared at the book, I remembered Miss Ochiba, and all the times she’d said, “That is certainly one way to look at the matter. There are others.”

“What others?” I grumbled, but I knew better than to expect an answer. Even if she’d been there, Miss Ochiba wouldn’t have said anything. In all the years I’d known her, she’d never once told anyone how to look at things. She just insisted that we look.

So I spent the rest of that year looking for different ways to see each of those stories. I saw that if you looked at it a little differently, the frog turned into a bird because he wanted to fly, not just to help the chief’s daughter. It was a story about the way natural things change in ways that aren’t natural to them, once people get involved. The more I looked, the more I found, and the more I found, the more I could see.

And then it was May, and the grubs were back worse than ever.