Thirteenth Child

CHAPTER 4

THE HOUSE THAT THE COLLEGE HAD PROVIDED FOR US WAS LARGE enough to satisfy even Nan (we each got a room of our very own). The Board of Directors had bought it from a lumber baron who’d made a fortune in the timberlands to the north and then gone back East to flaunt his fortune in front of the folks there. They’d intended to use it for classrooms until they got their new buildings built, and putting us into it instead left them a mite short of space. So for the first three years, Papa’s classes met in the front parlor, and Professor Graham’s classes met in the sitting room next to it.

Professor Graham was the college’s other professor of magic. One of the families who owned the big grain mills had sent him East to school on the understanding that he was to bring his knowledge back to the territory, and though he’d been quick enough to agree when he left, you could see plain as plain that he wasn’t pleased now that he was back. He lorded it over everyone, on account of his schooling, and at first he couldn’t make up his mind whether Papa was his competition or his ally. He was considerably put out when he discovered that Papa wasn’t much interested in being either.

I was too young then to pay heed to Professor Graham or his notions, and I probably would have known nothing about them if it hadn’t been for his son, William. William was just one year younger than Lan and me, a thin, sandy-haired miniature of his father. William’s mother was an invalid, so his father had the raising of him, which meant more rules than you could shake a stick at. We were the first friends he’d ever really had, because his father didn’t want him mixing with less-educated folk, and none of the other college families had children his age.

He almost didn’t get to mix with us, either, after Professor Graham found out that Mama and Papa were sending us to the day school instead of giving us special tutoring at home. But in the end the professor decided that William would be a good influence on us, and let him stop by to play when he wasn’t studying.

William took his influencing seriously, though he was mainly parroting the things his father said. He’d go on about the responsibilities of magic and the importance of proper learning at the slightest excuse, usually whenever Lan or Robbie came up with an idea for a prank he didn’t approve of.

Once in a while, I even took his side. Truth to tell, I thought it was funny to see Lan and Robbie come in for something like the lectures I’d had all my life. Then, too, I felt sorry for William, stuck in the house with the professor and a sick mother most days and with no friends but us.

My brothers and sisters and I all made friends at school right away. The upper school was even larger than the one back in Helvan Shores, which was a relief to Hugh and Rennie and Nan. Jack didn’t care, and Allie and Robbie were still down in the day school with Lan and me. Lan and I were in the same class, along with nine others. They were fascinated by us because we were twins, and of course no one knew that I was a thirteenth child or that Lan was a double-seventh son. I would have hung back, since I knew that sooner or later the other children would find out about me, but Lan dove right in and dragged me along with him. And the topic of family size and birth order just never came up.

For the next three years, Lan and I had basic schooling—reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and natural history. We weren’t taught any magic theory until we turned nine and went into the fourth grade; that was the way all the schools handled it then. Still, being around the house with the college students in and out for classes meant that we all picked up a bit, even though William was the only one who got lessons. Professor Graham had advanced ideas about training children in magic, and he was a little put out that Papa wasn’t eager to run educational experiments on us.

The first class of the Northern Plains Riverbank College graduated just before Lan and I turned nine. There were seventeen students who finished, out of the twenty-two who’d started. Our whole family had to get dressed up and go to the ceremony because six of the seventeen were taking degrees in magic, three with Papa as their sponsor. I could have done without the honor. All I remember of the graduation itself was that it was long and hot and boring, and that even though it was still early in the spring, the bugs were out with a vengeance, buzzing around our sweaty necks and landing to sting any bare bit of skin they could find.

After the ceremony, things brightened up. We joined the crowd on the lawn, where punch and cakes had been set out on long tables draped in white. Half of Mill City seemed to be there, and most of them didn’t know any of us, so as soon as we could, we slipped away from our parents and started through the lines over and over. Robbie was especially good at wheedling an extra piece of cake from the ladies who were serving, so he got nearly twice as much as the rest of us.

I was coming away from the tables with my third piece of cake, feeling very daring, when a voice behind me said, “Well, if it isn’t young Eff! Didn’t I see you a few minutes back with a plateful of sweets? What happened, one of your brothers knock it over?”

I turned and found Henry Masters, one of Papa’s students, smiling down at me. He looked different in his black gown, with the flat-topped hat shading his brown eyes. His smile, though, was exactly the same as ever.

The smile reassured me, and I said, “Robbie bet me I couldn’t get them to give me another piece without getting caught. You won’t tell, will you?”

“Never,” Henry said solemnly. “Cross my heart.”

“Ah, Henry!” Professor Graham came up behind Henry and put an arm around his shoulders. “Passing on good advice to young Francine here?” Professor Graham always called me Francine, even though I’d asked him very politely once to call me Eff like everyone else.

“Actually, she was giving me some,” Henry said, and winked at me. “She recommends the cake.”

“Yes, very good,” the professor said in that tone that means someone hasn’t really heard a word you said. “So what are your plans now, young man? Going back East to continue your studies?”

“No, sir,” Henry said politely.

“No?” Professor Graham frowned. “Surely you realize what a name you could make for yourself, with your talent!”

“I’m afraid I’m more interested in paying my debt to the Farmers’ Society,” Henry said. He sounded like he was apologizing for something, but he had his shoulders set like a man readying for a fistfight.

The professor’s frown deepened. “You’re not considering going out with one of those crazy settler groups, are you? Think, man! Three years of advanced training in New Amsterdam or Washington, and you’d be in a position to pay them back with double the interest!”

“The Farmers’ Society doesn’t need money,” Henry said, still polite as polite, but starting to get an edge on the underside of his voice. “They need magicians. Without magic to hold off the wildlife, those settlers are gambling with death every year, and sooner or later they’ll lose. That’s why they paid my college tuition.”

“The Farmers’ Society is much too eager to push people out into dangerous territory, in my opinion,” Professor Graham said, as if that settled the matter.

“With all due respect, sir—” Henry began, but he never finished his sentence, because just then Harmony Quillen ducked out of the crowd and took his arm.

“There you are, Henry!” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” She smiled at Professor Graham. “You will loan him to me, won’t you, Professor? Milo and I are having an argument over the riding horses that Susan is training, and I need Henry to back me up.”

“But of course, my dear,” Professor Graham said with a smile. Henry made a polite good-bye and went off with Harmony. The professor stood for a moment, watching them, and his frown returned. I decided that it’d be best if I took myself off before he remembered I was there.

I meant to ask Papa later about the Farmers’ Society and why Professor Graham was so displeased with Henry, but I got a stomachache from eating too much cake and it went right out of my head. I didn’t think of it again until almost a month later, when we went to the train station to see Mama off.

Mama was going back east to Helvan Shores for two months, because Sharl and Julie had both finally gotten around to having babies, and they wanted Mama’s help with their firstings. I didn’t understand it, myself—after all, Sharl and Julie were the oldest girls, so they’d had a chance to practice all the baby care on us younger ones. I thought that when I got old enough to be having babies, I’d need help for sure, because there weren’t any younger ones for me to practice on. But then I thought that maybe Sharl and Julie were worried that they’d forgotten things in the last nine years, and that was why they were so insistent that Mama come back to help.

Not that they needed to do much insisting. Mama was so pleased that she agreed right off, and if she could have, she’d have brought all the rest of us back along with her. But there wasn’t anywhere for all of us to stay; even between them, Sharl and Julie couldn’t put all of us up, and Papa pointed out that the idea was to make less work for the two of them, not more. So Mama was going alone, and we all went down to the train to say good-bye.

The train station was even busier than usual, because the waterways were open and the first loads of logs had floated down the river on the spring floodwaters. Some of them were milled right in Mill City, and some floated farther on down the Mammoth River, but most of them got piled onto flatcars and shipped east to the mills there, to be made into houses and furniture and wagons and boats and all the other things people used. The area around the train smelled of damp and fresh-cut wood as well as coal and steam and grease, and the yards were full of men and logs and flatcars.

The other reason the station was busy was one I didn’t know until Henry Masters saw us on the platform and came over to give us greeting. “Professor Rothmer!” he said to Papa. “You’re not leaving us, are you?”

“No, we’re just seeing Mrs. Rothmer off on a visit to the family back East,” Papa said. “Are you heading out, too?”

Henry laughed and sketched a little bow to Mama. “I am, but not eastward. My settlement has been assigned, and I’m here to pick up our homestead allotment equipment.”

“Where are they sending you?” Mama asked with an uneasy frown.

“To a completely new segment, about a hundred miles to the southwest.” Henry sounded excited. “We’re starting with twenty families, right at the edge of the settlement zone.”

“Oh, Henry!” Mama said. “On the edge? And so far away from the safety barrier!”

“Who’s your backup?” Papa asked.

“There’ll be a circuit-rider every two months, and they’ll send another magician with the next group to join us. It’s not as bad as it sounds; the first year, I only have to cover the central settlement itself. Getting the spells up may be a scramble, but after that I’ll have plenty of time to stretch them to cover tilled land.”

“Wow!” Jack couldn’t keep silent any longer. “You’re going to homestead out West? Will you get to see mammoths and dragons and everything?”

Henry laughed. “I hope not! My job is to keep the mammoths and dragons and everything away from the settlers, and it’ll be much easier if they aren’t around.”

“It’s a big responsibility” Papa said slowly. “And I don’t mean only the settlers.”

“I know that, sir,” Henry said. “I’ll do you proud.”

Mama sniffed. “Daniel has enough to be proud of already,” she said. “If it comes to choosing, we’ll be prouder if you come back safe.”

Before Henry could answer, the train’s whistle blew loud and long, and the conductor came down the platform to warn everyone to board. Mama started hugging everyone all over again, just as if she hadn’t given us good-bye hugs twice already, and Henry wished her good journey as she got on the train at last. Then we all moved up the platform to where we could see her sitting by the window, and we waved until the train pulled out.

I missed Mama from the very first minute. We all did. I think Papa missed her worst of all, though of course he didn’t say anything to us. The boys didn’t say anything, either, but you could tell they felt the same as the rest of us by the way everyone just happened to be right around the front porch every day about the time Papa brought the mail home.

It was a good thing Mama left when she did, because she hadn’t been back East for even a week before Julie had her baby. Papa opened the letter right there at the Post Office, and came home with a big smile on his face, so that we knew the news even before he got in the door. “Your sister Julie has had a little girl,” he told us.

“Hurrah! I’m an uncle!” Jack said, and everyone started talking at once.

Everyone except me, that is. I was feeling a little peculiar. I hadn’t thought about being uncles and aunts until Jack spoke up. Then Nan said, “And Papa is a grandfather!” and I felt even more peculiar. All sorts of memories came rushing back, and I shivered. I didn’t want to be like my aunts, not even like Aunt Tilly, and I didn’t want my sisters to be like them, either. I didn’t want my brothers to be like my uncles. And I most especially didn’t want Papa to be like our grandfather.

Then I thought that maybe it took a long time and a lot of nieces and nephews to get as mean as all the aunts and uncles had been to me. After all, there were twelve ahead of me just in our family, and all my older cousins, too. I swallowed hard. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe all the aunts and uncles had been fine until a thirteenth child came along. If that was it, then as long as none of my siblings had thirteen childings, they’d be safe. It would be a long time before anybody got close to having thirteen babies. I’d have plenty of time to convince them to stop before then.

“What are you thinking about so hard, Eff?” my father said in my ear.

I was so startled that I said, “Being an aunt.”

Papa laughed, and I saw that he didn’t understand what I meant.

“It’s a big responsibility,” I said, but he only laughed harder. I didn’t really want to explain in so many words what I’d been thinking.

Papa still didn’t understand. He lifted me up right off my feet and hugged me, and then he went through the whole family hugging everyone. He read Mama’s letter out loud to all of us, and we had roast chicken for dinner that night even though it wasn’t Sunday.

Mama wrote every few days, though her letters were very short because she was so busy. Three and a half weeks later, she wrote that Sharl had had a baby boy, and we went through the whole thing again. I was happy to have the roast chicken, but I wasn’t sure about the fuss that went along with it. After all, we wouldn’t be seeing either of those babies for a long, long time.

The rest of the summer got steadily worse and worse. Mostly, that was because Mama had to stay in Helvan Shores longer than she’d expected. Sharl took sick the week after her baby was born, and for a while it looked like she might die. Mama’s letters got shorter and shorter, though she tried to send something every day or two so we wouldn’t be so worried.

I wasn’t worried, exactly. My first thought, when we got Mama’s letter, was that if Sharl died then maybe I wouldn’t be counted as a thirteenth child anymore. Then I saw how upset everyone else was, especially the older ones and Papa, and I wondered if I was really as evil as Uncle Earn said, to have such thoughts. I was glad I hadn’t said anything out loud.

I stayed out of the way as much as I could for the next two weeks, so that I wouldn’t have to pretend to feel bad when I didn’t. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even Lan. When the news came that Sharl was out of danger, I felt like a sham. Nobody noticed. We all sent letters to Mama and Sharl, and then settled down to wait for Mama to come home. But from then on, I knew that Uncle Earn had been right about me. I was a real thirteenth child at heart, and if I didn’t look out extra-sharp, I’d end up doing horrible things to somebody one day.