Across the Great Barrier

by Patricia C. Wrede

  Magic classes were the worst, because everyone expected me to show off, and thought I was shamming when I still had nearly as much trouble getting my spells to work as I ever had. On the very first day, when we were reviewing the solidifying spell, mine turned half of the wooden table black and gooey, so that it collapsed. The mud we were supposed to be working on spattered all over everything, and I spent the rest of class cleaning up the mess. At least my spells had quit exploding, so I didn’t have to worry about someone getting hurt.

  I went back to spending most of my free time down at the college menagerie with Professor Jeffries. He was the college wildlife specialist, and I knew him pretty well because he used to let William and me come down and practice our Aphrikan magic on the animals, coaxing them to move around or choose one bit of food over another. That was when I’d first grown to love the menagerie, and by extension the Far West that was the true home for many of the menagerie’s animals.

  Although I didn’t have any official position with the menagerie, Professor Jeffries let me feed the animals, even the young mammoth that was the prize specimen in the collection, and sometimes I assisted in the office. There was a new professor in the department, Miss Aldis Torgeson, and she was at least twice as good at coming up with paperwork as Professor Jeffries ever was, so they needed a lot more assisting.

  This was why I was at the menagerie on the October day when Washington Morris came by. Actually, Wash got there before I did. I came straight from school, and found him sitting on the corner of Professor Jeffries’s desk, waving his hands to emphasize a point, so that the long leather fringe on his jacket flapped every which way as he talked.

  Wash was a circuit-rider, one of the six or seven magicians who rode from settlement to settlement to bring them news, share new spells, and help out when the settlement magicians needed helping. He’d been out in the settlements all summer, spreading the anti-mirror-bug spells that Papa and Professor Jeffries had worked out, and I hadn’t looked to see him again until spring. His black hair was a mass of frizz grown nearly to chin length, and his beard looked as if he’d used a crosscut saw to trim it. Circuit magicians always got a mite shaggy when they’d been out in the settlements for months, but Wash usually stopped at the barber in West Landing, on the far side of the river, before he came on into town. I thought he must have been in a powerful hurry to have skipped sprucing up.

  As soon as he saw me, he broke off and his dark face split in a wide grin. “Hello, Miss Rothmer!” he said, and I could tell that he was tired because the hint of Southern drawl in his voice was a lot stronger than usual.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Morris,” I said.

  “Wash,” he corrected me.

  “Not if you’re going to call me Miss Rothmer,” I told him. “I thought we got that settled last summer.”

  “Miss Eff, then,” he said, still grinning.

  I couldn’t keep from rolling my eyes, but I let that stand. It should have felt peculiar, being on a first-name basis with a gentleman a good fifteen or sixteen years older than me, and a black man to boot, but Wash never paid much attention to other people’s rules, and he had a way of making everyone else forget about them, too. I always thought that was why he spent most of his time out in the wild country: because there was no one there to make rules for him.

  “What are you doing back in Mill City so soon?” I asked.

  “Supply run,” he said. “I gave most of mine to the settlement magician at Evergreen Farms, and I need to restock.”

  Knowing Wash, that was true enough, but it wasn’t anything like all of the truth. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Then what are you doing in Professor Jeffries’s office, first thing? He doesn’t have supplies to sell.”

  “Not of the usual kind,” Wash said agreeably.

  “You’re as bad as William,” I complained. “And whatever Professor Jeffries has for you, it still doesn’t explain why you came straight here before you even got yourself looking civilized again.”

  Wash laughed. “You sound just like Miss Maryann,” he told me, meaning Miss Ochiba. That was how I’d first met him, three years back when Miss Ochiba had asked him to talk to her classes at the day school about the settlements and the open lands of the Far West.

  Professor Jeffries gave both of us a look of mild reproof. “Mr. Morris came to deliver a new specimen for the menagerie,” he said.

  “A new specimen? What did you catch?” I asked eagerly.

  “A pair of golden firefox cubs,” Wash said. “I had quite a time getting them through the Barrier Spell. Young ‘uns have a harder time with it. The ferryman didn’t much like me bringing wildlife over, either. I took myself off as soon as we docked and came straight here.”

  I stared at him. “Fox cubs? In October?”

  Wash shrugged. “Firefoxes don’t breed quite the same as their natural cousins.”

  “Still, a fall litter is unusual even for magical wildlife,” Professor Jeffries said. “We’re lucky you found them.”

  “It’s not so out of the way for those critters,” Wash said. “Truth to tell, I’d had my eye on a den I found two years back, hoping one of the family would circle around to use it again this fall. I wasn’t expecting goldens, though, and I wasn’t expecting the mama fox to be caught by a Gaulish trapper.”

  “I see.” Professor Jeffries pushed his glasses up on his nose and made a hrumphing sound. “I do wish you could see your way to staying in Mill City for more than a week at a time, Mr. Morris. Your practical observations would be infinitely useful, if we could persuade you to write them out.” He frowned slightly. “Or better yet, dictate them to someone.”

  I ducked my head to hide a smile. Wash’s handwriting was dreadful. I knew on account of he’d been sending notes to Professor Jeffries for a couple-three years, and I’d been the one making a clean copy of them for the professor.

  “It’s Wash, Professor,” Wash said with a smile, but then he shook his head. “I’m pleased enough to help out where I can, but staying too long in the city makes me twitchy.”

  “I’ve half a mind to assign you to one of my students as a project while you’re here,” Professor Jeffries said. He was still frowning with his eyebrows, but you could just see that the corners of his mouth were itching to curl up considerably more than he was letting them. Wash had that effect on people.

  “If you like,” Wash said. “I doubt it’d be worth the effort this time, though. I’m only here for a few days, to resupply and” — he gave me a quick wink — “get a haircut so I don’t frighten the new settlers.”

  “Hmph.” Professor Jeffries shook his head. “No doubt you’re right. Next time, I shall be ready for you.” His frown deepened suddenly, as if he’d thought of something, but all he said was that Wash should take me out back and show me the fox cubs. “And I trust that you will provide Miss Rothmer with any pertinent information regarding their care,” he added. “I would not wish to lose a pair of valuable specimens through ignorance.”

  So Wash took me out to the pen they’d rigged up in the menagerie. The golden firefoxes were a double handful each of long fluffy fur and bright black eyes and cold black noses, just barely past being weaned. Wash said they’d keep their pale, pale gold color until spring, when they’d get their first summer coats and start coming into control of their magic. When they were full-grown, they’d be a light gold on top, almost the color of dry grass, with a deeper gold underneath. And just like regular firefoxes, they’d be able to warm or cool the air around them, though neither animal could actually start fires as far as anybody knew.

  Wash told me how to feed the cubs, and what sort of bedding firefoxes used in their dens, and to be sure the cubs didn’t get too warm. Then I showed him around the menagerie. The college’s collection had grown in the past three years, though we still didn’t have very many magical creatures on account of the difficulty of getting them past the Great Barrier Spell. In addition to the scorch lizard and the daybat we’d started with, we’d added
a miniature silverhoof and a pair of jewel minks that the professors were trying to get to breed, but most of the animals were ordinary, natural ones, like the mammoth: a prairie wolf, a couple of bison, the colony of prairie dogs that had grown from the two Dr. McNeil brought back, a porcupine, and so on. We’d had a skunk for a while, but even the magicians couldn’t do much about the smell, so we’d gotten rid of it.

  After we went through everything once, we went back past the cages and pens that Wash thought could be improved on, and Wash made suggestions for changes. By the time we finished, the afternoon was getting on for evening and it was time for me to head home. Wash said he’d walk along with me, as he had a fair number of thanks from the settlements to pass along to Papa.

  “And to yourself as well, Miss Eff,” he added. “Seeing that it was you that figured out the spell for getting rid of the mirror bugs.”

  “Don’t you start, too!” I said. “I’ve had more than enough of that all summer long.”

  “Do tell,” Wash said, and so I did. It took me halfway home to cover it all, from the newspapers to Lan’s notions about college to my classmates at school. It turned out that Wash knew some of the boys from back in day school who’d gone west to the settlements instead of on to upper school. We gossiped some about them, and it was a considerable relief after all the talk of me and my doings. I’d almost forgotten how easy Wash was to talk to. He never pushed and he always listened, and when he finally said something to the purpose it was always worth hearing. So I was more than a little surprised when, after a short pause in the conversation, he asked after my magic lessons.

  I made a face. “It’s not as bad as it was, but I still can’t make Avrupan spells work properly most of the time. And I haven’t had time to practice Aphrikan magic.”

  Wash gave me a thoughtful look. “You’re still at the point of needing practice, then?” he said mildly.

  “I —” I stopped. It hadn’t occurred to me that there were other ways of learning magic than sitting down to work at it the way we did at school. I felt pretty foolish; Miss Ochiba had told us often enough that you could find a different way to look at anything, if you tried. And the most basic part of Aphrikan magic was all about sensing the way the world was and how it maybe could be different if you nudged it a little. It wasn’t a separate thing from just everyday living, and learning how to do it didn’t have to be separate, either. “I guess that’s what she meant.”

  “Miss Maryann?”

  I nodded. “She said once that when we got good at world-sensing, we’d be able to tell if an apple had a worm in it before we bit into it. I wondered at the time why anyone would go throwing spells around before they ate anything, but that’s not what she meant. She meant that when you get really good at it, you just do it all the time. And I haven’t even been trying once in a while!”

  “You’ve been raised to Avrupan magic,” Wash said. “It’s natural that you think in terms of specific spells and purposes. Aphrikan magic isn’t like that.”

  I touched the thumbnail-sized whorl of wood I wore on a leather cord around my neck, under my blouse. Wash had given me the charm early in the summer, to help me control my magic. Or at least, that’s what I’d thought at the time. Then I’d discovered that there were a whole lot of spells wrapped around it, some of them Aphrikan or Avrupan and some a kind I didn’t recognize. Some were very new, and some were very, very old, and a good chunk of them were there to make sure nobody noticed all the magic except people who already knew about it. I hadn’t gotten much further than that in the time I’d had to study on it, which wasn’t too surprising. Untangling all that old magic so as to get a proper look at it would have been hard enough all by itself; with all the don’t-notice spells added in, it was practically impossible.

  I started to ask Wash about it, but then changed my mind. Neither Wash nor Miss Ochiba would tell you something if they thought you ought to be figuring it out on your own.

  So instead of asking about how the pendant worked, I said, “Who gave you that wood pendant, Wash?”

  Wash’s eyes crinkled up at the corners and he looked at me like he thought I’d said something extra clever. All he said was, “A conjureman. He was a friend of my mother’s. I’ve had it since I was, oh, three or four.”

  “Wash!” I said. “And you gave it to me?”

  “It’s not a keeping thing,” Wash said. “I haven’t had need of it in years. It was more than time I passed it along, but I never met quite the right person before.”

  “But —”

  “But, nothing.” Wash’s voice was unusually stern. “I told you once, that pendant only goes one way. Teacher to student. I’ll tell you the whole story some other time, perhaps. But meantime, don’t you go leaving it in a drawer somewhere. Some things are meant to be worn, valuable or not.”

  “I’m wearing it now,” I said. “I just … it didn’t seem like something I wanted to show off. So I don’t.”

  “Ah. That’s good.”

  “It seems very complicated,” I said tentatively. “The spells that go with it, I mean.”

  “It is complicated,” Wash said. “So’s the world. Keep it while you can; use it while you need it; pass it on when you’ve finished.”

  “Use it for what?” I said, exasperated. “And how?” “That’s up to you,” Wash said with a wide grin that made me want to forget I was a grown-up lady, nearly, and haul off and smack him the way I used to smack Lan and Robbie when we were little.

  But I could see that I wouldn’t get anything more out of him then, and we’d almost reached the house, so I huffed a little and asked where he was going next, after he left Mill City.

  “Out to finish teaching the last few settlement magicians those new spells of yours,” he said. “After that, downriver for the winter.”

  I must have looked surprised, because he shook his shaggy head at me and grinned again. “It seems the Settlement Offices up and down the river got together and decided that somebody should train a few magicians farther south, just in case some of those mirror bugs turn up in the Midlands next spring. We don’t know how far they spread before we got a handle on them, after all. And it’s been a long time since I visited New Orleans.”

  “New Orleans is a long, dangerous trip,” I said, before I thought to remember who I was talking to. Going down to New Orleans wasn’t near as dangerous as riding circuit in the settlements, and the reason they’d asked Wash to ride a circuit in the first place was that he was one of the few men who’d gone off to explore the Far West on his own and come back alive to tell about it.

  “Not so far as you think,” Wash said. “I’ll be there well before Christmas, even stopping at settlements. Might even have time to swing east a bit and see how things are changing there, before I come back in the spring.”

  We turned in at the gate of the big lumber-baron house the Northern Plains Riverbank College had given Papa when we first moved to Mill City thirteen years before. It was a lot quieter now that Robbie and Allie and I were the only ones left at home, even with Papa’s students in and out all the time.

  I left Wash in the front parlor and went to find Papa and then to make tea. I had a million questions still to ask, but I didn’t think Wash would answer any of them right then, and certainly not when he had Papa to talk to. Besides, I had more thinking to do. Wash was almost as good at giving me things to think about as William.

  CHAPTER

  3

  THE FIRST THING I DID, THE MORNING AFTER THAT TALK WITH Wash, was to work on the Aphrikan world-sensing technique that Miss Ochiba had taught us. Only instead of just doing it and stopping, I tried to keep it going all the time.

  It was difficult. Paying attention to everything at once, while being very quiet inside your own head, is hard enough when you’re sitting still. Doing it while you are walking around and talking to people and doing breakfast dishes and solving math problems and answering history questions seemed pretty near impossible at first. I kept getting distracte
d by the warm feel of a wooden table or the swirly sense of the soap in the dishwater. The more I worked at it, though, the easier it got. I still couldn’t keep it up all the time, but the more I tried, the longer it worked.

  Oddly enough, one of the first things that happened was that my Avrupan spell casting got better as soon as I started doing the world-sensing in class. It was late November before I tried, because I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to mix Avrupan and Aphrikan magic, but after my pencil-mending spell reduced my broken pencil to a heap of splinters and black powder, I figured that world-sensing couldn’t make things any worse than they were already.

  Two days before Harvest Feast, I walked into magic class concentrating on world-sensing for all I was worth. I almost dropped my books in surprise. The practice tables where we set up our spells were covered with warm spots and cool spots, like someone had scattered snowballs and lit candles over them and left them to melt. My table was the coldest spot in the room, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that the reason was the way my spells always went wrong.

  That day, Mr. Nordstrom had us working on a spell for balancing an uneven weight from a distance. It was actually a blend of two spells we’d already learned, and the point was to learn to control them both at the same time. A lot of the advanced spells, like the travel protection spells that folks need west of the Great Barrier Spell, use two or more spells at once, so it’s important to know how to work with combinations.

  I was actually fairly good at the spell for doing things at a distance, because it was so useful at the menagerie. Cleaning the scorch lizard’s pen was downright dangerous if you got too close, but with the distance spell, I could just stand outside and lift the mess into the bucket without getting anywhere near the lizard’s teeth or breath. I’d never been able to do the weight-adjusting spell, though, so I expected the class exercise to be a failure, as usual.