Jinx

by Sage Blackwood

  “Oh, good,” said Elfwyn. “The directions my mother gave me weren’t very exact.”

  Jinx was glad she was going his way. He liked Elfwyn, even though she was harder to talk to than she’d been in his imagination. And it was good to have company.

  “I’ll accompany you too, fair lady,” said Reven. “I would fain meet your grandmother.”

  “You would what?” said Elfwyn.

  “He means he’d like to,” said Jinx. Some of the books in Simon’s house used old-fashioned words like that.

  “But where were you going?” said Elfwyn.

  Reven didn’t say anything for a moment. “I was crossing the Urwald,” he said at last, carefully. “But I should be glad to make a detour to meet your grandmother.”

  How long does it take to cross the Urwald? Jinx wondered.

  They headed westward along the path the next morning. Jinx thought it was odd of Reven to turn around and head back the way he’d come, just to meet Dame Glammer. In fact, there were a lot of odd things about Reven. It would have been all right with Jinx if Reven had gone on crossing the Urwald from west to east and left him and Elfwyn alone.

  They crossed more paths, and of course there were no signs telling you which way to go.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” said Elfwyn after several turns.

  “Yes,” said Jinx. “We’re going west.”

  “We’re headed back to my country,” said Reven.

  “What’s your country?” said Jinx.

  “Bragwood. It’s this way.”

  “Were you on your way to Keyland, then?” said Elfwyn.

  Jinx remembered Tolliver the Wanderer telling him that Bragwood lay to the west and Keyland to the east.

  Reven ignored the question completely. “I have to leave Bragwood, and I haven’t done it yet.”

  “Yes, you have,” said Jinx. “You said you’d been in the Urwald for ten days already.”

  “The Urwald belongs to Bragwood,” said Reven.

  “It does not!”

  “King Rufus claims it.”

  “King Bluetooth of Keyland claims the Urwald,” said Elfwyn. “He lives ten days east of Butterwood Clearing.”

  “The Urwald doesn’t belong to any king!” said Jinx. “It belongs to—to itself.”

  “Well, I agree,” said Elfwyn, “but that doesn’t change the fact that King Bluetooth says it’s part of Keyland.” She turned to Reven. “Why did you leave Bragwood?”

  “I was banished,” said Reven proudly.

  “What for?” Elfwyn pressed.

  “The king said I was anathema.”

  “He doesn’t like athemas?”

  “Anathema means, like, accursed,” said Jinx. “Probably it was for robbing people.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Reven.

  “What did you get banished for?” Elfwyn asked.

  “For being too friendly with the king’s daughter.” Reven said this with his eyes looking sideways, and Jinx had the impression that it was a lie. “But I’m sure your king is pleased with you, fair lady,” he added.

  “I don’t have a king,” said Elfwyn. “I’m an Urwalder.”

  “Pardon me, but you said King Bluetooth—”

  “I just know who he is, that’s all. But he’s evil. Everyone knows that. He killed his brother, who was the real king, and his brother’s wife and their little baby, too.”

  “Ah. Yes. I heard about that,” said Reven.

  “Of course the brother was pretty evil too. His wife died right after the baby was born, and nobody knew what of, and then he married another wife.”

  Jinx had heard this story before, from Tolliver the Wanderer. He wasn’t very interested in it, except to notice that kings’ personal lives were as messy as Urwalders’. He hefted the ax on his shoulder. The path split two ways here. One branch went a little too far south and the other a little too far north. He chose the one that went south.

  “Anyway, I don’t care about kings,” said Elfwyn. “I’m from Butterwood Clearing. It’s the best clearing. We’re famous for our butter and our cows and—oh, and we’ve just been invaded by barbarians.”

  “That’s terrible!” said Reven.

  “No, it sort of worked out all right. Some of them seem like pretty nice barbarians. My mother is marrying one of them.”

  “Oh,” said Reven.

  “Only she thought they might not like me, because of—well, because. And so she told me to go live with my grandmother. Are you sure this is the right path, Jinx?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” said Jinx.

  “It’s a much wider path than any I’ve seen so far,” said Reven. “Do you think it’s the Troll-way? I was told to stay off of that.”

  “It’s not the Troll-way,” said Jinx. “The Troll-way goes up into the Glass Mountains. This path isn’t going up at all.”

  “Maybe it climbs gradually,” said Elfwyn.

  “There are claw marks here in the mud,” said Reven.

  “There are claw marks everywhere in the Urwald,” said Jinx.

  “Do you think we’ll see real trolls?” Reven sounded eager.

  “This isn’t the Troll-way!” Jinx was getting really annoyed with them, especially because this path did seem too wide to be the one that he’d gone on with Simon to Dame Glammer’s house.

  Elfwyn put a hand on his shoulder. “Jinx, I really think we should go back and look for a different path.”

  “Fine!” They had probably come a mile on this path already. But if she wanted to turn around and waste all that effort, fine. Jinx spun around and marched back the way he’d come, and the others followed.

  Without saying anything about it, they all started to walk a lot faster.

  “I hear something coming,” said Reven.

  He got down and put his ear to the ground, which Jinx thought was pretty stupid considering they were now trying to move as quickly as possible.

  “Something running,” said Reven. He pulled the knife from his belt.

  Elfwyn set her basket down on the path and pulled a big knife from it.

  “I’ll do a concealment spell,” said Jinx. “Come here.”

  Feeling rather self-conscious, he took hold of Reven’s and Elfwyn’s arms. He concentrated hard on not being there. He felt power coming up through his feet and filling him. We’re not here, he thought.

  They could all hear the running clawed feet now. There was a smell of rotten meat; then the troll burst into sight around a bend in the path. Jinx’s legs were telling him to run. But this time he knew he’d done the concealment spell right. Then it all went wrong.

  Reven pulled away from Jinx’s grip and stepped into the troll’s path.

  “Reven, stop!” Jinx said. “Get back here!”

  Reven raised his knife. The troll grinned a huge, broken-tusked grin and swiped at Reven with its clawed hand. Jinx ran forward and swung his ax. Then there was troll everywhere, thick hairy arms and grabbing clawed hands, an ugly roaring face—Jinx never forgot a face. He forced his eyes to stay open even though he wanted to hide his head, and he swung his ax again and again. He heard howls and screams and had no time to wonder whose they were or what was happening. Something sharp raked across his face. He swung his ax, it met resistance, he pulled it free again. He swung again, hard, as though trying to split a thick oaken log.

  Then he was lying sprawled on the ground. A shadowy form blotted out the sun. Jinx swung his fist at it.

  “Stop it!” said Elfwyn. “I’m just trying to look at that cut on your face.”

  Jinx sat up. Reven was sitting beside him, his arm bandaged in a red-and-white checked napkin. The troll was gone. There was blood on the path. And something large and inert. Jinx’s stomach did a flip flop. It was the troll’s arm. Jinx put his hand to his face and it came away bloody. The things that had just happened began to sort themselves out in his head. Jinx never forgot a face, even one that appeared on the wrong sort of body.

  “Wow, a troll!” s
aid Reven. “That was my first troll.”

  “That troll was my stepfather,” said Jinx.

  He saw Reven and Elfwyn exchange a glance.

  “I think you hit your head pretty hard when you fell,” said Elfwyn. “Maybe you should lie back down.”

  “Bergthold. My stepfather. I cut off my stepfather’s arm.”

  “You were amazing,” said Reven a little too heartily, as if he were talking to someone not quite right in the head. “The way you swung the ax—where did you learn to do that?”

  “Firewood,” said Jinx. “If you hadn’t stepped out of my concealment spell, I wouldn’t have had to swing anything. I mean it, that troll was my stepdad.”

  “Er—do you mean that your mother married a troll?” said Elfwyn.

  “Of course not! My mother’s dead. And he didn’t use to be a troll, he—Why are we still sitting here? Let’s get off the Troll-way!”

  “Oh, now it’s the Troll-way?” said Elfwyn.

  This sarcasm was better than her treating him like he was insane, so Jinx didn’t mind it. They walked rapidly, almost running, Reven carrying the bloody ax. Jinx didn’t want to bring it—the sight of it made him sick—but Reven insisted. He said he wanted Jinx to teach him ax fighting.

  When they were off the Troll-way and had come to a small stream, Jinx agreed to stop and wash the gouge on his face. Elfwyn said it would probably leave a scar.

  Jinx told about how his stepfather had been carried off by trolls.

  “Simon says that violent, greedy people draw trolls to themselves,” he explained.

  “So what does that make us, then?” said Reven.

  “Simon says, Simon says,” said Elfwyn. “Does it ever occur to you that Simon might be lying? I think that wizard of yours turned your stepfather into a troll himself.”

  “He can’t,” said Jinx. “It isn’t that easy to do magic on people, Simon sa—well, it isn’t easy.”

  “Did he say he couldn’t do it, or just that it wasn’t easy?” said Elfwyn.

  “He said it’s a hundred times harder than regular magic. But easier for witches.” Jinx frowned. Of course Simon could do magic on people. He’d done it on Jinx. But it had taken a lot of preparation, and extra power drawn from fire and chalk figures, and those sinister-smelling roots of Dame Glammer’s.

  “Anyway, Bergthold wasn’t a troll the last time I saw him,” Jinx said. “He was a man, and he was being carried away by trolls. And then I think he turned into one.”

  “People can turn into trolls?” said Reven.

  “I don’t know. I never heard of them doing it before.”

  “I never heard of it either,” said Elfwyn, frowning. “I thought trolls came from—you know, starting out as baby trolls.”

  “Maybe if you act like a troll, you turn into one,” said Reven. “I’m not saying your stepfather acted like a troll—”

  “He did.”

  “Oh, well. There you go then.” Reven seemed to feel that this explained it. “I mean, stuff is just magic in the Urwald, right?”

  Now Elfwyn and Jinx exchanged a glance. They were Urwalders, and they knew magic was complicated.

  The fact was that they were lost.

  It had been three days since Jinx had cut off his stepfather’s arm, and the feeling of sick revulsion sometimes left him for whole minutes at a time.

  Jinx had stopped saying “It’s this way” each time they came to a new path and had to decide which way to go. The others were still letting Jinx choose. But he could see them exchanging glances that said that they knew he was lost.

  Well, so what? So were they.

  It began to rain.

  They slogged on, their feet cold in their soggy boots, and their sodden clothes clinging and weighing them down.

  “Maybe you should leave the ax,” Jinx said, not for the first time.

  “No, we need this! You were killer with this thing,” said Reven. He seemed to have the ability to stay cheerful no matter how tired, cold, wet, and miserable things got. It was annoying.

  “He doesn’t want to talk about it, Reven,” said Elfwyn.

  “Why not?” said Reven, splashing through a puddle. “The way he cut that troll’s arm off was—”

  “You said that already.” Jinx tried to shut out the memory. He wondered if Bergthold had survived.

  “Remember what you said to me before about those tree limbs I cut to make shelters? You said the forest would take limbs off people. Wouldn’t it be funny if that were true?”

  “It is true, and it’s not funny,” said Jinx.

  “Trolls aren’t people,” said Elfwyn.

  “Actually, I think maybe they are,” said Jinx. “I mean, that one was my stepfather. And they obey the Truce of the Path—”

  “That one didn’t,” Reven said.

  “That wasn’t the Path, that was the Troll-way.”

  “There’s something over there,” said Elfwyn. “A clearing, maybe.”

  The smell of smoke came through the rain, and there was a small path branching off. They went down it. They all wanted to get out of the rain.

  The clearing was small, gray, and drizzly. Wisps of steam spiraled upward from fresh-turned earth, which was rapidly becoming mud. Shovels, abandoned when the rain began, stuck up here and there.

  The houses were triangles of twigs and thatch, black with soaked-in rain. Jinx splashed up to a door and knocked. Reven and Elfwyn stayed behind him.

  “Who’s there?” came through the door.

  “A party of wet travelers seeking shelter,” said Jinx.

  “Hoity-toity!” The door swung inward. “‘Seeking shelter’? Here we just look for dry. Come in.”

  Jinx ducked, even though the doorway wasn’t too low. Something about the little hut just made him feel too big for it. He heard Elfwyn and Reven come into the house behind him.

  “You can put the ax down; we don’t none of us need chopping up,” said the woman.

  Jinx stared at her. He never forgot a face.

  “You can sit down if you want,” said the woman. “’Stead of standing around crowding up the place.”

  Besides the woman there was a girl about three years old, and a man sprawled on a bed in a corner.

  Jinx and Elfwyn sat down beside the fire, cross-legged so as to take up less room. Rain was falling down the chimney and hissing in the flames, and the wind blew down it and filled the room with puffs of eye-stinging smoke.

  Reven held his hands out to the little girl and smiled. “Hello, princess.”

  She ran and hid behind her mother, then peered out at Reven suspiciously.

  Jinx looked from the woman to the man on the bed, and decided to be blunt. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  “Should I? I never had any truck with any rich people.” She leaned past him to stir the cauldron hanging over the flames.

  “You’re my stepmother,” said Jinx.

  She dropped the ladle into the pot. “Fudge!” She brushed her hair out of her face and glared at him.

  He looked steadily back at her.

  “Now how am I going to get that out of there?” She reached for the fire tongs.

  Jinx wasn’t sure why he did what he did next—maybe because he didn’t want to eat soup that had had the ash-covered fire tongs stuck in it, but more likely because he wanted to force his stepmother to react to him in some way. She didn’t look the least bit interested in what he’d just told her.

  So he stood up, looked into the bubbling, steaming pot until he could see the ladle swimming among chopped squash and cabbage leaves, and levitated it. He’d gotten better at levitating things, and he’d noticed magic was easier when he wasn’t inside Simon’s stone house. The ladle rose easily through the water. It hung in the air a few inches above the pot. Everyone stared at it. Jinx pulled his sleeve down over his hand, grabbed the thing, and handed it to his stepmother.

  She took it, squawked, and dropped it on the floor.

  “Sorry. It’s hot,” said
Jinx. He really hadn’t meant to burn her. Honestly. Probably.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about her.

  He looked at her and her family. Their clothes were patched and colorless, the dye probably washed out years ago by other wearers who might be dead by now. He realized he was among people who would never wear new clothes in their lives.

  “I guess you got married again,” he said.

  He heard an intake of breath and a tsk from Elfwyn, and guessed he was in danger of being not-nice again. He tried to control himself and think nice thoughts. After all, the woman—Cottawilda—had let them in out of the rain.

  “Are you a wizard, or an elf, or what?” said Cottawilda, backing up to the bed and sitting down next to the man. She turned to Elfwyn, maybe as one woman to another, and asked, “What is he?”

  “He’s a wizard’s servant,” said Elfwyn.

  Cottawilda and her husband recoiled in horror.

  “You shouldn’t have told them that,” Jinx muttered.

  Elfwyn shot him an apologetic look.

  “What! The Bonemaster?” said Cottawilda.

  “No, the evil wizard Simon,” said Elfwyn.

  “Can’t you keep anything to yourself?” Jinx snapped, not caring if she thought he was nice or not. What a blabbermouth!

  “No,” said Elfwyn.

  “I’m your stepson,” he told Cottawilda. “Jinx. Remember?”

  He was conscious of dominating the tiny house and being at the center of an audience. Reven was sitting against the wall and had somehow coaxed the child into his lap.

  “You don’t look nothing like him. He was a tiny brat.”

  “Yeah, well, it was a while ago. I’ve grown.” The woman didn’t seem to feel guilty or anything. “You don’t remember? You abandoned me, you left me to die in the Urwald.”

  “I would never do anything like that.” Cottawilda shook her head firmly. “I’d’ve sold you.”

  “You did do it!” Jinx struggled not to raise his voice. He saw the little girl bury her face against Reven, in fear of Jinx. “Bergthold took me out in the woods to abandon me.”

  “Oh, Bergthold.” Her face twisted with disgust. “He was a mean old thing.”