“Go get him something to drink.” Simon’s voice cut through the pain at last, echoing and repeating itself ringingly on the inside of Jinx’s skull. “Something to drink thing to drink thing to dri dri dri …”
He wanted to get out of this aching body again. It had been a mistake to return.
“You’re all right,” said Simon. “Jinx, you’re all right.” It sounded pleading, not reassuring.
“Yeah,” said Jinx, at last, with great difficulty. He was all right. The pain was gone, just a horrible memory that he decided to do his best to forget.
“There, bring that drink here, put it—no, don’t spill it on him, you fool. Go get him another one.”
“Sorry,” came Elfwyn’s voice. “But would it kill you to say please once in a while?”
“Please. Jinx, don’t move. Just lie still until your bones have finished knitting.”
“Think they’ve finished,” said Jinx.
He was aware of claws pinching and prodding at him, an invasion that infuriated him but that he didn’t have the strength to avoid. “Yes, the little chipmunk is all fixed up,” said Dame Glammer. “See? Bones as good as new.” A hand slipped underneath him. “Even the backbone.”
He couldn’t see her thoughts. He never had been able to. But even with his eyes closed, he could see that Reven was astounded, in a great orange blob of surprise. Elfwyn radiated relief and shimmered bright blue happiness that Jinx was back, just like Simon did.
He could hear Elfwyn crying. Which didn’t go with the feelings she was having at all. People were funny.
“Get out of here and let him rest,” said Simon.
Jinx heard their footsteps on the floor as they left, all but Simon. Slowly Jinx opened his eyes. Simon was looking down at him, but as soon as he saw Jinx’s eyes open, he made a hmph sound and stood up and started putting things away. Simon normally never put things away. He waited for Jinx to do it.
Jinx followed Simon with his eyes. Simon certainly didn’t look happy or relieved. His expression seemed to say that Jinx was a nuisance, which showed that the expressions and words people chose weren’t always like what was going on inside their heads. Underneath it all, a warm blue cloud surrounded Simon and reached out and included Jinx, and Jinx realized for the first time that it had always been there.
“But it’s not enough,” said Jinx.
Simon turned around from shaking ashes out the window. “What’s not enough?”
“The blue stuff.”
A ripple of pink worry rustled past but didn’t show up on Simon’s face. “Supposing you let me in on the part of this conversation that is only happening in your head.”
“You didn’t have any right to take my magic away,” said Jinx. “Or my life. Can I have another drink? Please,” he added, hoping to set a good example for Simon.
Simon knelt down and gave him a drink of water.
“Thanks,” said Jinx. “Why didn’t you come before?”
“What, to rescue you? You go off to the one exact place that I specifically told you to stay away from—”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. I told you to stay away from the Bonemaster. Do you ever listen?”
“Yes. All the time,” said Jinx. He felt tired. “But you were watching me through the Farseeing Window, with that gold bird thing. Why didn’t you come sooner? Were you really watching me?”
Simon looked away. “I was busy.”
“You forgot. You always forget about me.”
“Nonsense. I give you room to grow, that’s all.”
“You were too busy fighting with Sophie to remember me,” said Jinx. Oh, right—“Are you feeling better, then?”
“Much better, thanks so much for asking,” said Simon sarcastically. “I watched the first few days you were gone but then, yes, it did slip my mind. I didn’t realize what had happened until Dame Glammer came to visit and merrily told me how she had sent you off to Bonesocket, and that the Bonemaster intended to kill you on August thirty-first—which happened to be the very next day.”
“How did she know that?” said Jinx.
“I suppose the Bonemaster sent her a message.”
“He sends messages to her? You mean she’s in league with him?”
“Dame Glammer’s not in league with anyone but herself.”
“But she—”
“People have their friends,” said Simon shortly.
“How can she be friends with—”
“I did tell you to stay away from her. Now, since you’re all wide awake and chattery, supposing you tell me about your visit with the Bonemaster.”
So Jinx did. It seemed strange that he’d thought he couldn’t trust Simon. But that was life when you were missing your magic. Now that he could see clearly, he knew that he could trust Simon—to be Simon, at any rate. Which was its own problem.
At least he seemed like the old Simon again—the one before the bottle spell.
“He said you’d killed me,” said Jinx when he was finished.
“Did he? Well, he was wrong.”
“You did, though. You put my life in a bottle—”
“And then I gave it back. You have it back now, correct?”
“Yes, but the Bonemaster said—”
“And suddenly the Bonemaster is the arbiter of truth, is he? Not killing you was the whole point. That’s what makes it such a difficult spell.”
“He did the same spell on you that you did on me.”
Simon said nothing.
“He put your life in a bottle.”
“Yes.” The thought that went with this was cold, green, and angry.
“He thought you’d sent me to steal it back,” said Jinx.
“I would never have done that,” said Simon. “However—” There was a long, difficult pause. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Why did he have your life? I mean, he took it to use your lifeforce power, all right, but why did you let him? Did he trick you?” Like you tricked me?
Simon got up, went to his workbench, and began fiddling around. Jinx heard boxes being opened and jars sliding about. He thought Simon wasn’t going to answer him. Different layers of thoughts and feelings were kicking each other angrily across the surface of Simon’s mind.
“It’s the usual price,” said Simon at last. “The apprentice permits the wizard to use his lifeforce for the length of the apprenticeship.”
“You were his apprentice?” Jinx had not been expecting that.
“Yes. Don’t look at me like that.”
“But why?”
“Because I wanted to learn to be a wizard, of course.” Simon began grinding something in the mortar.
“But—didn’t you realize he was evil?”
“No.” Simon sighed. “That is, yes. At first I didn’t think about it, because I was only interested in finding someone to teach me. And then I didn’t think about it because it wasn’t … convenient.”
“Wasn’t convenient,” Jinx repeated.
“Well, if you never in your life find yourself making excuses for things you know are wrong, wonderful,” said Simon. “But in the end, I couldn’t pretend any longer that I didn’t know what he was, and I told him I was quitting. And he claimed that because I hadn’t completed my apprenticeship, he didn’t have to give my life back.”
This all came out of Simon’s mouth freely enough, but his thoughts were struggling with one another—some of the thoughts didn’t want Jinx or anyone to know these things, and others were insisting it was for the best that they be spoken. Jinx wondered if this was what made Simon so cranky: having a brain like a dogfight.
“Why didn’t you take your life when you left? And the other bottles?”
“I didn’t know about the other bottles,” said Simon.
“How could you not know—”
“They were hidden. I never found that underground passage, never knew to look for it. I knew he’d killed people.”
“Did you see him kil
l people?”
A door slammed shut across Simon’s thoughts, so hard that Jinx flinched. “Enough talk. You need to rest.”
“What’s the difference between the dead people in the bottles and—us?”
“The difference between being dead and being alive.”
“Are the dead people in the bottles really completely dead?”
“They are now,” said Simon. His thoughts were making a cage around his words. “It wasn’t their lives that were bottled, it was their interrupted deaths. There’s power in that. He stole the moments of their deaths, and bottled them. He stopped them from going on.”
If you know that, Jinx thought, you must have known the bottles existed. “So when the bottles smashed, when I fell—”
“You set the deaths free.”
“So will they come back to life, those people who were in the bottles?”
“No,” said Simon. “But they will be free.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Simon. “You think I know everything?”
He lit a candle and held a glass phial over it in a clamp, turning it slowly. Jinx saw him reach for the powder in the mortar, and for things on the shelf that Jinx couldn’t see, and add them to the phial.
“You destroyed most of the Bonemaster’s power,” Simon said after a while. “It was well done.”
Praise from Simon was so rare that it took Jinx a minute to realize that that was what it was. “Well, I mostly had a lot of help,” Jinx said. “But why didn’t he bottle them alive?”
“Because it’s a much more complicated spell.”
“It requires a human sacrifice,” said Jinx.
Simon turned around fast. “Who told you that?”
“Isn’t that what deathforce magic is? And you did that spell on me!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Simon. “You were here. Did you see me sacrifice anybody?”
“Didn’t you sacrifice me?”
“Of course not. I told you.” Simon went back to fussing with his phial. “There’s a way around most things in magic, if you know how to look. That’s what Dame Glammer’s roots were for.”
And Jinx could see he was telling the truth.
“What do you think that other bottle was?” Jinx asked. “The one with all the ribbony smoke around it?”
“I have no idea,” said Simon. “But you were right not to touch it.”
Then you do have some idea. So did Jinx. “I think it’s the Bonemaster’s life.”
“Perhaps,” said Simon.
“He’ll kill more people now, won’t he? To get his power back?”
“I intend to prevent that.”
But you didn’t prevent it before, Jinx thought. He remembered the green, bottle-shaped fear that everyone had of the Bonemaster. Usually different people had different-looking feelings, but this one was the same for everyone, as if—oh.
“Did you cast a spell, before, to make people afraid of the Bonemaster?” said Jinx.
“Of course not,” said Simon. “I simply told them about him.”
“You made up stories. Like that he could suck out your soul with a straw.”
“It’s more or less the truth. And it kept people away from him.”
“Then where did all those dead people come from?”
“Mostly they happened before,” said Simon.
The word before lay smack across the wall around Simon’s thoughts.
“Before you left?”
“Yes.”
“And after people heard your stories, it wasn’t so easy for him to catch people,” Jinx guessed. “What did you steal from him?”
Simon rapped a knuckle against the red-bound book that lay open on the workbench.
“But that’s the book you used to—”
“It’s the book he used to kill people with,” said Simon.
“The book you used to take my life.”
“And to put it back.”
“Can he still do the bottle spell now that he doesn’t have the book?”
“How should I know? It depends how good his memory is.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Jinx asked.
“You think I go around killing people?”
Jinx looked up at Calvin the Skull, resting near Simon’s elbow on the workbench. “Well, but if killing him could save a lot of people’s lives—”
“Or cost them. I don’t know whose death he’s tied to his own. Mine, naturally, that goes with the bottling—”
“You mean if you killed him, you’d die?”
“Probably. Along with I-don’t-know-who-else.” Simon dribbled something from a jar into the phial he was heating.
“Are you going to take your life out of the bottle now?” Jinx asked.
“Can’t. I need another wizard to give it back to me. The spell’s quite complicated.”
“The spell you just did on me.”
“Yes. I can’t do it on myself.”
“But there are other wizards in the Urwald.”
“Not any that I’d trust with my life.”
Jinx was beginning to see the shape of this. “Why can’t you teach Sophie to do the spell? She likes magic really.”
At the mention of Sophie, Simon’s thoughts turned all orangeish gray, like a log about to fall apart in the fire. “Because Sophie does not know my life is in a bottle, and I do not wish her to find out.”
“You don’t trust her?” Jinx was surprised.
Annoyance crackled around Simon’s head. “Of course I do. It’s just not the sort of thing you tell your wife.”
“Where is Sophie?”
“She left.”
“Did she go back to Samara?”
“Yes.”
“Is she coming back?”
“How should I know? Now if you—”
“Well, did she say she was coming back?”
“She said she has to think about things. Now if you’re quite finished interrogating me—”
“What kind of things?”
“Things. Sometimes women need to think about things. You’ll see—when you’re older, they’ll do it at you.”
“Things like whether she wants to stay married?”
“Jinx, this is not something I care to discuss.”
Jinx could tell from the shape of Simon’s thoughts that he’d guessed right, and that it would be best to drop the subject for now.
“So you want me to learn to do that spell,” said Jinx. “I’m not very good at magic.”
“You’ll get better. Age helps. Sometimes.” Simon took the phial off the flame and poured steaming liquid into a cup.
Maybe Jinx was getting better at magic. Like the way he’d been able to draw on the Urwald’s power, just recently. Except that after that—
“I couldn’t do magic in Dame Glammer’s house.”
“Wizards’ magic does not work in witches’ cottages.”
“Why not?”
“How should I know? Ask a witch.”
Jinx thought of something else. “The Bonemaster was really worried when he heard you’d been injured. Was that because if you die, your bottled life won’t be as powerful?”
“You told him I was injured?” Angry little lightning bolts.
Elfwyn had actually told, because of her curse. Jinx decided not to say this. “Not intentionally.”
“That was a foolish thing to do.”
“Sorry,” said Jinx, since it was less trouble than arguing.
He didn’t think it would be tactful to add that he’d thought Simon was evil at the time.
“Is my life tied to yours, then? Would I die if you died?” he asked.
“In the first place, no. Because your life is no longer in the bottle. And in the second place, no. Because I happen to understand the bottle spell a great deal better than the Bonemaster does. And in the third place, no. Because the curse is only triggered if the apprentice kills the master.”
“I would never have—”<
br />
“I know that, of course.” Simon even managed to sound irritated at Jinx for not wanting to kill him. “But a great many apprentices have tried to kill a great many wizards. That’s why the spell was originally constructed as it was.”
So Simon had changed the spell, Jinx thought. And used roots, and made it not involve a human sacrifice. And now Jinx had to learn to do it in reverse—to put Simon’s life back inside him, so that there would be no chance of the Bonemaster ever getting his hands on it again. Jinx had trouble even with easy spells. He really doubted he would ever be able to do this one. And do it right, without killing Simon. The thought was both frightening and exhausting. Why did it have to be him?
“Because I was just a life lost in the forest,” Jinx answered himself.
“What, you think I would have just left you to the trolls if I didn’t have a use for you?” Simon jiggled the liquid in the cup, cooling it.
“But you didn’t even teach me to read, at first.”
“Well.” Embarrassment, of all things, in a little lavender cloud. “I never really thought of making a wizard of you, but then she kept saying you were clever.”
So I was meant for something else, Jinx thought. To do work that you could easily do yourself with a few spells? To be better company than the cats? Or just to be a living life trapped in a bottle? Jinx didn’t know.
Simon came over to Jinx and knelt down, the cup in his hand. “Drink this.”
The potion was bright green. “What is it?”
“A sleeping potion,” said Simon. “It’s not that easy to get over being dead. You need to rest and give yourself time to heal.”
“It doesn’t look anything like the sleeping potion we made for the Bonemaster.” It didn’t smell like it either. It smelled quite pleasant, like autumn leaves.
“Mine is a vegetarian recipe. No bat wings.”
“Ours didn’t work,” said Jinx, remembering how the Bonemaster had caught them at the top of the cliff.
“I’m sure he didn’t take it,” said Simon.
“But Elfwyn hid it in the drink she always gave him every day.”
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