Jinx's Fire

by Sage Blackwood

  “Who is?”

  “The Urwald against, er, Keyland. And Bragwood.”

  “Oh yes? Whose idea was this?”

  “It wasn’t really an—”

  “You see? This is what comes of making a nation. I told you not to try to make a nation, didn’t I, boy?”

  “So, what, I was supposed to just let them invade us?” Jinx demanded.

  “The Urwald would have taken care of them.”

  “It couldn’t. The Bonemaster was draining its power. Through you. And anyway, we are the Urwald!”

  Jinx tried to make the path go to Simon’s house. But it twisted and flopped out of his control. It was going, inexorably, back to where he’d started from.

  “We’re coming out in the Glass Mountains,” he said. “And they’re going to eat my arm off.”

  “Trolls are easy to deal with,” said Simon.

  “They have hostages. They’ve got Elfwyn and Wendell.”

  “Who’s Wendell?”

  “A guy from Samara.”

  “You brought a Samaran to the Urwald?”

  “That bothers you more than that I’m going to get my arm eaten off?”

  “You’re not going to get your arm eaten off,” said Simon. “We’ll figure something out.”

  You can’t do magic, Jinx thought. Stop trying to reassure me. You can’t do any magic at all. It’ll just be me and my magic and Elfwyn and Wendell being held hostage and a few hundred trolls eating my arm.

  They had reached the bottom of a set of stairs. It was the first familiar thing that Jinx had seen in his journey underground.

  Jinx climbed. It was strange—he had a feeling that he had just come down the stairs a moment ago, and then that it had been years and years—longer than he’d been alive. He reached the top.

  “This is it,” he said. He came to the archway that said

  entry not advisable

  over it. He was surprised to see it said it on this side, too. Though he supposed it was a good description of the Urwald. He stepped through into the cavern. The sky was a brilliant blue slit peering through the crack in the wall. Jinx blinked.

  “It’s pretty bright, isn’t it,” he said, trying to calm himself down and not think about getting his arm eaten.

  “Jinx?” It was Elfwyn’s voice. “Jinx? Is that you?”

  Jinx turned sideways and squeezed through the gap into white sunshine, which made him blink. He had trouble seeing Elfwyn at first, except as a green glow of happiness. She hugged him, which Jinx would have quite liked if they hadn’t been standing on this narrow ledge. And if he hadn’t been focused on the immediate prospect of having his arm chewed off. And if Simon hadn’t been there.

  “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” said Elfwyn. “I thought you were never coming back.”

  “I was only gone, um—”

  “Two months,” said Elfwyn.

  “Reall—? Er, oh.” Jinx let go of her, with a certain amount of regret. He looked out over the Urwald, and saw, here and there, a yellow wash of leaf-buds on the treetops. He’d removed the seal, and the long, cold winter was over.

  A sudden red puff of sadness from Elfwyn. “You didn’t find Simon.”

  “Yeah, I did. He’s right here.”

  Jinx turned around, and Simon was not right there. Uh-oh. Jinx stuck his head into the cavern. No Simon. He cursed. “‘You can take nothing with you that you did not bring.’”

  Elfwyn took his hand, the one that was scheduled to be eaten, and followed him into the cavern. “What does that mean?”

  “The Elf Princess said it,” said Jinx. “Drat. I thought it didn’t include Simon, because he’d faced the ice and I’d given him something of myself. But it looks like—”

  “You’re not making much sense,” said Elfwyn.

  Jinx cursed again. “I’m going to go back for him. Wait here. Please,” he added.

  He stepped through the archway, and went down the obsidian stair.

  He reached the bottom, and found the path very icy and slick. “SIMON!” he yelled.

  There was a long silence, and then a call came echoing back to him. “JINX!”

  The path went on past the obsidian stair—Jinx hadn’t noticed that before. Or maybe it hadn’t before. Jinx hurried down it, running and sliding on the ice. “Simon! Simon! Where are you?”

  “Right here.”

  Jinx stopped running, but couldn’t stop sliding. He smashed into the wizard, sending him flying.

  They picked themselves up. “Was that necessary?” said Simon.

  “Why didn’t you come with me?”

  “When? When you vanished into thin air?”

  “I didn’t,” said Jinx. “I just went up the stairway.”

  “I see. Well, that stairway isn’t there for everyone, it seems. It must be your special stairway. Supposing you introduce us.”

  They went back to the foot of the obsidian stair. “Can you see it?” said Jinx.

  “It seems to be escaping my elderly eyes,” said Simon.

  “Well, um, here.” This was awkward. Jinx grabbed Simon’s blanket-clad arm, stepped onto the stairway, and pulled.

  To his relief, Simon followed. The wizard stumbled onto the first step and looked up, with a little purple blop of surprise. “Why didn’t you make this stairway appear a few miles back, and save us all that slogging through tunnels?”

  “Because right here is where it actually is,” said Jinx patiently.

  They climbed the stairs, Jinx holding on to Simon’s arm the whole way to keep him from disappearing. When they got to the archway labeled “Entry Not Advisable,” Jinx was worried that he might lose Simon again, but he pulled the wizard into the cavern and there they were.

  And there was Wendell, jumping up from beside a small campfire and bubbling bright blue joy at seeing them.

  “Elfwyn didn’t wait for me?” said Jinx.

  “She did,” said Wendell. “All of that day, and then Sneep and I had to talk her out of waiting all night. We’ve been taking turns.”

  “But I only just ran back down there for—”

  “Two days,” Wendell finished. He smiled at Simon. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Wendell.”

  Simon blinked at him. “From Samara?”

  “Angara, actually,” said Wendell. “Oh, and don’t worry about the trolls, Jinx. I think I’ve pretty much convinced them that the trial they had for you was all wrong. It’s not how we have trials in Angara.” He frowned. “Well, it actually sort of is how we have trials in Angara, so maybe I lied, kind of. But there’s this ideal, obviously, and I told them about that.”

  “I see,” said Jinx, who didn’t. “So I’m having another trial?”

  “No,” said Wendell. “I pretty much convinced them that they weren’t allowed to do that.”

  “You convinced trolls that they weren’t allowed . . .” Jinx trailed off. You really are a lot smarter than I am, he thought. Not just a little bit. A whole lot. But the sort of thing you could say when you were facing the ice somehow wasn’t that easy to say to another person, so he just said, “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Wendell turned to Simon. “Would you care for some, er, warmer clothes? I’ve brought extras from home.”

  “You went home?” said Jinx. “But I thought you were a hostage for two months.”

  “Well, not all of it,” said Wendell. “There was the silk market, obviously, and I always have a lot of guiding jobs to do while that’s on. Not that I wouldn’t have been perfectly willing to be a hostage for two months,” he added, in the tone of one anxious not to offend.

  “The trolls let you leave?” said Jinx.

  “Sure. They’re on our side. They’ve joined the free and independent nation of the Urwald. Elfwyn talked them into it. She’s very convincing,” Wendell added, a little more admiringly than Jinx cared for.

  Simon was being uncharacteristically silent. A heavy gray cloud of dismay hung over him, and Jinx had a feeling that the wizard was tr
ying to do magic, and not succeeding. The thought of a magicless Simon frightened Jinx. He couldn’t imagine what the thought did to Simon.

  Wendell looked at Simon. “Well, I’ll just go get you some of my clothes, then.”

  A couple hours later, after a terrifying climb down the glass mountainside that Jinx never, ever wanted to happen again, they were sitting around a big trollish bonfire, among a crowd of about fifty trolls and five or six humans, eating a vegetarian stew that had been cooked up in consideration of Simon. Jinx sat beside Elfwyn, and ate, and enjoyed the warmth of the fire and of all the life going on around him.

  But the overwhelming smell of troll, and the size of them, made him nervous. It made him even more nervous to see a troll and a woman from Deadfall Clearing attacking each other with clubs.

  “They’re just practicing,” said Elfwyn. “The trolls are teaching us their way of fighting.”

  The troll raised his club high over his head, ready to smash down, and Jinx jumped to his feet.

  “It’s all right, Wendell keeps an eye on them,” said Elfwyn.

  “Wend—? But he’s just . . .” Jinx trailed off. Wendell had stepped in front of the troll, and said something. The troll put its club down and hooted with laughter.

  “No one’s been hurt yet,” said Elfwyn. “Well, not seriously, anyway. And it is good to have them on our side, even if, well, they’re kind of nervous-making.”

  “Kind of very nervous-making.”

  “I’m getting used to them,” said Elfwyn. “I haven’t been home in a couple weeks, actually. I’ve been here sort of helping them understand what’s going on.”

  Jinx had a lot of questions about this, but stopped himself from asking them. He leaned back on a glass boulder and listened to Elfwyn tell him. She and Wendell hadn’t really been hostages after the first few days, and Wendell had spent some time in Samara.

  Elfwyn, meanwhile, had brought a deputation to meet with the trolls—Sophie, and Hilda, and Malthus, and Cottawilda—

  “Cottawilda’s an idiot!” Jinx objected.

  “No she’s not,” said Elfwyn. “I mean, I can understand why you don’t like her—”

  “Because she let me be abandoned in the forest!”

  “But she’s quite clever, in a sort of limited way. Actually, she’s a lot like a troll. But her coming here didn’t work out well, because that troll whose arm you cut off—”

  “Bergthold,” said Jinx.

  “—tried to eat her.”

  “Well, they used to be married,” said Jinx.

  “And he’s angry because of the little girl,” said Elfwyn. “Gertrude, their daughter.”

  “Cottawilda is supposed to be looking for her,” said Jinx.

  “She asks people, when she remembers to. ‘Did you see a little girl about yea-high in the woods around five or six years ago—’”

  “Well, that narrows it down,” said Jinx. He was good with faces, but he didn’t think he’d recognize Gertrude. She’d been a baby when he’d last seen her, and babies’ faces all looked the same to him.

  “I don’t think she really expects to find Gertrude. But of course she didn’t tell Bergthold she was looking for her.”

  “Why of course?”

  “Because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction,” said Elfwyn. “That was a question! You’re usually so careful.”

  “Sorry,” said Jinx.

  The troll and the woman had gone back to battling with clubs.

  “In a way they’re easier to get along with than werewolves,” said Elfwyn. “I mean, your friend Malthus is really nice, but I think he’s probably eaten people, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Jinx. “Don’t tr—er, I thought trolls ate people.”

  “They do, but not very often,” said Elfwyn. “They don’t much care for the taste. Tell me about where you’ve been.”

  Jinx thought of where he’d been—miles and worlds away from all the life going on around him now. The Path of Fire might be the source of lifeforce, but only life was life, and Jinx had missed it.

  “I’ll tell you another time,” said Jinx. “Tell me more about the trolls. And the war.”

  He listened to Elfwyn talk. He couldn’t detect the faintest shred of a pink fluffy thought anywhere in her happy green glow at seeing him. But he told himself he shouldn’t mind. He was lucky to have friends, and lucky to have people, and enormously lucky to still have a full complement of arms.

  Even if, according to what Elfwyn was saying, they were still losing the war.

  A Problem with Sophie

  Jinx decided not to make a doorpath from the trolls’ home to the Doorway Oak. Trolls and humans might be allies for now, but there was no telling how long that would last. And KnIP spells couldn’t be undone.

  “So you’re telling me,” Simon said, as they walked down the Troll-way, “that you’ve made a KnIP path that ends at my house?”

  “He’s made dozens of them,” said Elfwyn. “You can get practically anywhere in the Urwald from your house.”

  “And vice versa, I suppose,” said Simon.

  “Only if you know the doorpaths are there,” said Wendell.

  “And it’s not really to your house,” said Jinx. “Because I made the ward a whole lot stronger, and I thought the Doorways ought to be outside of it.”

  “But unfortunately, there are enemy soldiers surrounding your clearing now,” said Elfwyn. “Or at least there were when I was there a couple weeks ago.”

  “I see,” said Simon.

  “Oh, er, and there’s something else I should tell you,” said Jinx. “About your house.”

  Simon glowered in anticipation.

  “There’s, ah—” Jinx looked at Wendell and Elfwyn, in case either of them wanted to be the one to tell. But they both seemed suddenly very interested in the large chunks of glass heaped beside the road.

  “There’s, um, a few people staying at your house,” said Jinx.

  “Oh?” said Simon.

  “Yes,” said Jinx.

  “I see,” said Simon. “What sort of people are they?”

  “Urwalders,” said Jinx. “Some of them are from Cold Oats Clearing, where you come from—”

  “And where I left from,” said Simon. “I certainly didn’t invite it to follow me.”

  “But it was destroyed by the Bonemaster,” said Jinx. “You know that. They didn’t really have anywhere else to go. And then a couple other clearings were destroyed by the Bonemaster. Gooseberry Clearing was one. And then some clearings were attacked by—”

  “How many is ‘a few people’?” said Simon.

  Elfwyn and Wendell were still studying the scenery assiduously. “About ninety-four,” said Jinx.

  “Ninety-four? Ninety-four people in my house?”

  “About that, yeah.”

  Purple-gray storm clouds had gathered around Simon’s head. “And where are these ninety-four people sleeping?”

  “Pretty much everywhere,” said Jinx.

  “Do you mean to tell me—”

  “Not the south wing,” Jinx added.

  “And how are you feeding all these people?”

  “Well, we kind of had to turn some of your clearing into potato patches and gardens and stuff—”

  “Some of it?”

  “Well, pretty much all of it.” Jinx looked at Elfwyn and Wendell to see if they wanted to help him out, but it seemed they did not. They had walked on ahead and were examining the glass as if they shared the Elf Princess’s fascination with geology.

  “Except for a little bit that we left for the goats and chickens to run around in,” said Jinx. “Oh, and Witch Seymour’s moved in with them.”

  The storm clouds grew an angry purple burst. “Witch Seymour? That idiot?”

  “He was really helpful to us when we broke Reven’s siege around Blacksmiths’ Clearing,” said Jinx.

  “You what?”

  “We had to do it because the blacksmiths are the ones who’re supplying
all our weapons. Witch Seymour helped us with some illusions that made Reven’s soldiers fall back. Actually, Dame Glammer did more than he did, but they both helped.”

  Simon stared at Jinx. “You really are fighting a war.”

  “That’s what I told you,” said Jinx. “Oh, and I’ve spent some of your money to buy food for people—”

  “That was generous of you.”

  “Sorry, but—”

  Simon shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. That’s what money’s for.”

  “And we’ve had to buy weapons, and clothes for people, and stuff. I’m not sure how much we’ve spent, but Sophie’s been keeping track.”

  “Sophie?” The storm clouds dissipated, as if a brisk wind had blown through. “Sophie’s there?”

  “Yeah. She’s left Samara. They sentenced her to death, and I had to help her escape from prison, and—”

  “Idiot! Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Don’t call me an idiot!” Jinx looked ahead, hoping Wendell and Elfwyn hadn’t heard. “Anyway, I was going to get to it eventually. It takes a long time to tell two years’ worth of stuff, you know.”

  “You start with the important things,” Simon snapped, walking faster. “Sophie’s here! Why didn’t you—”

  “I just did—”

  Simon stopped walking suddenly. “She left Samara because they sentenced her to death.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said. I had to help her escape from prison, and we came through into the Urwald by using KnIP, and that’s how Wendell got here—”

  “What did they sentence her to death for?”

  “For being married to you, more or less,” said Jinx. “They didn’t know she was in the Mistletoe Alliance. I mean, they accused her of it, but I think that was just . . . reflex, kind of.”

  “Who told you about the Mistletoe Alliance?”

  “Everybody,” said Jinx.

  “And you broke Sophie out of prison? Out of the prison in Samara? With all those guards and ten-foot thick walls? You did?”

  “Yeah,” said Jinx, annoyed. The trouble with adults was that they never stopped picturing you as six years old and unable to do things yourself.

  “How on earth did you do that?”

  Jinx told him.