Jinx (20 page)

“Well, I can tell you it doesn’t,” said Reven.

Well, he might as well say it. At least he was the one holding the ax. “The trees are afraid of you.”

“Yes, but why are
you
?”

“I’m not!” said Jinx.

Reven looked at the ax on Jinx’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “Well, the trees needn’t worry. I’ll do just as you say.”

They walked all day, going north, following Dame Glammer’s directions. Jinx was busy watching Reven and keeping a tight grip on the ax.

Reven talked. He told Jinx stories about life in King Rufus’s court, and about the king’s daughter, who was very beautiful, and Reven’s stepmother, who was very wise. He watched Jinx watching him, but he stayed cheerful.

Jinx was finding it hard to believe that Reven was the Terror. Reven was friendly, and he spoke well, and he knew how to say the right thing to people and put them at ease. It was probably because he’d been brought up at a royal court and he knew how to act around people. Jinx had been brought up in a wizard’s house and had only recently learned that he wasn’t even nice. The truth was, he envied Reven.

“At least I’m not a thief,” he said, not even realizing he had spoken aloud.

“Only because you haven’t been driven to it,” said Reven cheerfully. “Yet. What are those tracks?”

“Bear,” said Jinx.

“Werebear or real bear?”

“Could be either one,” said Jinx.

“I never heard of werebears before,” said Reven. “Only werewolves. Are there other kinds of weres?”

“Werechipmunks,” said Jinx.

Reven laughed.

“I can’t help it that she calls me chipmunk!” said Jinx.

“Oh, I wasn’t laughing at that,” said Reven. “Anyway, you’re too dangerous to be a chipmunk. Maybe you’re a werechipmunk.”

“There’s a tree house,” said Jinx. “We should stop.”

“But it’s hardly even dark yet.”

“It’ll get dark fast. And there’s a bear around.”

This tree house had a rope ladder hanging down from it. Jinx climbed up first. Reven passed the ax up to him. While Reven was climbing up, Jinx hid the ax on the flat roof, out of Reven’s sight.

They sat on the ledge and watched the forest going to sleep. There were rustlings of animals in the undergrowth, and birds made twittering settling-in noises. Jinx had no intention of sleeping. He wondered if he should wait for Reven to fall asleep and then sneak off.

“You can never see the sun rise or set in the forest, can you?” said Reven.

“Of course you can—it’s setting right now,” said Jinx.

“I mean see it disappear over the edge of the world.”

“It does that?”

“You don’t have a horizon here,” said Reven. “I never realized it before.”

“The line where earth and sky meet? I’ve seen that!” When he’d drifted away from his body, the night that Simon did the spell on him. “I’d like to go there and touch the sky.”

Reven laughed. “You can’t. When you got there, the horizon would be somewhere else, just as far away.”

Jinx didn’t like Reven laughing at him. He turned away.

“There’s something moving down there,” said Reven. “Your bear, probably.”

“It sounds like a person,” said Jinx. He strained his eyes in the gathering dark. “I see something sort of red.”

Elfwyn was walking along the path.

“Elfwyn!” Reven called.

Elfwyn looked every way but up.

“Up here,” said Jinx.

“I’ll come down and hold the ladder for you,” said Reven.

“No, I will,” said Jinx, pushing past Reven.

When he got down, he took Elfwyn’s arm and hurried her away from the tree house, out of Reven’s hearing.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Shh!” In a whisper, Jinx explained that the Terror was following them.

“And you think it’s Reven?”

“Well, it’s either him or me, and I know it’s not me.”

“
How
do you know it’s not you?”

“Because I’ve been listening to the trees for years and they’ve never been afraid of me before!”

“Maybe they changed their mind. I’m not afraid of Reven. I think he’s nice.”

Elfwyn shrugged away from him and started toward the tree house, which was just off the path. Jinx followed her.

It was dark now. He heard rustling nearby and a sound of heavy footsteps.

“We’re right here, Reven,” he said. But there was no answer.

Jinx wasn’t sure where the tree house was. Over to the left, maybe? And then … Jinx had no idea where he was.

“Elfwyn!” he called.

“Right here.” She was behind him.

He took her hand and they stumbled onward. There were more footsteps, nearby. Jinx heard a snuffling noise.

“Reven!” Elfwyn called.

“What are you two doing down there?”

Reven’s voice came from about a hundred yards behind them. Jinx and Elfwyn started toward the sound.

Ahead of them, branches crackled under someone’s feet.

“You can stay where you are, Reven,” said Elfwyn. “We’re almost there.”

“I
am
staying where I am.” Reven’s voice, surprised, came from above.

It wasn’t Reven whose footsteps they heard.

“Hold still,” Jinx whispered. “Concealment spell.”

He knew now that he could do it. The power came up easily through his feet, and he understood for the first time that he was drawing on the lifeforce of the Urwald itself. He and Elfwyn stood rooted in place.

“Jinx? Fair lady?” Reven’s voice sounded puzzled.

He doesn’t realize that there’s something else besides us down here, Jinx thought.

The footsteps moved past them, toward Reven. There was heavy breathing and a grungy, unwashed smell.

“Where are you?” Reven called.

“Reven, be quiet!” Elfwyn yelled back.

That broke the concealment spell. Jinx reached for the knife at his belt. He heard the sound of claws digging at a tree trunk nearby. The thing was going after Reven.

The tree house was off the path, and so the Truce did not apply.

“Reven, the ax is on the tree house roof!” Jinx yelled.

It didn’t matter if Reven was the Terror; Jinx couldn’t let him be eaten. Jinx ran forward in the dark, trying to think. He didn’t know any magic that would do any good.

“Aroint thee, foul dastard!” cried Reven.

There was the
thwok
of an ax hitting wood. Then grunts, flesh hitting flesh, sounds of struggle.

“Reven!” Elfwyn called.

The sound of blows and grunts came from above—a squawk of pain.

Elfwyn turned to Jinx. “Light a fire!”

There was the loud thud of something falling. Then more fighting, down on the ground. Reven’s voice, yelling.

Elfwyn thrust a stick into Jinx’s hands. “Light that so we can see!”

He lit it. They could see a crouched, horned figure raising a claw to strike at Reven, pinned underneath it. Jinx did the only thing he could think of. He used magic to set the creature on fire.

It roared. Reven screamed. Instantly Jinx pulled the fire out of existence. He hadn’t meant to burn Reven.

The creature got to its hind legs and turned to face Jinx. It was completely covered in singed, curly fur—but then there were the horns and a mouthful of tusks. It took a step toward Jinx and Elfwyn.

There was a nasty sound of an ax hitting something soft. The creature screamed. Jinx and Elfwyn jumped out of the way as it fell. Behind it, Reven stood holding the ax.

“Set it on fire now!” said Reven.

“No, don’t!” said Elfwyn.

The thing swiped out a paw and grabbed her ankle. Elfwyn yelled as it pulled her to the ground. Reven fell on the creature, swinging his ax. Jinx grabbed Elfwyn and hauled her away. He concentrated on looking to make sure her leg wasn’t hurt so that he could ignore the chopping sounds in the dark. Elfwyn got to her feet, shakily.

“Reven, stop,” she said. “Please. I’m sure it’s dead.”

She moved forward with the torch to have a look.

“It’s a werebear, isn’t it,” she said. “I wonder if it’s Urson.”

“Why does it have horns, then?” said Reven. “Do bears have horns?”

“No—maybe it’s an ogre. Jinx, come see.”

“No,” said Jinx. He felt sick. “I think we should leave.”

“But it’s safe now,” said Reven. “The tree house—”

“You can stay in it if you want,” said Jinx. “But we’re leaving.”

“I’m not leaving unless Reven does.”

“Very well,” said Reven. “Let me get our things.” He looked at the bloody ax, smiled, then handed it to Jinx. “I think I’m getting the feel of this thing.”

They walked along the path in the dark. Jinx made the torch glow brightly enough that they could see the edges of the path, and he hoped the light would keep wolves and bears away.

“Why did you follow us?” said Jinx.

“To talk you two out of going to the Bonemaster’s house,” said Elfwyn.

“It’s not easy to talk me out of things, fair lady,” said Reven.

Jinx thought of the chopping sounds and how they had gone on long after the werebear—or whatever it had been—was already dead. No, Reven might be friendly and unfailingly cheerful, but it wouldn’t be easy to talk him out of anything.

“I just think—” Elfwyn paused. “You saw how my grandmother is. She likes to … amuse herself with people. I think she’s sending you off to the Bonemaster to see what he does to you. Which personally I don’t think is very amusing.”

“She’s not sending me,” said Reven. “I’m going.”

“I just want to find out what he can tell me about my magic,” said Jinx.

“He might not be able to tell you anything. You can’t trust my grandmother. And Simon told you to stay away from him.”

“That’s because Simon knows the Bonemaster can tell me what he’s done to me.”

“If you believe my grandmother!” said Elfwyn. “He’ll suck out your soul with a straw and make a necklace of your eyeballs. There were two men from Butterwood Clearing who went to his house to sell him butter, and they never came back. He sneaks into clearings at night and steals babies from their cradles.”

“And his thoughts are full of bloody knives,” said Reven.

“They’re what?” said Elfwyn.

“Jinx can see people’s thoughts.”

“You can?” said Elfwyn.

“No,” said Jinx. Reven was just as bad as Elfwyn, blabbing about whatever you told him.

Uncomfortably, Jinx remembered some of the things he’d blabbed to Sophie during his fight with Simon.

“I used to be able to.”

He told Elfwyn about being able to see the color of people’s thoughts.

She stopped walking. “You mean you really could read people’s minds? No wonder he took it away from you! He probably saved your life.”

Jinx shook his head—she didn’t understand. “No, he didn’t. It was horrible. It was like being killed.”

“If you could read people’s minds, they would
want
to kill you. You were a menace to society. Trust me, I know about this sort of thing.” Elfwyn seemed to think for a moment. “Although I suppose you would have been very hard to kill.”

“It wasn’t reading people’s minds. It was like what was going on inside their heads would make a sort of cloud around them, and it would have a sort of color.”

They started walking again. A wind had come up, and the flames of the torch blew sideways. Branches creaked overhead.

“How’d he take the power away from you?” Elfwyn asked.

“He did a spell and put it in a bottle.”

“Perhaps you could take it out of the bottle,” said Reven.

“He hid it somewhere. And even if I found it, what would I do? Uncork it and drink?”

“Well, can’t you just learn the magic again? I mean it’s your magic, right?” said Elfwyn.

“Maybe,” said Jinx. “It’s not like something you learn, though. It’s more like a sense.”

He thought about the power that he’d newly discovered, that he could draw from the Urwald. No wonder he hadn’t been able to do much magic in Simon’s house—thick stone walls had blocked him off from the Urwald. But out here, he could sense its enormous presence. He felt he could levitate a house—he could make a fire as big as the sky.

But he also felt that he couldn’t. Because it was the Urwald’s power. And he wasn’t sure the Urwald would like him levitating a house, and he
knew
it wasn’t interested in big fires.

“Does your grandmother not expect you to return, my lady?” Reven asked.

“No. I told her I was going back to Butterwood Clearing,” said Elfwyn.

“I thought you were going to live with her,” said Jinx.

“Well, yes. That was the idea. But I didn’t tell her that. I sort of don’t entirely like her very much.”