Jinx's Magic (17 page)

Jinx checked the Farseeing Window. He didn't bother with the aviot, because he wasn't interested in Reven right now. The window showed him nothing but the night darkness of the Urwald. He checked Simon's bottle. The Simon figure was still lying on its side. Still breathing. Jinx locked the Eldritch Tome under the thirteenth step, beside the bottle.

The house felt hugely empty and bereft, except for the cats. It was hard to believe it had ever had Simon in it. Jinx wondered if it had felt this way to Simon when Egbert the Onion died.

But Simon couldn't be, well, dead. As nearly as Jinx had been able to understand from the Crimson Grimoire, Simon's lifeforce would become less visible when Simon died.

There had to be an explanation. And Jinx knew where he would have to look for it.

And he had to look
now
, because without Simon, Jinx wasn't going to be able to rescue Sophie. He needed Simon. Simon would know what to do.

He went and put on his warm Urwald clothes. He looked around for food and found some hopelessly desiccated apples and a chunk of extremely unlikely-looking cheese. That was odd. He didn't remember the cheese from his last visit. Someone must have been in the house since then.

He looked out the window. It was pitch dark. He ought to wait for daylight before he started, but the house was cold and he was too nervous to sleep.

He went out the front door, and began his journey to the Bonemaster's house.

21

The Paths of Fire and Ice

J
inx walked through the woods, off the path, in the dark. The last time he'd been in the Urwald, it had argued with him. The trees had told him he wasn't listening, and he'd mentioned that they didn't listen much themselves. The trees had said that Listeners burned.

But now the trees murmured and whispered. The Urwald's lifeforce filled and surrounded him. It calmed and warmed him. He felt safe, even when monsters passed by him in the dark and he had to stop and do a concealment spell.

At dawn he reached a path. He noticed there were a few seedlings growing on it, which was a thing he had never seen before.

He asked the trees
About this burning stuff you mentioned before . . . is there any way I can keep from burning?

You burn already, Listener. Seeds cannot grow without fire.

Right. I know that,
said Jinx.
Or anyway some can't. Lodgepole pines, for example. But I'm not a seed.

Seeds are everywhere.

The forest was being cryptic and no help at all. Still, Jinx preferred it to Samara, which had had a great forest's lifeforce and lost it.

Listeners leave, and gain knowledge,
said the trees.
Knowledge is power
.

What? Jinx tried to get the trees to explain, but they murmured and grumbled to each other. They had no idea they'd said anything important.

He walked on, careful not to step on any seedlings.

 

Jinx stopped once, in Badwater Clearing, to buy some of what passed for bread there.

At least the people in Badwater Clearing didn't slam their doors on him. Maybe the rumors about him hadn't reached this far into the Urwald. They gathered around and watched him as he picked stones and husks out of the bread. Jinx saw curiosity, interest, suspicion—and grim gray clouds of Urwish fear.

“You don't like our bread?” a woman demanded.

“No, it's okay,” Jinx lied. “It's good.”

“Maybe not what fancy-dressed rich people are used to,” said another woman.

Jinx bit into the bread. It was stale and took a lot of chewing. He swallowed painfully. It felt gritty in his throat.

“You shouldn't insult him,” said a girl. “He's a very powerful magician.”

With a start, Jinx recognized her. It was the girl who'd called him “
sir”
in Cold Oats Clearing.

“Hilda! How did you get here?”

“Walked, sir.”

“You got away,” said Jinx. “Was everyone else—”

“Thirty-two people were killed, sir,” said Hilda.

Jinx thought about how much power the Bonemaster must have gotten from killing thirty-two people. “So how many got away?”

“Twelve,” said Hilda. “Me and Silas came here—”

There was a general
harumph
through the crowd.

“Silas being my cousin,” said Hilda. “He's four.”

“He's not even her brother,” someone muttered.

“Where did the others go?” said Jinx.

“I don't know. We went in different directions, because we figured nobody was going to take us all in.”

“Wait, are you the evil wizard who destroyed that clearing?” a man asked.

Before Jinx could answer, someone else said, “Of course he ain't, it was the Bonemaster that done that.”

“How do we know he ain't the Bonemaster?”

“He can't be, he's just a kid.”

“He can't even be a wizard.”

“He lifted an enormous fallen tree off our house,” said Hilda. “By magic.”

They all looked at Jinx with a deep purple awe that was rather gratifying.

“
We
had someone disappear in Bone Canyon last month,” said a man.

“Did you go looking for them?” Jinx asked.

“Why would we need to do that?” asked the man. “The Bonemaster got her.”

“Well, to see if she was really dead. And to let the Bonemaster know you weren't going to stand for it,” said Jinx. “If everyone banded together—”

People began giving him angry looks.

“Trolls could've got her,” another man said fairly.

“Yes, we don't know for sure.”

But what they really meant, of course, was that they didn't want to end up like Cold Oats Clearing.

“Wait a minute,” said Merva, the woman who'd perpetrated the bread. “You ain't the boy that turned an army of trolls into rocks, are you?”

“No,” said Jinx.

“We heard about somesuch happening over that way.” She gestured to the east. “Folks are strange over there.”

Jinx gave up on trying to eat the bread. “People there are about like people here,” he said. “We're all Urwalders.”

“Are you sure you didn't turn trolls into rocks?” said Merva. “Because the boy I heard done it had the same name as you.”

“Sort of thing we could ask the Truthspeaker,” someone said.

“Yeah, if the Truthspeaker was here, she'd know.”

“I'm sure I didn't turn anyone into rocks,” said Jinx. “Listen, there are people in the east trying to cut down the Urwald—”

“I told you they were strange over there,” said Merva to a man standing next to her.

“It's not Urwalders doing the cutting, though,” said Jinx. “They're—”

“You just said we were all Urwalders,” said the man next to Merva.

“We are!” said Jinx, getting frustrated. “But these other people are from Keyland, which is outside the Urwald—”

“There's an outside to the Urwald?”

“'Course there is, it's where them Wanderers come from,” said another woman.

“What makes it outside of the Urwald, then? Why ain't it the Urwald?” Merva demanded.

“Because there are no trees there!” Jinx said. “Or at least hardly any. So the Keylanders come into the Urwald and cut down ours.”

The people of Badwater Clearing looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Well, like I said, folks are strange over that way,” Merva said.

Jinx did not have time to waste trying to pound new ideas into the Badwater people's heads. So he took his leave of them.

He had just started down the path when a voice said, “Hey, wait up, um—what's your name again?”

Jinx stopped. A boy with the scraggly beginnings of a red beard came trotting up. Jinx had seen him hovering behind Hilda, listening.

“Jinx. What's yours?”

“Nick. Listen, are you sure you didn't turn anyone into stones?”

“Completely sure,” said Jinx.

“Oh.” A little blue cloud of disappointment.

Jinx made a decision. If people were going to talk about him, it might as well be the truth. “I turned one guy into a tree.”

“Why'd you do that?”

“He was cutting down trees,” said Jinx. “He was one of a whole bunch of Keylanders that were cutting down the Urwald. But nobody cares.”

“Like the Bonemaster,” said Nick.

“What?” said Jinx, confused.

“Nobody cares about the Bonemaster. I mean not enough to do something. It's like we just keep quiet and hope he doesn't kill us next, right? You heard what he did to Cold Oats Clearing, right?”

“Yeah. Are you from there?”

“No, but Hilda is.” There was a purple glow around the name “
Hilda
.” “And she's told me all about it. It'll keep happening unless we all stand together and fight back.”

“Yup,” said Jinx.

“There's not much
we
can do,” said Nick. “But if
you
can turn people into trees, then—”

“I can't,” said Jinx. “Not the Bonemaster. He's . . . well, kind of powerful.”

“You've been places, right? Are there people in other clearings that have talked about fighting back?” said Nick.

“Um—I'm not sure.” Jinx didn't want to discourage Nick when the guy was just talking himself into fighting.

“Sometimes I think about going somewhere else. Folks in Badwater Clearing are mad because Hilda won't get rid of Silas.”

“Won't abandon him in the forest, you mean.”

“Right. I can understand her thinking. He's all she's got left. We've talked about going to Cold Oats Clearing, but we can't live there alone, can we? We'd need more of us—it's not safe to be just three people in a clearing. And one of them only Silas.”

“I think it would be a really bad idea to go there with just the three of you,” said Jinx. “Listen, that Truthspeaker that people were talking about . . . have you seen her?”

“Seen her?” Nick looked confused. “No. It's just a tale that's been going around. There's this girl that only speaks the truth, no matter what. Anything she tells you, you can believe.”

The rumor had gotten it wrong, but it sounded like Elfwyn. “You don't know where she is?”

“No, I don't know if she's even real. I mean a lot of things you hear are just tales.”

Drat. So the story could be old, and not news about Elfwyn at all. “Look, I have to get going.”

Nick looked crestfallen.

“You understand that there's a country called Keyland and that the people there want to cut down the Urwald?” Jinx asked.

“Oh, sure,” said Nick, though there was a purple-pink tangle of confusion around his head. “It's not the Urwald, and this is the Urwald, and we don't want the trees cut down.”

“And we're Urwalders,” said Jinx. “And the Urwald is our country.”

“We're Urwalders,” Nick repeated. “Got it.”

“Do you think you could try to explain it to those idio—to the people in your clearing?”

“Sure,” said Nick. “And listen, if—well, if you're ever looking for people that are willing to band together against the Bonemaster—well, it's not much, but you can count on me and Hilda.”

 

It was evening when Jinx reached the edge of the Canyon of Bones. He could see the stone cliffs of the island a mile away, and Bonesocket standing out black against the sunset.

The Bonemaster was an extremely dangerous wizard, and he didn't like Jinx.

And as soon as Jinx climbed down into the canyon, and moved away from the trees, he would lose his power source. But he had an idea.

I need to take some power with me,
he told the trees.
May I?

It is your power. How will you take it? The Restless, they always take. It is all right. It is his power. It is our power. It is the Urwald's power. He is the Urwald.

Jinx took this for permission.

He lit a stick on fire and set it down in a clear spot on the path. Then, drawing the Urwald's power up through his feet, he made the fire bigger. And bigger. A roaring green column of flame shot up into the twilight. Then Jinx drew the fire down into himself. He would carry it with him.

Thank you,
he told the Urwald.

It is your power
.

“Excuse me. What exactly are you doing?”

Jinx recognized the werewolf's voice. He turned around. “Hello, Malthus.”

They were not on the Path.

“I hope you're not doing what I think you're doing,” said Malthus.

Jinx wanted to say it was none of Malthus's business what he did. But even with the amount of fire that he had inside him now . . . you just didn't say that kind of thing to a werewolf.

“You're going to face the Bonemaster?” said Malthus. “You're not ready.”

“Neither is he,” said Jinx.

“He's a tough old wizard with all the deep power of ice behind him. You are, forgive me, scarcely more than a cub.” Malthus tapped his lower lip with a pencil. “Do you not see the problem with this?”

“Don't worry about me,” said Jinx.

“I'm not,” said Malthus. “Not as such. I'm worried about— Pardon me. Do you mind standing a bit downwind?”

“I just had a bath yesterday!”

“It's not that. It's that you, ah, smell like dinner.”

Jinx took several steps away from the werewolf. “What did you mean about the deep power of ice?”

“I'd better draw you a picture.” The werewolf whipped out a notebook, and Jinx didn't see where it came from. Malthus had no clothes—just fur—and hence no pockets, as far as Jinx could see. “Could I have a light?”

Jinx found a stick and lit it.

Malthus drew two parallel lines, from the top of the page to the bottom. “Here, you see, we have the Urwald. Not the Urwald
qua
Urwald, you understand, but the Urwald in a magical sense. You might say these two paths represent fire and ice, or lifeforce and deathforce. They have existed as long as the Urwald has. Did you think about balance, as I told you to?”

“Kind of,” said Jinx. “I've been busy.”

“Fire balances ice. Life balances death. Picture these two paths proceeding downward indefinitely,” said Malthus.

“Downward?”

“Yes. The amount of power that can be drawn on is virtually limitless. Lifeforce and deathforce. Fire and ice. Do you understand? Do you mind not standing so close?”

“I guess,” said Jinx, stepping hastily away. “I mean, yeah. You're saying the Bonemaster has this deathforce power, which is ice? And I've got lifeforce power? So like, I'm on one of the paths and he's on the other?”

“Precisely. One could say you are each other's chosen nemesis. Except that neither of you, I suspect, has a clue as to what you're doing. Nonetheless, he'll do it better, because he's been doing it longer.”

“I know what I'm doing,” said Jinx. “I'm going to find Simon.”

“It would be much better not to.”

“Why?” Jinx felt suddenly cold, despite the fire inside him. “What do you know?”

“Nothing,” said Malthus, “except that up here”—he tapped the upper part of his diagram—“if the two forces meet, there tend to be explosions.”