The Far West (7 page)

“It’s still not safe,” Allie said with a sniff as she set the last dry plate on the stack and reached for the first cup on the drain-board. “Look at all those lizards they’ve been catching. What if they miss one? And anyway, working with wild beasts is —”

“— not a proper way for a lady to behave,” I finished along with her. “Maybe not, but it’s my job and I like it. You’re the one who cares about propriety, Allie, not me.”

Mama looked from me to Allie and back, and her eyebrows drew together just a little. Allie went on without noticing. “Just tell Professor Jeffries that you can’t go. I’m sure he can find someone else.”

“Allie, I’ve been helping to care for that critter for a good four years now,” I said. “Six, if you count the first two years in upper school when I was just helping out for fun. The mammoth is accustomed to me.”

“That doesn’t mean —”

“And when it comes to the spells for controlling it, I’ve had more practice than anyone but Professor Jeffries, just from working with it for so long.” I’d had a lot of practice with the mammoth other ways, too. Ever since my first year in upper school, I’d been using it to practice Aphrikan magic on — nudging it to eat first and then drink, or to move from one part of its pen to another. I’d gotten pretty good at it, but I wasn’t bringing that up in front of Allie.

“But I’m sure you —”

“Allie.” Mama’s voice had that firm, no-nonsense edge that meant you’d best sit up and snap to, right this minute. Nobody argued when Mama used that voice, not even my oldest sister, Sharl, who’d been married for over fifteen years and had four childings of her own. “I think you’ve made yourself clear. Why don’t you run upstairs and help Rennie with her mending? I swear, those childings are harder on their clothes than the last six of you put together.”

“Yes, Mama.” Reluctantly, Allie put down her dish towel and left.

Mama picked up the dish towel and started in drying, right where Allie had left off. She didn’t say anything until the swing door had settled and I’d finished washing the forks and started on the knives. Then she gave a little sigh and looked at me.

“I know you worry, Mama,” I started, “but this really isn’t so —”

Mama held up her hands and I stopped. “This trip may not be so bad, but it won’t be your last, will it, Eff?”

I was quiet for a minute. “I hope it won’t,” I said at last.

There was another long silence. I finished the knives and spoons.

“I suppose we didn’t raise any of you to walk a path other than your own,” Mama said after a while. “And I can’t rightly say that I’d wish you all to be unhappy just so you would keep from being hurt. But …”

“But you really wish all of us could be happy doing something safe,” I finished.

Mama smiled slightly. “You’d think that watching your children grow up would get easier with practice, but it doesn’t. And you and Lan are special.”

“Because Lan’s a double-seventh son,” I said, nodding.

“Because you are the youngest,” Mama corrected gently. “The last of my boys, and the last of my girls.”

We finished the clearing up in silence. Afterward, I spent a good deal of time thinking about what Mama had said. She’d as much as told me that she wouldn’t stand in my way if I wanted to go West again, no matter how much she hated the idea. I wondered if she’d feel the same if Lan decided to go; technically, he was the youngest of us all, though I could see where a few minutes’ difference might not mean all that much to Mama. Next day, I told Professor Jeffries that I’d be pleased to help herd the mammoth to its new home.

In mid-May, we left Mill City — Professor Torgeson, Roger Boden and two other students who’d been helping at the menagerie, two guides, two muleteers, the mammoth, and me. Before we left, the professor had a harness made for the mammoth from leather-wrapped chain. Professor Jeffries had designed a series of spells to keep the mammoth calm and easy to control, and he got Lan and Roger to come and help layer them onto the harness. I could see why he’d asked Lan — the power of a double-seventh son would make all the spells stronger and more long-lasting — but I wasn’t sure why he wanted Roger’s help.

Enchanting the harness took nearly a week, mostly figuring out which spells to use and how to adapt them to stick to the harness. Every time someone mentioned it to Professor Torgeson, she grumbled that the mammoth was too large and too dangerous and ought to be let go instead of being moved to a new menagerie. Finally, Lan pointed out that we’d need the harness even if the college wanted to let the mammoth go, because we couldn’t set it free east of the Great Barrier Spell, so we’d still have to get it across the river. The professor quit grumbling so loudly after that. I was a little surprised that she
didn’t suggest shooting it, the way she had when she first came, but I think she’d gotten used to it.

Putting all those spells on the harness turned out to be well worth the effort. The mammoth shied when Professor Torgeson threw the first straps over its back, but as soon as the leather touched it, it calmed right down and let us finish hooking and buckling everything in place. Then the first guide took the lead rope and the muleteers and the two students took the ropes on either side, and we started on our way.

We had quite a crowd to see us off, mostly because of the mammoth. Everybody knew about it because Mr. Brewster, the mayor, had closed off the streets we were going to use, the way he always did for the Fourth of July parade, so that the mammoth wouldn’t spook someone’s horses and cause an accident. Folks on the east side of the river didn’t get much chance to see the more dangerous wildlife, and they lined up to gape as we went by. The crowd made the mammoth uneasy, even with the calming spells on the harness, and we were all relieved when we finally got out of town.

Once we were out of Mill City, we had more trouble with people than we did with the mammoth itself. The college and the Settlement Office had tried to let folks along the way know about the mammoth in advance, but we still attracted a lot of attention as we went up the river. A couple of times, farmers who hadn’t heard came out with rifles or shotguns to see what we were about, and one town sent a whole group of men along with their sheriff to warn us to keep away.

On the third night, I had a dream, one of the ones that was too sharp and clear and organized to be an ordinary
dream. I’d been having them off and on for over two years, ever since I’d gone out to the settlements with Professor Torgeson that first time to help with the wildlife survey. Even after so long, I wasn’t sure what they meant, but I was positive they were important. After we got back with the medusa lizard, I’d taken to writing them down, in hopes of making sense of them. I had quite a collection of them by then, but I hadn’t gotten very far with the making-sense part.

It started the way the dreams usually did, with me walking through an early-summer forest. A silver cord floated waist-high in front of me, stretching off between the trees. I thought about letting go of it and just following along by sight, but when I looked down at my hands, I saw that the cord disappeared six inches behind my fingers as usual, and it occurred to me that if I let go, it might disappear completely. Or I might. And it wasn’t as if holding the cord was a bother. It slipped easily through my hands, like it was made of silk.

Just as I thought that, the feel of the cord changed. When I looked down at it again, it had become a strip of leather, like the one that held the wooden pendant I wore every day. I wasn’t walking through a forest any longer, either — I was crossing a rolling plain. I didn’t see any trees or animals, just grass, stretching out toward a bright glitter on the distant horizon.

I followed the leather cord straight toward the glitter. After a bit, I realized that the glittering was sunlight on water. At first I thought it was a lake, but then I realized that it was the ocean that I hadn’t seen since we all went back East to Helvan Shores for my sister Diane’s wedding when I was thirteen. I felt light and happy.

Abruptly, a thick fog closed in ahead of me, cutting off my view of the ocean. The cord twisted sideways in my hands. I hesitated. I wanted to head for the ocean, but that would mean letting go of the cord and walking into the fog. I kept my hold on the cord.

Ahead was a hill, with a wall of white fog on the left, too thick to see through. I followed the leather cord up the hill. At the crown of the hill was a wrought-iron post, sunk deep into the ground. It stood as high as my chest, and on top of the post was a ring about three inches across. As the leather cord ran through the ring, it split in two. On the opposite side of the ring, half of the cord led off to the right and disappeared into the fog after about two feet; the other half went left, back across the plain. In the distance, if I squinted, I could see a line of green. I wondered if it was the forest I’d been walking through for so long.

Hesitantly, I let go of the cord with my right hand and reached around to touch the two branches on the other side of the iron ring, one after another. Nothing happened. I frowned, then switched hands.

As soon as my left hand touched the cord that ran back across the plain, I felt warmth run up my arm, and smelled smoke and fresh-baked bread and the sharp scent of the preserving solution that Professor Torgeson used on her specimens. When I touched the second cord, the one that led into the fog, I smelled water and leaf mold, coffee and frying onions, and the musty wet-hair smell of the mammoth on a rainy day.

My eyes blinked open, and I reached for the pencil and notebook I kept next to my bed before I was quite awake
enough to remember where I was. I blinked again to get the sleep-grit out of my eyes. It was near enough to morning that the sky was lightening, though the sun wasn’t up yet. I slid out of my bedroll quietly, to keep from waking Professor Torgeson, and left the tent to check on the mammoth.

The mammoth was asleep, leaning up against a tree with the end of its trunk curled up and its long hair poking every which way through the gaps in the harness. The muleteer who’d been on night watch waved at me, but didn’t say anything. I poked up the campfire and fetched a kettle of water from the river. I was always cold when I woke up after one of
those
dreams, and I wanted something hot to drink. I didn’t think anyone else would mind waking up to find the coffee already brewed.

While I waited for the water to heat, I sat and thought. I might not know all of what those strange dreams meant, but sometimes I got a bit of a feeling. I’d figured out the year before that they had something to do with the wooden pendant that Washington Morris had given me four years before.

Wash was one of the Settlement Office’s best circuit magicians, a tall black man with a touch of a Southern drawl in his voice. He was about fifteen or sixteen years older than me, I guessed — I knew he’d fought in the Secession War that ended the year I was born, though he’d had to lie about his age to get into the army. We’d been friends since my last year in upper school, when Miss Ochiba had brought him in to talk to our class.

He’d given me the pendant that summer, when I was still fretting over my magic maybe getting out of hand. He’d told
me to use it as long as I needed it and then pass it on, and that it could only pass in one direction, teacher to student. The idea of me being anyone’s teacher made me snort a little every time I thought of it.

I frowned. I’d been West three times: once with Papa and Lan and Professor Jeffries to visit Oak River and find out about the mirror bug beetles; once as Professor Torgeson’s assistant when she went to survey the wildlife in the settlements for the college; and again just the year before, when Professor Torgeson went to collect more samples of the stone animals we’d found, and we’d gone on to discover the first two medusa lizards.

Wash had been there every time. He’d been our guide on the first two trips; the third time, he’d been the one to let the professor know that something was turning animals to stone up by Big Bear Lake, and we’d gone with him to find out what it was. He might not have done a lot of teaching of the sort I’d been used to, but I’d learned a lot from him. Maybe that was all that the pendant counted.

I sighed in frustration. Thinking about the pendant never seemed to get me anywhere. The kettle was boiling, so I set about making coffee. I poured a cup for myself and took one to the muleteer, then sat back by the fire to think about the dream itself.

Usually when the dream changed, it changed completely, right from the beginning. The first time I’d had one, I’d been in the well house back in Helvan Shores, where we’d lived until I was five. In the second dream, I’d been flying over Mill City, and there hadn’t been any connection I could see to the first dream.

This time, the dream had started the same way the last few had, with me following the silver cord through the forest. I went over the dream in my head, trying to remember exactly when the forest had changed to the plain and whether there’d been any warning. The silver cord had changed to leather, and then I’d been on the plain. I wasn’t sure whether the fog counted as another change or not. And what did it mean that the cord had split in two?

Changes and choices. I frowned. If I wanted to keep following the cord, I’d have to pick one branch or the other. I already knew which one I’d choose. I’d wanted to get to the sea; the left-hand branch led back across the plain. On the other hand, neither one of the cords had smelled like the ocean when I touched them.

As I was going over the dream in my head one more time, I heard a rustle behind me, and Roger’s voice said, “You’re up early.”

“I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep,” I said. I hadn’t told anyone about the dreams, not even Wash or William, and I didn’t feel comfortable explaining it all to Roger. “I figured that as long as I was awake, I’d come watch the sunrise.”

Roger yawned. “It’s pretty, but I could have done with another hour’s sleep.”

“You and Lan,” I said. “Would you like some coffee?” He nodded. I passed him a cup, and we sat in silence for a while until the rest of the camp woke up and it was time to start moving again.

I half expected to have the dream again that night, but I didn’t, nor the night after. We worked our way slowly up the
Mammoth River, looking for a place to get the mammoth across. The first ford we came to was wider and deeper than either Professor Torgeson or I liked. Even something as big as the mammoth would have had to swim partway, and we didn’t know how well the calming spells would hold when they went through the Great Barrier Spell. Nobody wanted to be out swimming in the middle of the river with a suddenly angry mammoth. Also, the town at the east end of the ford wasn’t too keen on the notion of letting a mammoth walk down their main street to get to the river.

We passed up two more crossings before we came to one that suited Professor Torgeson. The banks sloped down easily on both sides, and the water was low enough that the near side of the river was a muddy flat. The main channel — and the Great Barrier Spell that followed along it — was nearer to the far bank, so if the mammoth spooked, there was a good chance it would head up the west bank and not back where we’d have to start over.

I’d only ever crossed the Mammoth River by ferry before. Looking at the dark water made me more than a little nervous about riding across, even if it wasn’t moving very fast and the guides said the water in the main channel wouldn’t be more than chest-deep for our horses. The really difficult part, though, was getting the mammoth through the Great Barrier Spell.

We had two things going for us: first, the mammoth was a natural animal, not a magical one; and second, we were heading east to west through the spell. The Great Barrier was made to keep dangerous wildlife out of the east, so it was practically impossible for any wildlife that couldn’t fly to get past the barrier
coming west to east. When the McNeil Expedition brought the mammoth back, it had taken half a dozen magicians from the college and several of the ones from the expedition to get it through the barrier, and Papa said afterward that they’d only gotten away with it because the mammoth was still a baby.

Going east to west, though, we only needed Professor Torgeson, one of the guides, and Roger and the other student-assistants to cast the spells that would let the mammoth through, and we only needed that many because we wanted to be sure the mammoth wasn’t hurt. The second guide, the two muleteers, and I had to control the mammoth on the way across the river. We’d all had plenty of practice; the professor and Roger had done the crossing spell for all of the smaller wildlife in the menagerie, and the guide, the muleteers, and I had been handling the mammoth every day since we left Mill City.

We coaxed the mammoth up to the edge of the ford and Professor Torgeson started the crossing spell. I cast a calming spell at the mammoth and, after a moment’s thought, an extra one at my horse, too. I dithered for a second about using my Aphrikan magic; the one time I’d gone through the Great Barrier while doing world-sensing, I hadn’t liked it at all. But I was a lot better at using Aphrikan magic on the mammoth than Avrupan. In the end, I damped my world-sensing down until all I was feeling was a tiny trickle, hoping that I’d be able to work on the mammoth that way without being overwhelmed by the Great Barrier Spell.

Professor Torgeson’s voice rose. As Roger and the others joined the spell casting, she waved us forward. The Great Barrier Spell shimmered in the air in front of us. It looked
thicker than I remembered, and I wondered if that was because the river was narrower here or because there weren’t ferry boats going back and forth through the spell every day.