The Magickers (13 page)

“If I get like that in a few years, just shoot me.”

“You mean, I'm tall and sure the girls will like me, like that?”

“Yup.”

“I promise.” Jason took Trent's hand and shook it firmly. He turned back to the day's agenda tacked to the bulletin board. “Tomes and Tombs with Eleanora?”

“No kidding? When's that?”

“Right after mail call.” Jason shifted weight uneasily, thinking of his nightmare. “What is a tome?”

“That's an old word for book. Makes it sound . . . I dunno . . . more important.”

Jason looked at the location, in the Gathering Hall. Sounded like the class was being held with all the campers at once. He shrugged. “We'll find out, I guess.”

Indeed, they would.

 

But they almost didn't. Eleanora stood at the front of the lecture room, listening to the restless shuffle of desks, looking over the sea of campers alertly. “A minute or two longer,” she said briskly. “While the stragglers trail in.” She pulled at the light laced cuffs of her jacket and took a step or two to the side of the blackboard. Even in the heat of summer and at camp, she still dressed as she had that first day, coming from tea and a musical recital. She moved with a gliding grace that made him think of dancing, somehow. Once again, even though Jason was sitting now, she looked taller than he was. He blinked in thought.

The lecture room door burst open and Bailey came bolting in. She stopped just inside the threshold, as everyone turned to look, and her face turned red.

“Nice of you to join us, Miss Landau,” Eleanora noted.

“I—I'm sorry.” Bailey moved sideways, her gaze finding Jason and Trent. She found the empty desk chair next to Jason and sidled into it. Her golden-brown hair stuck every which way out of unmatched braids.

Under his breath, Jason whispered. “What happened?”

“They stole my brush and comb while I was at breakfast! You can't imagine. I turned the cottage upside down looking.” Bailey tugged at one braid unhappily.

Eleanora cleared her throat. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, shall we begin? I want you to take notes, but I want them to be mental ones. I don't expect you to carry around scraps of paper with you your whole life to remember this class.” She smiled.

“Most of you were asked to attend Camp Ravenwyng because of your writing skills. You showed creativity and imagination and a certain talent that caught the judges' eyes, whether you thought you had or not.” Eleanora drew up a tall stool. “I am not here to turn you into English geeks, but I am here to teach you to appreciate the ability to know and use verbal and written language. There is power, you see, in naming things. A rose is a rose is a rose by any other name . . . but is it?”

“A tome is a dusty, musty old book and a tomb is a dusty musty old burial plot, but both are very different. We are empowered by knowing the difference and the names that separate them. Anyone have any other examples they can think of?”

Bailey's hand shot into the air. “A lion who mews into the night is not the same as the lion who roars.”

“Ah, but both are lions . . . or are they?” Eleanora smiled in response. She perched on her stool, bracing her feet on the crossbar. Her long skirt fell in graceful ripples about her legs. “A lion named a lion has no other voice but a roar, wouldn't you say? Just as a kitten must mew because that is what a kitten does.”

She tapped the blackboard. “More power in names. An emperor, a king, and a president. Each rules in quite a different way, wouldn't you say? Each evokes a different response: the time, place and the manner in which they ruled, even though all are indisputably rulers.”

From behind him somewhere, Stefan snickered lowly. “
X-Men
rule.”

Eleanora lifted her gaze as if she had heard it, but she did not remark on it. Instead she turned around, picking up a piece of chalk, and moving off the stool. “Now. If a name has power, then a spoken name has even more. You can think Rose to yourself all you want, but until you name it aloud, its only power resides with yourself. Are you following?”

Trent put his hand up. “What if you're wrong? I mean . . . you can't call a wren a Phoenix. It doesn't work that way. One's a small bird, the other a legendary creature who is reborn through fire. The wren's in trouble if you think it's a Phoenix.”

Laughter ran through the room. Eleanora smiled. “That's Crowfeather's class! Hopefully, he'll have taught you the difference. In this day and age there aren't many things which have not already been recognized and named by someone, unless you're into computer sciences. But you're right, Trent. The talent lies in recognition of the object's qualities and abilities. You have an obligation to think about it before you Name something.” She paused. “I want you all to think on that. You'll realize its importance shortly.”

“For now though, I am going to talk a bit about poetry. Why poetry? Because it celebrates the power of naming things for what they really are, and what they can mean to you.”

Eleanora turned back around and for the next long time, she wrote about meter and beat and rhyming on the blackboard. They decided that nothing rhymed with orange, and that limericks were silly but fun, and that some poets were absolute geniuses. They made up more verses for Sousa's camp marching song and the hour fled as if it had wings.

Stefan showed, much to everyone's surprise, a talent at songwriting poetry. He still pushed his way out of the hall belligerently after giving Henry a wedgie, red-headed Rich tailing behind him muttering something about lunch and FireAnn's cooking.

“Hey!” Henry danced around for a moment or two, tugging his shorts and underwear back into the comfort zone. He sputtered one or two more times getting out the door.

Trent clapped him on the shoulder. “Just think, Henry. When you figure out what it is you're going to do to get even with Rich and Stefan, you get to Name it!”

“Hey,” repeated Henry. He smiled slowly. “I will, won't I?” His smile spread as he left Lake Wannameecha Gathering Hall.

 

Outside, the brilliantly blue sky had become dotted with white-and-gray clouds. Jason could almost smell the incoming storm. Bailey tugged at one of her frazzled braids. “That was my grandmother's brush and comb set,” she said. It looked as though a storm cloud had settled on her brow.

“How are you going to get it back?”

She shook her head bleakly. “With no idea who's been taking them, I can't complain or accuse or anything.”

“Trap didn't work at all, huh?”

Bailey sighed.

“Tell you what. After Lights Out, Trent and I will come over and help set up a trap. You don't have time to wait on Guest Rules. Something else will be missing by dawn.”

“You will? Really?”

Jason nodded. Trent looked away and he got the sense his friend disapproved. “You'll have to get rid of Jennifer somehow.”

“Oh, she's got a counselor-in-training meeting, that's why she didn't make breakfast. Lights Out are an hour later for her.”

“Great! We'll be there then.”

A small smile replaced the unhappiness on Bailey's face. She waved.

Trent bumped shoulders with Jason as they trudged along the campground pathway. “That,” he said quietly, “was dumb.”

“Why?”

“It's after Lights Out.”

“Well . . . it seemed the best time.”

Trent rubbed his hand through his hair. “I know, I know.”

“Don't you want to find out what's going on?”

“Yeah, but . . .” He shut his mouth.

“What?”

Trent shook his head. Something else was bothering him, but he said not another word, just pressed his lips together tightly. When Jason punched him lightly, saying, “You've got to help me think of something,” he merely nodded.

 

After dinner, though, Trent seemed to loosen up. He dragged Jason with him into the kitchen and waited patiently for FireAnn to give her staff and the student assistants instructions on cleanup and preparation for the next day. She turned around, wiping her hands on her apron. The smell from the always-bubbling tall pot was next to heavenly. “Well, well. Waiting patiently. What can I do for you, gents?”

“We were wondering if you had some empty jars. Like . . . pickle jars or mayonnaise jars.”

“Me? Lord love a duck. We've not been here long enough t' empty jars.” She wrinkled her nose for a moment. “Tell you what. Have a look-see in the pantry, see if there's any under the bottom shelf.” She pointed toward the storage area of the kitchen, an immense area nearly as big as the kitchen itself. As they entered it, Jason was awed by the size of the sugar and flour sacks, and containers of this, that, and the other.

“We must eat a lot.”

“Are you kidding? Of course we do!”

They got down on their hands and knees, brushing aside empty battered old pots that had been stored there by FireAnn's staff when they brought in all her bright, new cooking pans. Behind them stood a row of dusty jars, with lids. Trent beamed. “Just what the doctor ordered!” He took three out, blowing the dust off.

Jason sneezed. Rubbing his nose, he asked, “Now what is this for, really?”

“Tonight. Later.” Trent stood, carrying a jar in each hand. “You'll see.”

Passing through the kitchen, he enthusiastically hefted his trophies for FireAnn to see. She smiled, tucking her wild hair back under her bandanna, and waved back.

Whatever it was, Jason hoped it wasn't supposed to be a surprise.

9

I
T'S going to rain tomorrow.”

“Feels like it.” Jason looked at the sky, though it was dark. But clouds hid the stars and fleetingly covered the moon from time to time. The wind had come in, and the trees rustling around them sounded like high tide in the ocean. It was a noise both soothing and restless. He contemplated the velvet darkness. It rarely rained in the summers he was used to, and he wondered just where it was they were. In the low mountains, but not so low that the air wasn't just a bit thinner, and not so high that there weren't much higher mountains ringing the horizon. The crickets were singing loudly and quickly from the day's heat, but their noise began to slow as the evening cooled.

Trent gave him a jar. “We'll go down by the lake. I know where a patch of lightning bugs are.”

Jason examined the jar lid. Trent had carefully poked a number of small airholes into it. “We're going to catch them?”

“Sure. Keep 'em for a day or two, and then let 'em go. They'll be fun to look at tomorrow. 'Sides, they're our alibi.” He winked at Jason. “Come on, Bailey is probably chewing the end of her braid off!”

Quietly, they left Starwind. The cabin door forgot to squeak at all as they eased through it and left the porch from the side, rather than down the steps. He had already mapped out the way in his head, off the beaten path, and headed toward the far end of the lake where the girls' cottages were located. Like the boys' more rustic cabins, they were built in groups of twos and threes, resting among the curving paths that toured the lake. Thick forests shrouded the other side of the lake, and Crowfeather had promised them a kayak tour in a day or two, saying that the rest of the lake-shore was fairly rugged.

Trent trotted at Jason's heels as evergreen branches tugged on their sleeves. Lights from cabins along the way went out, one after another, leaving only the campground overheads on, and those by the lodges and the hall. The wispy white zigzag pattern of the flying lightning bugs could be seen more clearly in the dark. Like tiny stars hanging by the small coves and eddies of the lake, the bugs swung back and forth. Jason stopped to point out a gathering spot where the bugs seemed to move in hazy clouds. Trent stopped and watched, then nodded.

Jason heard a panting behind them. He turned on his heel and looked quickly . . . to see nothing. The camp lay in black shadows around them, except for faint patches of light that seemed far away. Yet he could almost smell the hot breath hanging on the air. He turned completely around, searching the night.

“What is it?”

“Do you hear something? Feel something?”

Trent paused, then shook his head. “Something wrong?”

Jason felt the back of his hand twitch. He swallowed tightly before managing, “Guess not.” He hugged his jar to his rib cage.

There was a noise, which he did not recognize, and then he looked aside to see Trent unscrewing the jar lids on the two he held. “Let's get our jars filled before we get to Bailey's.”

He nodded, and let Trent lead the way down to the backwash cove where the bugs seemed to have gathered. The hair at the back of his neck prickled as he felt, rather than heard, something trailing him through the darkness. He rubbed hard at his hand and felt the tenderness lying under the skin like a bruise. Only a thin welted line remained, but the pain underneath was like a warning to take the injury seriously, healed though it seemed to be.

They scooped the bugs out of the air on the fly. It was harder than it looked, but eventually they had four or five buzzing in each of their jars, soft flashes of light, captured. Trent kept his two jars after examining them, his hands filled with their glow through the glass walls. He stifled a yawn as he stowed his jars inside his windbreaker.

Jason watched the bugs crawl around inside their small prison. Up close, the faint green cast to their flashing was stronger. Watching them was like watching tiny fairies flitting back and forth. No wonder people believed in them once. “This won't hurt them, will it?”