Across the Great Barrier (Frontier Magic)

by Patricia C. Wrede

  Professor Torgeson looked at Professor Jeffries as if she was trying to figure out whether he was joking. Professor Jeffries just smiled and went back to checking over the supplies we’d be taking. There were a lot of notebooks, several pencils, magnifying glasses, and tweezers, as well as some sample boxes enchanted to preserve whatever was in them and a small case full of spell ingredients that might be needed to test and classify things. Professor Torgeson was sure that a careful survey would turn up a lot of new animals and plants, and Professor Jeffries seemed to agree with her.

  Picking out what to take was hard, because there wasn’t much room. We were only taking one packhorse and what we could each fit into our saddlebags. Allie had near as much of a fit over that as Mama had had when I told her I was going West for the summer for sure and certain.

  “Riding horseback isn’t proper for a lady,” Allie said. “You should ride in a buggy or a wagon.”

  Papa and I exchanged looks. Last summer, Mr. Harrison had tried to take a buggy West and he hadn’t gotten five miles from West Landing before it broke an axle. Wagons were sturdier, but slow, and I’d had my fill of them on that trip. Anyway, Wash had already settled the question.

  “A wagon will slow us down too much,” he’d told the professors bluntly. “You’ll either have to cut your planned route in half or figure on taking two years to cover it, with half that spent holed up somewhere for the winter. Myself, I’d keep the route as is and take a packhorse. Overwintering in the far frontier is chancy.”

  Nobody wanted to spend the winter in the West — well, Professor Torgeson got excited and muttered a bit about winter fauna and adaptations, but even she was more wistful than really serious about the idea. Once we got Allie to understand that, she stopped fussing about wagons, but she wouldn’t let up on clothes. She’d have filled my saddlebags up with petticoats, if I’d let her.

  What with all the talk and the fussing, it seemed sometimes as if it’d take months before we were ready to leave, but between Professor Torgeson wanting to get started and Professor Jeffries being real good at arranging things, it actually only took about a week. Early Monday morning, Wash, Professor Torgeson, and I led our horses onto the ferry that linked Mill City with West Landing.

  Professor Torgeson seemed a bit absentminded as she tied her horse to the hitching rail. Her eyes kept straying to the faint shimmer in the air about halfway across the river. It dawned on me that she’d never been through the Great Barrier Spell before. Vinland had no need of such a thing, being an island, and what with all the settlement failures, the Settlement Office hadn’t called on any of the college magicians for help since she’d arrived.

  I didn’t have much in the way of time to worry over Professor Torgeson, though, because I had worries of my own. I’d only been through the Great Barrier Spell twice myself, once in each direction, but I knew that it was a disturbing feeling even when you knew what was happening. Animals couldn’t understand and nearly always panicked, especially horses, unless someone cast calming spells on them. Last time, I’d been a passenger, and Wash and Papa and Professor Jeffries had taken care of the calming spells for all our horses. This time, I would be expected to take care of my own.

  I’d started practicing the standard Avrupan calming spell as soon as I realized I was going to need it, so I was pretty sure I could do that part. What troubled me was whether I could keep it going when we passed through the Barrier Spell. Being looked over by something that felt as old and large and strange as the magic of the Great Barrier Spell was … well, the first time I’d gone through, I’d been convinced it would treat me the same as it did the wildlife, on account of me being thirteenth-born. I didn’t think like that anymore, but that Barrier Spell still made me plenty nervous. And if there’s one thing that’ll mess up a calming spell quicker than anything else, it’s if the magician gets distracted.

  As soon as Professor Torgeson saw Wash riding down toward the dock, she cast the calming spell on her horse. I hesitated for a second, then started on my own. I was just finishing up when Wash tied his horse next to mine and signaled the ferryman that everyone was ready to go.

  He did the spell for his horse as quick and easy as most folks do the candle-lighting spell. Then he turned and inspected my horse and the professor’s. He didn’t say anything, just gave me a little nod, but I felt better all the same.

  Wash and the professor went forward, so that she could watch as we approached the Great Barrier Spell. I stayed with the horses. Despite Wash’s approval, I was still nervous about the calming spell, and I wanted to be right there if anything went wrong.

  The ferry cast off and made its slow way toward mid-river. The shimmery haze got more and more shimmery as we got closer, then turned into a curtain of tiny rainbows that flickered and moved like the waves on the surface of the water. The horses shifted, as if they could tell they were drawing nearer to the greatest magical working in the New World.

  I looked at the horses, wondering what I was going to do if my spell did go wrong. I wasn’t good enough yet to cast it again in a big hurry. Then I smiled. All year in school, I’d been doing my Avrupan spells by using the Aphrikan world-sensing to tell when they were going wrong. I ducked under the hitching rail and braced myself against it with both hands. Then I let myself get very quiet inside my head, and felt outward for everything else, especially the spell I’d just cast.

  I’d done something similar by accident the first time I went through the Great Barrier Spell, so I thought I knew what the spell would feel like: huge and strong and ancient-seeming, even though Mr. Franklin and Mr. Jefferson and the others had only gotten it going a few years before the Revolutionary War. It felt like Avrupan magic and Hijero-Cathayan magic and Aphrikan magic all mixed together, and then some. Nobody could figure out how they’d done it, and nobody wanted to poke at it too hard trying to find out, on account of maybe making it fall apart and letting the wildlife back in.

  That first time I’d crossed the Mammoth River, it had felt like the Barrier Spell itself was looking me over, checking to see if I was a danger that shouldn’t be let through. It hadn’t been a pleasant feeling, and I’d been careful not to do any Aphrikan magic on the return trip. Now I had a moment of misgiving; I wasn’t sure whether being very quiet would be enough to keep the spell from noticing me. But it was too late for second thoughts; the ferry bell was ringing to warn everyone that we were almost at mid-river. A moment later the ferry hit the spell with a little bump.

  Little rainbows shivered across the deck toward me. The horses jigged and pulled against the hitching rail, and I could feel mine fighting the spell I’d put on him. I sank deeper into the magic to try to calm him. Without thinking, I fell into the breathing pattern of the Hijero-Cathayan concentration technique that Miss Ochiba had taught me when I was thirteen.

  The Great Barrier Spell reached the part of the ferry where I stood with the horses. It didn’t seem to pay me any mind, though I didn’t have too much time to think on it right then. That horse of mine was fighting the calming spell worse than ever, and I could see it wasn’t going to hold.

  I reached for the nearest natural magic source. I’d gotten in the habit of doing that whenever my Avrupan spells started to go wrong — twitching and tweaking them from outside to make them work, anyway. But there was no natural source of magic within reach except the power of the river, and the Great Barrier Spell was using all of that.

  I bit my lip, clenched my hands around the hitching rail, and poured as much of my own power as I could reach into the spell. Distantly, I felt something warm against my chest. The weak spots in the calming spell tightened up. My horse gave a great sigh, shook his mane, and settled down. And a few seconds later, we were through.

  I hung over the hitching rail, panting. As I did, I felt Wash’s wooden pendant swing and settle a few inches below my collarbone. It was cool again, but I knew it had been the source of the warmth I’d felt a minute earlier. Right that minute, though, I wasn’t thinking m
uch about it. I was just hoping that Wash hadn’t noticed what I’d been up to, because I was pretty near certain that he’d guess I’d been tweaking my Avrupan spells and wouldn’t think much of me doing it.

  “Nice job, Miss Rothmer,” said an accented voice above me. I jerked my head back to see Professor Torgeson pushing sweat-damp hair back from her forehead. “Fixing a spell on the fly like that is a useful talent,” she went on. “I’m glad you have it.”

  I straightened, though I still felt shaky and exhausted. “Thank you,” I said uncertainly. “But I always thought it was better if your spells didn’t need fixing.”

  The professor laughed. “True enough, as long as you’re working with a predictable situation. The wildlands aren’t predictable, though.”

  “Wildlands?”

  “The land that men haven’t tamed,” Professor Torgeson said. “From my home, that’s most of the mainland; from yours, it’s all of North Columbia that’s outside the Great Barrier Spell.”

  “Oh,” I said. Over her shoulder, I saw Wash studying me and my horse. His face was a dark, expressionless mask, and when he saw me watching, he turned away. My heart sank. He’d noticed what I’d done, right enough, and he frowned on it just as much as I’d thought he would.

  I wanted to head off somewhere and curl up in a ball, like I used to when I was five and my cousins back in Helvan Shores hectored me, but I couldn’t. There was no place on the ferry to go, and as soon as we docked, I had my hands full with my horse and the extra baggage and supplies. As our guide, Wash got to handle necessities like food and fire starters, but Professor Torgeson told me that as her assistant, the equipment and magical supplies for the survey were my responsibility, and we should begin as we meant to go on. I had to see that everything we’d packed up in Mill City was still there and safely unloaded.

  The main worry was the extra boxes we were sending on to settlements farther along on our route, so that we could pick them up later. With all the settlement failures, there weren’t so many carriers going back and forth, and we had to change our plans some. That meant repacking some of the preserving jars and labels, a couple of blank journals, ink, and about half of the extra spell-casting ingredients, so as to get the right amount to the right places. It took the rest of the day to get it all done and sent off.

  Wash didn’t say a thing to me all that afternoon that wasn’t about the business in hand. At first, I felt lower than a snake’s belly, but after a while I started to get a mite peeved. I hadn’t done anything except make sure my horse stayed calm, the way I was supposed to.

  I went to bed grumpy and woke up grumpier. I’d gotten in the habit of working on my Aphrikan world-sensing first thing every morning, but that day I didn’t. I told myself it was because it felt peculiar to be sitting there concentrating while Professor Torgeson bustled about the hired room we shared, but really it was just bad temper.

  Neither Professor Torgeson nor Wash noticed my mood, which didn’t help matters any. My horse did, though. He was skittish the whole time I was saddling him, and I thought for a while I was going to have to put a calming spell on him again. I didn’t know if I could get it to work, though, not without using Aphrikan magic to prop the spell up from outside, and that made me grouchy all over again.

  Fortunately, the packhorse was dead calm, and by the time I had her loaded up, I’d gotten over some of my grump. I triple-checked everything — the last thing I wanted was for Wash or Professor Torgeson to find a loose rope or an unbalanced load on the very first day. I was glad I had, too, because the professor and Wash each checked everything over again before we all mounted.

  Once I was in the saddle, my horse settled down. Then Wash took the lead rein for the packhorse and led us out onto the streets of West Landing.

  CHAPTER

  6

  WEST LANDING WAS THE OLDEST SETTLEMENT ON THE WEST BANK of the Mammoth — at this end of the river, anyway. It was founded right before the Secession War, though back then it was just a couple of big warehouses built of mortared fieldstone, meant to make it easier to catch the free timber that floated downriver from the lumber camps up North. The settlement had hung on through the war, just barely, and then started growing fast when the war was over and all the Homestead Claims and Settlement Offices started working at getting the Western Territories settled before anybody else laid claim to them.

  Riding through the town settled me down even more. I liked the feel of West Landing, from the double-wide dirt streets to the people in their long tan dusters and home-sewn calico. A lot of the folks recognized Wash and waved when they saw him. One man yelled to him that it was about time he got out on circuit.

  “Take it up with the Settlement Office, Lathrop!” Wash yelled, and the man made a show of rolling his eyes, then grinned back.

  A few of the men on horseback turned to come along with us for a little way, so they could ask Wash about what was happening farther out in settlement country or back at the Settlement Office in Mill City. Some just wanted to complain about the way the North Plains Territory Homestead Claims and Settlement Office was handling everything from the mirror bug problem to the freeze on new settlements. One or two had information to pass along.

  “There’s a pack of prairie wolves causing trouble down by Swan Prairie,” one man told us. “Watch your horses, if you’re heading that way.”

  Wash nodded. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “You’re welcome. Safe journey, Wash, ladies.” The man touched his hat brim to Professor Torgeson and me and rode off. A large young man on a chestnut horse took his place almost immediately. He asked about our route, and looked put out when Wash said we were swinging south to the Oak River settlement before we headed back west and north.

  “Blast it, I was hoping you were heading straight for the Raptor Bay settlement,” he said. “Isn’t that normally your first stop?”

  “Not this year,” Wash said. “We’re for Oak River first, then west and north until we get to St. Jacques.”

  “Ah.” The rider frowned, then hesitated. “So you won’t be passing near Raptor Bay at all?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Wash drawled. “I think we’ll be near enough to drop a letter by, though perhaps not as soon as you’d like.”

  The young man flushed slightly. “Would you? There’s supposed to be a supply carrier going out in another week, but you know what they’re like — it’d take a message weeks to arrive, if the wagon master even remembers to deliver it. And if I leave without sending word, it could be months before I get another chance.”

  Wash laughed. “Shipping barges do make stops,” he said. “And even if your captain is in a tearing hurry, he’ll overnight in St. Louis.”

  “Well, I know, but —”

  “Give me the letters, Charlie, and I’ll see that your parents and your girl get them in as reasonable an amount of time as I can manage,” Wash said.

  “Thanks, Wash!” The young man pulled some folded-over papers out of his pocket and handed them over. Then he bobbed his head at Professor Torgeson and me, and rode off.

  “Wash! Mr. Morris!”

  A little shiver went down my spine, and I felt a cool spot against my chest. I turned to see a pretty black woman standing on the boardwalk, waving. She was a few years older than me, with warm brown skin the color of the smooth bark on a young maple tree. Like most of the folks in West Landing, she wore a tan duster buttoned up close. Three inches of calico ruffle and a pair of neat high-button boots showed at the bottom. The tall black man next to her made a what-can-you-do-with-her? motion. He had left his duster open, and I could make out a gray work jacket and trousers under it.

  Wash’s mouth quirked, and he rode over. “Morning, Miss Porter, George.”

  “This is a nice surprise,” the woman said. “You usually come through West Landing in March. Or have you been gone and come back once already this year?”

  “No, ma’am,” Wash said. “It’s an unusual year.”

  “How long wil
l you be in town?”

  “I’m afraid we’re leaving this morning.” Wash made a little movement with his free hand to indicate the professor and me.

  “Then I shouldn’t keep you. Safe journey — but next time you’re through town, try to make time to visit us.”

  “Mother would love to see you,” the man with her said, nodding. “But not if she finds out Elizabeth has been accosting you on the street like a fancy woman.”

  “George! I did no such thing,” Miss Porter said. “Besides, Mother won’t mind if it’s Mr. Morris.”

  George and Wash exchanged a look over her head, then Wash touched his hat and rode back to us.

  It kept on like that all the way through West Landing. Some of the folks who came over to chat with Wash asked to be introduced to the professor and me, but most of them just tipped their hats to us before they rode off. It took us nearly an hour to get through the main part of town.

  Once we got out of West Landing at last, Wash and Professor Torgeson started up a conversation about how to manage the survey we were supposed to be doing. The professor wanted to stop and take samples right off, but Wash pointed out that most of the things this close to the Mammoth River had already been collected. Also, if we did too much stopping and starting, we wouldn’t make it to the first wagonrest by nightfall.

  They talked over various ways to go on, with me listening hard with both ears the whole time. I didn’t have much to add, but if I was going to help the professor, I had to know what I was supposed to do. Eventually, they settled on using the wagonrests as base camps, at least while we were still close to the Mammoth River. We’d stay for a day or two when the professor wanted to collect samples and make observations, and move on when she finished.

  Once we got past the middle settlements, though, there wouldn’t be any wagonrests. “That,” said Wash, “is when things will get interesting.”