Across the Great Barrier (Frontier Magic)

by Patricia C. Wrede

  Professor Torgeson pursed her lips. “In Vinland, when we use the term interesting in connection with the mainland, it usually means something like ‘you’ll have to watch that a short-faced bear doesn’t get your supplies, and maybe you’ or ‘a pack of dire wolves was hunting a unicorn in that area last week; if they didn’t catch it, they’re probably hungry enough to go after you and your horses.’ Is it the same here?”

  Wash laughed. “Pretty much, except it’s plains creatures we’ll need to keep an eye for.”

  “Steam dragons and saber cats and so on,” the professor said, nodding. “I know them in theory, but I haven’t seen many in life, and I certainly haven’t met up with any in their natural environment.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, Professor, I’d as soon we didn’t meet up with any of those particular critters this trip, either,” Wash said.

  “If nobody ever gets a look at them, we’ll never find out what to do about them,” Professor Torgeson said tartly. “Look at what happened to that expedition back in 1850 — they’d all have been eaten by swarming weasels if that one fellow hadn’t gotten off a lucky shot and killed the swarm leaders. None of them knew that weasel swarms had leaders.”

  “It wasn’t just luck!” I said before I thought. “Brant’s mother kept bees; he said the way the weasels moved reminded him of the bees, so he looked for something like a queen bee and shot that.”

  “Eh?” Professor Torgeson looked at me. “And how do you know that, Miss Rothmer?”

  “Brant Wilson married my sister Rennie,” I said. “Later on, I mean. He and Dr. McNeil came to our house after the expedition got back. My brothers were mad after stories about what they’d seen, so they told us all about it.”

  “Pity the whole tale didn’t get into the journal accounts,” the professor said.

  “Maybe Dr. McNeil thought it would mislead people,” I said. “Swarming weasels aren’t really that much like swarming bees, and the swarm leaders certainly aren’t queens.”

  “Yes, but the similarity in movement may be important. Someone should look into the reason why, but if no one knows about it, no one will think to investigate.”

  “It’s kind of hard to investigate a mob of critters that are trying to eat you,” Wash pointed out.

  “Which is why the first thing we need to learn is how to keep them from getting interested in eating us,” the professor replied. “So that we can watch and learn. The magicians in New Asante have proven it can be done; if we apply their methods —”

  “I can’t rightly claim to be up-to-date on exactly what the New Asante conjurefolk are doing, but Aphrikan ways of spell working don’t generally mix well or easily with Avrupan-style magic,” Wash said in a very dry tone.

  “I’m sure that if —” Professor Torgeson broke off, looking at Wash as if it had only just occurred to her that he might know a bit more about Aphrikan magic than she did. “It never hurts to consider new methods,” she said after a moment.

  “Now, that’s a true thing,” Wash said. “Though west of the Great Barrier, it’s best to be cautious about when you stop considering and start practicing. What will turn away one animal may call up a worse one. I speak from experience.”

  “Oh?”

  Wash shook his head ruefully. “During the war, when I was in the army, we had a little spell for keeping the flies off in summer. One of the men in my company said it made some kind of sound, up high where most folks can’t hear, that drove the bugs away.”

  Professor Torgeson gave him a quizzical look. “I’ve heard of the spell, but … during the war? You mean the Secession War?”

  “I do indeed, and I’ll take that skeptical tone as a compliment, ma’am,” Wash said with a grin. “I was a large lad, and like a good many others, I lied about my age to join up. That was the third year of the war, and by then the army wasn’t looking too hard at anyone willing to volunteer. I was seventeen when I was mustered out after the Southern states surrendered.”

  I did some quick math in my head. The third year of the war was 1835. Wash must have joined the army at fourteen or fifteen, in order to have been seventeen when it ended in 1838. Lan and I had been born in 1838; everything I knew about the war, I knew from history class. It felt peculiar to think that Wash had actually fought in it when he was younger than I was now.

  “Anyway, after the war, I had a hankering to see some places no one else ever had,” Wash went on. “So I lit out for the Far West. And naturally, I made use of that neat little spell for keeping the flies off.”

  “What happened?”

  “About a week west of the Mammoth, an arrow hawk dove at me. They don’t generally have much interest in people, but this one sliced a fair-sized hole through my sleeve and a bit of my arm. Next day there was another one, and two more the day after that. Took me four days to figure out that it was the spell for keeping off flies that was bringing them down on me.”

  “Why would it do that?” I asked. I’d gotten so interested in Wash’s story that I’d forgotten we were only speaking in the way of business.

  “I can’t say for sure,” Wash told us. “But have you ever seen a mob of sparrows drive off a hawk that came too close to where they were all nesting? Those hawks were acting the same way — like I was something they wanted dead or elsewhere in a right hurry.”

  “You think there’s a hawk predator that makes the same noise as your spell for getting rid of flies,” Professor Torgeson said.

  “Could be,” Wash said. “Or it could be something else about that spell that made them angry. All I know is that as soon as I quit using the spell, the arrow hawks lost interest in me.”

  Professor Torgeson nodded thoughtfully. “Another thing that someone should investigate.” She made a frustrated noise. “There is so much that we don’t know, and all the research funds the department has can barely stretch to cover five months in the field for one junior professor and an untrained girl. It is very badly arranged.”

  Neither Wash nor I had any argument with that. For the rest of the day, the professor alternated between questioning Wash about the wildlife he’d encountered during his travels in the West and watching the land around us. I didn’t know what she’d really been doing until we got to the wagonrest.

  As soon as we had the horses tied up and watered, Wash went to talk to the other travelers who were sharing the wagonrest with us, to see about setting up a schedule for handling the protective spells overnight. Professor Torgeson pulled a pencil and a journal out of the supply pack and started listing all the different plants and birds and animals she’d seen on the day’s ride. Then she asked me to mark the ones I’d seen, too, and add any I’d seen that she hadn’t. As soon as Wash got back, she asked if he’d be willing to do the same, and he did. When we finished, the list took up two pages, at two columns a page in small, clear printing — everything from grasses and wild-flowers to birds and insects and even a white-tailed deer we’d startled out of a little copse of serviceberry bushes.

  I’d only added five names at the end of the list, and marked less than half of the things the professor had put down. Wash had seen all but three of the things the professor listed, all of mine, and he still had a dozen more to add. Professor Torgeson stopped him when he started to write them. “I’ve seen the notes you’ve sent Professor Jeffries,” she said, “and I’d rather have no confusion. Let Miss Rothmer copy the names down for you.”

  “Whatever you say, Professor,” Wash replied, but he didn’t grin the way he usually did.

  We didn’t even start making camp until we finished with the professor’s journal, except for watering the horses, so it was getting dark by the time we finished eating. I was worn right out from riding so long, and I went to sleep as soon as we finished clearing up.

  I maybe shouldn’t have been quite so eager to bed down, because the next morning I was so stiff and sore I could hardly move. But Professor Torgeson wasn’t much better off, and she was up at first light, taking notes on whic
h birds started calling first.

  We spent that second day at the wagonrest — or, rather, all around it. The professor said that with only two of us doing the survey and only a few months to do it in, I would need to do more than take notes and handle supplies, and I might as well start right off doing it.

  So she spent the morning working her way around the north side of the wagonrest, showing me how to list the plants and insects I found, and mark the signs of animals and birds. She wanted a count of different kinds of things, and how many of each kind, and a bit about where each one was — in sun or shade, rocky ground or damp soil, near trees or in the open.

  “If you have time, describe or sketch what you see,” she told me. “At the least, we’ll want to know what stage of growth the plants are at — whether they’re just germinating, in early growth, in bud, flowering, or going to seed. Especially if it’s something you’re not familiar with.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to pick a few for samples?” I asked.

  “We won’t have room, if we start now,” she said. “Besides, we already know about most of these plants; I want the lists here mostly for comparison purposes. So we can see what changes as we get farther west.”

  I thought about the bare wasteland we’d ridden through last summer, where the grubs and mirror bugs had eaten every growing thing there was. I’d been too busy then to think about exactly where the barren patch started and where it ended, but I was pretty sure the professor would mark it down to the nearest half inch, if she could.

  So I spent the afternoon taking notes on a patch of earth near where the professor was working, measuring out a small square of ground and then listing every kind of plant in it and counting how many of them there were. The grasses were hard because they weren’t very tall yet, and it was hard to tell one flat, thin blade from another. Acadian thistles and dyeroot were easy. I made sketches of two plants and a butterfly I didn’t know the names of. The bugs were the hardest, because they kept moving around and I couldn’t be sure whether I’d counted them. I had to put a question mark next to two different beetles, and I gave up on the ants entirely.

  In the evening, the professor went over everything I’d done and pointed out things I could do better next time. She even said I’d done very well with my sketches. By the time I curled up in my bedroll that night, I was feeling pretty good about what I’d done that day.

  But I was too tired to do any magic practice that night, Aphrikan or Avrupan.

  CHAPTER

  7

  NEXT MORNING, WE SET OUT AGAIN, AND AFTER AN EASY DAY’S RIDE we came up on the Puerta del Oeste settlement. Puerta del Oeste was one of the older settlements west of the Mammoth River. The core had been built right after the Secession War, a tiny thing compared to a modern settlement, but in the years since it had been founded, it had grown three big loops off the original log wall, enough to house a passel of new folks from the Eastern states, Acadia, Vinland, and even all the way from Avrupa. Now they had three settlement magicians and a full-time doctor, and the North Plains Territory had just opened a branch of the Homestead Claims and Settlement Office there.

  That branch office was the main reason we stopped at the settlement instead of going straight on to the wagonrest. Even though he was acting as our guide, Wash was still a circuit-rider, and he wanted to check on the news that had come in from farther along our route.

  The other reason was that Professor Torgeson wanted to recruit an official observer to send information back to the college on a regular schedule. She’d spent the last month looking over all Professor Jeffries’s old records, and then she and Professor Jeffries had spent every spare minute for two days holed up in his office, coming up with a list of things they wanted to know and a form for reporting them.

  So while Wash went off to the branch office, Professor Torgeson and I headed for the general store. It wasn’t too hard to find; it was one of the biggest buildings in the oldest part of the settlement. The professor said that it was the most likely place to find a bunch of different folks all at once, and if none of them was willing to help out, they might still know someone who would be.

  At least a dozen people were crammed in between the barrels and boxes that filled Code’s General Store, examining tins and tools and fabric while they waited for the proprietor to get around to them. A tall woman in a blue calico dress looked up as we came in and gave a startled exclamation. A minute later, everyone in the store was looking at us.

  “Settling out?” a girl asked. “Where?”

  “Maury!” the tall woman said. “Mind your manners!”

  “But it’s what everyone wants to know,” the girl said. “Why waste a lot of time asking how they are and how their trip has been so far in order to work up to it?”

  “We are from the Northern Plains Riverbank College,” Professor Torgeson said. There was a little stir at that, and all the people who’d been pretending not to listen stopped pretending. Most times, when someone from the college was west of the river, it was because one of the settlements was having a problem with the wildlife that the settlement magicians couldn’t handle on their own.

  “We’re doing a survey of the wildlife farther out,” I said quickly. “For research.”

  Everyone relaxed. “I don’t suppose you folks brought along any newspapers?” one of the men asked.

  Professor Torgeson smiled. “I have three,” she said, much to my surprise. “The New Amsterdam International Weekly, the Washington Times, and the Long Lake City Tribune. Also the most recent issue of the Ladies’ Fashion Monthly from Albion.”

  There was a hubbub as the professor pulled the papers from her carrypack and distributed them. I found out later that Wash had recommended bringing them. Half of the men bent over the New Amsterdam International first of all, shaking their heads over the one-sided battle between the Cathayan Confederacy and the Albion warships and the argument over sending the few survivors back to Albion. The other half went straight to the Long Lake City Tribune, looking for news of the national baseball league that somebody had proposed starting up. The ladies all crowded around the Fashion Monthly to see what sort of sleeves and necklines they should be having on their Sunday-best dresses. Nobody seemed much interested in what was going on in Washington.

  Even the store owner paused to look over the Tribune headlines. Then he turned to look at Professor Torgeson. “I assume you ladies didn’t stop in just to bring us the news,” he said.

  “You are right, I confess,” Professor Torgeson said. “I’m hoping to persuade someone here to do some work for the college. Or if not, I’m hoping you’ll know someone in the settlement who’d be willing.”

  “What sort of work?”

  The professor explained what she wanted, and two men and a woman were interested enough to ask questions. One of the men lost interest once he got it clear that there was no money in it, but the other two didn’t seem to mind. In the end, Professor Torgeson decided that having two observers in the same place would be a useful double check, so she gave each of them one of her forms and showed them how to fill it out.

  I stood back out of the way while they talked, and just watched. After a bit, I noticed a man in the corner, watching the professor and turning his hat over and over in his hands. He’d come in just after Professor Torgeson started passing out the newspapers, and he looked like he was barely holding himself back from bulling right into the professor’s conversation. The longer he waited, the darker his face got. A woman in a poke bonnet next to him put a hand on his arm, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. I edged around to the far side of the group. I didn’t want to be near anyone who had that much trouble making himself be civil.

  Sure enough, the minute the professor finished her talking, he stepped up and cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, though he didn’t sound at all apologetic. “I couldn’t help —”

  “Professor,” Professor Torgeson snapped.

  The man looked at her with a
bewildered expression The man looked at her with a bewildered expression. “Beg pardon?”

  “Professor, not ma’am,” she repeated, sounding a bit less cross.

  “Professor? You’ll be from the college in Mill City, then?” The man sounded like he wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or sorry.

  “I am.”

  “I don’t suppose — that is, my name’s Carpenter, Giles Carpenter. My family and I are trying to get out to Kinderwald settlement, and they tell me we must have a guide or a spell caster to go any farther.”

  “That you do, unless you’re one of them crazy Rationalists,” the storekeeper said.

  “We’ve been waiting at this wagonrest for a solid week!” Mr. Carpenter went on. “And I’ll tell you straight, ma’ — Professor, I’m getting desperate. Could we travel with you? I can pay a little….”

  “You will have to discuss that with our guide,” Professor Torgeson said. “You are staying at the wagonrest? We will be there ourselves tonight; perhaps he can advise you then.”

  “The only advice he’s like to get is to keep waiting,” one of the other men called, and several people laughed. It sounded like a sympathetic sort of laughing to me, not like making fun, but Mr. Carpenter’s face darkened.

  “Easy for you all to say!” he growled, and for a moment he looked downright dangerous.

  “Who’s your guide, ladies?” another man called. “If you’re heading farther west, you need a good one.”

  “I believe Mr. Morris is quite competent,” Professor Torgeson said in a dry tone.

  “That’d be Wash Morris?” the man asked.

  Professor Torgeson nodded, and someone in the back gave a low whistle. “Can’t get much better than that,” the first of the onlookers said, nodding.

  “Perhaps we’ll see you this evening, Mr. Carpenter,” Professor Torgeson said, and motioned me to leave with her. As we left, I could hear the local men razzing Mr. Carpenter like a batch of schoolboys ragging on a new one, and I wondered what he’d done to set their backs up like that.