Simon whipped a knife out of his pocket and stabbed the cheese viciously.
Outside, the storm raged. The window shutters rattled and shook. Elfwyn and Reven exchanged nervous glances and went on eating.
“Some storm,” said Reven, in the overcheerful tone of someone trying to pretend everything was normal. “It’s even worse than that one that blew us to the Bonemaster.”
“I wonder if the Bonemaster has anything to do with this storm,” Elfwyn murmured.
“He can’t,” said Jinx. “We destroyed most of his power.”
“Unless he’s escaped,” said Elfwyn. “And found a way to get more power.”
“Storms just happen,” said Jinx.
“That lightning was amazing,” said Reven. “That bolt that almost hit us—I never knew lightning was pink.”
“Some of it’s blue,” said Jinx. “Like the flash right before it that stretched across the sky, and there were eight branches of lightning coming down to the treetops from it—”
He stopped, confused. Reven and Elfwyn were staring at him.
“We didn’t see that,” said Elfwyn. “Because we were under the trees, not on top of them. And so were you.”
“Maybe I just looked up and saw it,” said Jinx. But no, he knew he had seen the sea of swaying treetops, and lightning rippling and dancing across it.
“I think you’re turning into a tree,” said Reven. “Forsooth, you see what the trees see. You’ll be sprouting leaves next.”
Simon and the old man were still arguing.
“If you’d stayed here and married Friddelotta—”
“Don’t start that.” Simon hacked at the cheese as if he was decapitating an enemy. “Just don’t.”
Reven coughed. “I’m sorry, sir, we haven’t been introduced. I’m Reven, and do I have the honor of addressing Simon the Wizard’s esteemed father?”
“Esteemed? The brat hasn’t visited me in fifteen years.”
“Twenty. His name is Egon,” said Simon.
Jinx was surprised. He’d always assumed that Simon, like Jinx and almost every other Urwalder old enough to tie their own shoes, was an orphan.
Reven bowed and said all the polite things that you probably had to say if you’d been raised at King Rufus’s court and didn’t know any better. Jinx went back to eating.
“What’s it like?” Elfwyn asked him, very quietly.
“What’s what like?”
“Being able to”—she dropped her voice even quieter—“talk to the trees like that.”
“Strange,” said Jinx. “It’s started happening when I don’t expect it. And I mean it’s not always really talking. Sometimes it’s just sort of being there.”
“Like a tree,” said Elfwyn.
“You could’ve done real well out of Friddelotta,” said Egon. “Her father was cooked by a dragon, you know. She inherited nineteen goats.”
“Lucky her.” Simon turned to the door. “Is the wind letting up a little?”
“No,” said Elfwyn.
“You could’ve been a big man in goats by now, is what I’m saying,” said Egon. “But instead—all this hocus-pocus nonsense. Wearing purple dresses. Dancing around in the dark with witches.”
“I have never—”
“Is that why you never get lost anymore?” Elfwyn asked Jinx.
“Yeah,” said Jinx. “But I didn’t get lost all that much before.” Well, okay, maybe he had once last summer, in a situation that had perhaps involved an uncomfortable amount of troll. But nowadays . . . it was something about the root network. He always knew where he was.
“This all changed since you, um, fell off the cliff?” said Elfwyn.
“Yeah. I guess.” They were still talking very quietly, though it wasn’t really necessary because Simon and Egon had started shouting at each other.
“Come on, all of you,” Simon snapped. “We’re leaving.”
He went to the door and unbarred it. The wind smashed into the room, tearing the door out of his hands. Reven grabbed the old man out of the way as the table and chairs flew across the room and hit the far wall. The flames in the fireplace shot up and out, licking the ceiling beams. Jinx, struggling not to be blown into the wall himself, quickly sucked the fire out of existence with a thought.
“Will you help me get this flippin’ door closed!” Simon yelled.
Jinx, Elfwyn, and Reven fought their way across the room, climbing the floor. It took all four of them to wrestle the door back into place and bar it.
“You’re a disaster, boy,” said Egon. “I’ve always said that.”
“It’s true you’ve always said that,” said Simon. “All right. I suppose we’re staying the night. Put the fire back, Jinx.”
3
Cold Oats Clearing
The next morning the storm was over. When they went outside, the first thing Jinx heard was the forest mourning. And he saw why.
Great trees lay everywhere across the clearing. Some of them had smashed into houses. And farther into the forest, more trees had fallen.
“Was anybody killed?” Reven asked.
“Thousands,” said Jinx.
“What?” Reven rippled purple-green alarm at him. “Where? How do you know?”
Jinx blinked and shifted his mind into people-thought. “Thousands of trees. I don’t know about people.”
“People are what matters,” said Reven.
“Right,” said Jinx absently. He walked to the edge of the forest. The path they had come up yesterday was obliterated now by fallen trees. And Simon had wanted to stay out in the storm!
The forest murmured about the storm—how it had come shrieking down from the Boreal Wastes, cutting a slash of death, and finally howled its way out of the Urwald to the south.
“Come and help, Jinx,” said Elfwyn. “This woman has a tree on her house.”
“I don’t know what you can do about it.” The woman had a thin, moany voice. “It’s a huge tree, and you’re just a little bit of a boy.”
Jinx bit back an angry retort. After all, the woman did have a tree on her house, and that would upset anybody. It had smashed through the thatched roof and broken part of one thick, timbered wall.
Jinx backed up to the very edge of the forest. He concentrated hard, and drew on the Urwald’s lifeforce.
There was a creak as the tree came loose from the house and rose slowly into the air. It was heavier than the pine he’d lifted before. He drew on more power. Now the tree floated easily. Jinx went over and took hold of it—his fingers sank into the rotten wood—and swung it free of the house. He let go and cut the levitation spell. The tree thumped to the ground.
The woman looked at him with a mouth like an O.
“Now put the house back together,” she said. Instead of thank you.
“I can’t,” said Jinx. “Sorry. Ask Simon.”
Simon was standing on a rooftop, summoning the pieces of a broken chimney.
A teenage girl came running up. “Friddelotta, how did you get the tree off your house?”
“The wizard boy did it,” said the moany woman. “But he won’t fix the house.”
The girl looked at Jinx with nervous respect. “Will he take the trees off our house?”
“You could ask him,” said Jinx, annoyed.
“My name is Hilda, sir. Would you please to come and take the trees off my mother’s house?”
Jinx would have thought Hilda was making fun of him if he hadn’t been able to see the shape of her thoughts. She was perfectly serious, calling him sir. Weird.
“Sure,” he said.
Jinx spent the next several hours levitating trees and pieces of broken building. He tried not to let Simon see him doing it. Simon didn’t know how much power Jinx had, and Jinx didn’t want him to find out.
Simon was doing all sorts of magic that Jinx had never learned, sticking broken walls back together, summoning far-flung thatch and bits of smashed crockery that stuck themselves back together as they flew.
“If they’re alive,” said Reven. He had his trusty ax and was getting ready to chop up one of the fallen trees.
“Wait!” a woman cried. “Leave that for the wood-cutters.”
“I don’t mind doing it,” said Reven.
“It’s safer if the woodcutters do it.”
“It’s all right,” said Jinx. “The trees that are in the clearing, the Urwald says it can’t eat anyway.”
Simon grabbed Jinx and pulled him aside. “Jinx, don’t be weird.”
“The forest said—”
“Yes, I’m sure it did.” Simon hustled him along the edge of the clearing. “But you’re already strange enough. These people are going to talk about you. Let’s not make it worse, eh?”
“But—”
“Now. You want to explain to me what you’re doing?”
“Helping,” said Jinx. “The same as you.”
“Uh-huh. Levitating enormous trees off of houses. Where’d you learn to do that?”
“You taught me to levitate stuff,” said Jinx. “Remember?”
“Oh yes, I remember. I remember you had great difficulty levitating a pebble, and even more difficulty levitating a cup, and—”
“I got better at it,” said Jinx.
“Clearly.”
Jinx hoped that was going to be the end of the discussion, but then it took an unexpected turn.
“When you were in the Bonemaster’s castle—did he give you anything?”
“Of course not,” said Jinx. Except for the occasional whack on the head.
“Did you take anything from him?”
“Yeah, your life, in a bottle, remember?”
The dark cloud around Simon’s head grew lightning streaks of fury. Even though Jinx knew that they were aimed at the Bonemaster and not at him, they still made him nervous.
“Look at me,” said Simon.
Jinx did, and immediately found he couldn’t look away. “Don’t do magic on me!” He pulled his eyes away from Simon’s with an effort.
“Did the Bonemaster do anything to you? Other than kill you?” said Simon.
“He didn’t really kill me,” said Jinx. “I fell.”
“Look at me and say he didn’t do anything to you.”
Jinx glared into Simon’s oddly yellow eyes. “The Bonemaster didn’t do anything to me. Okay?”
Simon nodded. There was purplish perplexity around him, as if he hadn’t seen something he expected to see, and didn’t understand what he had seen. “Good. Keep the talking-to-trees thing a secret.”
Oh, Jinx had plenty of secrets. His whole head was full of secrets. There was the fact that he’d regained his ability to see people’s thoughts. That was a secret from everyone except Elfwyn, which made it a very precarious secret. Then there was the fact that he could draw on the Urwald’s power—that was a secret from Simon. And Elfwyn’s curse, which he had to keep secret out of common decency. But he couldn’t see why this had to be secret.
“It’s useful to be able to talk to the trees,” he said. “People need to know what trees think. And it got us out of the storm.”
“Yes, into a far worse fate,” said Simon.
“Is that really your father?”
“Obviously.”
“But you’re not really my father.”
“Of course not. What, you want blood relatives? They’re such a great joy. You want my relatives?”
“You have more?”
“Half the people in Cold Oats Clearing.” Simon made a waggly-fingered gesture at the men, women, and children busy thatching holes in roofs and reattaching doors to doorposts. “Uncles and cousins and things. Bunch of idiots.”
“You told me not to call clearing people—”
“These ones are idiots. Trust me.” Simon scowled. “Do the trees say anything about the Bonemaster?”
“They don’t really talk about the Restless much. Um, the Restless are people and trolls and like that.”
“Well, supposing you ask them.”
“No! Not right now. That would be awful.”
Simon puffed green bewilderment, so Jinx explained, “It’s like if your whole family had just been killed and I asked you—”
“To stop dancing for joy?”
“You don’t mean that,” said Jinx. “Anyway the Bonemaster’s all locked up. You put wards around his castle.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last two weeks, boy?”
“You’ve—we’ve all been walking around from one magician’s house to another,” said Jinx.
“Correct. And what have I been asking these witches and wizards to do?”
“Help you strengthen the wards around Bonesocket.”
“And why, in your wildest imaginings, do you suppose I might be doing that?”
“I guess because the wards aren’t strong enough?”
“And what have they all been saying to me?”
Lots of stuff. Much of it so rude that Jinx felt repeating it to Simon would be hazardous. “That they don’t want to,” Jinx summarized. “And that the Bonemaster isn’t their problem. Do you think he could escape from the wards?”
“Of course he can escape the wards. He’s a magician. All he needs is power.”
“But we destroyed his power,” said Jinx.
“The Bonemaster may have other ways of getting power.”
Something about the words Bonemaster and power tugged at Jinx’s memory, but he didn’t know why. He had a mental image of elves standing in the woods. Some dream he’d forgotten, maybe.
“Like what?” said Jinx.
“I don’t know.” Simon pressed his lips together and stared out at the clearing, his thoughts a dark gray cloud of worry. “I need to go to Bonesocket and see what he’s doing.”
“Now?”
“Now struck me as an excellent time,” said Simon. “Though last week would probably have been better. Right. We’ll say good-bye to your friend Reven-the-king, collect the girl, and head back.”
“I promised the trees that I would take Reven out of the Urwald.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t expect you to put my wishes ahead of the trees’.”
“They’re petrified of him. They call him the Terror.”
Simon gave Jinx an odd look. “The trees do?”
“Yeah.”
“That ridiculous boy is a greater danger than the Bonemaster?”
“I guess he is if you’re a tree,” said Jinx.
“As it happens, I’m not. Did the trees say why?”
“They just have this really bad feeling about him. Something he might do, I guess.”
“I see,” said Simon. “The trees have a feeling. Very well. You can escort king-boy as far as the edge of the Urwald. Then you’re to turn around and come back immediately. No sightseeing along the way. I need you home to help me deal with the Bonemaster.”
“You mean you’re letting me go?” Jinx had expected more of a struggle.
“Unless I change my mind.” Simon reached in his pocket. “Here. You’d better take this with you.”
Jinx saw the flash of gold in Simon’s hand and was annoyed. “I’ve been out on my own before. I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, I was very impressed last time. We practically had to carry you home in a bucket. Take it, or you’re not going anywhere.”
Jinx took the gold bird. It was a piece of Samaran money, called an aviot, and Jinx knew that Simon had bespelled it so that he could keep an eye on Jinx . . . at least when Simon was home and remembered to look in the Farseeing Window. Angrily, Jinx stuck the bird in his pocket.
“And drop the attitude. I suppose you’re at a difficult age.”
Jinx thought that was a bit much coming from Simon, who had been born at a difficult age. He started to say so, but then he saw warm blue clouds of worry around Simon’s head. The wiza
rd was very close to not letting Jinx go at all. And the trees wouldn’t like that. So Jinx kept his mouth shut.
Reven bowed, of course, taking his leave of Simon. “Farewell, good wizard. Thank you for your hospitality. I’m sorry not to have met your lady wife.”
There was a little ripple of red pain from Simon at that. Sophie had gone through the magic door into her world, Samara, months ago, and hadn’t returned. Jinx wished she would. He was very fond of Sophie.
Simon grunted. “Well, if you get into trouble, come back. The door knows your name.” He turned to Elfwyn. “Yours too. But you’ll be coming back anyway.”
“I’m going to Keyland with Reven,” said Elfwyn.
“I thought you wanted to find a cure for your curse,” said Simon.
“It’s more important to help Reven, though,” said Elfwyn.
“Really?” said Simon. “I’d be inclined to think it was more important to get rid of the curse. However—”
“Thank you, good wizard,” Reven said. “We must be going.”
Jinx was surprised. People didn’t usually interrupt wizards.
“Hmph,” said Simon. “Jinx, try not to do anything stupid. Come back at once. And don’t lose that thing.”
He meant the aviot, of course. Jinx clenched his hand around it, in his pocket. The gold wings dug into his fingers and he resented it.
He would get rid of it at the first opportunity.
“It’s very good of you to do this for me, my lady,” said Reven as they approached Butterwood Clearing.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Elfwyn, thinking pink fluffy thoughts at him. “I just think my mother probably knows your real name, because she’s the one who told me the story, about how your father killed your mother and your uncle killed your father and—oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s nothing,” Reven assured her cheerfully.
“No, I shouldn’t have said that. It must be awful for you to talk about it.”
“He can’t talk about it,” said Jinx. “That’s the whole point.”
Jinx could see that mention of these horrible events didn’t really upset Reven at all.
“Oh, there’s the old walnut tree,” said Elfwyn. “I don’t think the storm was so bad here, was it? We’re getting close now.” Gray clouds of worry. “I hope they don’t mind me coming home.”
Jinx's Magic Page 2
