Jinx's Magic

by Sage Blackwood

  He handed Jinx a slim volume called Sojourn Among Savages. “Here’s a book about Angara. Study it when you’re done studying the other stuff.”

  “I’m never going to be done studying the other stuff,” said Jinx, looking at the piles of books.

  “Just don’t take any of those books out of the Samaran house. Don’t take them to the Temple with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because books are viewed with great suspicion in Samara.”

  “Then why—”

  “A lot of things aren’t going to make sense,” said Simon. “Just keep quiet and wait until they do. Be polite and don’t call attention to yourself. Bow to any scholar above you in rank, which will be all of them. And—”

  “I don’t want to bow,” said Jinx.

  “Do it anyway. You’re playing a role. Nobody must find out you’re from the Urwald. They don’t know there’s any way to get to the Urwald, and you’re not going to tell them. Oh, and absolutely do not do any magic. At all. Magic is highly illegal and you can be put to death for it.”

  “And you’re sending me there to learn magic.”

  “Yes,” said Simon.

  “Wonderful,” said Jinx.

  “And watch your mouth. In fact, I can’t send you there if you can’t watch your mouth.”

  Anything Jinx might say to this would be taken as evidence that he couldn’t watch his mouth. He glared at Simon.

  “Good,” said Simon. “And take this.”

  Jinx took it—a letter to Simon’s wife. There had been lots of early versions of the letter that had gotten crumpled up and thrown into the air, where they burst into silver flames and then rained down as glittering pink ashes. This final version was sealed seventeen times with enchanted red wax.

  “Give it to Sophie immediately,” said Simon. “And don’t read it, or—”

  “You’ll turn me into a toad.” Jinx was looking forward to seeing Sophie again. She’d always been kind to him. Simon was kind too, Jinx supposed—but Sophie was actually nice about it. She never said “drop the attitude” or “because I said so.”

  Besides, he could ask her stuff. Though he supposed he could try asking Simon. “Have you ever talked to a werewolf?”

  Simon gave him an odd look. “Of course not.”

  “I did,” said Jinx.

  “Nonsense. You wouldn’t be standing here with all your pieces still attached if you had.”

  “But I did,” Jinx insisted. “After, um, Siegfried . . . when I was wandering around, I met a werewolf. He told me I had to figure out what a Listener is.”

  “Were you hungry and tired?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “You hallucinated a talking werewolf. And Listeners are just an old legend.”

  Jinx tried again. “What about elves?”

  “What about them? They’re dangerous. You’d better not try talking to them either,” said Simon. “Here’s twenty aviots to pay for your tuition at the Temple.”

  The gold was cold and very heavy in Jinx’s hand. “It costs that much?”

  “Yes,” said Simon. “So don’t screw up.”

  Jinx thought of something Reven had said. Simon was rich. Most magicians were merely comfortable.

  “Why do you have so much money? And, like, this house and stuff?” Jinx asked.

  “I inherited it.”

  “But your dad, um, only just died.”

  “And wouldn’t have left me anything if he’d had it,” said Simon. “It was left to me, if you must know, by the great wizard Egbert Magus.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A magician who took me in after I left the Bone-master. On his good days, he tried to teach me everything he knew.”

  “What about his bad days?”

  “On his bad days, he generally thought he was an onion.”

  “That’s awful,” said Jinx.

  “No, it’s not. What was awful was when he thought he was a potato masher.”

  “Oh.”

  “He always said to me, ‘Mildred, one day this will all be yours.’” Simon made a wide gesture, encompassing books, cats, and the door to Samara.

  “Er, he called you Mildred?”

  “Often as not.”

  “Maybe he really meant to leave everything to Mildred,” said Jinx.

  “If she ever shows up, we’ll talk,” said Simon. “But I think she may have been a dog he once had.”

  “Oh,” said Jinx. “Um, was that why you went to Samara to find the healing magic? For Egbert?”

  “Yes.”

  Jinx was relieved to hear this. He’d been afraid, for a minute there, that Egbert had become Calvin. “So you didn’t, like—”

  But no, there was a familiar blue glow when Simon spoke of Egbert the Onion. It seemed he had been genuinely fond of him.

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t find the healing magic,” Jinx amended.

  “Of course not. They keep it well hidden.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh yes,” said Simon. “Why. Wait till you get to Samara. Then you’ll see.”

  “I’m coming back pretty soon, though, right?” Jinx had frantic thoughts of Reven and the Bonemaster.

  “You’re staying there as long as it takes.”

  “To find the Eldritch thing?”

  “You’re to bring me the Eldritch Tome immediately.”

  “But taking the book—isn’t that stealing?”

  “Wait till you’ve been there a little while. Then tell me whether you think taking a book from the Temple is stealing.”

  “But . . . what if you don’t come back?” said Jinx.

  “Sophie’ll look after you.”

  “I don’t need to be looked after!” said Jinx. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Then you’ll look after her. Anyway, you can stay on in Samara. Become one of those Temple things, like Sophie.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Jinx. There was too much that needed doing here—too many threats. Lumberjacks, Reven, the Bonemaster. Once again he had that odd feeling that the Bonemaster was his responsibility.

  “Just make sure you’re out of the Urwald by midnight,” said Simon. “And don’t worry about me. I’ll come back.”

  After Simon left, Jinx began to have second thoughts. He should have insisted on going with him, deathbinding spell or no. It was true that the Urwald’s power was making Jinx do frightening, unpredictable things, but he wouldn’t mind doing a few unpredictable things to the Bonemaster.

  On the one hand, Jinx wondered if he ought to follow Simon and insist on helping him. On the other hand, he had a pretty good idea of how much Simon would appreciate that. On the third—well, moving on to feet, then—it didn’t matter whether Simon appreciated it or not. Jinx didn’t want Simon to get killed. It wasn’t like Jinx could necessarily do anything to prevent it, of course, but—

  There came a familiar pounding on the door. Jinx groaned inwardly and went to open it.

  “Hello, chipmunk!”

  Dame Glammer stood there in the deep blue evening, just as she had when Jinx had first seen her many years ago—snow swirling around her butter churn.

  “Come in,” said Jinx, standing aside. He didn’t want her here, he really didn’t, but magicians had to be hospitable. It was a rule.

  She took off her wraps and dumped them on him. “Simon here? I’ll be staying the night. Where’s my granddaughter?”

  “Don’t you know?” said Jinx. “Hasn’t the Witchline told you?”

  “Ah, you’ve been traveling.” She chucked him under the chin, which Jinx hated. “And become such a clever little chipmunk! Know all about the Witchline now, do you?”

  Jinx went over and busied himself at the fire, to avoid being chinchucked anymore. “Do you want some—kind of soup stuff?”

  Cooking was something he was even worse at than spells. Throwing everything into a pot and boiling it didn’t seem to do the trick, somehow.

  Dame Glammer s
niffed at the pot and wrinkled her enormous nose. “No, I’ll whip something up, chipmunk. You go back to your stacks and stacks and stacks of books. Where’s Simon?”

  “Around. I’ll make up the spare room for you,” said Jinx. He didn’t want to tell her Simon wasn’t here. He found her frightening.

  He went to look for blankets. He didn’t like the idea of being alone in the house with her. But it was all right, he told himself. Dame Glammer was an old friend of Simon’s. And just because she was also an old friend of the Bonemaster’s didn’t mean—well.

  Jinx really wished she wasn’t there.

  But when he came back out to the kitchen, she’d made some sort of thing with onions and potatoes happen, and an omelet, and there was a smell of apples baking in the oven.

  Which did make up, a little, for having to be cackled at.

  Jinx pushed some books out of the way, dislodged a cat, and set the table.

  “Simon! Dinner time!” the witch called merrily as she scooped fried potatoes and onions onto Jinx’s plate. “No, he’s not here, is he, chipmunk? He’d never have let me so much as peel an onion if he was.”

  That was true. Simon couldn’t stand to see other people cook, because they did it all wrong.

  “Now, I wonder where he’s gone,” said Dame Glammer, as a cat hopped into her lap and another curled around her ankles. “Can he have gone after the Bonemaster?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jinx. The omelet was pretty decent, and the potato stuff was really good.

  “And did my granddaughter stay in Keyland with that very ambitious young chickabiddy? She’s as much of a fool as her mother was. Doesn’t she want to be a witch?”

  Jinx rather thought Elfwyn wanted to be a wizard. But anyway, he could agree she was a fool. “She wants to get rid of her truth-telling curse.”

  “Does she?” Dame Glammer cackled.

  Annoyed, Jinx added, “And she knows where she got it from, too.”

  But that just made Dame Glammer cackle more. “And she still thinks she can get rid of it? Well, I don’t know how staying in Keyland will help.”

  “Can she get rid of it?” said Jinx. “Will you take it off her?”

  Dame Glammer grinned. “Why don’t you stick to your own concerns, chipmunk? What an awful lot of books you have. Are they magic?”

  “No,” said Jinx. They were not, not a single one of them. “You know what the Bonemaster did, right? You must have heard about it on the Witchline.”

  Dame Glammer frowned, an unusual expression for her. “Magicians don’t interfere with each other.”

  Jinx clenched his fists. “We can’t let him just go around killing people. We have to stop him. We have to all get together and stop him. And Reven—”

  He tried to explain to her that the Urwald was being threatened, from within and without, by the Bonemaster and lumberjacks and Reven. But it was just like it had been talking to everyone else.

  “Urwalders don’t get together,” she said. “We like space, dearie. We like to mind our own business, and have others mind theirs.”

  She sniffed. “I think those apples are done. Why don’t you go get them, chipmunk?”

  The baked apples were bubbling with cinnamon. Jinx burned his fingers on them. He dug his spoon into apple mush. “Do you know anything about elves?”

  “They’re neither dead nor alive, and they’re best left alone.”

  “Why? What can they do to you?” said Jinx.

  “Carry you off to the Eldritch Depths. Turn you into a little crystal chipmunk, and put you in their glass gardens.”

  “Would they ever, like, talk to someone?”

  “No chipmunk had better talk to them, if he knows what’s good for him. Simon doesn’t want you turned into a garden ornament, does he? Where is Simon, chipmunk?”

  “Around,” said Jinx. “So, like, what about werewolves?”

  “What about them, dearie? Why do you want to talk to elves and werewolves?” She cackled. “You have enough troubles. More than you know, chipmunk. You don’t need to go looking for more.”

  She was no help. Well, soon Jinx would see Sophie again. Sophie was a scholar, she’d studied the Urwald and its ways, and she always took Jinx seriously.

  She could answer his questions if anybody could.

  It was almost midnight. Dame Glammer was snoring loudly in one of the north tower rooms. Jinx didn’t much like leaving her alone in the house, but at least Simon’s bottled life was safe in the south wing. The front door would let in the people it knew—Simon’s witch friends, and Elfwyn if she chose to come. And Reven, Jinx realized. But this door that led to the workroom and the secret entrance to Samara was more selective. It knew only Jinx, Simon, and Sophie.

  Jinx looked around Simon’s workroom. He’d put all Simon’s stuff away on the shelves. The only thing left on the workbench was Calvin.

  Jinx picked Calvin up. He was yellowed and old-looking. How long did it take for a skull to get that way? Simon had never admitted to killing Calvin, but he’d never denied it either. But Simon wasn’t really old enough to have—

  Calvin blinked furiously. What was that about? Oh. Jinx picked a dead fly out of one of Calvin’s eye sockets. The skull grinned its thanks.

  Jinx had only recently learned to recognize power sources. He saw now that Calvin was one.

  Jinx thought of Cold Oats Clearing, and the bare, cold bones standing criss-cross. He remembered the purple potion in the snow. . . . Deathforce magic. Had Calvin been killed the same way?

  At least Simon didn’t use Calvin’s power. As far as Jinx knew.

  Jinx set Calvin down gently on the workbench. It occurred to him suddenly that he wouldn’t have much power when he got to Samara. He remembered his terror in Keyland when he’d discovered that he had none.

  “There are ways to move power,” Simon had said. Maybe if Jinx just made sure there was enough fire inside him, he’d be able to do magic in Samara.

  He went back out to the kitchen, and drew fire from the stove into himself. Then he levitated his huge stack of books and, pushing them ahead of him, went through the magically hidden door at the end of the corridor and into Simon’s house in Samara.

  Usually Jinx liked to read, but this wasn’t reading, it was cramming, trying to get endless facts into his head and make them stick there—the history, geography, and laws of Samara, and of all the countries around Samara, and several books about math. Jinx was aware that math existed, but he didn’t care. So he put those aside to concentrate on everything else.

  He read Sojourn Among Savages. It had been written by a Samaran named Iznak who had spent two weeks in Angara, and most of what he wrote was pretty much what Simon had said—that people from Angara weren’t very bright. Mainly this was because they did things differently from the way Samarans did them.

  Once, in the night, Jinx heard a scratching on the Samaran door of the house. Nervous, he went to open it. Nobody. The moonlit street was empty.

  He kept hoping Simon would come back. Simon had said he’d leave a signal when it was safe to return to the Urwald.

  “An egg,” he’d said. “Right here.” He’d pointed to the low table in the front room of the Samaran house.

  “An egg?” said Jinx.

  “On second thought, no. An egg is too useful. Someone might take it.”

  “Who?” said Jinx.

  “I’ll move this table over by that wall. That’s the signal. When the table’s by the wall, you can come back to the Urwald. Not before.”

  “But you said you wanted the Eldritch Tome right away.”

  “If you can get it, leave it here. Hide it under the sofa cushions.”

  “Shouldn’t I just put it in the book room?”

  “Absolutely not in the book room. Under no circumstances.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” said Simon. “I said so.”

  Jinx had to struggle every day not to go back to the Urwald and look for Simon. Simon could be out sea
rching for the Bonemaster, anywhere at all in the vast unmapped expanse of the Urwald.

  Samara was hot. The sun glared down. Jinx walked around the outside of the Temple—past the gates that opened onto the market square, with the pillars and portico emblazoned with the words

  KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

  and past more halls and towers and outcroppings, to a small, unspectacular-looking gate. There was a bald, sallow man in a white robe blocking it.

  “Here to be examined?” the man asked, in Samaran.

  “Yes. I want to study—stuff,” said Jinx.

  “Novice lectors must pay twenty aviots.”

  “I know that,” said Jinx.

  The man held out his hand. “You can pay me. I’m the Gatekeeper.”

  “What if I don’t pass the test?”

  “That’s your lookout,” said the gatekeeper. “Mine is keeping out anybody that doesn’t have twenty aviots.”

  This struck Jinx as extremely unfair.

  But he had to find the Eldritch Tome. Without it, the Bonemaster couldn’t be defeated. He had to learn KnIP. And he had to find Sophie and get her to answer his questions about werewolves and elves. And Listeners. Jinx scooped the golden birds out of his inside pocket and, reluctantly, dropped them into the gatekeeper’s cupped hands.

  “Name? Age? Homeland?”

  “Jinx. Thirteen. I’m, uh, from Angara.”

  The gatekeeper opened the gate for Jinx, and stood aside.

  14

  The Test

  There were about forty people waiting to be tested. Jinx joined them, feeling very alone.

  “Yinks?”

  A scholar with dark-brown skin, and spectacles perched on the end of his nose, sat at a table. He peered around expectantly. Jinx went over to him.

  “You are Yinks?” The man smiled. “I am Omar.”

  “Jinx, please,” Jinx tried.

  Omar smiled again. “Yes. Yinks. Now then, Yinks. Are you ready to be tested?”

  “I guess. Yeah.” And hurry up! Jinx could feel every single fact he’d memorized rushing to escape.