Jinx

by Sage Blackwood

  The cat shook its front paws disdainfully and turned and stalked out again, its tail held high.

  Sophie’s right, Jinx thought. Simon has changed. He thought of times Simon had been kind to him—making pumpkin pie because he knew Jinx liked it, and not letting the witches cackle at him too much, and occasionally checking to see whether Jinx had enough socks. And making that gold aviot charm to keep Jinx safe.

  Maybe when this spell was finished, the old Simon would come back again. Jinx would do whatever he could to make that happen.

  “Take this bottle and wash it as clean as you possibly can.”

  Jinx made his way gingerly among the chalk markings. He went out to the kitchen and put a kettle of water on the fire. Ordinarily he would have just dropped the green bottle right into it. But he was afraid of damaging it. The old Simon didn’t care much if Jinx broke things, but this new Simon probably would.

  When the water was hot, he scrubbed the bottle with a bottle brush, and with sand, and with soap, and then rinsed it. He rubbed it with a towel and then took it outside and held it up to the sunlight to make sure there wasn’t a spot or a smear anywhere on it.

  Then he took it back to the workroom and set it down in front of Simon, who said nothing.

  Jinx went back to the kitchen to look for something to eat. He had finished eating everything Simon had cooked, and Simon hadn’t eaten anything at all since Sophie had left.

  Jinx cut up some squash, pumpkin, and onions, and plunked them into boiling water. He let it stew awhile. It tasted of nothing. He put some salt in. He added a handful of cinnamon.

  He tasted it. It wasn’t very good. He added some sugarplum syrup.

  It tasted awful, but he ate a little.

  Then he dished some up for Simon. But Simon didn’t even look up when Jinx put the bowl on the workbench. Jinx pushed it toward him.

  “I think we’re ready to start,” said Simon. “First we need to light a fire under each of those braziers in the corners.”

  Simon had never said “we” about a spell before. Jinx ought to have been flattered, but he wasn’t. There was something wrong about this spell.

  “M-maybe I’ll just go into the kitchen and get out of your way.”

  “No, I need your help,” said Simon. “Take a coal with the tongs and go and light the braziers.”

  Jinx took the brass tongs and selected a glowing red coal from the dish on the workbench. As he carried it across the room, the glow and the hot smell filled his senses. There was tinder placed among the charcoal in each brazier, ready to catch. Over each one sat a pan filled with dried herbs, the potion Simon had been brewing, and a handful of twisted, evil-smelling black roots—they had to be the ones from Dame Glammer’s kerchief.

  As Jinx went from one fire to the next, very slowly and carefully so as not to step on the chalk figures, steam and smoke twisted into the middle of the room, forming a four-branched arch over his head. Jinx’s legs began to feel heavy—it was hard to control them and not to step on the chalk. He had a sense of not really being there, of being somewhere else. He was slowly floating away from his body. He could see himself now, from above, looking small and silly. He lit the last fire. The tongs and coal fell from his hands.

  Now he moved toward the center of the room—why was he doing that? Oh, Simon must have told him to. The room was rumbling with stone-heavy waves of sound that must have been Simon’s voice. Jinx couldn’t understand what Simon was saying, but he knew he was supposed to be in the center of the room, right here, in this jagged diagram, where the lines met—

  He watched his body collapse. It lay there like a rag doll, limbs sprawling uselessly.

  Simon’s voice rumbled through the air again, and then the wizard jumped up—that is, it took him a century or so to do it, so it wasn’t really jumping—and ran toward Jinx as slowly as if he’d been moving through solid stone.

  Jinx wasn’t really interested in that. He had floated to the ceiling and he wanted to float farther, but something was stopping him. It was immensely annoying. Jinx looked up, thinking it must be the ceiling that was in his way, but the stone ceiling was gone. Instead there was a great dome of black sky above him, dotted with fire-bright stars, millions of stars.

  Jinx had never seen the sky like this before. You couldn’t in the Urwald. There was a dim silver line, a great circle where the sky met the earth, and he felt an intense longing to go to the line and touch it. Desperately he tried to float higher. But he couldn’t. Something was holding him back. Maybe his body. Maybe Simon.

  Not really wanting to, he looked down again. Simon was kneeling beside the crumpled body. His hands were laid flat on Jinx’s chest. The wizard trembled with concentration.

  Then he straightened, holding a golden ball of light cupped in his hands.

  From above, Jinx watched curiously as Simon stood up and stepped over to his workbench, cradling the ball of light.

  The green bottle Jinx had scrubbed earlier—hadn’t he? It was so hard to remember now—was heating over a candle flame. Simon set the ball as gently as he could on the open bottle neck. It balanced, jiggling, for a moment, and then with a thwoop sound the golden ball swooped into the bottle.

  Quickly Simon corked the bottle, then walked back to Jinx’s body.

  Jinx turned around to look at the great night dome of sky again, feeling he could almost fly into it, if only Simon would let him.

  Then Simon knelt down by the body on the floor and laid a gentle hand on Jinx’s forehead. Horribly, Jinx felt himself being drawn downward, inexorably, back into his own body. He struggled, but it was no use. The ceiling reappeared above Jinx, stone and impenetrable—the sky was gone. Jinx began to sink. He slid into his abandoned body and knew no more.

  9

  Tied Up in a Sack

  Jinx woke up. He was on the floor before the summer fireplace, covered in itchy blankets. He was too warm. He shoved the blankets aside.

  Instantly Simon knelt down beside him. “Are you all right?”

  And Jinx had the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

  Simon put a hand on his shoulder. “Jinx? Say something, Jinx.”

  Jinx couldn’t figure out what was wrong. But whatever it was, it was wronger than it had ever been before.

  “Let me get you some water.”

  Jinx sat up. He stared at the beads of water on the copper dipper Simon brought him. Then he took the dipper in his hands, shakily, and drank. The water tasted of stone and copper. He drank all the water and wanted more. He would get up and get it. If he could figure out how to get up. It was as if he’d lost one of his senses.

  “Jinx, say something.”

  Jinx looked at Simon’s face and saw—nothing. Just a face. There were no colors and no clouds, no rays of light and no jagged orange anger … nothing but a face. Jinx had no idea what was going on behind it, no more than if it had been a cat’s face.

  It wasn’t just that Simon’s thoughts had gone opaque, like Dame Glammer’s. Something inside Jinx was gone.

  “No,” said Jinx.

  “No what?” said Simon.

  But what was Simon thinking? Was he being sarcastic, was he angry, was he worried? Were you supposed to be able to figure that out from the way things moved, mouths and eyes and eyebrows? It was like being tied up inside a sack! Furious, Jinx threw the dipper into the fire.

  Simon’s eyebrows shot up. Whatever that meant. He grabbed the fire tongs and plucked the dipper out—it was blackened with soot—and set it on the hearth.

  “Was that really necessary, Jinx?”

  “Yes,” said Jinx.

  He struggled to his feet with the world shaped all wrong. He staggered. Simon put out a hand to steady him and Jinx shrugged him away.

  “I can’t see,” said Jinx.

  Simon bent down and looked in Jinx’s eyes. “Of course you can see. You’re looking right at me.”

  “I can’t see.”

  One of his senses was gone. Maybe more. All r
ight, he could see with his eyes. And he could smell, feel, and hear. He licked the back of his hand—it tasted of dirt and salt. Five senses. The sixth one was missing.

  “I can’t see the clouds around your head,” Jinx explained, trying to fight down the rising panic. It felt like there was a blank white space in his head.

  “There aren’t any clouds around my head.” Simon spoke very patiently, and the expression on his face was—was what? Jinx didn’t know what Simon was thinking.

  “I mean the colored clouds! The ones you can always see.”

  “I can’t see colored clouds, Jinx.”

  “Of course you can! Everybody can.”

  But now Jinx was waking up and his thoughts were starting to organize themselves. Stop trying to read my mind, Dame Glammer had said. Nobody can. Was it the clouds she meant?

  “I guess everybody can’t,” Jinx said, realizing it for the first time.

  Simon’s spell had taken away Jinx’s ability to—not read minds, because that wasn’t really what it was, but see the color and shape of what people were thinking. Simon was looking down at him with some expression on his face that meant—concern? Anger?

  It didn’t matter! Jinx lurched to the front door—the blank white space made it hard to walk straight. The door wouldn’t open. “Let me out!”

  “Not right now, Jinx. Later. Calm down. Have something to eat.”

  “I don’t want anything to eat!” He pushed past Simon. There was another way out of the house. He climbed clumsily up the ladder to the loft. The blank white space got in his way, and when he reached the loft, he stumbled and almost fell over the edge into the kitchen. He could hear Simon hurrying up the ladder behind him. Jinx got to the door to nowhere and flung it open. Simon grabbed him.

  “Jinx! No, Jinx. You don’t want to do that.”

  Jinx struggled, trying to get out. He felt better now with the small blue sky above him and the life of the Urwald pouring in the open door. At least he could still feel that.

  “It’s a long way down, Jinx.” Simon hauled him inside and the door slammed shut by itself. “Now come downstairs and eat something.”

  “You can’t make me eat anything.”

  “Right. Come on, now.”

  Jinx half climbed, half fell down the ladder and ran to the drain by the pump and threw up.

  “All right, it can take people that way sometimes.” Simon pumped water into the drain and gave Jinx a damp towel.

  He put a hand on Jinx’s shoulder and Jinx, suddenly too tired to resist, let Simon steer him over to the stove steps to sit down.

  “What did you do to me?” Jinx demanded.

  “It’s just a small spell.”

  “It wasn’t a small spell, it was a huge spell!”

  “You’ll be all right soon.”

  “Not unless I can see the clouds again!”

  “Jinx, you’re babbling. There aren’t any clouds. Maybe you should rest.”

  “There’s something wrong with my head.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your head.”

  There was one more way out of the house. Jinx jumped up and staggered down the hall to the blank wall where Sophie had disappeared. He smacked into it. It was still a stone wall. He pushed at it, then pounded on it.

  “Jinx, stop!” Simon grabbed him.

  Jinx wrenched himself free. “Let me through!”

  “Jinx—”

  “I want to see Sophie!” He threw himself at the wall again. “Tell me how to get through.”

  “You can’t get through.”

  “You mean you won’t tell me how.” Jinx had never dared to speak to Simon that way before. He glared up at the wizard, expecting jagged orange anger, but of course there wasn’t any. There was that worried-looking expression, and who knew what lay behind it?

  Lies, probably.

  “She’s going to be really mad when she finds out what you’ve done to me,” said Jinx.

  “I haven’t done anything to you. Jinx—”

  “I know there’s a way through here!” Jinx turned to pound on the wall again, but Simon pulled him away.

  Jinx shook free and lurched into Simon’s workroom. He grabbed at things on the workbench, looking for the green bottle Simon had used in the spell. He pulled books off the shelves, looking to see if it was hidden behind them.

  “Stop that!” said Simon.

  Jinx accidentally knocked Calvin the skull off a shelf. He tried to catch him, but the blank white spot in Jinx’s head made him miss. The skull hit the workbench, rolled, and landed on his side, gazing up at Jinx crookedly.

  “What did he do to you?” Jinx asked him.

  “Jinx, sit down. Stop. Calm down. Now.” Simon grabbed Jinx, picked him up, and set him on the stool. “Deep breaths.”

  Jinx looked up at Simon and still couldn’t see any clouds. He would have liked to hurt Simon, to throw something at him, to pick up Calvin and hurl him at Simon’s unreadable face, but he couldn’t because Simon was dangerous. He’d never even realized before how dangerous.

  Jinx took deep, ragged breaths and tried to calm down and think, difficult as it was around the blank white space. Whatever Simon had done to him, there had to be a way to undo it. And Jinx was going to have to find it.

  10

  Knowledge Is Power

  Jinx spent days and nights searching the house for some clue to what Simon had done. Simon, meanwhile, was working on new spells. It seemed to Jinx that Simon was getting more powerful. Jinx was not. The only progress Jinx had made in learning magic was that now he could levitate a book, if it wasn’t a big one. That was all.

  It did not make up for what he had lost.

  Simon had gotten scraggly-looking about the hair and eyes. He probably wasn’t sleeping much. He certainly wasn’t bathing much. And he spent a lot of time staring at the blank stone wall that Sophie used to appear through. That was the sort of thing that let you know what people were thinking, Jinx was learning … you had to go by where their eyes went and the times when they just stopped talking, and things like that.

  But Jinx didn’t care. Ever since he’d lost his ability to see other people’s feelings, he’d become a whole lot more interested in how he felt. And how he felt was sick of everything. The only reason Jinx stayed in Simon’s house was because he didn’t see how he’d ever get his ability back if he left.

  Unless he could get to Samara. He remembered something Sophie had once said—that Simon had come to Samara looking for magical answers. Jinx wondered if he might be able to find out about his missing ability there. Because Simon had taken it away with magic, and now that Jinx thought about it, maybe his ability had been a kind of magic. Deep Urwald magic, Dame Glammer had called it.

  He examined the stone wall again and again. It was not an illusion. It was a wall.

  Simon went out into the Urwald frequently, for days at a time. Jinx never asked to go with him. Instead he made use of the time to search Simon’s workroom and the rest of the house, looking for the green bottle. He didn’t find it.

  Jinx read Simon’s books about magic, hoping to find out what Simon had done to him. The books weren’t very helpful—they tried to hide as much as they revealed. They put things in strange terms so that you would have trouble figuring out what you were supposed to do.

  There was a book in Samaran called Knowledge Is Power.

  When Jinx opened it, it burst into flames, but he just used magic to absorb them. Then he took it out to the kitchen and read it while sitting on the stove.

  It wasn’t a very useful book, as far as Jinx could tell. It was just a bunch of spells that went like this:

  An object may be concealed in plain view. One who knows that the object is there will find it, and one who does not will not.

  The book was full of stuff like that. It didn’t actually tell you how to do anything, it just told you that things might be done. Jinx read all the way through it—if only there was a way he could figure out what it meant! Maybe it
could help him get to Samara.

  Jinx burrowed his toes into the forest floor. His ability to understand the trees hadn’t gone into the green bottle with Simon’s spell. Jinx didn’t know why. In fact, since he’d lost the ability to see people’s thoughts, he seemed to hear the trees’ thoughts more clearly than ever. He tried asking the trees what Simon had done to his magic, but they didn’t hear him. They knew he was listening. They just didn’t listen back.

  It was summer and the trees were talking about that—about the rain and how well things rotted when the earth was warmer. And fear. The fear was something new, moving through the Urwald.

  The trees weren’t afraid of ogres, trolls, or dragons. They merely found them annoying. This had to be something much, much worse. It was moving from the west to the east—toward Simon’s house, as near as Jinx could figure. The trees were unspecific. They didn’t even try to describe the terrible creature. They just said fear.

  Jinx pulled his toes out of the dirt and started home.

  Something moved in the woods behind him. Jinx turned around. There was something hairy, walking on all fours. A werewolf, or a werebear? It slid out from behind a tree trunk. A werewolf. Jinx turned around to run, stepped into a hole, and fell.

  He got to his feet as quickly and silently as he could. When he put his right foot on the ground, pain shot through it. His right ankle bulged oddly on one side. He took a step. It hurt. He took another step. The werewolf was about fifty yards away now, sniffing interestedly at the ground. It hadn’t seen him, but it would pick up his scent in a second. As Jinx watched, it did. Its ears twitched. It snuffled eagerly toward the spot where Jinx had dug his feet into the ground.

  Jinx concentrated on doing a concealment spell. He concentrated harder than he’d ever done in his life.