Jinx

by Sage Blackwood

“Let me put these books away,” said Sophie. She gathered them up and went down the hall and through the wall into the hidden part of the house.

  Jinx went over to the stove. Simon was lying just about at Jinx’s eye level.

  “You should tell her you’re sorry,” said Jinx.

  “Thank you for your so helpful advice,” said Simon. “I’ve told her six times. You should tell me you’re sorry.”

  “For what?” Jinx had put up with too much to listen to this. In fact, he had had enough—enough of being told what to do and called an idiot and of having his magic taken away and everything. “I didn’t ask you to come after me! I wasn’t in any trouble till you came along.”

  “Oh, you could have found your way back to my house, could you?”

  “Probably! And who said I wanted to come back? I don’t have to live here! I don’t have to hang around here doing all your work for you and getting spells put on me.”

  “I’m teaching you magic, which most people would give their eyeteeth to learn.”

  “You took away my magic! And that was a lot worse than taking my eyeteeth, whatever they are. You took it away and didn’t even ask me!” Jinx flung away from the stove and began walking around in rapid circles. His insides were itchy with anger and he couldn’t stay still.

  “Hush! I didn’t take your magic. And don’t tell Sophie that.”

  “Don’t worry!” Jinx yelled. “That’s why you sent her away, because you knew she wouldn’t like it, and if I tell her now, then she’ll leave again and I’ll have to take care of you.”

  “Tell her what?” Sophie came into the kitchen.

  Jinx stared at her, trying to think what to say.

  “Tell the truth, it saves time,” said Sophie.

  “The boy is mad because I don’t pay him,” Simon said. “So I’ll pay him.”

  “That’s not why I’m mad! That’s not what I want!” Jinx looked around for something to kick and decided on the stone wall of the stove. He hurt his foot and didn’t care. He started walking in circles again.

  “What do you want then?” said Sophie. “You ought to pay him, Simon. I always said so. You can’t go buying people for a penny—”

  “He didn’t buy me for a penny!” said Jinx. “He never gave anyone a penny for me. He offered Bergthold a penny and then he summoned trolls to come and get him.”

  Sophie gave Simon a sharp frowning look. “So you did kill him.”

  “I didn’t summon the trolls. The stepfather summoned them.”

  “He couldn’t have!” said Jinx. “He didn’t know any magic!”

  “Greedy, violent people attract trolls as naturally as blood attracts wolves. They smelled your stepfather, I assume.”

  Jinx had never heard of that before. He wondered if it was true. You couldn’t trust Simon was the thing. Jinx went on walking in furious circles.

  “Anyway, he’d taken you into the woods to abandon you, so let’s not shed too many tears,” said Simon.

  “I wasn’t shedding tears! I just thought you should tell Sophie the truth.”

  “Jinx, stop it. You’re making me dizzy,” said Sophie.

  Jinx stopped pacing and stood with his arms folded, glaring at Simon.

  “You’ve been under a lot of strain, Jinx,” said Sophie.

  “He’s been under a lot of strain?” said Simon.

  “Well I hope you don’t think you have!” said Sophie. “Because all you’ve had to do is lie there—”

  “Trying not to die from being stabbed by the people you insist on working for even though they’ve sentenced me to death!” Simon heaved himself up into a sitting position and rocked unsteadily.

  “It’s not my fault you broke our laws, is it? And I do have a job, you know!”

  They were yelling. Their voices rang off the stone walls—the cats had all fled.

  “I would have put you before any job, if it had been me!” Simon shouted. “Especially a job working for people who had sentenced you to death. But apparently not everyone thinks that way.”

  “The court sentenced you. It had nothing to do with the Temple of Knowledge.”

  “The Temple of Knowledge owns the courts and everything else in Samara. Bought and paid for, everything and everybody. Including you, it seems.”

  “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this!” Sophie turned angrily toward the hallway that led to Samara.

  “Yes, you do!” said Jinx, grabbing her arm. “Simon, stop making her mad!”

  “I didn’t make her mad, you made her mad.”

  “Jinx, let go of me.”

  “You have to stay and take care of him.”

  “I’m not sure he’s worth taking care of.”

  “He was really sorry about the stuff he said to you that time,” said Jinx. “He stares at the wall all the time, all right? He didn’t want you to leave.”

  “Jinx, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” said Sophie.

  “I do. I saw it in his head, all right? I could tell what he was thinking.”

  “Oh, Jinx. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m not being ridiculous! You don’t believe me either! He took my magic away and he never believed I had it and neither do you!”

  Sophie frowned. “What do you mean, he took away your magic?”

  “Jinx, shut up. I didn’t take anything.”

  “No, I want to hear this,” said Sophie.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! Don’t listen to him!”

  “I do too know what I’m talking about!” Jinx was yelling now. “You got those roots from Dame Glammer on purpose so you could do the spell on me! And she said it couldn’t be for any good purpose! And you drew all those symbols on the floor and did the spell on me, and I floated up to the ceiling, and then you took away my magic and put it in a bottle, and that’s why you sent Sophie away, because you knew she wouldn’t let you, and now you’re lying about it.”

  In the ringing silence that followed this, Jinx realized that once you’ve said things, it’s impossible to unsay them.

  Sophie turned to Simon. “You what?”

  “It wasn’t what it sounds like.”

  “That’s it. I’m leaving,” said Sophie.

  “Are you even going to listen to my side of it?” Simon demanded.

  “No, I’ve done quite enough of that in my life already.”

  “You can’t leave!” Jinx said. “I don’t know how to take care of him, and he’ll die.”

  “Well, then he won’t be able to do spells on innocent little children and murder their stepfathers,” said Sophie.

  “I’m not an innocent little child,” said Jinx. “And my stepfather actually kind of beat and starved me a whole lot.”

  “But that’s not as bad as doing magic,” said Simon.

  “You can’t go, Sophie, you can’t let him die, if you do you’ll be just as bad as he is,” said Jinx.

  “Oh thanks,” said Simon.

  “You haven’t reformed at all, have you, Simon?” said Sophie. “You did deathforce magic on the boy.”

  “I never do deathforce magic!” said Simon. “If you knew anything at all about magic, which you refuse to—”

  “What’s deathforce magic?” said Jinx.

  “—you’d know deathforce magic when you saw it. And anyway, I did it to keep him safe,” said Simon.

  “To hear you tell it, you’ve never done anything for a bad reason,” said Sophie.

  “What’s deathforce magic?” Jinx repeated, with a feeling of rising panic.

  “It’s magic that uses a human life,” said Sophie, glaring at Simon.

  “Well, I’m not dead!” said Jinx. “So he can’t have done deathforce magic on me.”

  “The boy’s even taking your side,” said Sophie. “I suppose that’s because of a mind-control spell.”

  “There’s no such thing,” said Simon. “He’s taking my side because I’m right.”

  “I’m not taking his side!”
said Jinx. “He took my magic. I told you. And I want it back. And I’m going out into the Urwald and find it!”

  “You can’t go into the Urwald,” said Sophie.

  “He can if he wants,” said Simon. “So go, then, boy.”

  “Simon! You can’t let him. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Life is dangerous,” said Simon. “Young people need to see the world.”

  “There are all sorts of monsters out there,” said Sophie. “He could be killed.”

  “He knows how to conceal himself very effectively.” Simon lay back down. “And he knows the forest; he’s not afraid of it, not like most people are. He has some crazy idea that the trees talk to him.”

  “I can’t believe you’d let him go!”

  “I have to, don’t I? He’s not my slave,” said Simon. “If he doesn’t appreciate what he’s got, let him leave.”

  “Maybe he wants to go back to his people,” said Sophie.

  “I don’t want to go back to them,” said Jinx. “I want to get my magic back.”

  “Where is his clearing?” said Sophie.

  “I don’t know,” said Simon. “By the time I found him, he was already lost.”

  “You must have made inquiries,” said Sophie. “I know you—you always find things out.”

  “It’s called Gooseberry Clearing,” Simon admitted. “West of here, a day’s journey. It’s not very big, and they had a bad bout of winter plague and werewolves a couple years ago.”

  “What! You just left them to die?”

  “Why not? They’d left Jinx to die,” said Simon. “Besides, they’re not my responsibility.”

  “No, nothing is, is it?”

  “Anyway, they didn’t all die,” said Simon. He was watching Sophie’s face carefully. “I sent some rye and potatoes after they started starving.”

  “You’re an extremely strange person,” said Sophie.

  “Are you going to give my magic back, then?” said Jinx.

  “I don’t have your magic,” said Simon. “Haven’t I explained this to you before? Magic is something you do, not something you have.”

  “Then I’m leaving,” said Jinx.

  “So good riddance,” said Simon.

  “Simon!” said Sophie. “You don’t mean that.”

  “What, now I can’t say things I don’t mean?”

  Jinx refused to let them distract each other from him. “It was deep Urwald magic,” he said. “Dame Glammer said so. And I’m going to go into the Urwald and find it.”

  Simon looked startled. “Don’t go near Dame Glammer. You can go where you want, but stay away from her.”

  Jinx didn’t bother to answer that. Dame Glammer could tell him what had happened to his magic.

  “And stay away from the Bonemaster, too,” said Simon.

  But Jinx had no intention of going anywhere near the Bonemaster. Why would he? He was going to Dame Glammer.

  13

  The Truce of the Path

  The next day, which was drizzly, Jinx set out into the world to seek his fortune.

  He had a knife at his belt and a pack with a blanket and some food in it. He’d been hugged by Sophie and glowered at by Simon. Well, let him glower. Simon wasn’t about to die, and Jinx was relieved about that, but he was pretty disgusted with the wizard on the whole. The feeling seemed to be mutual.

  Tucked into a hidden pocket inside his tunic Jinx had the gold bird talisman Simon had made him—Simon had insisted he take it—and five silver pennies. In his outside pocket he had four farthings that he’d made by chopping up another penny. It was tricky splitting the pennies in exactly the right place. But Jinx was pretty good with an ax—he’d been chopping firewood for years.

  “I told you I was going to pay him,” Simon had said, ostentatiously counting out the six pennies in front of Sophie. “Six pennies for six years. Good enough?”

  Since Sophie didn’t say anything, Jinx figured it must be good enough.

  He followed the path. It joined another path. Jinx stopped. To the west lay the thing the trees were so afraid of. Jinx didn’t much want to run into it. But Dame Glammer’s house was that way too. Jinx turned to the right and headed west.

  Jinx had been in the forest a lot, and he had left the path, and he had learned not to be afraid of the dark unknown. When he had had Simon’s house to run back to. Now he didn’t. There was an exhilarating thrill to being on a journey of his own, but it was scary, too.

  He reminded himself that he could do a very strong concealment spell. Or at least had done one, once.

  The trees hung heavy overhead, and Jinx imagined things lurking in the branches—werewolves. Could werewolves climb trees? The human part of them probably could. And there might be elves, vampires—

  Resolutely he thought of the Truce of the Path. Nothing could attack him as long as he stayed on the path. He tried to recapture the elusive joy of freedom.

  Bam! Something hit him hard on the back, and he was lying flat on the path, his face pressed down so that he tasted dirt. He struggled against the hand pressed into the back of his skull, then stopped when he felt cold steel biting into his neck.

  “Let me go!” he said.

  “Your money or your life!”

  “Okay, you can have my money,” said Jinx, with some difficulty because the robber was kneeling on Jinx’s back, and Jinx’s mouth was full of gritty dirt from the path. “Let me up so I can get it.”

  “Where is it?” said the robber suspiciously.

  “In my pocket, on my belt.”

  The robber seized Jinx’s belt and pulled the pocket around to the back. Jinx felt him unbutton the pocket and reach inside.

  “Is this all you’ve got?”

  “Yes! And I worked a year for it. Let me up!”

  The weight was off Jinx’s back. Jinx stood up, turned around, and faced a boy about a head taller than he was. Jinx hadn’t even been robbed by a full-grown robber!

  “Haven’t you ever heard of the Truce of the Path?” Jinx demanded.

  “No,” said the boy, tucking Jinx’s money into his own belt pocket and buttoning it. He sheathed his knife.

  Jinx punched him in the stomach.

  The robber doubled over in pain. Jinx grabbed the robber’s head, but the robber stood up, catching Jinx with his shoulder, and threw him. The ground came up and hit Jinx so hard, it felt as if it had passed right through him. He lay flat on his back and wondered if he would ever be able to breathe again. The robber plainly knew more about fighting than Jinx did. Jinx decided to stay where he was.

  The robber clutched his stomach and uttered a foul word.

  “Same to you,” said Jinx, getting his breath back at last. “At least I didn’t break the Truce of the Path.”

  Well, actually he had, but the robber had broken it first.

  “What is this Truce of the Path of which you speak?” the robber asked.

  He had a clipped, formal manner of speech that reminded Jinx of Sophie. But he didn’t seem to have as much trouble with the sounds of Urwish as Sophie did.

  “You’re not from the Urwald, are you?” said Jinx, sitting up painfully.

  “No, thank the gods. But my king owns it.”

  “Nobody owns the Urwald,” said Jinx. He got to his feet. He brushed off his coat and his breeches. He noticed that the robber was well dressed—at least by Urwald standards. You could afford to be if you were a robber, probably. The robber had a whole penny of the six Simon had given Jinx. A whole year of cleaning Simon’s house, splitting firewood, mucking out the goats, and putting up with Simon’s moods. It made Jinx angry.

  “The Truce of the Path,” he told the robber, “is that you can’t harm anyone while they’re on the path. Every thinking creature in the Urwald obeys it. Even monsters obey it. If a werebear jumped out of the woods right now, it wouldn’t hurt us. Everybody honors the truce. Only you”—he jabbed the robber angrily in the chest—“don’t.”

  The robber took a step backward. “I di
dn’t know about it.”

  “Then you’re an idiot.”

  The robber looked hurt. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “Neither is jumping on people’s backs and stealing from them! Idiot.” Jinx turned and walked away.

  A moment later he heard footsteps trotting behind him, and he spun around to face the robber again.

  “My name is Reven,” said the robber, extending a hand.

  Jinx stared at the hand and then at the robber. He had light brown hair and a thin face, and Jinx thought that the robber would not grow up to be the kind of thick, hairy man that survived best in the Urwald.

  “And whom do I have the honor of addressing?” the robber asked, putting his hand down again.

  “Jinx.”

  “Do you mind if I walk with you for a while?” said Reven.

  Jinx looked at him in disbelief. Quite aside from the fact that Reven had just robbed him, Jinx still had five pennies sewn inside his clothes and Simon’s gold talisman. And he had more important things, like his blanket and his knife (he’d never thought of using the knife when he fought Reven), which he didn’t want to have stolen.

  “I suppose I can’t stop you,” said Jinx, and turned around and walked on, with the robber beside him.

  14

  Three Spells Too Many

  The path had wound and split a couple of times, and Jinx wasn’t sure if he was still headed toward Dame Glammer’s house. It was getting dark.

  “We should stop soon and make camp for the night,” Reven said.

  So you can steal the rest of my money? Jinx just stopped himself from saying this—no point in admitting he had more money.

  “I usually camp just off the path and cut a few pine boughs for a shelter,” Reven said.

  “You what?” Jinx had to stop and stare at this latest declaration of idiocy.

  Reven repeated himself. “I make quite good shelters. Want me to show you how?”

  “No. You don’t ever, ever cut anything off a living tree.” Jinx sounded to himself like Simon, scolding. “Never.”

  “Why? Are they holy or something?”

  “No. They’ll take revenge. You kill a tree, the trees kill a person. You cut off limbs—so do they. Or anyway, they make sure limbs get lost.”