Jinx

by Sage Blackwood

  “You could have told us you had a curse on you that made you have to tell the truth,” said Jinx.

  “Well, it’s pretty embarrassing,” said Elfwyn. “You didn’t tell us that evil wizard of yours had killed you.”

  “I didn’t know!”

  “Did it hurt?”

  Jinx didn’t want to talk about it.

  “I was trying to open the window, but I can’t,” he said instead. “I haven’t got the power.”

  Reven went over to the window and pulled—he couldn’t open it either. “You mean you can’t do magic at all here?”

  “Not really,” said Jinx. “I mean, there’s a lot of power here, but I can’t use it without the Bonemaster noticing.”

  “He caused that windstorm. I’m sure of it,” said Elfwyn.

  “I don’t think wizards can cause storms,” said Jinx. He’d never read anything about wizards being able to control the weather, and Simon had never mentioned—but you couldn’t trust Simon.

  “We’d better leave,” said Elfwyn.

  “Right,” said Jinx.

  “What?” Reven was surprised. “But the wizard—”

  “He’s evil,” said Jinx. “And we’re getting out of here.”

  “But I had hoped he might—” Reven trailed off, unable to mention his spell.

  “He won’t,” said Elfwyn. “Whatever he wants to keep us here for, it’s not to take our curses off us.”

  “But Jinx offered to pay him,” said Reven.

  “Reven, look at this castle,” said Elfwyn. “Look at the velvet drapes. The Bonemaster doesn’t need Jinx’s money!”

  “Actually the drapes are an illusion,” said Jinx. “But yeah.”

  “He seemed quite pleased with that golden charm he took from Jinx,” said Reven. “I’m sure that’s worth a bit.”

  Elfwyn frowned. “What was it, anyway?”

  “It’s called an aviot.” Jinx sighed. “Simon told me never to go out without it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I thought it was for safety,” said Jinx. “But I guess it was just a spell for spying on me.”

  “Maybe he wanted to spy on you to keep you safe,” said Elfwyn.

  “Elfwyn, he killed me,” Jinx reminded her.

  “But do you think he’ll come here looking for you?” said Reven.

  “Why would he?” said Jinx, exasperated.

  “Well, because, if the good Bonemaster is telling the truth, then you give the evil wizard Simon great power.” Reven frowned. “Perhaps we should at least stay here until we’ve had time to see whether the Bonemaster—”

  “Whether he wants to turn us into more parts for his bridge?” said Jinx. “Reven, he’s called the Bonemaster. He has a bridge made of bones. He’s just the slightest bit creepy, or didn’t you notice that?”

  “Yes, all right. I noticed that. But—”

  “Oh, and you drank wine out of a cup made from a skull.”

  Reven and Elfwyn both looked ill at that. “Are you sure?” said Reven.

  “All the cups on the table were made from skulls.”

  “But they didn’t look like skulls,” said Elfwyn.

  Jinx explained the technique for making a cup out of a skull.

  “And I suppose you learned that from Simon the not-evil wizard,” said Elfwyn.

  “Of course,” said Jinx. “So are we leaving?”

  “Let me get my things,” said Elfwyn.

  Reven considered. “Very well. I had hoped he might—”

  “Take your spell off you,” Jinx supplied. “It’s more likely he’ll take your bones off you.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” said Reven.

  They fetched their backpacks. Reven slipped the ax through the straps of his pack.

  “It looks dark down there,” said Elfwyn. “I think he’s gone to bed.”

  Jinx crept to the top of the stairs and looked into the great hall. The fire had died down to embers, and a gray curl of smoke rose from it. He nodded to Elfwyn and Reven, and the three of them tiptoed down the stairs.

  Dark shadows filled the hall. There was no sound except for the drip of water somewhere far away. They reached the great oaken door.

  Reven put his hand on the latch.

  “It’s locked,” he whispered.

  Jinx tried to levitate the latch, but it wouldn’t budge. “Let’s look for a back door,” he said.

  He started back across the hall.

  “Jinx!” whispered Elfwyn, just behind him.

  He turned around. Reven was still standing by the door with both hands on the latch. Jinx made a come-on gesture. Reven shook his head furiously. Elfwyn went back, and Jinx followed her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Jinx whispered. “Come on!”

  “I can’t,” said Reven. “My hands are stuck to the door.”

  “Just pull them away,” said Elfwyn, taking hold of one of Reven’s wrists. She pulled.

  “Ow! Let go!” said Reven. They were all still whispering.

  “I can’t let go!” said Elfwyn.

  This was ridiculous. Jinx reached out and grabbed Elfwyn’s arm to pull her away from Reven. At least he only grabbed her with one hand—so he still had the other hand free. But the hand he put on Elfwyn’s arm was stuck fast.

  “I thought you said wizards couldn’t do spells on people,” said Elfwyn.

  “He did the spell on the door, not on us. But I don’t know how—”

  Spells were hard to maintain if you weren’t actually looking at the object you were bespelling. It depended on how complicated the spell was, of course, and how powerful the wizard was. An illusion on curtains, for example, was much easier than something like this door. Jinx knew the Bonemaster had an immense power source nearby. Still, it was most likely that—

  “He’s here watching us,” said Jinx.

  “Ah. Quite so,” said the Bonemaster, stepping out of the shadows.

  Evil dastard! He’d known they’d try to escape, and he’d turned it into a trap. Jinx reached with his free hand for the ax strapped to Reven’s back. He had just worked it loose when it flew up out of his hand and struck the ceiling. Jinx swore.

  “Tsk. Such language, and in front of a lady,” said the Bonemaster.

  “Let us go!” said Jinx.

  The Bonemaster summoned a chair with a wave of his hand and sat down on it. “You know, manners are very important. You won’t have learned this from Simon. If you don’t have any manners, well, then who’s going to listen to you?”

  “I don’t call it very good manners to stick people to your front door.” Elfwyn’s voice was muffled by Reven’s coat, which was about an inch from her face.

  “You stuck yourselves to the door,” said the Bonemaster, leaning back in his chair and looking ready to settle in for a nice long chat. “I can’t think what you mean by it, but perhaps you’ll explain.”

  Reven was frantically trying to scratch his nose by rubbing it against the door.

  “Oh, it has to be a question, doesn’t it?” said the Bonemaster. “Tell me, Elfwyn, what were the three of you doing?”

  “Leaving,” said Elfwyn.

  “Now why would you want to do that?”

  “Because we’re afraid of you.”

  “Yes, yes, how tiresome of you,” said the Bonemaster. “People always are. And yet they come here anyway. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “Yes,” said Elfwyn.

  “But then they often find it quite difficult to leave,” said the Bonemaster.

  “The evil wizard Simon knows we’re here!” said Reven.

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” said the Bonemaster. “It will certainly be a more amusing party once he arrives.”

  He took the gold bird out of his pocket and spoke to it. “When you come to rescue your pet thief, Simon, be sure to bring what you stole from me. Otherwise I may not give him back.”

  “I’m not a thief,” said Jinx. And he certainly wasn’t a pet.


  “No? No instructions to come here and—no, I find I don’t believe that, Jinx.”

  The Bonemaster spoke to the bird again. “Come to think of it, Simon, bring me what you took from the boy.”

  He looked back at Jinx. “He does want you back, I take it.”

  “Yes,” said Jinx, only because he figured that was the correct answer if he wanted to stay alive. “What do we have to do to get you to unstick us?”

  “Ah, that’s more like it.” The Bonemaster smiled at Jinx. “I think—” He steepled his fingers together, leaned farther back in his chair, and looked up at the ceiling, where the ax was half buried in a beam. “I think I would like you to work for me, Jinx. As my servant. Until I find some other use for you.”

  “All right,” said Jinx.

  “Goodness, how suspiciously quickly you agree, young man. I’m afraid I’m no more trusting than you are. I wonder how I can assure myself of your loyalty? Especially when you’ve just attacked me with an ax.”

  “I wasn’t attacking you. I was going to chop the door down,” said Jinx.

  “Ah. It’s just as well you didn’t. I pay a ghoul to patrol the island at night.”

  Jinx was getting very uncomfortable stuck to Elfwyn’s arm.

  “I think you’ll work for me,” said the Bonemaster, “because you want me to take those curses off your friends. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” said Jinx.

  “And also because you wouldn’t like your friends to be harmed in any way. Am I right?”

  Jinx clenched his teeth. “Yes.”

  “Excellent,” said the Bonemaster. “Tomorrow, then, you can begin working for me. Your first job will be to convince Simon that if he wants to find more left of you than bones, he’d better get here soon.”

  He waved a hand, and they were all unstuck. Jinx shook out his arm, which had fallen asleep and was all pins and needles.

  Reven scratched his nose, stretched his arms and legs, and then charged at the Bonemaster, ready to do mayhem. He got two steps before he froze like a statue, unbalanced on one foot, and toppled. Jinx caught him and lowered him to the floor, thinking as he did that Reven probably wasn’t in league with the Bonemaster after all.

  “He’s frozen your clothes,” said Jinx. “As soon as he looks away from you, you’ll be unfrozen.”

  “Ah, sooner than that,” said the Bonemaster. He waved a hand again, and Reven was unfrozen and got to his knees, looking confused. “Let’s not try that again, young Reven. I’d hate to have to damage someone important enough to have a curse like yours cast on him.”

  20

  The Bonemaster’s Secret

  The next day Jinx and his friends explored the Bonemaster’s demesnes. The Bonemaster allowed them to. In fact, he invited them to, all smiles and politeness. Jinx was suspicious.

  “Do be careful out there,” said the Bonemaster. “I would hate to have you fall off.”

  They went outside into a gray fog, moving cautiously. The fog was thick—you could see only about twenty feet ahead of you.

  When they got to the place where they thought the bridge of bones should be, it wasn’t.

  “Maybe it’s invisible,” said Reven. He walked up to the two stone posts that had anchored the bridge the night before. He felt around the edge of the cliff with his feet.

  “Don’t do that!” said Jinx.

  “Do what?”

  “Stand so close to the edge.”

  Reven laughed. “I’m fine—don’t worry about me. See?” He stood on one foot and stuck his other foot out over the edge and waved it.

  Jinx closed his eyes and felt ill.

  “Stop it, Reven. That’s mean,” said Elfwyn. “Could he turn the bridge invisible, Jinx?”

  “How should I know?” It wasn’t nice, but Jinx felt unaccountably irritated with her for sticking up for him. “If Reven says the bridge isn’t there, the Bonemaster probably took it away.”

  “Let’s see if there’s another way down,” said Reven.

  And he led the way, walking much too close to the edge of the cliff. Jinx kept far away from it, and Elfwyn walked in between.

  The island was about an acre in size, and nothing grew on it except lichen and a single gnarled hemlock tree digging its roots deep into cracks in the rock and finding Jinx-couldn’t-imagine-what-nourishment. There was no way down. They could hear water rushing far below.

  “Is it just as far down all the way around?” said Elfwyn.

  “Come and look,” said Reven.

  Elfwyn did, cautiously, and Jinx, hating himself for being afraid when they were not, inched forward until he could see over the edge. The canyon was filled with clouds. Nothing penetrated the fog except the black outline of a tree here and there on the cliff tops. You couldn’t see the ground.

  Jinx really was not a coward. It wasn’t as if his brain was afraid—it was his body that was screaming at him to get away from the edge of the cliff.

  They circled the island and then started around again. When they had gotten to the farthest point from the wizard’s house, they stopped to talk.

  “Do you think Simon will be able to get us out of here?” said Elfwyn.

  “I don’t think he’ll even try,” said Jinx.

  “He must care about you. He gave you that bird so—”

  “So he could spy on me!”

  “—so he could make sure you were safe.”

  “Why are you sticking up for him?” Jinx demanded. “You said he was evil. You heard what he did to me!”

  “I heard what the Bonemaster said he did,” said Elfwyn.

  “He spied on me! And he took my life!”

  Elfwyn looked out at the fog. “Or anyway, that’s what the Bonemaster wants you to think.”

  “Look, I know he did,” said Jinx. “He did this evil spell and took away my life, and afterward I couldn’t see the stuff around people’s heads.”

  And it made sense that that talent would go away with his life, he thought—if he’d developed it to protect himself, like Dame Glammer said. There was no need to protect a life you’d already lost.

  Reven cleared his throat. “What does the magic bird do, exactly?”

  “Simon has this window.” Jinx looked at Elfwyn and remembered how different she’d seemed in the Farseeing Window. She’d never taken Simon’s side back then. But then, she’d only spoken words he’d invented for her. “Most the time it just shows you what it wants to, but he must have fixed that bird with a spell so that the Farseeing Window would follow it and he could watch me.”

  He wondered if Simon’s spell enabled him to hear through the window as well as see.

  “He won’t know where you are, though, will he?” said Reven. “All he’ll see is the inside of the Bonemaster’s pocket.”

  “It’ll show him Bonesocket, I think,” said Jinx.

  “You mean the outside of the castle?” said Elfwyn.

  “Yeah.” Jinx thought about how angry Simon would be if he knew where Jinx was. Stay away from the Bonemaster.

  “So he’ll be here soon,” said Reven. “Once he looks in his magic window.”

  “I doubt it.” A thought occurred to Jinx. “Besides, he’s kind of sick right now.”

  “What’s the matter with him?” Elfwyn asked.

  “Somebody stuck a sword into him.”

  “And you left him? You didn’t stay to take care of him?” Elfwyn seemed really shocked by this.

  “He killed me!” Jinx said.

  “Yes, but you didn’t know that!”

  “Anyway, his wife is taking care of him.”

  “I didn’t know evil wizards had wives,” said Reven.

  “Some do. Anyway, he’ll probably forget to look in the Farseeing Window. He kind of forgets about me a lot.”

  “He’s sure to look soon,” said Reven.

  “I don’t see why,” said Jinx. “When I was little, he’d just go off places for days and leave me. He probably forgets I exist.”

  “So what will
happen when Simon doesn’t show up?” said Reven.

  “The Bonemaster will kill us,” said Elfwyn. “Well, me, anyway. He might not kill you because you’re probably somebody very important. And he might not kill Jinx because he thinks he can use him against Simon.”

  “Yeah, he can use me by killing me,” said Jinx. “Like he said. Because if I’m dead, Simon won’t have as much power.”

  “I wonder how they know each other,” said Elfwyn.

  “I expect all the evil wizards know each other,” said Reven. “How many wizards are there, anyway?”

  “Not very many.” Jinx had never met any others.

  “Simon and the Bonemaster must’ve been at one time, don’t you think?” said Elfwyn. “Because he said Simon stole something, and it would be hard to steal anything from Bonesocket if you weren’t inside it.”

  “We’ve been inside it and we’re not his friends,” said Jinx.

  They stood in silence for a moment, looking out at the mist.

  “We’d better plan to save ourselves, then,” said Reven. “The first thing we need to do is find the bridge.”

  “Can we find out where his power is coming from?” said Elfwyn.

  “Probably not,” said Jinx. “I mean, he’s got a power source hidden somewhere on the island, but it doesn’t matter where. He’s got a lot of it; that’s all we need to know. He can stick us to doors or probably turn us into toads if he wants to.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t use his power source,” said Elfwyn.

  “Because he would know.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, he just would. Simon could always tell what I was using for power. It’s just something wizards can sense.”

  “So shouldn’t you be able to find where the power source is, then?” Elfwyn pressed.

  “No, because I am not a wizard, all right?”

  “There’s no need to get cranky,” said Elfwyn. “I just thought if you could find his power source, maybe you could use it against him.”

  “Use it against him? Look, he’s the Bonemaster. He’s a really hugely powerful ferocious wizard. If I even tried to use his power, he’d know it and he’d probably kill me or something. You don’t understand magic.”

  Elfwyn turned away, looking hurt.