Across the Great Barrier fm-2

by Patricia C. Wrede

  I didn’t think on it much, because we ran across Wash on our way back to the town gates, and the first thing he said was, “You have mail.” That was enough to knock everything else out of my head, just like that.

  I had a fat letter from Mama, and Professor Torgeson had a thin, official-looking one from the college. She opened hers right off and glanced it over, then smiled and said, “Nothing that can’t wait. Miss Rothmer?”

  I fingered the envelope. I couldn’t think why Mama would write so much, so soon, unless it was a lot of good advice she’d forgotten to give me before I left, and right then, I wasn’t too keen on advice. But I couldn’t hold everyone else up while I dithered, so I tore the envelope open.

  Two smaller envelopes and a sheet of paper fell out, and I felt very foolish. The single page was a note from Mama saying they missed me already but she was sure I was working hard, and that she was sending along the letters from Lan and William that had come just too late for me to get at home.

  I thought for a minute, then tucked the letters away in my saddlebag. I couldn’t see holding Wash and the professor up, and I figured I’d have time to read them after we got camp made at the wagonrest.

  When I finally did get to the letters, I was glad I’d waited. I opened Lan’s first. “If you’re so determined not to come East for school, why don’t you try for one of the ones nearer the border?” was the first thing he said. Then he had a whole list of suggestions, from the Northern Plains Riverbank College where Papa taught to the University of New Orleans at the other end of the Mammoth River. I sighed. I should have known Lan wouldn’t give up his notions without arguing.

  He didn’t say much else about my job with the college, except that he hoped I would have fun and to come back safe. The rest of his letter was about how much fun he was having at Simon Magus. Well, that and complaining about one of his professors, who he said was an idiot who thought he knew four times as much as he really did and what he really did know was wrong. I couldn’t follow all of it, because Lan started in on magical theory almost right away, telling me all the arguments he’d have liked to use on his professor.

  The last thing he said was that he wouldn’t be home for the summer again this year. I wasn’t too surprised. He’d only been home about one year in four since he went off to boarding school, and even then, he only stayed for a month or two at most.

  This summer, he and three of his friends were working with two of the professors, classifying a batch of new spells the college had imported from the Cathayan Confederacy and trying to develop Avrupan-style spells to do the same things.

  That made me frown just a little. Lan had never really been interested in either of the other major schools of magic — the Aphrikan or the Hijero-Cathayan — though he didn’t scorn them the way Professor Graham did. But Lan and I had grown up hearing Papa tell his students that the point of getting college schooling was to stretch yourself in new directions, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all.

  I set Lan’s letter aside and opened William’s. It was a lot shorter, though it covered nearly as much ground as Lan’s. William didn’t waste a lot of words. First he said congratulations on getting a position with the survey; then he said that he’d be staying in Belletriste for the summer, working for a company there that made railroad cars. He didn’t say anything about his father, but I knew William, and I knew that if he was staying in Belletriste, it meant that Professor Graham still hadn’t forgiven him.

  Apart from that, I could tell that William liked Triskelion University every bit as much as Lan liked Simon Magus. He had a whole list of classes he wanted to take in the fall, and he was planning to study evenings all summer so as to convince the professors that he could handle some of the more advanced material.

  I wrote Mama and Lan each a note, saying that nothing much eventful had happened and I was enjoying the work so far. I wrote more particulars to William, because I knew he’d be interested in the way the professor recorded all the little details, from types of plants to daily weather. I left all three letters unsealed. I wasn’t sure when we’d stop at a settlement where I could mail them, and in the meantime, I could keep adding things.

  About the time I finished up my letters, just when the sun was going down, Mr. Carpenter showed up, looking for Wash. Not that he was hard to find; there were only three groups staying at the wagonrest that night. The wagonrest, like the settlement, had been expanded as the Western settlements grew, by adding two loops to the original log palisade, one on either side of the main circle. Mr. Carpenter’s group had made camp in one of the additions; we’d set up in the main circle, along with a family by the name of Bauer who’d come north from St. Louis, heading for some relatives up along the Red River.

  Mr. Carpenter spotted Professor Torgeson and me right off. His face went kind of blank when the professor pointed out Wash, talking to the Bauers’ guide; then he put back his shoulders like he was giving a recitation in front of a whole school, teachers included, and walked over to join them.

  I couldn’t hear their talk from where I was sitting, but it didn’t take many minutes before the Bauers’ guide threw his hands up in the air and walked off in as much of a huff as ever I’ve seen on anyone west of the Mammoth River. Wash talked with Mr. Carpenter a bit longer, arguing some, it looked like. Eventually Mr. Carpenter stomped off toward his camp and Wash came back to our fire, shaking his head.

  “Is there a problem?” Professor Torgeson asked him, glancing after Mr. Carpenter.

  “Not for us, Professor,” Wash said. “But I don’t know what the Settlement Office was thinking, letting that gentleman loose in the West.”

  “He said he was heading for Kinderwald,” the professor replied. “Since the Frontier Management Department has temporarily suspended the building of new settlements, I assume he has family there, or perhaps has purchased an allotment.”

  “He bought in,” Wash said. “And he’s in for a shock. For one thing, neither he nor anyone in his family speaks Prussian, and Kinderwald’s a pure immigrant settlement — their magician is the only one there who has any English at all. For another … well, he seems of the opinion that he can take on the wildlife with one hand tied behind his back, and no need for guides or protection spells.”

  “He didn’t sound so unreasonable when we talked to him this afternoon,” the professor said.

  Wash shrugged. “Possibly he’s not so plainspoken with ladies. From what he said to me, he wants to get where he’s going, and he’s not much accustomed to waiting. And he didn’t take kindly to being told he’s best off waiting here. There’s more traffic through Puerta del Oeste than there will be farther on.”

  “Where is Kinderwald?” I asked.

  “About a week south of Little Fog,” Wash said. “I told him that if he was dead set on it, he could come that far with us, but we couldn’t spare two weeks to get him all the way to Kinderwald and then get back to our route. He didn’t much like that, either. I gather he intends to pull out in the morning.”

  “He’s a fool if he tries to make it alone,” Professor Torgeson said flatly.

  Wash shrugged again. “I did my best. Possibly you can talk sense into him.”

  The professor looked for a minute as if she’d like to try, but then shook her head and went back to her notes. Still, she did stop off at Mr. Carpenter’s camp next morning. She came back muttering about pigheaded, stubborn men. Mr. Carpenter’s wagon pulled out of the wagonrest about half an hour later, right after the Bauers’. Wash shook his head, and the professor pressed her lips together, but there wasn’t much either of them could do except watch him go.

  CHAPTER 8

  WE SPENT THE REST OF THAT DAY COUNTING PLANTS AND ANIMALS around the wagonrest, the same way we had at the first one. Professor Torgeson let me do one side while she did the other, though she came and checked my work around mid-morning and again a few hours later. She must not have found anything to complain of, because she just nodded and told me to keep on the
way I was going. Later on, she showed me how to collect specimens, though she only kept one of the plants she’d collected herself. She had a special case for them, divided into compartments to hold small vials (for insects and seeds) and press blocks (for pressing and drying and protecting flowers and leaves).

  When we left the Puerta del Oeste wagonrest the next morning, we made a sharp turn straight west. Wash warned us that soon we’d be crossing into the area that the grubs and the mirror bugs had laid to waste the summer before, and asked if the professor wanted to do any more surveying before we got there.

  Professor Torgeson looked thoughtful for a moment, but then she said that we had enough to go on with and she was more concerned with documenting the new growth in the recovering area. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant at first. I’d been through some of the area the summer before, when we went to Oak River, and it had looked the way I’d always thought a desert would: barren and dusty and eerily quiet. I couldn’t see much recovering happening any time soon.

  But two hours later, we were riding past green, green meadows and settlements with fields sprouting. From a distance, it looked almost normal, until you noticed that nearly all of the trees were dead, leafless skeletons. The grubs had eaten away all their roots and killed them. One or two had a single clump of leaves on a high branch, but that was all.

  Closer up, you could see that the meadow looked a little too green — there were no long, brown remnants of last year’s grass to be seen — and it was barely ankle high. And every hillside and uneven patch of ground had deep, irregular channels cut in them where rain had washed away the dirt. We had to slow down so the horses wouldn’t stumble on the uneven footing.

  Professor Torgeson made us stop to list the plants and bugs and so on. Wash picketed the horses and stood guard with the rifle while we worked, even though he still had all the protection spells for traveling up.

  We ended up spending nearly three hours, and had to stop at the next wagonrest instead of going farther on the way we’d planned. Turned out that the plants that were coming back — bluestem grass, catchfly, fleabane, milkweed — were all natural ones, not magical. Once the professor noticed, we started hunting for the magical plants in deliberate earnest, but we only turned up one stunted flameleaf and a hardy northern sleeping rose in the whole three hours.

  “Mr. Morris, is this common, in your experience?” she asked once we were finally back on our horses.

  “I can’t rightly say, Professor,” Wash said. “The grubs that laid waste to this area were a brand-new thing. But now and again I’ve crossed stretches that were coming back after a wildfire, and as best I recall, the magical plants came back first.”

  There were a few more magical plants around the wagonrest than there had been along the road — another flameleaf, three clumps of goldengrass, a scattering of demonweed, and a couple of spindly witchvines — and the professor got excited all over again. We didn’t leave until nearly mid-morning, and then only because Wash said if we waited much longer, we wouldn’t make the next wagonrest by nightfall.

  We made pretty good time to begin with, but shortly after noon, Wash pulled his horse to a stop at the crest of a low hill.

  “Something wrong?” Professor Torgeson asked.

  “Could be,” Wash said. He hesitated, then went on, “Would you mind taking over the traveling spells for a few minutes, Professor?”

  “Not at all, Mr. Morris,” the professor replied. Her eyes narrowed in concentration and she stretched out a hand. After a moment, her arm dipped as if she had caught a thrown ball or a falling plate, and I knew that Wash had handed off the protection spells to her.

  As soon as the spell hand-off was done, Wash turned in his saddle to face due south and went still as a stone. His horse shifted once, then stood quietly. I thought he must be doing Aphrikan world-sensing, and without thinking about it much, I took a deep breath and did the same.

  It was like stepping out the door on a dead calm day in mid-January when it’s so cold it hurts to breathe and it feels like everything is frozen so solid that nothing will ever move again. It was so unexpected that it threw me right back into my own head, which hadn’t happened to me when I was world-sensing since my first year in upper school.

  Wash was still sitting motionless on his horse. I tried again, slowly, like poking your nose out the door just a little to see how cold it is. I could feel our horses, and Wash and Professor Torgeson, and they all felt normal. But the plants and the ground underfoot felt … empty and cold. I poked a little further, trying to sense things that were farther away, but nothing changed. I could barely tell the difference between the top of the hill and the bottom. I wondered what it felt like to Wash.

  As I pulled back, Wash shivered all over and took a deep breath.

  “What is it?” Professor Torgeson said in a low voice.

  “Trouble,” Wash replied in a grim tone. He reached for his rifle. “The sort that needs looking into. If I’m not back in an hour —”

  “No,” the professor interrupted firmly. “Splitting up in the wildlands is asking for trouble. More trouble. Either we head for the nearest settlement for more assistance —”

  “That’s a good ten miles,” Wash said, shaking his head.

  “— or we all investigate now. If you are confident of handling things alone, the three of us together should manage quite —”

  The air at the foot of the hill rippled, and even though I wasn’t the one holding the protection spells, I felt them give. A tan-colored streak bounded up the slope toward us. Wash had his rifle to his shoulder, and the professor started muttering a spell. My horse shied and tried to bolt, and so did the packhorse. I heard the first shot while I was trying to get the two of them under control again. At the same time, I felt a spell sweep past me.

  Something snarled. I looked up, and the tan streak resolved into a saber cat. It had a large head, with fangs curving down past its lower jaw and chin. It would have been as high as my chest if I’d been standing on the ground instead of up on a horse. From there, its back sloped down to rear legs that were short but powerful enough to send the whole big cat hurtling through the air, even though it was jumping up the hill.

  Wash fired again. The bullet caught the charging saber cat in mid-leap, slamming it back and sideways to roll down the hill. As my eyes followed it, I saw something dark moving off to one side. I couldn’t seem to get a clear look at it, but I thought it was maybe half the size of the saber cat, and it was moving at least twice as fast.

  I raised my hand and, as hard as I knew how, cast the spell we used at the menagerie to push the mammoth back from the walls. It knocked the second creature all the way back to the foot of the hill. A moment later, another spell hit it. It howled in pain, and the air around it rippled. A third shot rang out. The creature jerked and stopped moving.

  I was panting, one hand clenched tight around the reins, the other raised in case I needed another spell. Professor Torgeson was still muttering, though neither of the animals looked to be moving any. The only other sounds were the whisper of the wind, the creak of the harness leather as the horses shifted, and the click of the cartridges as Wash reloaded his rifle.

  Professor Torgeson finished her spell. A moment later, she relaxed slightly in her saddle. “That’s all of them,” she said. “At least, that’s all that are nearby.”

  Wash shook his head, but not like he was contradicting her. “How nearby?”

  “Half-mile radius,” the professor replied. “And yes, I compensated for the sphinx effect.”

  “Saber cats and Columbian sphinxes travel in prides,” Wash said, frowning. “Meaning, more than three.”

  “Three?” I said before I could stop myself.

  The professor pointed past me, to the north. I turned and saw another heap of tan fur partway up the hillside. “Saber cats are clever, cooperative hunters,” she said. “When they’re stalking, the pride will try to encircle their prey, so that as few as possible will escape.”


  I’d just barely begun feeling easy, but that made me tense again. “So where are the rest of them?”

  “That is a right good question,” Wash said. He looked at the professor. “Are you as handy with a rifle as you are with a spell?”

  “I can manage, at need.”

  “Good.” He swung down from his horse and handed her the rifle and me the reins. Then he went down the hill to examine the dead saber cats and the sphinx. After a few minutes, he circled the hill farther out, pausing occasionally to study the ground.

  “Scouts,” he said shortly as he reclaimed his rifle and horse. “The rest of the pride will be back that way.” He pointed south. “All three look to be three-quarters starved … but they’ve fed well recently. That’ll be why they aren’t all traveling together — the pride has killed something large enough to last them a few days.” He looked from the professor to me and added, “Maybe a couple of bison, or a mammoth.”

  I couldn’t help frowning a little at that. We hadn’t seen any bison or mammoths or even deer since we crossed into the area that the grubs had devastated the year before.

  “Starving,” Professor Torgeson said thoughtfully. “That explains why they pushed through the protective spells, then.”

  Wash snorted. “Wildlife comes through the protective spells for all sorts of reasons, and we only know about half of them. If that.”

  “I take your point, Mr. Morris.” The professor hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, then shook her head slightly and waited.

  “We need to warn the nearest settlements,” Wash said after a moment. “Let’s go.”

  I noticed he didn’t say anything more about investigating trouble, but he didn’t seem too happy about going on, either. I wondered about that. Wash wasn’t the sort to go courting trouble, and searching out a mixed pride of saber cats and Columbian sphinxes looked to me like being more trouble than even a trouble-seeker would ever want.