a quick look back at me, but by then I was just looking doubtful again.
“I didn’t mean to say that we can actually fly like birds without magic,” Brant told me. “But our ideas and imaginations can soar, if we don’t cripple them by looking to spells to do everything for us. The man who designed the new engine for the railroads is a Rationalist. While everyone else was trying to use magic to improve it, he used his mind and his knowledge, and the result is an engine that works better and is more reliable. And you don’t need to have magic to use it. That’s the sort of thing we need more of, if—”
A knock at the door interrupted him. Rennie rose and opened it. “William!” she said. “Is it so late already?”
“Hello, Miss Rothmer,” William said. “Excuse me; I didn’t know Eff had another visitor.”
“This is Brant Wilson,” I said. “William Graham. He’s Professor Graham’s son. Brant’s from the Society of Progressive Rationalists,” I added to William.
William frowned for a second; then his face cleared. “Oh! That’s the people who don’t believe in magic.” Then he looked at Brant and went purple as a cooked beet.
“Not exactly,” Brant said. “We believe magic exists; we just don’t believe in
“That’s all right, then,” William said, nodding. “It’d be pretty stupid to think magic doesn’t exist, when people do spells all the time. Why are you poking me?” he added, looking at Rennie.
Rennie turned red and looked cross, but before she could snap at him I said, “She doesn’t think you were polite, but since you’re not part of our family, she can’t say so straight out without being impolite herself.”
“Eff!” Rennie sounded like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or read me the biggest scold I’d had in months. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do with you.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” I said. “I’m Mama’s problem, for that. And I don’t see that it’s so important. Brant doesn’t mind, and William’s practically family now.”
William looked surprised and gratified. Rennie rolled her eyes and looked at Brant. Brant laughed. I could see that William was getting ready to ask some more questions, and I didn’t want Rennie mad at him. “Brant and the Rationalists want to start a settlement,” I said, to give him something else to think on.
“But I thought you said you didn’t do magic,” William said.
“We don’t,” Brant told him. “We plan to start a settlement without using any magic.”
William’s eyes widened. “You can’t put a settlement on the west side of the river without using magic! How would you keep off the mammoths and the sphinxes and—and everything else?”
“We have some ideas,” Brant said. “A double trench and a palisade would stop the larger creatures—Samiel thinks the right defenses could halt even a mammoth stampede, if they’re properly designed. The smaller animals aren’t much of a danger to a village, only to lone travelers. The real difficulty will be protecting the crops. Barricading enough acreage for ten families to farm, or even five, just isn’t practical.”
“Five?” William’s eyebrows scrunched together, the way they always did when he was puzzled by something. “But ten families is the minimum for a settlement.”
“Yes, but they don’t all have to be farming,” Brant said. “We’d actually planned to start with fifteen families, because we want to be as self-sufficient as possible. It’s sometimes difficult to find goods that haven’t been—” he hesitated “—touched by magic, so we already make most things ourselves. We don’t want our settlers having to buy things that they could make themselves, if they had time.”
“What sorts of things?” Rennie asked, leaning forward with interest.
“All sorts,” Brant said. He waved an arm expansively. “Nails and horseshoes and cloth and furniture—we have a blacksmith who’s going, and his wife’s a weaver. Leather for saddles and harnesses and boots. Candles and soap, plows and kitchen pots, combs and clothespins.” His eyes were glowing and he seemed to have forgotten we were even in the room. “We
“Sounds to me like you’d need a whole city for all that,” I said.
“We’ll have to haul in a few things, at first,” Brant admitted. “But the planning committee has prepared very carefully, and they’re being even more careful about selecting the people who are to go. The settlement
“Are you going with them?” Rennie asked.
“I hope to,” Brant replied. “It’s why I’m studying here. The planning committee has plenty of people to pick from who can farm and weave and smith, but they’ll need someone who knows something about the territory and the animals, and what things have been tried and whether they’ve worked or not. Even your magicians can’t manage everything; a lot of the settlements have unmagical protections, too.”
William gave Brant a long, skeptical look. “It doesn’t sound like much fun to me,” he said finally.
“Not fun, exactly,” Brant said with a smile. “But just think of it—building a whole new community, the first one ever without magic! It will prove to everyone that we don’t need magicians to settle the plains, and the government will
“It won’t be the first one ever,” William said in a grumpy tone. “Lots of places on the Old Continent got along without magicians after the Roman Empire fell apart. Anyway, you can’t do it unless the Settlement Office lets you, and I bet they won’t.”
Rennie glared at William, but Brant just looked determined. “It may take time, but we will convince them,” he said firmly. “This is too important to let some shortsighted officials get in the way.”
“I don’t want to talk about the Settlement Office,” I said. “They’re just—boring. Tell me about something else.” Tears stung my eyes. Just saying the name of the place was hard; I didn’t want to hear anything more about it. William and Brant gave me surprised looks. Rennie clucked and stood up.
“She’s overtired and getting cross,” Rennie told them. She turned to me. “Time for a nap. It’s not so long since you were feverish, and Mama will slay me outright if you take sick again.”
I objected a little, for form’s sake, but I didn’t really mean it. Rennie was right; I was tired. And if napping cut the visit short, it at least put a stop to the talk of the Settlement Office and what it would or wouldn’t do.
By spring they were letting me out of bed for a little, and I only had to take the fever-prevention potions once a day. I was as weak and clumsy as a new puppy, and Mama fussed and fretted over me, and ordered me back to bed twice, until Papa asked her what she expected when I hadn’t used my legs all those long months. After that, Mama didn’t fuss so much, and after a few weeks Papa started me doing training exercises. Gradually, my legs got stronger, though Mama still wouldn’t let me run or do too much hard work. I was glad enough to be let off hoeing the garden and pumping water for the kitchen, but I wasn’t sure that getting landed with all the sewing and piecework was a good trade.
Shortly after the snow melted, when the Settlement Office announced who’d be going off to start new homesteads, we found out that Papa and William had been right: The Society of Progressive Rationalists wasn’t on the approved list. They didn’t give up, though. The folks who’d come to Mill City in hopes of moving west stayed on, hoping they could persuade the Settlement Office to change its mind. Brant wasn’t even that discouraged. He said they’d expected setbacks, and it was just an opportunity to show people in Mill City how to get along without magic.
The other big thing that happened that spring was the start of the McNeil Expedition. The report that Papa had written all those months ago had said in no uncertain terms that somebody needed to do a proper study of the animals and magical creatures that were causing so much trouble for the settlements. Somebody back East had paid attention, because Dr. Allen McNeil came out on the first train after the last snow melted to do just that. He wasn’t a medical doctor, just educated all the way up as far as you can get.
Papa said Dr. McNeil was a famous naturalist and magician, and he was going to spend a whole year out on the wild plains beyond the river, examining animals and watching the way they lived. He was taking a small group along to help. Five of them were students from the college, and one of the students was Brant.
CHAPTER 9
NOBODY WAS QUITE SURE HOW BRANT WILSON HAD TALKED DR. McNeil into letting him go west to study
