me. I hope this unfortunate incident has not put you off.”
“N-no, Miss Ochiba,” I said. After watching those three students, I had the feeling Miss Ochiba could handle just about anything, even a thirteenth child. I wasn’t sure I’d like it much, but that was beside the point. But now that I was here, I didn’t know quite how to begin. I’d kept silent on the subject for eight years, ever since we moved to Mill City, and the habit was just about as strong as the fear that lay behind it. And that old fear was as strong as it had ever been. On top of it, I was afraid of how Miss Ochiba would see me once she knew.
My head was near certain that talking to Miss Ochiba was the right thing to do, but my heart wanted to turn around and run. I managed to keep my feet from moving, but I couldn’t get my mouth started. I just sat there, feeling scared and tongue-tied.
“Was it something regarding your magic lessons?” Miss Ochiba prompted after a minute.
“Yes. I mean, no, not exactly. I—” I twisted my fingers together and looked down at my hands. “You know Lan’s a seventh son. Well, there are seven of us girls, too.”
Miss Ochiba studied me, frowning slightly. I waited for her to do the addition, but her expression didn’t change. Finally I said, “I’m a thirteenth child, Miss Ochiba.”
“So I gather,” Miss Ochiba said, tapping one finger lightly against the tabletop.
“I-I thought you ought to know,” I said. “Since you’re doing the magic teaching. Uncle Earn said—” I stopped, because Miss Ochiba’s eyes had narrowed and she was nodding. “You know Uncle Earn?”
“Not in the least, nor do I wish to,” Miss Ochiba said. “I take it that your uncle is a primitive Pythagorean, and has inflicted his unfortunate views on you?”
“Uh—” We’d studied about Pythagoras in our magic-history classes, two years before, but I didn’t remember it as well as I should have. “Pythagoras started number magic?” I said.
Miss Ochiba beamed. “Very good, Miss Rothmer.” Her voice took on the lecturing tone she used in class. “Pythagoras laid the numerical foundation for both mathematics and magic. Unfortunately like many of the ancient Greeks, his work was not always as rigorous as it might have been.”
“You mean he was wrong about thirteenth children being evil and unlucky?” I said.
“Say rather that his comprehension was woefully incomplete,” Miss Ochiba replied. “Which is no serious fault in Pythagoras, who lived over two thousand years ago and did not have the benefit of later work to improve his understanding, but is inexcusable in anyone with a modern education.”
My heart sank. Even if I didn’t remember much about Pythagoras, I knew that “woefully incomplete” didn’t mean wrong.
“So it’s really true,” I blurted.
Miss Ochiba made a clucking noise. “Miss Rothmer, you appear to be a sensible young woman. Consider. Yes, in Avrupan numerancy the number thirteen is associated with a variety of ills, and yes, you are without question a thirteenth child. But you are also a seventh daughter, and the number seven has as much or more association with positive power and good luck as the number thirteen has with bad.” Her eyes narrowed suddenly and she looked at me with an extra-thoughtful expression. “Is your mother by chance a seventh daughter?”
I had to think for a minute which of my aunts were Mama’s sisters and which were sisters-in-law. “No, ma’am. Mama has two sisters and two brothers.”
“Then you are not a double-seventh daughter,” Miss Ochiba said. “But you are the first of twins, a position second only to being the eldest in a family for imparting self-mastery and general authority. Taking a wider view, I presume that with your father’s family being so large you have some number of cousins; so long as you have even one who is older than you, you cannot be your paternal grandfather’s thirteenth grandchild. Are there cousins on your mother’s side of the family? More than one, older than you are?”
I nodded.
“Then you cannot be your maternal grandfather’s thirteenth grandchild, either. I daresay you were not born on the thirteenth day of the month, and as there are only twelve months, you cannot have been born in the thirteenth month of any year. You are not old enough to have been born in the thirteenth year of this century. All these numbers, and more, have meanings and importance, according to Avrupan numerancy theory.”
My head was whirling, but not enough to miss noticing that she’d made a point of mentioning Avrupa twice. I frowned. “Miss Ochiba, are you saying that all those numbers don’t mean anything in other kinds of magic?”
Miss Ochiba smiled. “Some of them don’t mean anything; others don’t mean the same things. Hijero— Cathayan number magic is quite different from Avrupan, and the Aphrikan tradition hardly deals with numbers at all.”
“Different how?” I asked suspiciously.
“The Hijero-Cathayans view life as a process of change,” Miss Ochiba replied. “A small child is not the same as a young man or woman, and a youth is not the same as a parent or an elder, though they may have been born on the same day and have similar places in their respective families. Since the day of birth does not change, the Hijero—Cathayans change the meaning of the number. A thirteenth child—” She stopped and looked at me, then went to a small cupboard at the back of the room. She took down a short, fat book bound in faded red leather and leafed through it for a moment.
“What does it say?”
“‘Thirteen is of fire and heaven, thus of the sun,’“ Miss Ochiba read. “‘The changes are also of the sun. At dawn, the fire is cool and distant, growing stronger and more passionate as the sun climbs the sky. At noon, the heat is greatest, for good or ill. The afternoon holds strength until the sun falls into twilight. Travel up or travel down; remember balance. Two feet on the ground are unshaken; two feet on the rungs of a ladder are unsteady whether they move up or down.’”
“What?” I said.
Miss Ochiba read it again. I still didn’t understand it, but it didn’t sound too bad, especially the part about “for good
I thought about that for a minute. “What about Aphrikan magic?”
“That is too difficult to explain in one short afternoon,” Miss Ochiba said, “and I have lessons to prepare. If you will come again tomorrow, however, I shall be happy to teach you as much as you wish to know, within my own knowledge.”
“Yes, please, Miss Ochiba,” I said.
And that was how I started getting my own extra magic lessons.
CHAPTER 10
FOR THE REST OF THAT YEAR, AND A GOOD MANY YEARS THEREAFTER, I stopped by Miss Ochiba’s classroom when school was over. For the first few days, it was only me, but then William and Lan noticed that I wasn’t coming directly home after school, and came around to see what was up. Then Miss Ochiba asked some of the other students who’d shown an interest, and all of a sudden we were an extra class.
Lan only came for the first few weeks. What with his regular schooling and the extra lessons he was already getting from Papa and Professor Graham, it was just too much time for him to spare. William kept coming, same as me, which was a surprise. I hadn’t thought he’d care for extra work, especially after all the bad things he’d said about learning Aphrikan magic.
But Miss Ochiba could make almost anything interesting, and she knew a lot about Aphrikan magic. Both of her parents had been conjurefolk. Her mother had been brought to Columbia on one of the slave ships, back before the Secession War, and her father was one of the anti-slavery advocates from the Aphrikan colonies in South Columbia. He’d come north with enough funds to buy a whole shipload of slaves free, then settled down in Pennsylvania with Miss Ochiba’s mother to help the abolitionists in the North. So Miss Ochiba grew up learning first-rate Aphrikan magic from her parents at home while she was learning Avrupan magic at school.
By Christmas, we’d learned the first basic spells in the day class—snuffing candles, stopping a rolling ball without touching it, silencing a specially made squeaky machine—and were beginning to work on things that required more energy and concentration, like lighting the candles and getting the balls rolling in the first place. In
