some reason to blame yourself for when something went wrong.” William gave me a long frown. “Have you got a curse or something?”
“N-not exactly,” I said, and then the bell rang for class and we couldn’t talk any longer.
I thought about that conversation for a couple of days. Mostly, I thought about how I’d never warned William I was a thirteenth child, and whether I ought to now. But it didn’t seem like something I needed to do right away, the way it had when I was stewing over whether to tell Miss Ochiba. Partly that was because I was afraid that William wouldn’t be my friend anymore if he knew I was an unlucky thirteen, and partly it was because I was beginning to think that maybe Uncle Earn had been wrong about what being a thirteenth child meant.
Until William pointed it out, I hadn’t noticed that the steam dragon had come and gone without me ever worrying that it’d come on account of me being an unlucky thirteen. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the steam dragon might have been my fault somehow. Now that I came to think about it, it still didn’t seem to me that a steam dragon turning up like that could have been my fault. I was quite sure that Uncle Earn would have blamed me for it if he’d been around to see, but for once I was just as sure that he’d have been wrong. Just thinking that felt so peculiar that I almost forgot to worry over what to tell William.
Luckily, William didn’t ask again about me being cursed. Even after thinking about it for a week, I wouldn’t have known what to say. And then it was the end of the school year, and time for the placing tests, and I forgot about it. I might have remembered again if the news about Dr. McNeil’s naturalizing expedition hadn’t come right at the end of school and thrown everyone into a tizzy.
Nobody’d heard any word from the expedition since they’d passed the last settlement boundary back in September. All the people who had friends or relatives out with Dr. McNeil had been worried sick for months, and all the people who’d been against the expedition from the start were pulling long faces and reminding everyone how nobody’d ever come back from the Far West, and they’d said all along no good would come of such a thing. Then, the day after school let out, a report arrived at the Settlement Office from one of the circulating magicians, saying that the McNeil expedition had passed through a settlement to the southwest a few days before his own arrival, heading home.
If he’d known what a fuss it would cause, I bet that circulating magician would have put more in his letter than just a couple of lines. The Settlement Office was practically mobbed by people wanting details. Finally, they printed up the whole report on broadsheets and passed them out to everybody, even though most of it was just about crops and planting acreage and weather. People still stood in line outside the office wanting to know more, but they were a lot more patient about it after that.
The Settlement Office sent out a fast rider right away. When he got back a week later with more news, even the people who hadn’t been interested got excited. Not only had Dr. McNeil done all the mapping and nature study that he’d planned on, but he had also found the camp where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter just before they vanished! Along with all his own samples, Dr. McNeil was bringing back some things the earlier expedition had left behind.
The news that the expedition had lost two men out of fifteen barely dampened the enthusiasm. A lot of people thought that if Dr. McNeil could go nearly a hundred miles west from the last settlement and spend a winter with only two men lost, everybody else should be able to do it, too, and they were as excited over the idea of the Settlement Office opening up a lot of new territory for settlements as they were over the expedition coming back.
Right away, the city began planning a big welcome-back ceremony and celebration for when the expedition arrived, even bigger than the send-off had been, with fireworks and a picnic and music and a parade and speeches. This time, everybody thought there was a good chance that at least some of the speeches would be interesting, because Dr. McNeil was going to be one of the speechifiers, and of course everyone expected him to talk about the expedition.
“I don’t know what Harrison is thinking,” Professor Graham grumbled to Papa. “Asking a man to make speeches the day after he comes back from a long, dangerous journey is unreasonable, in my opinion.”
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” Papa told him. “Dr. McNeil knew what to expect when he left, and even if he didn’t, he’s surely had enough notice by this time. The Settlement Office has had message riders going out and back every day, it seems.”
Papa and Professor Graham were in the middle of the planning right from the start, because the expedition was bringing back live specimens, including two swarming weasels, a baby mammoth, some rocketflowers, and a couple of other things that the Great Barrier Spell had been specifically designed to keep out. That meant that the college magicians had to open a hole in the barrier, long enough for the expedition to get everything across to our side of the Mammoth River. Papa had all of his students down to watch while they did it, and all the boys, too, from Jack right on down to Lan. Mama took some convincing.
“It will do very well for your young men…” That was what Mama called Papa’s students from the college. “… and perhaps for Jack, but I’m not so sure about Robbie and Lan.”
“It’s an excellent chance for them to watch the practical application of team spell casting,” Papa told her.
“I’m of the opinion they’ll be far more interested in watching the baby mammoth,” Mama said. “And perhaps more than watching, if you take my meaning.”
In the end, she let all the boys go, with Nan along to keep an eye on them. Rennie sulked all afternoon because she thought she should have gone, being older, but Mama said the boys wouldn’t mind her as well as they would Nan. Then Mama kept all of us busy for the rest of the day. There was plenty to do—besides regular chores, we’d been asked to make up three dozen little cloth figures of mammoths and wagons and dire wolves and other such things, to use for table favors at the celebration.
When Papa and the boys got back, Rennie insisted on hearing about the whole afternoon in detail, even though all the boys wanted to talk about was the baby mammoth and the magic. “It’s as tall as a man, even though it’s just a baby,” Robbie said. “They had to give it a whole barge just to itself, because it didn’t much like crossing the water. Or maybe it was the barrier spell; we couldn’t tell from away off where we were.”
“I don’t see why Father wanted us there at all, if he wasn’t going to let us close enough to see anything,” Lan complained.
“We were
“Well, we couldn’t see that, either, from way up on the bluffs where we were,” Robbie grumbled.
“I could see it,” Lan said. “The spells, anyway. Well, not see it, exactly, but I could tell where they were and what they were supposed to do.”
“Oh, that,” Robbie said. “Anybody could do that. I meant the casting.”
“You shouldn’t need to see it,” Jack told him. “You can look up the words and ingredients and gestures anytime you want. It’s the actual magic part that’s important, and the way everybody’s pieces have to fit together just so.”
“Did Dr. McNeil and his men help with the spells?” Rennie asked.
“No, they were too busy with the mammoth,” Robbie said. “It didn’t want to get on the barge, and then it didn’t want to stay on. It almost went over the side twice.” He sighed. “I wish I’d gotten to see it up close.”
Rennie rolled her eyes, and went on trying to get a proper story out of them. I could see it was no use, but Rennie never could let go of a thing once she’d decided on it. She spent the rest of the evening working at them and getting crosser and crosser, to no purpose.
Three days later, they had the official welcome-home celebration. Dr. McNeil gave a dandy speech, all about the importance of exploration and great discoveries, and following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. That last wasn’t right, strictly speaking, because Lewis and Clark went up the Grand Bow River in boats from just north of St. Louis, while Dr. McNeil went straight west from Mill City in wagons, so you couldn’t really say he
Dr. McNeil talked a lot about the trouble the expedition had encountered, and the two men who’d died. Then he introduced all eleven of the men who were left. The very last one was Brant Wilson, wearing his squared-off hat with the crow feather so everyone there knew him for a Rationalist straight off. Not too many people had known that there was a Rationalist on the expedition, so there was some puzzled murmuring in the crowd.
Dr. McNeil said in front of everyone that Brant was a hero, and that if it hadn’t been for him, they’d have lost more than just the two men. Everyone cheered, even the people who’d been too far back to hear, and that was the
