myself thinking that maybe Uncle Earn had been right after all, and I was bad luck for everyone I knew.
I had more trouble than ever with my magic classes. By mid-year, my spells weren’t just fizzling anymore— they were going off in little explosions. The teacher shook his head and said it was only to be expected, since the class was moving on to more difficult spells. He told me to just do the set-up and write out the procedure for him, and for a while that worked. But then the people on either side of me started having trouble getting their spells to work, the same way I’d had trouble at first. I knew it was my fault, but I had no idea how to stop it from happening.
Working with the little blue book Miss Ochiba had given us was the one bright spot for me all year. It wasn’t like the lesson books we’d used in the day school or the texts we used in the upper school, and it wasn’t a list of exercises like the ones we’d done in her after-school class. Instead, it was full of stories and tales, some of which didn’t seem to have anything to do with magic at all. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but I still read them over and over.
My favorite ones were the transformation stories, like the one where a frog turned himself into a bird to help a chief’s daughter, or the one where a lion turned into a snake because he’d lied to his wife. I still didn’t see what any of them had to do with Aphrikan magic, though. Until one day, when I was specially cross and frustrated. I’d just read three of the stories over again, and I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere. I dropped the little blue book on the table with a thud, and said out loud, “This is stupid! It’s just a lot of tales.”
As I glared at the book, I remembered Miss Ochiba, and all the times she’d said, “That is certainly one way to look at the matter. There are others.”
“What others?” I grumbled, but I knew better than to expect an answer. Even if she’d been there, Miss Ochiba wouldn’t have said anything. In all the years I’d known her, she’d never once told anyone
So I spent the rest of that year looking for different ways to see each of those stories. I saw that if you looked at it a little differently, the frog turned into a bird because he wanted to fly, not just to help the chief’s daughter. It was a story about the way natural things change in ways that aren’t natural to them, once people get involved. The more I looked, the more I found, and the more I found, the more I could see.
And then it was May, and the grubs were back worse than ever.
CHAPTER 21
STRICTLY SPEAKING, THE GRUBS AND THE SETTLEMENT SPELLS WEREN’T my worries, I suppose. But Papa had been part of the group that invented the new spells that were supposed to keep the grubs from spreading, so when the grubs showed up in three-quarters of the settlements—nearly all the way to the river, in some places— people came to him and the others to complain. Papa was very annoyed about it. He said that he and the other professors didn’t have time to waste settling down a bunch of bureaucrats when they ought to be figuring out what had gone wrong and how to fix it.
Professor Jeffries came around to our house on the second or third day after the news about the grubs reached Mill City. “Good afternoon, Miss Rothmer,” he said when he saw me on the porch. “Is your father about?”
“Papa isn’t home yet,” I said. “I can send Robbie over to the college to fetch him, if you like.”
“It’d be a mercy, if he’s still tied up with those idiots from the governor’s office,” Professor Jeffries said, so I went and found Robbie. When I got back, the professor was staring west, toward the river, though you couldn’t see it from our porch. “This is a bad business,” he muttered as I came up.
“You mean the grubs, Professor?” I said.
Professor Jeffries nodded. Then he looked at me as if he’d only just realized I was there, and his eyes narrowed like he was seeing me for the first time. I’d put up my hair and lengthened my skirts since last he’d seen me, and I couldn’t deny it made me look like a grown woman, though I was only middling tall. “It has been some time since we’ve seen you at the menagerie, Miss Rothmer,” he said after a moment.
“I…didn’t want to be in the way when everyone was so busy,” I said.
“The stacks of notes that have been piling up are much more in the way than you would be,” the professor said. He looked at me over the tops of his spectacles. “I shall expect you on Thursday at the usual time. Do not hesitate to interrupt if I am occupied with persons from outside the college when you arrive.”
The next Thursday I went over to the menagerie office. Professor Jeffries hadn’t been exaggerating by much when he’d said he had stacks of notes piling up. I started with the most recent notes and worked backward. It wasn’t easy, with so many people around. When I was copying out Wash’s notes, I could use a table somewhere else and get away from the visitors, but when I was updating the professor’s map, I had to be right there in the office, and it was very distracting.
Even so, I was nearly finished by the time Lan and William came home at last. Lan was taller again; he said he’d gotten nearly to six feet and he didn’t want to hear any jokes about beanpoles or the air up there from any of us. He’d grown himself a pair of muttonchop sideburns, and he wore a green paisley waistcoat under his single- breasted frock coat. William was taller, too, but not by much—he was a good four inches shorter than Lan, barely taller than me. He was wearing a pair of eyeglasses and a beaver hat, but he was just as sandy-haired and serious as ever. I was quite startled when he greeted me with a bow and called me “Miss Rothmer.”
“What do you expect?” Lan said. “How long has it been since you put your hair up? You ought to be used to it by now.”
“Months,” I said. “And I am used to it, from other people. It just sounds strange coming from William.”
“‘Miss Eff’ would sound even stranger,” William pointed out. “And I don’t think you’d like ‘Miss Francine.’”
I rolled my eyes at him, and then Lan asked William about the school he was attending. The two of them spent a few minutes comparing the larks they’d had when they weren’t in class and the scrapes they’d gotten into. Well, the scrapes Lan had gotten into, anyway. Then William turned to me. “What have you been doing while we’ve been gone?” he asked. “Are you still helping Professor Jeffries?”
I explained how I’d stopped for a while, but now I was back at work and nearly caught up despite all the visitors. William gave me a sharp look, but Lan just nodded and started asking questions. The next thing I knew, all three of us were heading for the menagerie office.
Professor Jeffries was bent over his desk, muttering. He looked up as I hesitated in the open door and smiled at the three of us. “Ah, Miss Rothmer, Mr. Rothmer, Mr. Graham! Come in.”
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, Professor,” I said. “But William and Lan were curious about your map.”
The professor sighed. “I’m curious about it myself. Perhaps one of these days I’ll have time to look at it again.”
“If you’re busy—”
“It’s just more Settlement Office foolishness,” Professor Jeffries said. “Harrison was in here this morning and saw that.” He waved at the wall map with all the colored pins. “Now he wants one that shows where these grubs are.”
“That sounds reasonable to me,” William said.
“Well, that part of it makes sense,” the professor admitted. “But he wants a portable map. With pins. That stay put when he folds it up. The man’s a magical imbecile; does he think spells like that are easy?”
“Could you use an illusion for the pins?” Lan asked.
“That’s an idea,” Professor Jeffries said. He considered a moment, then shook his head. “Illusions don’t last long enough. I’d have to renew the spell every few days, and if I have to trot over to the Settlement Office that often, I’ll never get anything done.”
“I could try it,” Lan offered. “I’ve always wanted to see how long I could make an illusion spell last.”
Professor Jeffries frowned, and I thought he was going to turn Lan down. But then he reached into his desk, fumbled around for a minute, and pulled out a piece of paper. “See what you can do with this map, young man,” he said. “The settlement layout has been out of date these five years, but the geography hasn’t changed. Just duplicate this pattern here.” He spread out a newer map beside the old one and ran his finger along a penciled line.
