The ferry hit the barrier spell with a bump, as if it had struck a rock. It hung there for a moment, then slowly moved into the spell. The horses lurched and tried to spook in spite of the calming spells Professor Jeffries had cast on them before we left the dock. I couldn’t blame them. It was unsettling, watching the front end of the ferry ripple and go all shimmery while the rest of the boat stayed solid and normal. Watching the shimmers creep along the deck toward me was even more unsettling.
My skin tingled as the shimmer reached me. Without thinking about it, I relaxed and looked at the rippling air the way Miss Ochiba had taught me. The feelings Miss Ochiba called “sensing the world” flooded in. William and I had gotten plenty of practice sensing the normal spells around the menagerie during that last year, and if I’d thought about it, I’d have expected the Great Barrier Spell to feel just like them, only larger and stronger.
It didn’t. Oh, it was large and strong, no question, but it wasn’t strong the way Papa’s spells were strong. It was strong the way an ancient oak tree is strong, and large like looking for the end of the sky at night. I could feel pieces that fit together the way Avrupan magicians do team spells, but they all flowed together into one thing, the way Hijero–Cathayan magic does. And under and over and around it was the steady, endless coursing of the river and the magic that followed the river, supporting and powering the spell the way steam powers a railroad engine.
All of that magic was looking right back at me, almost like it was checking to see whether I was something dangerous that shouldn’t be let through. The glitter in the air got thicker around me. I flinched, but there was no getting away from it. I tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t. I felt like I was drowning.
Then we were through. The shimmering, sparkling air retreated toward the back of the ferry, and I could breathe again. I collapsed all in a heap on the deck of the ferry with my hands clamped tight to the railing over my head. I took a great gulp of air, and then another. I felt like I’d run all the way home from school, twice. After a minute, I forced my fingers open and wiped them against my skirts. I shoved myself up so I wasn’t so much of a heap, and then I just sat there.
The boatmen all jumped up and went back to work right away as if nothing unusual had happened. Papa and Professor Jeffries weren’t quite so quick, but they’d both been through the barrier spell every time they made a trip to the frontier. They stood up a second later and started reinforcing the calming spells on the horses. Mr. Harrison was still sitting on the deck looking stunned. When I saw that, I picked myself up fully, though I still felt a little wobbly. I wasn’t going to let Mr. Harrison get ahead of me, even if nobody else noticed.
Lan stood looking back at the barrier spell, with his hands clamped to the ferryboat rail as tight as mine had been and his feet spread like he was bracing himself. William was up against the cabin wall, breathing hard. After a minute or two, he pushed off from the wall and dusted his pants, then came over to me.
“Wow,” he said. “That was…wow.”
I nodded. I didn’t have to ask what he meant; he’d been part of Miss Ochiba’s Aphrikan magic class as long as I had, and if we hadn’t felt quite exactly the same thing, it’d for sure been close enough.
He gave me a sharp look. “You all right?”
I nodded again. “I just wasn’t expecting it to be like that, is all.”
William looked like he wanted to say more, but if he did, he thought better of it. Right then Lan came up, looking halfway poleaxed and shaking his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears. “How the—how did they do that?” he said.
“Yeah,” William said. “The theories don’t seem particularly likely, do they? Not the ones in my textbooks, anyway.”
“I thought Mr. Franklin and President Jefferson wrote down how they did it,” I said.
The boys looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “They did, sort of,” Lan said. “But Benjamin Franklin was a self-educated double-seventh son, and a lot of his spells he made up on his own. Some of his descriptions aren’t very informative. And it’s practically certain that he improvised a lot when it came to actually working the spell.”
“And Thomas Jefferson never could remember that most other magicians hadn’t read four thousand or so books the way he had,” William said. “And even if they had, sorting out all the references he thought were obvious is going to take scholars years and years.”
Lan nodded. “We spent a month in magic theory class last year arguing over whether ‘the adaptation of MacReady’s transformation sequence using the principles described by Hamid al-Rashid’ meant the Colin MacReady who wrote a treatise on physical transformation spells or the Leon MacReady who worked out how to apply mathematical transformations to magic, and whether it was the thirteenth-century Hamid al-Rashid from North Aphrika or the one from Byzantium in the early 1700s. We never did decide, and we never got around to figuring out how any of them applied to the spell at all.”
“Oh,” I said. We’d studied the Great Barrier Spell in my magic theory class, too, but we hadn’t read the actual descriptions Mr. Franklin and President Jefferson had left, only talked about them.
Lan shook his head again. “I’m going to help with the horses,” he said. “That, I can handle. Coming?”
“Too many cooks,” William said. “Besides, you think better when you’re doing something; I think better when I’m staring into space. And I want to think for a while.”
“Humbug,” Lan said. “You just say that because it gets you out of work.”
William grinned and shrugged. Lan bopped his shoulder in passing and went forward. Despite what he’d said, I thought William would follow him, but he stayed right next to me, leaning on the rail in companionable silence, for the whole rest of the crossing.
CHAPTER 23
THE FERRY TO THE WEST BANK OF THE MAMMOTH RIVER HAD BEEN operating long enough to grow itself a sizable town around its landing point. Near the landing, the dirt streets were lined with big square shipping buildings, and all up and down the riverbank were docks for the flatboats that carried grain and timber down the Mammoth to New Orleans. The streets were double-wide to suit farm wagons, which made it easy to see farther in, along the roofed boardwalk that led from the docks to the storefronts. The oldest buildings, near the ferry head, were built of mortared fieldstone, but nearly everything else was whitewashed clapboard. West Landing was smaller and dustier than Mill City, but at first look, pretty much the same.
At second look, you saw that most of the folks on the boardwalk wore long tan-colored dusters over home- sewn calico or muslin shirts, and that almost all of the men wore gun belts. There were hardly any carriages, and the buggies were sturdier. All of the vehicles, from carriages to farm wagons, had a rifle rack next to the driver’s seat, and most of the racks were filled. And every so often the wagons or the horses or one of the buildings had the slightly hazy look that meant someone had cast a personal shielding spell around it.
We got a lot of curious looks as we unloaded our gear from the ferry, mostly on account of Mr. Harrison’s buggy and bandboxes. Some of the westbankers lounging on the boardwalk hollered advice as the buggy came off the gangplank, most of it uncomplimentary, which was another thing that didn’t happen much in Mill City. Mr. Harrison frowned when they started up, but he didn’t answer back, which showed he had some sense after all.
With the late start from Mill City and the difficulties unloading Mr. Harrison’s buggy, we didn’t leave the ferry head until near noon. Papa drove the wagon and I sat beside him, Mr. Harrison drove his buggy, and everybody else rode. All the way through West Landing, people yelled advice and comments at us. The boys were a bit miffed, at first, and Mr. Harrison scowled ferociously, but Papa and Professor Jeffries just waved cheerfully.
A couple of folks yelled something about guides or maps, and once a long-faced fellow on a big gray gelding rode up to the wagon and asked Papa if he wanted to hire him. “No,” Papa said. “But thanks for the offer.”
“Begging your pardon, but it looks to me like you folks are heading for one of the settlements,” the rider said. “And it’s plain you don’t realize what the trip will be like. You need a guide, sir, even if you don’t think you do.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Papa said mildly. “I’ll admit that some of our party are green as grass, but Professor Jeffries and I have both been west of the river more than once.”
“Ah,” the man said. “Professor, is it? And magicians as well, no doubt.”
“No doubt at all,” Papa said. “Between us, I think we’ll have no trouble making it as far as the Littlewood wagonrest, and we have a guide meeting us there. So we’ve no need of your services.”
“Can’t blame a man for trying,” the rider said. “Good day to you, Professor. Ma’am.” He touched the brim of
