Thirteenth Child

straight as an arrow for us. It petered out halfway across the dead fields, but I still felt a tug, much stronger than I had at Oak River. This close, I could tell it for one of Lan’s spells, only the beetles were soaking up most of it before it could get to me. “Lan’s trying to do something,” I said. “I have to get closer.”

I kicked my horse into motion and headed down the hill toward the settlement. I kept trying to think of something I could do. My horse squashed beetles with every step, but with so many around and more on the way, the few he killed were nothing like enough to make a difference. Burning them might work, but I couldn’t see how to get them away from the settlement first. And anything magic, they’d just soak up.

I was getting too worried to think straight, and I knew it. So I took a deep breath, then another, and started counting out the Hijero–Cathayan concentration technique. Mr. Harrison’s whining faded into the drone of insect wings, and my mind settled some. I still didn’t have any idea what to do, but I just knew there had to be something, if I could only figure out the right way to look at the problem. The beetles and the mirror bugs absorbed magic. The magic turned the beetles into mirror bugs, but what happened to the power the mirror bugs absorbed?

My horse slowed and shook his mane uneasily. We had almost reached the cloud of mirror bugs. Sunlight flashed on their wings as they darted in and out of the center, making my horse even more nervous. He pranced sideways, trying to run. As I brought him under control, I felt a surge of magic from the direction of the settlement.

It was Lan, trying again to reach me. Mirror bugs exploded into the air from around my horse’s hooves as the crawling beetles absorbed the magic and changed. My horse reared, and I slid sideways. I had just enough presence of mind to kick my feet free of the stirrups before I fell completely off.

I landed in a pile of beetles and my horse ripped the reins from my hands and bolted. The fall and the beetles had broken that brief contact with Lan’s spell. I didn’t think he could get through the beetles, and I knew I couldn’t reach him myself. I didn’t have his power, and anyway my spells always went wrong.

A dark green beetle crawled over my boot. I didn’t even have the energy to squash it. Behind me, I heard Mr. Harrison shouting for someone to come back at once. A second later, William pulled his horse up next to me and flung himself out of the saddle. “Eff! Are you all right?”

“It almost worked,” I told him. “Whatever Lan was trying to do, it almost worked. But not quite.”

“Come on,” he said, dragging me to my feet. “We have to get away.”

“Away?” I said, puzzled, and then I looked at him properly. His face was pale and he was sweating. Around his feet, several beetles popped into mirror bugs, and he swayed slightly. “The beetles!” I said. “They’re absorbing your magic!”

“Yes, I know; now come on,” he repeated.

“But they’re not bothering me,” I said. “And Lan—”

“We can’t get in,” he said doggedly. “And I can’t think this close. Come on, Eff.”

“Leave the da—dratted girl and get out of there!” Mr. Harrison yelled, and suddenly I was furious.

This time, though, the anger didn’t go pouring out the way it had with Uncle Earn, and it didn’t settle back down the way it had earlier at the Oak River settlement. It buzzed all through me like the sound the mirror bugs made, clearing my head. I turned toward the settlement, and the charm Wash gave me swung on its leather cord and thumped gently against my chest.

A familiar floaty feeling came over me, very like the combination of the Hijero–Cathayan technique and the Aphrikan world-sensing that I’d felt the night I’d tried to study the spells on the charm. Only this time, I wasn’t sensing the spells on the charm. This time, I was feeling the beetles and the mirror bugs and the settlement spells.

I could see the spells Lan was pouring his magic into, and the way he was reaching out for me. I could see the way the beetles pulled at the magic all around them, even the magic of the mirror bugs. And I could see the little twist in the magic of the mirror bugs that kept the beetles from taking it along with all the other magic. It was a lot like the slippery twist in the magic of the charm Wash had given me, only not so old or complicated.

I stared into the cloud of mirror bugs, trying to hold on to everything I was sensing. If there was a way to include that twist in the settlement spells, the twist that kept the beetles from absorbing the mirror bugs’ magic, then maybe the beetles wouldn’t be able to absorb magic from the settlement spells, either. But I didn’t know enough magic to do that, and anyway I couldn’t get at the settlement spells. Papa and Professor Jeffries would know, but I couldn’t get to them, either. I couldn’t even get to Lan.

But I could get at the mirror bugs.

I smiled, and reached out.

CHAPTER 30

APHRIKAN MAGIC DOESN’T TAKE A LOT OF POWER, AND IT DOESN’T take a lot of ingredients. You don’t have to memorize gestures or chants. You just look at whatever you want to cast the spell on, in as many ways as you can think of, until you have an understanding of it, and then you sort of nudge whatever magic is already there, so it moves the way you want it to.

What Aphrikan magic takes is timing. Also practice, which is how you learn to get the seeing and the timing right. I’d been studying and practicing Aphrikan magic for nearly eight years, and for the last five, it had been the only magic I could get to work for me. Eight years wasn’t enough to do anything that would take a lot of power or make a big change in something, but it was plenty enough time to get good at things that just needed a little bit of a push to make them happen anyway.

Straightening out the little twist in the mirror bugs’ magic, the one that kept the beetles from absorbing magic from the mirror bugs, didn’t take much more than a nudge.

The carpet of beetles seethed. The cloud of mirror bugs trembled and began to die as the crawling beetles absorbed more and more of their magic. It spread fast, like setting fire to the corner of a sheet of paper—first there’s just a small flame in the corner, then it spreads up one edge, and then suddenly the whole page is aflame, turning black and curling, and you have to drop it or singe your fingers.

Mirror bugs dropped out of the sky like silver rain. New mirror bugs rained upward as the crawling beetles popped and took off, then fell in turn as the beetles farther out absorbed their magic. It didn’t take long for the cycle to spread outward from the settlement in an expanding ring. All I had to do was keep holding that little twist straight, so that the beetles could absorb magic from the mirror bugs.

Beside me, William yelled in surprise. “Eff! What are you doing?”

“Killing bugs,” I said. I couldn’t explain more without losing my concentration.

At first it was easy. The magic in natural things doesn’t come one-thing-at-a-time, like it does with people. Oh, each mirror bug had its own little bit of mirror bug magic, but the magic itself was still all one thing, the way a river is all one thing even though it’s made up of lots of buckets and cups and drops of water. Normally, that overall mirror bug magic would be stretched thin and hard to feel, but with so many mirror bugs all in one place, it was concentrated and easy to sense.

But as the mirror bugs close to the settlement died and were replaced by new mirror bugs farther out, it got harder to hold on to their magic. I had to reach farther and farther, and in all directions at once. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, like trying to hold a full bucket of water head-high at arm’s length with nothing to brace against, but I knew I had to keep at it. I had to be sure that all the beetles heading for the settlement died, or the whole mess would start up again as soon as the next wave of them arrived. I wasn’t sure I could do this a second time. I wasn’t sure it would work a second time.

So I hung on, feeding my spell with determination and anger and all the magic I had bottled up inside me. Soon the ring of changing beetles and mirror bugs was nearly a quarter mile from the settlement. Outside the ring, beetles crawled steadily forward to meet it. Inside, the ground was covered in dead mirror bugs. They were heaped over a foot high around the walls of the settlement, but where I stood, they were only an inch or so deep. I could feel my hold on the mirror bug magic starting to slip, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the spell going much longer.

And then I heard Wash’s voice, and William’s, talking next to me. A minute later, a hand touched my shoulder. “Miss Rothmer, have you ever done a spell hand-off?” Wash asked.

I nodded.