mills had sent him East to school on the understanding that he was to bring his knowledge back to the territory, and though he’d been quick enough to agree when he left, you could see plain as plain that he wasn’t pleased now that he was back. He lorded it over everyone, on account of his schooling, and at first he couldn’t make up his mind whether Papa was his competition or his ally. He was considerably put out when he discovered that Papa wasn’t much interested in being either.
I was too young then to pay heed to Professor Graham or his notions, and I probably would have known nothing about them if it hadn’t been for his son, William. William was just one year younger than Lan and me, a thin, sandy-haired miniature of his father. William’s mother was an invalid, so his father had the raising of him, which meant more rules than you could shake a stick at. We were the first friends he’d ever really had, because his father didn’t want him mixing with less-educated folk, and none of the other college families had children his age.
He almost didn’t get to mix with us, either, after Professor Graham found out that Mama and Papa were sending us to the day school instead of giving us special tutoring at home. But in the end the professor decided that William would be a good influence on us, and let him stop by to play when he wasn’t studying.
William took his influencing seriously, though he was mainly parroting the things his father said. He’d go on about the responsibilities of magic and the importance of proper learning at the slightest excuse, usually whenever Lan or Robbie came up with an idea for a prank he didn’t approve of.
Once in a while, I even took his side. Truth to tell, I thought it was funny to see Lan and Robbie come in for something like the lectures I’d had all my life. Then, too, I felt sorry for William, stuck in the house with the professor and a sick mother most days and with no friends but us.
My brothers and sisters and I all made friends at school right away. The upper school was even larger than the one back in Helvan Shores, which was a relief to Hugh and Rennie and Nan. Jack didn’t care, and Allie and Robbie were still down in the day school with Lan and me. Lan and I were in the same class, along with nine others. They were fascinated by us because we were twins, and of course no one knew that I was a thirteenth child or that Lan was a double-seventh son. I would have hung back, since I knew that sooner or later the other children would find out about me, but Lan dove right in and dragged me along with him. And the topic of family size and birth order just never came up.
For the next three years, Lan and I had basic schooling—reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and natural history. We weren’t taught any magic theory until we turned nine and went into the fourth grade; that was the way all the schools handled it then. Still, being around the house with the college students in and out for classes meant that we all picked up a bit, even though William was the only one who got lessons. Professor Graham had advanced ideas about training children in magic, and he was a little put out that Papa wasn’t eager to run educational experiments on us.
The first class of the Northern Plains Riverbank College graduated just before Lan and I turned nine. There were seventeen students who finished, out of the twenty-two who’d started. Our whole family had to get dressed up and go to the ceremony because six of the seventeen were taking degrees in magic, three with Papa as their sponsor. I could have done without the honor. All I remember of the graduation itself was that it was long and hot and boring, and that even though it was still early in the spring, the bugs were out with a vengeance, buzzing around our sweaty necks and landing to sting any bare bit of skin they could find.
After the ceremony, things brightened up. We joined the crowd on the lawn, where punch and cakes had been set out on long tables draped in white. Half of Mill City seemed to be there, and most of them didn’t know any of us, so as soon as we could, we slipped away from our parents and started through the lines over and over. Robbie was especially good at wheedling an extra piece of cake from the ladies who were serving, so he got nearly twice as much as the rest of us.
I was coming away from the tables with my third piece of cake, feeling very daring, when a voice behind me said, “Well, if it isn’t young Eff! Didn’t I see you a few minutes back with a plateful of sweets? What happened, one of your brothers knock it over?”
I turned and found Henry Masters, one of Papa’s students, smiling down at me. He looked different in his black gown, with the flat-topped hat shading his brown eyes. His smile, though, was exactly the same as ever.
The smile reassured me, and I said, “Robbie bet me I couldn’t get them to give me another piece without getting caught. You won’t tell, will you?”
“Never,” Henry said solemnly. “Cross my heart.”
“Ah, Henry!” Professor Graham came up behind Henry and put an arm around his shoulders. “Passing on good advice to young Francine here?” Professor Graham always called me Francine, even though I’d asked him very politely once to call me Eff like everyone else.
“Actually, she was giving me some,” Henry said, and winked at me. “She recommends the cake.”
“Yes, very good,” the professor said in that tone that means someone hasn’t really heard a word you said. “So what are your plans now, young man? Going back East to continue your studies?”
“No, sir,” Henry said politely.
“No?” Professor Graham frowned. “Surely you realize what a name you could make for yourself, with your talent!”
“I’m afraid I’m more interested in paying my debt to the Farmers’ Society,” Henry said. He sounded like he was apologizing for something, but he had his shoulders set like a man readying for a fistfight.
The professor’s frown deepened. “You’re not considering going out with one of those crazy settler groups, are you? Think, man! Three years of advanced training in New Amsterdam or Washington, and you’d be in a position to pay them back with double the interest!”
“The Farmers’ Society doesn’t need money,” Henry said, still polite as polite, but starting to get an edge on the underside of his voice. “They need magicians. Without magic to hold off the wildlife, those settlers are gambling with death every year, and sooner or later they’ll lose. That’s why they paid my college tuition.”
“The Farmers’ Society is much too eager to push people out into dangerous territory, in my opinion,” Professor Graham said, as if that settled the matter.
“With all due respect, sir—” Henry began, but he never finished his sentence, because just then Harmony Quillen ducked out of the crowd and took his arm.
“There you are, Henry!” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” She smiled at Professor Graham. “You will loan him to me, won’t you, Professor? Milo and I are having an argument over the riding horses that Susan is training, and I need Henry to back me up.”
“But of course, my dear,” Professor Graham said with a smile. Henry made a polite good-bye and went off with Harmony. The professor stood for a moment, watching them, and his frown returned. I decided that it’d be best if I took myself off before he remembered I was there.
I meant to ask Papa later about the Farmers’ Society and why Professor Graham was so displeased with Henry, but I got a stomachache from eating too much cake and it went right out of my head. I didn’t think of it again until almost a month later, when we went to the train station to see Mama off.
Mama was going back east to Helvan Shores for two months, because Sharl and Julie had
Not that they needed to do much insisting. Mama was so pleased that she agreed right off, and if she could have, she’d have brought all the rest of us back along with her. But there wasn’t anywhere for all of us to stay; even between them, Sharl and Julie couldn’t put all of us up, and Papa pointed out that the idea was to make less work for the two of them, not more. So Mama was going alone, and we all went down to the train to say good-bye.
The train station was even busier than usual, because the waterways were open and the first loads of logs had floated down the river on the spring floodwaters. Some of them were milled right in Mill City, and some floated farther on down the Mammoth River, but most of them got piled onto flatcars and shipped east to the mills there, to be made into houses and furniture and wagons and boats and all the other things people used. The area around the train smelled of damp and fresh-cut wood as well as coal and steam and grease, and the yards were full of men and logs and flatcars.
