Wash wouldn’t talk about that, either. He didn’t have much to say about anything he’d been doing since he left in October. Of course, he didn’t have much time to talk to me about anything. Mostly, his time was taken up with Professor Jeffries and Professor Torgeson, getting ready for us to go.
Professor Torgeson was pretty cross, too. She wanted to head West right away, as soon as Professor Jeffries told her about the survey, and she wasn’t too pleased to have to wait on Wash or classes or anything.
“We should have been out in the field in early March,” she told Professor Jeffries. “We’ve already missed the entire germination period.”
“It’s May second and the trees are just now leafing out,” Professor Jeffries commented. “If you’d left in March, you’d have been snowed in at least twice, for very little gain.”
“We could still get snow,” I said. “Sam Gantz says that the year he first came to Mill City, it snowed in June, a good six inches’ worth.”
“Snow in June, this far south? Not likely,” Professor Torgeson said. “Who’s Sam Gantz?”
I stared at her, trying to soak up the notion of someone thinking of Mill City as “this far south.” I knew Professor Torgeson had grown up on Vinland, and I knew the islands of Vinland were just off the East Coast a fair piece north of Maine. It just never occurred to me to put the two things together before.
“Sam Gantz is the fellow who runs the general store,” Professor Jeffries told her. “He’s one of Mill City’s oldest residents and an invaluable source of information, once you figure out where he’s reliable and where he isn’t.”
I frowned. I wanted to object, because I liked Sam, but I had to admit that he had a fondness for tall tales.
“I would venture to guess that Mr. Gantz was quite accurate about the date of the snow,” Professor Jeffries went on. “It’s the amount that I question. An inch at most would be my guess, though of course there’s no way of finding out now.”
Professor Torgeson looked at Professor Jeffries as if she was trying to figure out whether he was joking. Professor Jeffries just smiled and went back to checking over the supplies we’d be taking. There were a lot of notebooks, several pencils, magnifying glasses, and tweezers, as well as some sample boxes enchanted to preserve whatever was in them and a small case full of spell ingredients that might be needed to test and classify things. Professor Torgeson was sure that a careful survey would turn up a lot of new animals and plants, and Professor Jeffries seemed to agree with her.
Picking out what to take was hard, because there wasn’t much room. We were only taking one packhorse and what we could each fit into our saddlebags. Allie had near as much of a fit over that as Mama had had when I told her I was going West for the summer for sure and certain.
“Riding horseback isn’t proper for a lady,” Allie said. “You should ride in a buggy or a wagon.”
Papa and I exchanged looks. Last summer, Mr. Harrison had tried to take a buggy West and he hadn’t gotten five miles from West Landing before it broke an axle. Wagons were sturdier, but slow, and I’d had my fill of them on that trip. Anyway, Wash had already settled the question.
“A wagon will slow us down too much,” he’d told the professors bluntly. “You’ll either have to cut your planned route in half or figure on taking two years to cover it, with half that spent holed up somewhere for the winter. Myself, I’d keep the route as is and take a packhorse. Overwintering in the far frontier is chancy.”
Nobody wanted to spend the winter in the West — well, Professor Torgeson got excited and muttered a bit about winter fauna and adaptations, but even she was more wistful than really serious about the idea. Once we got Allie to understand that, she stopped fussing about wagons, but she wouldn’t let up on clothes. She’d have filled my saddlebags up with petticoats, if I’d let her.
What with all the talk and the fussing, it seemed sometimes as if it’d take months before we were ready to leave, but between Professor Torgeson wanting to get started and Professor Jeffries being real good at arranging things, it actually only took about a week. Early Monday morning, Wash, Professor Torgeson, and I led our horses onto the ferry that linked Mill City with West Landing.
Professor Torgeson seemed a bit absentminded as she tied her horse to the hitching rail. Her eyes kept straying to the faint shimmer in the air about halfway across the river. It dawned on me that she’d never been through the Great Barrier Spell before. Vinland had no need of such a thing, being an island, and what with all the settlement failures, the Settlement Office hadn’t called on any of the college magicians for help since she’d arrived.
I didn’t have much in the way of time to worry over Professor Torgeson, though, because I had worries of my own. I’d only been through the Great Barrier Spell twice myself, once in each direction, but I knew that it was a disturbing feeling even when you knew what was happening. Animals couldn’t understand and nearly always panicked, especially horses, unless someone cast calming spells on them. Last time, I’d been a passenger, and Wash and Papa and Professor Jeffries had taken care of the calming spells for all our horses. This time, I would be expected to take care of my own.
I’d started practicing the standard Avrupan calming spell as soon as I realized I was going to need it, so I was pretty sure I could do that part. What troubled me was whether I could keep it going when we passed through the Barrier Spell. Being looked over by something that felt as old and large and strange as the magic of the Great Barrier Spell was … well, the first time I’d gone through, I’d been convinced it would treat me the same as it did the wildlife, on account of me being thirteenth-born. I didn’t think like that anymore, but that Barrier Spell still made me plenty nervous. And if there’s one thing that’ll mess up a calming spell quicker than anything else, it’s if the magician gets distracted.
As soon as Professor Torgeson saw Wash riding down toward the dock, she cast the calming spell on her horse. I hesitated for a second, then started on my own. I was just finishing up when Wash tied his horse next to mine and signaled the ferryman that everyone was ready to go.
He did the spell for his horse as quick and easy as most folks do the candle-lighting spell. Then he turned and inspected my horse and the professor’s. He didn’t say anything, just gave me a little nod, but I felt better all the same.
Wash and the professor went forward, so that she could watch as we approached the Great Barrier Spell. I stayed with the horses. Despite Wash’s approval, I was still nervous about the calming spell, and I wanted to be right there if anything went wrong.
The ferry cast off and made its slow way toward mid-river. The shimmery haze got more and more shimmery as we got closer, then turned into a curtain of tiny rainbows that flickered and moved like the waves on the surface of the water. The horses shifted, as if they could tell they were drawing nearer to the greatest magical working in the New World.
I looked at the horses, wondering what I was going to do if my spell did go wrong. I wasn’t good enough yet to cast it again in a big hurry. Then I smiled. All year in school, I’d been doing my Avrupan spells by using the Aphrikan world-sensing to tell when they were going wrong. I ducked under the hitching rail and braced myself against it with both hands. Then I let myself get very quiet inside my head, and felt outward for everything else, especially the spell I’d just cast.
I’d done something similar by accident the first time I went through the Great Barrier Spell, so I thought I knew what the spell would feel like: huge and strong and ancient-seeming, even though Mr. Franklin and Mr. Jefferson and the others had only gotten it going a few years before the Revolutionary War. It felt like Avrupan magic and Hijero-Cathayan magic and Aphrikan magic all mixed together, and then some. Nobody could figure out how they’d done it, and nobody wanted to poke at it too hard trying to find out, on account of maybe making it fall apart and letting the wildlife back in.