I didn’t, and so I told him the very next day. He wasn’t happy about it, but I got him to agree that it was my decision and he would have to let it be. I could see that he thought I’d come around sooner or later, but as long as he didn’t go stirring things up right then, I didn’t mind. I figured that by the time he was around to bring it up again, I’d have done a sight more thinking about what I did want and how to get to it. Right then, I just knew that it felt wrong for me to go so far away from everyone I cared about and everything I loved, just to get more schooling that I wasn’t sure I had any need for.
Lan left on the train the first week in September, still sure that I’d change my mind before Christmas. I didn’t try to convince him he was wrong. I wasn’t certain that he was. I only knew that between him and William, I had a lot more thinking to do before I finished upper school.
CHAPTER 2
THINKING DIDN’T COME EASY THAT FALL. I’D BEEN SURE THAT ALL the fuss about the mirror bugs and the settlement and me would finally die down when Lan and William went back East, but it didn’t. Oh, the newspaper people stopped coming around, and they’d quit doing broadsheets a while back when the big fire at the grain mill gave them something else exciting to write about, but it wasn’t like anybody forgot about it.
The ones who especially didn’t forget were my teachers and classmates at the upper school. Half of them treated me like a circus lion, wanting me to do tricks for them, and the other half thought I‘d made the whole thing up and made no bones about saying so. And some of them were jealous because I‘d been out past the Great Barrier Spell and seen part of the Western settlement country for myself, and they didn’t believe me one bit when I said the part I‘d seen wasn’t so different from the land around Mill City.
Magic classes were the worst, because everyone expected me to show off, and thought I was shamming when I still had nearly as much trouble getting my spells to work as I ever had. On the very first day, when we were reviewing the solidifying spell, mine turned half of the wooden table black and gooey, so that it collapsed. The mud we were supposed to be working on spattered all over everything, and I spent the rest of class cleaning up the mess. At least my spells had quit exploding, so I didn’t have to worry about someone getting hurt.
I went back to spending most of my free time down at the college menagerie with Professor Jeffries. He was the college wildlife specialist, and I knew him pretty well because he used to let William and me come down and practice our Aphrikan magic on the animals, coaxing them to move around or choose one bit of food over another. That was when I’d first grown to love the menagerie, and by extension the Far West that was the true home for many of the menagerie’s animals.
Although I didn’t have any official position with the menagerie, Professor Jeffries let me feed the animals, even the young mammoth that was the prize specimen in the collection, and sometimes I assisted in the office. There was a new professor in the department, Miss Aldis Torgeson, and she was at least twice as good at coming up with paperwork as Professor Jeffries ever was, so they needed a lot more assisting.
This was why I was at the menagerie on the October day when Washington Morris came by. Actually, Wash got there before I did. I came straight from school, and found him sitting on the corner of Professor Jeffries’s desk, waving his hands to emphasize a point, so that the long leather fringe on his jacket flapped every which way as he talked.
Wash was a circuit-rider, one of the six or seven magicians who rode from settlement to settlement to bring them news, share new spells, and help out when the settlement magicians needed helping. He’d been out in the settlements all summer, spreading the anti-mirror-bug spells that Papa and Professor Jeffries had worked out, and I hadn’t looked to see him again until spring. His black hair was a mass of frizz grown nearly to chin length, and his beard looked as if he’d used a crosscut saw to trim it. Circuit magicians always got a mite shaggy when they’d been out in the settlements for months, but Wash usually stopped at the barber in West Landing, on the far side of the river, before he came on into town. I thought he must have been in a powerful hurry to have skipped sprucing up.
As soon as he saw me, he broke off and his dark face split in a wide grin. “Hello, Miss Rothmer!” he said, and I could tell that he was tired because the hint of Southern drawl in his voice was a lot stronger than usual.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Morris,” I said.
“Wash,” he corrected me.
“Not if you’re going to call me Miss Rothmer,” I told him. “I thought we got that settled last summer.”
“Miss Eff, then,” he said, still grinning.
I couldn’t keep from rolling my eyes, but I let that stand. It should have felt peculiar, being on a first-name basis with a gentleman a good fifteen or sixteen years older than me, and a black man to boot, but Wash never paid much attention to other people’s rules, and he had a way of making everyone else forget about them, too. I always thought that was why he spent most of his time out in the wild country: because there was no one there to make rules for him.
“What are you doing back in Mill City so soon?” I asked.
“Supply run,” he said. “I gave most of mine to the settlement magician at Evergreen Farms, and I need to restock.”
Knowing Wash, that was true enough, but it wasn’t anything like all of the truth. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Then what are you doing in Professor Jeffries’s office, first thing? He doesn’t have supplies to sell.”
“Not of the usual kind,” Wash said agreeably.
“You’re as bad as William,” I complained. “And whatever Professor Jeffries has for you, it still doesn’t explain why you came straight here before you even got yourself looking civilized again.”
Wash laughed. “You sound just like Miss Maryann,” he told me, meaning Miss Ochiba. That was how I’d first met him, three years back when Miss Ochiba had asked him to talk to her classes at the day school about the settlements and the open lands of the Far West.
Professor Jeffries gave both of us a look of mild reproof. “Mr. Morris came to deliver a new specimen for the menagerie,” he said.
“A new specimen? What did you catch?” I asked eagerly.
“A pair of golden firefox cubs,” Wash said. “I had quite a time getting them through the Barrier Spell. Young ‘uns have a harder time with it. The ferryman didn’t much like me bringing wildlife over, either. I took myself off as soon as we docked and came straight here.”
I stared at him. “Fox cubs? In October?”
Wash shrugged. “Firefoxes don’t breed quite the same as their natural cousins.”
“Still, a fall litter is unusual even for magical wildlife,” Professor Jeffries said. “We’re lucky you found them.”
“It’s not so out of the way for those critters,” Wash said. “Truth to tell, I’d had my eye on a den I found two years back, hoping one of the family would circle around to use it again this fall. I wasn’t expecting goldens, though, and I wasn’t expecting the mama fox to be caught by a Gaulish trapper.”
“I see.” Professor Jeffries pushed his glasses up on his nose and made a hrumphing sound. “I do wish you could see your way to staying in Mill City for more than a week at a time, Mr. Morris. Your practical observations would be infinitely useful, if we could persuade you to write them out.” He frowned slightly. “Or better yet, dictate them to someone.”
I ducked my head to hide a smile. Wash’s handwriting was dreadful. I knew on account of he’d been sending notes to Professor Jeffries for a couple-three years, and I’d been the one making a clean copy of them for the professor.