“A lot of those wash down the creek,” he told me. “Just small ones. Miss Blanchard collects them and smashes them up to add to the clay she uses to make pots. She says it makes the clay smooth and shiny, and the pieces come out almost like Cathayan porcelain once they’re fired.”
“That doesn’t make these rocks any less odd,” I said.
“Odd appears to be normal in the West,” Professor Torgeson said in a dry tone. “We’ll take a sample back for the college, though I doubt it’ll be anything new to the geologists.”
By the time we finished setting up camp, it was late enough that we left heading down to the creek for the next morning. The professor was eager to see what plants were coming up along the creek, and if they were different above and below the dammed-up part, but even she wasn’t crazy about the notion of trying to climb back up the slope in the dark.
Next morning, after we’d fed and watered the horses, the four of us made our way down to the dam that was blocking Daybat Creek. It was a tricky business; the whole hillside had sheared away and there were no plants or bushes to grab on to if you slipped. I spent most of the climb down wishing for a rope, or wishing I could have stayed back in camp.
Wash made it to the bottom first. Champ and I were next, almost at the same time. Professor Torgeson was over to the side, about three-quarters down, when we saw her pause and bend over the ground. A minute later, she was scrabbling toward us as fast as ever she could, waving her fist and calling, “Wash! Eff! Look at this!”
I’d never seen her so excited before, not even when we found all the magical plants around the mirror bug traps. She slipped as she reached us, but Wash stepped forward and caught her before she fell into the dam. The professor straightened herself up and caught her breath, then slowly opened her dirty fingers.
Resting in the palm of her hand was one of the grayish white rocks like the ones we’d used to line the firepit — only this one was about two inches long and the exact shape and size of a squirrel’s front paw and forearm. If you looked close, you could even see where two of the claws had broken off.
“Huh,” Champ said after a moment. “Looks like somebody’s been here before us. So?”
“How could that be?” I said. “Nobody’d come all the way out here and bury a broken statue in the middle of a big old hill, especially one that’s been around long enough to grow trees all over it. I don’t see how anyone could do that.”
“Maybe it slid down from the top in the landslide.”
“That is possible,” Professor Torgeson acknowledged. “Though I think it is more likely that it was uncovered when half the hill slid away. If we can find the rest, or even a few more pieces, we may be able to get an historical excavator interested enough to come out and do a proper job.”
“Is it magic, then?” Champ asked.
I reached out to the stone with my world sense, the way I’d been taught, and flinched. That bit of rock was even colder and deader and more drained of magic than the land the mirror bugs had been over. I took a deep breath, and realized that Champ and Wash had flinched right along with me.
“No,” said Wash. “It’s not magic.”
The professor looked at him curiously. “We should try to find the rest of the statue,” she said. “I hope the pieces are still large enough to identify.”
“First things first,” Wash said firmly. “Whatever’s left of that has been sitting there a good long while; it’ll stand sitting a bit longer. I’m more concerned over this dam right at the moment.”
Professor Torgeson nodded reluctantly. She pulled out her handkerchief and wrapped the stone paw carefully, then asked to borrow mine so as to give it a bit more padding. Meantime, Wash and Champ inspected the blockage. Wash even climbed out toward the middle, stopping every now and then to have a closer look down the back side. When he came back, he was frowning mightily.
“The dam seems stable enough for the time being,” he said. “But it won’t last in the long run. Far as I can see, it’s a toss-up whether the creek will carve out a new channel through the landslide or whether the whole dam will give way at once. And if the blockage gives way all at once …”
“That’d be a problem.” Champ looked worried. “Especially if it takes a while before it goes.” He stared out over the lake that was building up behind the blockage.
I could understand why he was worried. Even though most of Mill City was high enough above the Mammoth River that it didn’t have to worry over flooding, there were still problems every few years, and the barges always had difficulty in the spring. I’d heard that some of the millers and bargemen had proposed building a lock and dam near the falls, to get some control of the water level in the river, but nobody wanted to take the chance on it causing a problem with the Great Barrier Spell.
Daybat Creek was a lot smaller than the Mammoth River, but if it filled up to the top of the dam before it cut loose, the fields and homes along the creek were sure to be flooded, at the very least. If the water was strong enough to carry some of the trees along, there’d be even more damage.
“What can we do about it?” Professor Torgeson asked. “We couldn’t dig out a landslide even if we had shovels and the whole of the Promised Land settlement to help.”
“We don’t need to get rid of the whole thing,” Champ said, sounding a little desperate. “Just enough to start a channel through the downfall. The water will take care of the rest. You’re one of those college magicians, aren’t you? Can’t you do something?”
Professor Torgeson sighed. “I’m afraid not. Magic might be some use if we were Cathayan magicians, or a well-trained Avrupan team, or even if one of us was a double-seventh son, but we aren’t.”
“We don’t need to be,” Wash said absently. “The real problem is that there’s nothing to draw on. The mirror bugs soaked up all the power and moved it elsewhere; it’ll be a few years before it comes back this far.”
I wasn’t sure what Wash had in mind, but I could see he was thinking real hard on something. And if what he needed was magic …
“Can you draw on the creek?” I asked.
Wash’s head whipped around to look at me. “Draw on the creek? What gave you that notion?”
“They always said that the power for the Great Barrier Spell comes from the Mammoth River itself,” I said. “Well, and the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence on the north side, but that’s sort of the same thing. This is just a creek that’s backed up into a lake, but it ought to have at least some magic about it.”
“That’s a true thing,” Wash said slowly. He looked down at the dam, then out between the hills. “Professor Torgeson, why don’t you three go hunt for the rest of that statue? I’m going to sit here awhile and think.”
“But what about —” Champ started, then stopped short when Wash held up a hand to shush him.
“This isn’t a thing to do in a tearing hurry, unless there’s a powerful need for it,” Wash told him. “And it doesn’t look much like there’s rain coming on, and the landslide is stable for now. I do believe the dam will hold for a few hours while I think.”
Champ looked down and scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Sorry, Wash.”
Wash nodded and waved us on. The professor gave him a curious look, but she didn’t make any more comments. She just pointed us at the part of the slope where she’d found the stone paw and set us to hunting. She said to gather up anything that looked possible, and we’d sort it out later.
We walked up and down the hill for a while. I wasn’t exactly sure what Professor Torgeson wanted; an awful lot of the gray-white stones looked to me like being part of something, even if they couldn’t all be a squirrel statue. After a few minutes, Champ went down to the landslide and found a branch he could break off. He started digging at the slope with it, while I scrambled up a bit higher.