“That I was,” Wash said agreeably. “But there are ways to learn Aphrikan magic even here.”
“I know just as much of it as I know Avrupan magic,” Champ said. He sounded angry, like he thought the professor was questioning his skills.
“Miss Ochiba taught Aphrikan magic to eight or nine of us after school for six years,” I put in.
“All right, all right,” the professor said. “I just thought … Never mind. I, too, would like to watch, if you’ll permit it.”
“Not this afternoon,” Wash said. “It’ll be simpler if it’s just me. Tomorrow, you can watch if you like. There won’t be much for you to see, though.” He put just the smallest extra stress on you, which made me wonder. Then he said, “Miss Eff, Champ, you can watch, too, as long as you keep yourselves strictly under control,” and I knew what he’d meant.
Avrupan spells could do a lot of things, but I didn’t know of any that did what Aphrikan world-sensing did. And world-sensing was one of the earliest bits of Aphrikan magic we’d learned from Miss Ochiba. It wasn’t exactly a spell. Spells work on things outside you — rocks and tables and weeds and candles. World-sensing is something you do to yourself, inside your own head, so that you can feel more of what’s going on around you. Growing up as he had, Champ had to know even more Aphrikan magic than I did, so for sure he knew how to do world-sensing. Professor Torgeson didn’t, so she wouldn’t be able to tell much of anything about Wash’s spell casting.
Suddenly, I felt a little embarrassed. I hadn’t really practiced my world-sensing since the hunt for the saber cats. Oh, I’d used it off and on, but I hadn’t been working at it the way I should have. At first, I’d just been extra sensitive to the unpleasant, dead feel of the land where the mirror bugs had been, and I’d taken to putting off doing a proper practice session. Lately, it flat-out hurt whenever I tried, so I’d pretty much given it up.
I frowned slightly. Wash and Champ didn’t seem to be having problems, and I bet myself that there were plenty of people in Promised Land who did world-sensing every day. I thought back, trying to remember when I’d started having problems. Right after the saber cat hunt, that was when I’d started avoiding my practice. And it had gotten painful after Novokoros … no, just before we got to Novokoros, at the failed settlement where Professor Torgeson had taken the bluehornet specimen.
Right after I’d had the dreams.
I frowned harder. I couldn’t see any reason why those two strange dreams should have mucked up my world-sensing, but I was willing to bet they’d done something. I resolved to start doing a proper practice from then on, headache or not.
Professor Torgeson decided that since we couldn’t go down the slope to the banks of the creek without bothering Wash, we’d all of us do some plant lists in the woods. With most of the trees dead, the sunlight got all the way down to the ground, and a lot of new bushes and trees had sprouted. Even keeping close to the campsite, so as to take advantage of the temporary protection spells, we found plenty enough things to list.
Next morning, we all went down to the creek to watch Wash work his spell. He sat us down a ways from the end of the dam and told us not to move from there and to be real quiet. Then he walked a few feet out onto the landslide, picking his way over stones and broken branches until he came to a spot that was clear. He sat down cross-legged, facing upstream toward the dammed-up lake, and for a minute nothing seemed to happen at all.
Cautiously, I started in on world-sensing. It was confusing at first, and my head hurt just the way it had been doing since the bluehornet settlement, but I made myself go on. After a minute or two, the headache stopped and everything settled. To my surprise, the area around Daybat Creek didn’t feel anywhere near as icy dead as most places had since we crossed the Mammoth River, just sort of cool with colder patches. The water felt warmest; the coldest part was the dam itself.
Wash reached in his rear pocket and pulled out a jack-knife. He opened it up and threw it down into the ground like he was playing mumblety-peg, so that the blade stuck. He dragged it forward along the way the blade was facing, cutting a line in the earth. Then he pulled the knife out and threw again.
Five times, he threw the knife and cut lines in the ground, all in dead silence. I could feel a kind of pressure building up, the way the air feels some days right before a thunderstorm, still and heavy and menacing. Then Wash took the knife and made a cut across the palm of each of his hands. Leaning forward, he slapped both hands down on the pattern he’d made.
I more than half expected something dramatic to happen, but nothing did. The professor stirred and whispered, “What is he doing?”
“Shh!” Champ hissed, and we were still.
I felt a warm spot in the dam. It wasn’t very big and it wasn’t very warm — just a small patch near the creek bed on the side nearest the water. I focused on that place, trying to sense what was different about it, but at first all I could sense was the warmth.
Then something shifted in my mind, and I knew what was happening. The water that was building up in the lake put pressure on the dam everywhere, but since the dam wasn’t really a nice, even shape, the pressure wasn’t quite the same all over. The warm bit of the dam was the place where the water was pressing hardest and soaking into the fallen dirt. The warmth of the water was sinking into the dam along with the water itself.
I still couldn’t feel Wash’s spell casting. I frowned, trying to concentrate harder, and almost lost my focus. Then I realized my mistake. I knew what Avrupan magic felt like, from doing world-sensing in my magic class at the upper school, and I’d been expecting something like that: a cage of magic built up all around the outside of something, to make it change. But Wash’s magic was inside the dam somewhere.
As soon as I thought that, I felt it — deep and firm, but also gentle, like Wash’s voice. It was all through the dam, but especially in the warmer part, and it felt like it belonged, like it was just another part of the rocks and dirt and trees. I figured that was why I’d had so much difficulty in sensing it in the first place.
I waited, expecting the magic to do something, but it just seemed to sit there. Then I noticed that the warm spot in the dam was growing, and not because Wash was pushing magic into it. It was growing because the water was soaking into it faster, and bringing the warmth of the lake with it. For the life of me, I couldn’t see why that should be happening, but it was.
The gentle deepness that was Wash’s magic pulled in toward the warm spot in the dam. I still couldn’t tell that it was doing much of anything, but the warm spot kept growing and going deeper into the dam.
I don’t know how long we all sat there, quiet and near motionless, watching Wash and the lake and the dam. It seemed like only a minute or two. Then the professor’s eyes widened and she grabbed my arm and pointed. I lost my focus and the world sense, and I would have been annoyed with her, except that what she was pointing at was water, seeping out from under the landslide on the downstream side.
I grinned and nodded at the professor, then went back to feeling the spell. It took me a minute to get focused again. By that time, the warmth and the water were nearly all the way through the dam, but only in a section about two feet wide. A minute or two later, I could see a rapidly darkening stripe on the front slope of the dam, and shortly after that, water began oozing out of the dirt and running down to join the seepage at the base of the landslide.
Wash hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d leaned over and slapped his bloody hands to the ground. I’d have been worried, if I hadn’t been able to feel his magic all through the dam. The professor shifted restlessly. Champ glared at her like she was interrupting, and the middle of the dam began to collapse slowly.