“Well,” said Professor Torgeson after a minute. “I’ve never seen that happen before.”
“I’m sorry, Professor,” I said in a low tone. “I just … I never have been much good with Avrupan magic. I think you’d better enchant all the jars yourself.”
“What?” The professor tore her eyes away from the puddle. “Nonsense! You just overloaded the spell. Though I’ve never seen quite so much of an overload before.” She looked at me with a considering expression. “Your twin brother is some sort of prodigy, isn’t he?” She put just the faintest extra emphasis on twin.
“Lan’s a double-seventh son,” I said. “I’m … not.” William and Wash and Miss Ochiba had spent a long time convincing me that being a thirteenth child didn’t make me evil or unchancy, and I mostly believed it myself now, but I was still leery of telling other people. I’d had too much unpleasantness in my life from people who truly did think I was bad luck, and I didn’t relish risking more if I didn’t have need.
Professor Torgeson didn’t let it go, though. “Yes, yes, I can see that you aren’t a son,” she said. “But what are you?”
I sighed. “I’m the older twin, and I’m a seventh daughter,” I told her. “Not a double-seventh daughter, though.”
“Pity,” the professor said absently. “I don’t recall ever hearing of a pair of twin double-sevens. I expect they’d be something exceptional, if they ever happened. Still, a pair of twins where one is a seventh and the other a double-seventh is quite remarkable. It might well explain the amount of power you put into that spell.”
“I —”
“Frustration no doubt had a fair bit to do with it, too,” the professor went on. She tilted her head, studying the table once more. “Why don’t you see if you can scare up a pair of work gloves and a cleaning knife? We can’t leave this as it is.”
I found a pair of work gloves in the kitchen, but I had to go all the way over to the laboratory building for the cleaning knife. When I got back, Professor Torgeson had cleared off the other end of the table and was busy enchanting canning jars. I scraped and pried at the puddle of glass until it came free from the table, then took it out to the waste bin.
Professor Torgeson looked up as I returned. “Ready to try again?” she asked, nodding toward the table. She’d already set up the feathers and the canning jar. All that remained was to cast the spell.
I gaped at her. “You want me to try again? After that?” I waved at the charred spot on the table.
“Of course,” Professor Torgeson said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “If you don’t try again, you’ll never learn the spell.”
“But —”
“You aren’t frustrated now, and attitude has a good deal to do with spell work. Go on, now.”
I was so surprised that I did what she said, without using Aphrikan magic or anything. The spell still didn’t work, but at least the canning jar didn’t melt.
“Again,” Professor Torgeson commanded.
“In a minute, please, Professor,” I said, staring at the work space. It had been so long since I’d cast an Avrupan spell without using Aphrikan magic to help that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Almost, but not quite — and the sample-preserving spell felt different from what I remembered. It needed something, some balance point … and then I remembered what it felt like to do the Aphrikan world-sensing. Like building with jackstraws, one at a time, I thought. Only I couldn’t build a straw box and keep up the world-sensing at the same time.
Slowly and carefully, I cast the spell again. This time, I didn’t use any world-sensing, but I concentrated on the feel of the spell itself. In the back of my mind, I pictured putting jackstraws on top of each other, one by one, very gently so as not to knock anything loose.
I spoke the last word as my hand completed the final pass. For just a second, I thought I’d failed again … and then the canning jar glowed, bright but not blinding. The glow faded, and I looked at the professor without even trying to keep from grinning. “I did it!”
“That you did,” Professor Torgeson said. “And a good job, too.” She plucked the jar out from the feathers and replaced it with another one. “Again.”
It took me three tries (it really was a fiddly spell), but I did it. She made me do five more jars before she was satisfied that I could keep it up; then she stacked all the unenchanted jars in the indent of the table where we could both reach them, and took herself down to the other end to do some spell casting of her own.
It took the two of us quite a while to finish, and I never did tell the professor about my strange dreams. I was late getting home to dinner. I didn’t pay much heed to the scolding Mama and Allie gave me, though I knew I deserved it. I was too busy thinking about the way Professor Torgeson had made me keep trying that spell, even after I melted the canning jar. When I was in upper school, no one ever made me redo my spells once they’d gone badly wrong.
But Professor Torgeson hadn’t just made me try again right away, I thought. She’d sent me off to get cleanup tools, and made me clean up first. She’d given me a little time, but not so much that I’d talk myself into a funk over having melted the jar.
The other thing that occurred to me was that I’d been using Aphrikan magic all wrong for near on to a year now. I hadn’t really been trying to work my Avrupan spells right — well, I’d been trying to the first time I cast them, but I hadn’t been using my Aphrikan world sense to see what I’d done wrong so I could do it the right way on my next try. I’d only ever just watched to see when the magic started going wrong, so I could shove it back into place. And since I never bothered to figure out why things went wrong, I’d make the same mistakes the next time I cast the spell. No wonder I couldn’t do Avrupan spells properly!
On the other hand, I’d had a lot of trouble with Avrupan magic before I ever started using Aphrikan magic to force my spells to work. I thought about that all evening, but it wasn’t until I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, that I finally figured out why.
I’d never thought of my problems with Avrupan magic as mistakes that I could learn to fix.
First, for years, I’d thought all my troubles were because I was an unlucky thirteenth child. On top of that, I’d been so afraid of what I might do if I went bad that I stopped ever really trying to learn Avrupan magic. Once I found out that I could do spells after all, and stopped really believing that being thirteenth-born was the reason for my problems, I was so used to messing up that I kept right on doing it without thinking. And when I found out that Aphrikan world-sensing could force my spells to work, that’s all I’d used it for.
I thought some more. Professor Torgeson had said that the sample-preserving spell was based on the general storage spell, and I’d thought I could make it work the same way I’d been making the general storage spell work. But I’d never really learned how to cast the general storage spell properly, without Aphrikan magic.
I sat up. The house was dark and quiet. I thought about waiting until morning, but I wanted to know if I was right. I slid out of bed, and the wooden pendant Wash had given me thumped against my breastbone.
I snuck down the hall to the linen cupboard and canceled the storage spell. There wasn’t much chance of moths getting into the blankets this late in the year, though there was still a month or two before Mama would have to get them out to put on the beds. Holding my breath, I cast the storage spell.
It didn’t work the first time, or the second, but on my third try I felt the magic click into place just the way it was supposed to.