“It’s Wash, Professor,” Wash said with a smile, but then he shook his head. “I’m pleased enough to help out where I can, but staying too long in the city makes me twitchy.”
“I’ve half a mind to assign you to one of my students as a project while you’re here,” Professor Jeffries said. He was still frowning with his eyebrows, but you could just see that the corners of his mouth were itching to curl up considerably more than he was letting them. Wash had that effect on people.
“If you like,” Wash said. “I doubt it’d be worth the effort this time, though. I’m only here for a few days, to resupply and” — he gave me a quick wink — “get a haircut so I don’t frighten the new settlers.”
“Hmph.” Professor Jeffries shook his head. “No doubt you’re right. Next time, I shall be ready for you.” His frown deepened suddenly, as if he’d thought of something, but all he said was that Wash should take me out back and show me the fox cubs. “And I trust that you will provide Miss Rothmer with any pertinent information regarding their care,” he added. “I would not wish to lose a pair of valuable specimens through ignorance.”
So Wash took me out to the pen they’d rigged up in the menagerie. The golden firefoxes were a double handful each of long fluffy fur and bright black eyes and cold black noses, just barely past being weaned. Wash said they’d keep their pale, pale gold color until spring, when they’d get their first summer coats and start coming into control of their magic. When they were full-grown, they’d be a light gold on top, almost the color of dry grass, with a deeper gold underneath. And just like regular firefoxes, they’d be able to warm or cool the air around them, though neither animal could actually start fires as far as anybody knew.
Wash told me how to feed the cubs, and what sort of bedding firefoxes used in their dens, and to be sure the cubs didn’t get too warm. Then I showed him around the menagerie. The college’s collection had grown in the past three years, though we still didn’t have very many magical creatures on account of the difficulty of getting them past the Great Barrier Spell. In addition to the scorch lizard and the daybat we’d started with, we’d added a miniature silverhoof and a pair of jewel minks that the professors were trying to get to breed, but most of the animals were ordinary, natural ones, like the mammoth: a prairie wolf, a couple of bison, the colony of prairie dogs that had grown from the two Dr. McNeil brought back, a porcupine, and so on. We’d had a skunk for a while, but even the magicians couldn’t do much about the smell, so we’d gotten rid of it.
After we went through everything once, we went back past the cages and pens that Wash thought could be improved on, and Wash made suggestions for changes. By the time we finished, the afternoon was getting on for evening and it was time for me to head home. Wash said he’d walk along with me, as he had a fair number of thanks from the settlements to pass along to Papa.
“And to yourself as well, Miss Eff,” he added. “Seeing that it was you that figured out the spell for getting rid of the mirror bugs.”
“Don’t you start, too!” I said. “I’ve had more than enough of that all summer long.”
“Do tell,” Wash said, and so I did. It took me halfway home to cover it all, from the newspapers to Lan’s notions about college to my classmates at school. It turned out that Wash knew some of the boys from back in day school who’d gone west to the settlements instead of on to upper school. We gossiped some about them, and it was a considerable relief after all the talk of me and my doings. I’d almost forgotten how easy Wash was to talk to. He never pushed and he always listened, and when he finally said something to the purpose it was always worth hearing. So I was more than a little surprised when, after a short pause in the conversation, he asked after my magic lessons.
I made a face. “It’s not as bad as it was, but I still can’t make Avrupan spells work properly most of the time. And I haven’t had time to practice Aphrikan magic.”
Wash gave me a thoughtful look. “You’re still at the point of needing practice, then?” he said mildly.
“I —” I stopped. It hadn’t occurred to me that there were other ways of learning magic than sitting down to work at it the way we did at school. I felt pretty foolish; Miss Ochiba had told us often enough that you could find a different way to look at anything, if you tried. And the most basic part of Aphrikan magic was all about sensing the way the world was and how it maybe could be different if you nudged it a little. It wasn’t a separate thing from just everyday living, and learning how to do it didn’t have to be separate, either. “I guess that’s what she meant.”
“Miss Maryann?”
I nodded. “She said once that when we got good at world-sensing, we’d be able to tell if an apple had a worm in it before we bit into it. I wondered at the time why anyone would go throwing spells around before they ate anything, but that’s not what she meant. She meant that when you get really good at it, you just do it all the time. And I haven’t even been trying once in a while!”
“You’ve been raised to Avrupan magic,” Wash said. “It’s natural that you think in terms of specific spells and purposes. Aphrikan magic isn’t like that.”
I touched the thumbnail-sized whorl of wood I wore on a leather cord around my neck, under my blouse. Wash had given me the charm early in the summer, to help me control my magic. Or at least, that’s what I’d thought at the time. Then I’d discovered that there were a whole lot of spells wrapped around it, some of them Aphrikan or Avrupan and some a kind I didn’t recognize. Some were very new, and some were very, very old, and a good chunk of them were there to make sure nobody noticed all the magic except people who already knew about it. I hadn’t gotten much further than that in the time I’d had to study on it, which wasn’t too surprising. Untangling all that old magic so as to get a proper look at it would have been hard enough all by itself; with all the don’t-notice spells added in, it was practically impossible.
I started to ask Wash about it, but then changed my mind. Neither Wash nor Miss Ochiba would tell you something if they thought you ought to be figuring it out on your own.
So instead of asking about how the pendant worked, I said, “Who gave you that wood pendant, Wash?”
Wash’s eyes crinkled up at the corners and he looked at me like he thought I’d said something extra clever. All he said was, “A conjureman. He was a friend of my mother’s. I’ve had it since I was, oh, three or four.”
“Wash!” I said. “And you gave it to me?”
“It’s not a keeping thing,” Wash said. “I haven’t had need of it in years. It was more than time I passed it along, but I never met quite the right person before.”
“But —”
“But, nothing.” Wash’s voice was unusually stern. “I told you once, that pendant only goes one way. Teacher to student. I’ll tell you the whole story some other time, perhaps. But meantime, don’t you go leaving it in a drawer somewhere. Some things are meant to be worn, valuable or not.”
“I’m wearing it now,” I said. “I just … it didn’t seem like something I wanted to show off. So I don’t.”
“Ah. That’s good.”
“It seems very complicated,” I said tentatively. “The spells that go with it, I mean.”
“It is complicated,” Wash said. “So’s the world. Keep it while you can; use it while you need it; pass it on when you’ve finished.”
“Use it for what?” I said, exasperated. “And how?” “That’s up to you,” Wash said with a wide grin that made me want to forget I was a grown-up lady, nearly, and haul off and smack him the way I used to smack Lan and Robbie when we were little.