“If it is, the medusa will be following along after Mr. Anderson and Mr. Le Grise,” I said slowly.
“Speed travel takes a lot of power,” Lan said, nodding. “And it leaves a trail for at least a day. Even if the medusa can’t move very fast, it’s had plenty of time to get pointed in this direction.”
“And once it gets close enough, it’ll sense the settlement spells,” I finished. “I can see why you wouldn’t be keen on pumping a lot of extra power into them just now.”
“Of course, the settlement spells may keep it off, the way they’re supposed to,” Lan said. He didn’t sound any more convinced than I felt.
“At least there’s only one medusa,” I said after a minute.
“Probably,” Lan added.
I nodded very slowly. We were both in a very sober frame of mind when we left the longhouse to see what help we could be.
CHAPTER 27
THE WHOLE SETTLEMENT HAD A TENSE AND SOLEMN AIR FOR THE rest of the morning. People gathered in little knots, talking. You could feel the fear growing as everything sank in. Settlers were accustomed to the dangers of the wildlife, but a creature that turned three horses to stone all at once was more than anyone had signed up for.
What worried people the most was the way the travel protection spells had come down. Mr. Macleod was acting like the settlement spells would stay up, especially since he knew to expect a problem, but most folks could see that he was just trying to reassure people.
The trouble was, nobody had any good idea what else to do. People came up with notions, of course, but they had no more back of them than hoping. One of the settlers took to carrying a hand mirror with him, because the Greek lady with the snake hair had finally been killed by a man who only ever looked at her in a mirror. As soon as word got out, more than half the settlers went looking for mirrors of their own. One man smashed his big looking glass and offered people the pieces. Lots of folks ended up with cuts from handling the broken glass, and slashes in their clothes, but they still carried them around, even though nobody knew for sure whether they’d help.
Pretty soon, a few folks started talking of heading back to Mill City “for a few weeks.” Mostly, it was the families with childings doing the talking, but I was still surprised to hear it. Big Bear Lake was three years into its five-year commitment — anyone who left now would be giving up their share for the Settlement Office to reassign.
Around mid-afternoon, Lan and I were sitting on the ground outside the longhouse when we saw Wash and Professor Torgeson come out of Mr. Macleod’s house. They made a bee-line for Mr. Macleod and started talking a mile a minute. Lan’s eyes narrowed. “You stay here, Eff,” he said. “I’m going to talk to them.”
He stood up and I stood up with him. He turned and glared at me. “Eff —”
“I know that look, Lan Rothmer,” I interrupted, “and I’m coming with you, and that’s that.”
Lan made a face. “I suppose I can’t stop you,” he grumbled, and set off for Wash and the others.
As we came up on them, the first thing we heard was Mr. Macleod saying, “— not. I can’t let you take a chance like that. Besides, we need you here, to protect the settlement.”
“No, you don’t,” Wash said. “The settlement protection spells are as strong as may be, and you’ve plenty of people to trade off holding them up so that they’ll stay that way. The next thing to do is to get rid of this medusa critter before it causes more trouble. Waiting here for it to show up doesn’t seem like the best plan to me. And taking chances is a circuit magician’s job.”
“It’s not a professor’s job!” Mr. Macleod said.
“Mr. Macleod,” Professor Torgeson said, “I am a Vinlander born and raised, and I’ve spent my time in the wildlands of a summer. Furthermore, my job is to find out more about the petrified animals we’ve been uncovering, and this is a golden opportunity to do so. And finally, it is not within your right to detain me should I wish to leave this settlement. Which, I must tell you, I am feeling more inclined to do the longer you talk.”
Wash hid a smile behind his hand and pretended to cough. Mr. Macleod sighed. “Professor, ma’am, I don’t — what do you two want?” he said as he saw Lan and me.
“You’re going to go out hunting the thing that turned the packhorses to stone, aren’t you?” Lan asked Wash.
Wash nodded, at the same time as Mr. Macleod said, “No, they’re not!”
“Well, I want to come with,” Lan said.
I snapped my teeth closed over an objection so fast that I bit my tongue. Telling Lan not to do things only made him stubborner about doing them.
Professor Torgeson frowned. “Mr. Rothmer, while you are not one of my students, you are in some sense my responsibility. This is not a lark, and I will not allow you to accompany us without a very good reason.”
“I have a very good reason,” Lan said steadily. “Two, actually. First of all, there’s a good chance this creature absorbs magic, the way the mirror bug beetles did, and I’m the only person here who’s had experience holding protection spells against that kind of drain.”
“Then you should stay here!” Mr. Macleod said.
“When was that?” Professor Torgeson said at the same time.
“Two years ago, at the Little Fog settlement, when my sister figured out how to beat the mirror bugs,” Lan said. “You may have heard about that part. I was inside the settlement, holding the protection spells against all the grubs and mirror bugs, while Eff figured out how to turn their magic back on them.”
Mr. Macleod’s eyes narrowed. “You held the settlement protection spells? All of them? How?”
“I held all of them,” Lan replied. “As to how — that’s the other reason I should go along on this hunting trip. I’m the seventh son of a seventh son.”
“All true,” Wash said. “I was with Miss Eff at the time.” He rubbed his beard in a thoughtful fashion. “It hadn’t occurred to me, Mr. Rothmer, but you have a point. You could be a right handy man to have along.”
“Sounds to me as if the one you want to take is his sister,” Mr. Macleod growled.
“Both of us, or neither,” I said, nodding.
“What? No, Eff, you can’t —”
“I already said, Lan — both of us, or neither. I let you go off to Little Fog without me last time, and look what happened! Not again.” Which wasn’t exactly fair; I hadn’t particularly wanted to go with him last time, because it was supposed to be just a boring day of fiddling with the broken settlement protection spells at Little Fog and getting them to work properly again. The effect on the grubs and the mirror bugs was something nobody had expected, and it had been a very good thing that I was outside where I could do something about it, once I went chasing after Lan. But I certainly wasn’t going to point any of that out now.
I especially wasn’t going to point it out when I knew I wasn’t being completely truthful about why I wanted to go with Wash and the others. Oh, I wanted to keep an eye on Lan, right enough, but if the only thing I’d wanted to do was watch out for him, I’d have put my energy into making him stay behind. What I really wanted was to go along, too. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t have anything to prove to myself, the way I had with the saber cat hunt the previous summer, and I knew this would be even more dangerous. We wouldn’t have anything like as many people; the settlement couldn’t spare them, and Wash wouldn’t wait for messengers to recruit folks from nearby settlements. We didn’t even know what we were hunting, much less how long it would take to find.
Even so, I wanted to go. I looked hopefully at Wash and Professor Torgeson.