Jinx's Magic Read online

  “Siegfried . . .” Jinx got to his feet, shakily. “Is he dead?”

  “Yes,” said Reven.

  “No,” said Elfwyn.

  Well, Elfwyn must be telling the truth. Jinx looked all around. The men had retreated into a cluster a stone’s throw away. They held their axes in front of them but they, too, were gathered under a purple cloud of fear.

  Three feet in front of Jinx, a small ash seedling had sprouted from the ground.

  “Ash trees grow very fast,” said Jinx. The tree hadn’t been there a few minutes ago.

  “How—how did you do it?” Elfwyn demanded.

  “Do what?”

  “You turned a man into a plant,” said Reven.

  “Siegfried, actually.” Elfwyn’s voice trembled on the edge of panic. “You turned Siegfried into a tree.”

  “Just a seedling,” said Jinx. “An ash seedling.” He didn’t know how he had done it. He kind of thought that the Urwald had done it. Mostly.

  He felt dizzy. He couldn’t stop looking at the tree that had been Siegfried. Jinx had turned a man into a tree. It was an act worthy of the Bonemaster.

  “Can’t you turn him back?” said Elfwyn.

  “No,” said Jinx.

  “Won’t?” said Reven.

  “Can’t,” said Jinx. He tried. He could feel the power, but he had no idea how to turn a tree into a man.

  “Um, look.” Elfwyn pointed.

  The lumberjacks were moving forward, their axes at the ready, and this time none of them were laughing.

  10

  Dangerous Jinx

  “What are you going to do now?” Reven murmured, raising his own ax. “Turn them all into greenery?”

  Jinx still felt the Urwald power flowing through him. He didn’t think he could turn them all into trees. His magical skills were really very limited. Concealment spell? Wouldn’t work. Door spell? There was nothing to lock. Levitation? Oh—

  Jinx drew on all the power he could, and levitated the axes.

  It was a struggle. The lumberjacks clung to the escaping axes with both hands, and for a minute there, Jinx and the Urwald were lifting tons of dangling lumberjack as the axes fought to rise and the lumberjacks swung with their feet a yard or two off the ground. Then one by one, as they realized what was happening, the men let go and dropped to the ground, falling and rolling. They scrambled to their feet, cast frightened looks at Jinx, and fled. One or two of them glanced nervously back at their axes, which rose until they were floating twenty feet in the air.

  Jinx looked down at the ash seedling in despair. Unfortunately, the moment he broke concentration to do this, he lost control of the levitation spell. The axes came thudding and thunking down all around.

  “Gah!” said Jinx.

  “Cripes,” said Elfwyn.

  “Odbodkins!” Reven glared at Jinx. “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “I forgot about them,” said Jinx.

  “You forgot that you had hung a score of axes over our heads?”

  Jinx looked at the little forest of axes, their blades half buried in the dirt.

  “Those almost hit us!” said Elfwyn.

  She edged closer to Reven. She and Reven seemed to have moved to the other side of an invisible divide and to be gazing distastefully at Jinx across it.

  Jinx suddenly felt shaky. The axes could easily have killed all three of them.

  “You wouldn’t have cared if you had hit us, I swan,” said Reven. “As long as it saved your trees.”

  “Of course I would have cared,” said Jinx. “It was an accident, all right? I forgot the axes were up there.”

  “Forsooth, I’m beginning to think you’re insane,” said Reven. “How many people will you kill to protect your trees?”

  Jinx got annoyed. “As many as it takes.”

  “You really are a werechipmunk,” said Reven. And Elfwyn didn’t say anything to contradict him. Her thoughts were red and shimmery and afraid of Jinx.

  She wanted to get away from him. They both did.

  Well, Jinx had done what he wanted, right? He’d escorted Reven out of the Urwald. And then he’d brought Reven back and made him see the treecutting. As for Elfwyn . . .

  He started to ask her if she was staying with Reven, then didn’t bother. Obviously she was.

  “Yeah,” said Jinx. “I’m a werechipmunk. And you’re willing to sacrifice anybody and anything to become king of your stupid little country. You’ll even make friends with those Lord-Sir-Whatsits that made Dame Morwen dance in red-hot iron shoes!”

  “Dame Morwen cursed Reven,” said Elfwyn.

  “Good for her,” said Jinx. “Listen, Reven or Raymond or whatever. Don’t come back to the Urwald.”

  And he turned his back on them, left them surrounded by twenty axes and the ash seedling, and walked straight into the Urwald.

  The trees murmured and mumbled all around him. But for once that didn’t make him feel better.

  Jinx wandered through the forest, not caring where he was going, just determined to get deeper in and farther away. The problem was that he was running away from what he’d done, and it wasn’t working. Somehow what he’d done seemed to come with him.

  The trees couldn’t really understand his distress over turning Siegfried into a tree. After all, they were trees.

  But he’ll never go home to his family, Jinx said. I mean I utterly turned him into a tree, okay? It’s like he’s dead.

  Not dead, no, said the trees. Growing. Sunlight. Worms.

  Yeah, yeah, worms, said Jinx. Wonderful. I’m sure he’s thrilled.

  Anyway Jinx was pretty sure it had been the trees’ idea, though it wasn’t like he hadn’t done his part. He’d been very angry and he supposed he’d wanted to kill Siegfried.

  He remembered the trees had once told him that he’d misuse their power. He reminded them of this.

  Humans misuse power, said the trees. Magicians do. Wizards do. It is the way of wizards.

  What I think happened, said Jinx, is that you misused me.

  After that he didn’t talk to the trees for a long time.

  Day became night. It grew bitterly cold. Jinx had dropped his blanket when he’d run to stop the treecutters. And he didn’t want to light a fire so far from the Path, where the ground was thick with saplings and fallen wood. So he walked to keep from freezing. Once he stopped and shivered inside a concealment spell while a werebear went past.

  Toward morning, Jinx reached a path. He followed it, heading north and east and wishing he had something to eat. He was getting dizzy and stumbling a lot.

  He leaned against a tree. He tried to remember the hungry times from when he was little, and the stories he’d heard. What had people eaten?

  Suddenly he saw a teenage girl with deep brown skin and a bright blue dress. She crouched at the base of an oak tree and picked at the bark.

  “Uh, hello,” said Jinx.

  The girl didn’t look up. She put something into her mouth.

  “Are you eating bark?” said Jinx.

  The girl ignored him. Dizzily, Jinx unleaned from the tree—but as soon as he moved, she vanished.

  Well, that was odd. Even by Urwald standards.

  Jinx went over to the oak tree. It seemed bigger than it had been a moment ago. The girl had left no footprints in the frost. A ghost?

  He touched the tree. Instantly the girl reappeared. She peeled some lichen off the bark and put it in her mouth. Jinx put out a hand to touch the girl and wasn’t particularly surprised that his hand went right through her.

  Jinx took his hand off the oak. The tree immediately grew thicker and the girl disappeared.

  He looked at the lichen, doubtful. Some lichen was poisonous. He supposed the trees were trying to tell him that this lichen was not, but did the trees know or care whether she’d been poisoned?

  He picked some of the stuff. He put it in his mouth and chewed. It was like eating wood. He didn’t drop dead.

  It didn’t really do much for him.<
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  It did clear his head a little, though. Or at least he thought so, until he looked up the path and saw the girl again. She was older now—almost grown up. And she looked completely there, although Jinx knew she was not. She reached toward a tree branch that hung over the path—and the branch bowed down and touched her outstretched hand.

  What the—?

  Listeners, said the trees. Listener.

  You’re trying to make me think I’m crazy, said Jinx shortly, and walked on.

  The trees murmured to themselves. The Listener isn’t listening.

  It was the shortest day of the year—and Jinx’s thirteenth birthday. What a way to spend a birthday. He was cold, hungry, and practically a murderer. Things could hardly get worse.

  Of course they could.

  Jinx heard clawed feet scrabbling along the path behind him. He wheeled around to see a wolf charging him. Suddenly it reared up on its hind legs and grinned at him—a werewolf. Jinx could see handlike paws, surprisingly intelligent golden eyes, and . . . fangs. Jinx clutched his knife.

  “Truce of the Path,” said the werewolf.

  Jinx took his hand off his knife, reluctantly. Simon had told him never to trust to the Truce unless he had to. He wished he couldn’t see the werewolf’s hunger. It was only slightly reassuring that this werewolf was wearing spectacles.

  The werewolf held out a hand. “I’m Malthus.”

  Swallowing hard, Jinx took the werewolf’s hand and shook it. Almost-human fingers stuck out of matted fur and ended in broken yellow claws. Jinx managed to suppress a shudder as the talons slid over his skin.

  “Jinx. Uh, nice to meet you,” Jinx lied.

  “I’ve been watching you for some time,” said Malthus.

  This is not exactly the most reassuring thing to hear when you’re many miles from home and alone on the Path.

  “Why?” said Jinx.

  “Reasons of my own,” said Malthus. “Shall we walk on?”

  They walked on.

  “Do you know you’re a Listener?” said the werewolf.

  “Of course,” said Jinx.

  Malthus tapped a claw against his lower lip, a thinking kind of gesture. “But you don’t know what it means.”

  Jinx started to say that he did, too, but decided arguing with a werewolf wasn’t a great idea. He shrugged.

  “If you want to survive,” said Malthus, “you’ll figure it out sooner rather than later. The Urwald can’t wait much longer, you know.”

  “I have a pretty good idea what Listener means, thanks. What do you mean by the Urwald?” It was a question that had been troubling Jinx lately.

  “Us,” said the werewolf promptly.

  “Us—?”

  “Werewolves.”

  “I see,” said Jinx. The trees had told him that the Urwald meant the forest and all the Restless—but when it came down to it, they mostly seemed to think it meant the trees.

  “And the trees and various other creatures,” Malthus added.

  “I think I may be hallucinating you,” said Jinx. “I’m really hungry.”

  “Do not mention hunger, please,” said the werewolf. “I am expending considerable effort on not eating you. Do you ever wonder what we gain by keeping the Truce?”

  Jinx started to say that everybody gained the use of the Path, but Malthus probably meant what werewolves gained, and you hardly ever saw werewolves on paths. In fact, Jinx had never seen one on a path before. In fact—

  “I’ve seen you before,” said Jinx. “You had a notebook.”

  A blue blop of pleased surprise from Malthus. “You remember that.”

  “And there was someone else there.” The memory was like a dream trying to slip away as he woke. “Elves. Two elves.”

  “They cast a spell to make you forget,” said the werewolf. “Do you remember anything else?”

  “No.” It was frustrating, because the memory seemed impossibly distant, and yet he had a feeling it hadn’t happened all that long ago.

  “You overcame an elf’s spell,” said Malthus. “At least partially. How unusual, and how encouraging. Think about flames, and wicks, and balance. I must leave you now. I’m really getting quite hungry.”

  The werewolf shook hands again—it wasn’t any less creepy the second time—and then went down on all fours and ran off into the forest.

  When night fell Jinx could walk no farther. He hardly had the strength to gather firewood—he just hauled one dead branch onto the path, lit it, and lay down to sleep. The tree roots murmured and mumbled beneath him. Jinx lay as close as he could to the fire and shivered until he went to sleep.

  He dreamed he was walking along an icy path, with high glass cliffs on either side of him. A cold wind blew and there were no trees anywhere. He looked down at his feet and found that they had been replaced with glass ones, and that an icy transparency was creeping up his body.

  Someone shook him, hard. “Hey! Are you alive?”

  This seemed to Jinx a very difficult question and he couldn’t think how to answer it. He opened his eyes to see how much of him had turned to glass. It seemed none of him had.

  “Bring blankets.” A woman’s voice. “Get some firewood.”

  Then people were pulling Jinx upright, wrapping blankets around him, and the smoke from a new fire was stinging his eyes. He heard the murmur of the Wanderer language. In the predawn light he could make out the shapes of the Wanderers arranging themselves around the fire—seven people, eight donkeys, and a small donkey cart. Jinx recognized them—they’d camped in Simon’s clearing many times.

  And he guessed they’d saved his life. He meant to say thank you, but what came out was, “Do you have anything to eat?”

  “Oh good, he’s talking. Get him some bread,” said the woman.

  “A long time ago, Keyland used to be part of the Urwald,” said Jinx.

  “He’s babbling.” A boy’s voice. “He’s crazy. Oh, it’s that wizard’s boy.”

  Jinx wasn’t babbling—he’d only just realized what the lone oak by the river had meant when it showed him forest all around it. The boy—whose name, Jinx remembered, was Tolliver—shoved a chunk of bread into Jinx’s hands. Jinx ate it.

  Jinx rode in the donkey cart, which he didn’t like much—it jolted, and it made him feel silly. But Quenild, the chief Wanderer, insisted that he was too weak to walk.

  So he bumped and jostled along all day, wrapped in blankets and burrowed in among sacks of woolen cloth and small kegs of sugarplum syrup. Tolliver walked beside him.

  “So did you learn to do any magic yet?” Tolliver said.

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s see some.”

  Jinx thought of doing something really spectacular, but then he remembered Siegfried. Using the Urwald’s power was dangerous. He used the fire inside him, and levitated a sack of cloth a few feet in the air.

  Tolliver looked reluctantly impressed. “You’re still short, though.”

  Jinx dropped the sack back into the cart. The donkey stopped, turned around, flicked its ears, and shot Jinx an annoyed look.

  “Now you’ve upset Biscuit.” Tolliver sang a little song in Wanderer language, something about carrots and warm straw, and Biscuit snorted and started walking again.

  “Seriously? You sing to your donkey?” Jinx felt he had some lost ground to make up, because Tolliver was right—he was short.

  Tolliver reddened. “What were you doing freezing on the path, anyway? Did the wizard kick you out?”

  “Of course not. I’m traveling.” Jinx remembered Tolliver had once accused him of never having been anywhere. “I just came from Keyland.”

  “You should’ve brought blankets with you. And food. That’s what people do when they travel.” Tolliver jumped up and touched a branch hanging over the path. “At least people with brains.”

  “There are lumberjacks cutting down trees back there.” Jinx extracted an arm from the blankets and waved vaguely southeastward.

  “Seen ’em.”<
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  “Doesn’t it bother you?” said Jinx.

  “Nope,” said Tolliver. But Jinx could see that it actually did.

  “If all the trees get cut down, and there’s no Urwald anymore, what will the Wanderers do?”

  “Same thing we do now,” said Tolliver. “You think we just work the Urwald? Man, there’s Wanderers everywhere. Anyway, the Urwald’s too big to cut down.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Jinx. “The Urwald used to go all the way to Keria. And probably a lot farther. So miles of it have been cut down already.”

  Tolliver looked skeptical. “When?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The oak by the river hadn’t told him. All it had done was show him a forest that was gone now. “Ages ago, probably. Before we were born.”

  “So why worry? The Urwald’ll be here after we’re dead. Or at least some of it will.”

  “That’s not good enough.” Jinx tried another tack. “Look, how big is the Urwald?”

  “Weeks,” said Tolliver. “Months.” He pointed south. “Six weeks that way.” He pointed north. “A month that way.” He pointed west. “A month that way or”—he pointed northwest—“two months that way.”

  “And you guys go, what, everywhere in it?”

  “Pretty much,” said Tolliver.

  “What if you kind of told people what was happening? The trees getting cut down and stuff? Maybe they would get together and do something about it.”

  “Nope,” said Tolliver. “They wouldn’t.” He jumped at another branch, but missed it.

  “How do you know?” said Jinx.

  “’Cause they’re Urwalders,” said Tolliver.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Urwalders don’t get together, they don’t unite, and they don’t do anything,” said Tolliver. “That’s just the facts.”

  They camped on the path that evening, and the next day Jinx was allowed to walk. Around noon they reached the Blacksmiths’ Clearing. The houses here, too, looked a bit nicer than the ones in most clearings. Maybe the Urwalders who lived closer to the edge were richer than people in the deep Urwald.

  Jinx was hoping he’d be able to talk to the people here about the treecutting. Maybe he could prove Tolliver was wrong about Urwalders.