The Magickers (12 page)

He knew that whatever he had seen in the darkness, it hadn't been Eleanora.

 

FireAnn beamed in delight as they handed her the full basket. “Berries! Just what I needed, darlins.”

“I don't think they've been washed,” Bailey offered. “Eleanora just picked them.”

“Oh, aye, I'll clean them and cull them before I put them in the big pot.” Behind her, in the kitchen that was already spanking clean even though dinner had hardly been finished, the singular huge pot simmered away. It smelled more than ever like jam. The pot seemed more like a cauldron to Jason, from what he knew of pots, which admittedly was little. Still . . . he eyed it curiously.

“Eleanora is a grand lass to think of me! Just wait till you take your Poetry and Chants class from her. A lively one, that girl is.”

FireAnn dumped the basket into a bright, brass col lander and put it in the sink. “Better run, you three, or you'll not get a good seat.” Still smiling, she tucked her red hair under her bandanna and began to wash the berries for cooking.

Dismissed, the three of them strolled back through the camp as the tall lamppost lights came on, and the thin strings of flickering outdoor lights that graced some of the buildings. Jason was wondering what a poetry and chants class could be, when Bailey sighed.

“It's rather like Christmas,” Bailey said wistfully. Her breath seemed to catch for a moment.

Jason looked at her. “Homesick?”

“Nope!” She kicked a pebble across the dirt and grass pathway. “Well, maybe a little. It's usually Mom and me. But, as Grandma always said, home is where you hang your clothes!” She skipped down ahead of them to where Eleanora did indeed hold their places amid a growing crowd of campers.

“That actually made sense,” Trent remarked.

“Strange, huh?”

They sang “Captain Jenks of the Horse Marines” with Sousa leading the lively chorus. They listened to Trent's and Bailey's ghost story with avid attention, laughing and gasping in most of the right spots. Tomaz Crowfeather told them one of his many tales (or so, he said) of the Trickster Coyote. That one had the hair standing on the back of Jason's neck. But it wasn't a coyote that had attacked him. That, he knew. What it actually was, he didn't know.

“Almost time to head for your cabins,” Gavan said, with a look at his pocket watch in the fire's glow. He took the poker and stirred the logs apart to settle their ashes down for cooling. One of the logs broke apart into bright red coals, then immediately cooled to feathery gray ashes. Out of its depths crawled a small lizard, hissing, tongue tasting the air.

Jennifer gasped. “It'll burn up in there!” She flailed her arms about in distress. Her pale face grew whiter in anguish.

The lizard, hardly visible in the darkness but for the faint glow of the dying flames, crawled over another log, tail slithering behind it, and disappeared.

“It'll be all right,” Trent said. “That was a fire salamander. Flames can't hurt them.”

“Do you think, Master Trent?” Gavan said brightly. “The stuff of legends, after all.”

He shrugged. “Some legends are born from facts, although misunderstood ones. Chances are he's really just moving too fast for the coals to hurt him.”

Gavan rubbed the wolfhead on his cane and nodded. “Naturally.” He lifted his voice. “Lights out in twenty minutes, ladies and gentlemen!” Without further ado, he broke into the song known only as Parting, and his deep voice swirled around them.

Eleanora stilled her dulcimer as the last notes faded. Most of the campers got to their feet and began to make their way down the path to the cabins and cottages. Jason didn't join the crush because resting across the top of his sneaker was the coiled lizard. It hadn't disappeared at all. Its warm red underside glowed against his shoe and he could feel its heat, just like that of the fire ring. The creature seemed quite content to rest there. Jason took a deep breath and started to tuck his feet under him as others crowded past. The lizard lifted its head, gold eyes seemingly examining his face, before it skittered off and slid into a hole under the log they sat on.

Jason got up, dusting himself off. Some things were strange. And others, stranger.

The lights were off and they had settled in their bunks when a frenzied shout from across the way brought them to their doorway. Henry Squibb danced about on the porch, white foam flying with every step. Squealing and howling, he finally came to a stop and bellowed, “I'll get you for this! Whoever you are!”

He stooped over to pull off his socks and flung them over the porch railing where shaving foam continued to drizzle off them.

Jason saw two hunched-over forms sneaking away, but the light was not so dim he could not recognize Rich and Stefan.

Henry danced one last shivery jig before going back inside Skybolt, slamming the door shut behind him.

Jason grinned in spite of himself as he latched their door shut. Trent was already back in his bunk and breathing deeply as he settled in.

An hour later, Jason was wide awake, sitting up in his bunk, breathing hard, and rubbing his eyes. His heartbeat drummed in his ears.

A nightmare of nightmares still danced behind his eyelids and he blinked hard, to fling it away. A dead man, lying on a stone platform, waiting for him. Beckoning with one whiter-than-death hand. Stretching his hand out to Jason. Silent pleas drawing him closer. The castle, the boneyard of his worst nightmares faded slowly.

His hand had writhed with pain. He had stared at it, his left hand, and the wound from the attack had opened up again, and streamed blood. It was the only color in the whole, awful place.

Stone had imprisoned him. He took no steps and yet moved closer though everything in his body fought it! The fingers curled . . . reached out for him—The last thing he wanted was for that dead man to touch him!

He'd awakened, his throat aching with a scream he couldn't force out. Now he fell back, shaking.

Jason gulped breath after breath. He couldn't close his eyes without the nightmare wavering before him. He had to think of something different! It seemed to take forever to conjure up something pleasant and sleep was far away. He had almost drifted off when he heard soft footsteps by the cabin. Voices murmured.

“Everyone sleeps?”

“Like charmed. And you?”

“Restless. I had the dream again, decided to walk it off. Do you think they're dreaming, too?”

“I hope not. If I can get them to sleep through the witching hour, they should be fine. Better they don't know yet. . . .”

“Tomaz says the storm may be gathering strength. He seems worried.”

“So I heard. I can't catch a glimpse of it myself.”

“You think he's wrong?”

“It's possible. He is not, after all, of our generation.”

The voices blurred, moved away, and his sleepy mind could not follow the almost sense of what they had said anyway. Jason tumbled into a deep, dark, dreamless night.

8

H
E rolled out of bed, hit his hand, and stifled a groan. For a moment, he thought it had all been some kind of dream, but no . . . there it was . . . plain as the gash on his hand, which looked angrier than before, puffy and red. It could be infected. He had no choice but to see the camp doctor.

The sky was still gray and no one else seemed awake as he washed and then went to the office inside the Gathering Hall which belonged to Dr. Patel. Her door, however, was cracked open and as he peeked inside, she looked up from her desk, saw him, and smiled.

“Come in, come in! You're up early. Not sick, I hope?”

He shook his head.

She gestured a slender dark hand at a chair next to her. “Sit and tell me, then.” Her eyes smiled on him as well, dark as chestnuts, but lively.

“Well, it doesn't look too bad today . . . it happened the first night, but I got to thinking. Well . . . I don't want an infection or anything.” How could he tell her it was an animal bite? Dare he?

“You are hurting yourself? Let me see.” Her words immediately became a little brisker.

Shyly, he put his hand out and she took it in hers. She probed him quickly about the healing wound, feeling him wince as she touched the tender spots. “How did this happen?”

“I fell. I tripped over something by the bathrooms and my hand went sliding into the bushes and just got ripped open. Is it infected? Am I all right?”

“Night before last, you said?”

He nodded. She frowned slightly. “And who am I talking to?”

“Jason. Jason Adrian.”

She smiled. “I was going to see you today anyway, to ask about your ankle. How's it coming?”

“Oh . . . fine.”

“Still a bit sore?”

“Not really. I mean, a little now and then.”

“Excellent.” She pulled out a pair of glasses that looked more like miners' headgear and looked at the back of his hand again. “This seems to be healing cleanly, but I'll give you a bit of salve to put on it. Your shots are up to date, correct?”

He nodded. “I can't get lockjaw then, or . . . or anything?”

“Highly unlikely.” She slipped her glasses back on her forehead. “You look a little worried.”

“Well, you know. Rabies, that sort of thing.”

Dr. Patel looked at him, her Indian face smoothed in a careful nonexpression. “Is there something you're not telling me?”

He fought back a squirm. “No. It's just that, well, you know. It was awful sharp when I fell. And I couldn't see. I thought maybe . . .” He felt his face grow hot. “I thought maybe I'd stuck my hand into something that was sleeping and it bit me.”

She slid her glasses back down, great grotesque-looking things that covered half her face, and peered at him intently, the lenses making her eyes blurred and buglike. “Nnnnno,” she said finally. “This is a slice, although there is a small puncture mark at the top, here,” she tapped his hand lightly and he tried not to jump because it
hurt.
“Looks like a thorn grabbed you and then sliced around as you fell into it.” She pushed the goggles back up and blinked as she refocused. Dr. Patel added, “Unless there's something you haven't told me.”

“Oh, no. No.”

She smiled then. “Only thing you'd have to worry about around here would be a wild animal, like a raccoon or possum, but they're pretty healthy. Spoiled, in fact, from the looks of them being chased out of the kitchen! And there hasn't been a recorded case of rabies in this area for over thirty years.” She pulled a log out of the desk. “Just use that ointment and let me know if it doesn't keep healing.”

He pocketed the medication in relief and stood. The loudspeaker sounded with the announcement for breakfast, and the doctor said, without looking up as she recorded something, “Don't miss breakfast.”

Dismissed, he hurried out of the office, suddenly famished. Quick as he was, there was a line snaking ahead of him, and tables were filling as he got his tray and sat down.

“Catch anything with your trap?”

Bailey stabbed her spoon at a bowl full of cornflakes. “No.” Droplets of milk splattered onto the tabletop and she wiped them up with her white paper napkin before crushing it. Next to her, Ting hardly missed reading a page while eating a dish of cottage cheese and fresh fruit.

“Better luck next time. Want us to help in setting it up?” Jason chased the last of his eggs around with a corner of toast.

She considered that, wrinkling her nose slightly. The dusting of freckles over her heart-shaped face crinkled. “Maybe. I'll have to find out about the guest rules.”

“Guest rules?”

“Yeah. You know. Boys on this side of the lake, girls on that side of the lake.” Bailey twirled her spoon. “Guest rules.”

“Ah.” Jason felt faintly foolish. “Probably best.”

Henry leaned over from his near empty table. “Hey guys, guess what?”

Trent shot a look at him. “Your sleeping bag is full of shaving cream?”

“Ha. Not anymore. But that's not it! Jonnard got pulled aside for a special conference.”

“What for?”

Henry tugged his glasses back into position, his owl-round face bewildered. “Don't know. Nobody would tell me. They just came and got him.”

Jason and Trent and Bailey all looked at each other. Bailey said slowly, “Jennifer didn't come to breakfast this morning.”

They glanced down the table. Ting sat, book in hand, but Jennifer's corner was indeed empty with no signs of the tall blonde girl ever having been there.

“I didn't even notice,” said Jason.

Bailey beamed at him. She was still glowing when she left the table a few minutes later to go straighten her cabin and go to her first session.

“What did I say?”

Trent shrugged at Jason. “Something right, evidently. Who knows?”

Neither of them did. They finished off their trays and then trotted back to Starwind to straighten up. They spotted Jonnard hurrying in to the mess hall before it closed, a look of mild amusement on his face. He smoothed his dark hair back just before entering and ducked inside the doorway just in time to miss Trent's faint snicker.