BRANT WILSON CAME BACK TO MILL CITY IN EARLY SPRING THAT year, a month and a half before we were to leave for Helvan Shores. He and the other men had finished building out at the Rationalist settlement, and he’d come to town to take back the first round of womenfolk and supplies. While he was in Mill City, he stopped by to let Papa know how the settlement was getting on and to say thanks for the help. He said he’d be back as soon as the plowing and planting was finished, if not before, and he seemed disappointed when Papa told him we’d be out East for the spring and summer. Most of the expedition ladies had given up by then, but Rennie and three others saw him off when he left.
Then, in mid-May, it came time for most of the family to leave for Helvan Shores. There was a lot of arguing about exactly who was going to go on the first trip. Papa had to stay in Mill City to finish teaching his classes. Rennie wanted to stay in Mill City and take care of the house for Papa while Mama and the rest of us were gone, and I wanted to stay just to keep away from my cousins for as long as possible. Papa insisted that he didn’t need any more taking care of than Mrs. Callahan looking in twice a week, and Rennie should go along with the rest of us.
Mama wouldn’t hear of leaving me behind, but she was all for Rennie staying in Mill City. She said Mrs. Callahan couldn’t finish planting the garden, or keep it weeded and watered, in just two visits a week, and Papa was sure to get caught up in his study and forget. She and Rennie argued hard, but Papa just shook his head.
So Rennie packed her trunk and got ready to go with us. She didn’t even pout. Jack said it was because she still expected to change Papa’s mind, but Nan said he was being unfair and nobody could pout with something as splendid as a wedding coming up. Nan had been old enough when Julie got married to remember how it was, and she was pleased as anything about being a bridesmaid this time.
In the end, it seemed, Jack turned out to be right. On the very last morning, while we were getting ready to go to the train station, Rennie came flying in through the door, crying, “Mama, Papa’s changed his mind! I’m to stay here after all!”
“What?” Mama looked up from her sewing box, where she was hunting for dark blue thread to sew back the button Robbie had just torn off his good suit. “Never say it!”
“He did!” Rennie said, frowning. “Right before he left for class.”
“But the trunks have already been sent off!” Mama said.
Rennie’s face cleared. “Oh, I’ll come to the station with you and get mine, and change my ticket. Papa explained it all to me, and gave me the money to pay for the ride back.” She held out the coins for proof.
“Well, if that isn’t just like him,” Mama said. “Why couldn’t he have changed his mind last week, if he was going to do it at all?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to come right out and admit to your face that you were right all along, Mama,” Allie said slyly.
Mama laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Jack, stop that—we’ll be late to the train if you tear your trousers and have to change. Rennie, would you finish this?”
So Rennie finished sewing on Robbie’s button and helped round everyone up, and we all took the hired wagon to the train station. Rennie went straight to the ticket window to change her ticket, then saw us off. I felt a little hollow as I waved good-bye.
The train trip back went by much faster than I wanted. I tried not to let on how scared I was, and mostly I succeeded. Lan noticed, but he just bopped me on the head and whispered “Goose!” which made me feel better.
When we got to Helvan Shores, Uncle Stephen and our two oldest brothers, Frank and Peter, met us at the station with enough carriages to hold all of us and the luggage. Mama exclaimed about the expense, but Uncle Stephen only smiled. “It’s not as if we hired them for the occasion, Sara. Now, where’s that list Tilly made up? We’ll need it to load the carriages properly.” He started rummaging through his pockets, but Frank stopped him.
“I have it right here, Uncle,” Frank said. “Mama and Rennie are to stay with Aunt Tilly; that’s closest to Diane’s rooming house, so it’ll be most convenient. Allie’s with Sharl, and Nan’s with Julie.” He looked at them apologetically. “The aunts thought you’d be a help with the little ones, and they neither of them have space for more than one person.”
“It’s fine with me,” Allie said. Nan looked thoughtful for a minute, then smiled and nodded.
“Uncle Thom and Aunt Grace are taking Robbie and Jack,” Frank continued. “Hugh is already bunking with me, and Lan’s going with Uncle Stephen. Eff—” he hesitated “—is going to stay with Cousin Marna.”
My heart sank. I hadn’t thought at all about where we’d be staying, but now that I did, it was plain as plain that we wouldn’t all fit in any one house. Sharl and Julie both had tiny homes that were full up with childings; Diane and the boys were still rooming out. Some of us would have to stay with aunts and uncles, and it only made sense to spread us out so the work wouldn’t all fall to any one family. But with all that, it was even plainer than plain that none of them had wanted to have me.
Mama frowned slightly, but before she could speak, Lan said, “I’m sorry, Uncle Stephen, but that won’t do. Eff and I are twins; we stay together.”
Everyone looked at Lan. Lan lifted his chin and stared right back. He didn’t add any arguments, or whine the way a childing would. He just stood there, quiet and more sure of himself than any thirteen-year-old had any right to be.
Uncle Stephen frowned and stuck his chest out, and I knew he was going to tell Lan that what the aunts had decided was settled, and no amount of fussing would change it. But then his frown deepened and he hesitated.
I looked back at Lan. His brown eyes had narrowed just a little, his shoulders were set, and his lips were pressed together firmly, like a man readying for a challenge. He’d grown in the last year, and though he wasn’t full size yet, he didn’t have that suddenly-stretched look that a lot of boys get. But he was still a boy, not a man.
And then I thought to wonder what else Lan was, and right away I saw why Uncle Stephen was frowning so hard. He wasn’t seeing an uppity boy wanting his own way. He was seeing a double-seventh-son magician—a double-seven old enough to have had three years of who knew what kind of training out West, who looked to be very sure he could get what he wanted, one way or another, and who maybe was fixing to do something about getting it, right there in the train station.
“Lan,” Frank said uncertainly. He looked at me, then down at his list, then at me again. Then he started to look at Uncle Stephen and stopped. “I don’t think Uncle Stephen has room for you and Eff, too.”
“Then we’ll have to stay somewhere else,” Lan said. “I’m staying with Eff. There’s no telling what’ll happen if I don’t.”
Mama’s head whipped around, but it wasn’t Lan she was looking at. It was Uncle Stephen, and if he hadn’t been shamefaced before, he surely was when her eye lit on him. “Do tell, Stephen,” she said in that mild tone that always meant trouble for somebody.
I looked back at Lan, and suddenly I saw something else. He looked the way Papa did sometimes, when he was casting a spell. As soon as I thought that, I felt the magic curling out of him, the same way I’d felt the magic of the steam dragon during Miss Ochiba’s after-school class. “Lan!” I said, shocked. “What are you doing?”
“I told you before,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “You’re my twin. I’m going to make sure you’re all right.”
“That’s not necessary,” Frank said.
“No, it isn’t,” Mama agreed. “Eff and Lan can stay at Tilly’s with me. Rennie stayed behind; she’ll be coming later with your father. So that’s no problem.”
“Ah…” Uncle Stephen gave me a sidelong look that made Mama frown. “There was some talk of having Eff stay with you, but Janna felt it would be safer to keep her away from the center for the wedding preparations. Not that it’s your fault, honey,” he added, looking at me straight for once. “But everybody knows—” He broke off, because everybody, including Frank, was looking at him with identical expressions of disgust.
“Janna,” Mama said, like she’d just found a nest of spiders in a kitchen cupboard. “I might have known she and Earn would come up with something like this. And don’t tell me he wasn’t in on it, for I won’t believe you. Janna does whatever her husband wants, and he’s never gotten over having a thirteenth child in the family.”
“That’s why you wanted Eff off by herself?” Hugh said in tones of outrage. “Because she’s thirteenth-born?”
“And why stick her with Cousin Marna?” Jack demanded. “She was one of the ones who used to pick on Eff all the time, even though she was years older than us. I remember.”
“You didn’t tell Sharl or Julie about this, did you?” Nan said. “They’d never have gone along with it.”
“They have childings,” Uncle Stephen said. “And Earn thought it’d be safer…”
“Uncle Earn can go jump in a lake,” Robbie said fiercely. “Why do you listen to him? Just because he’s oldest? I wouldn’t listen to Frank if he said stupid things like that.”
“You won’t ever have to,” Frank muttered.
“Robbie!” Mama said. “Mind your manners.”
“But, Mama, you agree with me, don’t you?” Robbie said. “You practically said so!”
“I may agree with your sentiments, but I very much disapprove of your way of expressing them,” Mama told him. “Earn Rothmer is still your uncle, and you should be polite when you speak of him.”
“Is there a polite way to tell someone to go jump in a lake?”
“We can discuss it later,” Mama said.
Allie stepped forward. “If Eff wants to trade with me, she can stay with Sharl,” she offered. She looked at Lan. “I know you wanted to stay with her, but Sharl will be just as good, especially now that we know.”
Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, the feel of magic pouring out of Lan had stopped, and he didn’t look like a powerful magician anymore. He looked more like my plain old brother, trying to keep up with things that had gotten out of his control. “I—”
“Eff and Lan will stay with me,” Mama said firmly. “If Tilly has some objection, we’ll find other arrangements. It’s not required that all of us stay with family, after all, and I still have good friends in town. One of them will surely be willing to put us up, especially after I explain the situation.”
Uncle Stephen looked horrified, and all the argument went right out of him. You could see he still didn’t care for the notion, though. He might have put up more fight if Lan hadn’t been so insistent on staying with me, but he wasn’t about to let the precious Rothmer double-seven magician stay with someone who wasn’t family. So he went off to the baggage room, muttering, and got our trunks sorted out so they’d be delivered to the right places. Then we all got in the carriages and rode to Uncle Stephen’s house for a big welcome dinner.
The aunts and uncles and cousins were all a bit startled when they heard about the new arrangements, but they didn’t dare say much straight out, not after Mama told Aunt Janna that she was sure Aunt Janna had the best of intentions, but she preferred to keep me near to hand as I was still delicate from the rheumatic fever three years before. It made a dandy excuse, but I wished she hadn’t used it. Aunt Tilly forgot all about being flustered over me staying with her and went straight to fussing over me like a broody hen. She didn’t stop for the next three weeks.
Lan stuck close by for the first few days, until he was sure everyone was clear on how I should be treated. It didn’t stop people from giving me funny looks and shifting away from me at dinner, but it kept them from doing much besides making an occasional nasty remark, and even that, they didn’t often do when they knew I could hear. Lan was very pleased with himself about it all.
I wasn’t so sure, myself. Those first few days, I had more chance to watch Lan than I’d had for a while. It seemed to me that he was enjoying making the uncles and cousins a little scared of him, and I was just a handy excuse for doing it. When I tackled him about what he’d done at the train station, he just laughed and shrugged it off.
“It’s not like I was casting any spells,” he said when I persisted.
“Then what were you doing?” I demanded. “There was magic coming off you like heat from the stove in winter!”
“It wasn’t a spell.” He laughed. “It was the part before a spell.”
“The part before a spell? What does that mean?”
“It’s something Dr. McNeil does when he wants people to pay extra-close attention. I saw it when he was talking at the college. He calls up magic, as if he’s going to work a spell, but then he just lets it all go again without doing anything. Most people, even magicians, don’t notice anything they could put a name to, but it makes them pay attention.” He looked at me curiously. “I think it took me three times before I realized that he was doing anything, and two more to figure out what it was.”
“You looked just like Papa does when he’s spell working,” I told him. He nodded, satisfied. I wasn’t satisfied, not all the way, but I could see I wasn’t going to get any more from him then, so I let it go.
Being back in Helvan Shores wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, those first three weeks. I got to meet my nieces and nephews, and Sharl and Julie even let me take care of them a time or two. John Brearsly was nearly as nice as Diane’s letters had made him sound. He wasn’t fussed at all about me being a thirteenth child, though I was sure he had to know.
The uncles weren’t around much, only the aunts and girl cousins, and all of them were so busy with wedding plans that they hardly had time to think of me at all. They didn’t like me helping, though. The one time I tried, Aunt Janna sniffed and looked disapproving, and Aunt Mari took away the tablecloth I’d picked up for hemming and gave me some charity mending instead. Apparently she thought it was fine for my bad luck to rub off on my sewing as long as it got sent out of the house right away, but she didn’t want me anywhere near something Diane would be using. I didn’t tell her that I’d already spent a month hemming two of the ruffles on the petticoat Diane was going to be wearing under her wedding dress, and put lace on them, too. Aunt Janna would’ve had an apoplexy right on the spot.
After that, I spent most of my time by myself, doing the regular lessons Mama had brought, or practicing the Aphrikan foundation work Miss Ochiba had taught me. I couldn’t practice regular spells without making everyone except Mama and Lan nervous, but nobody could sense me doing foundation work. I even tried Lan’s trick once or twice, calling up magic and then letting it go, just to see if I could. It worked just the way he said—it made people notice me without knowing why they were noticing me—but I didn’t like it. Being noticed made me nervous, especially in company with my aunts and cousins.
Then, barely a week before Diane’s wedding, Frank turned up one afternoon looking serious and insisted on seeing Mama privately, at once. They were holed up in Aunt Tilly’s second-best parlor for an hour, and then Mama called Diane in. The aunts were all buzzing, wondering what it could be about. Aunt Freda thought something dreadful must have happened to Papa, but Aunt Tilly said no, there hadn’t been a telegram, and that was how such news always came. Cousin Marna said Frank could have gotten the telegram, couldn’t he? Aunt Tilly sniffed, and everyone started choosing up sides. They were in such a tizzy they didn’t even think to send me out of the way.
When Mama and Diane and Frank finally came out of the parlor, Diane looked like she’d been crying. Mama was pale and stiff-faced, and all I could think was that Aunt Freda had been right. Then Mama took a deep, shuddery breath and said, “I’m afraid I have bad news.”
The room went so still you could hear the elms outside the window rustling in the wind. “You know my daughter Rennie—” Mama’s voice broke. She closed her eyes and went on after a minute, “My daughter Rennie stayed in Mill City, planning to come East with my husband in a few days.” She paused again, and swallowed hard. “It seems she won’t be coming.”
A little shiver ran through all the aunts and cousins, but nobody quite had the nerve to interrupt to ask why. Mama raised her chin and finished.
“She eloped with Brant Wilson the day we left Mill City.”