Patricia C. Wrede

Being a heroine is nowhere near the fun folks make it out to be. Oh, it's nice enough
at first, when everybody is offering congratulations and making a fuss, but that
doesn't last long. And when the thing they're congratulating you for is getting rid of a
bunch of bugs, which you didn't do all by your own self anyway, it feels pretty silly.
Not to mention that it annoys the other people who ought to have come in for some
of the credit.

The one it mainly annoyed was my twin brother, Lan. He's the seventh son of a
seventh son, which makes him a pretty hot magician, and it was his spells that had
held the mirror bugs off of the Little Fog settlement long enough for Wash and William
and me to get there. I thought that was a lot harder than what I'd done, but the
only people interested in talking to Lan much were the magicians at North Plains
Riverbank College, and even they were more interested in me than in my brother.
Because what Lan had done was something they understood, but what I'd done was
a mix of the Avrupan magic I'd learned in school and the Aphrikan magic I'd studied
outside regular hours. The professors all said it was a new thing, and got very
excited. Even Papa.

Outside the college, everyone from the North Plains Territory Homestead Claim and
Settlement Office to the Mill City Garden Club was only interested in me, Eff Rothmer.

I wasn't used to it. The only folks who'd paid me much mind before were the ones
who thought I was evil and unlucky because I was thirteenth-born. I didn't believe
they were right, not any more, but I still didn't like all the attention. I didn't like
strangers asking me questions or staring at me when I walked down the street. I
didn't like people asking me to make speeches and getting cross with me when I said
no. I didn't like folks expecting me to do absurd things for them, like the lady who
showed up one day with a train ticket to Long Lake City, saying she wanted me to
put a spell on her prize roses to get rid of the aphids. She wouldn't take no for an
answer, and Papa had to come out and be stern at her. And it wasn't even a
round-trip ticket.

I thought the fuss would die down after a few days, but it kept up all that summer
long. William Graham, who'd been friends with Lan and me ever since we moved to
Mill City, said it was because the newspaper reporters liked writing about a pretty
young girl. I told him I was eighteen and nothing like as pretty as Susan Parker.

William turned beet red, because everybody knew he'd been sweet on Susan before
he went East to school, but he stuck to his guns. Then Lan said that the newspapers
would call any eighteen-year-old heroine pretty, even if she was swaybacked and
had buck teeth. I whacked him with the flyswatter.

By that time, Lan had pretty much gotten over his mad, which was a big relief. Or at
least it was until the week before Lan went off to study at Simon Magus College in
Philadelphia, when he cornered me in the kitchen garden and started asking me all
kinds of questions.

"You're going to graduate from the upper school this year," he told me. "Where are
you going after that?"

I looked at him. The last few years at boarding school, Lan had sprouted up a good
bit taller than me, and he'd grown sideburns and started slicking his brown hair back
like an Easterner. He hardly looked like the brother I remembered ... except for the
gleam in his brown eyes. I knew that gleam, and it always meant trouble for
somebody.

"I'm staying right here with Mama and Papa," I said warily. "Just like Nan and Allie did.
And the other girls, before we moved to Mill City."

Lan rolled his eyes. "That's what I thought. You haven't even considered any other
possibilities."

"Other possibilities?"

"After what you did to the mirror bugs at the Little Fog settlement, any of the big
universities would be glad to have you as a student. You could probably even get a
sponsor, so it wouldn't cost Papa and Mama anything."

"Lan! Don't talk nonsense." I went back to my weeding, but Lan didn't leave.

"It isn't nonsense. You have talent and power; you deserve to get the training you
need to use them properly."

I sat back on my heels and rested my muddy hands on my green weeding apron, and
just looked at him for a minute.

From the time I was thirteen, when I almost blew up my Uncle Earn at my sister's
wedding dinner, I'd had more and more trouble doing normal, Avrupan-type magic
spells. It had only been a month or two since I'd figured out that the trouble was
mostly in my head. I'd been so worried about being an unlucky thirteenth child that
I'd nearly talked myself right out of doing any magic at all, ever, on account of being
afraid of what might happen if I lost my temper. For the past five years, Aphrikan
magic had been the only sort I'd had any luck with. I was still getting accustomed to
the notion that it was a safe thing for me to work Avrupan spells at all.

Oh, I'd learned the basic Avrupan magic theories in school, like everyone else, but I
had a lot of catching up to do on the practical side. I still had trouble even with
simple things like housekeeping spells. And here was Lan, proposing that I go off to
college as if it was me that was the double-seven magician.

"And don't go objecting because you're a girl," Lan went on. "There's lots of girls who
study advanced magic. And Mama doesn't need you here, really -- not when there's
only you and Robbie and Allie left at home."

He ran on like that for a while, while I just sat and watched. It was plain as day that
he didn't expect me to disapprove more than a token, for form's sake. He ran down a
whole long list of answers to objections I hadn't made and worries I hadn't
mentioned. It was a while before he noticed that I wasn't saying anything at all.

When he finally did notice, he stopped in the middle of a sentence. We looked at
each other for a minute, and then he said, "Eff?"

"I'll think on it," I told him..

"Good," he said a little uncertainly. Then he grinned, and I could see his confidence
coming right back. "While you're thinking, I'll mention it to Papa, so that --"

"If you say one word to Papa before I've had a good long think, I'll sew the tops of all
your socks together before I pack them."

"Eff!" Lan laughed, but he looked a little worried, too. "It's a great opportunity. You
have to grab it while you can."

"I'm not grabbing anything until I'm sure whether I'm grabbing a fire nettle or a sprig
of mint," I said. "You've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks at least. I can
tell. I want time to do some thinking of my own."

Lan tilted his head sideways and narrowed his eyes at me. Then suddenly he nodded.
"All right. But don't take too long. And don't go getting all tangled up in worries about
what it'd be like. Hardly anybody back East is like Uncle Earn."

He left, and I went back to my work. Weeding is a good job to do when you need to
think about things, and I needed to think even more than I'd let on to Lan.

Papa had moved the family -- well, the younger half of it, anyway -- to Mill City
when Lan and I were five, but I still remembered what it had been like before. Most
of my aunts and uncles and cousins hadn't liked it one bit that I was an unlucky
thirteenth child, and they'd taken it out on me every chance they got. We'd gone
back East for my sister Diane's wedding when I was thirteen, and none of them had
changed much except for being eight years older and eight years meaner. Uncle Earn
had been ready to have me arrested or worse, just because I happened to be
thirteenth born.

Mill City was different. It was right at the edge of the country, just this side of the
Great Barrier Spell that kept the steam dragons and mammoths and other dangerous
wildlife away from the settled parts. Some days it seemed like half the folks in Mill
City were looking to move out past the Mammoth River into the Far West, just as
soon as the Homestead Claims and Settlement Office approved their applications, and
the other half had relatives and friends and customers out past the barrier, even if
they didn't go their own selves.

Being so close to the wild country made people here a lot less interested in making
up dangers and a lot more interested in plain, practical magic. From Mill City on west,
nobody would care if I had two heads and bat wings, if I could work the spells that
kept the wildlife from overrunning the settlements. Of course, right that minute I still
couldn't work the wildlife protection spells, on account of the trouble I'd made for
myself over learning magic, so even in Mill City there was no reason for folks to
overlook my bad points. But back East ... well, Lan had been going to boarding school
there for the past four years, and I believed him when he said that not everyone was
like Uncle Earn. But even a few people like my uncle would make more unpleasantness
than I wanted to face.

I finished the row and began carting the dead weeds over to the compost pile. Lan
was right about a lot of things, I could see that. I might not be able to go to one of
the big important schools, like Simon Magus College or the New Bristol Institute of
Magic, but between all the attention I'd been getting and being the twin sister of a
double-seventh son, some Eastern school would surely take me in. It was an
opportunity that wouldn't likely come around again, and it didn't seem right to pass it
up only on account of a worry that folks might be unpleasant.

I thought about that, off and on, for the next couple of days, and about Lan. Even
though we were twins, he'd always been the one to look out for me. We'd been
growing apart, though, ever since I had rheumatic fever and got behind a year at
school. And for the past four years, he'd hardly even been home summers. I could
see that he wanted what was best for me, but I wasn't sure that he knew what that
was. Especially since I wasn't sure myself.

I was still thinking when William came around to say goodbye. He still had a year of
preparatory school before he went to college, and he was going back early to meet
up with a possible sponsor.

"What's this I hear about you coming East to school next year?" he asked.

I scowled. "That Lan! I told him not to talk to anyone about it until I was done
thinking."

"You'll never be done thinking," William said. "And he didn't actually say much. So
what is it about?"

I glared at him, but I knew there'd be no point to not answering. William didn't look
like he'd be difficult about anything -- he was thin and sandy-haired and already
wore eyeglasses like his father. Most of the time he didn't say much. But when he
was curious about something, he was stubborner than a bear after a honeycomb.
He'd pay no heed to glares or hints or scowls or much of anything else until you told
him what he wanted to know. Sometimes he'd listen if you told him straight out that
you didn't want to talk about it, or that you didn't want to tell him, but I knew as
sure as anything that this wasn't one of those times. So I said, "Lan thinks I should
go off to college when I'm done with upper school."

"So it was his idea." William didn't sound surprised. "What do you think?"

"I--" I looked down at my boots. "I don't know."

"Why not?"

"I just don't!" I said. Then I sighed. I had no call to go snapping at William, just
because I didn't know what to make of Lan's notions. "It's a completely new idea. I
never once thought about me getting schooling past upper school."

"Why not?" William asked. His eyes had narrowed and I could see he was getting
ready to be cross about something.

"I just didn't," I said. "I'm not like Diane or Sharl." Diane and Sharl were two of my big
sisters who hadn't come west with us. Diane had been saving up for music school
when we left; Sharl had finished college and been married

William looked suddenly thoughtful. "And your sisters who came here -- Allie and Nan
both went to work as soon as they finished with upper school. Rennie -- " His voice
cut off abruptly and he gave me an apologetic look.

My sister Rennie had run off and married a settler, a member of the Society of
Progressive Rationalists who thought using magic was a weakness. Mama and Papa
had been crushed and disappointed, and it tore up the rest of the family pretty bad,
too, at the time. But we'd had five years to get over it, and we all pretty much had,
even Mama.

"Yes," I said, so William would know it was all right and I knew he hadn't meant
anything by bringing it up. "And Julie got married practically right out of upper school
back in Helvan Shores, too. She just didn't run off to do it."

"That doesn't mean you have to do the same."

"I wasn't planning to!" I looked at my boot tips again. "I wasn't planning much of
anything, I guess."

"And neither was anyone else," William said. "Don't look at me like that. It'd take a
blind prairie skunk all of ten minutes to see that the plans in your family have always
been about Lan."

"William!"

"It's true," he said in that stubborn tone that meant there was no arguing with him. "I
think Lan feels guilty about it, too. Which is probably why he came up with this idea
about you going East for school."

"It's not just that," I said, because I knew William was right about my twin feeling
guilty. "Lan has a whole pile of good reasons."

"Like what?"

I started rattling them off. "It would be a chance for a kind of learning I've never had
before. The best teachers -- "

William cut me off. "Those are Lan's reasons," he said. "There are other ways to look
at the matter. What do you want to do?"

I just stared at him for a long minute. That was what Miss Ochiba, who used to
teach us magic at the day school, had said over and over -- there are always other
ways to look at things. I thought I'd learned that lesson through and through, but it
hadn't occurred to me to try looking at this proposal of Lan's from any other direction
until right that minute.

"Other ways," I said slowly. Lan saw going East for school as a great chance to learn
spells and theory from the best Avrupan teachers in the country. Papa would see it
the same way, especially if I found a sponsor so it wouldn't cost the family so much,
and he'd be especially pleased to have another child go for schooling past upper
school. Mama would see it as a chance for me to get some Eastern polish on my
manners, and a good way of keeping me far, far away from the settlement territory
on the west bank of the Mammoth River.

And I...I didn't know yet how I saw it, but I knew for certain fact that I wasn't going
to find out by arguing Lan's reasons over and over in my head. I had some more
thinking to do, of a different kind. I looked at William and nodded. "Thank you, Mr.
Graham," I said. "I needed reminding."

William looked at me for a minute, then just nodded back. One of the good things
about William was that he always knew when to stop pushing on a point. "You're
welcome, Miss Rothmer," he said. "Anytime."

We spent the rest of William's visit talking about his plans for the next year. He still
had a year of boarding school before he'd be ready for college. I told him I'd write if
he would, which I figured meant maybe three times all year. William wasn't much for
letter-writing.

After he left, I did some more thinking, only this time I wasn't just chasing my tail
trying to counter all Lan's reasons why I should do what he wanted. And the first
thing I thought was that it was what Lan wanted, not what I wanted. Lan had
always loved school, magic lessons especially, and he just kind of assumed that once
I got over my problem with spell-casting, I'd feel the same.

I didn't, and so I told him the very next day. He wasn't happy about it, but I got him
to agree that it was my decision and he would have to let it be. I could see that he
thought I'd come around sooner or later, but as long as he didn't go stirring things up
right then, I didn't mind. I figured that by the time he was around to bring it up
again, I'd have done a sight more thinking about what I did want and how to get to
it. Right then, I just knew that it felt wrong for me to go so far away from everyone I
cared about and everything I loved, just to get more schooling that I wasn't sure I
had any need for.

Lan left on the train the first week in September, still sure that I'd change my mind
before Christmas. I didn't try to convince him he was wrong. I wasn't certain that he
was. I only knew that between him and William, I had a lot more thinking to do before
I finished upper school.

Out in August, 2011, from Scholastic