Jinx's Fire Read Free Page A

proved that Jinx wasn’t someone it wasimpossible to think pink fluffy thoughts about. But being Inga’s, these pink fluffy thoughts were overlaid with flat grayness. All her thoughts were. Inga was grayly afraid and incurious and just generally, well, flat.
    Besides, Inga was at least four inches taller than him. Maybe she entertained some idea that she could still hold Jinx facedown in pig muck if she wanted to. She couldn’t, of course. Jinx was a lot stronger than he used to be, and he could do magic now, and anyway there was no way he’d ever let himself, Inga, and pig muck be in the same place again.
    Sophie shook her head. “You can’t go. You’re too—”
    Jinx shot her a look, and to his relief she stopped. No one else in the room thought Jinx was too young. Reaching the age of fourteen in the Urwald took considerable skill, sense, and luck.
    â€œI should go, because I can make a ward to protect Blacksmiths’ Clearing,” he said. “And because Reven might listen to me.”
    It was decided that Hilda and Nick would go with him, because they could use the doorpaths. Not everyone could. No matter how many times Jinx explained how to use a KnIP spell, some people still didn’t know the Doorways were there.
    Sophie could use them, too, but she was also the only one who could keep the houseful of Urwalders from quarreling. So she had to stay behind.
    Late that night, when he had Simon’s workroom to himself, Jinx opened the Eldritch Tome to see what Sophie had been hiding from him.
    It was a passage he’d read before.
    Let life equal death, and let living leaf equal cold stone. Take leaf to life, and dearth to death, and seal the whole at the nadir of all things.
    Jinx had never been able to make anything of this. Had Sophie? He pushed a cat off her notebooks and looked.
    In her first notebook, Sophie had translated this into Samaran, and Urwish, and then into Old Urwish, probably to see if it made sense in any of them.
    Jinx looked at her second notebook, to see what she thought it meant.
    She’d written
    Life = death = meeting of paths? Fire and ice? Lifeforce/deathforce?
    Living leaf = cold stone = repetition of above?
    Dearth/death = ????
    Jinx had a sudden memory. He picked up a pencil and wrote in the margin
    I once met an elf named Dearth.
    He knew what “nadir” meant. It meant the absolute lowest possible point. He thought of what Malthus hadtold him . . . that the Paths of Fire and Ice went down, much further than the roots of the Urwald. He turned the page to see what Sophie thought.
    On the next page, Sophie had written
    seal = Simon????

A Journey by Doorpath
    J inx went to the bottom of the staircase. “Sophie!”
    She appeared at the top. “There’s no need to bellow, dear.”
    â€œWhat does this mean?” He waved the open notebook at her.
    â€œWhat does what mean?” she asked, starting down the stairs.
    â€œWhat does ‘seal equals Simon’ mean? ‘Seal the whole at the nadir of all things’—you think that has something to do with Simon?”
    Sophie took the notebook and went into the workroom. “I was just trying to think what that ridiculouslyabstruse passage might mean. Because of what came before, I thought it was talking about the Paths of Fire and Ice. And you did say that the Bonemaster had trapped Simon in something that looked like ice or glass.”
    â€œBut not at the nadir of all things!” said Jinx, feeling panicky. How many times could he lose Simon? “Simon was in a room at Bonesocket.”
    â€œOr appeared to be,” said Sophie. “But—”
    â€œWhat about ‘seal’?” Jinx demanded. “Why seal?”
    â€œWell—” Sophie frowned at the notebook, and Jinx could see her thoughts struggling with each other. She wasn’t happy about this. “It does sound like the tome might be talking about connecting the