The Far West Read Free Page B

visiting. Every year, the settlers had gotten stricter about making sure no one used magic, and by my last visit, most of them had just about stopped speaking to Brant and Rennie because Brant didn’t think they should be so firm about making folks abide by their rules if the folks were just passing through. I hadn’t thought the settlers were worked up enough to kick someone right out of the settlement, though, especially not someone like Brant.
    I didn’t find out what had happened that night, nor the next day (which was mostly occupied with getting Rennie and the children settled in). Neither Brant nor Rennie would talk about it, so it wasn’t until Saturday, when I cornered Lan in Papa’s library, that I got the whole story.
    The problems at Oak River had started with the mirror bugs. They hadn’t been drawn to Oak River the way they were drawn to all the other settlements, because it was magic that drew them and the Oak River settlement didn’t use magic. You’d think that the settlers would have been pleased, but I’d already figured out that the Rationalists weren’t any more rational than most other folks. Sure enough, a lot of them hadn’t been happy. The spells the other settlements used had attracted the mirror bugs, keeping them away from Oak River, and some of the settlers didn’t like feeling that they’d benefited from spells, even if they hadn’t been the ones to cast them.
    Then Professor Torgeson found out that the mirror bugs hadn’t just been using whatever magic was around them, the way normal magical creatures did. They absorbed it and took it with them, and it didn’t go back into the surroundings until they died. The mirror bug traps that the Settlement Office set up had really high levels of magic around them, and would for a few more years until the magic evened itself back out.
    When they found that out, some of the more dedicated Rationalists at Oak River had taken the notion that they should find a way to get rid of all the natural magic anywhere in their allotment. Unfortunately for them, there was no way to do that without using magic or magical critters, and it wouldn’t have lasted, anyway. They’d backed off from that idea, but now they were talking about keeping all of the magical plants and wildlife away from their land, as well as not using any spells themselves.
    “That’s crazy,” I said. “Even the settlement protection spells can’t do that, not completely. They only try to block outthe dangerous things. And are the Rationalists going to stop growing hexberries and calsters in their gardens? Or Scandian wheat, or meadow rice?”
    “They’re scared,” Lan said softly. “Scared people do crazy things.”
    Something in the way he said that made me narrow my eyes at him. “How crazy?” I demanded. “And how did you end up traveling with Brant and Rennie, anyway? I thought you were riding the middle settlements with Paul Roberts. Oak River is part of Wash’s circuit.”
    Lan flushed and kicked at the floor. “We finished the circuit early, so I talked Mr. Roberts into taking me through Oak River on our way back. I wanted to talk to Brant.”
    “To …” I stopped, thinking hard. There had been a point, a few years back, when I’d thought that giving up magic and becoming a Rationalist was the best way to keep from ever doing harm with my magic. I’d almost done it, and I’d only been worried that I might hurt someone. Lan had actually killed his professor by accident. “You wanted to talk to someone who doesn’t use magic.”
    Lan nodded without looking at me. “Mr. Roberts tried to talk me out of it, but I thought it was just because the normal Rationalists don’t like magic. I told him I’d been to Oak River before and it hadn’t been that bad, and he finally gave in. I didn’t realize how much they’d changed.
    “When we got to Oak River, we found out that Brant and Rennie were the only folks who were still letting magicians stay with them. If