Then they suddenly fell back as if they had struck a wall. Everything kindled to blinding fire around them, the water glittering as it splashed away, the walls of the great hall shining, the Lone One standing there aghast in the blaze and terror of that light as Nita’s mother pulled the glede free of Nita’s bracelet, stood up, and squeezed the glede tight in her upheld fist, a gesture both frightened and fierce.
She was lost in the resultant violent blast of fire, and Nita tottered sideways and clutched at Kit, watching her mother in amazement and terror: a goddess with a handful of lightning, imperial and terrible, rearing up into the darkness and towering over them all, even over the Lone One, and—to Nita’s astonishment and concern—paying It no mind at all. All her mother’s attention now was on what she gripped in her hand, a writhing struggling knot of lightnings growing and lashing outward all the time, until it crowned her with thunder and robed her in fire, and there were no shadows left to be seen anywhere.
The fear and pain in her face were awful to see, as Nita’s mother struggled with the glede, trying to keep from being consumed by its power as other mortal women had been consumed, in old stories, by fire from beyond the worlds. But her eyes were ferocious with concentration, and the look of terror and anguish slipped away as she started to get the better of the Power she held.
Slowly she straightened, looking down at all of them—a woman in a T-shirt and a faded denim skirt, blazing with the fire from heaven, and with sudden certainty.
“The Light shone in the darkness,” she said softly, and the whole little universe that was Nita’s mom shook with it. “And the darkness comprehended it not. This light! But you never learn, do you? Or only real slowly.”
The Lone Power stared at her with at least as much incredulity as Kit and Nita. After a second, It turned away.
“Oh no you don’t,” Nita’s mother said. And the lightning blasted out from her, and struck It down into the nearest pool.
Nita’s mother looked at the Lone Power dispassionately as it struggled in the water. “If I am going to go anywhere,” she said, “first you’re going to find out up close and physical what the things you’ve done to me all this while have felt like.” It struggled to get up out of the water. Nita’s mom flung out her hand, and the lightning knocked It back in again.
“Having fun with that?” her mother said. “Doesn’t feel like so much fun from inside my body, does it? You should have thought of that before you came in here. Just feel all those broken bones and strains, those six weeks off for tendonitis, the bruises and infections and herniated muscles and all the rest of it. Oh, we knew about pain, all right! Dance is two hours’ worth of childbirth every weekday evening at eight, and a Saturday matinee!”
The Lone Power writhed and splashed in the water, stricken with the experience of her agony.
“And then how about this?” her mother said. “Now that I’ve got your attention—”
Nita flinched, for this was the phrase that most often preceded the tongue-lashing you got when you hadn’t cleaned your room properly—and to a certain extent she could feel what her mother was imposing on the Lone One. Here the experience inflicted on It was all the more intense for being recent, fresh in the sufferer’s mind—the blurred vision, the growing pain, the uncomfortable and unhappy sense that, hey, this isn’t supposed to be happening, what’s the matter with me?—the loss of control, of mastery over a body that was always precisely mastered in the old days; the slowly growing fury, inexpressible, bottled up, that things weren’t working the way they should.
In fact, that nothing was working the way it should. For in this place, under these circumstances, Nita’s mother now knew that if matters had somehow gone otherwise, death itself wouldn’t have happened. It was an additive, an afterthought, somebody’s “good idea.” And here was the somebody, right here, within reach… and available, just this once, for a real good spanking.
Not liking the idea, either, Nita thought.
“Fun, huh?” Nita’s mother said softly. “But even with your inventions, this Life that you hate so much is still too much for you. It was always too much for you. Whatever you do, it just keeps finding a way. Maybe even this time.”
The Lone One writhed and floundered in the water, and couldn’t get away. Nita’s mom looked down at It from what seemed a great distance. Under that majestic regard, as It finally managed to drag itself out of the pool, the Lone One seemed crumpled into a little sodden shape of shadow, impotent in this awful blaze of wrathful fire. Beaten, Nita thought, and her heart went up in a blaze of triumph to match the blinding light.
“But no,” said her mother then, in a much more mortal voice, and hearing it, Nita’s heart fell from an impossible height, and kept on falling. “That’s what you’re expecting, isn’t it? You want me to win this battle. And after that, when we’re all off our guard, comes the betrayal.”
The light began to fade. No, Nita thought. No, not like this! Mom!
But her mother had her own ideas, as usual. There was no longer any great distance between her and the much diminished darkness that was now the Lone Power in what she had made of her interior world. “No,” Nita’s mother said, “not even at that price. You’ve really been stuck playing this same old game for a long time, haven’t you? And you just don’t believe a mortal could refuse the opportunity.”
From that sodden darkness there now came no answer. Nita’s mother stood there looking down at the Lone Power as if at a daughter who’d turned up in particularly grimy clothes just after the laundry had all been done.
“No,” Nita’s mother said. “I can guess where this is going. How many times have I heard my daughters wheedle me to let them stay up late, just this once? It starts there, but that’s never where it stops. And if I was firm with them, I have to be the same way with myself when my turn comes, too.” She was looking entirely less like a furious goddess, entirely more like a slightly tired woman. “Because I’m up against my own time limit, now, aren’t I? Override the body now, and we’ll all be sorry for it later. If not personally, then in the lives of the people around us.”
Nita was horrified. “Mom, no!”
“Honey.” Nita’s mother chucked the lightning away, careless, and came over to her. The lightning hit the floor, lay there burning, and then came slowly humping back toward Nita’s mom, like some animate and terrible toy. “Believe me, if there was ever a time for the phrase ‘Don’t tempt me,’ this is it.”
“But, Mom, we’re winning!”
“We’re supposed to think so,” she said. “Look at It there; what a great ‘beaten’ act.” She gave the Lone Power a look that was both clinical and thoroughly unimpressed. “The point being to encourage us to go home in ‘triumph,’ and to distract me, at any cost, from doing what I know is right. If It can’t ruin my life, and yours, straightforwardly, by killing me, It’ll try it another way.”
She walked a little way over to It, the lightning following her. “Can’t you see it, honey? If we carry this to its logical conclusion, I live, all right. I survive this, and what the things in my body are doing to me now, because of what you kids have done here. But you know what? I have my weaknesses, too. And what could happen here is designed to play right into one of them.”
Nita’s Mom let out a long sigh. “A scare like this could make anybody paranoid about their health, about not letting anything stop them from being young and strong and alive, in a body that always works. So I take what’s happening here at face value, and go on to concentrate on nothing like this ever happening again—until after a while my whole life becomes not so much about living, but about not dying. And what kind of life’s that going to be? Because sooner or later, no matter what any of us do, it’s going to happen anyway.”
“Mom, no, you wouldn’t! You’d never—”
“Nita,” her mother said. “I know this might be a shocking concept, but isn’t it slightly possible that I know me better than you do? I live in here.” She looked sad, but there
was actually an edge of amusement to it. “And I can see just how this would go for me. Maybe more clearly than I’d have seen it before, considering. Not a pretty picture. “ She frowned. “Years and years of becoming less and less who I am, and more and more somebody who just doesn’t want to be dead. And then, who knows how many years from now—I get to die anyway, all bitter and furious and scared, doing everything I can to make everybody around me miserable. Including you, assuming you are still around, and I haven’t driven you and Dairine and your dad away with the sheer awfulness of my wanting to keep on living. That’s what this guy has in mind. Let me off the hook now, mess all of us over later.”
She threw an annoyed look at the crumpled shadow on the floor. “Well, I won’t do it, sweetie. Not even for this.” The persistent tangle of lightning was rubbing against her leg like a cat; she gave it a sideways nudge with her foot, and turned away from the Lone One, coming back toward Nita and Kit. “Not even because I love you, and I’m afraid to leave your dad and you and Dairine, and I don’t know what comes afterward for me, and I love my life, and I hate the thought of leaving all of you alone, in pain, and I’m not ready, and I just don’t want to go!”
It was a cry of utter anguish, and the air all around them trembled with it, rent as if by thunder. That shadow, crouched down off to the side, stirred just slightly, crouched down further. “Not even for that,” her mother said, a lot more quietly, unclenching her fists. “It is not going to happen.”
“Mom…” Nita said, and could find no other words.
Her mother just shook her head. For a moment, she seemed too choked up to speak. She pulled Nita close and held her, and then, her voice rough, she said, “Sweetie, I may not be what you are, but this I know. There’s a power in what we are as mortal beings that even that One can’t match. If we throw it away, we stop being human. I won’t do it. And certainly not when doing it plays into the enemy’s hands.”
She let go of Nita and turned around. “So as for you,” Nita’s mother said to the Lone Power, her eyes narrowing in what Nita recognized as her mother’s most dangerous kind of frown, “you’ll get what you incorrectly consider your piece of me soon enough. But in the meantime, I’m tired of looking at you. So you can now just take yourself straight on out of here before I set aside my self-control and kick your poor deluded rear end from here to eternity.”
The Lone Power slowly picked Itself up, towered up before them all in faceless darkness… and vanished without a sound.
“Mom!” Nita shook her head, again at a loss for words.
“Wow,” Kit said. “Impressive.”
Her mother smiled slightly, shook her head. “It’s all in the documentation, honey,” she said to Nita. “It says it plain enough: ‘Have I not said to you, “you are gods”?’ So we may as well act like them when it’s obviously right to and the power’s available.”
They all turned to look around at the sound of a splash. Ponch had jumped into one of the now-cleansed pools and was paddling around.
Nita’s mom smiled, then looked at the surroundings, once again dark and wet, then she glanced down at what Nita still held in her hands. “Is that what I think it is?”
Nita nodded and handed it over. Her mother tossed the apple in her hand, caught it again, looking at it thoughtfully, and polished it against her skirt. “Are we done here?” she said.
Nita looked around her sorrowfully. “Unless you can think of anything to add.”
Her mother shook her head. “No point in it now,” she said. She looked at the apple with an expression of profound regret, turning it over in her hands. For a moment Nita saw through the semblance, saw the kernel as it was, the tangle of intricate and terrible forces that described a human body with a human mind and soul inside it, infinitely precious, infinitely vulnerable. Then her mother sighed and chucked the apple over her shoulder into one of the nearby pools. It dropped into the waters and sank, glowing, and was lost.
Nita let out a long breath that became a sob at the end. There was no getting it back now; nothing more that could be done.
“Better this way,” her mother said, sounding sad. “You don’t often get a chance like this; be a shame to ruin it. Come on, sweetie.” She looked around at the darkness and the water. “We should either call the plumber or get out of the basement. How do we do that, exactly?”
“I don’t think you have to do anything but wake up,” Kit said. “But Nita and I should go.”
“Don’t forget Ponch,” Nita’s mother said, as the dog clambered out of the pool he’d been swimming in and came over to the three of them. “If I come out of the anesthesia barking, the doctors are going to be really confused.”
Ponch shook himself, and all three of them got splattered. “Kit needed me to get in,” Ponch said. “Without me, I don’t think he can get out. I’ll see him safely home.”
Nita’s mother blinked at that. “Sounds fair,” she said. “Meantime, what about this?” She bent over to pick up the dwindling knot of lightning that was all that was left of the glede.
The question answered itself, as it faded away in her hands. “One use only, I think,” Kit said.
“I think I got my money’s worth,” Nita’s mother said. “But thanks for the hint, Kit; you made the difference.”
“Just a suggestion someone gave me,” Kit said. “To listen to my hunches when it all went dark…”
“That one sure paid off. Go on, you kids, get out of here.”
Nita hugged her mom while Kit put the leash on Ponch. Then Kit offered Nita his arm. She paused a moment, took it, and they stepped forward into the darkness.
***
The two of them came out in Kit’s backyard. Nita saw Kit looking around him with an odd expression. “Something wrong?” she said. “Or is it just that reality looks really strange after what we’ve been through?”
“Some of that, maybe,” he said. He took the leash off Ponch and let the dog run toward the house.
“Kit—”
He looked at her.
“You saved my butt,” she said.
Kit let out a breath. “You let me.”
She nodded.
“Anyway,” Kit said, “you’ve saved mine a few times. Let’s just give up keeping score, okay? It’s a distraction.”
Nita nodded. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go to the hospital.”
***
Between transit circles and the business of appearing far enough away from the hospital not to upset anybody, it took them about fifteen minutes to get there. Down in that awful little waiting room, Nita found her dad and Dairine; and the look on her father’s face nearly broke Nita’s heart. There was hope there, for the first time in a long, long week.
Nita sat down while Kit shut the door. “Are they done?” Nita said.
Her father nodded. “They got the tumor out,” he said. “All of it. It went much better than they hoped, in fact. And they think—they think maybe the malignant cells associated with it might not have spread as far as they thought. They have to do some tests.”
“Is Mom awake yet?”
“Yeah. The trouble with her eyes is clearing up already, the recovery room nurses said, but they want us to leave her alone till this evening; it’s going to take her a while to feel better. We were just waiting here for you to catch up with us.” He looked at her. “What about you?”
Nita swallowed. “I think we did good,” she said, “but I’m not sure how good yet. It’s gonna take a while to tell.”
Her dad nodded. “So let’s go home, and we’ll come back after dinner.”
***
As much as Nita felt like she really needed a nap, she couldn’t sleep. Kit went home for a while, but when Nita’s dad was starting the car, Kit appeared again in the backyard, and Nita went downstairs to meet him. As she was walking across the yard, there was another bang, less discreet: Dairine. She stalked out of the air with an annoyed expression. “Where’ve you been?” Nita said.
“The hos
pital.”
“You weren’t supposed to go yet!”
“I know. I sneaked in. They just found me and threw me out.”
She looked at the two of them. “Have you seen the précis in the manual?” she said.
Nita shook her head.
“I have,” Dairine said softly. “I owe you guys one.”
Kit shook his head. “Dari, if you read the précis, then you know—”
“I know what’s probably going to happen to her,” Dairine said. “Yeah. But I know what you guys did. You gave it your best shot. That’s what matters.”
She turned and went into the house.
“She’s mellowing,” Kit said quietly.
“She’s in shock,” Nita said. “So am I. But, Kit— Thanks for not letting me go through it alone.” She gulped, trying to keep hold of her composure. “I’m not—I mean, I’m going to need a lot of help.”
“You know where to look,” Kit said. “So let’s get on with it.”
***
In the hospital they found Nita’s mother already sitting up in bed. She had a blackening eye and some bruising around her nose, but that was all; and the sticky contacts and wires and machines were all gone, though she now had an IV running into her arm and various finger-clips and contacts for the monitors in the room. Nita thought her mom looked very tired, but as they came in, her face lit up with a smile that was otherwise perfectly normal.
She looked at Kit. “Woof woof,” she said.
Kit burst out in helpless laughter.
“Does this have some profound secret meaning,” Nita’s dad said, sitting down and taking his wife’s hand, “or is it a side effect of the drugs?”
Nita’s mother smiled. “No drug on the planet could have produced the trip I’ve just been through,” she said.
There was a long silence. “Did it work?” Nita’s father said then.
“In the only way that matters,” her mother said. “Thank you, kids.”
Nita blinked back tears. Kit, finally managing to get control of the laughter, just nodded.