The second pain came, the fierce mouths ripping and worrying at her till she couldn’t go forward any more, only flail and thrash in an agony of helplessness and revulsion—
—and then the third pain hit, and Nita lost control of everything and started to fall down as the white fire blew up in her side. But the words were speaking her now, as they do in the more powerful wizardries. Though inwardly Nita screamed and cried for release, it did her no good. Her own power was loose, doing what she’d told it to, and the wizardry wouldn’t let her go until it was done. When it was, finally, it dropped Nita on her face in the sand, and she felt Kit go partway down with her, trying to keep her from breaking anything as she fell.
Eventually the world came back. Nita found herself sitting on the sand, feeling wobbly, but not hurting anywhere. She looked up at S’reee’s side. New gray skin covered the wound, paler than the rest of the whale’s skin, but unbroken. There was still a crater there, but no blood flowed. And many of the smaller shark bites were completely gone, as were the burns from the harpoon’s rope where it had gotten tangled around S’reee’s flukes.
“Wow,” Nita said. She lifted her left hand and looked at it. The place where Hotshot had bitten her was just a little oval of pink puncture marks, all healed.
“You all right?” Kit said, trying to help her up.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Nita said. She pushed him away as kindly and quickly as she could, staggered down to the water line, and lost her dinner.
When she came back, her mouth full of the taste of the salt water she’d used to wash it out, S’reee had rolled herself more upright and was talking to Kit. “I still feel deathly sick,” she said, “but at least dying isn’t a problem. At least for the moment.”
She looked at Nita. Though the long face was frozen into that eternal smile, it was amazing how many expressions could live in a whale’s eyes. Admiration was there just now, and gratitude. “You and I aren’t just cousins now, hNii’t,” S’reee said, giving Nita’s name a whistly whalish intonation, “but sisters too, by blood exchanged. And I’m in your debt. Maybe it’s poor thanks to a debtor to ask him to lend to you again, right away. But maybe a sister, or a friend—” and she glanced at Kit— “would excuse that if it had to happen.”
“We’re on active status,” Kit said. “We’re supposed to be handling whatever presents itself. What’s the problem?”
“Well then.” S’reee’s whistling took on a more formal rhythm. “As the only remaining candidate Senior Wizard for the Waters About the Gates, by Wizard’s Right I request and require your assistance. Intervention will take place locally and last no more than ten lights-and-darks. The probable level of difficulty does not exceed what the manual describes as ‘dangerous’, though if intervention is delayed, the level may escalate to ‘extremely dangerous’ or ‘critical.’ Will you assist?”
Nita and Kit looked at each other, unnerved by the second part of the job description. S’reee moaned. “I hate the formalities,” she said in a long unhappy whistle. “I’m too young to be a Senior: I’m only two! But with Ae’mhnuu gone, I’m stuck with it! And we’re in trouble, the water people and the land people both, if we don’t finish what Ae’mhnuu was starting when he died!” She blew out a long upset breath. “I’m just a calf; why did I get stuck with this?…”
Kit sighed too, and Nita made a face at nothing in particular. On their first job, she and Kit had said something similar, about a hundred times. “I’ll help,” she said, and “Me too,” said Kit, in about the same breath.
“But you’re tired,” Nita said, “and we’re tired, and it’s late, we ought to go home…” . ”
“Come tomorrow, then, and I’ll fill you in. Are you living on the Barrier?”
Nita didn’t recognize the name. “Over there,” Kit said, pointing across the water at Tiana Beach. “Where the lights are.”
“By the old oyster beds,” S’reee said. “Can you go out swimming a couple hours after the sun’s high? I’ll meet you and we’ll go where we can talk.”
“Uh,” Kit said, “if the sharks are still around—”
Out on the water there was a splash of spray as a silvery form leaped, chattering shrilly, and hit the water again. “They won’t be,” S’reee said, sounding cheerful for the first time. “Hotshot and his people are one of the breeds the sharks hate worst; when there are enough of them around, few sharks would dare come into the area. Hotshot will be calling more of his people in tonight and tomorrow—that’s part of the work I’m doing.”
“Okay,” Nita said. “But what about you? You’re stuck here.”
“Hello, wake up!” Kit shouted playfully in Nita’s ear, nudging her to look down at the sandbar. She found herself standing ankle-deep in salt water. “Tide’s coming in. She’ll be floated off here in no time.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” Nita opened her book, found the word to kill the wizard’s-wall spell, and said it. Then she looked up at S’reee. “You sure you’re gonna be all right?”
S’reee looked mildly at her from one huge eye. “We’ll find out tomorrow,” she said. “Dai stihó.”
“Dai,” Nita and Kit said, and walked slowly off the sandbar, starting to make their way across the water and toward the lights of home.
A Song of Choice
Nita got up late, and was still yawning and scrubbing her eyes even after she’d washed and dressed and was well into her second bowl of cereal. Her mother, walking around the kitchen in her bathrobe and watering the plants that hung all over the place, threw a curious glance at Nita. “Looking a little worn out this morning, Neets…”
“Am I?” Nita made a point of stifling the yawn that had been about to pop out.
“Yes you are.” Her mother moved to another plant and started tending to it, but still had an eye on her. “We’ve talked about you reading under the covers with your phone…”
“I wasn’t.” And for a change this was even true. Nita sighed into her cereal; sometimes exercising a wizard’s necessary care about saying what was true was a real nuisance.
“You’ll hurt your eyes, you know that.”
“If I was hurting my eyes, then why did the eye doctor say I only needed reading glasses now? And not even all the time?” Nita carefully kept herself from showing too much enjoyment at having a chance to play this particular card in the endless mother-daughter game. Very gradually over the last couple of months—because she had no desire to screw up something so vital—she’d been using her wizardry to cure her astigmatism. The optometrist had always said that the condition would clear up as she got older. Now it was just happening a lot sooner than scheduled.
Her mother sighed and watered another plant. “It’s nice that we don’t have to spend so much money on expensive prescriptions, I can’t argue that,” Nita’s mom said. “I just don’t want you straining your eyes and messing things up somehow…”
Nita rolled those eyes hard when her mom’s back was turned. She’ll find a way to worry no matter what I do… And sure enough, as Nita’s mom headed for the sink to refill the watering can, she stopped to put a hand against Nita’s forehead. “You’re not coming down with anything, are you?”
“No, I’m fine.” Nita made an annoyed face when her mother’s back was turned. Her mom loved the beach, but at the same time was sure that there were hundreds of ways to get sick there: too much heat, too much cold, too much time in the water; splinters, rusty nails, tar… Nita’s little sister Dairine had kicked off a tremendous family fight a few days earlier by insisting that the blueness of her lips after a prolonged swim was actually caused by a grape Popsicle.
“Is Kit having a good time?” her mother said.
“Without a doubt,” Nita said. “He says this is the best.” …Which was absolutely the truth. Kit had never been at the beach for more than a day at a time before, and Nita suspected that if he could, he’d dig into the sand like a clam and not come out for weeks.
“Just wanted to make sure. His dad called las
t night . . . wanted to see how his ‘littlest’ was.”
“El Niño,” Nita said, under her breath, grinning. The terrible pun was a family nickname—both the word for “the baby” and for the Pacific current that caused storms and so much other trouble. The name made Kit crazy, which was possibly why Nita loved to use it on him on every opportunity.
“Be careful he doesn’t hear you,” Nita’s mom said mildly. “You don’t want another of those little ‘accidents’ where someone helps you fall off the end of the fishing pier.”
Nita grinned to herself, for payback for that particular incident hadn’t been long in coming. Kit had no illusions at all about who’d made the wet cardboard box full of crabs on the pier suddenly give way, so that moments later Kit was forced to run for it as the aggrieved crabs went after him. And if I didn’t tell them it wasn’t his fault they were in that box, well, hey, I can’t do everything at once…
“Nita?”
“Oh! Sorry! What?”
“How’ve you two been getting along?”
“Huh? We’re fine. Kit’s great!” Nita saw a slightly odd look come into her mother’s eyes. “For a guy,” she added.
“Well,” her mother said, “be careful.” And she took the watering can off into the living room.
Careful? What about? Nita thought, briefly bewildered. She finished her cornflakes at high speed, rinsed the bowl and spoon in the sink, and hurried out of the house to find Kit.
Halfway across the sparse sandy grass of the front yard, another voice spoke up. “Aha,” it said. “The mystery woman.”
“Oh, put a sock in it, Dairine,” Nita said. Her sister was hanging upside down from the trapeze swing of the rusty swing set, her short red hair ruffling in the breeze. Dairine was a slim little stick of a thing, all right as younger sisters went, though (in Nita’s estimation) way too smart for her own good. Right now entirely too much smart was showing in those sharp gray eyes, and Nita tried not to react to it except by the most sensible approach, which was to attack first. “Kind of old for that, aren’t you? Gonna fall down and bust your head open. Probably lose what few brains you have all over the ground.”
Dairine shook her head, causing herself to swing a little. “Naaah,” she said, “but I’d sooner”—she started pumping, so as to swing harder—“fall off the swing—than fall out the window—in the middle of the night!”
Nita went first cold, then hot. She glanced at the windows to see if anyone parental was looking out. No one was. “Did you tell?” she hissed.
“I—don’t tell anybody—anything,” Dairine said, in time with her swinging. This was true enough. When Dairine had needed glasses, when she’d started getting beaten up at school, and when she was exposed to German measles, nobody had heard about it from her.
“Y’like him, huh?” Dairine said.
Nita glared at Dairine and opened her mouth to start telling her loudly what was her business. Then, remembering the open windows, she restrained herself.
But there was no getting away from the question, as Dairine would push till she got an answer. “…Yeah, I like him,” Nita said, turning red at having to make the admission. The problem was, there was no lying to Dairine. She always found out the truth sooner or later and made your life unbearable for having tried to hide it from her.
“You two hooking up?” Dairine said.
“Dairiiiiiiiine!” Nita said, quietly, but with murder in it. “No, we are not hooking up!” God, where does she get these ideas?
“Okay. Just wondering. You going swimming?”
“No, genius, skiing,” Nita said, snapping the strap of her bathing suit very obviously at her sister.
Dairine grinned at Nita upside down. “Kit went west,” she said.
“Thanks,” Nita said, heading out of the yard. “Tell Mom and Dad I’ll be back for supper.”
“Be careful,” Dairine called after Nita, in a perfect imitation of their mother. Nita made a face.
“And watch out for sharks!” Dairine added at the top of her lungs.
“Oh, great,” Nita said to herself, wondering if her mom or dad had heard. She took off at a dead run in case they had.
She found Kit waiting about a mile down the beach, playing fetch with Ponch to tire him out, as he’d told Nita he was going to. “Otherwise he gets crazy if I go away. This way he’ll just lie down and sack out.” And sure enough, after some initial barking and dancing around Nita when she arrived, Ponch flopped panting on the sand beside them where they sat talking and finally rolled over on one side in the warm sun and began to snore.
They grinned at each other and headed out into the water. It was unnerving at first, to swim straight out into the ocean, past the breakers and the rollers, past the place where the bottom fell away, and to just keep going as if they never intended to come back. Nita had uncomfortable thoughts about undertow and how it might feel to drown. But just when she was at her twitchiest, she saw a long floppy fin tip up out of the water. S’reee was lolling there in the wavewash, her long pale barnacled belly upward.
The night before, when S’reee had been injured and immobile, it had been hard to tell much of anything about her. Now Nita was struck by the size of her—S’reee was at least forty feet from the tips of her flukes to her pointy nose. And last night she had been a wheezing hulk. Now she was all grace, floating and gliding and rolling in the water like some absurd, fat, slim-winged bird—for her long swimming fins looked more like wings than anything else.
“Did you sleep well?” she sang at them, a weird cheerful crescendo like something out of a happy synthesizer. “I slept wonderfully. And I ate well too. I think I may get back most of the weight I lost yesterday.”
Kit looked at the healed place, treading water. “What do you eat?”
“Krill, mostly. The littlest things that live in the water, like little shrimp. But some fish too. The blues are running, and the little ones are good. Or they have been until now…” She sighed, spraying water out her blowhole. “That’s in the story I have to tell you. Come on, we’ll go out to one of the Made Rocks.”
They took hold of her dorsal fin, and she towed them. The “Made Rock” turned out to be an old square fishing platform about three miles south of Tiana Beach: wooden pilings topped by wooden slats, all covered with tarred canvas and also with bland-faced seagulls. Most of the gulls immediately took off and began flying around and screaming about the humans sitting on their spot, despite Nita’s and Kit’s polite apologies. Some of the other gulls felt less annoyed, especially after they found out the visitors were wizards. Later on, whenever Nita thought of her first real conversation with S’reee, what she remembered best were the two seagulls who insisted on sitting in her lap the whole time. They were heavy, and not housebroken.
“I guess the best place to start,” S’reee said when Nita and Kit were settled, “is with what you already know, that there’s been trouble for wizards on the land lately. The trouble’s been felt in the sea too. Out here we’ve been having quakes on the sea floor much more often than we should be having them—bad ones. And some other old problems have been getting worse. The dirt they throw into the water from the High and Dry, especially: there’s more of it than ever—”
“The High and Dry?”
“The area down at the east end of this big island. The one with all the tall buildings on it.”
“Oh,” Kit said. “New York City. Manhattan, anyway.”
“That’s right. The water close to it is getting so foul, the fish can’t breathe it for many thousands of lengths out. Those that can are mostly sick. And a lot more more of the whaling boats have been in the offshore waters recently. The past few months, there’s been a great slaughter—”
Nita frowned at the thought of other creatures suffering what S’reee had been through. She’d heard all the stories about the importance of whale meat in some countries, but at the moment she found herself thinking that there had to be something else to eat.
“Things have
n’t been good,” S’reee said. “I know less about the troubles on land, but the Sea tells us that the land wizards have been disturbed about events of late; that there was some great strife of powers on the High and Dry. We saw the Moon go out one night—”
“So did we,” Kit said. There was fear in his eyes at the memory, and pride in his voice. “We were in Manhattan when it happened.”
“We were part of it,” Nita said. She still didn’t know all of how she felt about what had happened. But she would never forget reading from the book that kept the world as it should be, the Book of Night with Moon, while around her and Kit the buildings of Manhattan wavered like a dream about to break—and beyond a barrier of trees brought to life, and battling statues, the personification of all darkness and fear, the Lone Power, fought to get at them and destroy them.
S’reee looked at them somberly from one eye. “It’s true then what Ae’mhnuu used to tell me, that there are no accidents. You’ve met the Power that created death in the beginning and was cast out for it. All these things—the lost Moon, that night, and the earthquakes, and the fouled water, and the whale-eating ships—they’re all Its doing, one way or another.”
Kit and Nita nodded. “It took a defeat in that battle you two were in,” S’reee said. “It’s angry, and the problems we’ve been having are symptoms of that anger. So we have to bind It, make It less harmful, as the first sea people bound It a long time ago. Then things will be quiet again for a while.”
“Bind it how?” Nita said.
“No, wait a minute,” Kit said. “You said something about the Sea telling you things—”
S’reee looked surprised for a moment. “Oh, I forgot that you do it differently. You work your wizardry with the aid of those objects you carry—”