“Our books.”
“The Wizards’ Manuals.”
“Right. Well, whales who are wizards get their wizardry from the Sea. The water speaks to you when you’re ready, and offers you the Ordeal. Then if you pass it, the Heart of the Sea speaks whenever you need to hear it and tells you what you need to know.”
Nita nodded. The events in that “other” Manhattan had been her Ordeal, and Kit’s; and after they passed it, their manuals had contained much more information than before. “So,” she said, “bind the Lone Power how?”
“The way the first whale-wizards did,” S’reee said. “The story itself is the binding. Or rather, the story’s a song: the Song of the Twelve. In the long form it takes—will take—hours to sing.”
“Good thing I had breakfast,” Kit muttered.
S’reee spouted good-naturedly. Nita wondered whether it was accidental that the wind turned at that exact moment, threw the spray straight at Kit, and soaked him to the skin. Nita couldn’t help laughing.
“I won’t take quite that long,” S’reee said. “You know about the Great War of the Powers, at the beginning of everything; and how the Lone Power invented death and pain, and tried to impose them on the whole universe, and the other Powers wouldn’t let It, and threw It out.”
“Even regular human beings have stories about it,” Kit said. He took off his windbreaker and shook it out, mostly on Nita.
“Hardly surprising,” S’reee said. “Everything that lives and tells stories has this story in one form or another. Well, after that war in the Above and Beyond, the Lone Power spent a long while in untraveled barren universes, recouping Its strength. Then It came back to our native universe, looking for some quiet, out-of-the-way place to try out Its new inventions. If there is such a thing, chance brought it here, where because thinking life was very new, this world was vulnerable. And the only place thinking life existed yet was the Sea. So the Lone One thought to come here and trick the Sea into accepting Death. Its sort of death, anyway—where all power and love are wasted into an endless darkness, lost forever.”
“Entropy,” Nita said.
“Yes. And any sea people It succeeded in tricking would be stuck with the death, the Great Death, forever. Now there was already a sort of death in the Sea, but only the kind where your body stops. Everyone knew it wasn’t permanent, and it didn’t hurt much; you might get eaten, but you would go on as part of someone else. No one was afraid of not being his own self anymore—I guess that’s the simplest way of putting it. That calm way of life drove the Lone Power wild with hate, and It swore to attach fear and pain to it and make it a lot more interesting.”
S’reee sighed. “The whales’ job then was what it is now: to be masters and caretakers for the fish and other sea life, the way you bipeds are supposed to be for dry-land life. The world being quite young then, the only wizards in the Sea as yet were whales. In fact it was so early on that there were only ten whale-wizards, all Seniors. Ni’hwinyii, they were called, the Lords of the Humors—”
“Oh, like in the old word for emotions,” Kit said. “Not ‘funny’ humor.”
“Exactly. Those ten whales ruled the Sea, under the Powers,” S’reee said. “If the Lone Power wanted to trick the Sea into the Great Death, It had to trick the Ten; then all the life they ruled would be stuck with the Great Death too. So the Lone One went to the Ni’hwinyii in disguise, pretending to be a stranger, a new whale sent to them so that they could decide under which of their Masteries it fell. And as each one questioned the Lone Power, the Stranger-whale offered each of them the thing he wanted most, if he would only accept the ‘Gift’ the Stranger would give him. And he showed them just enough of his power to prove he could do it.”
“Uh-oh,” Kit said softly. “I’ve heard this one before.”
“Apples and snakes…” Nita said.
“Yes. The pattern repeats. One after another, the Lone One tempted the Ten. The Sea was silent then and gave them no advice—some people say that the Powers wanted the Ten to make up their own minds. But however that might have been, three of the Ten took the Gift, and fell. Three of them were undecided. Three of them rejected the Gift. And the Lone Power needed a majority of the Lords to accept Death, or Its victory would only be partial.”
“Those were only nine Lords, though,” Kit said.
‘Yes, and here the Tenth comes in: the Silent Lord, they called her. She was the youngest of them, and each of the other Nine tried to bring her around to his own way of thinking. The Lone One came to her too and tempted her as It had tempted the others. You know, though, that it’s the youngest wizard who has the most power, and where the other Lords were deceived, the Silent Lord wasn’t. She realized what the Stranger was and what It was trying to do.
“She was faced with a difficult choice. She knew that even if she rejected the Stranger, the fighting would only continue among the other Nine. Sooner or later they or their successors would accept the Gift and doom the whole Sea to the Great Death. But she also knew something else that the Sea had told her long before, and that others have found out since. If one knows death is coming—any death, from the small ones to the Great one—and is willing to accept it fully, and experience it fully, then the death becomes something else—a passage, not an ending: not only for oneself, but for others.”
S’reee’s voice got very soft. “So the Silent Lord did that,” she said. “Luck, or the Powers, brought one more creature into the singing, uninvited. It was the one fish over whom no mastery was ever given—the Pale Slayer, whom we call the Master-Shark. The Silent Lord decided to accept the ‘Gift’ that the Stranger offered her—and then, to transform the Gift and make it safe, she gave herself up willingly to die. She dived into a stand of razor coral; and the Master-Shark smelled her blood in the water, and… well.” S’reee blew. “He accepted the sacrifice.”
Nita and Kit looked at each other.
“When that happened, the Lone Power went wild with rage,” S’reee said. “But that did It no good. The Silent One’s sacrifice turned death loose in some of the Sea, but not all; and even where it did turn up, death was much weaker than it would have been otherwise. To this day there are fish and whales that have astonishing lifespans, and some that never seem to die of natural causes. The sharks, for instance. Some in the Sea say that’s a result of the Master-Shark’s acceptance of the Silent Lord’s sacrifice. But the important thing is that the Lone Power had put a lot of Its strength into Its death-wizardry. It had become death Itself, in a way. And when death was weakened, so was the Lone One. It fell to the sea floor, and that opened for It and closed on It afterward. And there It lies bound.”
“‘Bound?’” Kit said. “S’reee, last time we had a run-in with the Lone Power, It didn’t look real bound to us. It had a whole alternate universe of Its own, and when It came into this one to get us, It went around tearing things up any way It liked! If It’s bound, how was it also been running loose in Manhattan?”
S’reee blew, a sober sound. “It’s the usual confusion about time,” she said. “All the great Powers exist outside it, and all we usually see of Them are the places and moments where and when They dip into the timeflow we’re inhabiting. This world’s always been an annoyance to the Lone One. It gets frustrated here a lot—so It just keeps on visiting, in a lot of different forms. From inside our timeflow it can look as if the Lone Power is bound in one place-time and free in another… and both appearances are true.” S’reee rolled and stretched in the water. “Meanwhile, outside the timeflow, where things don’t have to happen one after another, the Lone One is eternally rebelling and eternally defeated—”
“We gave It a chance to do something else, when we fought last,” Nita said. “We offered It the option to stop being a dark power—”
“And it worked,” S’reee said, sounding very pleased. “Didn’t you know? Though it’ll be long and long before any visible signs of that change start showing. Meantime we have to keep fighting the battles, even
though the tide of the war is on the turn. The Lone One’s going to take a long troublesome while to complete Its choice, and if we get lazy or sloppy about handling Its thrashing around, a lot of people are going to die.”
“The sea floor,” Nita said, “has been shaken up a lot lately.”
“That’s one symptom that tells us the Twelve-Song needs to be reenacted,” S’reee said. “We do the Song at intervals anyway, to make sure the story’s never forgotten. But when the Lone Power gets troublesome—as It seems to be doing now—we reenact the Song, and bind It quiet again.”
“Where do you do this stuff?” Kit said.
“Down the coast a ways,” S’reee said, “off the edge of the plateau, in the Great Deep past the Gates of the Sea. Ae’mhnuu was getting ready to call the Ten together for the Song in three days or so. He was training me for the Singer’s part—before they blew him in two pieces and boiled him down for oil.”
Her song went bitter, acquiring a rasp that hurt Nita’s ears. “Now I’m stuck handling it all myself. And it’s not easy. You have to pick each whale wizard carefully for each part. I don’t know who he had in mind to do what. Now I have to work it out myself—and I need help, from wizards who can handle trouble if it comes up.” She looked up at them. “You two can obviously manage that. And the Ten will listen to you, they’ll respect you, after what you went through up in the High and Dry. You’ve fought the Lone Power yourselves and gotten off—”
“It was luck,” Kit muttered. Nita elbowed him.
“Singing, huh,” Nita said, smiling slightly. “I don’t have much of a singing voice. Maybe I’d better take the Silent One’s part.”
S’reee looked at Nita in amazement. “Would you?”
“Why not?”
“Not me,” Kit said. “I’m even worse than she is. But I’ll come along for the ride. The swim, I mean.”
S’reee looked from Kit to Nita. “You two are enough to make me doubt all the stories I’ve heard about humans,” she said. “HNii’t, best check that manual of yours and make sure this is something you’re suited for. The temperaments of the singers have to match the parts they sing—but it’s possible this might suit you. And the original Silent Lord was a humpback. The shapechange would come easily to you, since we’ve shared blood—”
“Wait a minute!” Nita said. “Shapechange? You mean me be a whale?”
Kit laughed. “Why not, Neets? You’ve been putting on a little weight lately…”
“You are so dead,” Nitamuttered. “I need a new bathing suit, is all—”
“Oh, you’d shapechange too, Kit,” S’reee said. “We couldn’t take you down in the Great Deeps otherwise. —Look, you two, there’s too much to tell, and some of it’s got to be handled as we go along. We’ve got three days to get everyone together for the Song, so that it happens when the Moon’s full. Otherwise it won’t keep the sea bottom quiet.”
Kit looked suddenly at Nita. “Did you see that thing on the news the other night? About the volcano?”
“The what?”
“There was some scientist on. He said that hot-water vents had been opening up all of a sudden off the Continental Shelf. And he said that if those little tremors we’ve been having keep getting worse, it could open the bottom right up and there’d be a volcano.” He frowned. “Sure, they said the odds of it happening were low…”
“It’s the news, Kit. They wouldn’t dare get any more definite about it. They’d be scared of starting a panic.”
“Yeah. But think about it, because the odds have changed before. The least a volcano’d do would be boil the water for miles around. But if it triggered an earthquake, that could just Long Island in two. It’s not like we’ve got bedrock under us. The Island’s just so much piled up rock and sand. And even a small earthquake so close could cause a tsunami. Half of Long Island could wind up underwater. And another thing: Manhattan skyscrapers aren’t built for earthquakes.” Kit was quiet for a moment, then said, “Remember I mentioned the rocks being upset? This is why. They remember too…”
Nita wasn’t thinking about rocks, or Manhattan. In her mind she was seeing a very clear picture of a tidal wave of dirty, boiling water crashing down on the beach house and smashing it to driftwood.
“When should we start, S’reee?” she said.
“Dawn tomorrow. There’s little time to waste. Hotshot will be going with us—he’ll be singing the Fourth Lord, the Wanderer, in the Song.”
“Dawn—” Nita chewed her lip. “Could it be a little later? We’ve got to have breakfast with my parents or they’ll freak out.”
“Parents?” S’reee looked from Nita to Kit in shock. “Holy Powers that Be, you’re still calves, is that what you’re telling me? And you went outworld into a Dark Place and came back! I’d thought you were much older—”
“We wished we were,” Nita said under her breath. “S’reee, it’s okay. We can manage them.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” S’reee said. “Three hours after dawn be all right, then? The same place? Good enough. Let me take you back. I have something to fetch so that you can swim with us, Kit. And, look—”
She gazed at them for some time from that small, worried, gentle eye; but longer at Nita. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much indeed.”
“Think nothing of it,” Kit said grandly, slipping into the water and patting S’reee on one big ribbed flank.
Nita slid into the water, took hold of S’reee’s dorsal fin, and thought something of it all the way home.
Seniors’ Song
The alarm clock went off right above Nita’s head, a painful blasting buzz like a dentist’s drill. “Ohhh stop it stop it stop it,” she said, reluctantly putting one arm out from under the covers and fumbling around on the bedside table for the noisy thing.
It went quiet without her having touched it. Nita squinted up through the morning brightness and found herself looking at Dairine. Her little sister was standing by the bedside table with the alarm clock in her hands, wearing a long Star Wars nightshirt and an annoyed look.
“And where are we going at six in the morning?” Dairine said, too sweetly.
“We are not going anywhere,” Nita said, swinging herself out of bed with a soft groan. “Go play with your Barbie dolls, Einstein.”
“Only if you give them back,” Dairine said, unperturbed. “Anyway, there are better things to play with. Kit, for example—”
“Dair, you’re pushing it.” Nita stood up, rubbed her eyes until they started working properly, and then pulled a dresser drawer open and began pawing through it for a T-shirt.
“What’re you doing, then—getting up so early all the time, staying out late? You think Mom and Dad aren’t noticing?— Oh, don’t wear that!” Dairine said at the sight of Nita’s present favorite sweatshirt. It featured numerous holes made by Ponch’s teeth, and an image of a Big Fat Panda doing a kung-fu stance. “Oh, really, Neets, don’t, so juvenile, so tacky—”
“That sounds real weird,” Nita said, “coming from someone who willingly adorns herself every night with pictures of Yoda.” And she threw a meaningful glance at the oversized nightshirt. “Shopping for a boyfriend or a Master?”
“Screw you, Nita,” Dairine said. Nita looked away, smiling. Dairine had become so much easier to tease since she’d decided to be a Jedi Knight when she grew up. Still, Nita went easy on her sister. It wasn’t really that fair for a wizard to make fun of someone who wanted to do magic, of whatever brand.
“And double the same to you. When’re Mom and Dad getting up, did they say?”
“They’re up now.”
“Kind of early! What for?”
“They’re going fishing. We’re going with them.”
Nita blanched. “What?? No, no, no way! I can’t go—”
Dairine cocked her head at Nita. “They wanted to surprise us.”
“They did,” Nita said, in shock. “I can’t—”
“Got a hot date, huh?”
“Dairine! I told you—”
“Where were you two going?”
“Swimming.” That was the truth.
“Neets, you can swim any time,” Dairine said, perfectly imitating their mother’s tone of voice. Nita zipped up her jeans and sat down on the bed with a thump. “What were you gonna be doing, anyway?”
“I told you, swimming!” Nita got up, went to the window, and looked out, thinking of S’reee and the summoning and the Song of the Twelve and the rest of the business of being on active status, which was now looking ridiculously complicated. And it looked so simple yesterday…
“Look, just make up some reason—”
Nita made a face at that. She had recently come to dislike lying to her parents. For one thing, she valued their trust. For another, a wizard, whose business is making things happen by the power of the spoken word, learns early on not to say things out loud that aren’t true or that he doesn’t want to happen.
“Sure,” Nita said in bitter sarcasm. “Why don’t I just tell them that we’re on some big secret mission? Or that we’re busy saving Long Island and the greater metropolitan area from a fate worse than death?” Oh God, why does this have to be happening to me? What am I supposed to do now? “I know, maybe I can tell them that Kit and I have an appointment to go out and get turned into whales, how about that?”
Even without turning around, Nita could feel her sister staring at her back. Finally the quiet made Nita twitchy. She turned around, but Dairine was already heading out of the room. “Go eat your breakfast,” Dairine said quietly, over her shoulder. “Sound happy.” And she was gone.
Under her breath, Nita said a word her father would have docked her allowance for (”Your mother does it to me. So I get to do it to you…”) and then sighed and headed for breakfast, plastering onto her face the most sincere smile she could manage. At first it felt hopelessly unnatural, but in a few seconds it was beginning to stick. At the dining-room door, where her father came around the corner from the kitchen and nearly ran her over, Nita took one look at him—in his faded lumberjack shirt and his hat stuck full of fish hooks—and wondered why she had ever been worried about getting out of the fishing trip. It was going to be all right. And how do I even know that? Never mind right now, just smile!