“Not with any possible doubt of the outcome,” said that huge dark satisfied voice.
The Lone Power was standing there looking at her; and for just the briefest second, Pralaya coexisted with Its newly chosen form. It looked human, like a young man—though an inhumanly handsome one—with shadows wrapped around It like an overcoat; shadows that reached out and now wrapped themselves around Pralaya, dragged him, struggling and horrified, into themselves, and hid him away.
“Now, you shouldn’t really have said that,” said the young man. “While he didn’t actually know what was happening, I could have let him live. But you had to come right out and tell him, at which point his usefulness to me vanished.”
Nita stood there horrified. “You just killed him!”
“No,” the Lone One said, “you did. Not a bad start, but then you were intent enough on killing something.” All around Nita, the snarling of the malignant cells was getting louder and louder. “Anyway, don’t be too concerned about Pralaya; I’ll find another of his people to replace him if there’s need. Now, though, matters stand as I told you they stood. All we need is your conscious answer to the question. Can we do business?”
Nita stood there, frozen.
And another voice spoke out of the darkness.
“Fairest and Fallen,” Kit said, “one more time… greeting and defiance.” Beside him, Ponch just bared his teeth and growled.
Nita stared in astonishment at Kit and Ponch. The Lone Power whirled, taking them in, then giving them an annoyed look.
“You again,” the Lone One said. “Well, I suppose it was to be expected. You’ll do anything to run her life for her, won’t you?”
Nita’s eyes widened in shock. “The chance that she might possibly pull something off without your assistance drives you crazy,” the Lone Power said conversationally. “Well, fortunately you’re not going to see anything like that today. She’s decided to turn to someone else for her last gasp at a partnership.” Its smile made it plain Who that was meant to be.
“We know better, so don’t try this stuff on us,” Kit said.
“You think you know better,” It said. It looked at Nita. “Does he? Or are you perhaps a little tired of him pushing you around?”
Nita stood silent, trembling.
“Might you possibly, just this once, know better?” the Lone One said softly. “Know best? Actually make the sacrifice?”
“Neets, don’t pay any attention to It,” Kit said. “You know why I came—”
“To keep her Oath from being contaminated,” said the Lone One. “Too late for that. The deal is done, and she’s made her choice at last. Without you.”
Nita saw Kit flinch at that, but he straightened up again. “I wouldn’t write me off as useless just yet,” Kit said. “And I wouldn’t bet that Neets is just going to dump me.”
“I would,” the Lone One said. “I hold the only betting token that matters at all in the present situation. Only with my help can she save her mother’s life.”
“It’s not true, Neets!” Kit shouted. “It tried pretty hard to keep Ponch and me from getting here. It must have a reason!”
“I can do without further interference,” said the Lone One. “That’s reason enough. Now, though, if I thought you might possibly accept a different version of the same bargain…” It stood musing. “Suppose Nita here keeps her wizardry—even despite the mistake she’s just made. I even save her mother, in the bargain—”
Kit shook his head, and Ponch growled again. “I serve Life, and the Powers that cast you out; and the One, the Power beyond Them. And so does Neets, whatever you’ve done to her. So just get used to it!”
The brief silence that followed was terrible. “I’ve been used to it for too long,” said the Lone Power. “Here and there, I stop mortals from incessantly reminding me.” The shadow wrapped around It, already huge, grew longer and darker; and inside it moved things that Nita emphatically did not want to see. It had been a long time since her bedroom shadows had been full of their little legs and their blind front ends, and their fangs, the little jaws that moved….
Kit, though, laughed. “Been there, seen them,” he said. “Millipedes? Is that all you’ve got? What a yawn.”
His tone was astonishing. It banished the shadows, all by itself. Nita remembered how she had dreaded those things when she was little, and now found herself thinking, to her amazement, Can someone else really show you how to kill the fears? Is it that easy? I thought they always said you had to do it yourself.
But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe others’ strengths weren’t their own property—
—if they offered—
“Kit,” Nita said. “I know what you want to do, and after how stupid I’ve been with you, it’s great that you even tried, but you’ve got to get out of here!”
“And leave you alone with That? Not a chance.”
The Lone Power laughed. “Well, anyone can see where this is going. Unless you throw him out of here yourself, it looks like you’re going to let someone else die for you again. I wouldn’t have thought you were such a coward.”
The flush of fury and embarrassment and pain struck through Nita like fire. She opened her mouth to say, You think I wanted it that way the last time? You think I’m not brave enough to do it now? Okay, here—
She didn’t get a chance, for another shape leaped through the shadows and hit Nita about chest high. She came crashing down hard beside one of the pools. “Don’t!” Ponch barked at her. “Don’t do it!”
Nita rolled over and tossed Ponch off to one side. Oh, the good pooch; I love him, but I can’t let him stop me. There’s still time, I can still save her. Nita pushed herself up on her hands and knees, and opened her mouth again. But as she did, the greater darkness that had hung about her since she came to this place—that leaning, inward-pressing obscurity—came wrapping down around her, squeezing the breath right out of her, and it spoke.
Don’t I get something to say about this?
That darkness leaned in ever closer around all of them, even the Lone One. It was a different kind of darkness than the Lone Power’s enwrapping shadows. Nita stared up into it, confused and frightened.
And then she realized she had no reason to be. Nita knew this darkness, from a long time ago… from the inside. Some memories, she realized, are recovered only under very special circumstances. This dark, immense presence, completely surrounding her, owning the world, being the world…
“Mom?” Nita whispered.
“I do get something to say about this,” said that voice, not just suspected now but actually heard.
“Nothing that matters,” said the Lone Power, though it sounded just slightly uncertain.
“The only thing that matters,” said her mother’s voice.
“It’s too late,” the Lone One said. “She’s made the bargain.”
“She’s made nothing,” said Nita’s mother’s voice, “because this is my universe, and I say what goes here, and she does not have my permission.”
And Nita’s mother was standing there, in the dark, between Nita and the Lone Power, in her T-shirt and her denim skirt, with her arms folded, and her red hair a spot of brightness even in this gloom. “This is my body,” said Nita’s mother. “If this is going to be a battleground, I make the rules.”
“For a mortal,” said the Lone One, “you’re unusually assured. With little reason. You believe everything some part-time psychologist tells you?”
“For an immortal,” said Nita’s mother, “you’re unusually dumb. The therapist, as it happens, was plainly more right than she knew. There they are, the nasty little things, just the way I imagined them.” She glanced at the shadowy pools, roiling full of cellular death. “In here somewhere, to match the darkness, there has to be light. And that’s my weapon, for the darkness comprehendeth it not. On that point, I have sources of reassurance other than my therapist—much older ones. They say that you cannot command a soul that’s firmly opposed
to you.”
“But bodies are not souls.”
“At this level,” Kit said, “just how sure are you?”
There was a slightly unnerved silence at that.
Nita’s mother looked over her shoulder at Nita. “My daughter and I,” she said, “are fighting the same battle. Maybe I do it in more ordinary ways. But we’re on the same side. And you, if I recognize you correctly, are no friend of mine. Get off my turf!”
She talks a good fight, Kit thought. But it’s gonna take more than that!
Nita was almost breathless with tension, yet she suddenly realized that this was the first time in a good while that she’d overheard Kit think. In any case, she had to agree with him. She’s tougher than she looks, Nita thought. But then she was a dancer. Dancers are tough. Maybe what we need to be doing is feeding her power—
“You have no power to order me around,” said the Lone One. “I’ve been part of ‘your turf’ since the beginning of things. I have my own rights here.”
“I’ve heard that line before,” Nita’s mother said. “I reject it. I choose who shares my body with me. As I chose my children, and my husband. I choose! You think you have any rights here that I don’t grant you? Maybe you can live inside people who don’t look at themselves closely. But those who fight with you every day and have an idea of what they’re wrestling with? Let’s just find out.”
She stood up tall. Nita gulped. She had seen her mother looking ethereal, in her tutu and swan feathers and dinky little crown, in the poster from a Denver Opera Ballet production—looking like something you could break in two. But looking over her shoulder one day and seeing Nita eyeing dubiously that old framed poster, her mother had said, “Honey, take my advice. Don’t mess around with swans. One of those pretty white wings could break your leg in three places.” And off she had gone with the laundry basket, sailing past, graceful and strong, with the danger showing only around the edges of the chuckle.
But just bravery isn’t going to be enough. Not here—
“And just what do you plan to fight me with?” the Lone One said. “You have no weapons to equal my power. Not even the diluted form of it that’s killing you now.”
“She may not have anything but guts and intention,” Kit said, “but that’s half of wizardry to start with. And we’re carrying.” He reached into his claudication and came up with a long string of symbols in the Speech.
Nita looked at it, uncomprehending. The Lone One laughed.
“That won’t work,” It said. “Certainly not for her. And not even for Nita anymore, as you’ve seen. You think that by plugging an older version of Nita’s name into this spell, she will no longer be mine? It won’t work. It takes more power than either of you have to reverse the kind of changes she’s been through. She knows me now. She’s willing to pay my price to keep her mother alive. And sorry, Mom, but permission or no permission, it’s Nita’s choice that finally counts.”
“Oh yeah?” Kit said. “Neets,” he said to her then, holding out his hand, looking at her urgently. “Quick—”
“Oh, of course, give him all your power, why don’t you.” The Lone One laughed. “So much for your doing anything useful by yourself.”
Nita swallowed. In Its voice she heard too many thoughts of her own, roiling in its darkness the way the malignant cells were boiling around in the pools. Can’t cope. No independence. Scared to make a move without her partner.
Doesn’t have the nerve to strike out on her own—
Nita swallowed … and took off the charm bracelet.
—going to let him do all the dangerous stuff.
Going to prove him right again, and you wrong—
She hesitated one last time…
Then she threw the bracelet to Kit.
Kit caught it and quickly attached the old version of Nita’s name he’d saved from the Jones Inlet wizardry. Then he reached into the air beside him and brought something else out.
A small pale spark of light—
The light it gave at first seemed little, but swiftly it lit up all that place, and even chased the shadows briefly from the Lone One’s face … a sight that made Nita turn away. The terror of It, to some extent, she could stand, but the beauty of It, seen together with that ancient deathliness, was difficult to bear. Around the Lone One, all its shadows hissed with Its alarm, as if suddenly full of snakes. A glede—
“The dragon’s eye,” Kit said as he hooked the glede into an empty link of the charm bracelet, and the whole chain came alive with sudden fire. “Something brand new, something you’ve never touched. Something born after the change happened to you, the chance to be otherwise. Something you can’t affect—”
“Not true!” It cried. “All creation, even the void from which things are created anew, has my power at the bottom of it.”
“Not here, it doesn’t! Not in this! Whether you like it or not, even while you’re killing people, the world is starting to heal. And so are you!”
Nita swallowed hard, watching Kit and suddenly remembering Tom and Carl’s backyard and a fish looking up out of the water at her.
All the drawing lacks
is the final touch: to add
eyes to the dragon—
She desperately wanted to shout to Kit that yes, this had to be the answer—but she didn’t dare. She’d been wrong about so many things lately. What if her certainty, her desperation, got Kit killed, too? And the Lone One’s right, that’s not who I am anymore—
—but the other memory that came back to her, the amused piggy voice saying, “That is, assuming you’re into sequential time… You can handle it however you like.”
That blazing spark of light on the bracelet Kit held glittered at her like possibility made visible.
Why in the world not?! Nita thought. If you can’t put together what you were with what you are now—so you can make up for your mistakes and not make the same ones again—then what’s the point? This isn’t about reversing anything. It’s about going forward!
“Kit!” she cried.
He threw her the charm bracelet. Nita snatched it out of the air, and almost dropped it as the added power of the glede jolted up her arm like an electric shock.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” the Lone One cried. “You’ll destroy your mother, and yourself, here and now!”
Nita hesitated for just a second. Then she put the charm bracelet back on, taking hold of the two versions of her name that hung from it, side by side. “Well, guess what?” she said. “You’re not me!” And in the single quick gesture she’d had entirely too much practice with lately, she knotted the names tight together with the wizard’s knot.
The blast of power that went through her was like being hit by lightning. Whether because of her remade name or the presence of the glede, suddenly Nita could comprehend all those little darknesses in the water much more fully than just by using the kernel. Those clinging, buzzing little horrors were right about being, in their own twisted way, part of her mother. But now she could see exactly what to do about them. The solution was the same as what she had been trying to do with Kit and S’reee at Jones Inlet…
…except that, where she’d been wrong about how to use her part of the wizardry before, here and now she was right. Her wizardly fix for Jones Inlet had been too complicated. “This whole contrareplication routine would be great,” Kit had said, “if the chemicals in the pollution knew how to reproduce themselves.” Of course, they hadn’t. But these malignant cells, like all others, were just very smart chemicals in a protein-membrane shell that did know how to reproduce themselves… which made the solution perfect for her mother.
It set me up, Nita thought in growing fury. The Lone One made sure I came up against a problem where my solution would fail—and fail painfully—and where I fought with Kit. So that when I came to this moment, I’d be too hurt, too scared to try this solution again, too scared even to see it!
She trembled with rage. But to waste time on being angry now w
ould only play into Its hands. Nita’s eyes narrowed in concentration as she channeled the power from the glede through both the kernel and her memory of her part of the Jones Inlet wizardry, and into the dark waters around her…
Every pool around them roiled in agitation as all the malignant cells thrust their heads up out of the lapping darkness, like blind fish gasping in the air, desperately crying no!
For many of them it was already too late. All around them, the sea of her mother’s blood and the cerebrospinal fluid in her brain and spine was churning as if in a storm with the power that washed through it—and from all around came countless little dark explosions as the malignant cells’ membranes ruptured. The wizardry was reminding the human fluids of how they had once been part of an older, purer, uncontaminated Sea, one that was the outside of a world rather than the inside.
Yet Nita could feel through the kernel that there were some places where, for all the glede’s power, that cleansing Sea didn’t, couldn’t quite reach. Scattered through her mother’s inner world, little knots of darkness still lay, waiting. And there were many, many of them.
Too many…
Nita fell to her knees, defeated.
All for nothing…
“I told you,” the Lone One said. “You should have done it my way. Too late now—” And it began to laugh.
Nita began to cry. It was all over. All over… A deathly silence fell.
And an angry whisper broke it. “With me,” it said, “you can do what you like. But not with my daughter!”
And then another whisper.
“Mrs. Callahan—”
A moment later, someone took hold of Nita’s bracelet. Nita looked up, gasping.
“You need this, sweetie,” her mother said, her voice controlled despite her anger as she turned the bracelet past the new-made version of Nita’s name. “But Kit’s right. This is what I’ve been looking for!”
With a roar of fury, the Lone One moved toward the three of them, a terrible wave of shadow rearing up above It, ready to break. All around them, the waters of the pools rose up, to drown them, to destroy…