A Wizard Alone

Not really.

Kit waited. Normally Nita would now come forth with at least some explanation of what “not really” involved. But she wasn’t anything like normal right now, and no explanation came — just that sense of weariness, the same tired why-bother feeling that kept rearing up at the back of Kit’s mind.

Whether he was catching it directly from her via their private channels of communication, or whether it was something of his own, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if he didn’t miss Nita’s mother, too.

I finished fixing the TV, Kit said, determined to keep the conversation going, no matter how uncomfortable it made him. Someone around here had to try to keep at least the appearance of normalcy going. Now I’m bored again… and I want to stay that way for a while. Wanna go to the moon?

There was a pause. No, Nita said. Thanks. I just don’t feel up to it today. And there it was, the sudden hot feeling of eyes filling with tears, without warning; and Nita frowning, clenching her eyes shut, rather helplessly, unable to stop it, determined to stop it. You go ahead. Thanks, though.

She turned away in thought, breaking off the silent communication between them. Kit found that he, too, was scowling against the pain, and he let out a long breath of aggravation at his own helplessness. Why is it so embarrassing to be sad? he thought, annoyed. And not just for me. Nita’s overwhelming pain embarrassed her as badly as it did him, so Kit had to be careful not to “notice” it.

Yet there wasn’t anything he seemed able to do for her at the moment. He felt like an idiot — unable to think of anything useful to say, and just as idiotic when he was tempted to keep saying the same things over and over: “It’ll pass,” “You’ll come out of it eventually.” They all sounded heartless and stupid. And besides, how quick would I come out of it if it were my mama who died?

Kit let out a long breath. There was nothing to do but keep letting Nita know that he was there, one day at a time. So he’d taken care of today’s responsibility.

The phone rang, mercifully relieving Kit of his guilt for thinking that doing the right thing for his best friend was some kind of awful burden.

“Igotitlgotitlgotit!” Carmela shrieked from upstairs. “Hola Miguelque—” A pause. “Oh. Sorry.

Kit!.‘”

“What?”

“Tomds Eljefe.”

“Oh.” Kit went to the extension phone in the kitchen. His mother, deep in the business of deboning a chicken, glanced at him as he passed and said nothing, but her smile had a little edge of ruefulness about it. She was still getting her head around the concept that a man she routinely saw at hospital fund-raisers, a successful writer for commercial television and a pillar of the community, was also one of two Senior wizards for the New York metropolitan area. Ponch, Kit’s big black Labrador-cum-Border-collie-cum-whatever, was now lying on the floor with his head down on his paws, carefully watching every move Kit’s mother made that had anything to do with the chicken.

As Kit stepped over him, the dog spared him no more than an upward glance, then turned his attention straight back to the food.

Kit smiled slightly and picked up the phone. His sister was saying, “And so then I told him—

Oh, finally. Kit, don’t hog the line; I’m expecting a call. Why can’t you two just do the magic telepathy thing like you do with Nita? It’d be cheaper!”

“Vamos,” Kit said, trying not to sound too severe.

“Bye, sweetie,” Tom Swale said on the other end.

“Bye-bye, Mr. Tom,” Carmela said, and hung up the upstairs phone.

Kit grinned. “‘Magic telepathy,’” he said. “Like she cares that much about the phone bill.”

Tom laughed. “Explaining the differences of communications between you and me and you and Nita might make more trouble than it’s worth,” he said. “Better let her get away with it just this once. Am I interrupting anything?”

“I just finished dealing with a hardware conflict,” Kit said, “but it’s handled now, I think. What’s up?”

“I wouldn’t mind a consultation, if you have the time.”

He wants a consultation from me? That’s a new one. “Sure,” Kit said. “No problem. I'll be right over.”

“Thanks.”

Kit hung up, and saw the look his mother was giving him. “When’s it going to be ready, Mama?” he said. “I won’t be late. Not too late, anyway.”

“About six. It doesn’t matter if you’re a little late… It’ll keep.” She gave him a warning look.

“You’re not going anywhere sudden, are you?” This had become her code phrase for Kit leaving on wizardly business.

“Nope,” Kit said. “Tom just needs some advice, it looks like.”

His father wandered back into the kitchen. “The TV working okay now?” Kit said.

“Working?” his pop said. “Well, yeah. But possibly not the way the manufacturer intended.”

Kit looked at his pop, uncomprehending. His father went back into the living room. Kit followed.

Where the TV normally would have shown a channel number, the screen was now displaying the number 0000566478. The picture seemed to be of a piece of furniture that looked rather like a set of chrome parallel bars. From the bars hung a creature with quite a few tentacles and many stalky eyes, which were not in the usual places. The creature was talking fast and loud in a voice like a fire engine’s siren, while waving around a large, shiny object that might have been an eggbeater, except that, in Kit’s experience, eggbeaters didn’t usually have pulse lasers built into them. Characters flashed on the screen, both in the Speech and in other languages. Kit stood and looked at this with complete astonishment. His father, next to him, was doing the same.

“You didn’t hack into that new pay-per-view system, did you?” his father said. “I don’t want the cops in here.”

“No way,” Kit said, picking up the remote and looking at it accusingly. The remote sat there in his hand as undemonstratively as any genuinely inanimate object might… except that Kit was less certain than ever that there really were any such things as inanimate objects.

He shook the remote to see if anything rattled. Nothing did. “I told you to behave,” he said in the Speech.

“But not like what” the remote said in a sanctimonious tone.

His father was still watching the creature on the parallel bars, which pointed the laser eggbeater at what looked like a nearby abstract sculpture. This vanished in a flare of actinic green light, leaving Kit uneasily wondering what kind of sculpture screamed. “Nice special effects,” Kit’s father said, though he sounded a little dubious. “Almost too realistic.”

“It’s not special effects, Pop,” Kit said. “It’s some other planet’s cable.” He hit the reveal control on the remote, but nothing was revealed except, at the bottom of the screen, many more strings of characters flashing on and off in various colors. “Shopping channel, looks like.” Kit handed the remote back to his father.

“This is a shopping channel?” his pop said.

Kit headed for the coat hooks by the kitchen door and pulled his parka off one of them. “Popi, I’ve got to get to Tom’s. I’ll be back pretty soon. It’s all right to look at it, but if any phone numbers that you can read appear — do me a big favor, okay? Don’t order anything!”

Kit opened the back door. Ponch threw one last longing look at what Kit’s mama was doing with the chicken, then threw himself past Kit, hitting the screen door with a bang! and flying out into the driveway.

Kit followed him. At the driveway’s end, he paused, looking up briefly. It was almost dark already; the bare branches of the maples were showing black against an indigo sky. January was too new for any lengthening of days to be perceptible yet, and the shortness of the daylight hours was depressing. But at least the holidays were over.