A Wizard Abroad

there: probably at her accent. She smiled. They were going to have to get used to her for the little while she was going to be here.

She got herself a Coke and settled down to wait for her chicken to be ready, gazing idly over at the kids sitting at the other table. They were stealing glances back at her, boys and girls together: a little casual, a little shy, a little hostile. In that way, they looked almost exactly like almost everyone she knew at home. They did dress differently. Black seemed to be a big favorite here, and a kind of heavy boots that she had never seen before. Everyone seemed very into tight torn jeans, or just tight jeans, or very tight short skirts, all black again; and black leather seemed popular. She felt a little out of place in her quilted bodywarmer and her faded blue jeans, but she grinned back at the other kids and paid attention to her Coke again.

A couple of minutes later, two of them came over to her. She looked up amiably enough. One of them was a boy, very tall, with very shaggy dark hair, a long nose, with dark eyes set very close together, and a big wide mouth that could have been very funny or very cruel depending on the mood of its owner. The girl could have been his twin, except that she was shorter, and her hair was marvelously teased and ratted out into a great black mane. At least parts of it were black; some were stunningly purple, or pink. She was wearing a khaki T-shirt with a wonderfully torn and beaten-up leather jacket over it: black again, black jeans and those big heavy boots which Nita was becoming rather envious of.

'You a Yank?' said the boy. It wasn't entirely a question. There was something potentially a little nasty on the edge of it.

'Somebody has to be,' Nita said. 'You want to sit down?'

They looked at her and shuffled for a moment. 'You staying in town?'

'No, I'm out in Kilquade.'

'Relatives?'

'Yeah. Annie Callahan. She's my aunt.'

'Woooaaa!' said the boy in a tone of voice that was only slightly mocking and only slightly impressed. 'Rich relatives, huh?'

'I don't know if rich is the right word,' Nita said.

'You here looking for your roots?' the girl asked.

Nita looked at her hair, looked at the girl's. 'Still attached to them, as far as I can tell. Though finding them around here doesn't seem to be a big problem.'

There was a burst of laughter over this. 'Come on and sit with us,' they said. 'I'm Ronan. This is Majella.'

'OK.'

Nita went with them. She was rapidly introduced to the others, who seemed to alternate between being extremely interested in her, and faintly scornful. The scorn seemed to be because she was an American, because they thought she had a lot of money, because they thought she thought they were poor, and various other reasons. The admiration seemed to be because she was American, because they thought she had a lot of money, and because she could see the big films six months earlier than everyone else. 'Uh,' Nita said finally, 'my parents don't let me go and see all that many films. I have to keep my schoolwork up all the time, or they don't let me go out.' There was a general groan of agreement over this. 'There's no escape,' said Ronan.

More detailed introductions ensued. Most of the kids lived in Bray. One of them lived as far out as Greystones, but took the bus in 'for the crack', she said. Nita blinked a bit until she discovered that crack was not a drug here, but a word for really good conversation or fun. Nita was immediately instructed about all the nightclubs and all the discos she should go to. 'How many discos do you have here?' she said, in some surprise. It then turned out that 'disco' was not a word for a specific kind of building, or a specific kind of music, as it was in the States, but just a dance that various pubs or hotels did once or twice a week. Several of them were no-alcohol kids' discos, highly thought of by this group, who went off into enthusiastic discussion of what they would wear and who they would go with. 'You got somebody to go with?' said Ronan.

'Uh, no,' Nita said, thinking regretfully of Kit. He loved to dance. 'My buddy's back in the States.'

'HerbuddyyyyyyV Nita grinned a little: she was now beyond the blushing point. Her sister had been teasing her about Kit for so long that this was a very minor sort of salvo by comparison. 'Aren't you a little young for that?' one of the girls said, clearly teasing, to judge by the young guy massaging her shoulders at the moment.

Nita arched her eyebrows. 'Let's just say that in my part of the world we make up our minds about this kind of thing early.'

'Whooooaaaaa!' said the group, and started punching one another and making lewd remarks, only about half of which Nita understood.

'So if your buddy's there, what are you doing here?' said Ronan.

'I know!' said Majella. 'Her parents sent her away to separate them because they were — ahem!' And she shook her hand in a gesture intended to be slightly rude and slightly indicative of what they were doing.

Nita thought about this for a moment, and thought that the simplest way to manage things was to let them think exactly this. 'Well, yeah,' she said. 'Anyway, I'm stuck here for six weeks.' 'Stuck here! Only stuck here! In the best part of the Earth!' they said, and began ragging her shamelessly, explaining what a privilege it was that she should be among them, and telling her all the wonderful places there were to see, and things to do. She grinned at this at last, and said, 'I bet none ofyou do those things.' 'Oh, well, those are tourist things,' Ronan said. 'Thanks loads,' said Nita.

They chatted about this and that for a long while. Nita found herself oddly interested by Ronan, despite his looks: maybebecause of his looks. She didn't know anyone at home who managed to look so dark and grim, no matter how punk they dressed: and there was an odd, cheerful edge to his grimness that kept flashing out, a certain delight in having opinions, and having them loudly, in hopes that someone would be shocked. Ronan's opinions of anyone who wanted to colonize Ireland, from the English on back, were scathing. So were his views on people who thought they were Irish and weren't really, or who weren't Irish and thought they should have something to do with running the country, or thought that the Irish needed any kind of help with anything at all. The others tended to nod agreement with him, or if they disagreed, to keep fairly quiet about this: Nita noticed this particularly, and suspected that they had felt the edge of his temper once or twice. She grinned a little to herself, thinking that he would have a slightly hotter time of it if he tried it on her. She rather hoped Ronan would. It was amazing how long a couple of pieces of chicken and a few Cokes could be made to last; fortunately, the people running the shop didn't seem to care how long they stayed there. Eventually, though, everybody had to leave for one reason or another: buses to catch, people to meet. One by one they said goodbye to Nita, and headed off, Ronan last of them. 'Don't get lost looking for leprechauns, now, Miss Yank,' he shouted to her over his shoulder as he made his way off down Bray's main street.

She snickered and turned away, looking at the number forty-five bus pulling up across the street, and thought,Naah… Ill walk home. It was only eight miles, up the promontory of Bray Head and down the other side, through extremely pretty countryside.

It was a long, easy walk down, taking her about an hour to get down to Greystones. She strolled down into the town. It was a more villagey-looking street than Bray's, and smaller: a couple of banks, a couple of food shops, two small restaurants, a newsagents where you could get magazines and cards and sweets. Various other small shops. a dry cleaners. And that was it. After that, the town was surrounded by big old houses, and estates of smaller ones. And then the fields began again — in fact, they began almost as soon as you had left the town. Nita strolled by the tiny golf course, looked down to Greystones' south beach beyond it; walked past a cow with a blank expression, chewing its cud.'Dai,' she said to it. It blinked at her and kept chewing. The road climbed again, winding a bit, up through Killincarrig.Everything has names here, Nita thought.Ifs amazing. Every piece of ground. Aunt Annie was right. I really must get a map out. There may be one in the manual.

There was. She consulted it as she went up the road. At the top of the road, another crossed it at a T- junction: she turned left. That way led towards Kilquade and Kilcoole and Newcastle with its little church.

This road climbed and dipped over a little bridge that crossed a dry river; up between high hedges.

Birds dipped and sang high in the air. The sun was quite hot: there was no wind.

There came a point where there was a right turn, and a signpost pointing down between two more high hedges, towards Kilquade. Nita took it, making her way down the narrow road. The houses here were built well