A Wizard Abroad

Kit opened his mouth, too, and closed it, and then said, 'I thought you'd be glad to see me.' 'You idiot, Iam glad to see you! But what are youdoing here? I thought. .' 'Oh.' Kit turned red, then started laughing, 'Neets, uh, I feel like a fool.' She withheld comment for the moment. 'Oh?'

'Well, I mean,you promised your parents that you wouldn't come back to see me. But I never said anything of the kind. No-oneasked me. So I said to my mum, 'I have to go out for a while, I'll be back for dinner.' And she said, 'Fine, have a nice time. ' 'Dynamite! Come and see my aunt.'

She dragged him inside. Her aunt had taken a little while off from phone calls to feed the cats, and now stood there looking at Kit with a can of cat food in her hand, and a somewhat bemused expression. 'Aunt Annie,' Nita shouted,'this is Kit!' 'Ah.' Her aunt blinked. 'Haifa second, then, and I'll feed him too.'

Nita snickered and sat him down at the table, and started making tea. Out of the tangle of mewing and hollering cats, one detached itself and strolled over to the kitchen table, jumped up on it, and regarded Kit with big eyes. It was Tualha. 'And who is this?' she said.

Nita had to laugh a little at Kit's bemused expression. 'Kit, Tualha. She's a bard. Tualha, Kit Rodriguez. He's a wizard.' 'Dai stiho,' said Kit.

'Slan,'said the cat, looking him up and down. To Nita she said, 'I see the Spanish have finally arrived.'

'What?'

'Kit, don't get her started. She'll be reciting poetry at you in a minute.' 'I don't mind that.'

'So listen,' Nita's aunt said then, coming over to the table and sitting down as she dried her hands on a dishcloth. 'Kit, you're welcome here, but one question. Do your parents know you're a wizard?' 'Oh, yeah.'

She shook her head. 'It's getting easier these days than it used to be.' She looked at Nita, and then at Kit, and at Nita again. 'Listen,' she said, 'I want the straight word from you on this. You two aren't doing what your mum and dad were concerned you were doing — I mean, what theytold me they thought you were doing. Are you?'

She had the grace to look embarrassed as she said it. Nita and Kit could do nothing but look at each other and then burst out laughing. 'Why does everyone think that?' Kit said, sounding momentarily aggrieved. 'Are we panting at each other or something?' Then he lost it and cracked up again.

'No,' Nita said to Aunt Annie. 'We're not.'

'Well,' said her aunt. 'It's matters here that really concern me, and I've got enough on my plate at the moment. You know anything about it?'

'There was a preqis in the manual of what's been going on here,' Kit said. He sighed. 'We've got problems.'

That 'we' was one of the nicest things Nita had heard in a long time. She had had enough of working by herself. 'Yeah. Well, the Seniors here seem to have at least a handle on what to do. I just hope it works. Did you read about that?'

'Yeah. It seems they've already made some progress. There's a stone, is it? That they had to wake up-'

'It was half-awake already,' Nita said. 'It's the other three that are going to be a problem.' 'Yeah. They said that the second one was 'dormant', the third one was 'unusable' and the fourth one was 'unaccounted for'. That doesn't sound terrific.' 'Nope.'

'Listen,' Aunt Annie said, I' ll leave you two to chat. I've got to get back on the phone.' She smiled at them and headed out of the room. 'Phone? What for?' 'Other wizards,' Nita said.

Kit looked mystified. 'To just talk to them? Why don't they. .'

'NO, DON'T DO THAT!' she said, sitting bolt upright as she felt him starting to casually line up the beam- me-up spell in his head. 'You can't do that here!' 'Why not?'

'Feel around you for the overlays! They're all over the place! And you better watch how you go home, too.'

He paused a moment, and then looked surprised. 'You're not kidding. How do you get around here?'

'I walk. Or there's a bike to ride.'

'Well, let's go and do that, then. Sounds like I've got a lot of catching up to do.'

Nita slipped into the office, bent over Aunt Annie at her desk, scribbled a note on her pad: Going out bike riding, OK?

Her aunt nodded and went right on with her conversation about spell structure.

They were out for a long time. Part of it was Kit rubbernecking at the scenery while they talked. But part of it was the weather turning odd. The thunderstorms the weathermen had been predicting materialized, but they dropped hail rather than rain. They had to take shelter from several of these showers, and when they finally got down to the dual carriageway again, they found hailstones as big as marbles lying around on the road, steaming bizarrely in the bright sunshine. The sound of thunder rumbled miles away, sporadic but threatening, all through the ride. They had been taking turns riding, or sometimes Kit would ride and Nita would sit on the crossbar, or the other way around. At the moment Kit was walking the bike beside her, looking around appreciatively. 'This is great,' he said. 'I guess if you had to be sent somewhere, this is as good a place as any.'

'Huh,' Nita said. 'I don't remember you being very excited about it at first.'

He coloured somewhat. 'Yeah, well.'

Nita grinned. 'Listen, how's Dairine getting on?'

'OK, as far as I can tell. I think she may be on assignment; she doesn't seem to have been around your place much in the past few days. Busy.'

'I bet. Wizards all over the place are really busy about now.' Nita shook her head. The oppressive, thunderstorm-about-to-happen feeling had not stopped. She was still prickling, but not so violently as she had been that morning.

'Here it comes,' Kit said, looking up at one thundercloud that they had watched drifting halfway between them and the sea as they turned down the Kilquade road. Almost immediately as he said it, Nita saw the bolt of lightning lance down and strike one of the hills behind the farm. Silently she started counting seconds, and had barely got to 'two' before the crack of thunder washed over them. 'A little too close,' said Kit. 'Let's get inside.'

They headed down the drive in a hurry, and came out into the gravel yard in front of the house. Nita was heading for the front door when Kit looked around him with a sudden surprised expression. 'Wait a minute. What's that?' he said.

'That what?' Nita was feeling a little cross. She could feel the rain coming on in the air, and didn't want to stand around outside waiting for it, after all she'd been through that day. 'That,' Kit said, swinging around as if looking for something. 'Can't you feel it? Inanimate. Strong.'

Nita shook her head, wondering what he was talking about. Kit was staring down towards the farmyard, between the buildings. 'There's something going on down there,' he said. 'Something alive.'

'This place is full of horses and sheep and cows,' Nita said. 'Kit. .'

'No,' he said. 'Not something that'susually alive. It's inanimate, it's athing, it's — come on!' He started down that way. There was another roll of thunder. Nita didn't see the lightning bolt this time. She went after him, muttering to herself. The problem was that Kit frequently sensed things she didn't, just as she sensed things he didn't. They had areas where their talents overlapped, certainly, but Nita's specialty was live things; Kit had always been more for inanimate objects. And if he really felt he was on the trail of something important. .

'It's really weird,' he said as she caught up with him. 'It's nothing — I've never felt one that alive before.' 'One what?

He looked into the farmyard and shook his head, and gestured. 'That,' he said.

Nita looked. There was nothing in the farmyard but Biddy the farrier's pickup truck, with its forge on the back. 'That?'

'It's not the truck,' Kit said. 'Not the truck itself. That's a little more awake than usual, but nothing really strange. It's the thing in the back. That box. What is that?'

'It's a forge, a portable forge,' Nita said, mystified. 'She's the lady who comes and puts the horses' shoes on.'