A Wizard Abroad

turned and she saw the beginning sprawl of houses, and Shannon town — a little city, barely the size of her own. The plane was turning to line up with the airport's active runway, and the sun caught her full in the eyes. She shivered, a feeling that had nothing to do with the warmth of the sudden light. That was warm enough, but the feeling was cold. Something about to happen, something about the lances of light, the fire. .Nita shook her head: the feeling was gone. Ididn't sleep very well, she thought.I'm susceptible to weird ideas. But then when wizards have weird ideas, they do well to pay attention to them. She forced herself to relive the feeling, to think again of the cold, and the fire, the sun like a spear. .

Nothing came of it. She shrugged, and watched the plane finish its turn and drop towards the runway.

It took them about fifteen minutes to get down, and for the plane to trundle up to the arrivals area. With her rucksack over her back, she said goodbye at passport control to the stewardess who was taking care of her. 'No, I can manage myself, thanks.'

She went up to the first empty desk she found and laid her passport on it, and smiled at the man. He looked down at her and said, 'Here's a wee dote of a thing to be traveling all alone. And how are you this morning?'

'I didn't sleep very well on the plane,' Nita said.

'Sure I can't do that myself,' the man said, riffling through her passport. 'Keep hearing things all the time. Coming to see relatives, are you? Here's a nice clean passport then,' the man said. 'Where do you want the stamp, pet? First page? Or save that for something more interesting?' Nita thought of the first time she had cleared 'passport' formalities at the great Crossroads world- gating facility, six galaxies over, and warmed to the man. 'Let that be the first one, please,' she said. The man stamped the passport with relish. He was a big kindly man with a large nose and little cheerful eyes. He handed the passport back to her and said, 'You're very welcome in Ireland, pet. You ask for help if you need it, now. Chad milfallcha.'

At least, she had seen that spelled over the doorway past the arrivals hall: cead mile faille — 'a hundred thousand welcomes'. 'Thank you,' she said, and walked on towards baggage claim and the big duty-free shop. She wandered around it with her mouth open for a little while, never having quite seen anything like it before. It was the size of a small department store, filled with crystal and linen and china and smoked salmon, and books.

Soon she needed to go to the gate for the flight that would take her to Dublin.

Another flight, another plane equally eager to be gone. It was about an hour's flight, over the green, the thousand shades — and all the bright rivers winding amongst the hills, blazing like fire when the sun caught them. Her ears had started popping from the plane's descent almost as soon as it reached altitude, and Nita looked down and found herself and the plane sinking gently towards a great green range of mountains, and three mountains notable even among the others. Nita's mother had told her about these three, and had shown her pictures. One of them wasn't a mountain, but a promontory: Bray Head, sticking out into the sea like a fist laid on a table with the knuckles sticking up. Then, a mile further inland, and westward, Little Sugarloaf, a hill half again as high as Bray Head. And then westward another mile, and higher than both the others, Great Sugarloaf, Slieve na Chulainn as the Irish had it: the mountain of Wicklow, its name said. It was certainly one of the most noticeable — a grey stony cone, pointed, its slopes green with heather — no tree grew there. The plane turned off leftward, making its way up to Dublin Airport. Another ten minutes and they were down.

Nita got her bag back, got a trolley, looked around curiously at the automatic change machine that took your money and gave you Irish money back, and briefly regretted that she didn't have an excuse to use it. She sighed and pushed her trolley out through the customs area, out through the sliding doors and past the bored uniformed man at the desk who kept people from coming in the wrong way.

'Nita!' And there was her Aunt Annie. Nita grinned. After spending your life with people you know, and then having to spend a whole day with people you didn't know, the sight of her was a pleasure. Nita's aunt hurried over to her and gave her a big hug.

She was a big silver-haired lady, big about the shoulders, a little broad in the beam; a friendly face with pale grey-blue eyes. Her hair was tied back in a short ponytail behind. 'How was your flight? Were you OK?'

'I was fine, Aunt Annie. But I'm really tired. I wouldn't mind going home.'

'Sure, honey. You come right out here, the car's right outside.' She pushed the trolley out into the little parking lot.

The morning was holding fresh and fine. Little white clouds were flying past in a blue sky; Nita put her arms around herself and hugged herself in surprise at the cold. 'Mum told me it might be chilly, and I didn't believe her. It's July!'

'Listen, my dear,' her aunt said,'this is one of the cooler days we've been having lately. The weather-people say it's going to get warm again tomorrow: up in the seventies.' 'Warm,' Nita said, wondering. It had been in the nineties on the Island when she left. 'We haven't had much rain, either,' said her aunt. 'It's been a dry summer, and they're talking about it turning into a drought if it doesn't rain this week or next.' She laughed a little as she came up to a white Toyota and opened its boot. They drove around to the parking lots ticket booth, paid the fee, and went out. Nita spent a few interested moments adjusting to the fact that her aunt was driving on the left side of the road. 'So tell me,' Aunt Annie said, 'how are your parents?' Nita started telling her, with only half her mind on the business; the rest of her was busy looking at the scenery as they came out on to the main road — or the 'dual carriageway', as all the signs called it — heading south towards Dublin, and past it to Wicklow. AN LAR, said one sign: and under that it said DUBLIN: 8. 'What's'An Lar'?' Nita said. 'That's Irish for 'to the city centre',' said her aunt.

'We're about fifteen miles south of Dublin. it'll take us about an hour to get through it and home, the way the traffic is. Do you want to stop in town for lunch? Are you hungry?' 'Nnnnnno,' Nita said, yawning. 'I think I'd rather just go and fall over and get some sleep. I didn't get much on the plane.'

Her aunt nodded. 'No problem with that. you get rid of your jetlag. The country won't be going anywhere while you get caught up on your sleep.'

And so they drove through the city. Nita was surprised to see how much it looked like suburban New York, except that — except. .Nita found that she kept saying 'except' about every thirty seconds. Things looked the same, and then she would see something completely weird that she didn't understand at all. The street signs, half in Irish and half in English, were a constant fascination. It was a very peculiar-looking language, with a lot of extra letters, and small letters in front of capital letters at the beginnings of words, something she had never seen before. And the pronunciations. . She tried pronouncing a few of the words, and her aunt howled with laughter and coached her. 'No, no! If you try to pronounce Irish the way it looks, you'll go crazy. That one's pronounced 'bally aha-cleeah'.'

Nita nodded and went on with a brief version of how things were at home as they drove through the city, out past shops and department stores and parts of town that looked exactly like New York to Nita's eyes, though much cleaner; and then started to pass through areas where small modern housing developments mixed with old homes that had beautiful clear or stained-glass fanlights above their front doors, and elaborate molded plaster ceilings that could be glimpsed here and there through open curtains.

Then these houses, too, gave way, starting to be replaced by housing developments again, older ones now. The dual carriageway, which had become just one lane on each side for a while, now reasserted itself. And then fields started to appear, and big vacant areas that to Nita's astonishment and delight had shaggy horses casually grazing on them, right by the side of the road. 'Whose are they?' Nita said.

'They're tinkers' ponies,' her aunt said. 'The traveling people leave them where they can get some grass, if the grass where their caravans are is grazed down already. Look over there.' She pointed off to one side.

Nita looked, expecting to see some kind of a barrel-shaped, brightly-coloured wagon. Instead there was just a caravan parked off to one side of the road, with no car hitched to it. There seemed to be clothes laid over the nearby hedge in the sun: laundry, Nita realized. As they passed, she got just a glimpse of a small fire burning near the caravan, and several small children sitting or crouching around it, feeding it sticks. Then they had swept by. 'Are they gypsies?' Nita said.

Her aunt shrugged. 'Some of them say they are. Others are just people who don't like to live in houses, in one place. they'd rather move around and be free. We have a fair number of them down by us.'

Nita filed this with about twenty other things she was going to have to ask more about at her leisure. They passed more small housing developments — 'estates', her aunt called them — where houses sited by themselves seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. Rather, two houses were usually built squished together so that