A Wizard Abroad

'Uh, maybe tomorrow,' Nita said. She had been put up on a horse once, several years ago on holiday, and had immediately fallen off it. This had coloured her opinions about horses ever since. Joe and Derval finished their breakfasts and headed out, leaving Nita surrounded by cats eager to shake her down for another free handout. 'No way, you guys!' she said. 'Once was a special occasion. You want more, you'd better talk to your boss.'

They looked at her in thinly disguised disgust and stalked off. Nita finished her tea and toast, washed her cup and plate, and then wandered out into the concrete yard again. There was a pathway past the back of her caravan into the farm area proper, and the road that wound past the front of the house curved around to meet it. Here there was another large concreted area with two or three large brown, metal-sided, barnlike buildings arranged in a loose triangle around it. The field on the right-hand side as she faced it was full of horse-jumping paraphernalia, jumps and stiles; all around the edge of it ran a big track covered with wood shavings and chips for the horses to run on. Further down and on her right was the stabling barn, and beyond it what Derval had referred to as 'the riding school', a big covered building that had nothing in it except a floor thickly covered with the same chips as on the track outside. This was where the riders practiced when the weather was bad.

Nita took a little while to look around in there, found nothing of interest, and made her way back to the stables. There were about fifteen box stalls with various horses looking out over the doors, or eating their breakfasts, or standing there with vaguely bored expressions. She looked particularly at the horse in number five, who was a big handsome black horse. But he had a bad look in his eye, and when (since there was no human around to hear) she greeted him in the Speech, he eyed her coldly, laid his ears back and snorted, 'Clear off, little girl, or I'll have your arm off.' Nita shrugged and moved on. Other horses were more forthcoming. When she spoke to them in the Speech, they answered, asking her for a sugar cube, or asking if she would please take them out. A few just tossed their heads, blinked lazily, and went back to their eating.

At the end of the stable barn was an extremely large pile of hay, kept under cover there so that the rain couldn't get at it, and the horses could be given it easily. Nita was standing for a moment looking at it, when something small and black, a rock she thought, fell down from the top of it. It tumbled down the hay, and even though Nita sidestepped, the falling black thing fell crookedly, and landed on top of one of her trainers.

She looked down in shock. It was a kitten, its body no bigger than one of her hands. It more or less staggered to its feet, looked up at her, and meowed, saying, 'Sorry!' 'Don't mention it,' Nita said.

The kitten, which was already in the act of scampering away after a windblown straw, stopped so suddenly that it fell over forwards. Nita restrained herself mightily from laughing. It righted itself, washed furiously for a second, then looked at her. 'Another one,' it said. 'The winddoes blow, doesn't it.' 'Another what?' 'Another wizard. Are you deaf?'

'Uh, no,' Nita said. 'Sorry, I'm new here. Who are you, then?'

'I am Tualha Slaith, a princess of the People,' she said, rattling it all off in a hurry, 'a bard and a scholar. And who are you?' 'I'm Nita Callahan.'

'Nita?' said the kitten. 'What kind of name is that?'

Nita had to stop for a moment. She was amazed to be getting this much conversation out of a domestic cat, let alone a kitten that barely looked old enough to be weaned yet. 'I think it was Spanish, originally,' she said after a second or so. 'Juanita is the long form.'

'Aha, a Spaniard!' the kitten said, her eyes wide. 'There's wine from the royal Pope, Upon the ocean green: And Spanish ale shall give you hope, My dark Rosaleen!'

'You've lost me,' said Nita. 'Anyway, I'm not a big ale fan.'

The kitten looked at Nita as if she was a very dun bulb indeed. 'It's going to get really crowded in here shortly,' the kitten said. 'Let's go out.' She scooted out the barn door, and Nita followed her, feeling rather bemused: out the back, into the area between the riding school and the stable block. The path led up towards the field where the jumping equipment was. There was no-one out there at the moment.

The kitten stopped several times in her run to crouch down, her little behind waggling, and pounce on a bug, or leaf, or stalk of grass, or blown bit of hay; and she always missed. Nita was having trouble controlling her reaction to this, but if there was one thing a wizard had practice in being, it was polite: so she managed. A little dusty whirlwind passed them by as they went between the riding school and the stable block, and Tualha paused to let it go by. 'Good day,' she said. 'You usually talk to wind?' Nita said, amused.

Tualha eyed her. 'That's how the People go by,' she said 'the People of the Air. Youare new here.' She scuttled on.

They came to the fence. Tualha made a mighty leap halfway up on to the fencepost, hauled herself up claw over claw, and sat at the top, where she washed briefly.

Nita sat down on the fence next to her. 'Aren't you a little young to be a bard?' she said. The kitten looked Nita up and down. 'Aren't you a little young to be a wizard?' 'Well, no, I'm fourteen.'

'And that's what percentage of your lifespan?' 'Uh. .' Nita had to stop and figure it out.

'You can't even tell me right away? Poor sort ofban-draioa you'd make over here. Maths are important.'

Nita flushed briefly. Whatever aban-draioa might be, maths had never been one of her favorite things. 'And you of Spanish blood,' Tualha said, 'but you don't know that song, about how the Spanish came to Ireland first? Whatdo you know?'

'Not much sometimes,' Nita said, suspecting that here, at least, that was probably going to be true. 'I know about the Spanish Armada, a little.'Very little, she added to herself. History had never been a favorite with her either, but she was beginning to suspect that that was going to have to change.

'That was only the fifteenth invasion,' Tualha said. 'The real causes of things go back much further. The wind moves, and things move in it. Now, in the beginning. .' 'Do we have to go back that far?' Nita said dryly.

The kitten glared at her. 'Don't interrupt. How do you expect to become wise?' 'How did you do it?'

Tualha shrugged. 'I've been in the hills. But also, I had to be a bard: I was found in a bag. It's traditional.'

Nita remembered her aunt saying something the previous night about one of the farm cats having been found in a sack by the roadside, abandoned and starving. The starving part, at least, had been dealt with: Tualha was as round as a little ball. 'Anyway,' Tualha said, glaring at Nita again, 'it's all in the Book of Conquests, and the Book of Leinster, and the Yellow Book of Lecan.' 'I doubt I could just go get those out of the library where I come from,' Nita said,'so perhaps you'll enlighten me.' She grinned.

'It's all in the wizards' Mastery anyway,' Tualha said, 'if you'd bothered to look. But grow wise by me. In the beginning there was no-one in this island; it was bleak and bare, nor was it an island at all. The Flood rose and covered it, and fell away again. Then two hundred and sixty-four years later came twenty-four men and twenty-four women: those were Partholon and his people. At that time in Ireland, there was only one treeless and grassless plain, three lakes and nine rivers; so they built some more.'

'Built. .'?' Nita said. 'When was this?'

'Four hundred thousand years ago. Didn't I mention? Now do stop interrupting. They built mountains and carved valleys, and they fought the Fomor. The monster people,' Tualha said in obvious annoyance at Nita's blank look;'the ones who were here before. The Fomori made a plague, the sickness that makes those who catch it hate and fight without thought; and the plague killed Partholon's people. So the Island that was not an island was empty. Then after another three thousand years, the people of Nemed came. They settled there and dug rivers and planted forests; and they met the Fomor and caught their plague — fought with them, and lost, and in the great strife of the battle the land was broken away from the greater land, and drowned in ice, and then water. When the ice melted and the water drew back, another people came after: the Fir Bolg. They brought new beasts and birds into the land, and there was song in the air and life in the waters.' 'When did the cats get here?' Nita said.

'Later. Shush! The Fomor came to them too, though, with gifts and fair words, and married with them, and darkened their minds; and they caught the battle-sickness from the Fomor, and most died of it as all the others had: and the ones that were left had the bad blood of the Fomori in them, and became half-monstrous too.. .Are you getting all this?' Tualha said. 'I think so.' Nita resolved to have a look at her manual later, though, if as Tualha said all this information was in there. It might have been in a form that made sense to a cat at this point, but Nita was a little uncertain about it all, particularly about some of the dates.

'Well. After this the One grew angry that Its fair land was being ruined, and sent another people to live here.