standing on and admiring a crabgrass-free lawn, extolling the new brand of weedkiller he'd tried. He didn't notice, as Dairine did, the large patch of crabgrass under the apple trees in the neighbor's yard next door. . carpeting a barren place where the neighbor had been trying to get something green to grow, anything, for as long as Dairine could remember. It was all stuff like that. . little things, strange thin nothing Dairine could understand and use.
Then came summer vacation at the beach-and the strangeness started to come out in the open. Nita and Kit started spending a lot of time away from home, sneaking in and out as if there were something to hide. Dairine heard her mother's uneasy conversations about this with her father, and was amused; whatever Nita was doing with Kit, Dairine knew sex wasn't involved. Dairine covered for Nita and Kit, and bided her time, waiting until they should owe her something.
The time came soon enough. One night the two of them went swimming and didn't come back when it got dark, as they'd agreed to. Dairine's mom and dad went out looking for Nita and Kit on the beach, and took Dairine with them. She got separated from them, mostly on purpose, and was a quarter-mile down the beach from them when, with a rush of water and noisy breath, a forty-foot humpback whale breached right in front of her, ran itself aground-and turned into Nita.
Nita went white with shock at the sight of Dairine. Dairine didn't care. 'You're going to tell me everything,' she said, and ran down the beach to distract her parents just long enough for Nita and Kit-also just changed back from a whale-to get back into their bathing suits. And after the noisy, angry scene with their parents that followed, after the house was quiet, Dairine went to Nita's room, where Kit was waiting, too, and let them tell her the whole story.
Wizards' manuals, oaths, wizardry, spells, quests, terrible dangers beyond the world, great powers that moved unseen and unsuspected beneath the surface of everyday existence, and every now and then broke surface- Dairine was ecstatic. It was all there, everything she had longed for. And if they could have it, she could have it too. .
Dairine saw their faces fall, and felt the soft laughter of the world starting behind her back again. You couldn't have this magic unless you were offered it by the Powers that controlled it. Yes, sometimes it ran in families, but there was no guarantee that it would ever pass to you. .
At that point Dairine began to shut their words out. She promised to keep their secret for the time being, and to cover for them the best she could. But inside she was all one great frustrated cry of rage: Why them, why them find not me! Days later, when the cry ebbed, the frustration gave way to blunt, stubborn determination. have it. I will.
She had gone into Nita's room, found her wizard's manual, and opened it-The last time she'd held it it had looked like a well-worn kid's book from the library and, when she'd borrowed it, had read like one.
Now the excitement, the exultation, flared up in Dairine again; for instead of a story she found pages and pages of an Arabic-looking script she couldn't read. . and near the front, many that she could, in English.
She skimmed them, turning pages swiftly. The pages were full of warnings and cautions, phrases about the wizard's responsibility to help slow down the death of the universe, paragraphs about the price each wizard paid for his new power, and about the terrible Ordeal-quest that lay before every novice who took the Wizards' Oath: sections about old strengths that moved among the worlds, not all of them friendly. But these Dairine scorned as she'd scorned Nita's cautions. The parts that spoke of a limitless universe full of life and of wizards to guard it, of 'the Billion Homeworlds,' 'the hundred million species of humanity,' those parts stayed with her, filled her mind with images of strangeness and glory and adventure until she was drowning in her own thought of unnumbered stars. I can do it, she thought. I can take care of myself. I'm not afraid. I'll matter, I'll be something. .
She flipped through the English section to its end, finding there one page, with a single block of type set small and neat.
In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is Its gift in Life's service alone. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; nor will I change any creature unless its growth and
life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is fit to do so-looking always
, toward the Heart of Time, where all our sundered times are one, and all our myriad worlds lie whole, in That from Which they proceeded. .
It was the Oath that Nita had told her about. Not caring that she didn't understand parts of it, Dairine drew a long breath and read it out loud, almost in triumph. And the terrible silence that drew itself down around her as she spoke, blocking out the sounds of day, didn't frighten her; it exhilarated her. Something was going to happen, at last, at last. .
She went to bed eagerly that night.
Up and Running
Nita and Kit and Dairine made their way among the shops of the lower level of Penn Station and caught the C train for the Upper West Side, coming up at Eighty-first and Central Park West. For a little bit they stood there just getting their bearings. It was warm, but not uncomfortable yet. The park glowed green and golden.
Dairine was fidgeting. 'Now where?'
'Right here,' Nita said, turning around. The four-block stretch behind them, between th and st streets, was commanded by the huge, graceful bulk of the American Museum of Natural History, with its marble steps and beast-carved pediment, and the great bronze equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt looking eastward across at the park. Tucked into a corner of the building on st Street stood the art deco-looking brick cube of the Hayden Planetarium, topped with a greened-copper dome.
'It looks like a tomb,' Dairine said. 'Shove that. I'm going to Natural History and look at the stuffed elephants.'
'Climb on the stuffed elephants, you mean,' Nita said. 'Forget it. You're staying with us.'
'Oh? What makes you think you can keep track of me if I decide to-
'This,' Kit said grimly, hefting his wizard's manual. 'If we have to, we can put a tracer on you. Or a leash. .'
'Oh, yeah? Well, listen, smart guy,-'
'Kit,' Nita said under her breath, 'easy. Dari, are you out of your mind? This place is full of space stuff.
The new Shuttle mock-up. A meteorite ten feet long.' She smiled slightly. 'A store with Star Wars books. .'
Dairine stared at Nita. 'Well, why didn't you say so? Come on.' Sfle headed down the cobblestone driveway toward the planetarium doors.
'You never catch that fly with vinegar,' Nita said quietly to Kit as the two of them followed at a safe distance.
'She's not like my sisters,' Kit said.
'Yeah. Well, your sisters are human beings. . '
They snickered together and went in after Dairine. To Nita's mild relief- because paying for her little sister's ticket would have killed her hot-dog money-Dairine already had admission money with her. 'Dad give you that?' Nita said as she paid.
'No, this is mine,' said Dairine, wrapping the change up with the rest of a wad, and sticking it back in her shorts.
'Where'd you get all that?'
'I taught a couple guys in my class to play poker last month,' said Dairine. And off she went, heading for the souvenir store.
'Neets?' Kit said, tossing his manual in one hand.
Nita thought about it. 'Naah,' she said. 'Let her go. Dairine!'
'What?'
'Just don't leave the building!'
'Okay.'
'Is that safe?' Kit said.
'What, leaving her alone? She'll get into the Shuttle mock-up and not come out till closing time. Good thing there's hardly anyone here. Besides, she did say she wouldn't leave. If she were going to weasel out of it, she
