A Wizard Alone

“I wouldn’t be sure, either,” Carl said. “Well, the first thing you can do is, when he gets up, tell him I want a word with him, pronto. I don’t like to lean on my wizards as a rule, but Kit’s been a little less careful than usual, and with what you’ve discovered about the situation, he’d better sharpen up. The stakes have been raised.”

She came back from Tom and Carl’s the quick way, popping out into the backyard. The snow there was untouched, rather to her surprise. Dairine was as much a snow fiend as their mom had been. It was unusual to find that she hadn’t been out here at least long enough to make a couple of angels. Under more normal circumstances, there would have been a whole snowman by now. But the circumstances aren’t normal

…

Nita went in, shucked her parka off and left it by the back door, and went up the stairs to see what Dairine was up to. She found her in her bedroom, staring at her desk. Spot was sitting in her lap, also staring with its little stalky eyes at the construction sitting there.

Nita looked at the desk. It was covered with tinfoil. On the foil and on a subsidiary bed of newspaper rested what appeared to be a model volcano sculpted out of wet papier-mache. The volcano was extremely broad and flat, of the shield type, and Nita recognized it immediately.

“How does it look?” Dairine said.

“Not bad,” Nita said. “What’s it for?”

“We’re doing a geology unit in our science class.”

Nita raised her eyebrows. “Bending the rules a little, Dair?” she said. “That’s Olympus Mons. It hardly counts as geology.”

“Okay, areology, then.” Dairine sat there wiping her hands on a towel.

“It looks a little bare right now,” Nita said.

Her sister turned a look of withering scorn on her. Spot cocked one eye in Nita’s direction as if to suggest that she’d asked for this. “Of course it looks a little bare,” Dairine said. “I have to paint it first. My real project for today is constructing an airbrush out of nothing but wizardry.”

“Sounds like a moderate challenge,” Nita said.

“And when the volcano’s done, I’m going to make it blow up in class,” Dairine said.

Nita’s eyes widened slightly at the first image that occurred to her.

“With lycopodium powder,” Dairine said, more scornfully than before, if that was possible.

“Sheesh, Neets.”

“Just checking,” Nita said.

“Yes,” Dairine said, “I know you were.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell Dad I’m being good.”

“If you’re good enough, I won’t have to tell him anything,” Nita said. She turned away.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to do it with real lava, though?” Dairine said from behind her as Nita headed to her room.

“There are times,” Nita said, “when I think a nice big lava flow would improve that school a lot.

You know any card tricks?”

The silence in answer to that question was unusually eloquent.

Nita sighed and sat down in her room. You awake yet? she said silently to Kit.

She waited for a few seconds.

Huh

? Kit said.

Well, that’s half my question answered

, Nita said. You sound pretty tired. You okay?

I guess so.

Nita raised her eyebrows. This wasn’t exactly a normal response for Kit. Either he was okay or he wasn’t, but the middle ground wasn’t usually an option for him, in Nita’s experience, especially when he sounded as dulled as he did. I’m coming over in a while, she said. There’s some stuff I have to show you.

Okay.

And that was it.

Either he’s exhausted

, Nita thought, or there’s something wrong…

She knew what her present hunch suggested, though. She was starting to get worried about him.

He’s been hitting this problem with Darryl so hard

, Nita thought, that he’s just been wearing himself down. That’s one possibility.

Why don’t I think that’s what’s really going on?

Nita headed downstairs to make herself a sandwich. “By the way,” Dairine said in a piercing voice as Nita went past her door, “someone seems to have eaten all the bananas.”

Nita sighed. “I’ll stop by Brazil on my way home. Or Panama.”

“Costa Rica.”

“Please,” Nita said as she went down the stairs. She had never been any good at remembering which exports came from which countries. It struck her as information that, for someone in junior high, was about as useful as dissecting the history of the gold standard. When I get a job at an import-export firm

, Nita thought, turning the corner into the kitchen, then I'll worry about who exports bauxite and who exports tin. Not before.

She opened a can of tuna fish, drained it, mashed it in a bowl with mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce, made herself a sandwich with it, and ingested the sandwich without paying it much attention.

Darryl was on her mind. He‘s more important than all of us, Carl said. The thought was sobering.

She and Kit had done some moderately important and useful things in their time working together, but what Carl seemed to be describing was a different level of function, one in which just being there, just being alive and breathing, could be more important to the world than any amount of running around doing things. It made a strange kind of sense when Nita put it together with what Tom had been saying about the Powers finding the difference between active and passive work

“illusory.” If just by being here, Darryl is channeling the One’s power into the world, then if something were to happen to him suddenly

…

It was a scarier thought than any Nita had had in quite some time. Whatever else I do, she thought, I’ve got to find a way to help him.

Because he doesn’t know it, but he’s helped me…

Nita went to get her coat, and then went out to walk over to Kit’s.

“Hola, Carmela. Que-pasa?” Nita said as she came in Kit’s back door.

“Watasbi wa ureshii!” Carmela said, more or less dancing past Nita into the living room, with the TV remote in her hand.

Nita blinked as she slipped off her coat and dropped it on the floor beside the dining room sofa.

The Japanese thing was something Carmela had been working on for a while, and now that she was getting good at it, you never quite knew which language you were going to get from her. “Let me guess. You’re saying you’re going to turn into a giant robot?”

“No,” Carmela said, “that would be, Watashi, imakara sugo-ku o-kina robotto ni namno!”

“I’m impressed,” Nita said.

“If I really did turn into a giant robot, I bet you would be,” Carmela said, heading back into the living room.

Nita followed her. “Oh,” she said. “Is this the new TV?”

“Ohayo gozaimas‘!” shouted the TV and the DVD player together.

“Oh,” Nita said. “Hi, cousins. Nice to meet you.”