A Wizard Alone

He went in the back door, took off his coat and hung it up, while Ponch trotted over to his dog food bowl and started to chow down on dry food. Kit’s mama, in the kitchen in her nurse’s pinks, looked up at him from the business of making a sandwich. “How are you feeling, sweetie?”

“Maybe a little better,” Kit said, thinking that possibly this was true. “Getting out in the air was nice. Where’s Pop?”

“He’s lying down reading a book, waiting for the basketball game.”

“Okay.”

His mama gave Kit a glance as he went and flopped down on the dining room sofa. At first Kit thought she was going to bring up once more the subject of the discussion she and Kit’s pop had had with him earlier. “I meant to thank you, by the way,” his mama said as she opened a drawer to get a plastic bag to put her sandwich in. “It’s been so much quieter.”

His mama’s voice had a strange grating quality to it, which Kit couldn’t remember having heard before. Is she coming down with a cold, too? Kit thought. It wouldn’t be great if we all got sick at once

. “Sorry?”

“The little dog down the street.”

Kit was bemused. “Tinkerbell, you mean? I haven’t talked to him.”

“You haven’t?”

“Sorry, Mama, I’ve been busy.”

“Well, he got quiet again. Relatively quiet, anyway. There was some howling earlier, but it didn’t last long.”

“That’s good,” Kit said. He stretched, but far from making him feel more comfortable, it made him feel less so; he felt very out of sorts, as if his skin didn’t fit him, as if his bones weren’t fastened together correctly. “Mama, I think I might go lie down again for a while.”

That got her attention. She finished wrapping her sandwich and came over to feel his forehead.

“Do you feel hot, sweetie?” she said.

Kit shook his head. If anything, he felt chilly, though not to the point of shivers — he felt a strange kind of still numbness that left him unwilling to talk about what was bothering him. Indeed, talking about anything seemed more trouble than it was worth. When his mother took her hand away, Kit got up and went to his room. There, as he lay down on his bed, he reached out for his manual and started paging through it to find a diagnostic to run on himself. I won’t be any good to anybody if I just lie around feeling like this

But, shortly, Kit was lying on his back again, gazing at the ceiling, the manual lying open, pages down, on the bed beside him. He didn’t even hear Ponch come in and circle around once to lie on the braided rug by the bed, looking up at him with troubled eyes. And after a while Kit turned over on his side again and just stared at the wall…

The next afternoon, Nita was sitting at her desk, cutting a deck of cards. She had reached the point where what she really wanted to cut them with was a meat cleaver, but that would simply have meant that she’d have to get another deck of cards from somewhere.

Nita cut the cards again. There’s an art to this, she thought. The only problem is, it isn’t my Art.

And no matter how I do this, when I think of why I’m learning it in the first place, it feels like cheating.

She was working on her false shuffle. From what she’d been able to find out on the Web, many of the simplest card tricks depended on shuffling the cards in such a way as to make the card you wanted come up in the right place. This, in turn, involved protecting some of the cards with one of your hands while you shuffled. So far, Nita had gotten to the point where she could protect about a third of the deck, keeping the cards stacked there from being shuffled out of order. In about three hundred years

, she thought, I'll be ready to let some other human being see me do a trick. Why did I ever mention magic to Mr. Millman?

The only good thing about having to sit here doing this was that it gave Nita something to occupy her hands while she worried about Kit. She’d called him late yesterday afternoon to make sure he’d gone to see Carl, and had been very concerned about the tone of his voice. It had acquired a strange monotonous quality, one that made her think of…

A robot? she thought, unnerved. She stopped shuffling for a moment and thought about that. It occurred to Nita that the more contact they’d all had with Darryl, the better his ability to express himself had become… and the more adverse effect it seemed to be having on Kit.

If he goes in there again

, she thought, he’s going to lose it.

And he’s going to go in there again. I’m sure of it.

Nita cut the cards again, looking to see if the ace of hearts, the card she had been protecting, came up. What she got was the three of clubs. She made an annoyed face and pushed the cards away. It wasn’t just a matter of Kit’s stubbornness now — not that that couldn’t be formidable when he was in the right mood. She was also dealing with something else she was less familiar with: Darryl’s stubbornness. He had been holding off the Lone Power all by himself for a long time now, and Nita didn’t think he was going to stop for their sakes. And why should he? she thought. From his point of view, or what’s been his point of view for a long while, he’s all there is. He might as well be the only wizard alive. He may briefly realize there are more of us… but it doesn’t last.

Because he keeps making himself alone again every time

Nita thought about what that must cost him. Such loneliness would have crippled her a long time ago. But he bears up under it, she thought.

He just keeps fighting.

That stubbornness had found a resonance in Kit. He and Darryl had become linked in more ways than one.

His promises to Carl aside, Nita had a feeling that Kit was going to find himself in Darryl’s mind again shortly. At which time, Nita thought, I’d better be ready.

She picked up the deck again, took a couple of minutes to find the ace of hearts, repositioned it, and reshuffled, carefully protecting the back third of the deck. Then she put the deck down, cut it twice so that she had three piles, reached out to the leftmost pile, and turned the top card over. It was the four of diamonds.

I hate this, Nita thought. She stood up from her desk and went across the hall to Dairine’s room.

Her sister was sitting at her own desk, which was still completely covered by the papier-mache version of Olympus Mons. It was no longer gray-white; Dairine had done a fairly credible job with her wizardly airbrush. Now the mountain lay there nicely colored in shades of red and pink, its huge crater looking entirely ready to spill out lava. Spot was sitting up on one of the bookshelves, peering down at the volcano with his little stalky eyes.

“Dair?”

Dairine looked up at Nita with a weary expression.

“I think I’m going to need some help,” Nita said.

“As long as it doesn’t involve me painting anything,” Dairine said, “you’re on.”

Nita came in and sat down on Dairine’s bed. It creaked.

Dairine looked at her.

“Don’t start,” Nita said. “You know what’s on my mind.”

“Darryl,” Dairine said. “Or the ace of hearts.”

“Please,” Nita said. “Dair, I need to ask you a favor.”

Her sister gave her a slightly suspicious look.

“He’s going to go in there again,” Nita said.

“Kit?” Dairine put her eyebrows up. “I thought he promised Carl he wouldn’t.”

“Dairine, I don’t think he’s entirely in control of what’s going on with him. Darryl is very, uh, single-minded.