“Krakens,” Kit said.
“I don’t care what you call them, they’re still giant squid. And squid belong in sushi. I don’t like this.”
“With luck, we won’t see any of them, Carl says.”
“When have we ever had that kind of luck?…”
“Besides, Neets, even you can outrun a clam…”
“Cute,” she said. They splashed into the water together, glancing up and down the beach as they did so. No one was in sight; and they had left Ponch up in the dunes, looking for a good place to bury the remains of his latest water rat. “Look,” Nita said, pointing.
Several hundred yards out, there was a glitter of spray, and sunlight glanced off the curved, upleaping body of a dolphin as if from an unsheathed, upheld sword. Wild, merry chattering, a dolphin’s laughter, came to them over the water, as the leaping shape came down with a splash and another shock of spray.
“Hotshot,” Kit said. “Let’s go.”
They struck out through the breakers, into water that was again surprisingly warm. This time Nita wasn’t able to enjoy it quite as much; the thought of undersea volcanoes was much with her. But even she couldn’t be depressed for long when they paused to rest a moment, dog-paddling, and from behind came the nudge in the back she remembered, followed by a delphine laugh. “You rotten thing,” she said, turning to rub Hotshot affectionately. “I’m gonna get you for the first time you did that.”
“You’ll have to catch me first,” Hotshot said with a wicked chuckle — as well he might have, for nothing in the Sea except perhaps a killer whale or one of the great sharks on the hunt was fast enough to catch a dolphin that didn’t want to be caught.
“Where’s S’reee?” Kit said.
“Out in deeper water, by the Made Rock. HNii’t’s change could be done right here, but the kind of whale you’re going to be would ground at this depth, Kit. Take hold; I’ll tow you.”
The fishing platform was once more covered with seagulls, which rose in a screaming cloud at the sight of Kit and Nita and Hotshot. “I’ll meet you later, out at sea,” Hotshot said, leaving them beside a rusty metal ladder that reached down into the water.
Kit and Nita climbed up it and walked across the platform to where they could look down at S’reee, who was rolling in the wavewash.
“You’re early,” she whistled, putting her head up out of the water at them, “and it’s just as well; I’m running a bit late. I went a-Summoning last night, but I didn’t find most of the people — so we’ll have to make a stop out by the Westernmost Shoals today. Sandy Hook, you call it.”
“New Jersey?” Nita said, surprised. “How are we going to get all the way out there and back before—“
“It’s going to be all right, HNii’t,” S’reee said. “Time doesn’t run the same under the waters as it does above them, so the Sea tells me. Besides, a humpback swims fast. And as for Kit — well, one change at a time. It’ll come more easily for you, HNii’t; you’d best go first.”
Wonderful, Nita thought. She had long been used to being picked last for things; having to go first for anything gave her the jitters. “What do I have to do?” she said.
“Did you have a look at your book last night?”
“Uh-huh. I understand most of what we’re going to be doing; it’s fairly straightforward. But there was some business I didn’t understand very well—“
“The part about shapechanging.”
“Yeah. There wasn’t that much in the book, S’reee. I think it might have been missing some information.”
“Why? What did it tell you?”
“Only a lot of stuff about the power of imagination.” She was perplexed. “S’reee, aren’t there supposed to be words or something? A specific spell, or materials we need?”
“For shapechange? You have everything you need. Words would only get in the way,” said S’reee. “It’s all in the being. You pretend hard enough, and sooner or later what you’re pretending to be, you are. The same as with other things.”
“Oh, c’mon, S’reee,” Kit said. “If somebody who wasn’t a wizard jumped into the water and pretended to be a whale, I don’t care how hard they pretended, nothing would happen without wizardry—“
“Exactly right, Kit. Wizardry — not one particular spell. The only reason it works for you is that you know wizardry works and are willing to have it so. Belief is no good either; belief as such always has doubt at the bottom. It’s knowing that makes wizardry work. Only knowing can banish doubt, and while doubt remains, no spell, however powerful, will function properly. ‘Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart,’ the Sea says. There’d be lots more wizards if more people were able to give up doubt — and belief. Like any other habit, though, they’re hard to break…”
“It did take me a while to know for sure that it wasn’t just a coincidence when the thing I’d done a spell for actually happened as soon as I’d done the spell,” Kit admitted. “I guess I see the problem.”
“Then you’re ready for the solution,” S’reee said. “Past the change itself, the chief skill of unassisted shapechanging lies in not pretending so hard that you can’t get back again. And as I said, HNii’t, you have an advantage; we’ve shared blood. You have humpback in you now — not that our species are so far apart anyway; we’re all mammals together. I suppose the first thing you’d better do is get in the water…”
Nita jumped in, bobbed to the surface again. “And that stuff around you is going to have to go,” S’reee added, looking with mild perplexity at Nita’s bathing suit. Nita shot a quick look over her shoulder. For a moment, Kit just gazed innocently down at her, refusing to look away — then he turned, rolling his eyes.
Nita skinned hurriedly out of the suit and called to Kit, “While you’re up there, put a warding spell on the platform. I don’t want the gulls doing you-know-what all over my suit while we’re gone. Or yours.” She flung the wet lump of bathing suit out of the water overhanded; it landed with a sodden thwack! at which Kit almost turned around again. “Can we get on with this?” Nita said to S’reee.
“Surely. HNii’t, are you all right?” S’reee said.
“Yes, fine, let’s do it!” Nita said.
“So begin!” said S’reee, and began singing to herself as she waited.
Nita paddled for a moment in the water, adjusting to not having her bathing suit on. Saying “Begin to what?” especially with Kit listening, seemed incredibly stupid, so she just hung there in the water for a few moments and considered being a whale. I don’t have the faintest idea what this is supposed to feel like, she thought desperately. But I should be able to come up with something. I am a wizard, after all.
Nita got an idea. She took a deep breath, held it, and slowly began to relax into the sound. Her arms, as she let them go limp, no longer supported her; she sank, eyes open, into salty greenness. It’s all right, she thought. The air’s right above me if I need it. She hung weightless in the green, thinking of nothing in particular.
Down there in the water, S’reee’s note seemed louder, fuller; it vibrated against the ears, against the skin, inside the lungs, filling everything. And there was something familiar about it. Cousin, S’reee had called her; and We have blood in common, she had said. So it should be easy. A matter of remembering, not what you have been… but what, somewhere else, you are. Simply allow what is, somewhere else, to be what is here — and the change is done, effortless. Nita shut her eyes on the greenness and trusted to the wizardry inside her. That was it. “Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart.” Not the kind of will that meant gritted teeth, resisting something else, like your own disbelief, that was trying to undermine you — not “willpower”—but the will that was desire, the will so strong that it couldn’t be resisted by all the powers of normality…
Where am I getting all this? Nita didn’t know, didn’t care. To be a whale, she thought. To float like this all the time, to be weightless, like an astronaut. But space is green, and wet, and warm, and there are voices in it, and things growing. Freedom: no walls, no doors. And the songs in the water… Her arms were feeling heavy, her legs felt odd when she kicked; but none of it mattered. Something was utterly right, something was working. Nita began to feel short of air. It hadn’t worked all the way, that was all. She would get it right the next time. She stroked for the surface, broke it, opened her eyes to the light— and found it different. First and oddest — so that Nita tried to shake her head in disbelief, and failed, since she suddenly had no neck — the world was split in two, as if with an axe. Trying to look straight ahead of her didn’t work. The area in front of her had become a hazy uncertainty comprised of two sets of peripheral vision. And where the corners of her eyes should have been, she now had two perfectly clear sets of sideways vision that nonetheless felt like “forward.” She was seeing in colors she had no names for, and many she had names for were gone. Hands she still seemed to have, but her fingers hung down
