“I thought you meant you told the sharks to just go ahead and attack a hurt whale.” And with some trepidation, she copied S’reee’s earlier gesture— rolling over in the water, exposing her unprotected flanks and belly to the Master- Shark.
A few long seconds afterward she felt what few beings have lived to tell about — the abrasive touch of a live shark’s skin. Ed nudged Nita ever so lightly in the ribs, then glided by; almost a friendly touch, except that could see the ranged mouth working still, the opaque black eyes tracking on her. Finned whiteness sailed silent and immense above her, hardly stirring the water. “In another time, in another place, I might have told them to,” Ed said. “In another time, I may yet tell them to. And what will you think of me then, Sprat?”
“I don’t know,” she said, when the white shape had passed over.
“That was well said too.” Ed circled about the three of them, seeming to both watch them and ignore them at the same time. “So let us be on our way; we’re close to Tiana Beach. S’reee, you and I have business remaining that must be done before witnesses.”
S’reee wasted no time about it, gliding close to Ed — but, Nita noticed, not nearly as close as S’reee had come to Aroooon or Hotshot, or herself. “Ed’Rashtekaresket t’k Gh’shestaesteh, Eldest-In-Abeyance to the Pale Slayer That Was, Master for the Sharks of Plain and Shelf and what lies between — those who gather to sing that Song that is the Sea’s shame and the Sea’s glory desire you to be of their company. Say, for my hearing, whether you consent to that Song.”
“I consent, and I will weave my voice and my will and my blood with that of those who sing, if there be need.”
“I ask the second time—“
“Peace, S’reee, I know the words by now: Who better? A second time I say it, that those with me, both of my Mastery and not, may hear. Twice I consent to the Song, in my Mastery’s name; and a third time, that the Sea, and the Heart of the Sea, shall hear…” Was his voice just a touch drier on that phrase, Nita wondered? “So up, now, the three of you. We are where you need to be.”
Kit looked around him in confusion. “How can you tell? There’s a lot of Tiana Beach, and you’ve never seen our house—“
“I can smell your human bodies in the water from this morning,” Ed said, unperturbed. “And, besides, I hear distress.”
“Uh-oh…” Kit said.
“S’reee,” Nita said, stalling, “when will you need us next?”
“Next dawn,” the humpback said, brushing against first Nita, then Kit, in sympathy. “I’m sorry we can’t have a day’s rest or so, but there’s no time any more.”
“Do we have to be there?” Kit said.
“The Silent Lord does,” S’reee said, glancing at Nita. “In fact, normally it’s the Silent Lord who administers the Oath, since her stake in the Song is the greatest.”
Nita made an unhappy sound. “Kit,” she said, “maybe you’d better stay home. At least you won’t get in trouble with your folks that way.”
Kit shouldered over beside her, absent affection that bumped her considerably sideways as his hundred-foot bulk hit her. “No,” he said. “I told you: ‘All for one.’ It’s not fair for you to be stuck with this alone. Besides, what if those things show up again, and Ed’s not here—“
“Right,” Nita said.
“Neets, we better get going,” Kit said.
She headed for the surface. Kit and S’reee followed; but Ed was above her and surfaced first, several hundred yards westward and much closer to the shore. So the first sound Nita heard from the shore was the screaming.
Nita had never heard her mother scream. The raw panic in the sound got under Nita’s skin even worse than Kit’s hunting song had.
“Harry!” her mother was shouting, and every few words her terror would gnaw its way through her desperately controlled voice and come out as a scream again. “Harry, for God’s sake look, there’s a fin out there, it’s a shark! Get Mr. Friedman, get the cops, get somebody!”
The beach flickered with lights — flashlights, held by people running up and down — and every light in Nita’s house was on, as well as most of those in the houses next door. Nita gulped at her father’s hoarse reply — just as scared as her mother, trying to stay in control and failing.
“Betty, hang on, they’re coming! Hang on! Don’t go near the water!” For her mother was floundering into the surf, looking out seaward, searching for someone she couldn’t see. “Nita!”
Nita had to fight to stay silent.
Ed cruised serenely, contemptuously close to the shore, bearing off westward, away from Nita and Kit and S’reee. The flashlights followed his pale fin as it broached, as Ed went so far as to raise himself a little out of the water, showing a terrible expanse of back, then the upward-spearing tailfin as big as a windsurfer’s sail. Shouting in fear and amazement, the people followed him down the beach as if hypnotized. The flashlights bobbed away.
“He’s got them distracted, we’ve gotta get out now,” Kit said.
“But our bathing suits—“
“No time! Later! S’reee, we’ll see you in the morning!” The two of them fluked wildly and made for the beach, in the direction opposite the one in which Ed was leading the people on the shore. Nita stayed under the surface as long as she could, then felt the bottom scrape on her belly; she was grounded. Kit had grounded sooner than she had. Nita gasped a long breath of air and let the shapechange go, then collapsed into the water again — not deep for a whale, but three feet deep for her. She struggled to her feet and staggered to shore through the breakers, wiping the salt out of her eyes and shaking with the shock of a spell released too suddenly.
By the time her sight was working properly, there was no time to do anything about the small, dark figure standing a few feet up the incline of the beach, looking straight at her.
Dairine.
There was a slam of imploding air behind Nita. Kit came scrambling up out of the water, with the undone whalesark clutched glittering in one fist. “Quick,” he said, “I can do the Scotty spell before they come back—“ He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, shaking her. “Neets, are you okay?”
Then he saw Dairine too. “Uh,” he said. The sounds of voices down the beach were getting closer; and through them, abrupt and terrible, came a. sudden crack! of gunfire. Kit looked down that way, then at Dairine again, and took a long breath. “Right back,” he said. He said one quick syllable and, in another clap of air, vanished.
Dairine just stood there in her pajamas with Yoda all over them, staring at her sister. “Whales,” she said.
“Dairine,” Nita whispered, “how long have they been out here?”
“About an hour.”
“Oh, no. “And her folks would be there in moments. “Dairine,” Nita said, “look—“ There she stopped. She couldn’t think what she wanted to say.
“It is magic,” Dairine whispered back. “There really is such a thing. And it’s that book you have, isn’t it? It’s not just an old beat-up kids’ book. It’s—“
In another slam of air, blowing outward this time, Kit reappeared. He was already in his bathing suit; he flung Nita’s at her and then looked unhappily at Dairine.
“And you too,” she said to him as Nita struggled into her suit.
“A wizard?” Kit said. “Yeah. Both of us.”
Off to their left, there was another gunshot, and a mighty splash. Nita and Kit stared out at the sea. Ed was arrowing straight up out of the water with slow, frightful grace, jaws working as he arched up in a leap like a dolphin’s. Fifty feet of him towered out of the water, sixty, eighty, until even his long sharp tailfin cleared the surface and he hung there in midair, bent like a bow, the starlight and the light of the Moon sheening ice white along his hide and the water that ran down it. “Until later, my wizards!” came his hissed cry in the Speech, as Ed dived dolphin-curved back into the sea. The gunshot cracked across the water at him, once, twice. Ed went down laughing in scorn.
“That’s as much as he’s gonna do,” Kit said. “They’ll be back in a moment, when they see he’s gone.”
“That shark—“ said Dairine, sounding about ready to go into shock.
