“He’s a friend,” Nita said.
“Neets,” Kit said, “what’re we gonna tell them?”
“That depends on Dairine.” Nita took care to keep her voice perfectly calm. “What about it, Dari? Are you going to spill everything? Or are you going to keep quiet?”
Dairine looked at the two of them, saying nothing. Then, “I want you to tell me everything later,” she said. “Everything.”
“It’ll have to be tonight, Dari. We’ve got to be out again by dawn.”
“You’re gonna get it,” Dairine said.
“Tell us something else we don’t know, Sherlock,” Kit said, mild-voiced
“Well. I guess I saw you two coming over the dune,” Dairine said, looking from Kit to Nita. She turned to head down the beach.
Nita caught Dairine by the arm, stopping her. Dairine looked back at Nita over her shoulder — her expression of unease just visible in the dim light from the houses up the beach. “I really don’t want to lie to them, Dari,” Nita said.
“Then you better either keep your mouth shut,” Dairine said, “or tell them the truth.” And she tugged her arm out of Nita’s grasp and went pounding off down the beach, screaming, in her best I’m-gonna-tell voice, “Mom, Dad, it’s Nita!”
Nita and Kit stood where they were. “They’re gonna ground us,” Kit said.
“Maybe not,” said Nita, in forlorn hope.
“They will. And what’re you going to do then?”
Nita’s insides clenched. And the sound of people talking was coming down the beach toward them.
“I’m going,” she said. “This is lives we’re talking about — whales’ lives. People’s lives. It can’t just be stopped in the middle! You remember what Ed said.”
“That’s what I’d been thinking,” Kit said. “I just didn’t want to get you in my trouble — just because I’m doing it, I mean.” He looked at her. “Dawn, then.”
“Better make it before,” Nita said, feeling like a conspirator and hating it. “Less light to get caught by.”
“Right.” And that was all they had time for, for Nita’s mother and father, and Mr. Friedman, and Dairine, all came trotting up together. Then things got confusing, for Nita’s dad grabbed her and hugged her to him with tears running down his face, as if he were utterly terrified; and her mother slowed from her run, waved her arms in the air and roared, “Where the blazes have you been?”
“We lost track of the time,” Kit said.
“We were out, Mom,” Nita said. “Swimming—“
“Wonderful! There are sharks the size of houses out there in the water, and my daughter is off swimming! At night, at high tide, with the undertow—“ Her mother gulped for air, then said more quietly, “I didn’t expect this of you, Nita. After we talked this morning, and all.”
Nita’s father let go of her slowly, nodding, getting a fierce, closed look on his face now that the initial shock of having his daughter back safe was passing. “And I thought you had better sense, Kit,” he said. “We had an agreement that while you stayed with us, you’d do as we said. Here it is hours and hours after dark—“
“I know, sir,” Kit said. “I forgot — and by the time I remembered, it was too late. It won’t happen again.”
“Not for a while, anyway,” Nita’s mother said, sounding grim. “I don’t want you two going out of sight of the house until further notice. Understood?”
“Yes, Mrs. Callahan.”
“Nita?” her mother said sharply.
There it was: the answer she wasn’t going to be able to get around. “Okay, Mom,” she said. Her stomach turned over inside her at the sound of the lie. Too late now. It was out, not to be recalled.
“That also means staying out of the water,” her father said.
Why me? Why me! Nita thought. She made a face. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Kit said too, not sounding very happy.
“We’ll see how you two behave in the next few days,” Nita’s mother said. “And whether that shark clears out of here. Maybe after that we’ll let you swim again. Meanwhile — you two get home.”
They went. Just once Nita looked over her shoulder and was sure she saw, far out on the water, a tall pale fin that stood high as a sail above the surface, then slid below it, arrowing off toward Montauk — distress ended for the moment, and a job done.
Nita felt the miserable place in her gut and thought it was just as well that Ed couldn’t come up on the land.
Fearsong
Nita lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling. It was three thirty in the morning, by the glow of the cheap electric clock on the dresser. She would very much have liked to turn over, forget about the clock, the time, and everything else, and just sack out. But soon it would be false dawn, and she and Kit would have to be leaving.
Changes…
Only last week, her relationship with her folks had seemed perfect. Now all that was over, ruined — and about to get much worse, Nita knew, when her mom and dad found her and Kit gone again in the morning.
And the changes in Kit—
She rolled over on her stomach unhappily, not wanting to think about it. She had a new problem to consider, for when everyone was in bed, Dairine had come visiting.
Nita put her face down into her pillow and groaned. Dairine had gone right through Nita’s wizard’s manual, staring at all the strange maps and pictures. It was annoying enough to begin with that Dairine could see the book at all; nonwizards such as her mother and father, looking at it, usually saw only an old, beat-up copy of something called So You Want to Be d Wizard, apparently a kids’ book. But Dairine saw what was there, and was fascinated.
The aptitude for wizardry sometimes runs through a whole generation of a family. Several famous “circles” of wizards in the past had been made up of brothers or sisters or cousins, rather than unrelated people such as she and Kit, or Tom and Carl, who met by accident or in some other line of work and came to do wizardry together by choice. But families with more than one wizard tended to be the exception rather than the rule, and Nita hadn’t been expecting this. Also, Nita was beginning to realize that she had rather enjoyed having her wizardry be a secret from everybody but the other wizards she worked with. That secret, that advantage, was gone now too. Dairine had the aptitude for wizardry as strongly as Nita herself had had it when she started.
In fact, she’s got it more strongly than I did, Nita thought glumly. The book had to get my attention by force, that first time I passed it in the library. But Dairine noticed it herself, as soon as I brought it home.
For several years Nita had kept her advantage over her sister by only the slimmest of margins. She knew quite well that Dairine was a lot smarter than she was in most things. Wizardry had been a large and satisfying secret she’d felt sure Dairine would never catch on to. But that advantage was now gone too. The youngest wizards were the strongest ones, according to the book; older ones might be wiser but had access to less sheer power. Dairine had gotten the better of her again.
Nita turned over on her back, staring at the ceiling once more.
Kit…
He just wasn’t himself in the whalesark. When he’s in his own skin, she told herself fiercely, he’s fine. But she couldn’t quite make herself believe that. His look, his stance, were too different in just the past day or two.
She had thought that having a best friend at last would be great fun. And she and Kit had enjoyed each other’s company immensely in their first couple months of wizardry, after the terror and sorrow of their initial encounter with the Art had worn off a bit. But sometimes things just didn’t work. Kit would get moody, need to be by himself for days at a time. Or he would say sudden things that Nita thought cruel — except that it was Kit saying them, and Kit wasn’t cruel; she knew that.
I wish I’d had some friends when I was younger, she thought. Now I’ve got one who really matters — and I
