“Neets? You okay?”
“Oh, Kit,” she managed to gasp at last, between bubbles of laughter. “What Picchu said—“
“Huh?”
“What Peach said. ‘Do what the night tells you—‘ “ She went off into the giggles again.
Kit looked down at her, perplexed. “You lost me.”
Nita pushed herself upright, reached out and tugged a couple of times, weakly, at one of Dairine’s pajama- sleeves. “ ‘Do what the night tells you.’ Not night like when it gets dark. ‘Knight’! Do what the knight tells you! As in the Junior Jedi here—“ She went over sideways again and strangled her last few whoops of laughter in a convenient pillow.
“It was good advice,” he said to Dairine. “Thanks, Dari.”
“Uh, sure,” said Dairine, amazed at another compliment.
Nita sat up again after a little while, wiping her eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Even if I took it before I remembered you said it… it was good advice.” She thought she would let her sister have just one more compliment — especially since it was true, and information she might never have another chance to give her. “You’re gonna be one hot wizard someday,” Nita said.
Dairine sat speechless.
“Neets,” Kit said, “we’ve had a long day. And tomorrow’ll be longer. I’m sacking out. Dairine—“
“Right,” Nita said. She lay down again, feeling glad, afraid, excited, shaky, light — a hundred things at once. She never noticed when Dairine got off her bed; she never heard Kit leave. She fell into sleep as if into a hole.
Foregathering Song
Nita sat hunched in a miserable little bundle on the beach, her arms around her knees — staring at the bright morning sea and not seeing it.
She had gone to bed with the feeling that everything would be all right when she woke up in the morning. But she’d awakened to a pair of parents torn among insane curiosity, worry, approval, and disapproval, who drank cup after cup of coffee and stared at the lump of lunar pumice in the middle of the table, and made little sense when they talked.
She hardly knew them. Her mom and dad alternated between talking to her, hanging on every word she said, and talking over her head about her, as if she weren’t there. And they kept touching her like a delicate thing that might break — though there was an undercurrent of anger in the touches that said her parents had suddenly discovered she was in some ways stronger than they were, and they didn’t like it.
Nita sighed. I’d give anything for one of Dad’s hugs that squeeze the air out and make you go squeak! she thought. Or to hear Mom do Donald Duck voices at me. But fat chance of that…
She let out a long, unhappy breath. Kit was finishing his breakfast at a leisurely pace and handling endless questions about wizardry from her parents — covering for her. Just as well: She had other business to attend to before they left.
“Tom,” she said, almost mourning, under her breath. She had been down to Friedman’s already and had “minded the store” under Dog’s watchful eye for a long time, waiting for Tom to return her call. She needed expert help, in a hurry. I’ve gone as far as I can on my own, she thought. I need advice! Oh, Tom, where are you?
As she’d expected. Nothing—
The last thing she expected was the sudden explosion of air that occurred about twenty feet down the beach from her, flinging sand in all directions. No, Nita corrected herself. The last thing she expected was what the explosion produced: a man with one towel wrapped around his waist and another draped around his neck — tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, with dark hair and the kind of face one sees in cigarette ads, but never hopes to see smile. It was not Tom, but Carl. He looked around him, saw Nita, and came over to her in a hurry, looking grave. “What’sa matter, Nita?” he said, casual as always, but concerned. “I heard that even though it wasn’t meant for me.”
She looked up at him wanly and tried to smile just a little; but the smile was a dismal failure. “Uh, no. Look, no one was answering the phone — and then I was just thinking—“
“That wasn’t what I would call ‘just’ thinking,” Carl said, sitting down on the sand beside her. “Sometimes I forget what kind of power wizards have when they’re kids…”
Nita saw that Carl’s hair was wet. “I got you out of the shower,” she said. “I’m sorry…”
“No, I was out already. It’s okay.”
“Where’s Tom?” Nita said.
“He has a breakfast meeting with some people at ABC; he asked me to take his calls. Not that I had much choice, in your case… You’ve got big trouble, huh? Tell me about it.”
She did. It took her a while. Though she braced herself for it, the look of shock on Carl’s face when he heard about Nita’s accepting the Silent Lord’s part was so terrible, she started to leak tears again. Carl sat still while she finished the story.
“Do your folks know?” he said at last.
“No,” Nita said. “And I don’t think I’m going to tell them. I think Dad suspects — and Mom knows he does and doesn’t want to talk to him about it.”
Carl let out a long breath. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said.
This was not the most encouraging thing Nita had ever heard. A Senior Wizard always knew what to tell you. “Carl,” she said, tears still thick in her voice, “what can I do? I can’t — I can’t just die!”
It was the first time she had actually said the word out loud. It left her shaking all over like the aftermath of a particularly large wizardry, and the tears started coming again.
Carl was quiet. “Well, yeah, you can,” he said at last, gently. “People do it all the time — sometimes for much less cause.”
“But there must be something I could do!”
Carl looked down at the sand. “What did you say you were going to do?”
Nita didn’t say anything; they both knew the answer very well. “You know what caused this?” Carl said.
”What?”
“Remember the blank-check sorcery you did while in the other Manhattan, that time? The open-ended request for help?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That kind of spell always says that at some later date you’ll be called upon to return the energy you use.” Carl looked somber. “You got your help. But it must have taken a lot of energy to seal a whole piece of another space away from every other space, forever…”
Nita scrubbed at her eyes, not much liking this line of reasoning. “But the spell never said anyone was going to have to die to pay back the price!”
“No. All it said was that you were going to have to pay back the exact amount of energy used up at some future date. And it must have been a very great amount, to require lifeprice to be paid. There’s no higher payment that can be made.” Carl fell silent a moment, then said, “Well, one.” And his face shut as if a door had closed behind his eyes.
Nita put her head down on her knees again. This wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. “Carl, there has to be something you, we could do—“
The surf crashed for a long time between her words and his. “Nita,” Carl said finally, “no. What you absolutely do not want is ‘something you could do.’ What you really want is for me to get you off the hook somehow, so you don’t have to carry through with your promise.”
Her head snapped up in shock. “You mean— Carl, don’t you care if I die or not?”
“I care a whole lot.” The pain in Carl’s voice made it plain that he did. “But unfortunately I also have to tell you the truth. That’s what Seniors are for; why do you think we’re given so much power to work with? We’re paid for what we do — and a lot of it isn’t pleasant.”
“Then tell me some truth! Tell me what to do—“
“No,” he said gently. “Never that. Nine-tenths of the power of wizardry comes from making up your own mind
