what you’re going to do. The rest of it is just mechanics.” Carl looked at her with a professional calm that reminded Nita of her family doctor. “What I can do is go over your options with you.”
She nodded.
“So first — what you’d like to do. You want to break your word and not sing the Song. That’d be easy enough to do. You would simply disappear — stay on land for the next week or so and not have anything further to do with the whales with whom you’ve been working. That would keep you out of the Song proper; you’d be alive three days from now.”
Carl looked out to sea as he spoke, nothing in his expression or his tone of voice hinting at either praise or condemnation. “There would naturally be results of that action. For one, you took the Celebrant’s Oath in front of witnesses and called on the Powers of wizardry themselves to bring certain things about if you break the Oath. They will bring those things about, Nita — the Powers don’t forget. You’ll lose your wizardry. You’ll forget that there is any such thing as magic in the world. Any relationships you have with other wizards will immediately collapse. You would never have met Kit, for example, or me, or Tom, except for your wizardry. So we’ll cease to exist for you.”
Nita held still as stone.
“There’ll also be effects on the Song itself as a result of your leaving. Even if the group manages to find a replacement wizard to sing the Silent One—“ Nita thought of Kit and froze. “—the Song itself will still have been sabotaged by your betrayal of your Oath. It won’t be effective. The undersea tremors, the pollution and the attacks on the whales and all the rest of it will continue. Or the Lone Power will enter into the wizardry and throw it completely out of control — in which case I don’t want to think of what will happen to New York and the Island, sooner or later. If all the other wizards in the area worked together, we might be able to slow it down. But not for long.”
Carl took a breath. “And on top of everything else, breaking the Celebrant’s Oath will also be a violation of the Wizard’s Oath, your oath to assist in slowing down the death of the Universe. In your last moment as a wizard, as you lose your magic, you will know beyond all doubt that the Universe around you is going to die sooner because of your actions. And all through your life there’ll always be something at the bottom of your heart that feels sad… and you’ll never be able to get rid of it, or even understand it.”
Nita didn’t move.
“That was all the ‘bad’ stuff. On the ‘good’ side I can tell you that you probably wouldn’t die of the upheavals that will start happening. What you did in Manhattan with Kit wouldn’t be forgotten by the Powers either; they pay their debts. I imagine your folks would get a sudden urge to go visit some relatives out of state — something like that — and be a good distance inland when the trouble started. And after the trouble, you would go on to live what would seem a perfectly normal life… after all, most people think it’s normal to have a nameless sorrow at the bottom of your soul. You’d grow up, and find a job, and get married, or not, and work and play and do all the other things that mortals and wizards do. And then you’d die.”
Nita was silent.
“Now the second option,” Carl said. “You go down there and keep your word — though you’re not happy about it, to say the least. You sing the Song, and when the time comes you dive into that coral or whatever and cut yourself up, and the Master-Shark comes after you and eats you. You experience about two or three minutes of extreme pain, pain like being hit by a car or burned all over, until you go into shock, or your brain runs out of oxygen, whichever comes first; and you die. Your parents and friends then have to deal with the fact of your death.”
Nita’s tears started again.
“The ‘good’ side to this option,” said Carl, “is that the Song will be successfully completed, millions of people will continue to live their lives untroubled, and the Lone Power will have suffered another severe setback. My estimate is that It couldn’t interfere in any large way with the Sea’s affairs — and, to some extent, with the land’s — for some forty to fifty years thereafter. Possibly more.”
Nita nodded slowly. “So if—“
“Wait. There’s a third option,” Carl said.
“Huh?”
He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t fully decipher. “Sing the Song and make the Sacrifice — but do it willingly. Rather than just doing it because you have to, to keep terrible things from happening.”
“Does it make a difference?”
Carl nodded. “If you can make the Sacrifice willingly, the wizardry will gain such power as you can barely imagine. The Lone One’s power is always based on Its desire to have Its own way in everything. Nothing undermines Its workings faster than power turned toward having something be the way someone else wants it.”
Carl looked hard at her. “I have to make real sure you understand this. I’m not talking about the sort of fakery most people mean when they talk about ‘sacrifice’—none of that ‘unselfishness’ business, which usually has the desire for other people to feel guilty or sad hidden at the bottom of it. No being a ‘martyr.’ That would sabotage a wizardry almost as badly as running out on it. But to willingly give up one’s life for the sake of the joy and well-being of others will instantly destroy whatever power the Lone One has currently amassed.” He glanced away. “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be afraid and still have it work, by the way.”
“Great,” Nita said with a nervous laugh.
“The important thing is that, other times when the Sacrifice has been made willingly, there have been fewer wars afterward, less crime, for a long while. The Death of things, of the world as whole, has been slowed… ”
Nita thought of people beating and shooting and stealing from each other; she thought of A-bombs and H- bombs, and people starving and poor — and she thought of all that slowed down. But all those troubles and possibilities seemed remote right now compared to her own problem, her own life. “I don’t know if I could do that,” Nita said, scarcely above a whisper.
There was a long pause. “I don’t know if I could either,” said Carl, just as quietly.
She sat still for a long time. “I think—“
“Don’t say it,” Carl said, shaking his head. “You couldn’t possibly have decided already. And even if you have—“ He glanced away. “You may change your mind later… and then you’ll be saved the embarrassment of having to justify it to me.”
“Later—“ She looked at him in distress and confusion. “You mean you would still talk to me if I—“ She stopped. “Wait a minute. If I don’t do it, I won’t know you! And if I do do it—“
“There’s always Timeheart,” Carl said softly.
Nita nodded, silent. She had been there once, in that “place” to which only wizards can find their way while still alive; that terrible and beautiful place where things that are loved are preserved, deathless, perfect, yet still growing and becoming more themselves through moment after timeless moment. “After we— After we’re alive, then—“
“What’s loved,” Carl said, “lives.”
She looked at him in a few moments’ sorrowful wonder. “But sure,” she said. “You’re a Senior. You must go there all the time.”
“No.” He looked out over the sea. “In fact, the higher you’re promoted, when you’re a wizard, the more work you have to do — and the less time you get to spend outside this world, except on business.” He breathed out and shook his head. “I haven’t been to Timeheart for a long time, except in dreams…”
Now it was his turn to sound wistful. Nita reached out and thumped Carl’s shoulder once or twice, hesitantly.
“Yeah,” Carl said. Slowly he stood up and brushed the sand off his towel, then looked down at her. “Nita,” he said — and his voice was not impassive any more, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Call us before you start the song, if you can, okay?” The New York accent was pronounced and raspy, as if Carl’s nose were stuffed.
“Right.”
He turned away, then paused and looked back at her. And everything suddenly became too much for Nita. She went to Carl in a rush, threw her arms around him at about waist height, and began to bawl. “Oh, honey,” Carl said, and got down on one knee and held Nita tight, which was what she needed. But the helpless expression on his
