followed him.
Nita passed through the “twilight zone” at three hundred fathoms and saw light, the faint green gold she had never hoped to see again. When she broke surface and drew several long gasping breaths, she found that it was morning. Monday morning, she guessed, or hoped. It didn’t much matter. She had sunlight again, she had air to breathe — and floating half a mile away in the wavewash, looking too tired to move a fin, the massive back of a sperm whale bobbed and rocked.
She went to him. Neither of them did anything for a long time but lie there in the water, side by side, skin just touching, and breathe.
“I got carried away down there,” Kit said eventually. “And the whalesark started to go out on me. I would have gone all sperm whale — and then the sark would have blown out all the way—“
“I noticed,” Nita said.
“And you pulled me out of it. I think I owe you one.”
“After all that,” Nita said, “I’m not sure who owes what. Maybe we’d better call it even.”
“Yeah. But, Neets—“
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Someone has to keep you out of trouble.”
He blew explosively, right in her face.
One by one, finding one another by song, the other Celebrants began to gather around them. Neither Kit nor Nita had any words for them until, last of the group, S’reee surfaced and blew in utter weariness.
She looked at Nita. “Areinnye—“
“Gone,” Kit said.
“And the Master-Shark—“
“The Sacrifice,” Nita said, “was accepted.”
There was silence as the Celebrants looked at each other. “Well,” S’reee said, “the Sea has definitely never seen a Song quite like this—“
It will be a Song well sung, said a cool voice in Nita’s head. And sung from the heart. You, young and never loving: I, old and never loved—
“—but the Lone One is bound. And the waters are quieting.”
“S’reee,” Fang said, “don’t we still need to finish the Song?”
“It’s done,” Kit said.
S’reee looked at him in silence a moment. “Yes,” she said then. “It is.”
“And I want to go home,” Kit said.
“Well enough,” said S’reee. “Kit, we’ll be in these waters resting for at least a couple of days. You know where to find us.” She paused, hunting words. “And, look—“
“Please save it,” Nita said, as gently as she could. She nudged Kit in the side; he turned shoreward for the long swim home. “We’ll see you later.”
They went home.
They found Nita’s parents waiting for them on the beach, as if they had known where and when they would be arriving. Nita found it difficult to care. She and Kit slogged their way up out of the surf, into the towels that Nita’s mom and dad held out for them, and stood there shivering with reaction and early-morning cold for several moments.
“Is it going to be all right?” Nita’s father asked.
Nita nodded.
“Are you all right?” Nita’s mother asked, holding her tight.
Nita looked up at her mom and saw no reason to start lying then. “No.”
“… Okay,” her mother said. “The questions can wait. Let’s get you home.”
“Okay,” Kit said. “And you can ask her all the questions you like… while
Nita turned around then; gave Kit a long look… and reached out, and hugged him hard.
She didn’t answer questions when she got home. She did eat; and then she went to her room and fell onto her bed, as Kit had done in his room across the hall, to get some sleep. But before she dropped off, Nita pulled her manual out from its spot under her pillow and opened it to one of the general data supply areas. “I want a readout on all the blank-check wizardries done in this area in the last six months,” she said. “And what their results were.”
The list came up. It was short, as she’d known it would be. The second-to-last entry on the list said:
BCX 85/003—CALLAHAN, Juanita T., and RODRIGUEZ, Christopher K.: open-ended “Mobius spell” implementation.
Incurred: 4/25/85. Paid: 7/15/85, by willing substitution. See “Current Events” precis for details. “
Nita put the book back under her pillow, and quietly, bitterly, started to get caught up on her crying.
Heartsong
Neither she nor Kit got up till well after nightfall. When Nita threw clothes on and went downstairs, she found Kit sitting at the table, shoveling Cheerios into his face with the singleminded intensity he gave to the really important things in life. In the living room, she could hear the TV going, making crowd sounds, over which her mother was saying indignantly, “Him? He’s no hitter! Just you watch—“
Kit looked up at Nita as she leaned on the doorsill. “You hungry?”
“Not yet.”
She sat down beside him, carefully — she still ached all over — and picked up the cereal box, absently reading the list of ingredients on the side.
“Business as usual in there,” Kit said, between mouthfuls.
“So I hear.”
“I’m going out in a while. Wanna come?”
“Swimming?”
“Yeah.” He paused for another mouthful. “I’ve got to take the whalesark back.”
“Does it still work?”
“At this point,” Kit said, “I’d almost rather not get into it and find out. But it got me back.”
Nita nodded, put the cereal box down, and just sat for a moment with her chin in her hands. “I had a thought—“
“Aiooooooo.”
Nita looked brief murder at Kit, then let the look go. “We seem to have pulled it off again,” she said.
“Yeah.”
He said it almost a little too easily. “You notice,” she said, “that our reward for hard jobs seems to be that we get given harder jobs even?”
Kit thought, then nodded. “Problem is,” he said, “that we like the hard jobs.”
She made a sour face. Much as it annoyed her to admit it — her, little quiet Nita who sat in the back of the class and made decent grades and it was true. “Kit,” she said, “they’re gonna keep doing that.”
“They.”
“The Powers. They’ll keep doing it until one day we don’t pull it off. One of us, or both of us.”
Kit looked down at his cereal bowl. “Both, preferably,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Saves the explanations.” He scooped out the last spoonful of cereal, glanced up, and made a face. “Well, what would I have told them?”
Nita shook her head. “We could stop,” she said.
Kit chewed, watching her: swallowed, and said, “You want to?”
She waited to see if he would give some sign of what he was thinking. Useless: Kit would make a great poker player someday. “No,” she said at last.
“Me either,” Kit said, getting up and putting the bowl in the sink. “Looks like we’re stuck with being wizards,
