Deep Wizardry

Truthsong

And Nita began to tell them. By the time she saw from their faces just how crazy the story must be sounding, it was already much too late for her to stop.

She told them the story from the beginning — the day she had her hand snagged by an innocent-looking library book full of instructions for wizardry — to the end of her first great trial, and Kit’s, that terrible night when the forces of darkness got loose in Manhattan and would have turned first the city and then the world into a place bound in eternal night and cold, except for what she and Kit did. She told them about Advisory and Senior wizards, though she didn’t mention Tom and Carl; about places past the world where there was nothing but night, and about the place past life where there was nothing but day.

Not once did her parents say a word.

Mostly Kit kept quiet, except when Nita’s memory about something specific failed; then he spoke up and filled in the gap, and she went on again. The look on her father’s face was approaching anger again, and her mother was well into complete consternation, by the time Nita started telling them about the dolphin who nudged her in the back, the whale she and Kit found on the beach, and the story the whale had told them. She told them a little-very little, fearing for her own composure — about the Song of the Twelve and what she was going to be doing in it.

And then, not knowing what else to say, she stopped.

Her mother and father looked at each other.

Our daughter, the look said, is going to have to be hospitalized. She’s sick.

Nita’s mother finally turned to her. Her dad had bowed his head about a third of the way through the story, and except for that glance at her mother seemed unable to do anything but sit with his hands clasped tightly together. But her mother’s face was stricken.

“Nita,” she said, very gently — but her voice was shaking like the tightly clasped hands of the man beside her, “you don’t have to make up stories like this to keep us from being angry with you.”

Nita’s mouth fell open. “Mom,” she said, “are you trying to say you don’t believe me?”

“Nita,” her father said. His eyes were haunted, and his attempt to keep his voice sounding normal was failing miserably. “Give us a break. How are we supposed to believe a crazy story like this? Maybe you’ve got Kit believing it-” He broke off, as if wanting to find a way to explain all this, something reasonable. “I guess it’s understandable, he’s younger than you…”

Nita glanced over at Kit for the first time in a while and gulped. His annoyed look brought the sperm-whale battlecry scraping through her memories again.

“I’ll tell you how you’re supposed to believe it,” Kit said.

Nita’s mother and father looked at him.

Kit was suddenly sitting a little taller in the chair. And taller still, though he didn’t move a muscle. And taller — until Nita could see that Kit’s seat and the seat of the chair no longer had much to do with each other. He was hovering about two feet in the air.

“Like this,” Kit said.

Holding her breath, Nita looked from Kit to her parents.

They stared at Kit, their faces absolutely unmoved, as if waiting for something. Kit glanced over at Nita, shrugged, and kept floating up until he was sitting six feet or so above the floor. “Well?” he said.

They didn’t move a muscle.

“Harry—“ Nita’s mother said, then, after what seemed forever.

He didn’t say a thing.

“Harry,” her mother said, “I hate to admit it, but I think all this has gotten to me…”

Nita’s father simply kept looking at the chair.

Then, ever so slowly, he leaned his head back and looked up at Kit.

“Hypnosis,” Nita’s father said.

“Bull!” Kit said. “When did I hypnotize you?”

Nita’s father didn’t say anything.

“I haven’t said a thing,” Kit said. “If I hypnotized you without lights or words or anything, that’s a pretty good trick, isn’t it? You two better talk to each other and see if you’re seeing the same thing. If you aren’t, maybe I did hypnotize you. But if you are—“

Nita’s mother and father looked away from Kit with some effort. ‘Betty…” said Nita’s father.

Neither of them said anything further for a few seconds.

“Harry,” her mother said at last, “if I told you that I saw… saw Kit…” She stopped and swallowed. Then she started again, and the same feeling that had shaken Nita earlier about Kit took hold of her and shook her about her mother. Evidently bravery came in odd forms, and out of unexpected places. “If I told you that I saw Kit not sitting in the chair any more,” her mother said, all at once and in a rush. Then her voice gave out on her.

“Above it,” her dad said. And that was all he could manage.

They stared at each other.

“You got it,” Kit said.

Nita’s dad broke away from looking at her mother and glared at Nita instead. “Hypnosis,” her father said. “There’s no other explanation.”

“Yes, there is!”Nita hollered at him, waving her arms in frustration, “but you don’t want to admit it!”

“Nita,” her mother said.

“Sorry,” Nita said. “Look, Kit… this isn’t going to do it. We need something more impressive.” She got up. “Come on,” she said. “Outside. It’s my turn.”

Nita yanked the front door open and ran outside, up the dune and down its far side toward the beach. There was a long pause before she heard the sound of footsteps following her down the wooden stairs. Shock, she thought, feeling both pity and amusement. If only there was some easier way! But there wasn’t… She made it down to the beach, picked the spot she wanted, then stood and waited for them to arrive.

First her mother, then her father, came clambering up the dune and slid down its far side, to stand on the beach and stare up and down it, looking for her. Then Kit appeared beside them in a small clap of air that startled her mother so badly she jumped. Her father stared.

“Sorry,” Kit said, “I should have warned you.” He was still sitting cross-legged in the air, and Nita noticed that he didn’t sound very sorry either.

“Oh, Lord,” said Nita’s father at the sight of Kit, and then turned resolutely away. “All right. Where’s Nita?”

“Over here, Daddy,” Nita called from where she was standing on the water, just past the line of the breakers.

He stared at Nita. So did Nita’s mother, who slowly went to stand beside her husband. Her voice was shaking as she said, “Harry, it could be that my eyes are just going…”

“Mom,” Nita shouted, “give me a break; you both went to the eye doctor last month and you were fine!” She bounced up and down on the water several times, then took a few long strides to the west, turned, and came back. “Admit it! You see me walking on water! Well, surprise: I am walking on water! Get it! It’s like I told you: I’m a wizard!”

“Nita,” her father said, “uh, walking on water is, uh—“

“I know,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to overdo it. It makes my legs hurt.”

Nita trotted back in to shore, taking a last hop onto the curl of a flattening breaker and letting it push her up onto the beach and strand her there, a few feet in front of them.

Kit uncrossed his legs, got his feet back on the ground, and came to stand beside her. “So what else would you like to see?” he said.

Her parents looked at each other, then down at the two of them. “Look, Kit, Nita,” her father said unhappily, “it’s not a question of what we’d like to see. At this point I’m sure you two could get us to ‘see’ anything you wanted to… heaven knows how. But that’s not the point. This can’t be — none of this is real!”

“Wanna bet?” Kit said softly. “Neets, this is gonna call for drastic measures.”

“I think you’re right. Well, let’s see what the manual says about this. Book, please,” she said, thinking the six words of a spell she knew by heart and putting her hand out. Another small clap of air, about as noisy as a cap going off, and her wizard’s manual dropped into her hand. Her mother goggled. Nita opened the manual and began browsing through it. “Let’s see…”

“You two just stop making things pop in and out for a moment, and listen to me,” Nita’s mother said all of a sudden. “Nita, I want to know where this power came from! You two haven’t made a pact with, with—“

Nita thought of her last encounter with the Lone Power and burst out laughing. “Oh, Mom! Kit and I are the last people that One wants anything to do with.”

Her mother looked nonplussed. “Well, that’s — never mind, you’ll tell me about that some other time. But, honey, why, why?”

“You mean, ‘Why are there wizards?’ Or ‘Why are we wizards?’ “ Nita said. “Or do you really mean ‘What’s in it for us?’ “

“Yes,” her mother said, sounding lost.

Nita and Kit looked at each other, and Kit shook his head. “We’re never gonna be able to explain this,” he said.

She agreed with him. “Only one thing we can do, I guess,” Nita said, musing.

“Show them?”

Nita looked at Kit, and for the first time in what seemed days, a smile began to grow. “Remember that place we went a week and a half ago?” she said. “The one with the great view?”

“I’ll get my book,” he said, grinning back, “and the string.”

“Don’t forget the chip!” Nita said, but Kit had already gone out, bang! just like a candle, and Nita was talking to empty air. She turned to her mother and father. “He went to get some supplies,” she said. “Most wizardry you need things for — raw materials, kind of.”

“Fine, honey,” her mother said, “but does he have to keep appearing and disappearing like that?”

“It’s faster than walking,” Nita said. “And we haven’t got all night. He and I are going to have to be out early again tomorrow morning—“

“Nita!” said her father.

She went to him and put her arms around him. “Please, Dad,” she said, “let it be for a little while. We told you why. But you have to feel this first. It won’t make sense unless you do. In fact, it may never make sense. Just trust me!”

Kit popped back out of nothing, making Nita’s mother jump again. “Sorry, Mrs. Callahan,” he said. “It’s fun, that’s all. It’s a ‘beam-me-up-Scotty’ spell. So’s this one we’re going to do. Just a little more involved.” He dropped the necessary supplies on the sand — a small coil of cord, an old silicon chip salvaged from a broken pocket calculator, a gray stone. Then he started going through his own manual.

Nita looked down at the stone Kit had brought. “Good idea,” she said. “Shorthand, huh?”

“It remembers the way. Should save some work. Good thing, too… we’ve got two more sets of variables this time. Get the figures for me, will you?”

“Right.” Nita held out her book a bit as she went through it, so that her mother and father could look over her shoulder. “See, Mom? Dad? It’s just an instruction manual, like I said.”

“I can’t read it,” her father said, staring at the graceful strokes of the written form of the Speech. “What is it, Arabic?”

“No,” she said. “No Earthly language. At least, not strictly Earthly. A lot of the forces we work with don’t have names in any language on Earth — or they only have vague ones. You can’t be vague about magic.”

“Good way to get killed,” Kit said from where he knelt in the sand, scribbling with a stick and sounding cheerful. “Mr. Callahan, Mrs. Callahan, don’t step on any of these things I’m writing in the sand, or we’ll all be in big trouble. Mrs. Callahan, what’s your birthday?”

“April twenty-eighth,” said Nita’s mother.

“Mr. Callahan?”

“July seventh,” said Nita’s father.

“Neets, how big a circle?”

“Half a second,” Nita said. “Brighter,” she said to her manual. Its pages began to glow softly in the dark. “Okay, here we are. Four of us… about a cubic foot of air for each breath. Allow for excitement — say thirty breaths a minute. Times four…” She turned to another page. “Start,” she said, and heard over her shoulder her mother’s quick intake of breath as the page Nita had opened to abruptly went blank. “Print one two zero times four.” A set of characters appeared. “Okay, print four eight zero times twenty… Good, print nine six zero zero divided by three… Great. Cubic meters… uhh … Oh, crap. Kit, what’s the volume of a cylinder again?”

“V equals pi times r squared times the height.”

“That’s it. Now how did I do this before?” Nita chewed her lip a little, thinking. “Okay,” she said to the book, “print three point one four one seven times, uh, three zero.” A figure flickered at her. “No, that is not a number,” she said to the book. “Times three zero, and don’t get cute with me… Okay. Print square root parenthesis three two zero zero divided by nine four point two five one close parentheses. Great. End. Kit? Make it thirty-six feet wide.”

“Got it,” Kit said. “Mrs. Callahan, would you stand on this string, please? And whatever happens, don’t go near the edge of the circle after I close it.” He started to walk around them all, using Mrs. Callahan and the long knotted string as a compass. “Neets? Come check your name. And theirs; they can’t do it—“

She stepped over to the circle and made sure that the Speech-characters describing herself and her parents were correct, then glanced over Kit’s too for safety’s sake. Everything was in order. Kit finished the circle he was making in the sand, closed it with the figure-eight design called a wizard’s knot, and stood up. “All set,” Nita said.

“Then let’s go.” He opened his book; Nita went looking for the page in hers on which the spell was written. “It’s a ‘read’ spell,” Nita said to her mother and father. “That means it’s going to be a few moments before it takes. Don’t say anything, no matter what you feel or see or hear. Don’t move, either.”

“You might want to hang on to each other,” Kit said. Nita gave him a wry grin; there had been occasions in the past when the two of them, terrified out of their wits, had done just that. “Ready?”

“Go ahead,” said Nita’s father, and reached out and pulled Nita’s mother close.

Nita and Kit looked at each other and began slowly to read out loud. The strange, listening stillness of a working spell began to settle in around the four of them, becoming more pronounced with every word of the Speech, as the Universe in that area waited to hear what would be required of it. The wind dropped, the sound of the surf grew softer, even the breakers in the area became gentler, flatter, their hiss fading to a bare whisper…

The sense of expectation, of anticipation, of impatient, overwhelming potential grew all around them as the silence grew… slowly undergoing a transformation into a blend of delight and terror and power that could be breathed like air, or seen as a shading now inhabiting every color, a presence inhabiting every shape.

Nita raised her voice into the stillness unafraid, speaking the words of the spell formula, barely needing to look at her book. The magic was rising in her, pouring through her with dangerous power. But with the sureness of practice she rode the danger, knowing the wonder to which it would bring her, reveling in her defiance of her fear. And in more than that: for Kit was across the circle from her, eyes on hers, matching her word for word and power for power — peer and friend and fellow-wizard, afraid as she was, and still willing to dare, for the delight of what lay on the other side of the magic—

Almost through, Nita thought, exulting. Her words and Kit’s wound about one another, wove together, binding the spell tighter around the circle-squeezing air in, squeezing power in, pushing inward with such force that the circle and its contents had no choice but to be somewhere else than they were.

Almost — Nita matched her words to Kit’s with a laugh in her voice, rushing him, finding that she couldn‘t rush him because he had already matched pace to keep up with her— She laughed at being anticipated so. Faster and faster they went, like two kids seeing who could say the Pledge of Allegiance faster, as all around them the silence began to sing with inturned power, the air shimmered and rang with force like a gong ringing backward, soft at first, then louder, though without sound, without breaking that silence — a hiss, a murmur, an outcry of something about to happen, a shout of inner voices, a silent thunderclap. And the last not-sound, so loud it unmade the world around them and struck them deaf and blind—

Then true silence again, with darkness above and whiteness below — but not the same darkness or whiteness as on the beach.

“We’re here,” Nita whispered. “Mom, Dad, have a look around. Don’t go near the edges of the circle.”

“Be careful how you move,” Kit said. “You only weigh a sixth of what you usually do. If your muscles overreact you could bounce right out of the circle. I almost did, first time.”

Nita watched her mother and father stare around them. She swallowed— partly out of reflex, for her ears were ringing in the silence that surrounded them now. That was to be expected; this stillness was more total than anything experienced on Earth. Her other reason for swallowing was more practical. The sudden transfer to one-sixth gravity tended to upset your stomach unless you were used to it.

Her father was staring at the ground, which had changed from wet beach sand to a mixture of grayish gravel and pebbles, and rocks the size of fists or melons, all covered with a gray-white dust as fine as talc. But Nita’s mother was staring up at the sky with a look of joy so great it was pain — the completely bearable anguish of an impossible dream that suddenly comes true after years of hopeless yearning. Tears were running down her mother’s face at the sight of that sky, so pure a velvet black that the eye insisted on finding light in it where light was not — a night sky set with thousands of stars, all blazing with a cold fierce brilliance that only astronauts ever saw; a night sky that nonetheless had a ravening sun standing noonday high in it, pooling all their shadows black and razor-sharp about their feet.

Nita was blinking hard herself to manage the stinging of her eyes; she knew how her mother felt. “Over there, Mom,” she said very quietly. “Off to the left. Look.”

“Off to the left” was a steep slope that plunged down and down to a deep chasm, filled with absolute blackness ungentled by the presence of air. On the far side of the chasm stretched a flat, rocky plain that seemed to stop too soon, running up against a horizon abnormally close. Out on the plain, not too far away, a dazzling squarish glow of gold sat on four spidery legs. Some thirty yards from the bright platform on legs stood a silvery pole with an American flag standing out from it, held straight by a rod running through the top of it: a necessity — for here where it stood, no wind would ever stir it.

“No,” Nita’s father said, his voice hushed. “Impossible. Tranquillity Base—“

“No,” Kit said, his voice soft too. “That’s going to be a tourist attraction in a few years, when they build the Hilton there — so we don’t go down there for fear of leaving footprints where somebody might find them. This is from Apollo 16. See over there?” He pointed past the abandoned first-stage platform of the LEM Orion at the first Lunar Rover, which sat parked neatly beside a boulder — a delicate-looking little dunebuggy, still in excellent condition, used only once by a couple of astronauts from Pasadena for jaunts to Stone Mountain, on which the four of them stood.

Nita’s father slowly went down on one knee and brushed his hand along the dry, pale lunar soil, turning over the stones that lay there, then picking one up and clutching it hard in his fist.

“Harry,” Nita’s mother said, still looking up. The tone of her voice made her husband look up too — and seeing what she saw, he forgot the rock.

What they saw was part of a disk four times the size of the Moon as seen from the Earth; and it seemed even bigger because of the Moon’s foreshortened horizon. It was not the full Earth so familiar from pictures, but a waning crescent, streaked with cloud swirls and burning with a fierce green-blue radiance — a light with depth, like the fire held in the heart of an opal, that light banished the idea that blue and green were “cool” colors; one could have warmed one’s hands at that crescent. The blackness to which it shaded was ever so faintly touched with silver — a disk more hinted at than seen; the new Earth in the old Earth’s arms.

There’ll be a time,” Nita said softly, “when any time someone’s elected to a public office — before they let them start work — they’ll bring whoever was elected up here and just make them look at that until they get what it means…”

Kit nodded. “You wanted to know where the power came from,” he said to Nita’s mother and father. “The grownups who’re wizards tell us that whatever made that made the power too. It’s all of a piece.”

“ ‘The grownups who’re wizards’?”

“And as for ‘why,’ “ Kit said, “that’s why.” There was no need for him to point to “that.”

“Not just for the — for what you felt on the way in. That’s part of it. But because somebody’s gotta take care of that. Not just part of it — not just one country, or one set of rules, or one species, at the expense of the others. But everything that lives, all the kinds of ‘people.’ All of it, with nothing left out. One whole planet. Somebody’s got to make sure it grows as well as it can. Or just that it survives. That’s what wizards do.”

“Daddy,” Nita said, “it’s like you always say. If you don’t do it yourself, it may not get done right. And we can’t afford to let that get screwed up. We have to live there. So will other people, later.”

Her father shook his head, confused. “Nita,” he said, sounding unsure, “you’re too young to be thinking about this kind of thing.”

She bit her lip. “Dad — that sort of thinking might be one of the reasons why things aren’t working so well back there…”

“Neets,” Kit said, “we have to get back. We’re losing heat pretty fast.”

“Mom, Dad,” Nita said, “we can come back some other time. It’s late, and Kit and I have an early day tomorrow. Got the rock?” she said to Kit.

“Uh-huh. Ready?”

Nita’s mother reached out and pulled her husband close this time. “Is it going to be like it was before?”

“Huh? No. It just takes a lot of effort to push all this air up out of Earth’s gravity well, that’s all. You have to reach escape velocity—“

Nita’s father blinked. “Wait a minute. I thought this was — magic.” He said the word as if for the first time in his life.

Nita shrugged. “Even with magic,” she said, “you have to obey the rules. Downhill is a lot easier than uphill in a wizardry, same as anywhere else. Kit?”

“Ready,” he said. They looked at each other, took a breath, and said one short word in unison.

WHAM! — and air and sand and water blew outward in all directions as they left noon for midnight, standing once again on the long dark beach silvered with moonlight. Kit stepped to the edge of the circle, first scuffing the wizard’s knot out of existence, then going around and breaking the circle once at each compass point. “Let’s go in,” Nita said to her parents. “I’m dead.”

The four of them trudged up the stairs to the front door, back into the living room. Her dad plopped down onto the couch and said, “Nita, wait just a few minutes. I have to ask you something.”

Nita looked at him, sighed, and did as she was told. “Tell me again,” her dad said, “this stuff about what you’re doing underwater. Just very briefly.”

It turned out to be more than briefly, since much of what Nita had told her parents had fallen out of their heads the first time, discarded in general disbelief. And it was with growing dismay that Nita watched the unease in her parents’ faces, as she told them again about the undersea tremors, the pollution of the water, the slaughter of the whales — and the purposes of the Lone Power, though she tried to tell them as little about that as she could.

“Nita,” her father said at last, “what are the chances that you could get hurt doing this ‘Song’ business? The truth.”

She looked at him unhappily. “Pretty good,” she said.

“And the same for Kit?” her mother said.

“Just about,” Kit said.

Nita’s father shook his head. “Nita. Look. I understand… no. I sort of understand how you and Kit feel about this. Magic…” He raised his hands, dropped them again, in a helpless gesture. “If someone offered me the chance to be a magician, I’d jump at it…”

“A wizard,” Nita said. And, No, you wouldn’t, she thought. Because if you would have, really, you would have been offered it! There are never enough wizards…

But her father was still talking. “But this business… endangering yourself, or endangering Kit— Your mother and I can’t permit it. You’re going to have to bow out.”

For a moment, as far as Nita was concerned, everything faded out, drowned in a great wash of relief and hope. The perfect excuse. Perfect. My mom and dad won’t let me. Sorry, S’reee, Hotshot, Ed…

Opaque black eyes looked at Nita out of the scene her eager mind was already constructing for her — and hope died. The hair stood up all over Nita — not from fear, but from something more terrible. Without any warning, and for the first time, she understood in her own person what had only been a word to her before: honor. I can’t, she thought. For me — for me — it’s not right.

“Dad,” she said unhappily, “you didn’t get it. I’m sworn to the Song. If I back out now, the whole thing will be sabotaged.”

Her father got up, a sign that he intended this argument to be over shortly. “Come on, Neets. Surely someone else could do it—“

“No.”

“Nita,” said her mother, looking stern, “you don’t understand. We’re not letting you do this. Or Kit either, while he’s under our roof. You’re going to have to find a replacement. Or the — the whales will. Whoever. You’re not going.”

I must not have said it right, they’re not understanding! “Mom—“ Nita said, searching frantically for words. “This isn’t just some cute thing that Kit and I are doing because it’ll be fun! If we don’t stop the forces that are beginning to move, there are going to be massive earthquakes all up and down the East Coast. That’s not a maybe. It’s a will! You think the Island would survive something like that? The whole place is nothing but rocks and trash the glaciers dumped in the ocean; it’ll break up and wash away like a sandcastle at high tide! And you think Manhattan’ll survive? It’s already got four unstable geological faults of its own, right through the bedrock! And none of the buildings there are earthquake-proof; one quake’ll leave the place looking like somebody kicked over a pile of blocks!” Nita was waving her arms in the air now, so upset that she was beyond caring whether she looked silly or not. “Millions of people could die—“

“Could,” her father said, seizing on the word. He was pacing now.

Kit shook his head. “Will,” he said, and there was such a weight of certainty and misery on the word that Nita’s father stopped pacing, and her mother closed her mouth, and they both stared at Kit in amazement. “You’re saying,” Kit said, gazing at them out of eyes suddenly gone dark and fierce, “that you don’t care whether ten million people, more than ten million people, would die, just so long as we two don’t get hurt.”

Nita’s mother spluttered, to Nita’s great satisfaction. That one had sunk in. “No, we aren’t, we just—“

“You don’t even care that ten million people might die,” Nita said. “Just so Kit and I are okay, you’re willing to run that risk.”

“No, I—“ Nita’s father saw what was being done to him. “Young lady, no more out of you! Just the quakes going on off the coast now, by the reports we’ve heard, are too dangerous for you to be down there.”

“Daddy, believe me, we’ve survived a lot worse!”

“Yes — and your mother and I didn’t know about it then! Now we do.” Her father turned away. “The answer is no, and that’s final!”

From many fights Nita had overheard between her folks, Nita knew that when her dad said that, it never was. “Daddy,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really am. I love you, and I wish like anything I could do what you want. But I can’t.”

“Nita!” There was that rage again, full-blown, worse than before. Her father was on his feet, standing right over her, glaring at her. “You will do as I tell you!”

Hot all over, Nita shot to her feet — standing on the chair — and in sheer desperation shouted right back in his face. “Don’t you get it? There are some things in the world more important than doing what you tell me!”

Her father and mother stared at her, stunned.

“Besides,” Kit said quietly from out of her range of vision, “how would you stop us?”

Nita’s father turned away to stare at Kit now.

“Look,” Kit said. “Mr. Callahan, Mrs. Callahan — we gave our word that we’d do this.” What is this ‘we’? Nita thought, bemused. “And the wizardry we’re doing is mainly directed against the One who invented the broken promise. Breaking our word will play right into Its hands and cause a lot of people to die, at best. Maybe destroy this world, sooner or later, at worst.”

“But we have only your word on that!” Nita’s mother said.

“Uh-huh. But isn’t our word any good? And why would we lie to you about this? Considering that we’re going through all this crap for the sake of telling you the truth.”

Nita’s mother closed her mouth.

“She didn’t have to tell you,” Kit said, sounding angry for the first time. “But it would’ve been lying, in a way — and Nita thinks you’re worth not lying to.” He paused, then said, “I do too. We may just be kids, but we’re old enough to tell the truth. And to take it. Are you?”

The question wasn’t a taunt: It was honestly meant. “Even if you’re not, we’ll still have to do what we have to,” Nita said, though saying it made her unhappy. “When you two wake up in the morning, this could all seem like a dream to you — if it had to. I guess you’d better make up your minds, because we have to get some sleep or we won’t be worth dead fish tomorrow.”

Her parents were staring at each other. “Betty…” said Nita’s father.

“We need more time,” Nita’s mother said.

“I don’t think we’ve got it.”

Her mother looked back at her father. “If they’re right about this,” she said, “it would be wrong of us to stop them if they want to help.”

“But we’re responsible for them!”

“Apparently,” Nita’s mother said, in a peculiar mixture of pride and pain, “they’ve learned that lesson better than we suspected, Harry. Because now they seem to be making themselves responsible for us. And a lot of other people.”

“I guess there comes a time when you can’t do anything but trust,” her father said at last, sounding reluctant. “It just seems — so soon… Nita— is all this on the level?”

“Oh, Daddy.” She loved him, right then, and hurt for him, more than she could have told him. “I wish it weren’t. But it is.”

Nita’s father was silent for several long breaths. “Millions of lives,” he said under his breath.

And another silence, which he finally broke as if it were a physical thing, “When do you need to be up?”

“Sixish. I’ll set my alarm, Daddy.” Nita got stiffly down from the chair aching all over. Behind her, Kit got up and brushed past her as Nita hugged first her dad good night. Maybe the last time she would ever hug him.. or the second-to-the-last— Oh, don’t think of that now!

Her mother had caught Kit on the way past and hugged him — and now wouldn’t let Nita past without one either. She held her for a moment at arm’s length. “Thank you for — up there, baby,” she said, nodding once at the ceiling. Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling.

“It’s okay, Mom. Any time.” Is this what it feels like when your heart breaks? Oh, Lord, don’t let me cry.

“And thank you for trusting us.”

Nita swallowed. “You taught me how,” she said. And then she couldn’t stand it any more. She broke away and headed for her room, Kit right behind her.

She knew there was one hurdle left between her and bed. Actually, the hurdle was on the bed: sitting there crosslegged in the dark, looking at her with cool interest as they came in.

“Well?” Dairine said, as Nita flopped down on her stomach beside her, and the bed bounced them both once or twice. “I saw you disappear. Where’d’ja take them?”

“The Moon.”

“Oh, come on, Neets.”

“Dairine,” Kit said from the doorway. “Catch.”

Nita glanced up, saw her sister reach up and pick something out of the air: an irregular piece of pale, grainy stone, about the size and shape of an eraser. Dairine peered at it, rubbing it between her fingers. “What is this? Pumice?” There was a moment of shocked silence; then Dairine’s voice scaled up to an aggrieved shriek. “You did go to the Moon! And you didn’t take me! You, you —“ Apparently she couldn’t find anything sufficiently dirty to call them. “I’m gonna kill you!”

“Dari, shut up, they’re in shock out there!” Nita said. This argument did little to save her. Far more effective was Kit’s wrestling Dairine down flat, stuffing her under the bedcovers and a couple of pillows, and more or less sitting on her until she shut up and stopped struggling.

“We’ll take you next time,” Nita said, and then the pain hit her again. “Kit,” she said, husky-voiced. “Remind me to see that the runt here gets to the Moon in the near future. Next week, maybe. If she behaves.”

“Right,” Kit said. “You give up, runt?”

“Hwhmffm hnnoo rrhhrhn ffwmhhnhhuh,” said the blankets.

“Keep talking like that and your mouth’ll get stuck that way,” Kit said, and let Dairine out.

Nita’s sister extricated herself from the covers with icy dignity that lasted just until she was sitting where she had been, back in control and smoothing her ruffled pajamas. “Mom ‘n’ Dad didn’t kill you,” she said to Nita.

“Nope. You gave me good advice, runt.”

“Huh? What advice?”

“Last night, I suspect,” Kit said. “That stuff about ‘Either keep your mouth shut, or tell the truth—‘ “

Nita nodded, looking from Kit to Dairine, while Dairine modestly polished her nails on her Yoda pajamas. And Nita stared at her, and then started to laugh, so hard that she got the hiccups and fell over sideways, and Dairine looked at her as if she’d gone nuts, and Kit sat down and punched her once or twice, worriedly, in the shoulder. “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.