Deep Wizardry

Ed’s Song

“Neets,” her mother said from where she stood at the sink, her back turned. “Got a few minutes?”

Nita looked up from her breakfast. “What’s up?”

Her mother was silent for a second, as if wondering how to broach whatever she had on her mind. “You and Kit’ve been out a lot lately,” she said at last. “Dad and I hardly ever seem to see you.”

“I thought Dad said it’d be fun to have Dairine and me out of his hair for a while, this vacation,” said Nita.

“Out of his hair, yes. Not out of his life. — We worry about you two when you’re out so much.”

“Mom, we’re fine.”

“Well, I wonder… What exactly are you two doing out there all day?”

“Oh, Mom! Nothing!”

Her mother looked at her and put up one eyebrow in an excellent imitation of Mr. Spock.

Nita blushed a bit. It was one of those family jokes that you wish would go away, but never does; when Nita had been little and had said “Nothing!” she had usually been getting into incredible trouble. “Mom,” Nita said, “sometimes when I say ‘nothing,’ it’s really just nothing. We hang out, that’s all-We… do stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Mom, what does it matter? Just stuff!”

“It matters,” her mother said, “if it’s adult kinds of stuff… instead of kid stuff.”

Nita didn’t say a word. There was no question that what she and Kit were doing were adult sorts of things.

Her mother took in Nita’s silence, waiting for her daughter to break it. “I won’t beat around the bush with you, Neets,” she said at last. “Are you and Kit getting… physically involved?”

Nita looked at her mother in complete shock. “Mom!” she said in a despairing groan. “You mean sex? No!”

“Well,” her mother said slowly, “that takes a bit of a load off my mind.” There was a silence after the words. Nita was almost sure she could hear her mother thinking, If it’s true…

The silence unnerved Nita more than the prospect of a talk on the facts of life ever could have. “Mom,” she said, “if I were gonna do something like that, I’d talk to you about it first.” She blushed as she said it. She was embarrassed even to be talking about this to anybody, and she would have been embarrassed to talk to her mom about it too. Nevertheless, what she’d said was the truth. “Look, Mom, you know me, I’m chicken. I always run and ask for advice before I do anything.”

“Even about this?”

“Especially about this!”

“Then what are you doing?” her mother said, sounding just plain curious now. And there was another sound in her voice — wistfulness. She was feeling left out of something. “Sometimes you say to me ‘playing,’ but I don’t know what kids mean any more when they say that. When I was little, it was hopscotch, or Chinese jumprope, or games in the dirt with plastic animals. Now when I ask Dairine what she’s doing, and she says ‘playing,’ I go in and find she’s doing quadratic equations… or using my hot-curlers on the neighbor’s red setter. I don’t know what to expect.”

Nita shrugged. “Kit and I swim a lot,” she said.

“Where you won’t get in trouble, I hope,” her mother said.

“Yeah,” Nita said, grateful that her mother hadn’t said anything about lifeguards or public beaches. This is a real pain, she thought. I have to talk to Tom and Carl about this. What do they do with their families?… But her mother was waiting for more explanation. She struggled to find some. “We talk, we look at stuff. We explore…”

Nita shook her head, then, for it was hopeless. There was no explaining even the parts of her relationship with Kit that her mother could understand. “He’s just my friend,” Nita said finally. It was a horrible understatement, but she was getting hot with embarrassment at even having to think about this kind of thing. “Mom, we’re okay, really.”

“I suppose you are,” her mom said. “Though I can’t shake the feeling that there are things going on you’re not telling me about. Nita, I trust you… but I still worry.”

Nita just nodded. “Can I go out now, Mom?”

“Sure. Just be back by the time it gets dark,” she said, and Nita sighed and headed for the door. But there was no feeling of release, no sense of anything having been really settled, as there usually was when a family problem had been hashed out to everyone’s satisfaction. Nita knew her mother was going to be watching her. It griped her.

There’s no reason for it! she thought guiltily as she went down to the beach, running so she wouldn’t be late for meeting Kit. But there was reason for it, she knew; and the guilt settled quietly into place inside her, where not all the sea water in the world would wash it out.

She found Kit far down the beach, standing on the end of the jetty with a rippling, near-invisible glitter clutched in one hand: the whalesark. “You’re late,” he said, scowling, as Nita climbed the jetty. “S’reee’s waiting—“ Then the scowl fell off his face when he saw her expression. “You okay?”

“Yeah. But my mom’s getting suspicious. And we have to be back by dark or it’ll get worse.”

Kit said something under his breath in Spanish.

“Ay!” Nita said back, a precise imitation of what either of Kit’s folks would have said if they’d heard him. He laughed.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“We’d better leave our suits here,” Kit said. Nita agreed, turning her back and starting to peel out of hers. Kit made his way down the rocks and into the water as she put her bathing suit under the rock with his. Then she started down the other side of the jetty.

Nita found that the whale-body came much more easily to her than it had the day before. She towed Kit out into deeper water, where he wrapped the whalesark around him and made his own change; his too came more quickly and with less struggle, though the shock of displaced water, like an undersea explosion, was no less. S’reee came to meet them then, and they greeted her and followed her off eastward, passing Shinnecock Inlet.

“Some answers to Aroooon’s Calling have already come back,” she said. “Kit, it looks like we may not need you to sing after all. But I would hope you’d attend the Song anyway.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” he sang cheerfully. “Somebody has to be around to keep Neets from screwing up, after all…”

Nita made a humpback’s snort of indignation. But she also wondered about the nervousness in S’reee’s song. “Where’s Hotshot this morning?”

“Out calling the rest of his people for patrol around the Gates. Besides, I’m not sure he’s… well, suited for what we’re doing today…”

“S’reee,” Kit said, picking up the tremor in her song, “what’s the problem? It’s just another wizard we’re going to see—“

“Oh, no,” she said. “The Pale One’s no wizard. He’ll be singing one of the Twelve, all right — but the only one who has no magic.”

“Then what’s the problem? Even a shark is no match for three wizards—“

“Kit,” S’reee said, “that’s easy for you to say. You’re a sperm, and it’s true enough that the average shark’s no threat to one of your kind. But this is no average shark we’re going to see. This shark would be a good candidate to really be the Pale Slayer, the original Master-Shark, instead of just playing him. And there are some kinds of strength that even wizardry has trouble matching.” Her song grew quieter. “We’re getting close. If you have any plans to stay living for a while more, watch what you say when the Pale One starts talking. And for the Sea’s sake, if you’re upset about anything, don’t show it!”

They swam on toward Montauk Point, the long spit of land that was the southeastern tip of Long Island. The bottom began to change from the yellow, fairly smooth sand of the South Shore, littered with fish havens and abandoned oyster beds and deep undergrowth, to a bottom of darker shades dun, brown, almost black — rocky and badly broken, scattered with old wrecks. The sea around them grew noisy, changing from the usual soft background hiss of quiet water to a rushing, liquid roar that grew in intensity until Nita couldn’t hear herself think, let alone sing. Seeing in the water was difficult. The surface was whitecapped, the middle waters were murky with dissolved air, and the hazy sunlight diffused in the sea until everything seemed to glow a pallid gray white, with no shadows anywhere.

“Mind your swimming,” S’reee said, again in that subdued voice. “The rocks are sharp around here; you don’t want to start bleeding.”

They surfaced once for breath near Montauk Point, so that Nita got a glimpse of its tall octagonal lighthouse, the little tender’s house nearby, and a group of tourists milling about on the cliff that slanted sharply down to the sea. Nita blew, just once, but spectacularly, and grinned to herself at the sight of the tourists pointing and shouting at each other and taking pictures of her. She cruised the surface for a good long moment to let them get some good shots, then submerged again and caught up with Kit and S’reee.

The murkiness of the water made it hard to find her way except by singing brief notes, waiting for the return of the sound, and judging the bottom by it. S’reee was doing so, but her notes were so short that she seemed to be grudging them.

What’s the matter with her? Nita thought. You can’t get a decent sounding off such short notes— And indeed, she almost hit a rock herself as she was thinking that, and saved herself from it only by a quick lithe twist that left her aching afterward. The roaring of the water over the Shoals kept on flowing, interfering with the rebound of the song-notes, whiting them out. S’reee was bearing north around the point now and slowing to the slowest of modes. Kit, to keep from overswimming her, was barely drifting, and keeping well above the bottom. Nita glanced up at him, a great dark shape against the greater brightness of the surface water — and saw his whole body thrash once hard, in a gesture of terrible shock. “Nita!”

She looked ahead and saw what he saw. The milky water ahead of them had a great cloud of blood hanging and swirling in it, with small bright shapes flashing in and out of the cloud in mindless confusion. Nita let out one small squeak of fear, then forced herself to be quiet. The sound came back, though, and told her that inside that roiling red darkness, something was cruising by in a wide curve — something nearly Kit’s size. She backfinned to hover in the water, glancing up at Kit.

He drifted downward to her, singing no note of his own. She could understand why. Tumbling weightlessly out of the blood-cloud, trailing streaks of watery red, were the slashed and broken bodies of a school of smallfin tuna— heads, tails, pieces too mangled to name, let alone to bear close examination. Some of these drifted slowly to the bottom, where the scavengers — salt-water catfish and crabs and other such — ate them hurriedly, as if not wanting to linger and face whatever hunted above.

Nita didn’t want to attract its attention either, but she also wanted Kit’s reassurance. This place to which S’reee had brought them was unquestionably the location of a shark’s “feeding frenzy,” in which the hunter begins to devour not only its prey, but anything else that gets in the way, uncontrollably, mindlessly, until sated.

Inside the cloud of blood, which the current over the shoals was taking away, something moved. Impossible, was Nita’s first reaction as the circling shape was revealed. It broke out of its circling and began to soar slowly toward her and Kit and S’reee. Sonar had warned her of its size, but she was still astonished. No mere fish could be that big.

This one could. Nita didn’t move. With slow, calm, deadly grace the huge form came curving toward them. Nita could see why S’reee had said that this creature was a good candidate for the title Master-Shark, even if the original had lived ten thousand years ago, when everything was bigger. The shark was nearly as long as Kit — from its blunt nose to the end of its tail’s topfin, no less than ninety feet. Its eyes were that same dull, expressionless black that had horrified Nita when she’d watched Jaws. But seeing those eyes on a TV screen was one thing. Having them dwell on you, calm and hungry even after a feeding frenzy — that was much worse.

The pale shape glided closer. Nita felt Kit drift so close to her that his skin brushed hers, and she felt the thudding of his huge heart. In shape, the shark looked like a great white, at least as well as Nita could remember from Jaws. There, though, the resemblance ended. “Great white” sharks were actually a pale blue on their upper bodies and only white below. This one was white all over, an ivory white so pale that great age might have bleached it that color. And as for size, this one could have eaten the Jaws shark for lunch, and looked capable of working Nita in, in no more than a bite or two, as dessert. Its terrible maw, hung with drifting, mangled shreds of bleeding tuna, was easily fifteen feet across. Those jaws worked gently, absently, as the white horror cruised toward the three of them.

S’reee finned forward a little. She inclined the fore half of her body toward the white one and sang, in what seemed utter, toneless calm, “Ed’Rashtekaresket, chief of the Unmastered in these waters, 1 greet you.”

The shark swam straight toward S’reee, those blank eyes fixed on her. The whale held her position as the Pale One glided toward her, his mouth open, his jaws working. At the last possible moment he veered to one side and began to describe a great circle around the three.

Three times he circled them, in silence. Next to Nita, Kit shuddered. The shark looked sharply at them, but still said nothing, just kept swimming until he had completed his third circle. When he spoke at last, there was no warmth in his voice, none of the skin-stroking richness she had grown used to in whale-voices. This voice was dry… interested, but passionless; and though insatiably hungry, not even slightly angry or vicious. The voice destroyed every idea Nita had of what a shark would sound like. Some terrible malice, she could have accepted — not this deadly equanimity. “Young wizard,” the voice said, cool and courteous, “well met.”

The swimmer broke free of his circling and described a swift, clean arc that brought him close enough to Nita and Kit for Nita to see the kind of rough, spiky skin that had injured S’reee so badly two nights before. The great shark almost touched Nita’s nose as he swept by.

“My people,” the Pale One said to S’reee, “tell me that they met with you two nights since. And fed well.”

“The nerve!” Kit said, none too quietly, and started to swim forward.

Aghast, Nita bumped him to one side, hard. He was so startled he held still again. “Keep your mouth shut!” she said quietly. “That thing could eat us all if it wanted to!”

“If he wanted to,” said the Pale One, glancing at Nita and fixing her, just for a moment, with one of those expressionless eyes. “Peace, young human. I’ll deal with you in a moment.”

She subsided instantly, feeling like a bird face to face with a snake.

“I am told further,” said the shark, circling S’reee lazily, “that wizardry struck my people down at their meal…”

“And then released them.”

“The story’s true, then.”

“True enough, Unmastered,” said S’reee, still not moving. “I’m no more ignorant than Ae’mhnuu was of the price paid for the reckless wasting of life. Besides, I knew I’d be talking to you today… and even if I didn’t, I’d have you to deal with at some later time… Shall we two be finished with this matter, then? I have other things to discuss with you.”

“Having heard the Calling in the water last night, I believe you do,” said the Pale One, still circling S’reee with slow grace. His jaws, Nita noticed were still working. “You were wise to spare those of my Mastery. Are your wounds healed? Is your pain ended?”

“Yes to both questions, Pale One.”

“I have no further business with you, then,” said the shark. Nita felt Kit move slightly against her, an angry, balked movement. Evidently he had been expecting the shark to apologize. But the shark’s tone of voice made it plain that he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong… and bizarrely, it seemed as if S’reee agreed with him.

“Well enough,” S’reee said, moving for the first time, to break out of the Pale One’s circle. “Let’s get to business.” The shark went after, pacing her.

“Since you heard the Calling,” S’reee said, “you know why I’m here.”

“To ask me to be Twelfth in the Song,” said the shark. “When have I not? You may administer the Oath to me at your leisure. But first you must tell me who the Silent One is.”

“She swims with us,” S’reee said, rolling over on her back as she swam— something Nita would certainly never have dared do, lest it give this monster ideas — and indicating Nita with one long forefin.

Nita would have preferred to keep Kit between her and the shark; but something, the Sea perhaps, told her that this would be a bad idea. Gulping, she slipped past Kit and glided up between S’reee and the great white. She was uncertain of protocol — or of anything except that she should show no fear. “Sir,” she said, not “bowing” but looking him straight in those black eyes, “I’m Nita.”

“My lady wizard,” the Pale One said in that cool, dry voice, “you’re also terrified out of your wits.”

What to say now? But the shark’s tone did have a sort of brittle humor about it. She could at least match it. “Master-Shark,” she said, giving him the title to be on the safe side, “if I were, saying so would be stupid; I’d be inviting you to eat me. And saying I wasn’t afraid would be stupid too — and a lie.”

The shark laughed, a terrible sound — quiet, and dry, and violent under its humor. “That’s well said, Nita,” he said when the laughing was done. “You’re wise not to lie to a shark — nor to tell him that particular truth. After all, fear is distress. And I end distress; that’s my job. So beware. I am pleased to meet you; but don’t bleed around me. Who’s your friend? Make him known to me.”

Nita curved around with two long strokes, swam back to Kit, and escorted him back to the white with her fins barely touching him, a don’t-screw-it-up! gesture. “This is Kit,” she said. “He may or may not be singing with us.”

“A whalesark?” said the Pale One, as Kit glided close to him.

“Yes,” Kit said bluntly, without any honorific note or tone of courtesy appended to the word. Nita looked at him in shock, wondering what had gotten into him. He ignored her, staring at the shark. Kit’s teeth were showing.

The Pale One circled Kit once, lazily, as he had when offering challenge to S’reee. “She is not as frightened as she looks, Kit,” he said, “and at any rate, I suspect you’re more so. Look to yourself first until you know your new shape better. It has its own fierce ways, I hear; but a sperm whale is still no match for me.” He said this with the utter calm of someone telling someone else what time it was. “I would not make three bites of you, as I would with Nita. I would seize your face and crush your upper jaw to make myself safe from your teeth. Then I would take hold of that great tongue of yours and not let go until I had ripped it loose to devour. Smaller sharks than I am have done that to sperm whales before. The tongue is, shall we say, a delicacy.”

The shark circled away from Kit. Very slowly, Kit glided after. “Sir,” he said — sounding subdued, if not afraid, “I didn’t come here to fight. I thought we were supposed to be on the same side. But frightening us seems a poor tactic if we’re supposed to be allies, and singing the same Song.”

“I frighten no one,” said the shark. “No one who fears gets it from anywhere but himself. Or herself. Cast the fear out — and then I am nothing to fear… No matter, though; you’re working at it. Kit, Nita, my name is Ed’Rashtekaresket.”

“It has teeth in it,” Nita said.

The shark looked at her with interest in his opaque gaze. “It has indeed,” he said. “You hear well. And you’re the Silent One? Not the Listener?”

“The Listener’s part is spoken for, Pale One,” S’reee said. “And the Silent One’s part needs a wizard more experienced than any we have — one already tested against the Lone Power, yet young enough to fulfill the other criteria. HNii’t is the one.”

“Then these are the two who went up against the Lone One in Manhattan,” Ed’Rashtekaresket said. “Oh, don’t sing surprise at me, Kit: I know the Human names well enough. After all, you are who you eat.”

Nita swallowed hard. “Such shock,” the shark said, favoring Nita again with that dark, stony, unreadable look. “Beware your fear, Nita. They say I’m a ‘killing machine’—and they say well. I am one.” The terrible laugh hissed in the water again. “But one with a mind. Nor such a machine that I devour without cause. Those whom I eat, human or whale or fish, always give me cause. I’m glad you brought them, S’reee. If this ‘Heart of the Sea’ the wizards always speak of really exists, then these two should be able to get its attention. And its attention is needed.”

For the first time since the conversation began, S’reee displayed a mild annoyance. “It exists, Pale One. How many Songs have you played Twelfth in, and you still don’t admit that—“

“More Songs than you have, young one,” Ed’Rashtekaresket said. “And it would take more still to convince me of what can’t be seen by anyone not a wizard. Show me the Sea’s Heart, this Timeheart you speak of, and I’ll admit it exists.”

“Are you denying that wizardry comes from there?” S’reee said, sounding even more annoyed.

“Possibly,” said the shark, “if it does not. Don’t be angry without reason, S’reee. You warm-bloods are all such great believers. But there’s no greater pragmatist than a shark. I believe what I eat… or what I see. Your power I’ve seen: I don’t deny that. I simply reserve decision on where it comes from. What I say further is that there’s trouble in the deep waters hereabouts, more trouble than usual — and it’s as well the Song is being enacted now, for there’s need of it, wherever its virtue comes from. Will you hear my news? For if things go on as they’re going now, the High and Dry will shortly be low and wet — and those of my Mastery will be eating very well indeed.”