Nita saw the long, low, sharp-nose shape come towards her. The dog-fox had a tail bigger and bushier and longer than she would have thought possible. Only the faintest firefly gleam from the manual's pages glinted in his eyes and silvered his fur, giving him enough of an outline for her to see him.
“So," the fox said.
“What accent?" Nita said, curious. As far as she knew, her accent in the Speech was quite good.
“We wouldn't say "mathrara" here. "Madreen rua", that would be it." And Nita chuckled, for that meant 'the little red dog' in the Speech.
“Local customs rule," Nita said, smiling. “As usual. I have a warning for you, madreen rua. There's a hunt coming through here in a few days."
The fox yipped quietly in surprise. “They are early, then."
“That's as may be," Nita said. “But if I were you, I'd spread the word to keep your people well out of this area, and probably for about five miles around on all sides. Maybe more. And you might lay off the chickens a little."
The fox laughed silently, a panting sound. “They've poisoned almost all the rats: what's a body to eat? But for the moment… as you say. I am warned, wizard. Your errand's done." It looked at her with a thoughtful look. “So then," it said. “Go well, wizard." And it whisked around and went bounding off through the pasture-grass without another word.
Nita shut her manual and sat there in the quiet for a while more, getting her breath back. Talking to animals differed in intensity the more clever the animal was, and the more or less used it was to human beings. Pets like cats and dogs tended to have more fully humanized personalities, and could easily be got to understand you; but they also tended to be short-spoken - possibly, Nita thought, because being domesticated and more or less confined to a daily routine, they had less to talk about. Wilder animals had more to say, but it was often more difficult to understand them, the message being coloured with hostility or fear, or plain old bewilderment. The fox lived on the fringes of human life, knew human ways, but was wary, and so there was a cool tinge, a remoteness, about the way it came across.
At any rate, she had fulfilled her own responsibilities for the evening. A wizard had a duty to prevent unnecessary pain, and fox-hunting did not strike Nita as particularly necessary, no matter what farmers might say about the need to exterminate 'vermin'. If a fox was stealing someone's chickens, let them shoot it cleanly, rather than chasing it in terror across half the countryside and getting dogs to rip it to shreds.
Meanwhile, there were other concerns.
Kit? she said in her head.
Yeah!
She paused a moment. What's that noise?
I'm chewing, Kit said.
Oh no, you're eating dinner!
It's not such a fascinating experience that I can't spare a few minutes to talk to you, he said. Nita got a distinct impression of slightly lumpy mashed potatoes, and restrained herself from swallowing. What's happening? Kit said.
This, she said, and gave him a series of pictures of the day as quickly as she could, ending with the fox. Great, huh?
Bored with me already, Kit said. I knew it.
Kit. . .I She would have punched him hard, had he been in range. As it was, he flinched a little from what he felt her fist and arm wanting to do. Look, she said, I'm worn out. I'll talk to you more in the morning.
He started to nod and stopped himself. She had to laugh a little. Have a good sleep, Kit said.
Will do.
She let the contact ebb away, then got up and started carefully walking back the way she had come. Behind her, from the woodland, a fox was barking; perhaps a mile away, another answered it.
Nita smiled to herself and headed for the caravan.
As she had thought, she wasn't able to stay up very late that night. She tried to watch some television, and as her aunt had warned her, only one channel of the six available was working, showing some old film that didn't interest her. So she turned it off and went back to the caravan again to read. Not before, on the sly, opening a small can of cat food and parceling it out to the cats. They accepted this with great pleasure, purring and rubbing and making their approval known: but none of them spoke to her.
She went back to bed and slept some more. The dreams were not entirely pleasant. In one of them, she thought she felt the earth move, but it was probably just the wind shaking the caravan. When she woke up, everything was quite still. It was early morning - how early she couldn't tell any more without her watch: the different sunrise time here had her thoroughly confused. She found her watch and saw to her surprise that, even though the sun was well up the sky, it was only seven o'clock in the morning.
She got up and dressed in yesterday's clothes, slipped into the house, had a quick shower, dressed again in clean clothes this time, and went to see what there was for breakfast. There were already several people in the kitchen, two of whom Nita had been introduced to earlier. One was Joe, the stable manager, a tall lean young man with a grin so wide that Nita thought his face was in danger of cracking. Another was Derval, the head riding instructor, a tall curly-haired woman, eternally smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. She had a drawly accent that made her sound almost American.
“There y'are then," Derval said. “You want some tea?"
Nita was beginning to think that every conversation in Ireland began this way. “Yes, please," she said, and rooted around in the big ceramic bread crock for the loaf. “Where's Aunt Annie?"
“Down at the riding school, waiting for the farrier. She said to tell you to come on down if you want to."
“OK," Nita said, and cut herself a slice of bread and put it in the toaster. The butter was already out on the worktop, as were a basket of eggs from the farm's hens, various packages of bacon and a gruesome-looking sausage called 'black pudding', more toast, some of it with bites out of it, boxes of cereal, and spilled sugar. Breakfast was a hurried business in this house, from the look of things.
Nita sat down with her tea and toast and pulled over the local weekly paper, The Bray People. Its front-page story was about someone's car catching on fire in the main street of Wicklow town, and Nita sat there paging through it in total wonder that any place in the world should be so quiet and uneventful that a story like that would make the front page. Derval looked over her shoulder and pointed with one finger at an advertisement in the classifieds that said BOGS FOR SALE. Nita burst out laughing.
“If you're going to be around the stable block," Derval said to her, going to get another piece of bread out of the toaster, “just one thing. Watch out for the horse in number five. He's got a bad habit of biting."
“Uh, yeah," Nita said. She had been wondering when she was going to have to mention this. “I'm a little scared of horses… I hadn't been planning to get too close to them."
“Scared of horses!" Joe said. “We'll fix that."
“Uh, maybe tomorrow," Nita said. She had been put up on a horse once, several years ago on holiday, and had immediately fallen off it. This had coloured her opinions about horses ever since.
Joe and Derval finished their breakfasts and headed out, leaving Nita surrounded by cats eager to shake her down for another free handout. “No way, you guys!" she said. “Once was a special occasion. You want more, you'd better talk to your boss."
They looked at her in thinly disguised disgust and stalked off. Nita finished her tea and toast, washed her cup and plate, and then wandered out into the concrete yard again. There was a pathway past the back of her caravan into the farm area proper, and the road that wound past the front of the house curved around to meet it. Here there was another large concreted area with two or three large brown, metal-sided, barnlike buildings arranged in a loose triangle around it. The field on the right-hand side as she faced it was full of horse-jumping paraphernalia, jumps and stiles; all around the edge of it ran a big track covered with wood shavings and chips for the horses to run on. Further down and on her right was the stabling barn, and beyond it what Derval had referred to as 'the
riding school', a big covered building that had nothing in it except a floor thickly covered with the same chips as on the track outside. This was where the riders practiced when the weather was bad.
Nita took a little while to look around in there, found nothing of interest, and made her way back to the stables. There were about fifteen box stalls with various horses looking out over the doors, or eating their breakfasts, or standing there with vaguely bored expressions. She looked particularly at the horse in number five, who was a big handsome black horse. But he had a bad look in his eye, and when (since there was no human around to hear) she greeted him in the Speech, he eyed her coldly, laid his ears back and snorted, "Clear off, little girl, or I'll have your arm off."
Nita shrugged and moved on. Other horses were more forthcoming. When she spoke to them in the Speech, they answered, asking her for a sugar cube, or asking if she would please take them out. A few just tossed their heads, blinked lazily, and went back to their eating.
At the end of the stable barn was an extremely large pile of hay, kept under cover there so that the rain couldn't get at it, and the horses could be given it easily. Nita was standing for a moment looking at it, when something small and black, a rock she thought, fell down from the top of it. It tumbled down the hay, and even though Nita sidestepped, the falling black thing fell crookedly, and landed on top of one of her trainers.
She looked down in shock. It was a kitten, its body no bigger than one of her hands. It more or less staggered to its feet, looked up at her, and meowed, saying, "Sorry!"
"Don't mention it," Nita said.
The kitten, which was already in the act of scampering away after a windblown straw, stopped so suddenly that it fell over forwards. Nita restrained herself mightily from laughing. It righted itself, washed furiously for a second, then looked at her. "Another one," it said. "The wind does blow, doesn't it."
"Another what?"
"Another wizard. Are you deaf?"
"Uh, no," Nita said. "Sorry, I'm new here. Who are you, then?"
"I am Tualha Slaith, a princess of the People," she said, rattling it all off in a hurry, “a bard and a scholar. And who are you?"
“I'm Nita Callahan."
“Nita?" said the kitten. “What kind of name is that?"
Nita had to stop for a moment. She was amazed to be getting this much conversation out of a domestic cat, let alone a kitten that barely looked old enough to be weaned yet. “I think it was Spanish, originally," she said after a second or so. “Juanita is the long form."
“Aha, a Spaniard!" the kitten said, her eyes wide. "There's wine from the royal Pope, Upon the ocean green: And Spanish ale shall give you hope, My dark Rosaleen!"
“You've lost me," said Nita. “Anyway, I'm not a big ale fan…"
The kitten looked at Nita as if she was a very dun bulb indeed. “It's going to get really crowded in here shortly," the kitten said. “Let's go out." She scooted out the barn door, and Nita followed her, feeling rather bemused: out the back, into the area between the riding school and the stable block. The path led up towards the field where the jumping equipment was. There was no-one out there at the moment.
The kitten stopped several times in her run to crouch down, her little behind waggling, and pounce on a bug, or leaf, or stalk of grass, or blown bit of hay; and she always missed. Nita was having trouble controlling her reaction to this, but if there was one thing a wizard had practice in being, it was polite: so she managed. A little dusty whirlwind passed them by as they went between the riding school and the stable block, and Tualha paused to let it go by. “Good day," she said.
“You usually talk to wind?" Nita said, amused.
Tualha eyed her. "That's how the People go by," she said “the People of the Air. You are new here." She scuttled on.
They came to the fence. Tualha made a mighty leap halfway up on to the fencepost, hauled herself up claw over claw, and sat at the top, where she washed briefly.
Nita sat down on the fence next to her. “Aren't you a little young to be a bard?" she said.
The kitten looked Nita up and down. “Aren't you a little young to be a wizard?"
'Well, no, I'm fourteen.”
“And that's what percentage of your lifespan?"
“Uh. . ." Nita had to stop and figure it out.
“You can't even tell me right away? Poor sort of ban-draioa you'd make over here. Maths are important."
Nita flushed briefly. Whatever a ban-draioa might be, maths had never been one of her favorite things. “And you of Spanish blood," Tualha said, “but you don't know that song, about how the Spanish came to Ireland first? What do you know?"
“Not much sometimes," Nita said, suspecting that here, at least, that was probably going to be true. “I know about the Spanish Armada, a little." Very little, she added to herself. History had never been a favorite with her either, but she was beginning to suspect that that was going to have to change.
“That was only the fifteenth invasion," Tualha said. “The real causes of things go back much further. The wind moves, and things move in it. Now, in the beginning. . ."
“Do we have to go back that far?" Nita said dryly.
The kitten glared at her. “Don't interrupt. How do you expect to become wise?"
“How did you do it?"
Tualha shrugged. “I've been in the hills. But also, I had to be a bard: I was found in a bag. It's traditional."
Nita remembered her aunt saying something the previous night about one of the farm cats having been found in a sack by the roadside, abandoned and starving. The starving part, at least, had been dealt with: Tualha was as round as a little ball. “Anyway," Tualha said, glaring at Nita again, “it's all in the Book of Conquests, and the Book of Leinster, and the Yellow Book of Lecan."
"I doubt I could just go get those out of the library where I come from," Nita said,"so perhaps you'll enlighten me." She grinned.
"It's all in the wizards' Mastery anyway," Tualha said, "if you'd bothered to look. But grow wise by me. In the beginning there was no-one in this island; it was bleak and bare, nor was it an island at all. The Flood rose and covered it, and fell away again. Then two hundred and sixty-four years later came twenty-four men and twenty-four women: those were Partholon and his people. At that time in Ireland, there was only one treeless and grassless plain, three lakes and nine rivers; so they built some more."
"Built. . ."?" Nita said. "When was this?"
"Four hundred thousand years ago. Didn't I mention? Now do stop interrupting. They built mountains and carved valleys, and they fought the Fomor. The monster people," Tualha said in obvious annoyance at Nita's blank look;”the ones who were here before. The Fomori made a plague, the sickness that makes those who catch it hate and fight without thought; and the plague killed Partholon's people. So the Island that was not an island was empty. Then after another three thousand years, the people of Nemed came. They settled there and dug rivers and planted forests; and they met the Fomor and caught their plague - fought with them, and lost, and in the great strife of the battle the land was broken away from the greater land, and drowned in ice, and then water. When the ice melted and the water drew back, another people came after: the Fir Bolg. They brought new beasts and birds into the land, and there was song in the air and life in the waters."
“When did the cats get here?" Nita said.
“Later. Shush! The Fomor came to them too, though, with gifts and fair words, and married with them, and darkened their minds; and they caught the battle-sickness from the Fomor, and most died of it as all the others had: and the ones that were left had the bad blood of the Fomori in them, and became half-monstrous too.. . .Are you getting all this?" Tualha said.
“I think so." Nita resolved to have a look at her manual later, though, if as Tualha said all this information was in there. It might have been in a form that made sense to a cat at this point, but Nita was a little uncertain about it all, particularly about some of the dates.
“W
ell. After this the One grew angry that Its fair land was being ruined, and sent another people to live here. That was the Tuatha de Danaan, the Children and People of the Goddess Danu. They tried to parley with the Fir Bolg, but the Fir Bolg were sick with the battle-sickness of their Fomor blood, and would make no parley. So there was a great fight at the Plain of the Towers, Moytura. The battle came out a draw, and both sides drew apart and waited for a sign. And the sign came, sent by the One: the young hero-god, Lugh the Allcrafted. He told the Tuatha to bring the four treasures of the people of Dana, the Cup and Stone and Sword and Spear they had brought with them when they first came there from the Four Oldest Cities. Seven years he reforged those treasures with the power that was in him. Then the Children of Danu went forth to battle once more at Moytura. Lugh went forward with the Spear called Luin, and with it destroyed Balor of the Deadly Eye, and the Fomori."
Tualha stopped, panting a little. Nita made a list in her head. 'That's, let's see," she said,"six invasions. If you count the Tuatha."
“It's all invasions," said Tualha, “from the land's point of view."
Nita thought about that for a moment. “You may have something there. So then who threw the Tuatha out?"
Tualha laughed at her. "Sure, you're joking me," she said. "They're still here."
"What?" Nita said.
A leaf went by Tualha on the breeze. She jumped at it, missed spectacularly, and came down on the ground so hard that Nita could hear the breath go out of her in a squeak. Nita couldn't help it any more: she burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, I really am," she said, "but I think you need some practice."
Tualha looked at her scathingly. "When you're a cat-bard," she said, "you get to choose. You get to be fast, or you get to be clever. And no offence, but I prefer clever. Not sure what you prefer, Shonaiula ni Cealodhain," she muttered, and scuttered off.
Nita chuckled a little, then got up and made her way back the way Tualha had gone, through the area between the riding school and the stables. As she went she noticed a sort of burning smell, and put her head quickly into the stable-block to make sure that something flammable hadn't fallen into the hay. She couldn't see anything but one of the grooms leading a chestnut horse out.