Kit looked at Nita. “What?”
This, the white hole said, all of this. He made another circle.
“Oh! A planet,” Nita said. “See, there’s our star.” She pointed, and the white hole rotated slightly to look.
Artificer within us, he said, maybe I have blown my quanta, after all. I always wanted to see a planet, but I never got around to it. Habit, I guess. You get used to sitting around emitting X rays after a while, and you don’t think of doing anything else. You want to see some? he asked suddenly. He sounded a little insecure.
“Uh, maybe you’d better not,” Nita said.
Why not? They’re really pretty.
“We’re not built to see them. And we’re also not built to take hard radiation. Our atmosphere shuts most of it out.”
An actual planet, the white hole said, wondering and delighted, with a genuine atmosphere. Well! If this is a planet, there definitely has to be an Advisory around somewhere. Could you help me find one?
“Uhh—” Kit looked uncertainly at the white hole. “Sure. But do you think you could help me find some power? And Nita get her pen back?”
The white hole looked Kit up and down. Some potential, some potential, he muttered. I could probably have you emitting light pretty quickly, if we worked together on a regular basis. Maybe even some alpha. We’ll see. What’s a pen?
“What’s your name?” Kit asked. “I mean, we can’t just call you ‘hey you’ all the time.”
True, the white hole said. My name is Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd’enagouni— and at the same time he went flickering through a pattern of colors that was evidently the visual translation.
“Ky—elik—” Nita began.
“Fred,” Kit said quickly. “Well,” he added as they looked at him again, “if we have to yell for help or something, the other way’s too long. And that was the only part I got, anyway.”
“Is that okay with you?” Nita asked.
The white hole made his figure-eight shrug again. Better than having my truename mangled, I guess, he said, and chuckled silently in another flicker of light. Fred, then. And you are?
“Nita.”
“Kit.”
I see why you like your namings short, Fred said. All right. Tell me what a ‘pen’ is, and I’ll try to help you find it. But we really must get to an Advisory as fast as we can.
“Okay,” Kit said. “Let’s break the circle and go talk.”
“Sounds good,” Nita said, and began to erase the diagrams they had drawn. Kit cut the wizards’ knot and scuffed the circle open in a few places, while Nita took a moment to wave her hand through the now empty air. “Not bad for a first spell,” she said with satisfaction.
I meant to ask, Fred said politely. What’s a spell?
Nita sighed, and smiled, and picked up her book, motioning Fred to follow her over to where Kit sat. It was going to be a long afternoon, but she didn’t care. Magic was loose in the world.
Research and Development
The afternoon turned inevitably into evening, and as evening started to shade toward night Nita and Kit inevitably had to go their separate ways. It wasn’t that either of them precisely hated going home, even under these circumstances. Their family lives were fairly tolerable, and as they got around to discussing such things, it turned out that they both got around well enough with their parents and their sister or sisters (Kit, as it turned out, had two). But Nita in particular shortly started to discover that it was a nuisance to have to hide things… especially since Dairine had the nose of a bloodhound for concealment, and the clever nosiness of someone from CSI when it came to finding out what was really going on.
That Nita should turn up so late without having called or texted first was in itself interesting to Dairine, and when Nita finally came swinging in so long after dinner, she found her little sister actually lurking in the kitchen and (unusually for her) helping her mom clear up after those of the family who’d already eaten.
“Sorry, Mom,” Nita said as she came in and shrugged out of her backpack. “I got distracted…”
“No problem, honey,” her mother said. “It wasn’t anything fancy tonight, you can always microwave it. Just go wash up first.”
“Where were you?” Dairine demanded, following Nita through the kitchen.
“Out reading,” Nita said. This was true, insofar as it went. She found that all the business in the manual about it being important for a wizard not to play fast and loose with the truth wasn’t a problem in and of itself. But normally one of the ways she managed Dairine, when her sister got too curious about things, had been to simply lie through her teeth. With that option suddenly unavailable, life was going to get a little more complicated than usual. Good thing I’ve got a secret weapon…
“New books? Lemme see!” Dairine said, making a grab for Nita’s backpack.
Nita swung it easily out of her reach as she headed through the kitchen and made for her room. “Mom, please get the dweebling off my case for five minutes while I go attend to my bodily functions?!”
“Dairine,” Nita’s mother said behind her in her patented patience-of-a-saint voice, “let your sister breathe for a few moments, she’s just in the door.”
“But Mom, I just want to see…”
Nita made her escape at best speed and hurriedly shut her bedroom door. She pulled the manual out of the backpack and dropped it on her desk; then yanked her closet door open and tossed the backpack gently up onto the top shelf.
A second later Fred emerged from under the backpack’s flap. He hung there in midair above the top shelf, brilliantly illuminating the clothes and shoes and piled-up papers and books and other stuff in the closet as he looked around him. What a charming… volume of space, he said, rather in the tone of voice of someone who’s been expecting a Marriott and instead finds a Motel 6.
“More inner than outer, sorry,” Nita said very softly. “Look, here’s a little private place for you.” Also on the top shelf was an empty shoebox: she pushed the lid aside. “Stay in here, okay? And don’t let anybody but me see you. I’ll come get you out in a while.”
That’s fine, thank you, Fred said, dropping himself into the shoebox. After the day I’ve had, a little darkness and rest will be most welcome.
“And watch what you emit,” Nita said, in hurried afterthought, before she pulled the shoebox’s lid closed. “No infrared! You’ll wind up burning the place down.”
Noted. X-rays be all right?
“No! We’ll wind up glowing in the dark.”
You say that as if it was a bad thing, Fred said, sounding bemused.
“Just trust me on this,” Nita whispered. “Lights out, now! I’ll be back later.”
She dropped the lid on the shoebox and closed the closet door: then paused by the desk just long enough to brush her fingers against the cover of the manual, feeling the slight buzz she was expecting. “Right,” she said softly, and headed out to the bathroom to wash up and go back out to the dining room.
It would be another hour or two before Nita saw what then happened: her bedroom door easing open, and Dairine sneaking in to look around. Quickly and quietly she went to Nita’s closet, opened it, pulled her backpack down, and rummaged through it. “Books,” she said under her breath. “What was the big deal?”
Vaguely annoyed at having found nothing worth her suspicions, Dairine paused by Nita’s desk, picked up the “library book” that said So You Want to Be a Wizard? on its spine, riffled through the pages, and sniffed. “Card tricks,” she said under her breath. “Rabbits in hats. Wonder if all this pummeling’s starting to unhinge her brain…” She dropped the book and went out again, softly closing the door behind her.
What Dairine did not then see – but Nita did later – was the sudden glow of light that brilliantly outlined the closet door, as if someone had just turned on a two hundred watt bulb inside.
Hello? said a somewhat diffident mental voice. Hello?
It got no answer.
Such a peculiar place, it said to itself after a few moments, and the light once more dimmed down to nothing.
*
Some hours later, Nita was in her bed and under her blankets, with a light shining through them visibly enough for anyone who might have been standing outside. The sounds of soft conversation were coming from underneath it.
“I know,” Nita was saying, “but it’s really a nuisance that the spells we want to do need all these weird ingredients. Sugar cubes and batteries… who needs them when you’ve got the Speech? It’s supposed to be able to manipulate the actual structure of the universe.”
“They’re shortcuts,” Kit said from the manual. “It’s to do with how they bend space around them…” He yawned. “Sorry, it’s catching up with me. Kind of a crazy day…”
“No problem.” Nita had her manual open to the page they were discussing, and on the same page she could see Kit’s face, flashlight-lit under his own blankets, on the page. They were teleconferencing using the manual’s native comms management routines, rather than drive themselves crazy with trying to get their phones to sync up with their manuals just yet. “I’m wrecked too.”
“That’s exactly why you go for the shortcuts sometimes,” Kit said. “The spells that just use words take it out of you way worse than the ones with physical components.”
“Tell me about it. I feel like I did three gym classes in a row. Hope it doesn’t take too long for our magical muscles to bulk up…”
“Well, we won’t have to bulk up too much for what we have to do first. Tomorrow morning Fred’ll help us put Operation Frustrated Bully into operation as soon as we see Joanne… yeah, buddy?”
Absolutely, said Fred from where he was perched on the upper corner of the manual Nita had braced in front of her against her knees. You get her to produce this ‘pen’ thing, and I’ll do the rest.
“Great,” Nita said, and sighed.
“What?” Kit said. “It’s not going to be a big deal.”
“No, it’s not that as such,” Nita said. “I just keep thinking about this Naming of Lights thing. And I don’t even know why. I keep getting this feeling I read something about it in the manual, and can’t remember what…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kit said. “Fred’s Advisories’ll know what do to about it when we find them…”
“Yeah, about that—”
“Nita?” said a voice from outside the covers.
Nita froze. Then, very carefully, she closed the manual and put her head out from under the blankets. “Yeah?”
“Who’re you talking to, sweetie?”
Nita gulped. “Uh, somebody I met.”
“’Somebody’?” her mother said. “Care to be a little more precise?”
“Uh, a kid. A friend. From school.”
Her mother sighed as she came in, a long-suffering sound that Nita suspected of concealing the thought, At least she’s got a friend. “Sweetheart, you know the rules about phone calls after lights out…”
Nita heaved a very long-suffering sigh, reached out from under her blanket and handed her mother her phone.
Her mom stood there by the bed and let out a sigh of her own. “And while we’re on the subject of lights…”
The light under the blanket went out, and Nita silently handed her mother a flashlight.
“Thanks, Nita,” her mother said. “Now try to get some sleep!”
“Okay, Mom,” Nita said.
The door closed, and the room went dark.
Then, very very softly, the snickering began.
“Was that perfect?”
“Yes!”
“Did I tell you?”
“Yes!”
A pause. Is it all right now?
“Yeah, Fred. It’s okay, dial it back up. She thinks I’ve been disarmed.” Nita was having to struggle to keep the giggling under control.
And that was all right?
“Absolutely.”
“We’re gonna get you a part-time job as a security light,” Kit said from inside the manual, sounding a little muffled until Nita opened the book’s covers again.
“I don’t know, I think he makes a really good nightlight…”
“Well, don’t think you’re gonna hog him all the time! I get him tomorrow.”
“Right, I heard you the last time…”
It’s so nice to be in demand, Fred said, sounding very pleased.
They both chuckled at him. “So let’s go over the plan one more time,” Nita said. “And then before you go, let me show you Dairine snooping around in here before. I had the manual on record when I went to dinner. Wait’ll you see her face…!”
*
The next morning they were at the schoolyard early, in order to make sure they wouldn’t miss Joanne and her crew. Nita and Kit sat on the curb by the front door to the school, staring across at the packed dirt and dull grass of the athletic field next to the building. Kit leafed through his wizards’ manual, while Fred hung over his shoulder and looked around with mild interest at everything. Will it be long? he said, his light flickering slightly.
“No,” Nita said. She was shaking. God, after the other day I want nothing to do with her. But if I’m going to get my pen back, I’ve got no choice about this… “Look, it’ll be all right,” Kit said, paging through his manual. “Just do it the way we decided last night. Get close to her, keep her busy for a little while. Fred’ll do the rest.”
“It’s keeping her busy that worries me,” Nita muttered. “Her idea of busy usually involves her fists and my face.”
I don’t understand, Fred said, and Nita had to laugh briefly—she and Kit had heard that phrase about a hundred times since Fred arrived. He used it on almost everything. What are you afraid of?
“This,” Nita said, pointing to her black eye. “And this—” uncovering a bruise. “And this, and this—”
Fred regarded her with a moment’s discomfiture. I thought you came that way. Joanne makes this happen?
“Uh-huh. And it hurts getting this way.”
But she only changes your outsides. Aren’t your insides still the same afterward?
Nita had to stop and think about that one.
“Okay,” Kit said suddenly, “here’s the Advisory list for our area.” He ran a finger down the page. “And here’s the one in town. Twenty-seven Hundred Rose—”
“That’s up the hill past the school. What’s the name?”
“Lessee. ‘Swale, T.B., and Romeo, C.J. Research Advisories, temporospatial adjustments, entastics, nonspecific scryings—’“
“Wait a minute,” Nita said hurriedly. “‘Swale’? You mean Nutcase Swale? We can’t go in there, Kit! The place is just too weird. Everybody knows that! Funny noises at all hours, weird lights, it’s like a haunted house or something—”
“If it is, it’s haunted by wizards.” Kit sounded surprisingly unconcerned. “We might as well go after school, it’s only five or six blocks up the road.”
They were quiet for a while. It was about twenty minutes before the bell would ring for the doors to open, and a few early kids were. “Maybe we could rig you a defense against getting hit,” Kit said, as he kept looking through his manual. “How about this?” He pointed at one page, and both Nita and Fred looked at the formula he was indicating. All it needed was the right words. It would be something of a strain to carry the shield for long, but Nita wouldn’t have to; and any attempt to hit her would just glance off.
Problem is, Fred said, that spell will alter the field slightly around this Joanne person. I’m going to have a hard enough time matching my pattern to that of your pen so that I can, get it off her—if indeed she has it. Her own field is going to interfere, and so will yours, Nita. More stress on the space in the area and I might not be able to get your pen back at all.
Nita shook her head. She could tolerate another black eye if it meant getting that pen back. “Forget it,” she said, still shaking, and leaned forward a bit, elbows on knees and face in ha
nds, trying to relax. Above her the old maple trees were muttering morning thoughts in the early sunlight, languid observations on the weather and the decreasing quality of the tenant birds who built nests in their branches. Out in the field the grass was singing a scratchy soprano chorus—growgrowgrowgrowgrowgrow—which broke off abruptly and turned into an annoyed mob sound of boos and razzes as one of the groundskeepers, way across the field, started up a lawn mower. I’m good with plants, Nita thought. I guess I take after Dad. Wonder if I’ll ever be able to hear people this way…?
“Heads up,” Kit said under his breath, nudging her. “You’re on,” he said.
Nita looked up and saw Joanne walking into the schoolyard. As their eyes met. Joanne recognized her handiwork on Nita’s face and smiled.
Now or never! Nita thought, and got up before she had a chance to chicken out and blow everything. She walked over to Joanne without a pause, fast, to keep the tremor in her knees from showing. Oh, Fred, please be behind me. And what in the world can I say to her?
“Joanne? Want my pen back,” she said. Or rather it simply fell out of her mouth as she got close, and she went hot at her own stupidity.
Yet the momentary shocked look on Joanne’s face made her think that maybe saying what was on her mind hadn’t been so stupid after all. Joanne’s shock at what must have looked like Nita’s cockiness didn’t last. A second later she was smiling again. “The first eye getting better too fast, Callahan?” she said slowly. “Prefer to always have a matching pair? That can be arranged.”
Nita swallowed. “No, just the pen, thanks.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Joanne said, and then grinned. “Guess all the blunt objects you keep running your face into have started messing up the inside of your skull. Not that it wasn’t already pretty messed up to begin with, geek girl.” Behind her, her crew snickered.
“I had a space pen on me the other day when you jumped me, and it was gone afterward. One of you took it, and I want it back.” Nita was shaking worse than ever, but she was also surprised that the fist hadn’t hit yet. They’re having too much fun. Don’t escalate this too fast, keep it going… And there over Joanne’s shoulder was a flicker, a pinpoint of light, hardly to be seen, looking at her.