A nervous expression passed across her mother’s face, which she wasn’t able to hide.
“It’s about the biopsy, isn’t it?” Nita said.
Her mother closed her eyes, and Nita felt the fear that went right through her. “Yup,” her mother said.
Nita didn’t even have to ask, Was it positive? She knew. “I’ll go find her,” Nita said. But she didn’t let go of her mother’s hand. “Mom,” she said, “I really hate this.”
“I hate it, too.”
“All I want is for you to be home again.”
Her mother opened her eyes and gave Nita a sly look. “Yelling at you to clean your room?”
“Sounds like paradise.”
“I’m going to remind you of that later.”
Nita found a smile somewhere. “You do that.”
“I will. Go on, sweetie. Do your work … and we’ll see what happens.”
Nita kissed her mom and got out of there in a hurry, before the mood changed. She went out into the hall and saw Dairine leaning in the doorway of a little alcove where there were some vending machines—her gaze trained on the floor, her arms folded.
Thanks for the circle, she said silently to Dairine as she went over to her. You got a couple of minutes? Mom wants to talk to you.
About what? I can’t do anything. Dairine didn’t look up. All this power, and it’s not enough.
Nita leaned against the same wall, folded her arms, stared down at the same undistinguished gray linoleum. I know, she said. It’d be nice to be able to just make all this vanish. But—
But what can I do?!
Don’t let her go through this alone, was all Nita could think of to say.
Dairine nodded and went off down the hall. Nita watched her sister go, small and quick and tense, shoulders hunched, into their mother’s room.
13: Tuesday Evening
When Kit got home at last and lugged his share of the shopping into the kitchen, it was nearly seven.
Neets? Kit said silently as he started unpacking the contents of too many plastic bags onto the sofa. There were some T-shirts and some new jeans, but mostly the contents of these bags seemed to be socks, socks, and more socks.
Nothing. Nope, she’s off doing her training-universe stuff already. Can’t blame her.
“…and it’s all got to be washed separately,” his mama said, sounding less than enthusiastic, as she came in from the car. “Kit, honey, just make two piles, dark stuff and light stuff. This is going to take me forever.”
Ponch came bounding in from outside, released from the backyard. “I think certain people want a walk,” Kit’s pop said as he entered and started unpacking another bag onto the kitchen table. “You go do that, son; I’ll take care of these— Did you leave any socks in the store for the rest of humanity?” he called after Kit’s mother.
“No. You’re going to be wearing these till you die. Where’d you hide the laundry basket?”
Kit gladly left his father in the company of all the world’s socks, went to the back door, looked at the leash. Then he picked up the other one he’d left hanging beside it, invisible to nonwizardly eyes. “Ponch?”
“Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah!”
They went down the street together, Ponch running ahead to take care of business while Kit went along behind him, paging through his manual as twilight deepened toward full dark. He found a good-sized section discussing the theory and structure of the practice universes, but no information on how to get into them. Access to the aschetic continua and to more detailed information is released on a need-to-go basis, the manual said. Consult your Area Advisory or Senior for advice and assessment.
Yeah, and what if they say no? Kit closed the manual and shoved it into his “pocket.” And what if Nita gets pissed about my asking, because she thinks I think she can’t handle it?
Better not to get involved.
Except I am involved.
It wasn’t just that Kit liked Nita’s mother. He couldn’t imagine a world without her, and knew Nita couldn’t, either. The shock of finding out what was happening was giving way to the fear of what life would be like afterward: after—
He didn’t even want to think the word, think about it at all. And neither does Neets…
Her fear was on Kit’s mind. It was true that the two of them had been in a fair number of frightening situations. But mostly these hadn’t involved the kind of fear that lingered; they’d been over with in a hurry. What Kit had felt in Nita today, by contrast, had settled deep into her and started to turn her into something of a stranger. And there’s nothing I can do to help, really. She’s got to get over it herself.
If she can.
Ponch came running back to Kit. Let’s go!
They headed down the street, to the side gate of the school. It was usually locked, but this was hardly a problem for Kit; he and the padlock through the gate’s latch were old friends. As he reached the gate he reached out and held the padlock briefly. “Hey there, Yalie,” he said in the Speech.
It wasn’t as if inanimate objects were intelligent, as such, but they didn’t mind being treated that way. Who goes there?
“Like you don’t know.”
The padlock popped open in his hand. Kit slipped it out, softly opened the gate and let himself and Ponch through, then locked up again. “You keep an eye on things now.”
You can depend on me.
Kit smiled. Ponch had launched himself away across the grass, in the general direction of the school buildings. Kit let him run awhile, then whistled to call him back. All the lights in the school were off except for the exit lights at the ends of the hallways, and the houses nearby were all screened from the road and parking lot on this side by hedges. No one could see them in the near-darkness.
He shook out the wizardly leash and put the shorter loop around his wrist. Ponch ran back to him, jumped up, and put his forepaws against Kit; Kit braced himself and slipped the bigger loop around the dog’s neck.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Together they stepped into the deeper dark—
—and walked several steps more through it before breaking out into light. There wasn’t much light, though. A dim gray illumination inhabited the space, a thunderstorm twilight, tinged greenish like a bruise. A fog swirled around them, too, of the same color as the light. Where is this? Kit said silently to Ponch, down the leash. I wasn’t thinking about this.
Neither was I. I don’t always come out where I’d planned to.
They walked on through the grayness together. Ponch was sniffing at the featureless ground as they went. Not very exciting, Kit said. How about if we—
Not yet.
This assured tone from his dog was strange enough, but there was also something urgent about it. You smell something?
Always. But here— Ponch smelled the air, then went forward again with his nose to the ground—it’s something different
Like what?
Like— The light was getting dingier, fading away—an odd, slow effect, as if the universe were hooked up to a dimmer, and the whole thing were being turned slowly, slowly down. It’s you, but it’s not you, Ponch said, perturbed.
Dimmer and dimmer… and then Kit caught his first sight of them in the dark.
He could feel a rustling, hear a shifting in the shadowless light that was fading away all around him. The hair went up on the back of Kit’s neck as he thought, I really don’t want to be stuck here in the dark with them!
He’d never really seen them, when he was little. Well, duh, of course not! Because I was imagining them. But his early childhood had been haunted by these creatures: the things themselves by night, and the fear of them by day. Kit took a step backward. Beside him Ponch held his ground, but he whimpered softly, the same eager sound he made when he had a squirrel in his sights.
The rustling sound got louder, seeming to come from all around him. Kit glanced about him, getting more nervous by the minute. His childhood night fe
ars hadn’t been anything like what some adults seemed to expect: grotesque unlikely things hiding somewhere specific—under the bed, in the closet, or behind a dresser. They’d been nowhere near so easy to nail down, or to ridicule. Silly monster-shapes would have been infinitely preferable to his tormentors, which had had no shapes at all. Shadow had been their element, twilight their breeding place; and if summer had been Kit’s favorite season when he was little, it was because in summer the nights were shortest and the twilight a long time coming. It had been years since he’d thought of these creatures. But maybe they haven’t forgotten me. And now, in a place where things that weren’t real could become that way, his fears had come looking for him.
But have they? Kit thought. Or did I find them—make them—the way I made those other worlds?
He clenched his jaw as the scrabbling sound of jaws munching and chewing around him got louder. It doesn’t matter, Kit thought. If I run away now, they win. No way I’m going to let that happen. His eyes narrowed. I’m a wizard. And anyway, I got over these things years ago!
But would that make a difference? The shadows around Kit grew deeper, the scrabbling noises louder than before, closer. The thought of dead eyes staring at him out of the dark—no-color eyes that were black holes even in the night—brought the hair up on the back of his neck. Kit turned, thinking he saw something; the old familiar way the shadow turned and writhed against his bedroom wall when a car went by in the street, flinching from the headlights, then wavering up and out into the dark again when the lights died, the shape towering up against the wall and dissolving its features. Kit gasped, felt around in the back of his mind for a wizardry that would save him—
—then abruptly stopped, because nothing was towering up anywhere. The scrabbling noises were still going on all around him and getting louder, but whatever these things were, they weren’t his night terrors. Now he caught the first real glimpse of one of them as it came close enough to be clearly seen through the dimness…
What Kit saw coming toward him was something that looked more like a giant centipede than anything else. It didn’t seem to have a front or back end, just a middle, and about a million legs, but that was all. Millipede, Kit corrected himself, watching the shiny gray-black creature, about a yard long, come chittering and skittering along this space’s streaky gray floor, at the head of a group of maybe twenty of them. This whole scenario was looking more and more like a bug’s-eye view of a kitchen floor late in the day, before anyone turned the lights on. The surface on which he and Ponch and the millipedes stood even started to look like linoleum.
Kit listened to his pulse starting to go back to normal as the first millipede came cruising along toward him, all those little feet whispering against the floor—a completely innocuous sound, now that he knew what it was. Ponch looked suspiciously at the creature, and a growl stirred down in his throat.
No, it’s okay, Kit said. Let it go. It won’t hurt us.
Are you sure?
Kit had a spell ready just in case. I think it’s all right, he said. Just let it go. Unless—
“I’m on errantry, and I greet you,” Kit said in the Speech.
The millipede creature paused, reared half its body up off the ground, and faced the two of them, its little legs working in midair. But there was no sense of recognition, no reply. The creature dropped down again and went flowing on past him and Ponch, all those legs making a tickly shuffling sound as it went. All its friends went flowing away after it, the little legs rustling and bustling softly along on the floor. Kit watched them vanish into the still-growing shadows, and slowly relaxed.
Now why did you make those? Ponch said, looking after them with a disapproving expression.
Did I make them?
I know I didn’t, Ponch said in a reproachful tone. And I don’t care for the way they smelled. Don’t make any more, all right?
I think we’re in agreement on that. Kit went forward, walking but not with intention to make another universe, or anything else, right this second. He just wanted to recover a little.
Ponch padded along beside him, his tongue hanging out. Those were like the things I see sometimes when I’m asleep and it doesn’t go right.
Kit knew that Ponch dreamed, but it hadn’t occurred to him that dogs might have nightmares.So what do you usually do when you see them?
Bite them. And then run away.
Kit laughed. I think if I bit one of those, it wouldn’t have tasted real wonderful. But once he’d seen the creature clearly, it hadn’t seemed terribly threatening. In the past he’d seen aliens that had looked much more horrendous. If that was a nightmare, it was someone else’s. …But if things had gone a little differently, it could have been mine. If I’d run, for example. Kit was suddenly certain of that. I need to watch what I think in here, not let my mind wander.
He looked down at Ponch. You want to make something first?
Squirrels! Ponch said.
Kit rolled his eyes. Look, I changed my mind. Let me go first. We can do the squirrels last, and you can have yourself a big run around while I rest.
All right.
They made their way out of the dimness and walked through fifteen or twenty new and different universes in fairly rapid succession. It was getting easier for Kit now to imagine these quickly, but all the same he spent a little more time in each one, making sure the small details looked correct. After all, if these things are going to be here after I’m gone, I should take a little more care. In one of them he spent a long while under that world’s Saturn-like rings, watching to make sure they behaved as they really should when they rose and set. In another he stood on a long narrow spit of land pushing out into a turbulent sea, while the waves crashed all around him, and waited what seemed like nearly an hour for what he knew was coming: a fleet of huge-sailed ships that came riding up out of a terrible storm and with difficulty made landfall by that strange new shore.
As the last of the strangers came up out of the sea and into their new home, bearing their black banner with its single white tree, Kit glanced down at Ponch, who sat beside him, supremely unconcerned, scratching behind one ear.
The dog looked up as he finished scratching. Aren’t you done yet? Why don’t you find one you like and stay there?
Kit had to laugh. Like you want to.
Well, yes!
Come on, then. Squirrels…
Ponch leaped forward, and the sea and sky vanished as that universe flowed around them, full-formed—a great grove of those huge trees suddenly standing around the two of them as if it had been there forever. A veritable carpet of squirrels shrieked and leaped away as Ponch came plunging down into the middle of them.
Kit chuckled and went strolling off among the trees while the barking and squeaking and chattering scaled up behind him. Maybe Neets’ll be back by the time I get home, he thought, heading into the depths of the green shade. She’s got to see this.
The greenness went darker around him, the trees becoming fewer but much taller, and their high canopy becoming more solid. Kit stuffed his hands into his pockets and gazed down at the grass as he scuffed through it. He was feeling oddly uncomfortable. Until now any thought of Nita would have been perfectly ordinary. But now thinking about her unavoidably brought up the image of her mother. It was as unavoidable as the idea of what might happen to Nita’s mom.
Imagine if it was my mama. Or my pop…
But Kit couldn’t imagine it. His mouth went dry just at the thought. It’s no wonder she didn’t call me. She’s been completely freaked out.
The shadows fell more deeply around him as he went, and though Kit could still feel the grass under his feet, he noticed that it was becoming indistinct. At least Neets is working on an answer, he thought. But there was no avoiding the thought that no matter what any of them did for Nita’s mother, wizards or not—finally, there was always the possibility that nothing would work.
He passed the last of the trees and came to a place where there was only grass
left, vague on the ground as if partially transparent against a dark substrate. Kit walked slowly toward the edge of this, and slowly the light around him faded down toward darkness again—a clean plain empty darkness, not like the place where the millipedes had been: simply space with nothing in it. He paused there, turned to look behind him. Distant, as if seen through a reducing lens, all the trees were gathered together in their little halo of sunlight and glowing green grass, and Kit could just make out a small black shape running back and forth, being initially avoided and then chased by many little gray forms.
Kit turned around and looked out into the dark again. Now it was just an innocent void—no millipedes, no ghosts of childhood fears. I wonder how I got so scared of the dark, anyway? It all seemed such a long time ago, and that phase of his life had come to an end, without warning, when he was eight. He could remember it vividly, those first heady nights when he realized that he wasn’t afraid anymore and could lie there in the dark and stare at the ceiling of his room and not be afraid of falling asleep—not have to lie there shaking at the thought of what lay waiting for him on the other side of dream.
Before that, the sight of this would have left me scared, to death. But now there was something intriguing about this imageless emptiness. Kit stood there for a long while, and then felt something cold and wet touch his hand.
He looked down. Ponch was sitting there beside him, gazing up at him. Bored already? Kit said.
Bored? Oh, no. But it isn’t good to leave you by yourself a long time. It’s rude.
Kit smiled. It’s okay. I coped. He looked back toward the trees. There was a gray line beneath the nearest trees: the squirrels, looking for Ponch.
Ponch looked back, too. It happened faster that time, Ponch said, this world.
Yeah, Kit said.
I think it was because you’d seen it before.
Kit looked down at his dog, briefly distracted. It wasn’t as if Ponch wasn’t normally fairly smart. But this kind of thought, or interaction, even when the Speech was involved, wasn’t exactly what Kit would have expected. Is he getting smarter? Or am I just getting better at understanding him? Or is it a little of both?