“Who is she?” Roshaun said.
“She’s Carmela. Our neighbor,” Dairine said. “One of those lesser life-forms you don’t want anything to do with.”
There was a silence that lasted for several seconds, a noticeable period when dealing with Roshaun. “She’s magnificent,” he said at last.
Dairine burst out laughing. “Oh, boy,” she said, when she got enough breath back to speak, “does her brother ever need to hear that you said that!” If he does ever hear about it, she thought. How do I make best use of a piece of information like this? The alien prince has the hots for Kit’s sister. This is too funny—
“What did she mean,” Filif said, “she wanted to decorate me?”
Oh no, Dairine thought, as the humor of the moment abruptly evaporated. “Some of us have a tradition here,” she said. “There’s a time of year when we bring trees into our houses”—she was not going to tell him that most of those trees had been severed from their roots—”and we put decorations on them. Pretty things… glass balls… lights… ”
There was a surprisingly long silence from Filif, at the end of which he said, “I want to see!!”
“I’ll find you a picture,” Dairine said. “Shame you weren’t here at Christmas.” Then she wished she could take the line back. To see thousands of slowly dying trees standing around in vacant lots waiting to be bought by my people and put on display until their needles drop off?! Do not put so much emphasis on this that he wants to come back someday and see this for himself!
“But if we, uh, if we go to the mall today,” Dairine said, desperately trying to cover by manufacturing a plan for his and everybody else’s distraction from the dangerous subject, “we can decorate you with other stuff.”
Carmela reappeared in the dining room as if by magic. “Someone mentioned the mall?”
“Let’s go!” Filif said. “I want to see the decorations!”
“You all need to put on your disguises first,” Dairine said, “because there will be no end of trouble if you go out the way you are. And I want to see the disguises before we go anywhere.”
“I’m sure I won’t need anything to pass unremarked in this culture,” Roshaun said.
Carmela started to laugh. “Oh, you are so funny!” she said, and the dry way that she said it brought Roshaun up short. “No, of course you don’t need to do anything! You look just like everyone around here! Oh, my.” She turned away, ostentatiously half covering her face with one hand and throwing a look at Dairine that Roshaun could not possibly have missed.
He didn’t miss it. “Perhaps the lady would show me the correct manner of a disguise for this world,” Roshaun said, all haughtiness again, “since we have seen so few examples of this world’s dress… ”
“Dairine,” Carmela said, “can we use the TV for a moment? I’ll show him a few things and lay a groundwork.”
“Be my guest,” Dairine said, drinking some tea. “If you think it’ll do any good… ”
She went in with her mug of tea and sat down at the table with Sker’ret and Filif as Carmela and Roshaun headed into the living room. “So how are you guys this morning?” Dairine said to them.
“Everything’s well,” Sker’ret said. “Though I’m getting hungry again… ”
“We’ll find you something,” Dairine said.
“And how about you?” Filif said. “Are you well?”
From the living room, Dairine heard Carmela’s muted chuckle. A moment later, Roshaun said, “Under no circumstances will I be seen in anything like that—”
Dairine grinned. “Getting better every minute,” she said, and drank her tea.
The mall was still fairly quiet when they got there later that morning. It was Sunday morning, and a lot of the most serious shoppers wouldn’t be in for some hours yet.
There were, however, going to be a lot of kids there who were also on spring break, getting an early start on their malling. It was meeting these that Dairine was secretly most dreading, but she refused to show any sign of her concern to her fellow wizards.
She had been nervous enough, earlier, over the prospect of simply getting them all out of the driveway. But in retrospect, that had worked well enough. Everyone’s disguises looked good, and stayed in place, repaying the hour or two of work that Dairine and Carmela had spent on their charges before letting them out.
Filif had needed the most coaching. His disguise was no shape-change, but a visual illusion keyed to a wizardry he built, with some assistance from Dairine, to mimic human limb action, facial affect, and clothing. The illusion would not withstand close examination, such as being touched. But Dairine had no plans to let anyone near enough to touch him, and told him so.
“Your people must be very easily shocked,” Filif said, in a pitying tone of voice. It sounded funny coming from the big, stocky, dark-haired guy that he’d become, partly with Carmela’s coaching.
“They are,” Dairine said, “and sometimes so am I. I certainly will be if your disguise falls off in the middle of the street because somebody bumps up against you. So keep your distance from people, and we’ll all be fine.”
“What about me?” Sker’ret said. “Do I look all right?”
“You look excellent,” Dairine said, sizing him up. Carmela had talked him more or less into the shape of a slim, redheaded surfer guy. “In fact, I’m not sure you need any advice from me. You may want to go talk to Carmela about that sweatshirt, though.” The sweatshirt was illusionary and looked perfectly orthodox, except for the words “Will Do Magic for Food,” which he had added to the front of the illusion, in the Speech.
And then there had been Roshaun. Carmela had worked him over most effectively, and without completely losing her temper—a feat Dairine had to admire. Roshaun was “wearing,” over some of his real clothes, a long, floppy shirt and large trousers that made him look rather like an unusually elegant rapper. “You’ve got the height to carry them,” Carmela had said, just a little admiring. “Not many people do.” And Roshaun had fallen for the line. Carmela had also made him reduce his epic ponytail to a more manageable length, at least in illusion. The two long front locks in front of his ears had given Carmela the most trouble; Roshaun adamantly refused to put them behind his ears, where they would show less. “They’re supposed to show!” he said.
“What they’re going to show here,” Carmela said “is that you look a little too different. All you need is for some wise guy to come along and pull one of those—”
Roshaun looked at her, indignant. “Who would dare?!”
“I would,” Carmela said, suiting the gesture to the concept. Roshaun winced. “And if it’s something I’d do, it’s something that will probably occur to other people. This is not your palace you’re going into, Your Royal Highness. This is a mall. You are entering a world where anything can happen—mostly having to do with people getting real judgmental about your looks.” She raised her eyebrows. “Fortunately, your looks are generally okay. But if I were you, I wouldn’t push your luck with the hair.”
“As you say,” Roshaun had muttered. But it was plain he was agreeing with ill grace, if any at all.
At the time, Carmela had thrown Dairine a look that said, This boy is going to take some kicking into shape. Dairine had kept her face very straight. But Carmela had caught her answering flicker of eyes, and knew that Dairine was in complete agreement.
With everyone’s disguises well in place, they had set out for the mall. Originally, Dairine’s plan had been to do a private-gating transit there, a variant of Kit’s and Nita’s “beam-me-up-Scotty” spell. She had long had several sets of prelocated coordinates laid in for each of the major malls nearby. But Dairine was astounded to come up against serious resistance to this concept from all her guests—even Roshaun, who she would’ve thought would resist so plebeian an option as walking on general principles.
“One cannot truly experience a place by doing fast transits to and from locations,” Roshaun said, looking down his nose at
Dairine. “Having come all this way, I may as well see what this world looks like from the ground up.”
“He’s right,” Sker’ret said. “I see enough gates as it is. Walking has got to be lots more fun.”
Dairine had sighed. “Just so you know that it’s not soft ground we’re going to be walking along,” she said, looking at Filif. “You can’t walk through it. It’s all concrete—”
“I can deal with that,” Filif said. “I haven’t had to walk through any of your floors here; I can manage.”
And as a result, they all walked down Dairine’s street toward Nassau Road, maybe half a mile away, and the bus stop there. It was beautiful, bright, sunny weather today—unusually warm for spring and much warmer than it had been in previous days—and people were out washing their cars, mowing their lawns, doing all the things that would make it easier for them to see that there were aliens walking down their street. Bizarrely, Dairine found herself praying for a return of the rain and gloom, a sudden hailstorm or blizzard—anything that would drive people in out of their front yards and reduce the chances of them seeing some part of her charges’ disguises slip.
To her eyes, they were a motley group… but then Dairine was looking for errors. People who lived on the street and chanced to be looking out their windows probably only saw five kids in a ragged group wandering down the sidewalk together. In particular, Dairine was admiring Sker’ret’s command of the human gait, which he seemed to have no trouble handling. Probably, Dairine thought, it’s all of those legs. If you can manage about forty of them, you shouldn’t have that much trouble with two.
Neither thunder nor rain nor gloom of night answered Dairine’s prayer; but somehow, striding, gliding, or just approximating walking the best they could, everybody made it down to Nassau Road in one piece, and without causing peculiar looks from anybody—even the Nassau County police cruiser that went past them at one point. Dairine had sweated as the cops had gone by; she felt as if she had INSTIGATOR OF ALIEN MALL-CRAWLING FIASCO stenciled across her forehead. But the cops barely glanced at them, having better things to do with their time. Nonetheless, Dairine heaved a sigh of relief when they were gone.
On Nassau Road, they had stood for a while at the corner, waiting for the bus. One going to Roosevelt Field, one of the oldest shopping malls in the area, was scheduled to come by every half hour. “It used to be kind of a dump,” Carmela said, “but they fixed it up—it’s better now.”
“And what does one do in a mall?” Roshaun said.
“Walk around,” Dairine said. “Look at things.”
“What kind of things?” Filif said.
“Decorations,” Dairine said. “Like the kind we were talking about before. Not the seasonal stuff—but the kind of decorations you see in Roshaun’s and Sker’ret’s disguises, the kind that humans wear all the time. Personal ornamentation.”
“Clothes,” Carmela said with relish. “And there are all kinds of other places to buy things. Electronics and appliances, and there’s a food court—”
Sker’ret looked up, instantly fascinated. He was getting the hang of showing his emotions in the human expression. Probably from watching us, Dairine thought. He’s a quick study. At the rate he’s going, we could pass him off as human in a few days… “What kind of food?” said Sker’ret.
Some kinds that we should keep Filif away from, Dairine thought, suddenly remembering the restaurant in the food court that had a huge salad bar. Fortunately, it was at about that point that Carmela began describing one of her favorite places up there—the ice cream stand. The others, even Roshaun, were enthralled by this.
“You freeze food, and then you eat it?” Roshaun said. “Don’t you break your teeth?”
“Not if you’re careful,” Carmela said. She went on talking about ice cream for some minutes, until the bus came. Dairine was fascinated by how much attention Roshaun was paying Carmela. He’s not all that interested in ice cream, Dairine thought. Kit is just about going to bust a gut when he hears about this. I can’t wait for him to call— in fact, if I have a chance, I should message him myself from the mall.
The bus pulled up, and Sker’ret and Filif regarded it with wonder. Roshaun eyed it with some suspicion. “There are other people in this vehicle,” he said.
“Of course there are,” Dairine said behind him. “Wizards are supposed to support public transport. It’s not just that we’re not supposed to be wasting energy: it’s ecologically sound. Besides, you were the one who wanted to use ground transport and see your local environment. Well, here’s the environment for you. So get in, put the money I gave you in the box, and sit down!”
Roshaun did as he was told, though not without throwing a glance at Dairine that suggested he would discuss this impertinence with her later. She snorted and sat down herself.
The ride took about twenty minutes, which ranked among the twenty longest minutes of Dairine’s life. She had cautioned her colleagues not to speak in the bus more than they had to. Because they were using the Speech, the other bus riders would hear them exactly as if they were speaking in their own languages—and members of some of this area’s ethnicities might find that a little strange, in terms of the way the strangers looked. Especially, Dairine thought, considering the kinds of things these guys are likely to be saying if they get started.
But, by and large, the visitors behaved themselves pretty well, at least in terms of not talking. Nothing Dairine could do or say would keep them from plastering their noses up against the window of the bus—at least in Filif’s and Sker’ret’s cases; Roshaun would not have done anything so déclassé, and sat there looking scornfully unfocused. But even he would steal the occasional glance of startled wonder out the windows, and the others gawked at everything they saw, exclaiming softly to themselves sometimes when they just couldn’t hold it in any longer. Everything was amazing to them. Storefronts, parked cars, parking meters, traffic lights, real estate signs in front of houses, trees and flowers, garbage in the street… and advertising.
Especially advertising. Dairine spent nearly half the bus ride, from the point where they left her town to the point where they entered Hempstead town and drove through it toward the shopping center, explaining what milk was and why it was important that you should “got” some. Yet at the same time, the bus ride made Dairine nostalgic for the first time she’d gone off-planet, when everything had been new and strange. As they piled off the bus in the parking lot of the shopping center, Dairine remembered her first alien parking lot, and how she had nearly been killed by any number of alien vehicles before she got her bearings. And how I talked to somebody’s luggage for the better part of five minutes, she thought, before I realized what I was doing.
It seemed like such a long time ago now. She’d almost forgotten what it was like. But she was quickly being reminded; and the other wizards’ attitude toward the strangeness of her world was beginning to affect her. She found herself looking at shopping-cart pens and sliding doors and the displays in the outer shop windows of the shopping center as if she had never seen such things before. It was refreshing.
They went into the mall, and in a matter of seconds, Dairine was being bombarded with questions. “What’s that for?” “Why is that colored that way?” “You mean people actually ride on those?” “They should fall off, shouldn’t they?” “Isn’t that beautiful!” “What’s that smell?” “Are those ‘decorations’?”
That was the question that got asked most frequently. Filif was fixated on the concept. “Those decorations,” Filif said, “those look especially nice… ” He moved over to the window in question and peered in.
Dairine came up behind him, not wanting to touch him—that always ran the risk of breaking the visual illusion—but she leaned over him and whispered, “Fil, I don’t think these are really you.”
“Why not?”
“Well… ” Dairine looked up at the sign over the store’s door. “Can you read that?”
Filif turned his human face u
p toward the sign, dutifully. Though he seemed to be looking at it with human eyes, somehow Dairine could still perceive the alert attention of a whole array of berries trained on the letters. “Victoria’s—did I pronounce that right? Secret.”
“That’s right,” Dairine said.
“Who’s Victoria?” said Filif. “And what’s its secret?”
“Never been really clear about that myself,” Dairine said. “But if you start wearing those, people are going to talk. Come on.” She turned away, already having a great deal of difficulty dealing with the image of a Christmas tree in a garter belt.
Filif moved away carefully, but not without a backward look at the bright colors of the lingerie in the window. Then Dairine saw Sker’ret hurrying ahead of them, and she began to fear the worst. “Sker’ret?” she said. “Wait up!”
She went after him as quickly as she could, with a glance at Carmela to suggest that she should keep an eye on the others. But Carmela already had her hands full. She and Roshaun had paused by a window display of clothes and were apparently discussing them. Sker’ret had moved a little farther away and was closely examining a freestanding gift stall stacked high with balloons, cards, gift plaques, and bright-colored candies. Oh no, Dairine thought. What is it with the colors? These guys are like five-year-olds!
The sound of laughter came to Dairine from down the mall. A group of five older kids—high school juniors, Dairine guessed—came wandering along toward them, much more interested in the shoppers of their own age than in the merchandise. “Hey, sweet things!” one of them called to Carmela. “Who’s your skinny friend?”
Carmela didn’t respond. “Hey, elf boy!” shouted another of the guys. “Nice hair!” This was followed by a chorus of snickering and laughter.
Dairine saw Roshaun draw himself up to his full height and turn to favor the oncoming group with an expression of truly withering scorn. “‘Elf boy’?” he said softly. “What kind of disrespectful, speciesist—” One of his hands moved in a gesture that Dairine recognized as the preliminary to producing some predesigned wizardry. She gulped and hurried toward him.