by Diane Duane
Kit and Nita burst out laughing. “It’s because you’re so small,” Quelt said. “Once we weren’t as tall as we are now. But in the days of the Ancients, everybody was more your size. Little.”
“I don’t mind being famous,” Nita said, “but what I really, really want to do is lie in the sand, by the water, and do nothing.”
Quelt grinned that grin at her and Kit again. To Nita, it seemed to threaten to go right around her face, suggesting that if Quelt did it any harder, the top of her head might fall off. “I like that, too,” she said. “It’s the only thing I like as much as wizard work.”
Then suddenly Quelt jumped up. “I forgot!” she said. “Pabi, it’ll be time for the keks pretty soon—”
“Yes,” Demair said. “You two might like to see that. Our beaches are famous for them.”
“Keks?” Kit said.
“Come on,” Quelt said. “Afterward, I’ll show you where we have couches put down for you, in the outbuilding—you can put your pup-tents up there. But right now, hurry or we’ll miss them—”
Nita and Kit got up to follow her out. Ponch loitered briefly by the table, accepted a couple of final tidbits from Demair and Kuwilin, and then ran after.
Nita and Kit and Quelt started down the beach again together, but this time in the opposite direction from the way they’d gone before. Almost all the sunset glow was gone; stars were thick overhead, and they were very bright—the broad curved band of the back side of the Milky Way was glowing almost as brightly as a full moon in that night unbroken by any streetlight or other artificial light source. Ponch tore past the three of them, racing down the beach, running ahead and romping in and out of the water, a black shape shining in the bright starlight. “I should warn you,” Kit said to Quelt, “he’s going to do that the whole time we’re here. He likes the water.”
Quelt smiled. “So do we,” she said. “It’s no problem.” She looked up to their right, where the rise that ran behind the Peliaen house was more of a dune, bare of the ironwood reeds. “We have to go up there, out of the way,” she said. “Can you see all right?”
“Sure,” Kit said.
“Then come on—”
They climbed the dune. Once at the top, Quelt sat down, facing the water, and Nita and Kit sat down on either side of her, looking out at the starlit sea.
For long minutes, none of them said anything. Nita found herself willing to sit there all night, for no reason at all, just looking at the starlight on that softly moving water. There was no crash of surf here, hardly any noise but the whisper of the little waves sliding in and out, the whisper of the wind, and the starlight glitter. This is what I came for, she thought. All of the craziness to get here would have been worth just this. But we get another two whole weeks of it!
“Here they come,” Quelt said softly. “The keks.”
Nita strained her eyes, looking out at the water. Then she saw a motion near the shore: not water, but something else.
Silent, hardly daring to breathe, Nita and Kit watched them come. First one or two, then five, ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand: a host of tiny creatures, blue-green and shining, came flooding up out of the water onto the beach. They had a lot of legs, like crabs, but no pincers. They had eyes like crabs, though; and the general look of them as they scuttled around was very crablike, though Nita couldn’t remember ever having seen any crab look quite so busy.
Soon the wet gleam of the sand under the starlight was obscured by them, black with them. All up and down the length of that beach, from right in front of them to (it seemed) the edge of the world, the crabs started to dig, throwing the peach-colored sand up behind them in little showers. The whole beach became obscured by the haze created by sand in the air, sand kicked up by millions of little legs.
“What are they doing?” Nita whispered.
“Watch,” said Quelt.
They watched, while some of the tiny satellites that were all Alaalu had by way of moons went sliding by overhead, casting faint, shifting shadows over the shapes on the beach. And slowly, slowly, the beach above the waterline began to be obscured by something that was not flat.
The keks were building.
“What are they making?” Kit said, very quietly, as if he was afraid he might frighten them.
“We don’t know,” Quelt said. “No one knows. They build these things in the sand… then they go back into the water by midnight. And the next night, they come and do it again. They’ve always done it, as far as I know. Since our people began to notice things… ”
They sat there and watched for maybe another half an hour. There, in the darkness, the crabs sculpted the sand. Shapes reared up—mostly little cones with holes opening out of them. They would collapse, get built again, collapse once more. And, finally, the keks got tired of it, and slowly, one by one, they started going into the sea again.
In the darkness, Kit said, “That was so wicked… ” And he let out a tremendous yawn.
Quelt laughed under her breath. “Come on, cousins,” she said. “It’s late for all of us. No need to get up early tomorrow.”
They got up and walked back to the house along the rise, looking down at the strange shapes built on the sand, watching as the sea began to creep up and wash them slowly away. Before too long they were back at the Peliaens’ house, where here and there in an open window, a little lamp showed like a star.
“There’s your building,” Quelt said, leading them to it. It was thatched with ironwood, like the other buildings, and had several open windows that let the warm night breeze in. Screens partitioned it in half. “You have a gender-separability thing at your age, don’t you?” Quelt said. “I thought so. Is this all right?”
Kit yawned. “This is fine,” Nita said, and started to laugh at Kit, until she yawned herself.
“There’s a big couch on each side,” Quelt said. “Some coverings and cushions if you need them.” And then she bent down to each of them and took them gently by the shoulders. “I’m so glad you came!” Quelt said. “This is going to be fun.”
Nita reached up, did the same for Quelt. “You have a good night,” she said.
Quelt smiled, slipped out of the building like a shadow. Kit, standing there and looking out the window, smiled, too.
“The coolness of this whole situation,” he said, “cannot possibly be overstated.” And he yawned.
Nita glanced at him and laughed. “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way,” she said, “but, yeah, you’re right there. These people are really, really nice… and this is going to be a terrific holiday. Now go to bed!”
On either side of the screen, they went to sleep under strange stars—and, for the first time, did it not on errantry, where anything might happen, but in safety, and at leisure. Nothing seemed strange about the stars, here, and that odd, high horizon somehow made the sky seem smaller, a cozier and more protected place. Nita fell asleep with the sound of the sea whispering in her ears. And later on, there were other whispers entirely, but all friendly ones. This is so great, she thought once in the middle of the night as she turned over and saw, not her own dark bedroom wall, with the occasional late-night car headlight flickering across it through the Venetian blinds, but the nearby low, wide window opening onto the sea, and through it, stars falling like rain, so many of them that she was somehow surprised not to hear them pattering on the roof. So great. I love being a wizard…
And she fell asleep again, while all around her, cheerful, unperturbed, like the wind, the whispers went on.
“Everything’s fine…”
7: Local Excursions
A voice was shouting something indistinct through a roar of fire. After a while, she could just make it out:
“Dairiiiiiiine!”
She held very still, hoping they would just stop shouting her name and go away. But the roaring just got louder, an indistinct, crackling, rushing sound—
“Dairiiiiiiine.” The voice came from downstairs. “Where arrrrrrrre they?”
<
br /> Dairine rolled over in her bed and clutched the pillow over her head. Then she jumped, a half-awake version of the falling-out-of-bed awakening. There was a tree next to her bed, rustling in no wind whatever.
“Uh, hi,” she said. “Uh, Filif. Yeah. Was there something you needed?”
“You were making a noise,” Filif said.
“Snoring,” Dairine said. “That’s called snoring.” Usually, when Nita accused her of it, she tried to find a way around the accusation, but she and Filif were both using the Speech, so there was no point in trying.
“Also,” Filif said, “there is someone who wants you.”
Dairine sat up in the bed, rubbing her eyes and trying to become more conscious. Her body was resisting her: She felt wrecked. If I feel like this at home, she thought, what would I have felt like if I’d gone away? Maybe this wholeexcursus thing wasn’t such a great idea…
“Dairiiiiiiine!”
“Coming!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
“You’re loud today,” Filif said, sounding amused.
“Yeah, well, I’m about to get louder,” Dairine said, getting out of bed and scouting around her room to find a pair of jeans to get into. Then she realized that Filif was standing on them. “Fil,” she said, “could I get you to move sideways a little? Thanks.”
Filif backed away, looking around her room. “This is interesting,” he said.
“How?” Dairine went to her chest of drawers and rummaged in it for another oversize T-shirt.
“It’s so… enclosed.”
“You’ve got to show me your home,” Dairine said, “when we have a moment. But I have a feeling that’s not going to be for a while… ”
She went into the bathroom, took care of some things, changed, and then headed downstairs. In the dining room, Carmela was sitting at the table, looking in astonishment at Sker’ret. The Rirhait was mostly coiled up on a chair himself, but had draped the front half of his body over the back of it, and, in turn, was staring at Carmela with most of his eyes. Both he and Carmela glanced up at Dairine as she came in.
“Decide to sleep in this morning?” Carmela said.
Dairine glanced at her watch. It was 9:30. “I don’t know if I would describe this as ‘sleeping in,’” she said. “Or maybe it would’ve been, if some people hadn’t been shrieking my name at the top of their lungs.”
“Oh, come on,” Carmela said. “How can you sleep when you’ve got all these wonderful people in your house?” She leaned across the table toward Sker’ret and grabbed one of his clawed forelegs, wiggling it back and forth. Sker’ret chuckled, a raspy, ratchety little sound. “I mean, look at this guy!”
Dairine stared at Carmela. “I thought you hated bugs!”
“Bug bugs, yeah,” Carmela said. “But Sker’ret’s not a bug! I mean, look at the size of him! Nobody’s going to have to worry about him going down their back or getting in their shoes.”
One of Sker’ret’s eyes came around to waver almost in front of Carmela’s nose. She grabbed the stalk just behind the eye and wiggled it, too, playfully. “And look at all these eyes he’s got! He’s just terrific!”
“Thank you!” Sker’ret said. “You’re an amiable being, and I like you, too.”
As she rummaged in the kitchen cupboard for tea, Dairine had to smile: the attitude was so like him generally. It’s a shame he can’t stay around a while after this is over, she thought.
“‘Amiable,’” Carmela said. “See that? He’s cultured. What a nice vocabulary you have!” she said to Sker’ret.
“You’re really going to spoil these guys,” Dairine said, filling the kettle and putting it on to boil. “Sker’ret, don’t use hard words on her. She’s still in the kindergarten level in the Speech.”
“I don’t think she’s doing so badly,” Sker’ret said. “It’s not like we’re going to start talking technical things out of the blue.”
The sound of rustling in the doorway brought Carmela’s head around. “And what have we here?” she said. “Why, you’re just some kind of wonderful shrub! Aren’t you cute!” She stood up and went over for a closer look at him.
“You’re not bad-looking for a biped yourself,” Filif said.
Dairine gave him a look from the kitchen. “You flirt!” she said.
“Well, it’s true,” Filif said. It was impossible to say how one perceived that a tree was winking at you, but Dairine perceived it. Maybe it’s the berries, she thought.
What made Dairine have to control herself very carefully for the next couple of minutes was Carmela’s response… because she perceived the winking, too. “You tease,” she said, and ran an affectionate hand through Filif’s needles. “Dairine, is it possible to become an item with a tree?”
“Uh,” Dairine said. Many, many possible responses went through her head. “Might be some splinter problems,” she said at last.
Carmela burst out laughing. “We’ll see. I’m just trying to resist the urge to take this kid home and decorate him. You and I,” she said to Filif, “we’re going to spend lots of time talking, because I want to know all about you.”
“That would be excellent!” Filif said. “I want to know about you, too.”
“I thought you said that people here didn’t know about wizards,” Sker’ret said to Dairine.
The teakettle boiled and started whistling: Dairine got it off the stove and poured boiling water on the tea bag in her mug. “Mostly they don’t,” she said. “Carmela’s an exception to the rule. Most rules,” she added, smirking slightly.
“I heard that, and I’m taking it as a compliment!” Carmela said.
Dairine heard footsteps on the basement stairs, and winced. The sound was too light to be her father’s tread, and he was probably at the shop already, anyway. Let’s give Roshaun another chance, she thought. Maybe I just got off on the wrong foot with him yesterday.
Roshaun came into the kitchen, and at first sight of him, all of Dairine’s good intentions evaporated. He was even more splendidly dressed than he had been the day before. Today the long overjacket that he favored was in blue, and it was richly, even thickly, embroidered with jewels, in all shades of blue and green, some of them the size of marbles or quail’s eggs. Gauntlets, tunic, boots, all were in metallic blues and greens, and the fillet binding his brows was of some blue metal. The fillet—an alloy? Or some metal we don’t know about?—was the only part of the costume that really interested Dairine. But no way am I going to show it!
“Good morning,” Dairine said to Roshaun.
Roshaun merely nodded at her and swept through the kitchen into the sunny dining room. It’s hopeless, Dairine thought. I think all my feet with this guy are going to be the wrong feet. I wonder if the Powers would let me send him back and get another wizard?
Roshaun paused in the doorway, gazing in at his fellow wizards, and at Carmela. It was a second or so before Carmela turned, most casually, and looked Roshaun up and down. “A little early for such a big fashion statement,” she said, “but maybe some of us need to start early. And you would be?”
Roshaun straightened up even straighter and taller than he had been standing, if that was possible, and gazed at Carmela.
“That’s Roshaun,” Dairine said, doing her best to keep any kind of smile from showing.
“… ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Wellakhit,” Roshaun began, and this time went on reciting names for at least twice as long as he originally had with Dairine.
Carmela stood there watching Roshaun go through this performance with the vaguely impatient expression of someone who’s arrived at the movies on time and then has to sit through ten minutes of commercials and previews. Finally, Roshaun trailed off and stood gazing imperiously at Carmela, waiting for her response.
“He means he’s a prince,” Dairine said, not entirely kindly. I’m sorry, Powers That Be. I haven’t had my breakfast yet; it’s the damn blood sugar again…
Carmela regarded Rosh
aun in the most leisurely manner possible. “No methane,” she said at last. “Two legs.” These she gave a last noncommittal glance, which suggested that perhaps he’d put them on backward that morning, but she wasn’t going to embarrass him by mentioning it. “Well, one out of four’s not bad,” Carmela said at last. “Let’s go for two. You wouldn’t have a battle fleet on you, would you?”
Peering out through the kitchen doorway while pretending to do something concerning toast, Dairine saw that even Roshaun was having trouble looking haughty and completely confused at the same time. “We have not yet been formally introduced, in that I—” Roshaun finally said, trying hard to sound chilly about it.
Dairine opened her mouth, but had no chance to say anything, for Carmela was once again looking Roshaun up and down, this time with the expression of someone who’s been asked a personal question by someone who should have been asking her “Paper or plastic?” “Formally introduced? I’ll let you know if and when I think we need to be,” Carmela said. She turned her back on Roshaun with a grim look and the merest twitch of a wink at Dairine. “Meanwhile,” she said to Dairine, “I need to use the bathroom. But make a note for me: When you next hear from my brother, tell him he and I are going to have a talk, because I see that he was pulling my leg, and I’m already planning numerous ways to make him pay.” She leaned over and whispered in Dairine’s ear—the “whisper” being something that could have been heard at twenty paces— “And whatever you do, get me a date with that bush!”
Carmela then walked away toward the back of the house cloaked in a demeanor of complete unconcern, leaving Filif and Sker’ret sitting there exuding the pleasure of having met a wonderful being, while Dairine and Roshaun stared after her, both briefly mute with astonishment.
The moment didn’t last long for Roshaun. “Her brother was pulling her leg?” Roshaun said to Dairine. “Does this have some cultural significance?”
“I think it’s gonna be significant for him when he gets back,” Dairine said, making a mental note to be there when that happened.
