by Diane Duane
Nita found that she could swim again, and she did, fast — away from there, where all the sharks of the world, it seemed, jostled and boiled in feeding frenzy. Areinnye vanished in a cloud of sleek silver bodies. Ed could not be seen. And the Serpent—
A scream of astonishment and pain crashed through the water. The Lone Power, like all the other Powers, had to obey the rules when within a universe and wear a body that could be acted upon. The sharks — wild with their Master’s blood and beyond feeling pain — were acting upon it. The taste of Its scalding blood in the water, and their own, drove them mad for more. They found more. The screaming went on, and on, and on, all up and down the length of the thrashing, writhing Serpent. Nita, deafened, writhing herself, felt as if it would go on forever.
Eventually forever ended. The sharks, great and small, began milling slowly about, cruising for new game, finding none. They began to disperse.
Of the Master-Shark, of Areinnye, there was no sign; only a roiling cloud of red that every now and then snowed little rags of flesh.
Of the Lone Power, nothing remained but sluggishly flowing lava running over a quieting sea bed, and in the water the hot sulfurous taste, much diluted, of Its flaming blood. The writhing shape now defined on the bottom by cooling pillow lava made it plain that the Unbound was bound once more by the blood of a willing victim, a wizard — no matter that the wizardry was borrowed.
Aching all over, impossibly tired, Nita hung there for several minutes, simply not knowing what to do. She hadn’t planned to live this long.
Now, though: “Kit?”
Her cry brought her back the echo of a sperm whale heading for the surface as quickly as was safe. She followed him.
Nita passed through the “twilight zone” at three hundred fathoms and saw light, the faint green gold she had never hoped to see again. When she broke surface and drew several long gasping breaths, she found that it was morning. Monday morning, she guessed, or hoped. It didn’t much matter. She had sunlight again, she had air to breathe — and floating half a mile away in the wavewash, looking too tired to move a fin, the massive back of a sperm whale bobbed and rocked.
She went to him. Neither of them did anything for a long time but lie there in the water, side by side, skin just touching, and breathe.
“I got carried away down there,” Kit said eventually. “And the whalesark started to go out on me. I would have gone all sperm whale — and then the sark would have blown out all the way—“
“I noticed,” Nita said.
“And you pulled me out of it. I think I owe you one.”
“After all that,” Nita said, “I’m not sure who owes what. Maybe we’d better call it even.”
“Yeah. But, Neets—“
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Someone has to keep you out of trouble.”
He blew explosively, right in her face.
One by one, finding one another by song, the other Celebrants began to gather around them. Neither Kit nor Nita had any words for them until, last of the group, S’reee surfaced and blew in utter weariness.
She looked at Nita. “Areinnye—“
“Gone,” Kit said.
“And the Master-Shark—“
“The Sacrifice,” Nita said, “was accepted.”
There was silence as the Celebrants looked at each other. “Well,” S’reee said, “the Sea has definitely never seen a Song quite like this—“
It will be a Song well sung, said a cool voice in Nita’s head. And sung from the heart. You, young and never loving: I, old and never loved—
“—but the Lone One is bound. And the waters are quieting.”
“S’reee,” Fang said, “don’t we still need to finish the Song?”
“It’s done,” Kit said.
S’reee looked at him in silence a moment. “Yes,” she said then. “It is.”
“And I want to go home,” Kit said.
“Well enough,” said S’reee. “Kit, we’ll be in these waters resting for at least a couple of days. You know where to find us.” She paused, hunting words. “And, look—“
“Please save it,” Nita said, as gently as she could. She nudged Kit in the side; he turned shoreward for the long swim home. “We’ll see you later.”
They went home.
They found Nita’s parents waiting for them on the beach, as if they had known where and when they would be arriving. Nita found it difficult to care. She and Kit slogged their way up out of the surf, into the towels that Nita’s mom and dad held out for them, and stood there shivering with reaction and early-morning cold for several moments.
“Is it going to be all right?” Nita’s father asked.
Nita nodded.
“Are you all right?” Nita’s mother asked, holding her tight.
Nita looked up at her mom and saw no reason to start lying then. “No.”
“… Okay,” her mother said. “The questions can wait. Let’s get you home.”
“Okay,” Kit said. “And you can ask her all the questions you like… while I eat.”
Nita turned around then; gave Kit a long look… and reached out, and hugged him hard.
She didn’t answer questions when she got home. She did eat; and then she went to her room and fell onto her bed, as Kit had done in his room across the hall, to get some sleep. But before she dropped off, Nita pulled her manual out from its spot under her pillow and opened it to one of the general data supply areas. “I want a readout on all the blank-check wizardries done in this area in the last six months,” she said. “And what their results were.”
The list came up. It was short, as she’d known it would be. The second-to-last entry on the list said:
BCX 85/003—CALLAHAN, Juanita T., and RODRIGUEZ, Christopher K.: open-ended “Mobius spell” implementation.
Incurred: 4/25/85. Paid: 7/15/85, by willing substitution. See “Current Events” precis for details. “
Nita put the book back under her pillow, and quietly, bitterly, started to get caught up on her crying.
Heartsong
Neither she nor Kit got up till well after nightfall. When Nita threw clothes on and went downstairs, she found Kit sitting at the table, shoveling Cheerios into his face with the singleminded intensity he gave to the really important things in life. In the living room, she could hear the TV going, making crowd sounds, over which her mother was saying indignantly, “Him? He’s no hitter! Just you watch—“
Kit looked up at Nita as she leaned on the doorsill. “You hungry?”
“Not yet.”
She sat down beside him, carefully — she still ached all over — and picked up the cereal box, absently reading the list of ingredients on the side.
“Business as usual in there,” Kit said, between mouthfuls.
“So I hear.”
“I’m going out in a while. Wanna come?”
“Swimming?”
“Yeah.” He paused for another mouthful. “I’ve got to take the whalesark back.”
“Does it still work?”
“At this point,” Kit said, “I’d almost rather not get into it and find out. But it got me back.”
Nita nodded, put the cereal box down, and just sat for a moment with her chin in her hands. “I had a thought—“
“Aiooooooo.”
Nita looked brief murder at Kit, then let the look go. “We seem to have pulled it off again,” she said.
“Yeah.”
He said it almost a little too easily. “You notice,” she said, “that our reward for hard jobs seems to be that we get given harder jobs even?”
Kit thought, then nodded. “Problem is,” he said, “that we like the hard jobs.”
She made a sour face. Much as it annoyed her to admit it — her, little quiet Nita who sat in the back of the class and made decent grades and it was true. “Kit,” she said, “they’re gonna keep doing that.”
“They.”
“The Powers. They’ll keep doing it until one day we don’t pull i
t off. One of us, or both of us.”
Kit looked down at his cereal bowl. “Both, preferably,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Saves the explanations.” He scooped out the last spoonful of cereal, glanced up, and made a face. “Well, what would I have told them?”
Nita shook her head. “We could stop,” she said.
Kit chewed, watching her: swallowed, and said, “You want to?”
She waited to see if he would give some sign of what he was thinking. Useless: Kit would make a great poker player someday. “No,” she said at last.
“Me either,” Kit said, getting up and putting the bowl in the sink. “Looks like we’re stuck with being wizards, huh?”
Very slowly, she smiled at him. “Yeah.”
“Then let’s go down to the water and let them applaud.”
Kit gave the screen door a good-natured kick and went pounding down the stairs. Nita shook her head, still smiling, and followed.
It was late. The Moon was now a day past full, and about halfway up the sky; its light was so bright the sky couldn’t even manage to be totally black. The stars hung glittering in a sky more indigo, or midnight blue. Nita and Kit walked out into the surf, feeling the wind on them and hearing something most unusual — the sound of whales basking on the surface, some miles out, and singing where they lay. It was, as it had been on first hearing, a high, wild, lovely sound; but now the songs brought something extra, a catch at the heart that hadn’t been there before — sorrow, and loss, and wonder. Oh, Ed, Nita thought, and sighed, remembering the glory of how he had sounded at the last. I’m gonna miss you…
Nita swam out far enough to take whaleshape, then took Kit in tow until they made it to water deep enough for a sperm whale. He changed. Side by side they swam outward into the singing, through a sea illumined in a strange green-blue radiance, moonlight diffused and reflected. Dark shapes came to meet them; all the Celebrants but two, cruising and singing in the bright water. S’reee came to greet them skin to skin. “Come swim with us awhile,” she said. “No business tonight. Just singing.”
“Just a little business,” Nita said. It was hard to stop being the Silent One with all her responsibilities. “How are things down deep?”
“Quiet. Not a shake; and several of the hot-water vents seem to have reduced their outputs to normal levels. We’re going to have some peace for a while, it seems… for which we thank you. Both of you.”
“You’re very welcome,” Kit said. “We’d do it again, if we had to.” Nita shot Kit a quizzical look, which he returned in kind. “After all, it’s our world too…”
They swam, the Celebrants and Kit and Nita, for a long time, a long way out — into waters bright with fish going about their business, peaceful with seaweed and coral, and warm — whether with volcanism or summer, Nita couldn’t tell. “This is the way it’s supposed to be,” S’reee said from beside her, at one point. “Not the way you met me — not blood in the water. Just the long nights, the singing, time to think…”
“It’s so bright,” Nita said, wondering. The krill were evidently out in force tonight; between them and the moonlight, the water was dazzling. And there seemed to be more krill yet in the deeper waters, for it was brighter down there; much brighter. “Look at that,” Kit said, and dived, heading for the light.
At about a hundred feet down, Nita began to realize that the light in the water had nothing to do with krill. Of itself the water was burning, a harmless warm radiance that grew stronger and stronger in the greater depths. And in those depths, everything else shone too: not just reflected light, but a fire that seemed to come from inside seaweed, shells, branching coral. Song echoed in that water, sounding at first like whalesong — but slowly Nita began to hear something else in the music, in a way that had nothing to do with hearing. Expressions of growth, of power, of delight — but no note of limitation, pain, loss. She found herself descending into timelessness, into a blaze of meaning and purpose so bright it could have blinded the heart — had the heart not become stronger every moment, more able to bear it.
Finally there was nothing but the brightness, the water all around her on fire with light. Shapes moved in the light, swimming in it as if the water were extraneous and the light were their true medium. There was no looking at those shapes for more than a heartbeat before the eye was forced to turn away, defeated by glory. It was in the passage of those shapes near Nita that it was made plain to her, in the way the Sea gave a whale-wizard knowledge, that she and Kit were welcome indeed and had successfully completed the job they’d been given.
Kit was silent, as if not knowing what to say. Nita knew, but simply considered for a moment before singing it in one soft note that, in this place, carried as poignantly as a trumpet-call at evening. It hurt, she said.
We know, the answer came back. We sorrow. Do you? For what happened?
No.
For who you are now — the person you weren’t a week ago…
No.
No, Kit said.
Would you do the same sort of thing again?
Yes… if we had to.
Then there’s no guarantee this won’t happen again. Not that we could offer you any. Hope, like fear, comes from within…
Nita nodded. There was nothing sorrowful about the pronouncement; it was as matter-of-fact as anything in the manual. Kit turned away from the shape, the bright Power, that had answered them. As always, Nita turned with him.
And, looking up in astonishment, backfinned hurriedly. Something was passing over. Something as huge, or huger than, the unseeable shapes in the radiant water; burning as fiercely as they did, though with a cooler flame; passing by with a silent, deadly grace that Nita would have known anywhere. I am no wizard, he had said. But how could he, or she, have anticipated that borrowing a wizard’s power would make even a nonwizard part of the Heart of the Sea? Or maybe there was more to it than that. What’s loved, Carl had said, survives. Nita’s heart went up in a great note of unbelieving joy.
The passing shape didn’t turn, didn’t pause. Nita got just a glance of black eyes, the only dark things in all this place. Yet even they burned, a fire behind that opaque look that could mean anything.
Nita knew what it meant. And on he went, out of sight, in unhurried grace; the true dark angel, the unfallen Destroyer, the Pale Slayer who never really dies — seeking for pain to end.
Nita turned to Kit, wordless. He gazed back, as astonished and delighted as she.
…Okay, Kit said. Bring on the next job.
She agreed.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 8c8ba52f-86a1-4e3e-9469-fe26091a996f
Document version: 1.1
Document creation date: 15.6.2011
Created using: calibre 0.8.3, FictionBook Editor 2.4 software
Document authors :
Diane Duane
Document history:
1.0 — создание файла — неизвестный; 1.1 — структура, скрипты, добавление аннотации — Isais.
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