by Diane Duane
“Well, I think we’re going to have to get together and discuss the matter.”
“But if you don’t do something real fast—”
“My dear,” Mrs. Smyth said, “you come from a very...energetic...school of wizardry. I appreciate that. But we do things a little more slowly here. No, we need to call the local wizards and the Area supervisors together, and discuss what needs to be done. It’ll take a few days at least.”
Nita chafed at that. It seemed to her that a few days might be too long. But she was a stranger here, and theoretically these people knew best. “What do you think they’ll decide?” Ronan said.
Mrs. Smyth shook her head. “It’s hard to say. If we have here a rising of the old sort—a reassertion of the events associated with this holiday—then normally one would also have to reassert the events that stopped whatever thing it was that happened.”
“I’m sorry, but what was it that happened?” Nita said.
“The second battle of Moytura,” Ronan said. “I suppose you won’t have heard about it—”
“Actually I have,” Nita said. “A little cat told me. In considerable detail.”
“A cat told you?”
“Yeah. She said she was a bard, and—”
Mrs. Smyth looked at Nita in surprise. “I’m sorry. You mentioned this briefly, but we didn’t pursue it. How old was this cat?”
“She’s a kitten. Not very old...maybe ten weeks.” Nita told them, as well as she could remember, everything Tualha had told her.
“That is interesting,” Mrs. Smyth said. “Normally cat-bards aren’t born unless there’s about to be some change in the so-called ‘ruled’ world, the animal world—as well as the human one. —And she mentioned the Carrion-Crow, did she.”
Nita nodded. “I get a feeling that’s not good?”
Ronan made a face. “The Morrigan’s always trouble,” he said. “She turns up in the old stories, sometimes, as a war goddess. Or sometimes as three of them.”
“It’s the usual problem,” Mrs. Smyth said, “of the language not being adequate to describe the reality. The Morrigan is one of the Powers, a much diminished one… though even the lesser Powers were often mistaken for gods, in the ancient times. She has become, or made herself, the expression of change, and violence. A lot of that around here in the old days,” she said, and sighed. “And now. But she’s also the peace afterwards...if people will just let it be. ‘Carrion-crow’ she might be, but the crows are the aftermath of the battle, nature’s attempt to clean it up...not the cause of it.” Mrs. Smyth turned her teacup around. “It’s dangerous to see her...but not always bad. She shows herself as a tall dark woman, a fierce one. But she almost always smiles. She is Ireland, some ways: one of its personifications. Or its hauntings.”
She looked up at Ronan again. “So, the Morrigan...and the Hunt. Some very old memories are being resurrected. The foxhunt’s running must have reminded the world of an older hunt over the same ground.”
“What were those?” Nita said. “They looked like dire wolves, but they had some kind of werelight around them.”
“They were faery direwolves,” Mrs. Smyth said, “from one of the companion worlds.”
“Who was that following them?” Nita said.
Mrs. Smyth looked at her. “I see by the Knowledge,” she said, “that you’ve had a certain amount of dealing with the Other. The head of the Fomori—the Lone Power. I should say, a dangerous amount of dealings with It.”
“I don’t deal with It,” Nita said. “Never have.” She began to go a bit hot. “I don’t think you need to doubt which side I’m on. Are you saying that you think I’m attracting this trouble?”
Wizards do not tell white lies to make people feel better. Mrs. Smyth said nothing.
“Well, if I’m here for that purpose,” Nita said, “I’m here because the Powers that Be sent me. If I’m a trigger, it’s Their finger that’s on it, not the Lone One’s. It has no direct power over wizards.”
“I realize that,” Mrs. Smyth said. “Yet there have been changes in the Lone One recently, and you had something to do with those.”
“Something,” Nita said, “yes.”
Ronan looked at her, and then back at Mrs. Smyth. “Her?”
“She was involved just now in the Song of the Twelve,” Mrs. Smyth said. Ronan looked wide-eyed. “She was also involved in—Well, never mind. It’s a distinguished start: if you and your partner survive, of course. Wizardly talent is usually tested to destruction. Your sister,” Mrs. Smyth said; “where is she now? Did she come with you?”
“No, she’s back in New York.”
“Pity,” Mrs. Smyth said. “At any rate, I advise you to keep your use of wizardry to the minimum needed. Ronan, you’ll want to speak to your friends among the locals, especially the young ones. If anyone finds themselves going sideways, tell them not to meddle.”
“What kind of reenactment were you thinking of doing?” Nita said.
“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Smyth said. “We have a problem. If there’s a reenactment of Moytura to be done, we don’t have anything to do it with, even though one or two of the Treasures still exist.”
“Then how do you mean you don’t have anything to do it with?”
“Nita,” Mrs. Smyth said, “it took one of the Powers that Be a very long time to invest those four objects with strength enough to function against the Lone Power in the form It took. The legend says that anything that the Lone One in Balor’s form beheld with his eye open, burst straightway into fire and fell as ash, and poisoned the ground for leagues around, so that nothing would grow there, and men who walked that ground died.”
“Sounds nuclear,” Nita said.
“So it might have been,” Mrs. Smyth said. “The Lone One has never minded using natural phenomena for Its own ends. But Its power was so terrible that only an army of all the wizards in Ireland—for that’s what the druids were—could even think about going up against him; and without the Treasures to protect them, they all would have been destroyed. The Cup, known as the Cauldron of Rebirth, raised up their fallen. The Sword, Fragarach the Answerer, held off Balor’s creatures. And the Stone of Destiny kept the ground of Ireland whole and rooted when Balor would have dragged it off its foundations and overturned the whole island into the deep. All their power together, and all the wizards’, was just enough to buy the time for the Spear of Lugh to pierce Balor’s fire and quench it at last.”
She took a sip of her tea. “Now, three of the four Treasures we still have—at least one of them is in the National Museum in Dublin. But they have no virtue any more. No one believes that the gold and silver cup they have there, the Ardagh Chalice, is actually the Well of Transformations, the Bottomless Cauldron. No one really believes that the poor old notched bronze blade in the glass case is Fragarach, even though the legends say so. Its virtue has long since ebbed away as a result: the ‘soul’ in it, if you like, has departed. And the Lia Fáil is now just a cracked stone half buried in the ground up North, with an iron picket fence around it, and tourists come and take its picture because it’s supposed to be Saint Patrick’s gravestone or some such. Not because of what it really is, or was.” Her smile was very rueful. “The thousands of years and the loss of true knowledge of the nature of the Protectors have taken them and made them just a cup, a sword, and a rock.”
“What about the Spear?”
“Its ‘soul’ was the strongest of all of the Treasures,” Mrs. Smyth said. “It should be the easiest to find...but it’s nowhere in the world that we can feel. No, what we’re going to do—if a reenactment—” She sighed. “I can’t say. We’re going to have to work something out from scratch. In the meantime, if I were you, I’d step very lightly. And thank you for coming to me. Where are you staying?”
“With my aunt, Anne Callahan, at Ballyvolan.”
“Right,” said Mrs. Smyth, and made a note. “Now then; another cup of tea?”
Nita groaned.
***
&nbs
p; They went down to the little tea shop in Enniskerry, and had a Coke to kill the time until the 45 bus was ready to leave. “She’s not much like my Seniors at home,” Nita said, thoughtful. “But definitely as tough.”
Ronan was sitting slumped back in his chair, his legs crossed, scowling out at her from under those black brows. The hair rose a little on Nita’s neck, and she started to blush, and felt extremely stupid. “Just because she’s not like your precious Seniors—” he said.
“Oh, Ronan, just shut your face. You think you’re the hottest thing on wheels, don’t you?” And Nita scowled back at him, mostly to cover her own confusion at her anger. “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder the size of a two-by-four, and you’d better do something about it before it messes up your wizardry. And I’m not one of your little herd of yes-men or girls or whatever, so don’t waste your dirty looks on me. You don’t like the news, that’s just tough. Suck it up and cope.”
He stared at Nita, and his expression had changed slightly when she dared to look at it again. He looked a little shocked, still angry: but there was an odd thread of liking there. “No,” he said softly, “you’re not like the locals, are you? Not half. Do girls usually make a such virtue of having mean mouths where you come from?”
Nita blushed again, feeling more like an idiot than ever, not understanding her own discomfiture. “Why should that matter?” she said, annoyed. “But wizards do usually make a virtue of telling the truth, where I come from. Part of the job description. And I wasn’t criticizing your Senior, as you would have discovered if you let me finish. Your people skills could use some work.”
“And what else about me needs work?” he said, that same odd soft tone.
She just looked at him, and her insides roiled. That dark regard was disconcerting when it was bent hard on you. And it was worse still when he was smiling. He really is pretty hot, she thought, somewhat to her own horror. Nita wondered for a moment what some of the girls at school would think of this guy if they had a chance to see him. She knew what they would think, and what they would say. He was the kind of guy who gets texted and IM’d about all day, the kind that girls steal phonecam shots of and trade them back and forth: the kind of guy they look at from the safety of groups, stealing glances, laughing softly together at their shared thoughts about him. What would you do if you got him alone?...
And Nita was alone with him.
“Hulloooo!!” Ronan said to her, waving a hand in front of her face. “Earth to Nita!”
“Uh, nothing,” she said hurriedly. She finished her Coke in one long pull on the straw. “Listen, the bus is starting up.”
“What’s the hurry? I don’t hear—”
From outside there came a roar of diesel engine. Ronan looked at Nita oddly, then grinned. She flushed again, and inwardly swore at herself. Oh, he genuinely is hot. This is awful!
“Can’t keep the man waiting,” Ronan said, and got up. “You going to come with?”
“Uh, no, I’ll walk it. Fresh air,” she said, mortified at the feebleness of the excuse. “Exercise.”
“As far as the bus stop, then.”
Reluctantly she walked out to see Ronan off that far at least.
“Do you have my mobile number?” Ronan said as he got on. “Call me or text me if you have any problems.”
Problems! Do I have problems! Sweet Powers that Be—”I’ll do that,” Nita said. “You’re in the book.”
Ronan made an annoyed face. “The book.’’ I can’t believe this,” he said, and the bus doors shut in front of him.
***
Nita started home to Kilquade. It was a longish walk again, about eight miles: but she was really beginning to enjoy the walking, and the freedom to do it in the countryside. This was one of the prettiest places she had ever been, and the quiet and the sound of the wind and the warm, fair weather were all conspiring to make it very pleasant. She ached slightly, but there were some things worth aching for.
She couldn’t get rid of the memory of the look of Ronan’s face, the whole feel of him, the uneasy, uncomfortable sense of—power: there was no other word for it. Add to that the fact that he was good-looking, and funny, when he wasn’t being angry. Or even when he was, a little…
Nita smiled grimly at herself, annoyed: it was funny to be so hot for someone she so much wanted to give a few good kicks. …And heaven help me, that’s what it is. I’ve got the hots.
The admission made her nervous. Neither parents at home or the sex education classes at school ever told you anything really useful about how to handle this kind of thing. Oh, the mechanics of it, body changes and so forth, and how not to catch diseases, and responsibility, and family planning, and all the rest. But not the seriously important stuff, like: kissing—how did you do it and still breathe? Where do you put your nose? How much tongue is too much? Is wearing a push-up bra a come-on? Is it worth chasing someone you’ve got the hots for, or will it just make you look stupid? And if you catch him, what do you do then?
Or worse: what do you do if you get caught?...
Nita heard something stirring in the hedge off to her right. At first she thought it was a bird—lots of birds nested in these hedges, encouraged by the thorns—but this sounded too loud. Nita paused, and saw a flash of color, a soft russet red.
“Ai elhua,” whispered a voice in the Speech, “I have a word for you.”
Nita’s eyebrows went up. She hunkered down by the hedge. The red dog-fox was deep inside it, curled up comfortably in a little hide against the wall that the hedge grew against.
“Madreen rua!” she said in the Speech. “Are you all right?”
“O yes. But that you may be—” The fox glanced around, a shifty, conspiratorial look. “And that I may repay a debt and all things be even again. There are wizardries afoot.”
“No kidding.”
“Then you should get help for them. One of the Ard-Tuatha is in hide, not half a mile from here.”
Nita was confused: there were several different ways to translate the term. “Ard—You mean, one of the Powers that Be? Here??”
“In truth. We are all boundnot to say exactly where, or who. But it is one of the Old Ones. Catch it at its work, and it must help you, yes?”
“That’s one way to put it.” Nita frowned. The Powers that Be were required to assist wizards when requested to do so. But you had to identify Them first...and They usually made that difficult, preferring to do Their work in secret. It made it harder for the Lone Power to sabotage it.
“Well,” she said. “I am warned, madreen rua. My thanks.”
“All’s even,” the fox said, and in the tiny space where it lay, somehow managed to get up, turn around, and vanish back through a dark hole under the wall.
Nita got up and went on down the road, trying to make sense of what the fox had told her. It’s hard to believe. Why would one of the Powers be living around here?...
She made her way down the little lane to her aunt’s driveway, and the farm. In the field to the right she could see Aunt Annie heading off with a rake over her shoulder, probably to do something about the new potatoes she had just planted. They were a rare breed, something called “fir-apple potatoes,” and Aunt Annie raked and weeded them herself every day, and wouldn’t let anyone near them.
Nita grinned at this and went inside. She was just in the act of making herself another sandwich in the kitchen, when the phone began to ring. Nita went and picked it up out of the charger cradle, punched the green button, and (as she’d heard others do) said, “Ballyvolan.”
“Is Mrs. Callahan there?” said a man’s voice.
