by Diane Duane
“No, she’s not...can I take a message for you?”
“Yes, please. Tell her that Shaun O’Driscoll called, and ask her to call back immediately, it’s very urgent.”
“All right,” Nita said, scribbling down the name on the topmost of the block of sticky notes by the phone. “Does she have your number?”
“Yes she does.”
“All right. I’ll see if I can catch her; she just went out. Bye.” And Nita ran out across the gravelyard, vaulted the fence, and headed into the field.
Far away, over the hill of the second field, she could see her aunt walking toward the little rise in the middle of it. Yelling at her seemed ridiculous at this point, so Nita just ran on after her as quickly as she could, puffing. She still ached.
As she got closer, Nita was rather surprised to see her aunt take the rake off her shoulder and bang the wooden end of it on the ground. However, she was even more surprised when the little hill split open, and her aunt walked into it.
Nita lost all her momentum and came to a stand, and her mouth fell open.
…Oh, no! she thought. She was remembering Tom’s voice, from not so terribly long ago, saying to her father: “Well, you know, Ed, it’s your side of the family that the wizardry comes down from...”
My dad’s sister…
My aunt’s a wizard!
Half torn between terror and laughter, Nita ran after her, toward the gaping darkness in the side of the hill.
5: Faoin gCnoc / Under the Hill
The chasm was deeper and wider than it looked. Is this happening in the real world? Nita thought, and paused for a moment to try to see with double vision, as she had seen the other day. True enough, mere daylight vision showed her a smooth hill, no crack; nothing. But then no one in the house had seen her aunt... and she had. Nita was seeing sideways where her aunt was, and this was sideways too. Not as sideways as it might have been, of course.
“Aunt Annie,” she said, not loud, but urgently, and loud enough to carry. Ahead of her, her aunt stopped in shock, standing there with the rake.
She looked back at Nita and said, “Oh, no.”
“Aunt Annie,” Nita said, grinning a little in spite of herself, “what did they tell you about why they’d sent me here?...”
Aunt Annie’s mouth opened and shut, and then she said, “When I get my hands on Ed...I’m going to pull his head off and hand it to him.”
“They couldn’t exactly tell you,” Nita said, immediately wanting to defend her father. “It’s not his fault.”
“Maybe not,” Aunt Annie said, “but, Nita...! I had no idea!”
“Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t,” Nita said, wry. “I don’t usually try to advertise it.”
“But how can you be here?” Aunt Annie said. Then she shook her head. “Never mind that now. That you’re here means you’re intended to be. I’ve got business. Let’s go see them.”
“Them?”
“Be polite,” Aunt Annie said. “And follow my lead.”
Nita was entirely willing. She followed her aunt into the hill.
It was not a hill. It was a city. It was like the one that Nita had seen crowning Sugarloaf, but smaller, more intimate. It could not, of course, be inside the hill. It was two, three—ten? fifty?—universes over from the “real world.” Before them was a vista of broad streets, airy; of shade and running water, and stone as fluidly formed as if it had been clay once, or flesh—but paused in mid-movement, possibly to move again some day. There were echoes among the buildings of thatched houses, and old castles, and castles no human being could have imagined—hints of architecture Nita recognized as extraterrestrial from her travels. Apparently the builders had had connections elsewhere.
The light was different too; harder, somehow clearer than the light that rested on the fields around Aunt Annie’s farm. Things seemed to have sharper edges, more weight, more meaning. Nothing here needed to glow with magical light, or anything so blatant. Things here were too busy being real... more real even than the “real world,” It was a slightly unnerving effect.
“Oh, and one other thing,” her aunt said. “Don’t eat or drink anything here.”
Nita burst out laughing. “There had to be one place in Ireland where no one was going to make me drink tea or eat anything,” she said.
Her aunt looked at her cockeyed, then laughed. “Well, you just keep on thinking of it that way.”
They walked on among the high houses. “Where are we going?” Nita said.
“To talk to the people who live here,” said her Aunt Annie. “I do have certain rights. This is my land—I am the landowner—” She chuckled then. “As if anyone in Ireland can really own land. We all just borrow it for a while.” She looked sidewise at Nita. “Where were you last night?”
“I was out with some very very large things that should have been wolves, but weren’t,” Nita said. “Oh, by the way. There was a phone call for you. A Shaun O’Driscoll—”
“I just bet,” said Aunt Annie. “The Area Supervisor. Well, we’ll see him shortly, but I need to deal with these first.”
“These people—”
“You know the name,” her aunt said. “We don’t usually say it...it’s considered impolite. Like shouting at someone, ‘Hey, human!’”
The Sidhe, Nita thought. The people of the hills...the not-so-little people. “You see them often?” Nita said.
“Often enough. ‘Good fences make good neighbors,’ as the poet says. However, every now and then, when you share common ground, you need to have a good long chat over the fence. That’s what this is about.”
They came to the heart of the city, an open place. There were twelve trees in a circle, and three bright chairs under the trees, seemingly resting on the surface of a pool of water. Or rather, the chairs on either side of the central one were true chairs; the central one was a throne. The trees moved in the wind, and the shadows thrown by their branches wove and shifted on the surface of the bright water in patterns that seemed to Nita to be always on the edge of meaning. People stood around and watched from under the shade of those trees; tall people, fair people, with beautiful dogs at heel. Handsome cats sat here and there, watching; unconcerned birds sang rainbows in the trees. Nita tried to look at a few of the people, and found it difficult. It wasn’t that they were indistinct. They were almost too solid to bear, and their clothes and weapons, in an antique style, all shone with certainty.
The chairs on either side of the throne were filled; a man sat in one, a woman in the other. The throne was empty. Aunt Annie walked straight toward the three seats, across the water. Nita watched with professional interest. She knew several ways to walk on water, but she felt safe in assuming that the water here was more assertive, and didn’t mind being walked on without more active spelling. She headed out after her aunt.
Aunt Annie stopped about ten feet away from the central throne, acknowledged it with a slight nod, and then looked at the person sitting in the right-hand chair. “The greeting of gods and men to you, Amadaun of the People of the Hill in Cualann. And to you, lady of this forth.”
The lady bowed her head. “To you also, Áine ní Cealodháin, greeting,” said the man in the right-hand chair. “And greeting to you, Shonaiula ní Cealodháin.”
Nita was slightly out of her depth, but she knew how to be polite. She bowed slightly and said, “I am on errantry, fair people, and the One greets you by me.”
“This we had known,” said the woman in the chair.
“Then perhaps you will explain to me,” said Aunt Annie, “why my niece was chased halfway across my field last night by that one’s hunt. I thought we had an agreement that if you saw any power of that kind waking, you would warn me so that I could take appropriate action.”
“We had no warning ourselves, Áine,” said the lady.
“I would then appreciate your view of what’s happening here. It’s most unusual for you to have no warning of so major an intrusion. That you didn’t means we have trouble on our hand
s.”
“Trouble rarely comes near us, Áine. But it would be true to say that the past is becoming restless. We have had a messenger at our gates… one of the Fomori.”
“And what did this messenger say?”
“That the old shall become new in our fields, and yours. He offered us...what we were offered once before. The end of your kind, once and for all.”
Aunt Annie said nothing. The young man, the “Amadaun,” looked at Nita and said, “You must understand that the children of the Milesians are not looked upon with favor in some parts of the Fifth House.”
“If you mean that some of the nonhuman species think humans were a dumb idea,” Nita said, “yes, I’ve heard that opinion before.”
“There are those powers in this part of the world, and children of the Powers—powers fallen lower than we—who never looked kindly on human folk. Those beings would be glad to see all humans dead, at their own hands, or by the hands of other humans. In this land, such old angers and hatreds live uncannily long.”
“Yes,” Nita said, “I’ve noticed that.”
“It is the land itself that causes it, of course,” said the fair young woman. “The land remembers too well. It saw Partholon come; it saw Nemed; it saw us, and the Fir Bolg, and the hosts of man. One after another of us it threw off, in its way, having been taught to do so by the Lone One, and given a memory that other lands don’t have—a sense of injury. Long time we’ve tried to heal that, but there is no healing it now. The old angers waken again and again.”
“There must be something that could be done,” Nita said.
“If there is an answer, we do not have it,” said the lady of the forth, “and the Fomori are at our gates. Soon enough they’ll be at yours.”
“They have been at our gates, they and their children, for a long while,” said Aunt Annie, “under various names. We do what we can, as do you. What are the Fomori threatening you with this time?”
“Nothing concrete as yet. Of course they demanded tribute. They have done that before. We will of course refuse to give it; we have done that before too. And then they will begin to strike, here, and there, at the innocent, the ones who have no defense.”
“That too we know about,” said Aunt Annie, “for a long time now. Nonetheless, something needs to be done. I think all the wizards will now be called together. Probably there should be another meeting between us once that has happened. Doing seems to have passed into our hands, these days, and out of yours.”
“That seems to be true,” said the Amadaun. “So advise us what you do. We will back you as far as possible. Mean time, rain has not fallen here for too long. We seem to be losing the ability to order our world as we used to. Something outside is becoming very strong...and Lughnasád is coming, when old battles are remembered. Even with the power of the Treasures, the ancient battle was very close. We almost lost, last time. Without the Treasures—” The form on the left shook her head. “There is no saying. We need your help.”
“Keep your people in, then, if you would,” said Aunt Annie. “ ‘Sideways’ and the not-sideways parts of the world are getting too close together at the moment; we need to part them until this is resolved.”
“We will do that. And you—” The Amadaun looked at Nita. “What would you say to us?”
Nita looked at the shining forms all around her, and shook her head. “I think you owe me one,” she said. “For the other night. If your carelessness let that happen, I think you owe me a favor one of these days.”
There were shocked looks at her boldness, and Aunt Annie looked at Nita sideways. But there was a wry smile from the Amadaun. “Our people have long known that a favor given must be returned, and a wrong done must be avenged,” he said. “Come here, then, and let me speak a word in your ear.”
Nita stepped up to him, wondering. The Amadaun leaned over and whispered; and the hair stood up all over Nita. What he had said was a word in the Speech, a name...but not the kind of name mortals had. There was too much power in it, and too much time.
Nita glanced sideways in shock, and met the Amadaun’s eyes, and found no relief there: the time was in them too. “Should you need help,” the Amadaun said, “name that name.”
“Thank you,” Nita said, trying to get some of her composure back. “I’ll do that. Meanwhile, I hope you do well, and that things are quiet for you.”
“A mortal wishes what we wish,” said the lady of the forth, smiling. “There’s a change.”
“Thank you,” said Aunt Annie.
Nita rejoined her, and together they walked out the way they came. The sunlight looked thin and wan when they came out, when it should have looked golden; everything seemed a little unreal, a little fake, compared with the way it had earlier.
Nita looked at Aunt Annie and was a little surprised to find that she had sweat standing out on her forehead. “Are you okay?” she said. “You look pale.”
“I’m all right,” said Aunt Annie. “It’s just a strain talking to those people. They don’t see time the way we do.”
“I kind of liked it in there,” Nita said.
Her aunt looked at her. “Yes, I thought you might. They prefer the young; the younger wizards have always bent a little more easily to their ways. I make them uneasy, too; I’m a little too close to mortality for their liking...But anyway, I still can’t believe it. You’re a wizard!”
“At times I find it hard to believe myself,” Nita said. “Like last night. My wizardry wasn’t working terribly well.”
“Yes, it’s a problem we have around here,” said her aunt. “The overlays. ...If I’d have known, I could have warned you.”
“How could you have known? How was I supposed to tell you?” She broke out laughing. “What did they tell you when they sent me out here?”
Her aunt shook her head. “They said you were getting too involved with your friend Kit. —He’s your partner, I take it.”
“Yeah. They’re really nervous about it, Aunt Annie. I try to calm them down…”
Her aunt laughed. “Listen, you’re lucky. At least you were able to tell your folks. I was never able to tell your grandma and grandpa.”
“Even when they know,” Nita said drily, “it doesn’t always make for the best of times. But Aunt Annie, look, what are we going to do?”
“We can’t do anything just yet.”
Nita groaned. Her aunt looked at her with a sympathetic expression. “Look, honey, I know. But the tradition of wizardry is different in this part of the world. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years longer than there even were American wizards. And don’t forget that at home you’re working in a relatively clean environment; the magic of the native American wizards was of a much more naturalistic kind. There was practically no overlay, since it worked so completely in conjunction with nature and the environment. Over here we’re dealing with the equivalent of wizardry toxic waste...the accumulation of thousands of years of buildup. No, we take our time. We need to get everyone together to talk.”
“When is this Lughnasád thing?”
“It starts tomorrow, really—”
“Tomorrow?!”
“It goes on for two weeks… No, don’t panic! The first of the month is the beginning of it: August 15th is the end. It’s the end that we have to worry about...things will be building up, forces will have to be released. It’s going to be like a dam breaking. If we can dig a channel somehow, something for the power, the flow, to run off into...Otherwise—”
“Otherwise even the nonwizards are going to notice.”
