4: Wellakh
Nita appeared as quietly as she could in the shade of the sassafras trees at the “wild” rear of her backyard. In between the bigger trees were tall thickets of smaller sassafras and wild mulberry scrub, screening the space from any possible view from the houses behind or to either side: but right now, the possibility of any neighbors noticing her was the least of her worries. Nita glanced up through the leaves at the late afternoon light, letting out a long, annoyed breath. Since when do I appear out here like someone who’s afraid to go in the house?
She slipped out from under the trees, heading up between the flower beds of the garden. Close to the house, not far from the chain-link fence and its gate, a tall, broad-crowned rowan tree stood in the middle of the yard, all covered with white flowers: an old rope swing hung from one branch. As she walked under the rowan, a long, leafy twig dropped down toward her: she put up a hand absent-mindedly and highfived it. “Liused…” she said in the Speech.
Sounding a little under the weather, the tree said.
“Ask me in an hour or so and I’ll give you a more detailed weather report.”
She opened the gate to the driveway. Her home life had once seemed so much more casual. Where’s your sister, dear? She’s on one of Jupiter’s moons, Mom… Oh, well. I guess that’s all right. Just as long as she’s not creating life again. After the shock of discovering that their daughters were wizards, Nita’s mom and dad had eventually become almost relaxed about it all. But along with Nita’s mother, those days were now gone. Her dad had become much more the heavy parent in the last six months.
You have to expect some changes, her counselor Mr. Millman had said. People handle their love and their loss in a hundred different ways. The results can be annoying until you understand what’s going on. Though Nita was starting to understand, the annoyance was a long way from abating. In Nita’s dad’s case, she suspected his new sternness about wizardly doings was because he knew the tendency toward wizardry had come down to his kids through his side of the family, and he was feeling as if this was somehow all his fault.
If only I could brainfix my dad and make him think that everything was just fine with Dairine. Well, Nita could brainfix him, but it would be the wrong thing to do, would be in complete contravention of the Wizard’s Oath, and would make her feel like a criminal. Nor was it any consolation that psychotropic spellings, the wizardries that could be used to change people’s minds about things, were such a nuisance to work, had such a horrible backlash on the wizard who worked them, and worked for so short a time before everything went back to the way it had been before. The irony wasn’t lost on Nita that a wizard could so easily change concrete physical matter, but practically had to sweat blood to change something as immaterial as someone else’s thought.
Or if I could only clone my sister. Make an extra one who’d stay home and behave, so Dad wouldn’t notice what was going on with the real one…
Then Nita groaned, not believing she was seriously having this idea. The last time there’d been a cloned Dairine around, during her sister’s Ordeal, the complications had been nearly endless.One of her’s enough for any universe! Or the whole sheaf of them. Besides, a Dairine that hangs around behaving all the time? Instantly identifiable as a fake.
She paused on the back doorstep, trying to devise some kind of strategy for handling her dad. His stern moods could be hard to derail—
“You could come in, you know,” said a voice from the kitchen, through the screen door. “It’s not you I’m going to ground.”
That sounded promising, but it didn’t seem smart to relax just yet. Nita went in.
Her dad was rooting around in a cupboard next to the stove; a full coffee cup stood on the counter. “Are we out of sugar?”
“We just got a whole bag last week,” Nita said, leaning against the counter. “Is sugar why I came all the way back from Mars? We were just getting to the good part!”
“And you can go back,” her dad said, coming down with a crumpled up, near-empty bag of store-brand sugar, “as soon as you sort things out here at home.”
“What ‘things’?”
“Your sister,” her father said, “was missing from school today.”
Thought so. Nita rolled her eyes. “Daddy, there’s only two days of school left before summer. You know that she—”
“I don’t know that she,” her dad said, sounding annoyed, letting the cupboard door fall shut and pulling a spoon out of the silverware drawer, which he hip-slammed shut. “And I really dislike getting these calls from school telling me she’s nowhere to be found, after she promised she’d stop cutting classes to run all over the galaxy!”
Nita went into the dining room and flopped down in a chair. This is not my fault, why am I having to deal with this?
“So where is she?” her dad said. “Did she mention to you where she was headed?”
“No. I have no idea.”
“It’s not just that she wasn’t at school,” her dad said. “She also hasn’t done her chores. The kitchen was a mess when I came in, and the garbage didn’t go out this morning for the guys to pick up, after it was already a pickup late because of her ‘forgetting’ it last week. The thing’s nearly overflowing! And this happens even after I had a big thing with her after that about not leaving the planet before she’s done her work at home! For a few days it looked like she was going with the program. But now…”
Nita buried her head in her arms. This is a disaster. I can see it coming now: here goes my whole summer…
In the kitchen, the spoon clinked in the cup for a few moments: then her dad followed Nita in and sat down beside her. He turned the mug around and around on the table between his hands. “Honey, your mom was always better than I was at knowing what was going on in Dairine’s head. Or at least having a clue.” She could hear from his voice that it cost her father something to make this admission. “I don’t have her to help me out now. So you’re going to have to step into the gap and give me a hand.”
Nita wanted to laugh helplessly, but this didn’t seem to be the moment. “I can check the manual to find out where she is, sure. But as for figuring out why she does what she does day by day, by reading her mind or something, it’s not going to happen, Daddy! It’s easy to keep someone out of your head if you know they’re trying to listen. And even when you can hear somebody’s thoughts, you can’t always tell what the thoughts mean to them.”
Her dad looked frustrated. “Then what use is mind reading?”
“Not a lot,” Nita said. “Talking still works best. Which is what wizardry’s about to begin with.”
“Well, talking’s not working real well with Dairine at the moment,” Nita’s dad said. “She keeps telling me she’ll stay in touch, be back home for meals, and then it doesn’t happen. This has to stop. And you’re going to see that it does.”
“Me? How? I can’t do anything about—”
“Oh yes you can. To begin with, you can find her and get her back here. And then you can find a way to make sure she behaves.” Nita’s father frowned. “I don’t want to play the bad guy here, but I can’t spend every day of the summer wondering where she is and what trouble she’s getting into! I have a right to some time off, too—an afternoon or an evening when I don’t have to be worrying about her. This kind of behavior isn’t fair to me!”
He looked at Nita. She let out a breath. “No,” she said, “guess it’s not.”
“Thank you. So I want to know from you every day where Dairine is, until I can start depending on her to let me know. And you go nowhere on any given day until you’ve satisfied me as to where she’s going to be and whether she’s okay.”