“Clumsy,” he said as he turned her loose. “Watch it, Nino—“
He punched her, not as hard as he might have; then spent a moment or two brushing himself off, and redraped the whalesark over one shoulder, where it hung mistily shimmering like a scrap of fog with starlight caught in it. “Is that locked?” he said, looking up at Nita’s window with interest.
“Uh-huh.”
“And the front and back doors are too.”
“Yeah.”
Kit threw a wicked look at Nita as they made their silent way out of the yard and toward the beach. “Your mom and dad are going to be real curious how we got out of the house and then locked all the inside locks when we don’t have the keys.”
“Uh-huh,” Nita said. “If we’re gonna get in real trouble, we might as well confuse them as much as possible. It might distract them…”
“Wanna bet?” Kit said.
Nita didn’t answer.
The beach was desolate. Nita and Kit left their bathing suits under a prominent boulder and slid into the chilly water. Nita changed first and let Kit take hold of her dorsal fin and be towed out to deeper water. She shuddered once, not knowing why, at the strange cool feeling of human hands on her hide as she swam outward.
Beyond the breakers, the water was peculiarly still. The sky was cobalt with a hint of dawn-silver in it; the sea was sheenless, shadowless, the color of lead. And rising up from the listless water, four or five hundred yards from shore, a tall white fin was cruising in steady, silent circles, like the sail of a ghost ship unable to make port.
“I didn’t think Ed was going to be here,” Kit said. He let go of Nita’s fin and slipped off into the water.
“Neither did I,” Nita said, not knowing if he heard her before he dived. When he was finished changing, she dived too and made her way toward where Ed swam serenely.
S’reee was there as well. She swam close, whistling Nita a greeting, and brushed skin with her. Hotshot was there too, gamboling and swooping in the dim-lit water — though with just a little more restraint than usual around the silently drifting bulk of Ed.
“A long swim today,” S’reee said to Nita. “Up to Nantucket. Are you ready? Did you get your problem with your dam and sire worked out?”
“Not really,” Nita said. “In fact, it’ll probably get a lot worse before it gets any better. There’s going to be trouble tonight…” She stopped; there was no use letting it spoil the day. “Never mind,” she said. “Let’s go.”
S’reee led the way, a straight course east-northeast, to Nantucket Rips. From her reading and from what the Sea told her, Nita knew those were treacherous waters, full of sudden shelves and hidden rocks. And the wizard’s manual spoke of uneasy “forces” that lingered about those dead and broken ships — forces Nita suspected she would mistake for restless ghosts, if she should have the bad luck to see one.
“You are silent today,” said a dry, cool voice directly above Nita. Glancing upward, Nita saw floating above her, effortlessly keeping pace, the great pale form that had been one of the images keeping her awake last night. “And you did not greet me. Is this courtesy to another celebrant?”
“Good morning, Ed,” Nita said, in the same mildly edgy tone of voice she would have used on a human being who bugged her that way.
“Oh, indeed,” Ed said. “You’re bold, Sprat. And the boldness comes of distress. Beware lest I be forced to hurry matters, so that we should have even less time to get acquainted than you seem to desire.”
“That was something I was meaning to ask you about,” Nita said, looking up at Ed again. “The ‘distress’ business—“
“Ask, Sprat.”
“You said before that it was your ‘job’ to end distress where you found it…”
“You are wondering who gave me the job,” Ed said, sinking to Nita’s level, so that her left-side eye was filled with the sight of him. “Perhaps it was the Sea itself, which you wizards hear speaking to you all the time. You look askance? Doubtless you think the Sea would be too ‘good’ to assign a whole species to nothing but painful and violent killing.” Ed’s voice stayed cool as always, though there was a tinge of mockery to it. “If you think so, look around you, Sprat. The ocean is full of weaponry as effective as my teeth. Poisons and spines, snares and traps and claws that catch are everywhere. We all have to eat.”
Ed smiled at her. A long shiver went down Nita from head to tail; a shark’s smile is an expression the wise person does not provoke. “Those are just dumb creatures, though,” she said, keeping her song as inoffensive-sounding as possible. “They don’t think. You do — and you enjoy what you do.”
“So?” Ed swam closer. “How should I not? Like all my people I’m built to survive in a certain fashion… and it’s only wise to cause what you build to feel good when it does what it must to survive. My nerves are tuned to pain. That fact tells me beyond question what my job is. Distress calls me; blood in the water is the clearest sign of that distress, and I have a duty to it. If I destroy, still I serve life. What can’t elude me is often sick or injured, and suffering; what survives me or outthinks me is stronger and wiser for it. And the survivor’s descendants will be too. Is that so bad?”
“Well, that way… no. But I bet you wouldn’t be so calm about it if it was you dying.”
“Me? Die?” Ed laughed again. “The Master-Shark eats the Silent Lord’s ‘Gift,’ you know, along with the Silent One. There’s immortality in all the sharks, in various degrees. But what good is immortality if you haven’t died first? And nothing in the Sea is deadly enough to kill me against my will.”
Something about Ed’s voice was making Nita curious. “What about with it?”
“Ah, but will must spread to the body from the mind. And after all the years I’ve lived in it, my body is too strong. All it wants is to eat, and live. And so it does; and I swim on. Immortality is of terrible power. It would take something more powerful yet to override it…”
Nita didn’t say anything.
“But all that being so,” Ed said, “for good or ill, I am the Destroyer. Being that, I might as well enjoy my work, might I not? And so I do. Would it help if I decided to be miserable?” There was actually a touch of humor in that cold, dry voice.
“No, I suppose not.”
“So I go about my work with a merry heart,” Ed said, “and do it well as a result. That should please you, I think—“
“I’m delighted,” Nita sang, under her breath.
“—for spells work best, you wizards tell me, when all the participants are of light heart and enjoying themselves. I’ll certainly enjoy eating you when the time comes ‘round.”
“Ed, that’s not funny.”
“It isn’t?” said the Master-Shark, looking at her.
Nita stopped swimming, letting herself coast for a moment. There was something odd about the way he’d said that— “Ed, what was that crack supposed to mean?”
The look Ed gave her was expressionless as ever. “The Silent Lord is pleased to jest with me,” he said.
“Ed!”
“Distress, distress, Sprat. Have a care.”
Ed was drifting closer again, and Nita kept herself as outwardly calm as she could. “Ed,” she said, slowly and carefully, “are you trying to say that you’re actually planning to eat me sometime soon?”
“The day after tomorrow,” said the Master-Shark in perfect calm, “if we keep to schedule.”
Nita couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You seem surprised,” Ed said. “Why?”
It took Nita a few moments to answer, for her mind was boiling with sudden memories. S’reee’s great relief when Nita agreed to participate in the Song. Her repeated questions to Nita about whether she was sure she wanted to do this. The Blue’s silent, sad appraisal and approval of her. S’reee’s remark about the Silent Lord’s contribution to the Song being the most important of any celebrant—“the Silent Lord has the most at stake.” And the wording of the Celebrant’s Oath itself, with its insistent repetition and the line Nita had been so sure was ceremoniaclass="underline" “and I will blend my blood with theirs should there be need…”