Her mother and father were sitting side by side on the Coca-Cola-colored couch, their backs straight. They looked up as Nita and Kit came through the door, and Nita saw her mother’s face tight with fear and her father’s closed like a door. They had been reading magazines; they put them aside, and the usually friendly room suddenly looked dingy as a prison, and the matador hurt Nita’s eyes.
“Sit down,” her father said. His voice, quiet, calm, sounded too much like Ed’s. She managed to hold onto her composure as she headed for Dairine’s favorite chair and sat down quickly.
“Pretty slick,” said her father. “My daughter appears to have a great future in breaking and entering. Or breaking and departing.”
Nita opened her mouth and shut it again. She could have dealt with a good scolding… but this chilly sarcasm terrified her. And there was no way out of it.
“Well?” her father said. “You’d better start coming up with some answers, young lady. You too,” he said to Kit, his eyes flashing; and at the sight of the anger, Nita felt a wash of relief. That look was normal. “Because what you two say is going to determine whether we send you straight home tomorrow morning, Kit — and whether we let you and Nita see any more of each other.”
Kit looked her father straight in the eye and said nothing.
Sperm whales! Nita thought, and it was nearly a curse. But then she took the thought back as she realized that Kit was waiting for her to say something first, to give him a lead. Great! Now all I have to do is do something!
What do I do?
“Kit,” her father said, “I warn you, I’m in no mood for Latin gallantry and the whole protect-the-lady business. You were entrusted to my care and I want answers. Your parents are going to hear about this in any case — what you say, or don’t say, is going to determine what I tell them. So be advised.”
“I understand,” Kit said. Then he glanced at Nita. “Neets?”
Nita shook her head ever so slightly, amazed as always by that frightened bravery that would wait for her to make a move, then back her utterly. It had nothing to do with the whalesark. Kit, Nita thought, practically trembling with the force of what she felt, you’re incredible! But I don’t have your guts — and I have to do something!
Her mother and father were looking at her, waiting.
Oh, Lord, Nita thought then, and bowed her head and put one hand over her face, for she suddenly knew what to do.
She looked up. “Mom,” she said — and then had to start over, for the word came out in a kind of strangled squeak. “Mom, you remember when we were talking the other day? And you said you wanted to know why we were staying out so much, because you thought something besides ‘nothing’ was going on?”
Her mother nodded, frozen-faced.
“Uh, well, there was,” Nita said, not sure where to go from there. Two months of wizardry, spells wrought and strange places visited and wonders seen — how to explain it all to nonwizards? Especially when they might not be able to see wizardry done right under their eyes — and in the past hadn’t? Never mind that, Nita told herself desperately. If you think too much, you’ll get cold feet. Just talk.
Her mother was wearing a ready-to-hear-the-worst expression. “No, not that,” Nita said, feeling downright cross that her mother was still thinking along those idiotic lines. “But this is going to take a while.”
Nita swallowed hard. “You remember in the spring,” she said, “that day Kit and I went into the city — and that night, the Sun went out?”
Her parents stared at her, still angry, and now slightly perplexed too.
“We had something to do with that,” Nita said.
Truthsong
And Nita began to tell them. By the time she saw from their faces just how crazy the story must be sounding, it was already much too late for her to stop.
She told them the story from the beginning — the day she had her hand snagged by an innocent-looking library book full of instructions for wizardry — to the end of her first great trial, and Kit’s, that terrible night when the forces of darkness got loose in Manhattan and would have turned first the city and then the world into a place bound in eternal night and cold, except for what she and Kit did. She told them about Advisory and Senior wizards, though she didn’t mention Tom and Carl; about places past the world where there was nothing but night, and about the place past life where there was nothing but day.
Not once did her parents say a word.
Mostly Kit kept quiet, except when Nita’s memory about something specific failed; then he spoke up and filled in the gap, and she went on again. The look on her father’s face was approaching anger again, and her mother was well into complete consternation, by the time Nita started telling them about the dolphin who nudged her in the back, the whale she and Kit found on the beach, and the story the whale had told them. She told them a little-very little, fearing for her own composure — about the Song of the Twelve and what she was going to be doing in it.
And then, not knowing what else to say, she stopped.
Her mother and father looked at each other.
Our daughter, the look said, is going to have to be hospitalized. She’s sick.
Nita’s mother finally turned to her. Her dad had bowed his head about a third of the way through the story, and except for that glance at her mother seemed unable to do anything but sit with his hands clasped tightly together. But her mother’s face was stricken.
“Nita,” she said, very gently — but her voice was shaking like the tightly clasped hands of the man beside her, “you don’t have to make up stories like this to keep us from being angry with you.”
Nita’s mouth fell open. “Mom,” she said, “are you trying to say you don’t believe me?”
“Nita,” her father said. His eyes were haunted, and his attempt to keep his voice sounding normal was failing miserably. “Give us a break. How are we supposed to believe a crazy story like this? Maybe you’ve got Kit believing it-” He broke off, as if wanting to find a way to explain all this, something reasonable. “I guess it’s understandable, he’s younger than you…”
Nita glanced over at Kit for the first time in a while and gulped. His annoyed look brought the sperm-whale battlecry scraping through her memories again.
“I’ll tell you how you’re supposed to believe it,” Kit said.
Nita’s mother and father looked at him.
Kit was suddenly sitting a little taller in the chair. And taller still, though he didn’t move a muscle. And taller — until Nita could see that Kit’s seat and the seat of the chair no longer had much to do with each other. He was hovering about two feet in the air.
“Like this,” Kit said.
Holding her breath, Nita looked from Kit to her parents.
They stared at Kit, their faces absolutely unmoved, as if waiting for something. Kit glanced over at Nita, shrugged, and kept floating up until he was sitting six feet or so above the floor. “Well?” he said.
They didn’t move a muscle.
“Harry—“ Nita’s mother said, then, after what seemed forever.
He didn’t say a thing.
“Harry,” her mother said, “I hate to admit it, but I think all this has gotten to me…”
Nita’s father simply kept looking at the chair.
Then, ever so slowly, he leaned his head back and looked up at Kit.