Nita nodded, put the cereal box down, and just sat for a moment with her chin in her hands. “I had a thought—“
“Aiooooooo.”
Nita looked brief murder at Kit, then let the look go. “We seem to have pulled it off again,” she said.
“Yeah.”
He said it almost a little too easily. “You notice,” she said, “that our reward for hard jobs seems to be that we get given harder jobs even?”
Kit thought, then nodded. “Problem is,” he said, “that we like the hard jobs.”
She made a sour face. Much as it annoyed her to admit it — her, little quiet Nita who sat in the back of the class and made decent grades and it was true. “Kit,” she said, “they’re gonna keep doing that.”
“They.”
“The Powers. They’ll keep doing it until one day we don’t pull it off. One of us, or both of us.”
Kit looked down at his cereal bowl. “Both, preferably,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Saves the explanations.” He scooped out the last spoonful of cereal, glanced up, and made a face. “Well, what would I have told them?”
Nita shook her head. “We could stop,” she said.
Kit chewed, watching her: swallowed, and said, “You want to?”
She waited to see if he would give some sign of what he was thinking. Useless: Kit would make a great poker player someday. “No,” she said at last.
“Me either,” Kit said, getting up and putting the bowl in the sink. “Looks like we’re stuck with being wizards, huh?”
Very slowly, she smiled at him. “Yeah.”
“Then let’s go down to the water and let them applaud.”
Kit gave the screen door a good-natured kick and went pounding down the stairs. Nita shook her head, still smiling, and followed.
It was late. The Moon was now a day past full, and about halfway up the sky; its light was so bright the sky couldn’t even manage to be totally black. The stars hung glittering in a sky more indigo, or midnight blue. Nita and Kit walked out into the surf, feeling the wind on them and hearing something most unusual — the sound of whales basking on the surface, some miles out, and singing where they lay. It was, as it had been on first hearing, a high, wild, lovely sound; but now the songs brought something extra, a catch at the heart that hadn’t been there before — sorrow, and loss, and wonder. Oh, Ed, Nita thought, and sighed, remembering the glory of how he had sounded at the last. I’m gonna miss you…
Nita swam out far enough to take whaleshape, then took Kit in tow until they made it to water deep enough for a sperm whale. He changed. Side by side they swam outward into the singing, through a sea illumined in a strange green-blue radiance, moonlight diffused and reflected. Dark shapes came to meet them; all the Celebrants but two, cruising and singing in the bright water. S’reee came to greet them skin to skin. “Come swim with us awhile,” she said. “No business tonight. Just singing.”
“Just a little business,” Nita said. It was hard to stop being the Silent One with all her responsibilities. “How are things down deep?”
“Quiet. Not a shake; and several of the hot-water vents seem to have reduced their outputs to normal levels. We’re going to have some peace for a while, it seems… for which we thank you. Both of you.”
“You’re very welcome,” Kit said. “We’d do it again, if we had to.” Nita shot Kit a quizzical look, which he returned in kind. “After all, it’s our world too…”
They swam, the Celebrants and Kit and Nita, for a long time, a long way out — into waters bright with fish going about their business, peaceful with seaweed and coral, and warm — whether with volcanism or summer, Nita couldn’t tell. “This is the way it’s supposed to be,” S’reee said from beside her, at one point. “Not the way you met me — not blood in the water. Just the long nights, the singing, time to think…”
“It’s so bright,” Nita said, wondering. The krill were evidently out in force tonight; between them and the moonlight, the water was dazzling. And there seemed to be more krill yet in the deeper waters, for it was brighter down there; much brighter. “Look at that,” Kit said, and dived, heading for the light.
At about a hundred feet down, Nita began to realize that the light in the water had nothing to do with krill. Of itself the water was burning, a harmless warm radiance that grew stronger and stronger in the greater depths. And in those depths, everything else shone too: not just reflected light, but a fire that seemed to come from inside seaweed, shells, branching coral. Song echoed in that water, sounding at first like whalesong — but slowly Nita began to hear something else in the music, in a way that had nothing to do with hearing. Expressions of growth, of power, of delight — but no note of limitation, pain, loss. She found herself descending into timelessness, into a blaze of meaning and purpose so bright it could have blinded the heart — had the heart not become stronger every moment, more able to bear it.
Finally there was nothing but the brightness, the water all around her on fire with light. Shapes moved in the light, swimming in it as if the water were extraneous and the light were their true medium. There was no looking at those shapes for more than a heartbeat before the eye was forced to turn away, defeated by glory. It was in the passage of those shapes near Nita that it was made plain to her, in the way the Sea gave a whale-wizard knowledge, that she and Kit were welcome indeed and had successfully completed the job they’d been given.
Kit was silent, as if not knowing what to say. Nita knew, but simply considered for a moment before singing it in one soft note that, in this place, carried as poignantly as a trumpet-call at evening. It hurt, she said.
We know, the answer came back. We sorrow. Do you? For what happened?
No.
For who you are now — the person you weren’t a week ago…
No.
No, Kit said.
Would you do the same sort of thing again?
Yes… if we had to.
Then there’s no guarantee this won’t happen again. Not that we could offer you any. Hope, like fear, comes from within…
Nita nodded. There was nothing sorrowful about the pronouncement; it was as matter-of-fact as anything in the manual. Kit turned away from the shape, the bright Power, that had answered them. As always, Nita turned with him.
And, looking up in astonishment, backfinned hurriedly. Something was passing over. Something as huge, or huger than, the unseeable shapes in the radiant water; burning as fiercely as they did, though with a cooler flame; passing by with a silent, deadly grace that Nita would have known anywhere. I am no wizard, he had said. But how could he, or she, have anticipated that borrowing a wizard’s power would make even a nonwizard part of the Heart of the Sea? Or maybe there was more to it than that. What’s loved, Carl had said, survives. Nita’s heart went up in a great note of unbelieving joy.
The passing shape didn’t turn, didn’t pause. Nita got just a glance of black eyes, the only dark things in all this place. Yet even they burned, a fire behind that opaque look that could mean anything.
Nita knew what it meant. And on he went, out of sight, in unhurried grace; the true dark angel, the unfallen Destroyer, the Pale Slayer who never really dies — seeking for pain to end.
Nita turned to Kit, wordless. He gazed back, as astonished and delighted as she.
…Okay, Kit said. Bring on the next job.
She agreed.