Within a few minutes she had all the pulp out and had begun cutting the face. Kit and Ronan immediately started offering helpful design tips and critiquing her cutting technique, so that Nita lost any further concern about the pumpkin’s feelings in a vague fog of annoyance at the kibitzing. “And how many of these have you done, oh great design expert?” Nita said to Ronan when she couldn’t bear it any more.
“Pumpkins? Not a single one, I’m glad to say.”
Kit glanced at him, confused. “Wait, I thought you guys invented Hallowe’en.”
“’Course we did. The pumpkins to carve, and the candy, though, that’s new. We didn’t get candy when I was little. Just nuts and apples.”
Nita and Kit looked at him, incredulous. “And that was all?” Kit said. “That wouldn’t get your house a whole lot of business around this neck of the woods. Might even get you egged…”
“Different times,” Ronan said. “Different traditions. Back then people just gave the kids what we grew at home: stuff from outside was too expensive. But nowadays you lot have ruined us. We’re coming down with pumpkins and plastic Jack O’Lanterns and crappy superhero costumes.” Then he snickered a little. “You know what we used before pumpkins?”
“What?”
“Turnips.” Ronan started laughing.
“Turnips,” Nita said in wonder. “But wasn’t the whole carving thing originally about putting something freaky enough in front of your house that it would scare the demons away?”
Ronan was still laughing, but he managed to stop himself after a few moments, wiping his eyes. “Yeah. And you do have to ask yourself what poor weedy wimp of a demon would be scared of a carved-up turnip…”
“Not that I’m sure why demons would be scared of pumpkins either,” Kit said.
Ronan shook his head, but he grinned a little. “Some traditions don’t make sense,” he said. “No point in paying attention to them if they don’t work for you. Like the apples and nuts. Lots of lovely fiber, no question. Good for little growing kids. But I think I prefer these wee marshmallowy things.” He reached into yet another of the bags he’d been plundering and produced a screamingly yellow cellophane-wrapped chick, eyeing its packaging. “Peeps? Poops?”
“Poops!” Kit snorted with laughter and mimed falling over sideways out of the chair.
“Must be some planet where they poop this color,” Ronan said, examining the marshmallow chick with a critical eye. “Wouldja ever look at that shade. Think of the godawful crap they must put in these things to make that happen…”
He popped the chick into his mouth and chewed with a meditative expression. “Revolting,” Ronan said after a moment. “Got any more?”
“They come in orange too,” Kit said, digging around in yet another of the bags and coming up with an orange marshmallow pumpkin, which he unwrapped and tossed to Ronan.
“Will you two cut that out?” Nita said as she finished with the pumpkin’s second eye. “It took me hours to get those right!”
Ronan ingested the Peep-pumpkin and started going through the contents of another of the dumped out bags. “And look at these,” he said, picking out a piece of candy corn that had somehow wiggled its way into the marshmallow pumpkin packet. “Look at this thing, it’s just so much sugar and dye. All the chemicals in these, you’ll stunt your growth for sure! Here, I’ll eat them for you.”
Nita sighed in resignation. “These peanut things are good,” she said, picking up one candy that Kit had spilled out of another of the bags.
Ronan stared at the pale-orange object. “That’s never a peanut.”
“It’s just supposed to sort of look like one. It’s marshmallow too.”
“Who’re you kidding?” Ronan said. “This thing’s hard. A Styrofoam peanut, that it might be.”
“Different kind of marshmallow…”
Ronan bit into it anyway, and then gave Nita the kind of look reserved for some unfortunate whose senses were malfunctioning. “And why’s it taste like bananas? You people are unwell.” But nonetheless he started rooting around in the candy on the table for another.
In the back of the house, the bathroom door opened. A few seconds later Dairine came into the dining room, and Ronan and Kit turned to look at her. “Whoa!” Kit said, and Ronan simply burst out laughing: for Dairine was turned out in the long brown overrobe and crosswrapped beige gi-like undertunic of a young Jedi. Every detail had been handled— the breeches, the boots, and even the narrow apprentice braid hanging down on one side, with her red hair otherwise tied into a short ponytail behind. Behind her came Spot, who for the occasion had applied a virtual-shapechange field to himself and now looked like the kind of little low-running droid that when it sees you coming, hurriedly does a K-turn and runs away squeaking in fear.
Nita knew Dairine had been working on getting her costume right for days, and therefore she wasn’t above teasing her a little. “Still looks like a bathrobe,” she said.
Dairine turned a faintly scornful look on Nita. “People who carry these are not wearing bathrobes,” she said, twitching aside the overrobe to reveal, hanging from the bathrobe’s inner belt, a foot-long cylindrical object. This she unhitched, flipped in the air, and caught while hitting its actuator stud. The lightsaber’s actinic blade instantly sprang out and sang softly in the air.
Ronan nodded, impressed. “Now that’s a nice wizardry,” Kit said.
Dairine gave Kit the same look. “You kidding? Who needs wizardry for this? I bought it from one of Carmela’s weapons suppliers. Light-based weapons are real popular with species that have tight-channel plasma technologies. And once you’ve got one, modding a new hilt onto the thing’s no big deal.” She flicked her wrist from side to side, and the blade sizzled and hummed in the air: she looked at it with an expression of satisfaction tinged with annoyance. “Though you won’t believe the crap I went through to get it to make that noise. Any decent lightsword’s completely silent. What kind of lamebrain builds weapons that let the bad guys hear you coming?”
Nita sucked in a breath and was glad that there were none of the more rabid sort of Star Wars fans around to take issue with such heresy. “Ooookay,” she said. “Just don’t let anybody else play with that thing…”
“Are you insane?” Dairine said, collapsing the blade and hanging the lightsaber hilt at her belt again. “It’s DNA-locked— all the basic models come with that now.” She glanced at the table and the neat rows of candy bags, now not quite so neat. “This is getting kind of messed up…”
“Yes it is,” Nita said, glaring at Ronan and Kit. “You guys are going to get plenty of stuff once we’re out; will you lay off this?”
Kit and Ronan both smiled at her angelically, but showed no signs of stopping. Got to get them out of here before they eat it all… Nita thought. “Okay,” she said, “we’re done here.” She wrapped up the seeds and pulp from the pumpkin in the top few layers of newspaper on which she’d been working, took them into the kitchen and put them in the bag with the composting waste.
“So where are you going to put it?” Kit said. “Front step?”
“Probably…” Nita said. But as she came back into the dining room, she looked at the pumpkin and realized that it was looking back at her: and despite the carven smile, it looked a little sad.
“…No,” she said. “I’m taking him with. Dad can’t keep an eye on the front door every minute, and I don’t want him getting smashed while we’re out.”
Kit looked at her quizzically. “You’re going to carry a real pumpkin around with us?”
Nita studied the pumpkin briefly. “It’s not like he’s overripe,” she said. “Or too heavy. I can get some rope, pierce through the sides and make a handle. I’ll take a separate bag for the candy.”
“He?” Dairine said, bemused.
Ronan shook his head in genial disbelief. “I’ve seen a lot of wizards do a lot of weird things,” he said, “but I’ve never seen one bond with a vegetable before.”