A nervous expression passed across her mother's face, which she wasn't able to hide. "It's about the biopsy, isn't it?" Nita said.
Her mother closed her eyes, and Nita felt the fear that went right through her. "Yup," her mother said. Nita didn't even have to ask, Was it positive? She knew. "I'll go find her," Nita said. But she didn't let go 227
of her mother's hand. "Mom," she said, "I really hate this." "I hate it, too."
"All I want is for you to be home again."
Her mother opened her eyes and gave Nita a sly look. "Yelling at you to clean your room?" "Sounds like paradise."
"I'm going to remind you of that later." Nita found a smile somewhere. "You do that."
"I will. Go on, sweetie. Do your work... and we'll see what happens."
Nita kissed her mom and got out of there in a hurry, before the mood changed. She went out into the hall and saw Dairine leaning in the doorway of a little alcove where there were some vending machines—her gaze trained on the floor, her arms folded.
Thanks for the circle, she said silently to Dairine as she went over to her. You got a couple of minutes? Mom wants to talk to you.
About what? I can't do anything. Dairine didn't look up. All this power, and it's not enough.
Nita leaned against the same wall, folded her arms, stared down at the same undistinguished gray linoleum. I know, she said. It'd be nice to be able to just make this vanish... but...
But what can I do?/
Don't let her go through this alone was all Nita could think of to say.
Dairine nodded and went off down the hall. Nita watched her sister go, small and quick and tense, shoulders hunched, into their mother's room.
Tuesday Evening
WHEN KIT GOT HOME at last and lugged his share of the shopping into the kitchen, it was nearly seven.
Neets? Kit said silently as he started unpacking the contents of too many plastic bags onto the sofa. There were some T-shirts and some new jeans, but mostly the contents of these bags seemed to be socks, socks, and more socks.
Nothing. Nope, sloe's off doing her training-universe stuff already. Can't blame her.
"...and it's all got to be washed separately," his mother said, sounding less than enthusiastic, as she came in from the car. "Kit, honey, just make two piles, dark stuff and light stuff. This is going to take me forever."
Ponch came bounding in from outside, released from the backyard. "I think certain people want a walk," Kit's dad said as he entered and started unpacking another bag onto the kitchen table. "You go do that, son; I'll take care of these— Did you leave any socks in the store for the rest of humanity?" he called after Kit's mother.
"No. You're going to be wearing these till you die. Where did you hide the laundry basket?"
Kit gladly left his father in the company of all the world's socks, went to the back door, looked at the leash... then picked up the other one he'd left hanging beside it, invisible to nonwizardly eyes. "Ponch?"
"Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah!"
They went down the street together, Ponch running ahead to take care of business while Kit went along behind him, paging through his manual as twilight deepened toward full dark. He found a good-sized section discussing the theory and structure of the practice universes but no information on how to get into them. Access to the aschetic continua and to more detailed information is released on a need-to-go basis, the manual said. Consult your Area Advisory or Senior for advice and assessment.
Yeah, and what if they say no? Kit closed the manual and shoved it into his "pocket." And what ifNita gets pissed about my asking, because she thinks I think she can't handle it?
Better not to get involved.
But I am involved.
It wasn't just that he liked Nita's mother. He couldn't imagine a world without her, and knew Nita couldn't, either. The shock of finding out what was happening was giving way to the fear of what life would be like afterward... after—
Tuesday Evening
He didn't even want to think it. And neither does Neets...
Her fear was on Kit's mind. The two of them had been in some frightening situations. Mostly, though, these hadn't involved the kind of fear that lingered; they'd been over with in a hurry. What Kit had felt in Nita today, by contrast, had settled deep into her and made her something of a stranger. And there's nothing I can do to help, really. She's got to get over it herself.
If she can.
Ponch came running back to Kit. Let's go!
They headed down the street, to the side gate of the school. It was usually locked, but this was hardly a problem for Kit; he and the padlock through the gate's latch were old friends. As he reached the gate he reached out and held the padlock briefly. "Hey there, Yalie," he said in the Speech.
It wasn't as if inanimate objects were intelligent, as such, but they didn't mind being treated that way.
Who goes there?
"Like you don't know."
The padlock popped open in his hand. Kit slipped it out, softly opened the gate and let himself and Ponch through, then locked up again. "You keep an eye on things now."
You can depend on me.
Kit smiled. Ponch had launched himself away across the grass, in the general direction of the school buildings. Kit let him run awhile, then whistled to call him back. All the lights in the school were off except for the exit lights at the ends of the hallways, and the houses
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nearby were all screened from the road and parking lot on this side by hedges. No one could see them in the near-darkness.
He shook out the wizardly leash and put the shorter loop around his wrist. Ponch ran back to him, jumped up, and put his forepaws against Kit; Kit braced himself and slipped the bigger loop around the dog's neck.
"Ready?" "Ready."
Together they stepped into the deeper dark—
—and walked several steps more through it before breaking out into the light. There wasn't much light, though. A dim gray illumination inhabited the space, a thunderstorm twilight, with a greenish tinge like a bruise. A fog swirled around them, too, of the same color as the light. Where is this? Kit said silently to Ponch, down the leash. / wasn't thinking of this.
Neither was I. I don't always come out where I'd planned to.
They walked on through the grayness together. Ponch was sniffing at the featureless ground as they went. Not very exciting, Kit said. How about if we—
Not yet.
This assured tone from his dog was strange enough, but there was also something urgent about it. You smell something?
Always. But here—Ponch smelled the air, then went forward again with his nose to the ground—it's something different.
Like what?
Tuesday Evening
Like— The light was getting dingier, fading away— an odd, slow effect, as if the universe were hooked up to a dimmer, and the whole thing were being turned slowly, slowly down. It's you, but it's not you, Ponch said, perturbed.
Dimmer and dimmer...and then Kit caught his first sight of them in the dark. A rustling, a shifting in the shadowless light that was fading away all around him... and the sudden thought, as the hair went up on the back of his neck was: / don't want to be in the dark with them/
He had never really seen them, when he was little. Well, of course not! I was imagining them. But his early childhood had been haunted by these creatures themselves by night, and the fear of them by day. Kit took a step backward. Beside him Ponch held his ground, but he whimpered softly, the same eager sound he made when he had a squirrel in his sights.
The rustling sound got louder and seemed to come from all around him. Kit glanced about, getting more nervous by the minute. His childhood night fears hadn't been anything like what some adults seemed to expect: unlikely things hiding somewhere specific—under the bed, in the closet, or behind a dresser. They'd been nowhere near so easy to nail down, or to ridicule. Silly monster-shapes would have been infinitely preferable to his tormentors, which had had no shapes at all. Shadow had been their element, twilight their breeding place; and if summer had been Kit's favorite season when he was little, it was because in summer the nights were shortest and the twilight a long time coming. It