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had been years since he'd thought of these creatures. But maybe they haven't forgotten me. And now, in a place where things that weren't real could become that way, his fears had come looking for him.
But have they? Kit thought. Or did I find them... make them ...the way I made those other worlds?
He clenched his jaw as the scrabbling sound of jaws munching and chewing around him got louder. It doesn't matter, he thought. run away now, they win. No way I'm going to let that happen. His eyes narrowed. I'm a wizard. And more than that, I'm thirteen/ / got over these things years ago!
But would that make a difference? The shadows grew deeper, the scrabbling noises louder than before, closer. The thought of dead eyes staring at him out of the dark, no-color eyes that were black holes even in the night, brought the hair up on the back of his neck. Kit turned, thinking he saw something—the old familiar way the shadow turned and writhed against his bedroom wall when a car went by in the street, flinching from the headlights, then wavering up and out into the dark again when the lights died, the shape towering up against the wall and dissolving its features. Kit gasped, felt around in the back of his mind for a wizardry that would save him—
—then abruptly stopped, because nothing was towering up anywhere. The scrabbling noises were still going on all around him and getting louder, but whatever these things were, they weren't his night terrors. Now he caught the first real glimpse of one of them as it came close enough to be clearly seen through the
Tuesday Evening
dimness... and what Kit saw was something that looked more like a giant centipede than anything else. It didn't seem to have a front or back end, just a middle, and about a million legs, but that was all.
Millipede, Kit corrected himself, watching the shiny gray-black creature, about a yard long, come chittering and skittering along this space's streaky gray floor, at the head of a group of maybe twenty of them. This whole scenario was looking more and more like a bug's-eye view of a kitchen floor late in the day, before anyone turned the lights on. The surface on which he and Ponch and the millipedes stood even started to look like linoleum.
Kit listened to his pulse starting to go back to normal as the first millipede came cruising along toward him, all those little feet whispering against the floor— a completely innocuous sound, now that he knew what it was. Ponch looked suspiciously at the creature, and a growl stirred down in his throat.
No, it's okay, Kit said. Let it go. It won't hurt MS.
Are you sure?
Kit had a spell ready just in case. I think it's all right, he said. Just let it go. Unless— "I'm on errantry, and I greet you," Kit said in the Speech.
The millipede creature paused, reared half its body up off the ground, and faced the two of them, its little legs working in midair. But there was no sense of recognition, no reply. The creature dropped down again and went flowing on past him and Ponch, all those legs making a tickly shuffling sound as it went. All its friends went flowing away after it, the little legs rustling and bustling softly along on the floor. Kit watched them vanish into the still-growing shadows, and slowly relaxed.
Now why did you make those? Ponch said, looking after them with a disapproving expression. Did I make them?
I know I didn't, Ponch said in a reproachful tone. And I don't care for the way they smelled. Don't make any more, all right?
I think we're in agreement on that. Kit went forward, walking but not with intention to make another universe, or anything else, right this second. He just wanted to recover a little.
Ponch padded along beside him, his tongue hanging out. Those were like the things I see sometimes when I'm asleep and it doesn't go right.
Kit knew that Ponch dreamed, but it hadn't occurred to him that dogs might have nightmares. So what do you usually do when you see them?
Bite them... and then run away.
Kit laughed. / think if I bit one of those, it wouldn't have tasted real wonderful. But once he'd seen the creature clearly, it hadn't seemed terribly threatening. In the past he'd seen aliens that had looked much more horrendous. If it was a nightmare, it was someone else's.
Though if things had gone a little differently, it could have been mine. If I'd run, for example. Kit was suddenly certain of that. / need to watch what I think in here, not let my mind wander.
Tuesday Evening
He looked down at Ponch. You want to make something first? Squirrels, Ponch said.
Kit rolled his eyes. Look, I changed my mind. Let me go first. We can do the squirrels last, and you can have yourself a big run around while I rest. All right.
They walked through fifteen or twenty universes more. It was getting easier for Kit now to imagine them quickly, but despite that he spent a little more time in each one, making sure the small details looked correct. After all, if these things are going to be here after I'm gone, I should take a little more care. In one of them he spent a long while under that world's Saturn-like rings, watching to make sure they behaved as they really should when they rose and set. In another he stood on a long narrow spit of land pushing out into a turbulent sea, while the waves crashed all around him, and waited what seemed like nearly an hour for what he knew was coming: a fleet of huge-sailed ships that came riding up out of a terrible storm and with difficulty made landfall by that strange new shore.
As the last of the strangers came up out of the sea and into their new home, bearing their black banner with its single white tree, Kit glanced down at Ponch, who sat beside him, supremely unconcerned, scratching behind one ear.
The dog looked up as he finished scratching. Aren't you done yet? Why don't you find one you like and stay there?
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Kit had to laugh. Like you want to. Well, yes!
Come on, then. Squirrels...
Ponch leaped forward, and the sea and sky vanished as that universe flowed around them, full-formed— a great grove of those huge trees suddenly standing around the two of them as if it had been there forever. A veritable carpet of squirrels shrieked and leaped away as Ponch came plunging down into the middle of them.
Kit chuckled and went strolling off among the trees while the barking and squeaking and chattering scaled up behind him. Maybe Neets'll be back by the time I get home, he thought, heading into the depths of the green shade. She's got to see this.
The greenness went darker around him, the trees becoming fewer but much taller, and their high canopy becoming more solid. Kit stuffed his hands into his pockets and gazed down at the grass as he scuffed through it. He was feeling oddly uncomfortable. Until now any thought of Nita would have been perfectly ordinary. But now thinking about her unavoidably brought up the image of her mother... . It was as unavoidable as the idea of what might happen to her.
Imagine if it was my mama. Or my pop...
But Kit couldn't imagine it. His mouth went dry just at the thought. It's no wonder she didn't call me. She's been completely freaked out.
The shadows fell more deeply around him as he went, and though Kit could still feel the grass under his feet, he noticed that it was becoming indistinct. At least
Tuesday Evening
Neets is working on an answer, he thought. But there was no avoiding the thought that no matter what any of them did for Nita's mother, wizards or not... finally, there was always the possibility that nothing would work.
He passed the last of the trees and came to a place where there was only the vaguely seen grass left. Kit walked slowly toward the edge of this, and slowly the light around him faded down toward darkness again—a clean plain empty darkness, not like the place where the millipedes had been: simply space with nothing in it. He paused there, turned to look behind him. Distant, as if seen through a reducing lens, all the trees were gathered together in their little halo of sunlight and glowing green grass, and Kit could just make out a small black shape running back and forth and being avoided, and then chased, by many little gray forms.