the ironwood reeds. “We have to go up there, out of the way,” she said. “Can you see all right?”
“Sure,” Kit said.
“Then come on—”
They climbed the dune. Once at the top, Quelt sat down, facing the water, and Nita and Kit sat down on either side of her, looking out at the starlit sea.
For long minutes, none of them said anything. Nita found herself willing to sit there all night, for no reason at all, just looking at the starlight on that softly moving water. There was no crash of surf here, hardly any noise but the whisper of the little waves sliding in and out, the whisper of the wind, and the starlight glitter. This is what I came for, she thought. All of the craziness to get here would have been worth just this. But we get another two whole weeks of it.
“Here they come,” Quelt said softly. “The keks.”
Nita strained her eyes, looking out at the water. Then she saw a motion near the shore: not water, but something else.
Silent, hardly daring to breathe, Nita and Kit watched them come. First one or two, then five, ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand: a host of tiny creatures, blue green and shining, came flooding up out of the water onto the beach. They had a lot of legs, like crabs, but no pincers. They had eyes like crabs, though; and the general look of them as they scuttled around was very crablike, though Nita couldn’t remember ever having seen any crab look quite so busy.
Soon the wet gleam of the sand under the starlight was obscured by them, black with them. All up and down the length of that beach, from right in front of them to (it seemed) the edge of the world, the crabs started to dig, throwing the peach-colored sand up behind them in little showers. The whole beach became obscured by the haze created by sand in the air, sand kicked up by millions of little legs.
“What are they doing?” Nita whispered.
“Watch,” said Quelt.
They watched, while some of the tiny satellites that were all Alaalu had by way of moons went sliding by overhead, casting shifting shadows over the shapes on the beach. And slowly, slowly, the beach above the waterline began to be obscured by something that was not flat.
The keks were building.
“What are they making?” Kit said, very quietly, as if he was afraid he might frighten them.
“We don’t know,” Quelt said. “No one knows. They build these things in the sand…then they go back into the water by midnight. And the next night, they come and do it again. They’ve always done it, as far as I know. Since our people began to notice things…”
They sat there and watched for maybe another half an hour. There, in the darkness, the crabs sculpted the sand. Shapes reared up—mostly little cones with holes opening out of them. They would collapse, get built again, collapse once more. And, finally, the keks got tired of it, and slowly, one by one, they started going into the sea again.
In the darkness, Kit said, “That was so neat…” And he let out a tremendous
yawn.
Quelt laughed under her breath. “Come on, cousins,” she said. “It’s late for all of us. No need to get up early tomorrow.”
They got up and walked back to the house along the rise, looking down at the strange shapes built on the sand, watching as the sea began to creep up and wash them slowly away. Before too long they were back at the Peliaens’ house, where here and there in an open window, a little lamp showed like a star.
“There’s your building,” Quelt said, leading them to it. It was thatched with ironwood, like the other buildings, and had several open windows that let the warm night breeze in. Screens partitioned it in half. “You have a gender-separability thing at your age, don’t you?” Quelt said. “I thought so. Is this all right?”
Kit yawned. “This is fine,” Nita said, and started to laugh at Kit, until she yawned herself.
“There’s a big couch on each side,” Quelt said. “Some coverings and cushions if you need them.” And then she bent down to each of them and took them gently by the shoulders. “I’m so glad you came!” Quelt said. “This is going to be fun.”
Nita reached up, did the same for Quelt. “You have a good night,” she said.
Quelt smiled, slipped out of the building like a shadow. Kit, standing there and looking out the window, smiled, too.
“The coolness of this situation,” he said, “cannot possibly be overstated.” And he yawned.
Nita glanced at him and laughed. “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way,” she said, “but, yeah, you’re right there. These people are really, really nice…and this is going to be a terrific holiday. Now go to bed!”
On either side of the screen, they went to sleep under strange stars—and, for the first time, did it not on errantry, where anything might happen, but in safety, and at leisure. Nothing seemed strange about the stars, here, and that odd, high horizon somehow made the sky seem smaller, a cozier and more protected place. Nita fell asleep with the sound of the sea whispering in her ears. And later on, there were other whispers entirely, but all friendly ones. This is so great, she thought once in the middle of the night as she turned over and saw, not her own dark bedroom wall, with the occasional late-night car headlight flickering across it through the Venetian blinds, but the nearby low, wide window opening onto the sea, and through it, stars falling like rain, so many of them that she was somehow surprised not to hear them pattering on the roof. So great. I love being a wizard…
And she fell asleep again, while all around her, cheerful, unperturbed, like the wind, the whispers went on.
“Everything’s fine…”
****
Local Excursions
A VOICE WAS SHOUTING SOMETHING indistinct through a roar of fire. After a while, she could just make it out:
“Dairiiiiiiine!”
She held very still, hoping they would just stop shouting her name and go away. But the roaring just got louder, an indistinct, crackling, rushing sound—
“Dairiiiiiiine.” The voice came from downstairs. “Where arrrrrrrre they?”
Dairine rolled over in her bed and clutched the pillow over her head. Then she jumped, a half-awake version of the falling-out-of-bed awakening. There was a tree next to her bed, rustling in no wind whatever.
“Uh, hi,” she said. “Uh, Filif. Yeah. Was there something you needed?”
“You were making a noise,” Filif said.
“Snoring,” Dairine said. “That’s called snoring.” Usually, when Nita accused her of it, she tried to find a way around the accusation, but she and Filif were both using the Speech, so there was no point in trying.
“Also,” Filif said, “there is someone who wants you.”
Dairine sat up in the bed, rubbing her eyes and trying to become more conscious. Her body was resisting her: She felt wrecked. If I feel like this at home, she thought, what would I have felt like if I’d gone away? Maybe this whole excursus thing wasn’t such a great idea…
“Dairiiiiiiine!”
“Coming!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
“You’re loud today,” Filif said, sounding amused.
“Yeah, well, I’m about to get louder,” Dairine said, getting out of bed and scouting around her room to find a pair of jeans to get into. Then she realized that Filif was standing on them. “Fil,” she said, “could I get you to move sideways a little? Thanks.”
Filif backed away, looking around her room. “This is interesting,” he said.
“How?” Dairine went to her chest of drawers and rummaged in it for another oversize T-shirt.
“It’s so…enclosed.”
“You’ve got to show me your home,” Dairine said, “when we have a moment. But I have a feeling that’s not going to be for a while…”
She went into the bathroom, took care of some things, changed, and then headed downstairs. In the dining room, Carmela was sitting at the table, looking in astonishment at Sker’ret. The Rirhait was mostly coiled up on a chair himself, but had draped the front half of his body over the back of it, and, in turn, was staring at Carmela with most of his eyes. Both he and Carmela glanced up at Dairine as she came in.