The moment didn’t last long for Roshaun. “Her brother was pulling her leg?” Roshaun said to Dairine. “Does this have some cultural significance?”
“I think it’s gonna be significant for him when he gets back,” Dairine said, making a mental note to be there when that happened.
“Who is she?” Roshaun said.
“She’s Carmela. Our neighbor,” Dairine said. “One of those lesser life-forms you don’t want anything to do with.”
There was a silence that lasted for several seconds, a noticeable period when dealing with Roshaun. “She’s magnificent,” he said at last.
Dairine burst out laughing. “Oh, boy,” she said, when she got enough breath back to speak, “does her brother ever need to hear that you said that!” If he does ever hear about it, she thought. How do I make best use of a piece of information like this? The alien prince has the hots for Kit’s sister. This is too funny—
“What did she mean,” Filif said, “she wanted to decorate me?”
Oh, lord, Dairine thought, as the humor of the moment abruptly evaporated. “Some of us have a tradition here,” she said. “We bring trees into our houses”—she was not going to tell him that most of those trees had been severed from their roots—”and we put decorations on them. Pretty things…glass balls…lights…”
There was a surprisingly long silence from Filif, at the end of which he said, “I want to see!!”
“I’ll find you a picture,” Dairine said. “It’s a pity you weren’t here at Christmas.” Then she wished she could take the line back. To see thousands of slowly dying trees standing around in vacant lots waiting to be bought by my people and put on display until their needles drop off?! Do not put so much emphasis on this that he wants to come back someday and see this for himself!
“But if we, uh, if we go to the mall today,” Dairine said, desperately trying to cover by manufacturing a plan for his and everybody else’s distraction from the dangerous subject, “we can decorate you with other stuff.”
Carmela reappeared in the dining room as if by magic. “Did someone mention the mall?” she said.
“Let’s go!” Filif said. “I want to see the decorations!”
“You all need to put on your disguises first,” Dairine said, “because there will be no end of trouble if you go out the way you are. And I want to see the disguises before we go anywhere.”
“I’m sure I won’t need anything to pass unremarked in this culture,” Roshaun said.
Carmela started to laugh. “Oh, you are so funny!” she said, and the dry way that she said it brought Roshaun up short. “No, of course you don’t need to do anything! You look just like everyone around here! Oh, my.” She turned away, ostentatiously half covering her face with one hand and throwing a look at Dairine that Roshaun could not possibly have missed.
He didn’t miss it. “Perhaps the lady would show me the correct manner of a disguise for this world,” Roshaun said, all haughtiness again, “since we have seen so few examples of this world’s dress…”
“Dairine,” Carmela said, “can we use the TV for a moment? I’ll show him a few things and lay a groundwork.”
“Be my guest,” Dairine said, drinking some tea. “If you think it’ll do any good…”
She went in with her mug of tea and sat down at the table with Sker’ret and Filif as Carmela and Roshaun headed into the living room. “So how are you guys this morning?” Dairine said to them.
“Everything’s well,” Sker’ret said. “Though I’m getting hungry again…”
“We’ll find you something,” Dairine said.
“And how about you?” Filif said. “Are you well?”
From the living room, Dairine heard Carmela’s muted chuckle. A moment later, Roshaun said, “Under no circumstances will I be seen in anything like that—”
Dairine grinned. “Getting better every minute,” she said, and drank her tea.
The mall was still fairly quiet when they got there later that morning. It was Sunday morning, and a lot of the most serious shoppers wouldn’t be in for some hours yet. There were, however, going to be a lot of kids there who were also on spring break, getting an early start on their malling. It was meeting these that Dairine was secretly most dreading, but she refused to show any sign of her concern to her fellow wizards.
She had been nervous enough, earlier, over the prospect of simply getting them all out of the driveway. But in retrospect, that had worked well enough. Everyone’s disguises looked good, and stayed in place, repaying the hour or two of work that Dairine and Carmela had spent on their charges before letting them out.
Filif had needed the most coaching. His disguise was no shape-change, but a visual illusion keyed to a wizardry he built, with some assistance from Dairine, to mimic human limb action, facial affect, and clothing. The illusion would not withstand close examination, such as being touched, but Dairine had no plans to let anyone near enough to touch him, and told him so.
“Your people must be very easily shocked,” Filif said, in a pitying tone of voice. It sounded funny coming from the big, stocky, dark-haired guy that he had become, partly with Carmela’s coaching.
“They are,” Dairine said, “and sometimes so am I. I certainly will be if your disguise falls off in the middle of the street because somebody bumps up against you. So keep your distance from people, and we’ll all be fine.”
“What about me?” Sker’ret said. “Do I look all right?”
“You look excellent,” Dairine said, sizing him up. Carmela had talked him
more or less into the shape of a slim, redheaded surfer guy. “In fact, I’m not sure you need any advice from me. You may want to go talk to Carmela about that sweatshirt, though.” The sweatshirt was illusionary and looked perfectly orthodox, except for the words “Will Do Magic for Food,” which he had added to the front of the illusion, in the Speech.
And then there had been Roshaun. Carmela had worked him over most effectively, and without completely losing her temper—a feat Dairine had to admire. Roshaun was “wearing,” over some of his real clothes, a long, floppy shirt and large trousers. “You’ve got the height to carry them,” Carmela had said, just a little admiring. “Not many people do.” And Roshaun had fallen for the line. Carmela had also made him reduce his epic ponytail to a more manageable length, at least in illusion. The two long front locks in front of his ears had given Carmela the most trouble; Roshaun adamantly refused to put them behind his ears, where they would show less. “They’re supposed to show!” he said.
“What they’re going to show here,” Carmela said “is that you look too different. All you need is for some wise guy to come along and pull one of those—”
Roshaun looked at her, indignant. “Who would dare?!”
“I would,” Carmela said, suiting the gesture to the concept. Roshaun winced. “And if it’s something I’d do, it’s something that will probably occur to other people. This is not your palace you’re going into, Your Royal Highness. This is a mall. You are entering a world where anything can happen—mostly having to do with people getting real judgmental about your looks.” She raised her eyebrows. “Fortunately,” she said, “your looks are okay. But if I were you, I wouldn’t push your luck with the hair.”
“As you say,” Roshaun had muttered, but he agreed with ill grace, if any at all. At the time, Carmela had thrown Dairine a look that said, This boy is going to take some kicking into shape. Dairine had kept her face very straight. But Carmela had caught her answering flicker of eyes, and knew that Dairine was in complete agreement.
With everyone’s disguises well in place, they had set out for the mall. Originally, Dairine’s plan had been to do a private-gating transit there, a variant of Kit’s and Nita’s “beam-me-up-Scotty” spell. She had long had several sets of prelocated coordinates laid in for each of the major malls nearby. But Dairine was astounded to come up against serious resistance to this concept from all her guests—even Roshaun, who she would’ve thought would resist so plebeian an option as walking on general principles.