Wizard sHoliday DIANE DUANE Book 7 of the Young Wizard series * * * * Unending stairs reach up the mountain above you, And you keep climbing, while the welcoming voices Cheer you along. They make the long climb easier, Though the gift you re bringing may to you seem small. Don t worry, it s what they need: For all the cheering, See how empty the streets are Take your time. Make your way upward steadily toward what waits, Through day s blind radiance to the city s pinnacle, And fall up the last few steps into empty sky…. hexagram 46, Sheng Onward and Upward With me, a change of trouble is as good as a vacation. David Lloyd George (1863-1945) What, can the Devil speak true William Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, iii * * * * That Getaway Urge IT WAS THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON before the start of spring break. The weather was nothing like spring. It was cold and gray outside; the wind hissed unrepentantly through the still-bare limbs of the maple trees that lined the street, and in that wind the rain was blowing horizontally from west to east, seemingly right into the face of the girl, in parka and jeans, running down the sidewalk toward her driveway. Except for her, the street was empty, and no one looking out the window of any nearby house was close enough to notice that the rain wasn t getting the young girl wet. Even if someone had noticed, probably nothing would have come of it; human beings generally don t recognize wizardry even when it s being done right under their noses. Nita Callahan jogged up her driveway, unlocked the back door of her house, and plunged through it into the warmth of the kitchen. The back door blew back and slammed against the stairwell wall behind her in a sudden gust of wind, but she didn t care. She pushed the door shut again, then struggled briefly to get her backpack off, flinging it onto the kitchen counter. Freedom! she said to no one in particular as she pulled off her jacket and tossed it through the kitchen door onto the back of one of the dining room chairs. Freedom! Free at last! And she actually did a small impromptu dance in the middle of the kitchen at the sheer pleasure of the concept of two weeks off from school… though the dancing lasted only until her stomach suddenly growled. Freedom and food, Nita said then, and opened the refrigerator and stuck her head into it to see what was there to eat. There was precious little. Half a quart of milk and half a stick of butter; some small, unidentifiable pieces of cheese bundled up in plastic wrap, at least a couple of them turning green or blue because of the presence of other life-forms; way back in a corner, a plastic-bagged head of lettuce that had seen better days, probably several weeks ago; and a last slice of frozen pizza that someone, probably her sister, Dairine, had left in the fridge on a plate without wrapping it, and which was now desiccated enough to curl up at the edges. Make that freedom and starvation, Nita said under her breath, and shut the refrigerator door. It was the end of the week, and in her family, shopping was something that happened after her dad got home on Fridays. Nita went over to the bread box on the counter, thinking that at least she could make a sandwich but inside the bread box was only a crumpled-up bread wrapper, which, she saw when she opened it, contained one rather stale slice of bread between two heel pieces. I hate those, Nita muttered, wrapping up the bread again. She opened a cupboard over the counter, pulled down a peanut butter jar, and saw that the jar had been scraped almost clear inside. She rummaged around among various nondescript canned goods, but there was no soup or ravioli or any of the faster foods she favored just beans and other canned vegetables, things that would need a lot of work to make them edible. Nita glanced at the clock. It was at least half an hour before the time her dad usually shut his florist s shop on Fridays and came home to pick up whoever wanted to go along to help do the shopping. I will die of hunger before then, Nita said to herself. Die horribly. Then she glanced at the refrigerator again. Aha, Nita thought. She went to the wall by the doorway into the dining room and picked up the receiver of the kitchen phone. She dialed. The phone at the other end rang, and after a couple of rings someone picked up. Rodriguez residence… Behind the voice was a noise that sounded rather like a jackhammer, if jackhammers could sing. Kit How d you beat me home My last-period study hall was optional today… I was finished with my homework so I went home early. What s up I was going to ask you that, Nita said, raising her voice over the racket. Is your dad redoing the kitchen or something She heard Kit let out an exasperated breath. It s the TV. It s acting up again Nita said. Kit s last attempt to use wizardry to repair his family s new home entertainment system had produced some peculiar side effects, such as the TV showing other planets cable channels without warning. Neets, Kit said, it s worse than just acting up now. I think the TV s trying to evolve into an intelligent life-form. Nita s eyebrows went up. That could be an improvement … Yeah, but evolution can have a lot of dead ends, Kit said. And I m getting really tempted to end this one with a hammer. The TV says it s meditating…but most things get quieter when they meditate. She snickered. Knowing your electronics, you may need that hammer. Meanwhile, I don t want to talk about your TV. I want to talk about your refrigerator. Uh-oh, Kit said. Uh-oh, something inside Nita s house also said, like an echo. She glanced around her but couldn t figure out what had said it. Weird Kit, Nita said, I m dying here. You saw what lunch was like today. Nothing human could have eaten it. Mystery meat in secret sauce again. Fridays are always bad in that cafeteria, Kit said. That s why I eat at home so much. Don t torture me. What s in your fridge There was a pause while Kit walked into his kitchen, and Nita heard his refrigerator door open. Milk, eggs, some of Carmela s yogurt drinks, beer, some of that lemon soda, mineral water, half a chocolate cake, roast chicken You mean cold cuts No, I mean half a chicken. Mama made it last night. You ve had this recipe before. She rubs it with this hot-smoked paprika she gets from the gourmet store, and then she stuffs it with smoked garlic, and then she Nita s mouth had started to water. You re doing this on purpose, she said. Let me raid your fridge. Hey, I don t know, Neets, that chicken breast would be pretty good in a sandwich with some mayo, and I don t know if there s enough for Kit! He snorted with laughter. You really need to get your dad to buy more food when he shops, Kit said. You keep running out on Friday. If he d just KIT!! Kit laughed harder. Okay, look, there s plenty of chicken. Don t bust your gnaester. You coming over later Yeah, after we shop. Bring a spare hammer, Kit said. This job I m doing might need two. Yeah, thanks. Keep everybody out of the fridge for five minutes. See you later, bye! Nita hung up, then stood for a moment and considered her own refrigerator. You know what I ve got in mind, she said to it in the Speech. And you keep having to do it, the refrigerator said. Being inanimate, it wasn t actually talking, of course, but it still managed to produce a sound and sensation that came across as grumpy. It s not your fault you re not as full as you should be, come the end of the week, Nita said. I ll talk to my dad. Do you mind, though It s my job to feed you, the refrigerator said, sounding less grumpy but still a little unhappy. But in a more usual way. Talk to him, will you First thing. And, in the meantime, think how broadening it is for you to swap insides with a colleague every now and then! Well, I guess you ve got a point, the refrigerator said, sounding more interested. Yeah, go ahead… Nita whistled for her wizard s manual. Her book bag wriggled and jumped around on the counter as if something alive were struggling to get out. Nita glanced over and just had time to realize that only one of the two flap-fasteners was undone when the manual worked its way out from under the flap and shot across the kitchen into her hand. Sorry about that, she said to the manual. Casual wizardries, home utilities, fridge routine, please… The manual flipped open in her hand, laying itself out to a page about half covered with the graceful curly cursive of the wizardly Speech. Right, Nita said, and began to read. The spell went as spells usually did the workaday sounds of the wind and the occasional passing traffic outside, the soft hum of the fridge motor and other kitchen noises inside, all gradually muting down and down as that concentrating silence, the universe listening to what Nita was saying in the Speech, came into ever greater force and began to assert its authority over merely physical things. The wizardry itself was a straightforward temporospatial translocation, or exchange of one volume of local space for another, though even a spell like that wasn t necessarily simple when you considered that each of the volumes in question was corkscrewing its way through space-time in a slightly different direction, because of their differing locations on the Earth s surface. As Nita read from the manual, an iridescent fog of light surrounded her while the words in the Speech wove and wrapped themselves through physical reality, coaxing it for just a little while into a slightly different shape. She said the spell s last word, the verbal expression of the wizard s knot, the completion that would turn it loose to work The spell activated with a crash of silent thunder, enacting the change. Silence ebbed; sound came back the wind still whistling outside, the splash and hiss of a car going by. Completed, the spell extracted its price, a small but significant portion of the energy presently available to Nita. She stood there breathing hard, sweat standing out on her brow, as she reached out and opened the refrigerator door. The fridge wasn t empty now. The shelves looked different from the ones that were usually there, and on one of those shelves was that lemon soda Kit had mentioned, a few plastic bottles of it. Nita reached in and pulled one of those out first, opened it, and had a long swig, smiling slightly: It was her favorite brand, which Kit s mom had taken to buying for her. Then Nita looked over Kit s refrigerator s other contents and weighed the possibilities. She had a brief flirtation with the idea of one of those yogurt drinks, but this was not a yogurt moment; anyway, those were Carmela s special thing. However, there was that chicken, sitting there wrapped in plastic on a plate. About half of it was gone, but the breast on the other side was intact and golden brown, gorgeous. Okay, you, Nita said, come here and have a starring role in a sandwich. She reached in, took out the roast chicken, put it on a clean plate, and then unwrapped it. Nita pulled the sharpest knife off the magnetic knife rack by the sink and carved a couple of slices off the breast. She contemplated a third slice, then paused, not wanting to make too much of a pig of herself. Uh-oh, something said again. Nita looked around her, but couldn t see anything. Something in the dining room she thought. Hello she said. Instead of a reply, there came a clunking noise, like a door being pulled open. Kit, said a female voice, what s wrong with the fridge All the food s gone. No, wait, though, there s a really ugly alien in here disguised as a leaky lettuce. Hey, I guess I shouldn t be rude to it; it s a visitor. Welcome to our planet, Mr. Alien! This was followed by some muffled remark that Nita couldn t make out, possibly something Kit was saying. A moment later, Kit s sister Carmela s voice came out of Nita s refrigerator again. Hola, Nita, are your phone bills getting too big This is a weird way to deal with it… Nita snickered. No, Mela, she said into the fridge, I m just dying of hunger here. I ll trade you a roast chicken from the store later on. It won t be as good as my mama s, Carmela said. But you re welcome to some of this one. We can t have you starving. Hey, come on over later. We can shop. Nita had to grin at that, and at the wicked twist Carmela put on the last word. I ll be over, she said. Clunk! went the door of Kit s refrigerator, a block and a half away. Or three feet away, depending on how you looked at it. Nita smiled slightly, put the chicken back in the fridge, and closed the door. She d left a verbal tag hanging out of the wizardry she d worked, like a single strand of yarn hanging off the hem of a sweater. Nita said the word, and the spell unraveled itself to nothing. She went back to the bread box, got those two heel pieces of bread, which no longer looked so repulsive now that the chicken was here, and started constructing her sandwich, smiling in slight bemusement. Welcome to our planet, Mr. Alien, Carmela had said. Nita absolutely approved of the sentiment. What was unusual was that Carmela had used the Speech to express it. Nita shook her head. Things were getting increasingly strange over at Kit s house lately, and it wasn t just the electronics his family, even his dog, seemed to be experiencing the effects of his wizardry more and more plainly all the time, and no one was sure why. Though Carmela s always been good with languages, Nita thought. I guess I should have expected her to pick up the Speech eventually, once she started to be exposed to it. After all, lots of people who aren t wizards use it on other planets, anyway. And at least the lettuce didn t answer her back…Of course, the fact that it hadn t suggested that it should have been in the compost heap several days ago. Nita got up, opened the fridge again, and fished the lettuce out in a gingerly manner. Carmela was right: It was leaking. Nita put the poor soggy thing in the sink to drain it would have to be unwrapped before it went into the compost rinsed and dried her hands, and went back to her sandwich. Uh-oh, said that small voice again. Wait a minute, I know who that is…Nita stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, with half the sandwich in her hand, looking around. Spot, she said, looking around. Where are you Uh-oh, Spot said. She couldn t quite locate the sound. Is he invisible or something It s okay, Spot, Nita said. It s me. No answer came back. Nita glanced around the dining room for a moment or so, looking on the seats of the chairs, and briefly under them, but she still couldn t see anything. After a moment she shook her head. Spot was an unusually personal kind of personal computer he would speak to her and her father occasionally, but never at any length. Probably, Nita thought, this had to do with the fact that he was in some kind of symbiotic relationship with Dairine part wizard s manual, part pet, part…Nita shook her head and went back to her sandwich. Spot was difficult to describe accurately; he had been through a great deal in his short life. The part of this that Nita knew about Spot s participation in the creation of a whole species of sentient computers would have been enough to account for the weird way he sometimes behaved. But he had been constant companion to Dairine on all her errantry after that, and for all Nita knew, Spot had since been involved in stranger things. There were no further utterances from Spot. Okay, Nita said, straightening up. You stay where you are, then…She ll be back in a while. She sat down at the table and called her manual to her again. Two weeks of my own, she thought. Yeah! There were a hundred things to think about over the school holiday: projects she was working on with Kit, and things she was doing for her own enjoyment that she would finally have some time to really get into. She opened the manual to the area where she kept wizardries-in-progress and paged through it idly, pausing as she came to a page that was about half full of the graceful characters of the Speech. But the last line was blinking on and off to remind her that the entry was incomplete. Oh yeah, she thought. I d better finish this while the material s still fresh. Nita sat back and eyed the page, munching on her sandwich. Since she d first become a wizard, she tended to dream things that later turned out to be useful not strictly predictions of the future, but scenes from her life, or sometimes other people s lives, fragments of future history. The saying went that those who forgot history were doomed to repeat it; and since Nita hated repeating herself, she d started looking for ways to make better use of the information from her dreams, rather than just be suddenly reminded of them when the events actually ha