“And it worked,” S’reee said, sounding very pleased. “Didn’t you know? It’s also eternally redeemed. But meantime we have to keep fighting the battles, even though the war’s decided. The Lone One’s going to take a long while to complete Its choice, and if we get lazy or sloppy about handling Its thrashing around, a lot of people are going to die.”
“The sea floor,” Nita said, “has been shaken up a lot lately.”
“That’s one symptom that tells us the Twelve Song needs to be reenacted,” S’reee said. “We do the Song at intervals anyway, to make sure the story’s never forgotten. But when the Lone Power gets troublesome — as It seems to be doing now — we reenact the Song, and bind It quiet again.”
“Where do you do this stuff?” Kit said.
“Down the coast a ways,” S’reee said, “off the edge of the plateau, in the Great Deep past the Gates of the Sea. Ae’mhnuu was getting ready to call the Ten together for a Song in three days or so. He was training me for the Singer’s part — before they blew him in two pieces and boiled him down for oil.”
Her song went bitter, acquiring a rasp that hurt Nita’s ears. “Now I’m stuck handling it all myself. It’s not easy: You have to pick each whale wizard carefully for each part. I don’t know who he had in mind to do what. Now I have to work it out myself — and I need help, from wizards who can handle trouble if it comes up.” She looked up at them. “You two can obviously manage that. And the Ten will listen to you, they’ll respect you, after what you went through up in the High and Dry. You’ve fought the Lone Power yourselves and gotten off—“
“It was luck,” Kit muttered. Nita elbowed him.
“Singing, huh,” Nita said, smiling slightly. “I don’t have much of a singing voice. Maybe I’d better take the Silent One’s part.”
S’reee looked at Nita in amazement. “Would you?”
“Why not?”
“Not me,” Kit said. “I’m even worse than she is. But I’ll come along for the ride. The swim, I mean.”
S’reee looked from Kit to Nita. “You two are enough to make me doubt all the stories I’ve heard about humans,” she said. “HNii’t, best check that book’thing and make sure this is something you’re suited for. The temperaments of the singers have to match the parts they sing — but I think this might suit you. And the original Silent Lord was a humpback. The shapechange would come easily to you, since we’ve shared blood—“
“Wait a minute! Shapechange?” Nita cried. “You mean me be a whale?”
Kit laughed. “Why not, Neets? You have been putting on a little weight lately…”
She elbowed him again, harder. “Oh, you’d shapechange too, Kit,” S’reee said. “We couldn’t take you down in the Great Deeps otherwise. — Look, you two, there’s too much to tell, and some of it’s going to have to be handled as we go along. We’ve got three days to get everyone together for the Song, so that it happens when the Moon’s round. Otherwise it won’t keep the sea bottom quiet—“
Kit looked suddenly at Nita. “Did you see that thing on the news the other night? About the volcano?”
“The what?”
“There was some scientist on. He said that hot-water vents had been opening up all of a sudden off the Continental Shelf. And he said that if those little tremors we’ve been having keep getting worse, it could open the bottom right up and there’d be a volcano. The least it’d do would be to boil the water for miles. But it could also break Long Island in two. The beaches would go right under water. And Manhattan skyscrapers aren’t built for earthquakes.” Kit was quiet for a moment, then said, “The rocks remembered. That’s why they were upset…”
Nita wasn’t thinking about rocks, or Manhattan. She was thinking that her folks were planning to be there for another week and a half at least — and she saw a very clear picture of a tidal wave of dirty, boiling water crashing down on the beach house and smashing it to driftwood.
“When should we start, S’reee?” she said.
“Dawn tomorrow. There’s little time to waste. Hotshot will be going with us — he’ll be singing the Fourth Lord, the Wanderer, in the Song.”
“Dawn—“ Nita chewed her lip. “Could it be a little later? We’ve got to have breakfast with my parents or they’ll freak out.”
“Parents?” S’reee looked from Nita to Kit in shock. “You’re still calves, is that what you’re telling me? And you went outworld into a Dark Place and came back! I’d thought you were much older—“
“We wished we were,” Nita said under her breath.
“Oh, well. No matter. Three hours after dawn be all right? The same place? Good enough. Let me take you back. I have something to fetch so that you can swim with us, Kit. And, look—“ She gazed at them for some time from that small, worried, gentle eye; but longer at Nita. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much indeed.”
“Think nothing of it,” Kit said grandly, slipping into the water and patting S’reee on one big ribbed flank.
Nita slid into the water, took hold of S’reee’s dorsal fin, and thought something of it all the way home.
Seniors’ Song
The alarm clock went off right above Nita’s head, a painful blasting buzz like a dentist’s drill. “Aaagh,” she said, reluctantly putting one arm out from under the covers and fumbling around on the bedside table for the noisy thing.
It went quiet without her having touched it. Nita squinted up through the morning brightness and found herself looking at Dairine. Her little sister was standing by the bedside table with the alarm clock in her hands, wearing Star Wars pajamas and an annoyed look.
“And where are we going at six in the morning?” Dairine said, too sweetly.
“We are not going anywhere,” Nita said, swinging herself out of bed with a groan. “Go play with your Barbie dolls, Einstein.”
“Only if you give them back,” Dairine said, unperturbed. “Anyway, there are better things to play with. Kit, for example—“
“Dairine, you’re pushing it.” Nita stood up, rubbed her eyes until they started working properly, and then pulled a dresser drawer open and began pawing through it for a T-shirt.
“What’re you doing, then — getting up so early all the time, staying out late? You think Mom and Dad aren’t noticing? — Oh, don’t wear that,” Dairine said at the sight of Nita’s favorite sweatshirt. It featured numerous holes made by Ponch’s teeth and the words WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS. “Oh, really, Neets, don’t, it’s incredibly tacky—“
“That sounds real weird,” Nita said, “coming from someone with little Yodas all over her pajamas.”
“Oh, stuff it, Nita,” Dairine said. Nita turned her head and smiled, thinking that Dairine had become easier to tease since she’d decided to be a Jedi Knight when she grew up. Still, Nita went easy on her sister. It wasn’t fair for a wizard to make fun of someone who wanted to do magic, of whatever brand. “Same to you, runt. When’re Mom and Dad getting up, did they say?”
“They’re up now.”
“What for?”
“They’re going fishing. We’re going with them.”
Nita blanched. “Oh, no! Dair, I can’t—“
Dairine cocked her head at Nita. “They wanted to surprise us.”
“They did,” Nita said, in shock. “I can’t go—“
“Got a hot date, huh?”
“Dairine! I told you—“
“Where were you two going?”
“Swimming.” That was the truth.
“Neets, you can swim any time,” Dairine said, imitating their mother’s tone of voice. Nita zipped up her jeans and sat down on the bed with a thump. “What were you gonna be doing, anyway?”