“I told you, swimming!” Nita got up, went to the window, and looked out, thinking of S’reee and the summoning and the Song of the Twelve and the rest of the business of being on active status, which was now looking ridiculously complicated. And it looked so simple yesterday…
“You could tell them something—“
Nita made a face at that. She had recently come to dislike lying to her parents. For one thing, she valued their trust. For another, a wizard, whose business is making things happen by the power of the spoken word, learns early on not to say things out loud that aren’t true or that he doesn’t want to happen.
“Sure,” she said in bitter sarcasm. “Why don’t I just tell them that we’re on a secret mission? Or that we’re busy saving Long Island and the greater metropolitan area from a fate worse than death? Or maybe I could tell them that Kit and I have an appointment to go out and get turned into whales, how about that?”
Even without turning around, Nita could feel her sister staring at her back. Finally the quiet made Nita twitchy. She turned around, but Dairine was already heading out of the room. “Go on and eat,” Dairine said quietly, over her shoulder. “Sound happy.” And she was gone.
Under her breath, Nita said a word her father would have frowned at, and then sighed and headed for breakfast, plastering onto her face the most sincere smile she could manage. At first it felt hopelessly unnatural, but in a few seconds it was beginning to stick. At the dining-room door, where her father came around the corner from the kitchen and nearly ran her over, Nita took one look at him — in his faded lumberjack shirt and his hat stuck full of fish hooks — and wondered why she had ever been worried about getting out of the fishing trip. It was going to be all right.
Her dad looked surprised. “Oh! You’re up. Did Dairine—“
“She told me,” Nita said. “Is there time to eat something?”
“Sure. I guess she told Kit too then — I just looked in his room, but he wasn’t there. The bed was made; I guess he’s ready—“
Nita cheerfully allowed her father to draw his own conclusions, especially since they were the wrong ones. “He’s probably down at the beach killing time,” she said. “I’ll go get him after I eat.”
She made a hurried commando raid on the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove for her mother, who was browsing through the science section of The New York Times and was ready for another cup of tea. Nita’s mother looked up at her from the paper and said, “Neets, where’s your sister? She hasn’t had breakfast.”
That was when her sister came thumping into the dining room. Nita saw her mom look at Dairine and develop a peculiar expression. “Dari,” her mother said, “are you feeling all right?”
“Yeah!” said Dairine in an offended tone. Nita turned in her chair to look at her. Her sister looked flushed, and she wasn’t moving at her normal breakneck speed. “C’mere, baby,” Nita’s mother said. “Let me feel your forehead.”
“Mom!”
“Dairine,” her father said.
“Yeah, right.” Dairine went over to her mother and had her forehead felt, rolling her eyes at the ceiling. “You’re hot, sweetie,” Nita’s mother said in alarm. “Harry, I told you she was in the water too long yesterday. Feel her.”
Nita’s dad looked slightly bored, but he checked Dairine’s forehead and then frowned. “Well…”
“No ‘wells.’ Dari, I think you’d better sit this one out.”
“Oh, Mom!”
“Cork it, little one. You can come fishing with us in a day or two.” Nita’s mother turned to her. “Neets, will you stick around and keep an eye on your sister?”
“Mom, I don’t need a babysitter!”
“Enough, Dairine,” her mom said. “Up to bed with you. Nita, we’ll take you and Kit with us the next time; but your dad really wants to get out today.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Nita said, dropping what was left of the smile (though it now really wanted to stay on). “I’ll keep an eye on the runt.”
“Don’t call me a runt!”
“Dairine,” her father said again. Nita’s little sister made a face and left, again at half the usual speed.
As soon as she could, Nita slipped into Dairine’s room. Her sister was lying on top of the bed, reading her way through a pile of X-Men comics; she looked flushed. “Not bad, huh?” she said in a low voice as Nita came in.
“How did you do that?” Nita whispered.
“I used the Force,” Dairine said, flashing a wicked look at Nita.
“Dair! Spill it!”
“I turned Dad’s electric blanket up high and spent a few minutes under it. Then I drank about a quart of hot water to make sure I stayed too warm.” Dairine turned a page in her comic book, looking blase about the whole thing. “Mom did the rest.”
Nita shook her head in admiration. “Runt, I owe you one.”
Dairine looked up from her comic at Nita. “Yeah,” Dairine said, “you do.”
Nita felt a chill. “Right,” she said. “I’ll hang out here till they leave. Then I have to find Kit—“
“He went down to the general store just before you got up,” Dairine said. “I think he was going to call somebody.”
“Right,” Nita said again.
There was the briefest pause. Then: “Whales, huh?” Dairine said, very softly.
Nita got out of there in a great hurry.
The sign on top of the building merely said, in big, square, black letters, TIANA BEACH. “ Tiana Beach’ what?” people typically said, and it was a fair question. From a distance there was no telling what the place was, except a one-story structure with peeling white paint.
The building stood off the main road, at the end of a spur road that ran down to the water. On one side of it was its small parking lot, a black patch of heat-heaved asphalt always littered with pieces of clamshells, which the gulls liked to drop and crack open there. On the other side was a dock for people who came shopping in their boats.
The dock was in superb repair. The store was less so. Its large multipaned front windows, for example, were clean enough outside, but inside they were either covered by stacked-up boxes or with grime; nothing was visible through them except spastically flashing old neon signs that said “Pabst Blue Ribbon” or “Cerveza BUDWEISER.” Beachgrass and aggressive weeds grew next to (and in places, through) the building’s cracked concrete steps-The rough little U.S. Post Office sign above the front door had a sparrow’s nest behind it.
Nita headed for the open door. It was always open, whether Mr. Friedman the storekeeper was there or not; “On the off chance,” as Mr. Friedmam usually said, “that someone might need something at three in the morning… or the afternoon…” Nita walked into the dark, brown-smelling store, past the haphazard shelves of canned goods and cereal and the racks of plastic earthworms and nylon surf-casting line. By the cereal and the crackers, she met the reason that Mr. Friedman’s store was safe day and night. The reason’s name was Dog: a whitish, curlyish, terrierish mutt, with eyes like something out of Disney and teeth like something out of Transylvania. Dog could smell attempted theft for miles; and when not biting people in the line of business, he would do it on his own time, for no reason whatever — perhaps just to keep his fangs in.
“Hi, Dog,” Nita said, being careful not to get too close.
Dog showed Nita his teeth. “Go chew dry bones,” he said in a growl.
“Same to you,” Nita said pleasantly, and made a wide detour around him, heading for the phone booth in the rear of the store.
“Right,” Kit was saying, his voice slightly muffled by being in the booth. “Something about ‘the Gates of the Sea.’ I tried looking in the manual, but all I could find was one of those ‘restrictEd’ notices and a footnote that said to see the local Senior for more details—“