Her father looked at her and shook his head sadly. "I just don't want to see you hurt. Kidling, I don't know… if you could just be a little more like them, if you could try to…. " He trailed off, running one hand through his silver hair. "What am I saying?" he muttered. "Look. If there's anything I can do to help, will you tell me?"
"Yessir. "
"Okay. If you feel better tomorrow, would you rake up the backyard a little? I want to go over the lawn around the rowan tree with the aerator, maybe put down some seed. "
"Sure. I'll be okay, Dad. They didn't break anything. "
"My girl. " He got up. "Don't read so much it hurts your eyes, now. "
"I won't, " Nita said. Her father strode out the door, forgetting to close it behind himself as usual. She ate her supper slowly, for it hurt to chew, and she tried to think about something besides Joanne or that book.
The Moon was at first quarter tonight; it would be a good night to take the telescope out and have a look at the shadows in the craters, Or there was that fuzzy little comet, maybe it had more tail than it did last week.
It was completely useless. The book lay there on her bed and stared at her, daring her to do something childlike, something silly, something absolutely ridiculous,
Nita put aside her empty plate, picked up the book, and stared back at it.
"All right, " she said under her breath. "All right. "
She opened the book at random. And on the page to which she opened, there was the Oath.
It was not decorated in any way. It stood there, a plain block of type all by itself in the middle of the page, looking serious and important. Nita read the Oath to herself first, to make sure of the words. Then, quickly, before she could start to feel silly, she read it out loud. " 'In Life's name, and for Life's sake, ' " she read, " 'I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and easel pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so — till Universe's end. ' " The words seemed to echo slightly, as if the room were larger than it really was. Nita sat very still, wondering what the ordeal would be like, wondering what would happen now. Only the wind spoke softly in the leaves of the trees outside the bedroom window; nothing else seemed to stir anywhere. Nita sat there, and slowly the tension began to drain out of her as she realized that she hadn't been hit by lightning, nor had anything strange at all happened to her. Now she felt silly — and tired too, she discovered. The effects of hen beating were catching up with her. Wearily Nita shoved the book under hen pillow, then lay back against the headboard and closed her hurting eyes. Sol much for the joke. She would have a nap, and then later she'd get up and, take the telescope out back. But right now… right now….
After a while, night was not night any more; that was what brought Nita to the window, much later. She leaned on the sill and gazed out in calm wonder at her backyard, which didn't look quite the same as usual. A blaze of undying morning lay over everything, bushes and trees cast light instead of shadow, and she could see the wind. Standing in the ivy under her window, she turned her eyes up to the silver-glowing sky to get used to the brilliance. How about that, she said. The backyard's here too. Next to her, the lesser brilliance that gazed up at that same sky shrugged slightly. Of course, it said. This is Timeheart, after all. Yes, Nita said anxiously as they passed across the yard and out into the bright shadow of the steel and crystal towers, but did I do right? Her companion shrugged again. Go find out, it said, and glanced up again. Nita wasn't sure she wanted to follow the glance. Once she had looked up and seen — I dreamed you were gone, she said suddenly. The magic stayed, but you went away. She hurt inside, enough to cry, but her companion flickered with laughter. No one ever goes away forever, it said. Especially not here. Nita looked up, then, into the bright morning and the brighter shadows. The day went on and on and would not end, the sky blazed now like molten silver…
The Sun on her face woke Nita up as usual. Someone, her mother probably, had come in late last night to cover her up and take the dishes away. She turned over slowly, stiff but not in too much pain, and felt the hardness under her pillow. Nita sat up and pulled the book out, felt around for her glasses. The book fell open in her hand at the listing for the wizards in the New York metropolitan area, which Nita had glanced at the afternoon be-fore. Now she looked down the first column of names, and her breath caught.
CALLAHAN, Juanita L., 243 E. Clinton Ave., Hempstead NY 11575 {516)555-6786. (novice, pre-rating)
Her mouth fell open. She shut it. I'm going to be a wizard! she thought. Nita got up and got dressed in a hurry.
Preliminary Exercises
She did her chores that morning and got out of the house with the book as fast as she could, heading for one of her secret places in the woods. If weird things start happening, she thought, no one will see them there. Oh, I'm going to get that pen back! And then. , Behind the high school around the corner from Nita's house was a large tract of undeveloped woodland, the usual Long Island combination of scruh oak, white pine, and sassafras. Nita detoured around the school, pausing to scramble over a couple of chain-link fences. There was a path on the other side; after a few minutes she turned off it to pick her way carefully through low underbrush and among fallen logs and tree stumps. Then there was a solid wall of clumped sassafras and twining wild blackberry bushes. It looked totally impassable, and the blackberries threatened Nita with their thorns, but she turned sideways and pushed through the wall of greenery undaunted.
She emerged into a glade walled all around with blackberry and gooseberry and pine, sheltered by the overhanging branches of several trees. One, a large crabapple, stood near the edge of the glade, and there was a flatfish half-buried boulder at the base of its trunk. Here she could be sure no one was watching.
Nita sat down on the rock with a sigh, put her back up against the tree, and spent a few moments getting comfortable — then opened the book and started to read. She found herself not just reading, after a while, but studying — cramming the facts into her head with that particular mental stomp she used when she knew she was going to have to know something by heart. The things the book was telling her now were not vague and abstract, as the initial discussion of theory had been, but straightforward as the repair manual for a new car, and nearly as complex. There were tables and lists of needed resources for working spells. There were formulas and equations and rules. There was a syllabary and pronunciation guide for the 418 symbols used in the wizardry Speech to describe relationships and effects that other human languages had no specific words for.
The information went on and on — the book was printed small, and there seemed no end to the things Nita was going to have to know about. She read about the hierarchy of practicing wizards — her book listed only those practicing in the U.S. and Canada, though wizards were working everywhere in the world — and she scanned down the listing for the New York area, noticing the presence of Advisory wizards, Area Supervisors, Senior wizards. She read through a list of the "otherworlds" closest to her own, alternate earths where the capital of the United States was named Huictilopochtli or Lafayette City or Hrafnkell or New Washington, and where the people still called them-selves Americans, though they didn't match Nita's ideas about the term. She learned the Horseman's Word, which gets the attention of any member of the genus Equus, even the zebras; and the two forms of the Mason's Word, which give stone the appearance of life for short periods. One chapter told her about the magical creatures living in cities, whose presence even the nonwizardly people suspect sometimes — creatures like the steambreathing fireworms, packratty little lizards that creep through cracks in building walls to steal treasures and trash for their lair-hoards under the streets. Nita thought about all the steam she had seen coming up from manhole covers in Manhattan and smiled, for now she knew what was causing it. She read on, finding out how to bridle the Nightmare and learning what questions to ask the Transcendent Pig, should she meet him. She read about the Trees' Battle — who fought in it, and who won it, and why. She read about the forty basic classes of spells and their subclasses. She read about Timeheart, the unreal and eternal realm where the places and things people remember affectionately are preserved as they remember them, forever.