Not this side of Timeheart, anyway.
Normally it was a comfort thinking of Timeheart, where everything that existed was preserved in perfection, close to the center of things. But the Heart of Time was remote—a remote certainty at best, a remote possibility when you were in a more cynical or suspicious "taood. It was an abstract, nothing like the concrete reality of the woman who had been genially cursing at her Cuisinart just a week or so ago. The woman who had always been there with a hug for Nita, who had been able to understand about everything—about being bullied, about doing well or badly at school—even, to a certain extent, about wizardry itself.
And now ...if I do this... I'll have to give that up. But she would still be here.
Yet... to give it up— The idea was bitter. A window on a hundred thousand other worlds, and a most intimate window on this one, closed forever—even the memory of it slowly ebbing away until there was just a small nameless ache at the bottom of her that she would learn to ignore with time, the place where wizardry had been and wasn't anymore. So many people had that ache and thought it was normal. Eventually Nita would be just one more of them. She would remember—if she remembered anything —"those great games she used to play with Kit." That was all they would be: memories of childhood fantasies.
And he would still remember the reality, while Nita would pass him on the street, maybe, or in school, and not know what he had been to her... not really.
But at least nobody would be dead.
Except the part of you that the Powers gave the wizardry to, Nita thought. Murdered, just as if you'd shot it with a gun. How could it possibly be a good thing to do that, no matter whose life it saved?
She put her face in her hands. It was a dilemma.
But, then, that's what a dilemma is, Nita thought. A two-horned problem. A thing split in two.
Like me.
Like me and Kit, whispered a thought that had been lying unspoken in the back of her mind for a while now, for fear that speaking it might make it come true.
She moaned out loud with the sheer unfairness of it. Yet what use was keeping wizardry and partnership, and all the rest of it, when her mother wouldn't be
Wednesday
there to see it and roll her eyes and insist that she do her homework? All the hospital talk of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and so on, after the surgery, could not hide from her what it took no wizardry at all to see: the looks on the faces of the doctors and nurses who were caring for her mom.
They usually would not even say the name of the thing that had attacked her mother from within. They merely said "C.A." or used long Latin and Greek words, all of which had the ominous "oma" ending clinging to them, like a dark shadow trailing away behind. The doctors were as afraid of what was going to happen to her mom as Nita was. For all the magic that was medical science, there was precious little hope in their eyes.
If anything'* going to save her, Nita thought, it's going to have to be something I do. But which something?
The weariness was beginnning to catch up with her. Nita put her face into her pillow. She wanted to cry, but she felt too tired to do even that.
Mom. Kit. Her mind went back and forth between the two of them. I'm just going to have to go ahead and get what help I can get out ofPralaya. And then... if it doesn't work...
She was afraid now to try to see that far ahead in her life. But she was considering the options—and the idea of what Kit would think of this scared Nita. Yet she knew that keeping her options open was the right thing.
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Like you were right about Jones Inlet? said another small voice in the back of her mind.
She gripped the pillow with both hands and ground her face into it. Tell me what to do! she begged whoever might be listening. Give me a hint!
But the night was silent around her, and no answers came. And the only Power That had spoken to her so far had been the One she had sworn never to deal with.
Finally sleep took her. But her dreams were all bad, and even in the midst of them, she knew that when she woke up, things would be no better.
Thursday
THE AWAKENING WAS SUDDEN, and Nita lay there with her heart pounding, knowing something was wrong but unable to work out what it was. Finally her eyes focused as she looked over at her alarm clock, and she realized it was eleven-thirty in the morning.
Didn't it go off? What happened? she thought, sitting bolt upright in bed.
"Dad called school," Dairine's voice said. Nita looked up and saw Dairine sitting in her chair with her feet up on Nita's desk, wearing nothing but one of her dad's T-shirts, and looking small and miserable. "He asked them to let us both off today because of the operation tomorrow."
Nita lay down again, wishing that she could just go back to sleep... except that it was hardly any better than being awake.
"Dair," she said, "if giving up your wizardry would make Mom better, would you do it?"
,
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Her sister looked at her in complete shock and didn't say anything for at least a minute. For Dairine this was something of a record.
"Is that what you're going to have to do?" she said at last. "I don't know."
"I'd...," Dairine said. "I'd..." And she trailed off, her eyes going haunted. Nita nodded.
"Are you sure it would work?" Dairine said after a while. Nita shook her head. "Nothing's sure," she said.
Dairine pulled her knees up under the baggy T-shirt and hugged them to her for a long time. Then she looked up.
"And then it would all be gone?"
"Everything," Nita said. "All the magic, gone forever."
Dairine sat with her forehead on her knees, minute after minute. When she looked up, her face was wet.
"If you were sure..."
Nita shook her head again. "I'd miss you," Dairine said. "I wouldn't be gone," Nita said. "You know what I mean."
Nita nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I'd miss you, too."
And Dairine got up and went out of Nita's room, heading downstairs.
Nita could do little else that day but work with the manual, trying to evaluate the effectiveness of her work with the kernels and fine-tuning the spells she
Thursday
would have with her while working on her mother. But the problem that she could not solve kept intruding itself between her and her preparation, and there was no respite from it, nowhere to hide.
The sound of the discreet bang! in the backyard brought Nita's head up—almost a welcome distraction. But then her heart went cold. Kit. How am I going to explain this to him?
It just isn't fair, she thought. What's happened to Mom has spoiled everything. Even things I should be glad about hurt now.
She heard the back door open and the faint sound of Kit saying something to Dairine in the kitchen, then his footsteps on the stairs, and a scrambling noise behind him as Ponch ran up. The dog was first into her room; he burst past Kit and ran up to Nita and put his forepaws up on her. "We went bang!" he said.
"Yeah, I heard you, big guy," Nita said, and looked at Kit as he came in and sat down on the bed. "How'd it go?" Kit said. "You get your practice done?"
"Yeah... the last one, I think."
He looked concerned. "Is that going to be enough? Are you ready?"
At that she had to put her face in her hands, rubbing her eyes in an attempt to keep from looking like she was hiding her face. "I don't know," she said. "But it can't wait any longer."
"I guess you couldn't really put it off," Kit said, sounding like he could tell perfectly well that Nita wanted to.
"No," she said, unhappy. "When Mom's anesthetized is the best time to do this; even during sleep there's a chance she could be conscious enough to get caught up in what's going on, and that'd be a problem."
"Well," Kit said, "if you've done all the preparation you can... I guess there's nothing to do now but wait." "Yup," she said.
"And while we're doing that, we can talk about exactly what you want me to be doing to help."