She didn't answer right away. Kit looked at her sharply, and she noticed Ponch's eyes on her, too, an expression more subtle and considering than you usually got from him. "Neets," Kit said, "why're you so twitchy all of a sudden?"
"Well, why on Earth wouldn't I be twitching!" Nita said.
Kit and Ponch just looked at her. "Neets," Kit said, "give me a break. This is me, remember? You're twitching more than usual. More than makes sense even for what you're going through, not that it's not awful enough. What's happened to you since we talked last?"
"Kit...," Nita said at last. "We've saved a lot of lives in our time. A lot." "Millions," Kit said. There might have been some pleasure in the way he said it, but no pride.
"So how come I may not be able to save the one who matters?"
"Like those other times didn't matter, really," Kit said, with mild scorn. "But Neets, the key word here is we. You don't have to go through this alone."
She didn't say anything for a long while. "You don't
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understand," Nita said at last. "This time, I think I have to do it alone." And she tightly controlled her mind so that he wouldn't hear her thought: Because I couldn't stand it if somehow you wound up paying the same price I might have to... and losing your wizardry, too!
Kit's look got suddenly even more concerned. "Neets. Tell me what you've been doing. I don't want a precis. I want the details. All of them."
She was silent for some moments. Then Nita told him.
It took a while, though doing some of the explaining mind to mind sped things up. But toward the end of it, as she began telling him about Pralaya, Kit's expression turned grave. When she told him about that last conversation she and Pralaya had had, Kit's eyes went cold. He didn't say anything for a good while.
"I'm still not sure how He was doing that," Nita said.
"As an avatar," Kit said. "Neets, all the. Powers That Be can do that when They need to, when They're on the job. For cripes' sake, if the One's Champion can live inside a macaw for years at a time, why should it surprise you that the Lone Power can pull the same stunt every now and then?"
Slowly she nodded, feeling cold inside.
"Neets, I hate to say it, but this really looks like the Lone One's been getting at you. Even before It fell, It preferred to work by Itself. Then It got isolated and proud, and after that came the Fall...and now that
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pride is still Its favorite way of tripping people up. It makes them think they can handle everything by themselves."
"Kit, in this case there's actually something to it! You just don't have the experience at what I'm going to have to be doing—*
"As if that matters! Neets, you're not thinking straight right now. You even missed something as simple as the mechanism the Lone One's using to hide inside Pralaya. How can you be so sure about your thinking on everything else?"
That was something she couldn't bear to hear. Followed to its logical conclusion, that line of reasoning would suggest that everything Nita had been planning was possibly useless, doomed to failure from the start.
"If you accept Its help," Kit said, "you're probably going to lose your wizardry! But what's more important is that doing that is just wrong."
Now she did hide her face in her hands. "Kit," she said softly, "it looks more and more like, to save my mom, I'm going to lose it no matter what I do. Or die trying. But I have to try."
"Not alone," Kit said. "And not this way, Neets! You come to any kind of deal with that One, it's gonna backfire somehow. Believe me!"
"All this is real easy for you to say, butjowr mother's not dyingl"
Kit's expression was pained, but he just shook his head. "You think I haven't imagined about a hundred times how this must be for you? But it doesn't change
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the rights and wrongs of it, Neets. It says right there in the Oath, 'I will defend life when it is right to do so.' It's never right to do it on the Lone Power's terms, and if you let It sucker you into this—"
"Kit, you've got to believe me. It's not like that. You don't really understand what's going on here."
"I understand that you're messing around with the Lone Power, and you're going to get burned! What makes you think It has the slightest intention of doing what It says It's going to? It's gonna find some loophole to exploit, just the way It always does, and leave you out in the cold."
He stopped. There was a long, long silence as he and Ponch watched her.
Nita discovered that she was actually starting to shake. He's right. But I'm right, too. What do I do—? "Look," she said. "I can't take much more of this right now. Tomorrow morning is getting closer every minute, and I'm not sure I'm ready yet."
"When are you going to start work in the morning?" Kit said.
Nita rubbed her eyes again. "Around eight. The doctors said that's when they're starting."
"I'll be here," Kit said. "Neets, please... Get some rest. Get your brains straightened out. You're not going to do this alone."
He got up and headed out hurriedly, almost as if something was making him nervous. Ponch licked her hand and trotted out after Kit.
Nita sat there for a long while. There's no way I'm going to be able to keep him from coming along...... if I wait for him.
But Nita did want to wait for him. She knew his help would be invaluable. At the same time, she knew that the minute Kit set eyes on Pralaya, there would be trouble. She would lose Pralaya's help. And she needed that, too, regardless of who might live inside Pralaya from time to time.
And at the end of it all, if she could not cure her mother herself, then Pralaya had to be there to implement the bargain.
There were no answers, and time was running out. The only consolation was for Nita to keep telling herself that tomorrow around this time, it would all be over. Her mother would have been saved or else she wouldn't have been, and if she hadn't, Nita wouldn't be in any position to worry about anything else.
It was not much consolation at all.
The rest of the day was a waking nightmare. Nita was tempted to go back into the practice universes one last time, but she wasn't sure what difference that would make—and she was tired, tired. She needed her rest but couldn't seem to get any. Details of the spells she would need to take with her, last-minute ideas, and the constantly returning thought that Kit might be right and she might be completely wrong kept going around and around in her head, and gave her no peace.
It seemed like about five minutes after Kit had come over that Nita's dad came home from work, and they all went to the hospital together. Her mother hadn't had any more seizures, for which Nita was profoundly
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thankful. Except the thought kept creeping in: Is this the Lone One just giving me more time to think... and to be grateful to It? The idea made her shudder.
When they went into Nita's mom's room, Nita saw that a number of machines had been moved in by the bed. One apparently was to make sure there was warning if she had any more seizures—there were ugly little pink and blue contact pads glued all over her head, with the hair held down around them in a hopeful sort of way by one of the "turbans" Nita had seen some of the nurses wearing. Her mom looked unnatural, drawn, more tired than ever, and her smile was wearing thin at the edges.
"Oh, honey, don't look at me like that," her mom said, seeing Nita's expression. "I look like the bride of Frankenstein, I know that. It's all right. I was due for another haircut, anyway."
Two things hit Nita at once. The first thing was that, as always, her mother was trying to take care of her, even when she herself was sick. The second, which struck Nita with a terrible inevitability, was that what her mother was saying was not true: It would never be all right, never again. Her mom was really going to die.
For several long seconds, Nita could find nothing at all to do or say, and she didn't dare look her mom in the eye; she knew her mother would see instantly what was the matter. Fortunately, Dairine got between her and her mom, and Nita disentangled herself and turned away, never more grateful for her sister's inborn ability to get in the way.