Behind her, Logo, silvered by that same light, looked out across the strange place, the image of a Timeheart within a Timeheart. Now do you understand?
Yes, Dairine said softly. We still have unfinished business…!
She went back out through the worldgate, and back out through Roshaun’s place in that virtual Timeheart, and back out to the railing. Then Dairine stepped back out of it all, across the plane of wizardry and back through the portals of dream to Earth’s universe, to the real world, to begin the search for the one who was lost.
***
Watching this in silence from the shadows of the trees, Nita nodded slowly, then stepped back into her own dream.
She walked out of the shadows behind the dais in the great central cavern of the Commorancy. It was empty except for a pool of darkness that slowly began to draw itself up into human shape to look at her.
Nita laughed at it. “You lose again,” she said.
“Oh, go on, delude yourself,” said the Lone One, Its arms folded. “So your wonderful Hesper is here after all. Do you think that matters so far above your level of existence are going to have any effect on your pitiful lives? You won’t live to see any difference her appearance will make. The worlds will seem to be doing the same old thing for millennia to come. And as for your ‘victory,’ you and your universe will be cleaning up its consequences for centuries to come.” It sounded triumphant. Yet behind the triumph, Nita could clearly feel the rage: none of this should have happened!
“Maybe so,” Nita said. “But for the time being, we’ll keep our old promise to you … because that’s what wizards do. We’ll keep on fighting the little versions of you that you’ve left all over the place. And as for the long term, well, we’ve got a new ally now: the one who’s doing what you should have done. So make what you can of what little time you have left.”
“Little? Little! For millions of years yet I will rule this universe!”
“‘Rule’?” Nita said. “Running around kicking over everybody’s sand castles doesn’t mean you own the beach. And as for ‘millions’—in the bigger scheme of things, what’s that?” She snapped her fingers, grinning. “Do what you can with it, because until you finally give up, we’ll always be here to stop you.”
It smiled again, one last time. “Wizards may always be here,” the Lone Power said. “But will you?”
It vanished.
Nita shook her head. Well? she said to the peridexis. Will I?
Let’s go find out, it said.
***
The next morning, Kit got up and did all the routine things that he did when getting ready for school. He got showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, went downstairs. He ate breakfast, and washed the cereal bowl, and put it and the spoon away.
Then he sighed, and went to Ponch’s bowls, and picked them up, and cleaned them. He rinsed out the water bowl and put it away. The dry-food bowl and wet-food bowls were empty. He washed them, too, and put them in a cupboard. And finally he went to the back door, to the coatrack where the leash was hanging, and took it down.
The front doorbell rang. His pop was at work already, and his mama was still in the bathroom, so that when the door opened, Kit had to smile, knowing what was going to happen next. He waited there by the back door for a few moments.
“Oh, wow!” Carmela yelled. “You shouldn’t have! Or no; I take it back. Yes, you should!”
Very quietly, Kit went out the back door and down the driveway, swinging the leash. At the end of the driveway, he stopped, watching as the UPS truck that had delivered Carmela’s new curling iron drove away.
There were no dogs in sight anywhere. Kit stood there and just felt the loss: the strange feeling of having Ponch’s leash in his hand, but not having Ponch dancing around him and insisting that he hurry up and put it on him. It was much like the strange empty feeling of the braided rug beside Kit’s bed, which had no dog lying on it with his feet sticking up in the air—the strangeness of a bed where there was enough room to stretch your feet out in the morning, because there was no dog taking up the whole lower end of it.
Kit started to walk, because there was nothing else he could do. The only good thing about this, he thought, the only good thing, is that there won’t be any more weird howling all hours of the day and night. No more Hitchcock movie scenarios staged on his front lawn with dogs instead of birds. No more, he thought. All gone.
His eyes started to fill up, as he realized, on a different level, what Nita had had to deal with earlier in the year. The place where the other had always been … or for nearly as long as you could remember … now gone forever.
He kept walking, because that was what he did, this time of day, with a leash in his hand. There was no barking in the street. Even Tinkerbell, the slightly psychotic dog three doors down, stood quietly at his gate and watched Kit go by without the usual threats of bodily harm.
“Dai stihó,” he said.
Tinkerbell just stood looking at him, then turned and trotted back behind his own house.
Kit sighed and kept on walking down the block toward the corner where he usually would stop and let Ponch do his thing. The only thing he was missing right now was the plastic bag he’d have picked up Ponch’s doings with. There was no need for that now.
Kit stopped at the corner, looked around him, and let out a miserable sigh. What am I doing here? he thought.
That was when the sheepdog came trotting down the sidewalk. Kit just stood there for a moment, watching it come. It had been sitting on the lawn, weeks ago, and it wasn’t a neighborhood dog: Kit’s father had asked him where it had come from, and Kit had had no idea. His first urge was to turn away; the sight of any dog was a touch on an open wound.
Then he stopped himself. I don’t care, Kit thought. I want to talk to a dog, any dog, and get an answer back.
The sheepdog crossed the street toward him, jumped up onto the sidewalk, and paused by him, looking up. Kit almost managed to laugh: the way its hair hung down in its face, it was amazing that it could see anything. He hunkered down next to it and ruffled it behind the ears, though the gesture made his throat go thick with tears. In the Speech, he said, “So listen, guy, just where did you come from?”
The sheepdog shook its fur out of its eyes and gazed up at him, its tongue hanging out. That’s sort of a funny question, it said. You should know. You were there, too!
And Kit’s breath went right out of him—because though the sheepdog’s eyes were golden and not dark, Ponch was looking out of them.
Now the tears he’d been fighting so hard did come, and Kit didn’t care. “But I thought—I thought that you—”
That me did, said the sheepdog. But there’s a lot more of me now. I’m more here than I ever was. I’m in every dog there is! Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to leave you? The sheepdog grinned at him. Some parts of the old Choice were worth keeping.
Kit threw his arms around the sheepdog. But I made another Choice, Ponch said. For all of us. And now we have a new story: how the Hound of Heaven defeated the Wolf that ate the Moon … but only with the help of the Wise One who knew that what you give away, you get back a hundred times more, and who brought the Hound to where he could learn how the sacrifice could be made. Now all debts are paid, and we can all be more than we were.