Tom raised his eyebrows. “School, I thought,” he said. “Spring break would have ended, I don’t know, last week sometime?”
Nita opened her mouth and closed it again.
“Listen,” Tom said, “I’d love to chat, but I’m on a deadline. I’ve got to get this article to the magazine by Friday.”
Magazine? What’s going on with him?
“Tom,” Nita said. “Uh, this is kind of important. Do you have guests or something?” She leaned a little past him to try to see into the house.
“Guests? No, I’m just working.” His tone was polite, but a little cool now.
Nita was beyond understanding what was going on. “Okay, I won’t keep you. But this is an errantry matter.”
He blinked at her, actually blinked. “Errantry?”
Then he laughed. “Oh, wow, you had me going there for a minute. I remember how serious we used to be about those role-playing games. Wizardry. Spells. The magic Speech that everything understands. It’s great that you still like thinking about that kind of thing even when you’re in junior high.”
Nita stood there absolutely speechless. Tom’s laugh was kind, but he wasn’t playacting.
We’ll lose our wizardry, he’d told her himself. All of us. And also, Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart… or the heart that’s come to believe that it’s impossible.
Nita had to give it one more try. “Tom,” she said, “the universe is tearing itself apart, and we’ve been out trying to repair it. I just didn’t want you to worry about where we were.”
He sighed. “You’ve been listening to the news, too, huh?” he said. “It’s enough to make anyone want to take their second childhood early.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Look, sweetie, I have to get back to work. Was there anything else? Anything serious, I mean. How’s your dad?”
“He’s fine,” Nita said. Her heart was breaking, and there was no way she could take time to deal with it now. “Uh, where are Annie and Monty?”
“Carl had to drop them off at the groomer’s this morning,” Tom said. “Their fur was getting out of hand again. You can stop in and play with them later if you like.”
“Okay,” Nita said. She knew it was irrational to try to prolong the conversation, but she desperately wanted to. What am I going to tell Kit? This is so awful. And we’re really on our own now. “Do you mind if I go around back and see how the fish are doing?” she said.
“Sure. Anything else? I have to get back to this.”
She looked into Tom’s eyes, desperate to find there the one thing she wanted to see, but it wasn’t there. “Nope,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Come back anytime,” Tom said. “Best to your dad.” And he shut the door.
Nita stood on the doorstep feeling utterly shattered, bereft in a way she hadn’t felt since her mother died. The bottom had fallen out of her world again, and this time what had gone out from under her was something that had seemed too solid, too important, ever to go away. Not even just wizardry itself, but the memory of having been a wizard, party to the most basic glories and tragedies of the universe, was now suddenly reduced in Tom—her role model, in some ways her hero, a figure of power and competence—to a cute memory of some kind of friendly “let’s pretend.” The thought was almost too painful to bear.
But bearing pain, and learning how to deal with the weight of it, was something at which Nita had been getting a lot of practice lately. She went down the front steps and around on the little path that ran down the side of the house to the backyard.
It was tidy as always. Across the lawn, near the back wall, was the koi pond. Carl had spent considerable time rebuilding it over last summer, widening the edge of the pond so there was a place to sit while he fed the fish.
Nita wandered over to it, looking toward the sliding doors at the back of the house. They were closed; it was still chilly for the time of year. From inside, just very faintly, she heard the machine-gun fast clicking of Tom typing super fast on his laptop. For a long time she and Kit had teased Tom about his typing speed, claiming that it almost certainly had something to do with his wizardry. Apparently not.
Nita sat down on the pond’s edge and gazed into the water. It was clear enough, but lily pads hid about half the surface. The koi are probably hiding, Nita thought. If they even remember who they are any more.
She let out a long, unhappy breath. There was no point in her spending any more time here. She should get back to the Crossings, and then to Rashah, and get on with work. But Nita couldn’t bring herself to move just yet. Walking away from this house, where there was suddenly no wizardry, was going to hurt. She would delay that pain for just a little longer.
As she looked down into the pond, an old memory stirred. She felt around in her pockets, looking for a penny, but couldn’t find anything but a dime. Nita gazed at her reflection in the water for some moments, waiting, hoping, but no fish came up to look at her. Finally Nita dropped the dime into the water.
The tiny plunk! sounded loud in the silence. Nothing happened.
Nita let out a long breath. It’s like everything that’s happened was a dream.
And what if it was? What if it was all a game—nothing but a fantasy?
That terrible thought hung echoing in her mind. Nita shivered. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where what I am isn’t real anymore! she thought. A world with no room in it for wizards—what kind of place would that be?
Very slowly, a drift of white and orange came up to the surface of the dark water. The koi looked at her, blank-eyed, almost with a sad expression—
—and spat the dime back at her.
It hit Nita in the chest, surprisingly hard. The koi eyed her with an annoyed expression. “Boy, are you people ever slow learners,” it said. “I thought we told you no throwing money on our living room floor! Seriously…”
Another koi, bigger and more silvery, with bright scales like coins scattered here and there down its body, drifted up beside the first. Nita was practically gasping with relief. “You’re still you!” she said. “You haven’t lost wizardry!”
“We’ve got less to lose,” the marmalade koi said. “Or more. Humans are always sort of in the middle when it comes to magic; they’re always trying to talk themselves out of it.”
“They’re always trying to talk themselves out of whatever power they’re given,” said the koi with the mirror-scales. “Just listen to them! Whatever happens to humans is always somebody else’s fault. It’s almost, pardon the phrase, magical.”
“But the magic’s going away, all the same,” Nita said softly.
A third koi, one of the calico-patterned ones, drifted up to the surface. “Night falls,” it said,
“and all things
Go too silent for me; my
Heart’s chill with starfall.”
Nita sighed. The sentiment sounded as sad and full of foreboding as she felt. “Do you guys do anything but that?” she said.
The calico koi gave her a look. “Everybody’s a critic,” it said. “You prefer sapphics? Those are hard.”
“You want hard,” said the mirror-scaled koi, scoffing, “you want sonnets. Sonnets are tough—”
Nita rolled her eyes. “I meant, do you do anything besides predict the future,” she said.
The calico koi gave her a morose look. “We’re talking to you, aren’t we?”