A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition (15 page)

She took a sip of her tea. “Now, three of the four Treasures we still have—at least one of them is in the National Museum in Dublin. But they have no virtue any more. No one believes that the gold and silver cup they have there, the Ardagh Chalice, is
actually
the Well of Transformations, the Bottomless Cauldron. No one
really
believes that the poor old notched bronze blade in the glass case is Fragarach, even though the legends say so. Its virtue has long since ebbed away as a result: the ‘soul’ in it, if you like, has departed. And the Lia Fáil is now just a cracked stone half buried in the ground up North, with an iron picket fence around it, and tourists come and take its picture because it’s supposed to be Saint Patrick’s gravestone or some such. Not because of what it
really
is, or was.” Her smile was very rueful. “The thousands of years and the loss of true knowledge of the nature of the Protectors have taken them and made them just a cup, a sword, and a rock.”

“What about the Spear?”

“Its ‘soul’ was the strongest of all of the Treasures,” Mrs. Smyth said. “It should be the easiest to find...but it’s nowhere in the world that we can feel. No, what we’re going to do—if a reenactment—” She sighed. “I can’t say. We’re going to have to work something out from scratch. In the meantime, if I were you, I’d step very lightly. And thank you for coming to me. Where are you staying?”

“With my aunt, Anne Callahan, at Ballyvolan.”

“Right,” said Mrs. Smyth, and made a note. “Now then; another cup of tea?”

Nita groaned.

***

They went down to the little tea shop in Enniskerry, and had a Coke to kill the time until the 45 bus was ready to leave. “She’s not much like my Seniors at home,” Nita said, thoughtful. “But definitely as tough.”

Ronan was sitting slumped back in his chair, his legs crossed, scowling out at her from under those black brows. The hair rose a little on Nita’s neck, and she started to blush, and felt extremely stupid. “Just because she’s not like
your
precious Seniors—” he said.

“Oh, Ronan, just shut your face. You think you’re the hottest thing on wheels, don’t you?” And Nita scowled back at him, mostly to cover her own confusion at her anger. “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder the size of a two-by-four, and you’d better do something about it before it messes up your wizardry. And I’m not one of your little herd of yes-men or girls or whatever, so don’t waste your dirty looks on me. You don’t like the news, that’s just tough. Suck it up and cope.”

He stared at Nita, and his expression had changed slightly when she dared to look at it again. He looked a little shocked, still angry: but there was an odd thread of liking there. “No,” he said softly, “you’re not like the locals, are you? Not half. Do girls usually make a such virtue of having mean mouths where you come from?”

Nita blushed again, feeling more like an idiot than ever, not understanding her own discomfiture. “Why should that matter?” she said, annoyed. “But wizards
do
usually make a virtue of telling the truth, where I come from. Part of the job description. And I wasn’t criticizing your Senior, as you would have discovered if you let me finish. Your people skills could use some work.”

“And what else about me needs work?” he said, that same odd soft tone.

She just looked at him, and her insides roiled. That dark regard was disconcerting when it was bent hard on you. And it was worse still when he was smiling.
He really is pretty hot,
she thought, somewhat to her own horror. Nita wondered for a moment what some of the girls at school would think of this guy if they had a chance to see him. She knew what they would think, and what they would say. He was the kind of guy who gets texted and IM’d about all day, the kind that girls steal phonecam shots of and trade them back and forth: the kind of guy they look at from the safety of groups, stealing glances, laughing softly together at their shared thoughts about him.
What would you do if you got him alone?...

And Nita
was
alone with him.

“Hulloooo!!” Ronan said to her, waving a hand in front of her face. “Earth to Nita!”

“Uh, nothing,” she said hurriedly. She finished her Coke in one long pull on the straw. “Listen, the bus is starting up.”

“What’s the hurry? I don’t hear—”

From outside there came a roar of diesel engine. Ronan looked at Nita oddly, then grinned. She flushed again, and inwardly swore at herself.
Oh, he genuinely
is
hot. This is awful!

“Can’t keep the man waiting,” Ronan said, and got up. “You going to come with?”

“Uh, no, I’ll walk it. Fresh air,” she said, mortified at the feebleness of the excuse. “Exercise.”

“As far as the bus stop, then.”

Reluctantly she walked out to see Ronan off that far at least.

“Do you have my mobile number?” Ronan said as he got on. “Call me or text me if you have any problems.”

Problems! Do I have problems! Sweet Powers that Be—”
I’ll do that,” Nita said. “You’re in the book.”

Ronan made an annoyed face. “The book.’’ I can’t
believe
this,” he said, and the bus doors shut in front of him.

***

Nita started home to Kilquade. It was a longish walk again, about eight miles: but she was really beginning to enjoy the walking, and the freedom to do it in the countryside. This was one of the prettiest places she had ever been, and the quiet and the sound of the wind and the warm, fair weather were all conspiring to make it very pleasant. She ached slightly, but there were some things worth aching for.

She couldn’t get rid of the memory of the look of Ronan’s face, the whole feel of him, the uneasy, uncomfortable sense of—
power:
there was no other word for it. Add to that the fact that he was good-looking, and funny, when he wasn’t being angry. Or even when he
was
, a little…

Nita smiled grimly at herself, annoyed: it was funny to be so hot for someone she so much wanted to give a few good kicks. …
And heaven help me, that’s what it is. I’ve got the hots.

The admission made her nervous. Neither parents at home or the sex education classes at school ever told you anything really useful about how to handle
this
kind of thing. Oh, the mechanics of it, body changes and so forth, and how not to catch diseases, and responsibility, and family planning, and all the rest. But not the seriously important stuff, like: kissing—how did you do it and still breathe? Where do you put your nose? How much tongue is too much? Is wearing a push-up bra a come-on? Is it worth chasing someone you’ve got the hots for, or will it just make you look stupid? And if you catch him, what do you do then?

Or worse: what do you do if
you
get caught?...

Nita heard something stirring in the hedge off to her right. At first she thought it was a bird—lots of birds nested in these hedges, encouraged by the thorns—but this sounded too loud. Nita paused, and saw a flash of color, a soft russet red.

“Ai elhua,
” whispered a voice in the Speech,
“I have a word for you.”

Nita’s eyebrows went up. She hunkered down by the hedge. The red dog-fox was deep inside it, curled up comfortably in a little hide against the wall that the hedge grew against.

“Madreen rua!”
she said in the Speech. “Are you all right?”

“O yes. But that you may be—” The fox glanced around, a shifty, conspiratorial look. “And that I may repay a debt and all things be even again. There are wizardries afoot.”

“No kidding.”

“Then you should get help for them. One of the
Ard-Tuatha
is in hide, not half a mile from here.”

Nita was confused: there were several different ways to translate the term.
“Ard
—You mean, one of the Powers that Be?
Here??”

“In truth. We are all boundnot to say exactly where, or who. But it is one of the Old Ones. Catch it at its work, and it must help you, yes?”

“That’s one way to put it.” Nita frowned. The Powers that Be were required to assist wizards when requested to do so. But you had to identify Them first...and They usually made that difficult, preferring to do Their work in secret. It made it harder for the Lone Power to sabotage it.

“Well,” she said. “I am warned,
madreen rua.
My thanks.”

“All’s even,” the fox said, and in the tiny space where it lay, somehow managed to get up, turn around, and vanish back through a dark hole under the wall.

Nita got up and went on down the road, trying to make sense of what the fox had told her.
It’s hard to believe. Why would one of the Powers be living around here?...

She made her way down the little lane to her aunt’s driveway, and the farm. In the field to the right she could see Aunt Annie heading off with a rake over her shoulder, probably to do something about the new potatoes she had just planted. They were a rare breed, something called “fir-apple potatoes,” and Aunt Annie raked and weeded them herself every day, and wouldn’t let anyone near them.

Nita grinned at this and went inside. She was just in the act of making herself another sandwich in the kitchen, when the phone began to ring. Nita went and picked it up out of the charger cradle, punched the green button, and (as she’d heard others do) said, “Ballyvolan.”

“Is Mrs. Callahan there?” said a man’s voice.

“No, she’s not...can I take a message for you?”

“Yes, please. Tell her that Shaun O’Driscoll called, and ask her to call back immediately, it’s very urgent.”

“All right,” Nita said, scribbling down the name on the topmost of the block of sticky notes by the phone. “Does she have your number?”

“Yes she does.”

“All right. I’ll see if I can catch her; she just went out. Bye.” And Nita ran out across the gravelyard, vaulted the fence, and headed into the field.

Far away, over the hill of the second field, she could see her aunt walking toward the little rise in the middle of it. Yelling at her seemed ridiculous at this point, so Nita just ran on after her as quickly as she could, puffing. She still ached.

As she got closer, Nita was rather surprised to see her aunt take the rake off her shoulder and bang the wooden end of it on the ground. However, she was even more surprised when the little hill split open, and her aunt walked into it.

Nita lost all her momentum and came to a stand, and her mouth fell open.

…Oh, no!
she thought. She was remembering Tom’s voice, from not so terribly long ago, saying to her father: “Well, you know, Ed, it’s
your
side of the family that the wizardry comes down from...”

My dad’s sister…

My aunt’s a wizard!

Half torn between terror and laughter, Nita ran after her, toward the gaping darkness in the side of the hill.

The chasm was deeper and wider than it looked.
Is this happening in the real world?
Nita thought, and paused for a moment to try to see with double vision, as she had seen the other day. True enough, mere daylight vision showed her a smooth hill, no crack; nothing. But then no one in the house had seen her aunt... and she had. Nita was seeing sideways where her aunt was, and this was sideways too. Not as sideways as it
might
have been, of course.

“Aunt Annie,” she said, not loud, but urgently, and loud enough to carry. Ahead of her, her aunt stopped in shock, standing there with the rake.

She looked back at Nita and said, “Oh, no.”

“Aunt Annie,” Nita said, grinning a little in spite of herself,
“what
did they tell you about why they’d sent me here?...”

Aunt Annie’s mouth opened and shut, and then she said, “When I get my hands on Ed...I’m going to pull his head off and hand it to him.”

“They couldn’t exactly tell you,” Nita said, immediately wanting to defend her father. “It’s not his fault.”

“Maybe not,” Aunt Annie said, “but, Nita...!
I had no idea!”

“Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t,” Nita said, wry. “I don’t usually try to advertise it.”

“But how can you
be
here?” Aunt Annie said. Then she shook her head. “Never mind that now. That you’re here means you’re intended to be. I’ve got business. Let’s go see them.”

“Them?”

“Be polite,” Aunt Annie said. “And follow my lead.”

Nita was entirely willing. She followed her aunt into the hill.

It was not a hill. It was a city. It was like the one that Nita had seen crowning Sugarloaf, but smaller, more intimate. It could not, of course, be
inside
the hill. It was two, three—ten? fifty?—universes over from the “real world.” Before them was a vista of broad streets, airy; of shade and running water, and stone as fluidly formed as if it had been clay once, or flesh—but paused in mid-movement, possibly to move again some day. There were echoes among the buildings of thatched houses, and old castles, and castles no human being could have imagined—hints of architecture Nita recognized as extraterrestrial from her travels. Apparently the builders had had connections elsewhere.