Wizards At War

“Now I remember you,” Nita said. “We met in the Crossings!”

The boy blinked at her, then he grinned. “No accidents, are there?” he said. “Call me Matt, cousin. Get ready to pull this stasis off him, and we’ll have him right as rain in no time.”

It was a little longer than no time, and Matt looked a little pale by the time it was over. But fifteen minutes or so later, Ronan lay breathing quietly, and Matt was sitting in the moondust getting his breath back, his own wounds closing up. Like most healing wizardries, this one had needed blood.

“But he’s not conscious!” Nita said.

“He won’t be for a little,” Matt said. “His body’s still got to deal with the leftovers from the shock. Take him home, stick him in bed, let him have a few hours’ rest. He’s been through the wringer.” Matt gave Nita a look, and glanced at Kit, who’d come to join them. “But so have you.”

“He can be in my room,” Dairine said from behind them. “I have some things to take care of.”

Nita looked at Dairine with some concern. Her sister was holding Spot, which was normal enough, but so calm and flat a tone of voice was alien to her. Behind her, Carmela glanced at Dairine, then at Nita, and raised her eyebrows.

Nita nodded, and got up. “Sounds good. Matt, thanks!”

“No problem. Have him get in touch with me in a couple of days. I’ll want to do a follow-up,” Matt said as he stood up. “I’m in the book.” He sketched them a small salute, and vanished.

They looked around them, watching the crater start to empty out. Nita looked up at that dark sky, full of stars again, and breathed out in relief. “Come on,” she said.

They all vanished too.

***

Her backyard looked so utterly ordinary that Nita could barely believe it, the late-afternoon shadows of spring lying over it absolutely as usual. She sighed. “We’ve got to go back and touch base with Sker’,” she said. “See if he’s found his ancestor yet.”

Dairine nodded and went ahead of them, very quietly, unlocking the back door and vanishing into the house. Carmela glanced at Kit, then started after her.

Nita put out a hand. “Let her go,” she said. “‘Mela, maybe this is a job for you. Want to go check on Sker’ret?”

Carmela nodded, and roughed up the top of Kit’s hair before he was able to do anything about it. “I’ll go tell Mama and Pop that we’re home,” she said. “And that you’re a hero.”

“Spare me!” Kit said, but Carmela was already trotting down the driveway.

Nita and Kit headed for the back door. Just briefly, as they opened the back gate, Nita paused to look up at the Moon. There it hung, just past first quarter and looking utterly innocent, as if nothing of any importance had been happening.

“It’s hard to believe,” she said to Kit.

“I still can’t believe it,” Kit said. He was standing by the gate as if waiting for someone to run past him.

“Come on,” she said softly. She checked to make sure that the wizardly screening field around their property was still in place, so that the neighbors wouldn’t freak when they saw a body being levitated in through the back door.

They had gotten no farther than into the kitchen when Nita heard the sound of someone dropping newspapers by the easy chair. A moment later, her dad came around through the dining room and into the kitchen. Nita ran to him and hugged him hard. “Are you okay?”

“I feel fine,” he said. “How about you?”

There were too many possible answers to that question, some of them contradictory. “It’s going to take a while to tell you everything that happened,” Nita said. “But are things okay here?”

Her dad sighed. “It looks that way,” he said. “The political situation looked pretty bad late last night and early this morning, but now the news channels say that all the people who were threatening each other with nukes have begun to see sense and back down.” His expression got wry. “One of the commentators said, ‘Often you wait for one party or the other in a crisis to blink. But this time they all blinked at once.’”

Nita managed a very slight smile. “That would have been about the time,” her dad said, “that every dog in town started to howl.”

She put her eyebrows up at that. “Oh, yes,” her dad said. “And it wasn’t just here, either. Dogs all over the state, possibly all over the country. There are as many theories as there are news channels that are bothering to carry the story. The main theory seems to be that the government was testing some new kind of sound weapon. Or early warning system.”

Nita shook her head. “Ponch,” she said.

Her dad had been looking at Kit, who was looking at Ronan. “I thought maybe it was something like that,” he said. “Because all the other governments on the planet seem to have been testing the same weapon. —Tell me later. What about Ronan there?”

“He needs somewhere to rest awhile before he goes home,” Nita said. “Dairine said we should put him in her room.”

Her dad nodded. “Fine. Neets … how is she?”

Nita shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Her dad sighed. “Okay,” he said. “By the way, school called.”

“Oh no.”

“You all have to be back tomorrow,” he said.