Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Abroad

"Uh, no," Nita said, thinking regretfully of Kit. He loved to dance. "My buddy's back in the States."

"Her buddyyyyyyV Nita grinned a little: she was now beyond the blushing point. Her sister had been teasing her about Kit for so long that this was a very minor sort of salvo by comparison. "Aren't you a little young for that?" one of the girls said, clearly teasing, to judge by the young guy massaging her shoulders at the moment.

Nita arched her eyebrows. "Let's just say that in my part of the world we make up our minds about this kind of thing early."

"Whooooaaaaa!" said the group, and started punching one another and making lewd remarks, only about half of which Nita understood.

"So if your buddy's there, what are you doing here?" said Ronan.

"I know!" said Majella. "Her parents sent her away to separate them because they were — ahem!" And she shook her hand in a gesture intended to be slightly rude and slightly indicative of what they were doing.

Nita thought about this for a moment, and thought that the simplest way to manage things was to let them think exactly this. "Well, yeah," she said. "Anyway, I'm stuck here for six weeks." "Stuck here! Only stuck here! In the best part of the Earth!" they said, and began ragging her shamelessly, explaining what a privilege it was that she should be among them, and telling her all the wonderful places there were to see, and things to do. She grinned at this at last, and said, "I bet none of you do those things." "Oh, well, those are tourist things," Ronan said. "Thanks loads," said Nita.

They chatted about this and that for a long while. Nita found herself oddly interested by Ronan, despite his looks: maybe because of his looks. She didn't know anyone at home who managed to look so dark and grim, no matter how punk they dressed: and there was an odd, cheerful edge to his grimness that kept flashing out, a certain delight in having opinions, and having them loudly, in hopes that someone would be shocked. Ronan's opinions of anyone who wanted to colonize Ireland, from the English on back, were scathing. So were his views on people who thought they were Irish and weren't really, or who weren't Irish and thought they should have something to do with running the country, or thought that the Irish needed any kind of help with anything at all. The others tended to nod agreement with him, or if they disagreed, to keep fairly quiet about this: Nita noticed this particularly, and suspected that they had felt the edge of his temper once or twice. She grinned a little to herself, thinking that he would have a slightly hotter time of it if he tried it on her. She rather hoped Ronan would. It was amazing how long a couple of pieces of chicken and a few Cokes could be made to last; fortunately, the people running the shop didn't seem to care how long they stayed there. Eventually, though, everybody had to leave for one reason or another: buses to catch, people to meet. One by one they said goodbye to Nita, and headed off, Ronan last of them. "Don't get lost looking for leprechauns, now, Miss Yank," he shouted to her over his shoulder as he made his way off down Bray's main street.

She snickered and turned away, looking at the number forty-five bus pulling up across the street, and thought, Naah… Ill walk home. It was only eight miles, up the promontory of Bray Head and down the other side, through extremely pretty countryside.

It was a long, easy walk down, taking her about an hour to get down to Greystones. She strolled down into the town. It was a more villagey-looking street than Bray's, and smaller: a couple of banks, a couple of food shops, two small restaurants, a newsagents where you could get magazines and cards and sweets. Various other small shops. a dry cleaners. And that was it. After that, the town was surrounded by big old houses, and estates of smaller ones. And then the fields began again — in fact, they began almost as soon as you had left the town. Nita strolled by the tiny golf course, looked down to Greystones' south beach beyond it; walked past a cow with a blank expression, chewing its cud. "Dai," she said to it. It blinked at her and kept chewing. The road climbed again, winding a bit, up through Killincarrig. Everything has names here, Nita thought. Ifs amazing. Every piece of ground. Aunt Annie was right. I really must get a map out. There may be one in the manual .

There was. She consulted it as she went up the road. At the top of the road, another crossed it at a T- junction: she turned left. That way led towards Kilquade and Kilcoole and Newcastle with its little church.

This road climbed and dipped over a little bridge that crossed a dry river; up between high hedges.

Birds dipped and sang high in the air. The sun was quite hot: there was no wind.

There came a point where there was a right turn, and a signpost pointing down between two more high hedges, towards Kilquade. Nita took it, making her way down the narrow road. The houses here were built well away from one another, even though they were quite small; some were larger, though.

The road dipped and broadened, curving around in front of St Patrick's. Nita stopped and looked at it for a moment. It was quite normal. A little white-painted church, with the tower off to one side of the building, and the bell with a circular pulley to make it go. There was a big field on one side, and visible behind it a hedge, and beyond that, some of Aunt Annie's land, another field planted with oilseed rape and those bright yellow flowers. The hum of bees came from it, loud. Nita stood still and listened, smelled the air. No broken stained glass, no fire, no blackening. She turned and looked off to her right. Well behind her, she could see Little Sugarloaf, which she had passed on her walk. And just beyond it, Great Sugarloaf, a very perfect cone, standing up straight, a sort of russet and green colour this time of year; for in this heat, the bracken was beginning to go brown already. I wonder, she thought. Sideways.

She had done it without wizardry yesterday. She stood there for a moment, and just looked. Not at Sugarloaf as it was, but as it could be; not this brown, but green.

Nothing.

Nothing. But it was green.

Her eyes widened a little. She looked at the nearby hedge. There were no flowers. She looked over her shoulder in panic at the church. The church looked just the same, but it was earlier in the year, much earlier. I wonder, she thought. How far can you take it? Do you have to be looking for anything in particular? Most wizardries required that you name the specifics that you wanted. All right. What does it look like? she thought. What does it look like for them, for the Sidhe? She looked at Sugarloaf again. What does it look like? Show me. Come on, show me.

There was no ripple, no sense of change, no special effects. One minute it was Sugarloaf, green as if with new spring. The next minute — it was a city.

There were no such cities. No-one had ever built such towers, such spires. Glass, it might have been, or crystal: a glass mountain, a crystal city, all sheen and fire. It needed no sunlight to make it shine. It shed its light all around, and the other hills nearby all had shadows cast away from it. Nita was not entirely sure she didn't see something moving in some of those shadows. But for the moment, all she could see clearly was the light, the fire; Sugarloaf all one great mass of tower upon tower, arches, architraves, buttresses, leaping up; an architecture men could not have imagined, since it violated so many of their laws. It was touched a little with the human idiom, true; but then those who had built it and lived in it — were living in it — had been dealing with the human idiom for a while, and had become enamored of it. "They're still here," Tualha had said, and laughed. Nita blinked, and let it go: and it was gone. Brown bracken again, plain granite mountain, with its head scraped bare. She let a long breath out and went walking again, back up to the last hill that would lead her up to her aunt's drive. "That simple," she said to herself. "That easy. " For wizards, at least. At the moment. But it shouldn't be that easy. Something had better be done. If only I could find out what? She headed back to the farm.