Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

“They haven’t,” Darryl said. “I’m home in bed.”

“Oh,” Nita said, and laughed. “Wow, that two-for-one deal really does come in handy, doesn’t it?”

She’d already had a word with Kit about the genuine source of Darryl’s ability to be in two places at once. They’d agreed that there was no need to be too cagey about mentioning Darryl’s ability to co-locate, as long as they stayed away from discussing the reasons for it. If Darryl just thought it was a personal talent, that was fine.

“I looked at the transit spells,” Darryl said. “But except for the air, they looked like a waste of energy. We’re not supposed to waste. And besides, why go to all that trouble when I can just do this?”

For a moment he was standing behind a large boulder some feet away, while also sitting on the rock beside Kit. Kit shook his head in admiration.

“It’s a slick trick,” Kit said. “I’ll do it my way for the time being, though. Seriously… are your parents coping?”

“They’re coping great.” Darryl’s eyes shone. It was plain to Nita that this was an understatement.

“My mom and dad are…” He broke off, shook his head.

“It’s all new,” Darryl said after a moment. “They hardly dare to believe it. And I can’t really tell them why they can believe it, not yet. Eventually I will. But right now wizardry’d be one shock too many. They’d probably think I was coming down with some kind of nuts to replace the autism.”

“Give them some time,” Kit said. “Neither of us came right out to our parents, either. I think you’re probably right, though. Too much strange at once isn’t a good thing for them. There’s going to be enough of that later, once you start getting into your serious work, whatever that turns out to be. For now, just enjoy how happy they are, and take it easy.”

“Well, happy’s good, but the ‘take it easy’ part’s not going to last,” Darryl said, and grinned. “I heard my mom thinking that if I was really going to be better now, she was going to start giving me chores

.”

Nita and Kit groaned in unison.

“She was kind of nervous about it,” Darryl said. “I think I get a few weeks of being lazy before they really start expecting me to be normal.”

“Take advantage of it,” Kit said. “Once they start, they never let up.”

Darryl nodded, looked over at the Earth. “So now we get to take care of that,” he said.

“That’s the job,” Nita said.

“I’d better get on with it then,” Darryl said. “You guys come here often?”

“Often enough,” Kit said.

“I might be needing some advice as I work into this job,” Darryl said.

“For you, we’re available any time,” Nita said.

Kit grinned. “We’re in the book.”

Darryl nodded and waved. A second later he was gone.

“Nice kid,” Kit said after a moment.

“No argument there,” Nita said. “Come on, your mom said dinner was at six.”

Kit was looking over at the Earth. “It really is the best job, isn’t it?” he said.

Nita nodded. “None better. And the company’s good, too.”

“The best,” Kit said. “Welcome back.”

Nita smiled. “Come on ,” she said. “I want some of that chicken you’re always raving about.”

Kit stood up and dusted floury pumice dust off him. “Yeah, well, if you think you’re going to get a bigger portion than I am, think again! C’mon, Ponch.”

Ponch rolled over and bounced to his feet in a cloud of silvery dust. Kit and Nita vanished.

Ponch stood there, looking thoughtfully at the half-Earth for some moments… then wagged his tail.

Chicken

! he said silently, leaped up, and vanished.

The next morning Nita walked to school quietly by herself, noticing a lot of things that had passed her by recently: the snow, the slush (of which there was a great deal), the icicles hanging down, glittering, from the eaves of people’s houses; the color of the sky, the sound of people’s voices as they said good-bye to each other on their way to work. If it wasn’t for what’s been going on this past week or so

, she thought, how much of this would I have noticed ? She had been locked up in her grief as surely as Darryl had been locked up in the otherworlds of his own making. It had taken a major blow to jar her loose, and Darryl had gone through something similar.

But he was free now. And as for me …

Nita mused as she turned the corner, thinking of Carl’s mention of the concept that right across the fields of existence “all is done for each.” As far as she could tell, that meant that every good thing that happened to everybody had some effect on all the rest of everybody, from here to the edges of the universe. It was like that saying about the chaos-theory butterfly in the rainforest, which, just by waving its little wings, contributes to the hurricane half a hemisphere away— if not actually causing the hurricane. But more specifically, the “all done for each” principle seemed to mean that the Powers That Be had designed the world so that everything that happened in it — every victory, every sacrifice, from the largest to the smallest — was pointed specifically at every separate living thing. At first Nita had found this almost impossible to imagine. Now she found herself wondering if what she’d just been through, besides being about Darryl’s liberation, had been about helping her find her way out of her own pain as well.

Nita shrugged as she walked in through the gates that led into the parking lot. There was plenty of time to get into the highly theoretical stuff later. For now, she had work to catch up on… and some other business to finish.

She went down to the temporary office where she usually found Mr. Millman. There he was, sitting behind the desk and reading a magazine while eating the last couple of bites of a bagel with cream cheese.

He glanced up as Nita came in. “Morning,” he said.

Nita sat down, put her book bag on the floor, reached into her jacket, and came out with the cards.

“Before you start in with those,” Mr. Millman said, “one thing. We left on a slightly jangly note the other day…”

“Did we?” Nita said, refusing for the moment to smile at him, refusing to let him off the hook.

“I think we did, especially since you cut half your classes shortly thereafter.”

Nita shrugged. Millman’s eyebrows went up as he took note of the gesture. “I just wanted you to know something,” he said. “Whatever the secret is about what’s going on in your life right now — I want you to know that there’s no need for you to tell me, ever, and I have no intention of pressing you.”

Nita looked at him with surprise, because this wasn’t what she’d been thinking. She also looked at him with amused suspicion. “What is this, some kind of reverse psychology?”

Mr. Millman looked at her in shock, and then laughed. “What? Like you’re a three-year-old or some-thing, and you’ll do the opposite of what I suggest? Spare me. This is supposed to have been counseling, not brain surgery. I was merely saying that my intent was just to counsel you — not to dig around in your skull for juicy tidbits, like something out of a horror movie about bad Far Eastern food.”

Nita snickered. “Okay,” she said. “I thought you were going to say something about my anger.”

“Anything that needs to be said,” said Mr. Millman, “I’m sure you’ll take care of it.”

Nita slipped the cards out of their pack and started to shuffle them. It was surprising how easy the false shuffles were when you were really paying attention to them. “Name a card,” she said.

“Five of diamonds,” he said.