Диана Дуэйн - Wizard's Holiday

“You’re the newcomer,” Dairine said, “and I am your host. It’s for you to introduce yourself.” Where this made-up rule had come from, she had no idea, but she felt disinclined to make things easy for this guy.

He stood there and continued to look down at Dairine, way down, as if from some inaccessible mountain peak. “I,” he said, “am Roshaun ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Wellakhit.” And he looked at her as if he expected her to know what it meant.

“Pleased to meet you, cousin,” Dairine said, feeling that it was just barely true and desperately hoping that at some point it would be more so. But at the moment she was having all kinds of doubts. “I’m Dairine Callahan. Welcome to Earth.”

Roshaun looked around at the scrubby wooded surroundings with those green, green eyes. “This is perhaps a public park?” he said.

“No,” Dairine said. “It’s part of the property that belongs to our house. We use this area for coming and going on business, because our planet is sevarfrith.”

The Rirhait and the Demisiv each nodded or twitched briefly. Sevarfrith was a syllabic acronym for several words in the Speech that, taken together, meant “a world where wizardry must be conducted under cover.” There were numerous longer forms of the acronym that indicated the general or specific reason for the restriction, but the simple version often was used as shorthand. Dairine knew that this information would have been in the visitors’ own orientation packs, but it seemed like a good time to mention it.

“That’s a shame for you, isn’t it?” the Rirhait said. “I’m sorry about your trouble.”

“It’s okay,” Dairine said. “It’s more of a logistical problem than anything else. You get used to it after a while. The best thing to do is treat it as if it’s a game. For the first day or so, while you guys are getting used to being here, I’ve taken the liberty of setting up a wizardry around the perimeter so that the people who live in the immediate vicinity won’t see anything, in case somebody’s visual overlay slips. If you look around, you can see it—I’ve left the perimeter visually active for anyone who uses the Speech.” She gestured around her, indicating the paired lines of blue green light that ran around the backyard from the left rear corner of the house, down the property line and above the chain-link fence, right around the back of the property, where they were standing, and up the right side toward the garage. “Inside that, you’re safe in your own shape. At night, though, there may be some leakage of light from inside the space, and we can’t be certain that some of the neighbors might not be able to see you; so it’s better to be careful.”

The Demisiv looked up through the leaves of the trees at the shifting light of the sky above, where clouds were racing by in a stiff wind. “That’s fine,” Filif said. “We wouldn’t want to frighten anybody.”

“Come on this way,” Dairine said, and led them out of the woods. “Oh,” she said, “and this is my associate, Spot.”

Spot put up a selection of stalked eyes and looked around him, fixing on each of the aliens in turn. “Dai stihó,” he said.

“Dai,” said Filif and Sker’ret. Roshaun peered down at the small laptop in Dairine’s arms. “Is it sentient?” he said.

I’m beginning to think he’s more sentient than you are, Dairine thought. And immediately after that, she thought, What is the matter with me?

“We like to think so,” Dairine said, as politely as she could. “Though since he and I started working together a couple of years ago, there’ve been a few discussions over which of us is more sentient.”

They made their way up the lawn toward the house. “It’s spring here!” Filif said. “I love the colors.”

“Yeah,” Dairine said. “They haven’t really started yet, though. In a few weeks there’ll be a lot more flowers here.”

“Oh,” Roshaun said, “so the look of the place will improve, then? I’m glad to hear it. At home, we would have had the groundskeepers reprimanded.”

Dairine flushed as hot as if someone had insulted her, or her dad, or Nita, to her face. There was something insufferably superior about Roshaun’s delivery. I have to be imagining this, Dairine thought. I’ve known this guy exactly two minutes. It’s much too soon to believe that he’s a complete turkey.

Nonetheless, as Roshaun looked around the Callahan backyard, as he took in the slightly beat-up lawn furniture and the artfully ragged plantings, he radiated a sense that all of this was below him, somehow. I don’t get it, Dairine thought. Where is he getting this attitude? All the wizards I’ve ever known have been nice!

Well, Spot said in her head, how many wizards have you known?

That brought her up short. Well…she said.

Sker’ret, oblivious to what was going on inside Dairine’s head, was looking around him in all directions, a job made easier by stalked eyes that went every which way. “Do you have an indoor dwelling place here,” it said, “or do you stay outside?”

His tone of Speech was entirely different, suggesting a cheerful interest. “Not this time of year,” Dairine said. “It’s too cold for us to stay out just yet… though the time’s coming. We’re heading for the dwelling now—this white structure. Come on inside.”

She led the way toward the back door, Spot pacing her. Sker’ret came trundling along behind, followed by Roshaun, with Filif bringing up the rear. “And these other structures built so close to your dwelling,” Roshaun said, looking left and right as they approached the house, “more members of your species live in these as well?”

“That’s right,” Dairine said.

“They are perhaps an extended kinship group?” Roshaun said. “Members of your family?”

“Oh, no,” Dairine said. “As I said, they’re just our neighbors.”

“Neighbors,” Roshaun said, as if trying out a completely unfamiliar word. “It’s fascinating. At home, it wouldn’t be permitted.”

Dairine stopped halfway up the stairs to the back door. “Not permitted?” she said. “By whom?”

Roshaun looked at Dairine as if she were insane. “By us,” he said. “Our family wouldn’t want, you know, people looking at them.” And the word he used

wasn’t the plural of the one in the Speech that meant “person, fellow sentient being”; it was one that meant a being markedly less advanced than you in the Great Scheme of Things. Usually the word was used affectionately, or at worst in a neutral mode, for creatures that were aware in some mode but not quite sentient. But Roshaun’s tone of voice seemed to put an extra unpleasant spin on it, turning the word into something more like “lowlife.”

Dairine stood there wondering if she was suffering from low blood sugar or something of the kind. It has to be me, she said. No one could be so offensive on purpose… and if he’s doing it accidentally, then it’s not his fault. Why am I finding it so hard to cut him some slack?

“It must be very lonely for you, then,” Dairine said, as politely as she could.

“Oh, no,” Roshaun said, “I wouldn’t say that…”

The phrasing caught Dairine’s attention sharply as she opened the screen door. You wouldn’t say it because it would be true, she thought.

That insight, if it was one, she filed away for later study. “My father,” she said, “isn’t here right now. He’s still at work. But he’ll be along in an hour or so.”

“What does he work at?” Sker’ret said.

“He’s a florist,” Dairine said as they went in the back door into the kitchen.

Filif looked at her with many more berries than previously. “A doctor!” he said.