Diane Duane - The Wizard's Dilemma

... and then suddenly fell back as if they had struck a wall. Everything kindled to blinding fire around them, the water glittering as it splashed away, the walls of the great hall shining, the Lone One standing there aghast in the blaze and terror of that light as Nita's mother pulled the glede free of Nita's bracelet, stood up, and squeezed the glede tight in her upheld fist, a gesture both frightened and fierce.

She was lost in the resultant violent blast of fire, and Nita tottered sideways and clutched at Kit, watching her mother in amazement and terror: a goddess with a handful of lightning, imperial and terrible, rearing up into the darkness and towering over them all, even over the Lone One, and—to Nita's astonishment and concern—paying It no mind at all. All her mother's attention now was on what she gripped in her hand, a writhing struggling knot of lightnings growing and lashing outward all the time, until it crowned her with thunder and robed her in fire, and there were no shadows left to be seen anywhere.

The fear and pain in her face were awful to see, as Nita's mother struggled with the glede, trying to keep from being consumed by its power as other mortal women had been consumed, in old stories, by fire from beyond the worlds. But her eyes were ferocious with concentration, and the look of terror and anguish slipped away as she started to get the better of the Power she held.

Slowly she straightened, looking down at all of them—a woman in a T-shirt and a faded denim skirt, blazing with the fire from heaven, and with sudden certainty.

"The Light shone in the darkness," she said softly, and the whole little universe that was Nita's mom shook with it. "And the darkness comprehended it not. This light! But you never learn, do you? Or only real slowly."

The Lone Power stared at her with at least as much incredulity as Kit and Nita. After a second, It turned away.

"Oh, no you don't," Nita's mother said. And the lightning blasted out from her, and struck It down into the nearest pool.

Nita's mother looked at the Lone Power dispassionately as it struggled in the water. "If I am going to go anywhere," she said, "first you're going to find out up close and physical what the things you've done to me all this while have felt like." It struggled to get up out of the water. Nita's mom flung out her hand, and the lightning knocked It back in again.

"Having fun with that?" her mother said. "Doesn't feel like so much fun from inside my body, does it? You should have thought of that before you came in here. Just feel all those broken bones and strains, those six weeks off for tendonitis, the bruises and infections and herniated muscles and all the rest of it. Oh, we knew about pain, all right! Dance is two hours' worth of childbirth every weekday evening at eight, and a Saturday matinee!"

The Lone Power writhed and splashed in the water, stricken with the experience of her agony. "And then how about this?" her mother said. "Now that I've got your attention—"

Nita flinched, for this was the phrase that most often preceded the tongue-lashing you got when you hadn't cleaned your room properly—and to a certain extent she could feel what her mother was imposing on the Lone One. Here the experience inflicted on It was all the more intense for being recent, fresh in the sufferer's mind—the blurred vision, the growing pain, the uncomfortable and unhappy sense that, hey, this isn't supposed to be happening, what's the matter with me?—the loss of control, of mastery over a body that was always precisely mastered in the old days; the slowly growing fury, inexpressible, bottled up, that things weren't working the way they should.

In fact, that nothing was working the way it should.

For in this place, under these circumstances, Nita's mother now knew that if matters had somehow gone otherwise, death itself wouldn't have happened. It was an additive, an afterthought, somebody's "good idea." And here was the somebody, right here, within reach... and available, just this once, for spanking.

Not liking it, either, Nita thought.

"Fun, huh?" Nita's mother said softly. "But even with your inventions, this Life that you hate so much is still too much for you. It was always too much for you. Whatever you do, it just keeps finding a way. Maybe even this time."

The Lone One writhed and floundered in the water, and couldn't get away. Nita's mom looked down at It from what seemed a great distance. Under that majestic regard, as It finally managed to drag itself out of the pool, the Lone One seemed crumpled into a little sodden shape of shadow, impotent in this awful blaze of wrathful fire. Beaten, Nita thought, and her heart went up in a blaze of triumph to match the blinding light.

"But no," said her mother then, in a much more mortal voice, and hearing it, Nita's heart fell from an impossible height, and kept on falling. "That's what you're expecting, isn't it? You want me to win this battle. And after that, when we're all off our guard, comes the betrayal."

The light began to fade. No, Nita thought. M>, not like this! Mom!

But her mother had her own ideas... as usual. There was no longer any great distance between her and the much diminished darkness that was now the Lone Power in what she had made of her interior world. "No," Nita's mother said, "not even at that price. You've really been stuck playing this same old game for a long time, haven't you? And you just don't believe a mortal could refuse the opportunity."

From that sodden darkness there now came no answer. Nita's mother stood there looking down at the Lone Power as if at a daughter who'd turned up in particularly grimy clothes just after the laundry had all been done.

"No," Nita's mother said. "I can guess where this is going. How many times have I heard my daughters wheedle me to let them stay up late, just this once? It starts there, but that's never where it stops. And if I was firm with them, I have to be the same way with myself when my turn comes, too." She was looking entirely less like a furious goddess, entirely more like a slightly tired woman. "Because I'm up against my own time limit, now, aren't I? Override the body now, and we'll all be sorry for it later. If not personally, then in the lives of the people around us."

Nita was horrified. "Mom, no!"

"Honey." Nita's mother chucked the lightning away, careless, and came over to her. The lightning hit the floor, lay there burning, and then came slowly humping back toward Nita's mom, like some animate and terrible toy. "Believe me, if there was ever a time for the phrase 'Don't tempt me,' this is it."

"But, Mom, we're winningl"

"We're supposed to think so," she said. "Look at It there; what a great 'beaten' act." She gave the Lone Power a look that was both clinical and thoroughly unimpressed. "The point being to encourage us to go home in 'triumph,' and to distract me, at any cost, from doing what I know is right. If It can't ruin my life, and yours, straightforwardly, by killing me, It'll try it another way."

She walked a little way over to It, the lightning following her. "Can't you see it, honey? If we carry this to its logical conclusion, I live, all right. I survive this— and what the things in my body are doing to me now— because of what you kids have done here. And then I live and live, and live some more, and I get to like it so much that my whole life becomes about not dying. What kind of life is that going to be?

Because sooner or later, no matter what any of us do, it's going to happen anyway. Finally—who knows how many years from now—I get to die, all bitter and furious and scared, and doing everything I can to make everybody around me miserable—including you, assuming you are still around, and I haven't driven you and Dairine and your dad away with the sheer awfulness of my wanting to keep on living. That's what that One has in mind. Well, I won't do it, sweetie. Not even for this." The persistent tangle of lightning was rubbing against her leg like a cat; she gave it a sideways nudge with her foot, and turned away from the Lone One, coming back toward Nita and Kit. "Not even because I love you, and I'm afraid to leave your dad and you and Dairine, and I don't know what comes afterward for me, and I love my life, and I hate the thought of leaving all of you alone, in pain, and I'm not ready, and I just don't want to go!"