by Diane Duane
You sound worried.
“Well, yeah, a little,” Nita murmured, getting up. All that week her ability to hear what the plants were saying had been getting stronger and surer; the better she got with the Speech, the more sense the bushes and trees made. “It’s just—the rowan branch has to come off a live tree, Fred, and I can’t just pick it—that’d be like walking up to someone and pulling one of their fingers off. I have to ask for it. And if the tree won’t give it to me…”
Then you don’t get your pen back, at least not for a while. Fred shimmered with colors and a feeling like a sigh. I am a trouble to you.
“Fred, no. I have to hush for a moment now. Put your light out a moment so we can get out of here…”
Nita interrupted the shopkeeper’s intense concentration on a Gothic novel long enough to find out what the fork cost (a dollar) and buy it. A few steps outside the door, Fred was pacing her again. “If you’re trouble,” Nita said under her breath, “you’re the best trouble that’s happened around here for a while. You’re good to talk to, you’re good company—when you don’t forget and start emitting cosmic rays…”
Fred winked momentarily bright in a blush at Nita’s teasing. In an excited moment the night before he had forgotten himself and emitted a brief blast of ultrashortwave radiation, which had heated up Nita’s backyard a good deal, ionized the air for miles around, and produced a local but brilliant aurora. Well, it’s an old habit, and old habits die hard. I’m working on it.
“Heat we don’t mind so much. Or ultraviolet, the longwave kind that doesn’t hurt people’s eyes.”
You fluoresce when I use that, though…
Nita laughed softly. “I don’t mind fluorescing. Though on second thought, don’t do that where anyone but Kit can see. I doubt my mother’d understand.”
They walked home together, chatting alternately about life in the suburbs and life in a part of deep space close to the Great Galactic Rift. Nita felt more relaxed than she had for months. Joanne had been out of sight since Monday afternoon at Tom and Carl’s. Even if she hadn’t, Nita had been practicing with that body shield, so that now she could run through the syllables of the spell in a matter of seconds, and nothing short of a bomb dropped on her could hurt her. She could even extend the spell to cover someone else, though it wasn’t quite so effective; she had a harder time convincing the air to harden up. But even that lessened protection would come in handy if she and Kit should be in trouble together at some point and there was no time to cooperate in a spelling. Not that she was expecting any more trouble. The excitement of a trip into the city was already catching at her. And this wasn’t just another shopping trip. Magic was loose in the world, and she was going to help work some….
*
She ate supper and did her homework almost without thinking about either, and as a result had to do much of the math homework twice. By the time she was finished, the sun was down and the backyard was filling with a cool blue twilight. In the front of the house, her mother and father and Dairine were watching TV as Nita walked out the side door and stood on the step, letting her eyes get used to the dimness and looking east at the rising Moon. Canned laughter echoed inside the house as Fred appeared by her shoulder.
My, that’s bright for something that doesn’t emit heat, Fred said, looking at the Moon too.
“Reflected sunlight,” Nita said absently.
You’re going to talk to the tree now?
“Uh-huh.”
Then I’ll go stay with the others and watch that flat thing emit. Maybe I’ll figure out what it’s trying to get across.
“Good luck with that,” Nita said, amused, as Fred winked out.
She walked around into the backyard. Spring stars were coming out as she paused in the middle of the lawn and looked down the length of the yard at the rowan, a great round-crowned tree snowy with white flowers. Nita’s stomach tightened slightly with nervousness. It had been a long time ago, according to her manual, that the trees had gone to war on humankind’s behalf, against the dark powers that wanted to keep human intelligence from happening at all. The war had been a terrible one, lasting thousands of centuries—the trees and other plants taking more and more land, turning barren stone to soil that would support them and the animals and men to follow; the dark powers breaking the soil with earthquake and mountain building, scouring it with glaciers, climate-changing good ground for desert, and burning away forests in firestorms far more terrible than the small brushfires any forest needs to stay healthy. But the trees and the other plants had won at last.
They had spent many more centuries readying the world for men—but when men came, they forgot the old debts and wasted the forests more terribly than even the old dark powers. Trees had no particular reason to be friendly to people these days. Nita found herself thinking of that first tree that had spoken to her, angry over the destruction of its friend’s artwork. Even though the rowan tree had always been well tended, she wasn’t certain how it was going to respond to her. With the other ash trees, rowans had been in the forefront of the Battle; and they had long memories.
Nita sighed and sat down under the tree, book in hand, her back against its trunk. There was no need to start right away, anyhow—she needed a little while to recover from her homework. The stars looked at her through the rowan’s wind-stirred branches, getting brighter by the minute. There was that one pair of stars that always looked like eyes, they were so close together. It was one of the three little pairs associated with the Big Dipper. The Leaps of the Gazelle, the ancient Arabs had called them, seeing them as three sets of hoofprints left in the sky. “Kafza’at al Thiba,” Nita murmured, the old Arabic name. Her eyes wandered down toward the horizon, finding a faint reddish gleam. “Regulus.” And a whiter gleam, higher: “Arcturus.” And another, and another, old friends, with new names in the Speech, that she spoke silently, remembering Carl’s warning: Eltháthtë … ur’Senaahel… The distant fires flickered among shadowy leaves. Lahirien…
And Methchánë and Ysen and Cahadhwy and Rasaugéhil…. They do look nice tonight.
Nita glanced up. The tree above her was leaning back comfortably on its roots, finished with the stretching-upward of growth for the day, and gazing at the stars as she was. I was hoping that haze would clear off, it said as silently as Nita had spoken, in a slow, relaxed drawl. This will be a good night for talking to the wind. And other such transient creatures. I was wondering when you were going to come out and pay your respects, wizardling.
“Uh—“ Nita was reassured: the rowan sounded friendly. “It’s been a busy week.”
You never used to be too busy for me, the rowan said, its whispery voice sounding ever so slightly wounded. Always up in my branches you were, and falling out of them again. Or swinging. But I suppose you outgrew me.
Nita sat quiet for a moment, remembering how it had been when she was littler. She would swing for hours on end, talking to herself, pretending all kinds of things, talking to the tree and the world in general. And sometimes— “You talked back!” she said in shocked realization. “You did, I wasn’t imagining it!”
Certainly I talked. You were talking to me, after all … Why are you surprised? Small children look at things and see them, listen to things and hear them. Of course they understand the Speech. Most of them never realize it any more than you did. It’s when they get older, and stop looking and listening, that they lose the Speech, and we lose them. The rowan sighed, many leaves showing pale undersides as the wind moved them. None of us are ever happy about losing our children. But every now and then we get one of you back.
“All that in the book was true, then,” Nita said. “About the Battle of the Trees—“
Certainly. Wasn’t it written in the Book of Night with Moon that this world’s life would become free to roam among our friends there—the rowan stretched upward toward the turning stars for a moment— if we helped? After the world was green and ready, we waited for a, long time. We started letting all sorts o
f strange creatures live in our branches after they came up out of the water. We watched them all; we never knew which of our guests would be the children we were promised. And then all of a sudden one odd-looking group of creatures went down out of our branches, and looked upward again, and called us by name in the Speech. Your kind… The tree looked down musingly at Nita. You’re still an odd-looking lot, it said.
Nita sat against the rowan and felt unhappy. “We weren’t so kind to you,” she said. “And if it weren’t for the plants, we wouldn’t be here.”
Don’t be downcast, wizardling, the tree said, gazing up at the sky again. It isn’t your fault. And in any case, we knew what fate was in store for us. It was written in the Book.
“Wait a minute. You mean you knew we were going to start destroying your kind, and you got the world ready for us anyway?”
How could we do otherwise? You are our children.
“But … we make our houses out of you, we—“ Nita looked guiltily at the book she was holding. “We kill you and we write on your bodies!”
The rowan continued to gaze up at the night sky. Well, it said. We are all in the Book together, after all. Don’t you think that we wrote enough in the rock and the soil, in our day? And we still do. We have our own lives, our own feelings and goals. Some of them you may learn by your wizardry, but I doubt you’ll ever come to know them all. We do what we have to, to live. Sometimes that means breaking a rock’s heart, or pushing roots down into ground that screams against the intrusion. But we never forget what we’re doing. As for you— and its voice became very gentle— how else should our children climb to the stars but up our branches? We made our peace with that fact a long time ago, that we would be used and maybe forgotten. So be it. What you learn in your climbing will make all the life on this planet greater, more precious. You have your own stories to write. And when it comes to that, who writes the things written in your body, your life? And who reads? It breathed out, a long sigh of leaves in the wind. Our cases aren’t that much different.
Nita sat back and tried to absorb what the tree was saying. “The Book of Night with Moon,” she said after a while. “Do you know who wrote it?”
The rowan was silent for a long time. None of us are sure, it said at last. Our legends say it wasn’t written. It’s simply been, as long as life has been. Since they were kindled, and before. It gazed upward at the stars.
“Then the other Book, the dark one—“
The whole tree shuddered. That one was written, they say. The rowan’s voice dropped to a whisper. By the Lone Power—the Witherer, the one who blights. The Kindler of Wildfires. Don’t ask more. Even talking about that one or its works can lend it power.
Nita sat quiet for a while, thinking. But you came to ask something, the rowan said. Wizards are always asking things of rowans.
“Uh, yes.”
Don’t worry about it, the rowan said. When we decided to be trees of the Light, we knew we were going to be in demand.
“Well—I need some live wood. Just enough for a stick, a little wand. We’re going to open the Grand Central worldgate tomorrow morning.”
Above Nita’s head there was a sharp cracking sound. She pressed back against the trunk, and a short straight branch about a foot and a half long bounced to the grass in front of her. The Moon is almost full tonight, the rowan said. If I were you, I’d peel the leaves and bark off that twig and leave it out to soak up moonlight. I don’t think it’ll hurt the wood’s usefulness for your spelling, and it may make it more valuable later on.
“Thank you, yes,” Nita said. The book had mentioned something of the sort—a rowan rod with a night’s moonlight in it could be used for some kind of defense. She would look up the reference later. “I guess I should go in and check my spells over one more time. I’m awfully new at this.”
Go on, the tree said, with affection. Nita picked up the stick that the rowan had dropped for her, got up and stretched, looking up at the stars through the branches. On impulse she reached up, hooked an arm around the branch that had had the swing on it.
“I guess I could still come and climb sometimes,” she said.
She felt the tree looking at her. My name in the Speech is Liused, it said in leafrustle and starflicker. If there’s need, remember me to the trees in Manhattan. You won’t be without help if you need it.
“I’m Nita,” she said in the Speech, aloud for this once. The syllables didn’t sound strange: they sounded like a native language and made English feel like a foreign tongue. For a moment every leaf on the tree quivered with her name, speaking it in a whispery echo.
Go, the rowan said again. Rest well. It turned its calm regard to the stars again.
Nita went back inside.
*
Saturday morning about eight, Kit and Nita and Fred took the bus down to the nearby Long Island Railroad station and caught a shiny silver train for Manhattan. The train was full of the usual cargo of Saturday travelers and shoppers, none of whom paid any particular attention to the boy and girl sitting by one window, going over the odd contents of their backpacks with great care. Also apparently unnoticed was a faint spark of white light hanging in the center of the window between the two, gazing out in fascination at the stores and backyards and parking lots the train passed.
What are all those dead hunks of metal there? All piled up?
“Cars, Fred.”
I thought cars moved.
“They did, once.”
They all went there to die?
“They were dead when they got there, probably.”
But they’ve all climbed on top of each other! When they were dead?
“No, Fred. They have machines—“
Nita sighed out loud. “Where were we?” she said to Kit.
“The battery.”
“Right. Well, here it is.”
“Lithium-cadmium?”
“Right. Heavy thing, it weighs more than anything else we’ve got. That’s the last thing for activating the piece of time, isn’t it?”
“One more. The eight and a half sugar cubes.”
“Here.” Nita held up a little plastic bag.
“Okay. Now the worldgate stuff. The pinecone—”
“Bristlecone pine.” Nita held it up then dropped it in her backpack.
“The aspirin.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The fork.”
“Here.”
“The rowan branch.”
“Yup.” She held it up. Cut down and peeled, it was about a foot long, a greenish-white wand.
“Great. Then we’re set. You’ve got all that other stuff; why don’t you give me the battery?”
“Here.” Nita handed it to him, watched as he found a good spot for it in his backpack, under the sandwiches. “What’s that?” she said, spotting something that hadn’t been accounted for in the equipment tally.
“Huh? Oh, this.” He reached in and brought out a slim piece of metal like a slender rod, with a small knob at one end and broken off jaggedly at the other.
“What is it?”
“A piece of junk. A busted-off car antenna. Well,” Kit amended, “it was, anyway. I was sitting out behind the garage yesterday afternoon, reading, and I started talking to my dad’s old car. He has this ancient Edsel. He’s always talking about getting it reconditioned, but I don’t think he’s really going to—there’s never enough money. Anyway, he goes out every now and then to work on the engine, usually when he’s tired or mad about something. I don’t know if he ever really gets any work done, but he always comes inside greasy all over and feeling a lot better. But I was going over the spells in my head, and the car spoke to me in the Speech—”
“Out loud?”
“No, inside, like Fred does. Kind of a grindy noise, like its voice needed a lube job. I wasn’t too surprised; that kind of thing keeps happening since I picked the book up. First it was rocks, and then things started to talk to me when I picked them up. They would tell me where they’d been
and who’d handled them. Anyway, the car and I started talking.” Kit paused, looking a touch guilty. “They don’t see things the way we do. We made them, and they don’t understand why most of the time we make things and then just let them wear out and throw them away afterward…”
Nita nodded, wondering briefly whether the train was alive too. Certainly it was as complex as a car, if not more so. “What about this antenna thing, though?” she said after a moment.
“Oh. The car said to take it for luck. It was just lying there on the ground, rusting. Dad replaced the antenna a long time ago. So I took it inside and cleaned it up, and there are some wizardries you can do with metal, to remind it of the different forces it felt when it was being made. I did a couple of those. Partly just practicing, partly…”
“You thought there might be trouble,” Nita said.
Kit looked at her, surprised. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m going to be careful, anyway. Carl was pretty definite about not messing around with the worldgate; I wasn’t thinking about anything like that. But it occurred to me that it’d be easy to carry the antenna to school if I wanted to. And if anyone started bothering me—” He shrugged, then laughed. “Well, that’s their problem. Hey, look, we’re getting close to that big curve where you can see the city before you go under the river. Come on, these trains have a window in the very front of the first car.”
“Fred!” he said silently in the Speech again. “Want to see where we’re going?”
Why not? Maybe I’ll understand it better than where we’ve been…
Kit and Nita wriggled into their backpacks and made their way up through a couple of cars, hanging on carefully as they crossed the chained walkways between them. Treetops and housetops flashed by in a rush of wind and clatter of rails. Each time Nita touched the bare metal of the outside of the train, she jumped a little, feeling something, she wasn’t quite sure what. The train? she thought. Thinking? And now that I’m aware that it does, I can feel it a little?—though not as clearly as the trees. Maybe my specialty is going to be things that grow and Kit’s is going to be things that run. But how many other kinds of life are there that I could learn to feel? Who knows where thought is hiding?…