by Diane Duane
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!"
It was a cry of utter anguish, and the air all around them trembled with it, rent as if by thunder. That shadow, crouched down off to the side, stirred just slightly, crouched down further. "Not even for that," her mother said, a lot more quietly, unclenching her fists. "It is not going to happen."
"Mom...," Nita said, and could find no other words.
Her mother just shook her head. For a moment, she seemed too choked up to speak. She pulled Nita close and held her, and then, her voice rough, she said, "Sweetie, I may not be what you are, but this I know. There's a power in what we are as mortal beings that even that One can't match. If we throw it away, we stop being human. I won't do it. And certainly not when doing it plays into the enemy's hands."
She let go of Nita and turned around. "So as for you," Nita's mother said to the Lone Power, her eyes narrowing in what Nita recognized as her mother's most dangerous kind of frown, "you'll get what you incorrectly consider your piece of me soon enough. But in the meantime, I'm tired of looking at you. So you just take yourself straight on out of here before I kick your poor deluded rear end from here to eternity."
The Lone Power slowly picked Itself up, towered up before them all in faceless darkness... and vanished without a sound.
"Mom..." Nita shook her head, again at a loss for words. "Wow," Kit said. "Impressive."
Her mother smiled slightly, shook her head. "It's all in the documentation, honey," she said to Nita. "It says it plain enough: 'Have I not said to you, "you are gods"?' So we may as well act like them when it's obviously right to and the power's available."
They all turned to look around at the sound of a splash. Ponch had jumped into one of the now-cleansed pools and was paddling around.
Nita's mom smiled, then looked at the surroundings, once again dark and wet, then she glanced down at what Nita still held in her hands. "Is that what I think it is?"
Nita nodded and handed it over. Her mother tossed the apple in her hand, caught it again, looking at it thoughtfully, and polished it against her skirt. "Are we done here?" she said.
Nita looked around her sorrowfully. "Unless you can think of anything to add."
Her mother shook her head. "No point in it now," she said. She looked at the apple with an expression of profound regret, turning it over in her hands. For a moment Nita saw through the semblance, saw the kernel as it was, the tangle of intricate and terrible forces that described a human body with a human mind and soul inside it, infinitely precious, infinitely vulnerable. Then her mother sighed and chucked the apple over her shoulder into one of the nearby pools. It dropped into the waters and sank, glowing, and was lost.
Nita let out a long breath that became a sob at the end. There was no getting it back now, nothing more that could be done.
"Better this way," her mother said, sounding sad. "You don't often get a chance like this; be a shame to ruin it. Come on, sweetie." She looked around at the darkness and the water. "We should either call the plumber or get out of the basement. How do we do that, exactly?"
"I don't think you have to do anything but wake up," Kit said. "But Nita and I should go."
"Don't forget Ponch," Nita's mother said, as the dog clambered out of the pool he'd been swimming in and came over to the three of them. "If I come out of the anesthesia barking, the doctors are going to be really confused."
Ponch shook himself, and all three of them got splattered. "Kit needed me to get in," Ponch said. "Without me, I don't think he can get out. I'll see him safely home."
Nita's mother blinked at that. "Sounds fair," she said. "Meantime, what about this?" She bent over to pick up the dwindling knot of lightning that was all that was left of the glede.
The question answered itself, as it faded away in her hands. "One use only, I think," Kit said.
"I think I got my money's worth," Nita's mother said. "But thanks for the hint, Kit; you made the difference."
"Just a suggestion someone gave me," Kit said. "To listen to my hunches when it all went dark..." "That one sure paid off. Go on, you kids, get out of here."
Nita hugged her mom while Kit put the leash on Ponch. Then Kit offered Nita his arm. She paused a moment, took it, and they stepped forward into the darkness.
The two of them came out in Kit's backyard. Nita saw Kit looking around him with an odd expression. "Something wrong?" she said. "Or is it just that reality looks really strange after what we've been through?"
"Some of that, maybe," he said. He took the leash off Ponch and let the dog run toward the house. "Kit—"
He looked at her.
"You saved my butt," she said. Kit let out a breath. "You let me." She nodded.
"Anyway," Kit said, "you've saved mine a few times. Let's just give up keeping score, okay? It's a distraction."
Nita nodded. "Come on," she said. "Let's go to the hospital." Between transit circles and the business of appearing far enough away from the hospital not to upset anybody, it took them about fifteen minutes to get there. Down in that awful little waiting room, Nita found her dad and Dairine—and the look on her father's face nearly broke Nita's heart. There was hope there, for the first time in a long, long week.
Nita sat down while Kit shut the door. "Are they done?" Nita said.
Her father nodded. "They got the tumor out," he said. "All of it. It went much better than they hoped, in fact. And they think... they think maybe it hasn't spread as far as they thought. They have to do some tests."
"Is Mom awake yet?"
"Yeah. The trouble with her eyes is clearing up already, the recovery room nurses said, but they want us to leave her alone till this evening; it's going to take her a while to feel better. We were just waiting here for you to catch up with us." He looked at her. "What about you?"
Nita swallowed. "I think we did good," she said, "but I'm not sure how good yet. It's gonna take a while to tell."
Her dad nodded. "So let's go home...and we'll come back after dinner."
As much as Nita felt like she really needed a nap, she couldn't sleep. Kit went home for a while, but when Nita's dad was starting the car, Kit appeared again in the backyard, and Nita went downstairs to meet him.
As she was walking across the yard, there was another bang, less discreet: Dairine. She stalked out of the air with an annoyed expression. "Where've you been?" Nita said.
"The hospital."
"You weren't supposed to go yet!"
"I know. I sneaked in. They just found me and threw me out."
She looked at the two of them. "Have you seen the precis in the manual?" she said. Nita shook her head.
"I have," Dairine said softly. "I owe you guys one."
Kit shook his head. "Dari, if you read the precis, then you know—"
"I know what's p
robably going to happen to her," Dairine said. "Yeah. But I know what you guys did. You gave it your best shot. That's what matters."
She turned and went into the house.
"She's mellowing," Kit said quietly.
"She's in shock," Nita said. "So am I. But, Kit-Thanks for not letting me go through it alone." She gulped, trying to keep hold of her composure. "I'm not— I mean, I'm going to need a lot of help."
"You know where to look," Kit said. "So let's get on with it."
In the hospital they found Nita's mother already sitting up in bed. She had a blackening eye and some bruising around her nose, but that was all; and the sticky contacts and wires and machines were all gone, though she now had an IV running into her arm. Nita thought her mom looked very tired, but as they came in, her face lit up with a smile that was otherwise perfectly normal.
She looked at Kit. "Woof," she said.
Kit cracked up.
"Does this have some profound secret meaning," Nita's dad said, sitting down and taking his wife's hand, "or is it a side effect of the drugs?"
Nita's mother smiled. "No drug on the planet could have produced the trip I've just been through," she said.
There was a long silence. "Did it work?" Nita's father said then. "In the only way that matters," her mother said. "Thank you, kids." Nita blinked back tears. Kit just nodded.
The head nurse came in and stood by the bed. "How're you feeling?"
"Like someone's been taking out pieces of my brain," Nita's mother said, "but otherwise, just fine. When can I go home?"
"The day after tomorrow," said the nurse, "if the surgeons agree. It's not like the surgery itself was all that major, and you seem to be getting over the post-op trauma with unusual speed. If this keeps up, we can send you home and have a private-duty nurse keep an eye on you for the first few days. After that, there'll be other business, and we'll be seeing a fair amount of each other. But there's time for you to deal with that when you're feeling better and the surgery's healed."
"You're on," Nita's mother said. "Now let me talk to you about dinner." "No dinner tonight," said the nurse. "Just the bottle, until tomorrow." "I want a second opinion," Nita's mother said, unimpressed. The nurse laughed, and went out.
"And a cheeseburger!" Nita's mother called after her.
Nita chuckled; her mother got junk food cravings at the oddest times. Then she caught herself chuckling, and stopped abruptly.
"No," her mother said. "Don't. You're right; it's disgusting, and there's no reason you shouldn't laugh." This she said as much to Nita's dad as to Nita.
Her father didn't say anything.
"Would you two excuse us a second?" Nita's mother said to Kit and Nita.
They went out. "Back in a moment," Kit said, and walked away down toward the vending machine and the rest rooms—a little too quickly, Nita thought. She watched him turn the corner. It didn't occur to me how much this was hurting him, too. If he's going to be watching out for me, I'd better keep a close eye on him.
Might get to be a full-time occupation.
Nita leaned against the wall outside the room. She should not have been able to hear anything from where she was, but she could.
Harry," she heard that soft voice say. "Cut it out and look at me. We've bought me some time. We have time to say our good-byes—enough for that, at the
Friday Afternoon
least. Beyond that, it's all a gamble. But it always has been, anyway." Nita could hear her dad breathing in the silence, trying to let it in.
"But one thing, before I forget. You don't need to waste any more time worrying about Kit." "No?"
"No."
I shouldn't be able to hear this, Nita thought. She closed her eyes and concentrated on not listening. It didn't work. It has to have something to do with where I've just been.
"But enough of that. We've got things to do. Listen to me! I don't want you to start treating me like someone who's about to die. I expect to spend every remaining moment living. There's little enough time left, for any of us."
Nita could have sworn she heard her father gulp. "Oh, God, sweetheart, don't tell me there's going to be some kind of... of disaster!"
"What? Of course not." Her voice went soft and rough again, in a way that Nita had last heard just after her mom had dropped a handful of lightning. "But, Harry, being where I've just been, do you think that sixty years looks any longer to me than six months? Or that anything that's just time looks like it's going to last? So shut up and kiss me. We've got a lot to do."
There was only silence then. Nita took herself away as quietly as she could. Down the corridor and around the corner, she found Kit leaning against the wall, his arms folded, waiting for her.
"What are they up to in there?" he asked after a moment.
"Don't ask." She gave him a thoughtful look. He didn't ask. And 1 bet be doesn't have to. "So, what now?"
"Just for a little while," Nita said, "we leave them alone." Kit nodded. Together, they headed out.
Dawn
NITA WENT HOME AFTER that, and slept the clock around. They would only need to go to the hospital once or twice more to pick up equipment that the visiting nurse would need, and to talk to the doctors about chemotherapy and so on. Nita was glad enough to let her dad take care of all that. For her own part, she and Dairine mostly just sat and held her mom's hands, and listened to her complain about the hospital food, which she had been allowed to start eating that morning. It was a peculiar kind of happiness that Nita and Dairine were experiencing, and Nita was being careful to say nothing that might break it. Just under the surface of it lay a lot of pain. But right now, the simple joy of knowing that her mom would be home the next day was more than enough for Nita... and she knew Dairine agreed.
They went home that evening, and Nita went off to her room and went straight to sleep again. She was getting caught up a little on her own weariness, enough to dream again, but the realization that she was dreaming coincided with a certain amount of confusion. The mountainous landscape towering all around her in a misty early morning sun wasn't anyplace she recognized. Neither were the forests running up and up those slopes, all golden, or—as she turned, and paused, amazed—the vast, glittering, manyspired city that was looming out of the mist a mile or so away from her. Beyond it was a faint glimmer, as of the sea unseen in the overshadowing light. Nita thought of the roil and shimmer of the light on Jones Inlet, and let out a long breath of wonder. "Where is this?" she said aloud.
"The inside, honey," Nita's mother said. "The heart of things... what's at the core. Don't you ever dream about this?"
"Uh.. .yeah, sometimes. But it never looked exactly like this."
"Oh, well, this is my part of the territory. That's yours over there; of course, it'd be here, too. It's part of me, like you are." Her mother, in that beat-up denim skirt and T-shirt again, waved a hand back at the glittering towers, half veiled in radiant mist. "I know you'll live there, eventually. Have your own children there." She smiled slightly. "What is it they say? Your grandchildren are your revenge on your kids?" And Nita's mother laughed. "Well, at least you'll know what to expect from them. Partly. But this..." She turned her back on the towers, looking toward the mountains. "This is mine. When you grow up at the edge of the Continental Divide, there's always this wall towering up over you... and when you're little, you look at it and say, 'I'm going to go there someday. Right to the top of that mountain.' Or else you imagine mountains that don't have any top. The places that just go right up and up, into the center of things... forever."
"Yeah," Nita said.
They stood there a while together, looking at those mountains, and then began to walk slowly down through the flower-starred meadow below where they'd been standing. "It's not fair," Nita said softly. "How come I only get to really know you now, when I'm going to lose you?"
"I don't know if you can ever lose me, honey. I'm your mother. There's a bond neither of us can break unless we want to. And it doesn't have to hurt."
Nita wasn't sure about that as yet. But still, there was no lying here...
"So this is it?" Nita's mother said, gazing around her with a look of awe and appreciation. "What you told me about: Timeheart?"
"Uh," Nita said. "I'm not sure. I'm not sure how nonwizards see it." "After all that" Nita's mom said, "am I a non-wizard?"
Nita had no answer for her, but her neart lifted, and she felt a twinge of something that until now she had been afraid to feel: hope.
And it wasn't even hope that her mother would somehow miraculously survive. Nita would hurt for a long while every time she remembered all those dark little creatures dying, and the feeling of many of them not dying, hidden away where even the flush of power from the glede couldn't reach. But Nita had reason to believe that she and her mom would have enough time to get to know each other very well before the hardest moment—the moment of final parting—had to be faced.
And when that came...
... there would, eventually, be Timeheart, where no matter what you dreamed might await you, there was always more.
If she could just last through the testing that would follow, just keep faith long enough to find out what that more would be.
"I could definitely get used to this," her mother said.
You will, Nita thought... or heard. With the words came a pang of relief mingled with pain, the two impossible to separate. It would be a long time before Nita would get used to the pain, she knew. But the relief was there regardless, and here, in this place, there was no matching echo of grief to suggest that the relief was somehow false or illusory. Nothing that happened here could fail to be real. If she felt relief here, it was justified.
"No," Nita's mother said, "I don't think I'm going to let anyone throw me out of here."
"I don't think they can," Nita said, the tears coming to her eyes, even here. She knew, as all wizards know if they know nothing else, that in Timeheart everything worth having, everything that is loved, or of love, is preserved in perfection.
And everyone?...