A Wizard Abroad

2. Cill Cumhaid / Kilquade

Nita sat back and blinked a little. Her aunt stirred her tea and said, "Do ghosts bother you?" "Not particularly," Nita said, wondering just how to deal with this line of enquiry. Wizards knew that very few ghosts had anything to do with people's souls hanging around somewhere. Most apparitions, especially ones that repeated, tended to be caused by a kind of 'tape recording' that violent emotion could make on matter under certain circumstances, impressing its energy into the molecular structure of physical things. Over long periods of time the 'recording' would fade away, but in the meantime it would replay every now and then, for good reasons or no reason, and upset the people who happened to see it. And if they happened to believe that such a thingwas caused by human souls, the effects would get steadily worse, fed by the emotions of the living.

Nita knew all this, certainly. But how much of it could she safely tell her aunt? And how to get it across without sounding like she knew more than a fourteen-year-old should?

"Good," her aunt was saying. She drank her tea and looked at Nita across the table with those cool blue-grey eyes. "Did you hear the church bells, earlier?"

"Uh, no. I must have been asleep."

"We have a little church down the road," Aunt Annie said. "About three hundred years ago, after the English killed their King — Charles the First, it was — his "replacement", an English general named Oliver Cromwell, came through here." Her aunt took another long drink of tea. "He and his army went up and down this country throwing out the Irish landowners and installing English ones in their places. He sacked cities and burned houses and churches — ours was one — and got himself quite a name for unnecessary cruelty." Aunt Annie looked out the kitchen window, into the near- dark, watching the apple trees out the back move slightly in the wind. "I think what you heard was, well, a reminder of some soldiers of his, who were camped here on guard late at night. You can hear the horses, and you can hear the soldiers talking, though you usually can't make out what they're saying."

"As if they were in the next room," Nita said.

"That's right. The memory just reasserts itself every now and then; other people have heard it happening. It's usually pretty low-key." She looked at Nita keenly.

Nita shrugged in agreement. "They didn't bother me. They didn't seem particularly, well, "ghostly". No going "Ooooooo" or trying to scare anyone." "That's right," her aunt said, sounding relieved. "Are you hungry?"

"I could eat a cow," Nita said, suspecting that in this household it would be wiser not to offer to eat horses.

"I've got some beefburgers," her aunt said, getting up, "and some chicken." Nita got up to help, and to poke around the kitchen a little. All the appliances were about half the size she was used to. She wondered whether this was her aunt's preference, or whether most of the cookers and refrigerators sold here were like that, for on the drive in she had kept getting a feeling that everything was a bit smaller than usual, had been scaled down somewhat. The rooms in her aunt's house were smaller than she was used to, as well, reinforcing the impression. "So have you got other ghosts," Nita said, "or are those all?"

"Nope, that's it." Her aunt chuckled a bit and pulled out a frying pan. "You want more, though, you won't have far to go. This country is thick with them. Old memories. Everything here has a long memory. longer than it should have, maybe." She sighed and went rooting in a drawer for a few moments. "There's a lot of history in Ireland," Aunt Annie said. "A lot of bad experiences and bad feelings. It's a problem sometimes." She came up with a spatula. "Do you want onions?" "Yes, please," Nita said. Her aunt came up with a knife and handed it to Nita, then found an onion in a bin by the door and put it on the worktop. "Hope you don't mind crying a little," she said. "No problem."

They puttered about the kitchen together, talking about this and that: family gossip, mostly. Aunt Annie was Nita's father's eldest sister, married once about twenty-five years ago, and divorced about five years later. Her ex-husband was typically referred to in Nita's family as 'that waste of time', but no-one at home had ever been too forthcoming about just why he was a waste, and Nita had decided it was none of her business. Aunt Annie had three kids, two sons and a daughter, all grown up now and moved out: two of them lived in the States, one in Ireland. Nita had met her two male cousins a couple of years ago, when she was very young, and only dimly remembered Todd and Alec as big, dark-haired, booming shapes that gave her endless piggyback rides. At any rate, her aunt had moved with her kids to Ireland after the divorce, and had busied herself with becoming a successful farmer and stable-manager. Now she had other people to manage her stables for her: she saw to the finances of the farm, kept an eye on the function of the riding school that also was based on her land, and otherwise lived the life of a moderately well-to-do countrywoman.

They fried up beefburgers and onions. There were no rolls: her aunt took down a loaf of bread and cut thickish slices from it for both of them. "Didn't you have any dinner?" Nita said. "It's way past time."

"We don't have set mealtimes," Aunt Annie said. 'My staff come in and get a snack when they can, and I tend to eat when I'm hungry. I was busy with the accounts for most of this evening — didn't notice I was hungry until just now. Unlike some," she said, looking ruefully down at the floor around the cooker, which was suddenly littered with cats of various colours, "who are hungry whether they've just eaten or not."

Nita laughed and bent down to scratch the cats: the black-and-white cat again, and a marmalade- coloured cat with golden eyes, and a tiny delicate white-bibbed tabby, and another black-and-white cat of great dignity, who sat watching the others, and Nita and her aunt, unblinking. "Bear," Aunt Annie said, "and Chessie, and Big Paws. All of you, out of here: you've had your dinners! Now where's the mustard got to?"

She turned away to find it. Under her breath, Nita said hurriedly in the wizards' Speech,"You all get out of here and I'll see if I can liberate something for you later… "

They sat looking thoughtful — since almost everything that thinks can recognize and understand the Speech — then one by one got up and strolled off. Big Paws went last, looking thoughtfully at Nita as he did so. Her aunt had found the mustard, and noticed the exodus. "Huh," she said. "I guess they don't like the smell of the onions."

"It's pretty strong," Nita said, and started spreading mustard on bread.

When everything was ready, they sat down and ate. 'I hope you don't mind being a little on your own tomorrow," Aunt Annie said. "You hit us at kind of a busy time. There's going to be a hunt here in a few days, and we have to start getting ready for it." "You mean like a fox hunt?" Nita said.

"That's right. Some of the local farmers have been complaining about their chicken flocks being raided. Anyway, some of our horses are involved, so we have to have the vet in to certify them fit, and then the farrier is coming in tomorrow afternoon to do some re-shoeing. It's going to be pretty hectic. If you want to be around here, that's fine: or if you think you'll be bored, you might want to go down to Greystones — it's a pretty easy bike ride from here. Or take the bus over to Bray and look around."

"OK," Nita said. I'll see how I feel. I'm still pretty tired."

"Traveling eastbound takes it out of you," Aunt Annie said. "It won't be so bad going back." You said it, Nita thought.And the sooner the better. But she smiled anyway, and said, "I hope not." They finished eating, and cleared the table. "If you want to watch TV late, you're going to be out of luck," her aunt said. "All but one of the TV stations shut down around midnight, and the one that's left mostly just shows old films. But if you feel inclined, go ahead."

"Uh, thanks. I thought I might read for a while. After that I may just go to sleep again. I'm still rather tired."

'That's fine. You make yourself completely at home." Her aunt looked at Nita with an expression that had some of Big Paws' look about it. "It must have been a bit of a wrench, just being shipped off like that."

What did they tell you, I wonder? Nita thought. "It was," she said after a moment. "But I'll cope." Her aunt smiled. 'Typical of our side of the family," she said. "There's a long history of that. Well, if you get hungry or something later, just come on in and take what you need. Use the back door, though: I'm going to lock the front now, and turn in. I'll leave a light on for you in here. You know where everything is, the bathroom and so forth?" "Yeah, Aunt Annie. Thanks."

Her aunt headed off. Nita looked around the kitchen to see if there was anything else that needed cleaning up — her mother had drummed into her that she should make sure she returned hospitality by helping out in the kitchen: her aunt hated washing-up more than anything else, her mother had said. But there was nothing left to do.

Except something that needed a wizard to do it, and Nita set about that straightaway. She headed out the back door, out through a little archway into the concrete yard again. The only light was the one she had left on in the caravan, and it was dim. She paused outside the door. Even now, past midnight, the sky wasn't completely black. Nevertheless, it was blanketed with stars, much brighter than she was used to seeing them through the light pollution of the New York suburbs. And there was no sound here but the faintest breath of wind. Even the dual carriageway a mile away made no noise at all. It was as if everyone in this part of the country had gone to bed all at once. There was only one light visible, about a mile away across the fields: someone's house light. For someone who had always lived in places where the street had streetlights on all night, this utter darkness was a shock.

But the stars, she thought. The Milky Way was clearly visible, even bright. At home it was almost impossible to see it at all.At least there's been one thing worth seeing here. She shivered hard then, and ducked back into the caravan to get her jacket, and her manual. Once she had them she headed out across the concrete yard again, making for the log fence that separated the land immediately around Aunt Annie's house from the fields beyond it. The closest field was planted with something called oilseed rape — tall green plants with flowers at the top so extremely yellow that they had made Nita's eyes hurt to look at them in the sunshine that morning when she had arrived. The field beyond that was clean pasture, grassland being left fallow for this year. That was what Nita wanted, for there was a thick strip of woodland at the far side of it. She made her way through the oilseed rape, enjoying the fragrance of it, and on to the next fence. This was barbed wire: she climbed one of the fenceposts carefully, so as not to tear anything. Cautiously, for the ground over here wasn't as even as it had been in the rape field, Nita made her way into the centre of the field, and opened her manual.

She said the two words that would make the pages generate enough light to read by, though not enough to mess up her night vision. Normally she wouldn't have needed the manual for this spell, which was more a matter of simple conversation than anything else; but she didn't know the name she needed to call, and had to look it up. The manual's index was straightforward as usual. "Canidae," she said under her breath. "Here we go."

The spell was a calling, but the kind that was a request, not a demand. She hoped there would be someone to respond. She recited the standard setup, the request for the Universe to hear. Then, "Ai mathrara," she said in the Speech, "if any hear, let them speak to me; for there's need." And then she put the book down and sat there in the quiet, and waited.

It seemed to take a long time before she heard the soft sound of something rustling in the grass, about a hundred meters away. Normally she would never have heard it, except that her ears were sharpened by sitting in this total silence. The noise stopped. "Mathrara," she said then, very quietly, "if that's you, then I'm here." Another rustling, another silence.

"You speak it with an accent," said a voice in a series of short, soft barks, "but well enough. Let me see you."

Nita saw the long, low, sharp-nose shape come towards her. The dog-fox had a tail bigger and bushier and longer than she would have thought possible. Only the faintest firefly gleam from the manual's pages glinted in his eyes and silvered his fur, giving him enough of an outline for her to see him.

"So," the fox said.

"What accent?" Nita said, curious. As far as she knew, her accent in the Speech was quite good. "We wouldn't say"mathrara" here."Madreen rua", that would be it." And Nita chuckled, for that meant 'the little red dog' in the Speech.

"Local customs rule," Nita said, smiling. "As usual. I have a warning for you, madreen rua. There's a hunt coming through here in a few days."

The fox yipped quietly in surprise. "They are early, then."

"That's as may be," Nita said. "But if I were you, I'd spread the word to keep your people well out of this area, and probably for about five miles around on all sides. Maybe more. And you might lay off the chickens a little."

The fox laughed silently, a panting sound. "They've poisoned almost all the rats: what's a body to eat? But for the moment. as you say. I am warned, wizard. Your errand's done." It looked at her with a thoughtful look. "So then," it said. "Go well, wizard." And it whisked around and went bounding off through the pasture-grass without another word.

Nita shut her manual and sat there in the quiet for a while more, getting her breath back. Talking to animals differed in intensity the more clever the animal was, and the more or less used it was to human beings. Pets like cats and dogs tended to have more fully humanized personalities, and could easily be got to understand you; but they also tended to be short-spoken — possibly, Nita thought, because being domesticated and more or less confined to a daily routine, they had less to talk about. Wilder animals had more to say, but it was often more difficult to understand them, the message being coloured with hostility or fear, or plain old bewilderment. The fox lived on the fringes of human life, knew human ways, but was wary, and so there was a cool tinge, a remoteness, about the way it came across.

At any rate, she had fulfilled her own responsibilities for the evening. A wizard had a duty to prevent unnecessary pain, and fox-hunting did not strike Nita as particularly necessary, no matter what farmers might say about the need to exterminate 'vermin'. If a fox was stealing someone's chickens, let them shoot it cleanly, rather than chasing it in terror across half the countryside and getting dogs to rip it to shreds. Meanwhile, there were other concerns. Kit? she said in her head. Yeah!

She paused a moment. What's that noise? I'm chewing, Kit said.

Oh no, you're eating dinner!

It's not such a fascinating experience that I can't spare a few minutes to talk to you, he said. Nita got a distinct impression of slightly lumpy mashed potatoes, and restrained herself from swallowing. What's happening? Kit said.

This, she said, and gave him a series of pictures of the day as quickly as she could, ending with the fox. Great, huh?

Bored with me already, Kit said. I knew it.

Kit.

…I She would have punched him hard, had he been in range. As it was, he flinched a little from what he felt her fist and arm wanting to do.Look, she said,I'm worn out. I'll talk to you more in the morning.

He started to nod and stopped himself. She had to laugh a little.Have a good sleep, Kit said. Will do.

She let the contact ebb away, then got up and started carefully walking back the way she had come. Behind her, from the woodland, a fox was barking; perhaps a mile away, another answered it. Nita smiled to herself and headed for the caravan.

As she had thought, she wasn't able to stay up very late that night. She tried to watch some television, and as her aunt had warned her, only one channel of the six available was working, showing some old film that didn't interest her. So she turned it off and went back to the caravan again to read. Not before, on the sly, opening a small can of cat food and parceling it out to the cats. They accepted this with great pleasure, purring and rubbing and making their approval known: but none of them spoke to her.

She went back to bed and slept some more. The dreams were not entirely pleasant. In one of them, she thought she felt the earth move, but it was probably just the wind shaking the caravan. When she woke up, everything was quite still. It was early morning — how early she couldn't tell any more without her watch: the different sunrise time here had her thoroughly confused. She found her watch and saw to her surprise that, even though the sun was well up the sky, it was only seven o'clock in the morning.

She got up and dressed in yesterday's clothes, slipped into the house, had a quick shower, dressed again in clean clothes this time, and went to see what there was for breakfast. There were already several people in the kitchen, two of whom Nita had been introduced to earlier. One was Joe, the stable manager, a tall lean young man with a grin so wide that Nita thought his face was in danger of cracking. Another was Derval, the head riding instructor, a tall curly-haired woman, eternally smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. She had a drawly accent that made her sound almost American. "There y'are then," Derval said. "You want some tea?"

Nita was beginning to think that every conversation in Ireland began this way. "Yes, please," she said, and rooted around in the big ceramic bread crock for the loaf. "Where's Aunt Annie?" "Down at the riding school, waiting for the farrier. She said to tell you to come on down if you want to."

"OK," Nita said, and cut herself a slice of bread and put it in the toaster. The butter was already out on the worktop, as were a basket of eggs from the farm's hens, various packages of bacon and a gruesome-looking sausage called 'black pudding', more toast, some of it with bites out of it, boxes of cereal, and spilled sugar. Breakfast was a hurried business in this house, from the look of things. Nita sat down with her tea and toast and pulled over the local weekly paper,The Bray People. Its front-page story was about someone's car catching on fire in the main street of Wicklow town, and Nita sat there paging through it in total wonder that any place in the world should be so quiet and uneventful that a story likethat would make the front page. Derval looked over her shoulder and pointed with one finger at an advertisement in the classifieds that said BOGS FOR SALE. Nita burst out laughing.

"If you're going to be around the stable block," Derval said to her, going to get another piece of bread out of the toaster, "just one thing. Watch out for the horse in number five. He's got a bad habit of biting."

"Uh, yeah," Nita said. She had been wondering when she was going to have to mention this. "I'm a little scared of horses. I hadn't been planning to get too close to them." "Scared of horses!" Joe said. "We'll fix that."

"Uh, maybe tomorrow," Nita said. She had been put up on a horse once, several years ago on holiday, and had immediately fallen off it. This had coloured her opinions about horses ever since. Joe and Derval finished their breakfasts and headed out, leaving Nita surrounded by cats eager to shake her down for another free handout. "No way, you guys!" she said. "Once was a special occasion. You want more, you'd better talk to your boss."

They looked at her in thinly disguised disgust and stalked off. Nita finished her tea and toast, washed her cup and plate, and then wandered out into the concrete yard again. There was a pathway past the back of her caravan into the farm area proper, and the road that wound past the front of the house curved around to meet it. Here there was another large concreted area with two or three large brown, metal-sided, barnlike buildings arranged in a loose triangle around it. The field on the right-hand side as she faced it was full of horse-jumping paraphernalia, jumps and stiles; all around the edge of it ran a big track covered with wood shavings and chips for the horses to run on. Further down and on her right was the stabling barn, and beyond it what Derval had referred to as 'the riding school', a big covered building that had nothing in it except a floor thickly covered with the same chips as on the track outside. This was where the riders practiced when the weather was bad.

Nita took a little while to look around in there, found nothing of interest, and made her way back to the stables. There were about fifteen box stalls with various horses looking out over the doors, or eating their breakfasts, or standing there with vaguely bored expressions. She looked particularly at the horse in number five, who was a big handsome black horse. But he had a bad look in his eye, and when (since there was no human around to hear) she greeted him in the Speech, he eyed her coldly, laid his ears back and snorted, "Clear off, little girl, or I'll have your arm off." Nita shrugged and moved on. Other horses were more forthcoming. When she spoke to them in the Speech, they answered, asking her for a sugar cube, or asking if she would please take them out. A few just tossed their heads, blinked lazily, and went back to their eating.

At the end of the stable barn was an extremely large pile of hay, kept under cover there so that the rain couldn't get at it, and the horses could be given it easily. Nita was standing for a moment looking at it, when something small and black, a rock she thought, fell down from the top of it. It tumbled down the hay, and even though Nita sidestepped, the falling black thing fell crookedly, and landed on top of one of her trainers.

She looked down in shock. It was a kitten, its body no bigger than one of her hands. It more or less staggered to its feet, looked up at her, and meowed, saying, "Sorry!" "Don't mention it," Nita said.

The kitten, which was already in the act of scampering away after a windblown straw, stopped so suddenly that it fell over forwards. Nita restrained herself mightily from laughing. It righted itself, washed furiously for a second, then looked at her. "Another one," it said. "The winddoes blow, doesn't it." "Another what?" "Another wizard. Are you deaf?"

"Uh, no," Nita said. "Sorry, I'm new here. Who are you, then?"

"I am Tualha Slaith, a princess of the People," she said, rattling it all off in a hurry, "a bard and a scholar. And who are you?" "I'm Nita Callahan."

"Nita?" said the kitten. "What kind of name is that?"

Nita had to stop for a moment. She was amazed to be getting this much conversation out of a domestic cat, let alone a kitten that barely looked old enough to be weaned yet. "I think it was Spanish, originally," she said after a second or so. "Juanita is the long form."

"Aha, a Spaniard!" the kitten said, her eyes wide. "There's wine from the royal Pope, Upon the ocean green: And Spanish ale shall give you hope, My dark Rosaleen!"

"You've lost me," said Nita. "Anyway, I'm not a big ale fan."

The kitten looked at Nita as if she was a very dun bulb indeed. "It's going to get really crowded in here shortly," the kitten said. "Let's go out." She scooted out the barn door, and Nita followed her, feeling rather bemused: out the back, into the area between the riding school and the stable block. The path led up towards the field where the jumping equipment was. There was no-one out there at the moment.

The kitten stopped several times in her run to crouch down, her little behind waggling, and pounce on a bug, or leaf, or stalk of grass, or blown bit of hay; and she always missed. Nita was having trouble controlling her reaction to this, but if there was one thing a wizard had practice in being, it was polite: so she managed. A little dusty whirlwind passed them by as they went between the riding school and the stable block, and Tualha paused to let it go by. "Good day," she said. "You usually talk to wind?" Nita said, amused.

Tualha eyed her. "That's how the People go by," she said "the People of the Air. Youare new here." She scuttled on.

They came to the fence. Tualha made a mighty leap halfway up on to the fencepost, hauled herself up claw over claw, and sat at the top, where she washed briefly.

Nita sat down on the fence next to her. "Aren't you a little young to be a bard?" she said. The kitten looked Nita up and down. "Aren't you a little young to be a wizard?" 'Well, no, I'm fourteen."

"And that's what percentage of your lifespan?" "Uh. ." Nita had to stop and figure it out.

"You can't even tell me right away? Poor sort ofban-draioa you'd make over here. Maths are important."

Nita flushed briefly. Whatever aban-draioa might be, maths had never been one of her favorite things. "And you of Spanish blood," Tualha said, "but you don't know that song, about how the Spanish came to Ireland first? Whatdo you know?"

"Not much sometimes," Nita said, suspecting that here, at least, that was probably going to be true. "I know about the Spanish Armada, a little."Very little, she added to herself. History had never been a favorite with her either, but she was beginning to suspect that that was going to have to change.

"That was only the fifteenth invasion," Tualha said. "The real causes of things go back much further. The wind moves, and things move in it. Now, in the beginning. ." "Do we have to go back that far?" Nita said dryly.

The kitten glared at her. "Don't interrupt. How do you expect to become wise?" "How did you do it?"

Tualha shrugged. "I've been in the hills. But also, I had to be a bard: I was found in a bag. It's traditional."

Nita remembered her aunt saying something the previous night about one of the farm cats having been found in a sack by the roadside, abandoned and starving. The starving part, at least, had been dealt with: Tualha was as round as a little ball. "Anyway," Tualha said, glaring at Nita again, "it's all in the Book of Conquests, and the Book of Leinster, and the Yellow Book of Lecan." "I doubt I could just go get those out of the library where I come from," Nita said,"so perhaps you'll enlighten me." She grinned.

"It's all in the wizards' Mastery anyway," Tualha said, "if you'd bothered to look. But grow wise by me. In the beginning there was no-one in this island; it was bleak and bare, nor was it an island at all. The Flood rose and covered it, and fell away again. Then two hundred and sixty-four years later came twenty-four men and twenty-four women: those were Partholon and his people. At that time in Ireland, there was only one treeless and grassless plain, three lakes and nine rivers; so they built some more."

"Built. ."?" Nita said. "When was this?"

"Four hundred thousand years ago. Didn't I mention? Now do stop interrupting. They built mountains and carved valleys, and they fought the Fomor. The monster people," Tualha said in obvious annoyance at Nita's blank look;"the ones who were here before. The Fomori made a plague, the sickness that makes those who catch it hate and fight without thought; and the plague killed Partholon's people. So the Island that was not an island was empty. Then after another three thousand years, the people of Nemed came. They settled there and dug rivers and planted forests; and they met the Fomor and caught their plague — fought with them, and lost, and in the great strife of the battle the land was broken away from the greater land, and drowned in ice, and then water. When the ice melted and the water drew back, another people came after: the Fir Bolg. They brought new beasts and birds into the land, and there was song in the air and life in the waters." "When did the cats get here?" Nita said.

"Later. Shush! The Fomor came to them too, though, with gifts and fair words, and married with them, and darkened their minds; and they caught the battle-sickness from the Fomor, and most died of it as all the others had: and the ones that were left had the bad blood of the Fomori in them, and became half-monstrous too.. .Are you getting all this?" Tualha said. "I think so." Nita resolved to have a look at her manual later, though, if as Tualha said all this information was in there. It might have been in a form that made sense to a cat at this point, but Nita was a little uncertain about it all, particularly about some of the dates.

"Well. After this the One grew angry that Its fair land was being ruined, and sent another people to live here. That was the Tuatha de Danaan, the Children and People of the Goddess Danu. They tried to parley with the Fir Bolg, but the Fir Bolg were sick with the battle-sickness of their Fomor blood, and would make no parley. So there was a great fight at the Plain of the Towers, Moytura. The battle came out a draw, and both sides drew apart and waited for a sign. And the sign came, sent by the One: the young hero-god, Lugh the Allcrafted. He told the Tuatha to bring the four treasures of the people of Dana, the Cup and Stone and Sword and Spear they had brought with them when they first came there from the Four Oldest Cities. Seven years he reforged those treasures with the power that was in him. Then the Children of Danu went forth to battle once more at Moytura. Lugh went forward with the Spear called Luin, and with it destroyed Balor of the Deadly Eye, and the Fomori."

Tualha stopped, panting a little. Nita made a list in her head. 'That's, let's see," she said,"six invasions. If you count the Tuatha." "It'sall invasions," said Tualha, "from the land's point of view."

Nita thought about that for a moment. "You may have something there. So then who threw the Tuatha out?"

Tualha laughed at her. "Sure, you're joking me," she said. "They're still here." "What?" Nita said.

A leaf went by Tualha on the breeze. She jumped at it, missed spectacularly, and came down on the ground so hard that Nita could hear the breath go out of her in a squeak. Nita couldn't help it any more: she burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, I really am," she said, "but I think you need some practice."

Tualha looked at her scathingly. "When you're a cat-bard," she said, "you get to choose. You get to be fast, or you get to be clever. And no offence, but I prefer clever. Not sure what you prefer, Shonaiula ni Cealodhain," she muttered, and scuttered off.

Nita chuckled a little, then got up and made her way back the way Tualha had gone, through the area between the riding school and the stables. As she went she noticed a sort of burning smell, and put her head quickly into the stable-block to make sure that something flammable hadn't fallen into the hay. She couldn't see anything but one of the grooms leading a chestnut horse out. In the concreted yard, she found the source of the burning. There was a small pickup truck out there, and a square steel box about half a meter square had been unloaded from it.It's a forge, Nita thought, as the little woman standing by it pulled at a cord hanging out of one side, and pulled at it again, and again, like someone trying to start a lawnmower.

The comparison was apt, since a moment later a compressor stuttered and then roared to life. That pushes air into it, Nita thought, and then.. The woman standing by it went around to one side of the portable forge and applied a blowtorch to an aperture there. How about that, Nita thought. Portable horseshoeing..

Nita went down to have a look as the chestnut horse was led up to the forge to be reshod. The woman standing by the forge had to be about sixty. She was of medium height, with short close- cropped white hair and little wire-rimmed glasses, wearing jeans and boots and a T-shirt. Her face was very lined and very cheerful, and her accent was lighter than a lot of them Nita had heard so far: in fact, she sounded like an American who had been here for a long time. "Ah, you again," she said to the chestnut as the groom led it up and fastened its reins to a loop on the back of the pickup truck's tailgate. "We'll do better than we did last time. Ah," the farrier said then, looking up immediately as Nita wandered over. "You'll be Miz Callahan's niece."

"That's right," Nita said, and put her hand out to shake. She was getting used to the ritual by now,

and was becoming relieved that no-one was in a position to offer her any tea.

The farrier held up her hands in apology: they were covered with honest grime. "Sorry," she said.

"I'm Biddy O'Dalaigh. How are you settling in?"

"Pretty well, thanks."

"Have you seen this done before?"

"Only on TV," Nita said. "And never out of the back of a truck."

Biddy laughed. "Makes it easier to get a day's work done," she said, rooting around in a box in the truck and coming out with a horseshoe. She looked critically from it to the horse's feet, then bent down to push it into the aperture of the furnace-box. "Used to be that all the farms had their own farriers. No-one can afford it now, though. So I go to my work, instead of people bringing it to me." Nita leaned against the truck to watch. "You must travel a lot."

Biddy nodded and walked around to the front of the horse, stroking it and whistling to it softly between her teeth. "All over the county," she said. "A lot of horse shows and such." With her back to the horse's nose, she picked up its right forefoot and curled it around and under, grasping it between her knees. With a tool like a nail-puller, she went around the horse's hoof loosening the nails and prising them up one by one, and then changed her leverage and knocked the shoe completely up and off. With another tool, a smaller one with a sharp point, Biddy began trimming down the rough edges of the hoof. 'Tell Derval," Biddy said to Aisling, the blonde groom who had been handling the chestnut,"that he won't be needing the surgical shoes any more; the hoofs cleared up."

Nita was surprised. "Surgical horseshoes?" she said.

"Oh yes," Biddy said. "Horses have problems with their feet the same as people do. Tango here has been wearing a booster until this hoof grew back straight — he hurt his foot a few months ago, and that can make the hoof go crooked. It's just an overdeveloped toenail, after all." She patted Tango as she got up. "We're all better now, though, aren't we, my lad? And you'll have a nice run tomorrow." She reached into the truck and came up with a pair of tongs. "This one's in the hunt?" Nita said.

Biddy nodded. "He belongs to Jim McAllister up on the Hill. Jim's a great one for a mad ride, though I don't think he cares about the fox at the end of it." She rooted around in the forge, stirring and rearranging the coals in it. Nita peered into the opening of it. "Lava rocks?" she said.

"Oh aye, like in the barbecues. They work as well as charcoal unless you're doing drop forging or some such."

She turned her attention back to the hoof, scraping its edges a bit more. Then Biddy picked up the tongs again. "Here we go, now," she said, and took hold of the hoof again. With her free hand she plucked the horseshoe out of the furnace and slapped it hard against the hoof, exactly where she wanted it. There was a billow of smoke, and a stink like burned hair or nails. Nita waved the smoke away. "Foul, isn't it," Biddy said, completely untroubled. After dunking the shoe into a bucket of cold water, she dropped the tongs, then took a hammer out of another belt loop, reached into a pocket for nails, and began fitting the shoe, tapping the nails in with great skill, each nail halfway in with one tap, all the way in with the next.

Nita watched Biddy do Tango's other three shoes. Then another horse was led out, and Nita turned away: this kind of thing was interesting enough, once.Maybe I'll go down to Greystones, she thought. Aunt Annie had told her that the bike was out in the shed behind the riding school, if she wanted to use it and no-one else had it. Ormaybe I won't. It was strange, having nowhere familiar to go to, and no-one familiar to go with. Being at loose ends was not a sensation she was very used to: but she didn't feel quite bold enough at the moment to just go charging off into a strange town. I wouldn't mind if Kit were here, though…

Nita wandered back the way she had come, back to the field where the jumping equipment lay around. She climbed over the fence and walked out into the field to look at it all; the odd barber- striped poles, the jumps and steps and stiles, some painted with brand names, or names of local shops.

The wind began to rise. From this field, which stood at the top of a gentle rise, you could see the ocean. Nita stood there and gazed at it for a while. The brightness it had worn this morning, under full sunlight, was gone. Now, with the sun behind a cloud, it was just a flat silvery expanse, dull and pewter-coloured. Nita smelled smoke again, and idly half-turned to look over her shoulder, towards the farrier's furnace.

And was rather shocked not to see it there at all. or anything else. The farm was gone.

The contour of the land was still there — the way it trended gently downhill past the farm buildings, and then up again toward the dual carriageway and the hills on its far side. But there were no buildings, no houses that she could see. The road was gone. Or not gone: reduced to a rutted dirt track. And the smoke. .

She looked around her in great confusion. There was a pillar of black smoke rising up off to one side, blown westward by the rising wind off the sea. Very faintly in this silence she could hear cries, shouts. Something white over there was burning. It was the little white church down the road, St Patrick's of Kilquade, with its one bell. She stood there in astonishment, hearing the cries on the wind, and then a terrible metallic note, made faint by the distance: the one bell blowing in the wind, then shattering with heat and the fall of the tower that housed it. A silence followed the noise. then faint laughter, and the sound of glass exploding outwards in the force of the fire. And a voice spoke, down by her feet. "Yes, they have been restless of late, those ghosts," said Tualha, looking where Nita looked, at the smoke. "I thought I might find you here. It's as I said, Shonaiula ni Cealodhain. The wind blows, and things get blown along in it. Bards and wizards alike. Why would you be here, otherwise? But better to be the wind than the straw, when the Carrion-Crow is on the wing. It always takes draoiceacht to set such situations to rights." Nita gulped and tried to get hold of herself. This was a wizardry, but not one of a kind she had ever experienced. Worldgating, travel between planes, she knew. But those required extensive and specific spelling. Nothing of the sort had happened here. She had simply turned around. and been here. "Where are we?" she said softly. "How did we get here?"

"You went cliathanach," Tualha said. "Sideways, as I did. True, it's not usually so easy. But that's an indication that things are in the wind indeed." "Sideways," Nita breathed. "Into the past. ."

"Or the future," Tualha said, "or the never-was. All those are here. You know that." "Of course I know it," Nita said, a bit irritable with the shock of everything. It was part of a wizard's most basic knowledge that the physical world coexisted with hundreds of thousands of others, both like it and very unlike. No amount of merely physical travel would get you into any of them. The right wizardry, though, and you had to move no more than a step. "It shouldn't be anythinglike this easy, though," she said.

Tualha looked up at her with wide, bland eyes. "It is easier here," she said. "It always has been. But you're right that it shouldn't bethis easy. There's danger in it, both for the "daylight" world and the others."

Nita looked at the smoke, shaking her head. "What was it you said.? The wind blows, and things get blown along with it?"

Tualha said nothing. Nita stood there and thought how casually she had said to her mother, I go on call in Ireland, I go on call, and that's it. It was not her mother's idea that she come here, after all. One of the Powers that Be had sent her here to do a job. She knew that when she got back to the farmhouse — if she got back to the farmhouse and opened her manual, she would find she was on active status again. And here she was, without her partner, without her usual Senior Wizards' support for their authority didn't run here: Europe had its own Senior structures. Alone, and with a problem that she didn't understand. .She was going to have to catch up on her reading. Tualha crouched and leaped at a bit of ash that the wind sailed past her. She missed it. Nita sighed. "How do we get back?" she said.

"You haven't done this before?" Tualha said. "Where were you looking when it happened?" "At the ocean." "Look back, then."

Nita turned her back on the smoke and the cries and the brittle music of breaking glass, and looked out to the flat grey sea, willing things to be as they had been before.

"There you are, then," Tualha said. Nita turned again. There was the farm, the riding school, the farmhouse: and the field, full of its prosaic jumping equipment, all decals and slightly peeling paint. "But indeed," Tualha said, "it's as I told you. Something must change. Get about it, before it gets about us."