A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online Page A

onions?”

    “Sure,” 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 counter. “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 now lived in Ireland, one in the States. Nita had met her two male cousins some years back, 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.

    The two of them fried up some onions and then grilled hamburgers in the pan. There were no buns: Nita’s aunt took down a loaf of bread and cut thickish slices from it for both of them. “Didn’t you have supper?” Nita said. “It’s way past time.”

    “We don’t really 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 stove, which was suddenly littered with cats of various colors, “who are hungry whether they’ve just eaten or not.”

    Nita laughed and bent down to scratch the cats: the black and white one, again—”Bronski”—as well as a marmalade-colored 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 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. Her aunt found the mustard, and noticed the exodus. “Huh,” she said. “Guess they don’t like the smell of the onions.”

    “It’s pretty strong,” Nita said, smiled slightly, and started spreading mustard on bread.

    When everything was ready, they sat down and ate. “I hope you don’t mind being mostly 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, her eyebrows going up. “Is that legal here?”

    “Yes it is, as long as the pack’s registered.” Her aunt sighed. “All it takes to get one organized is for some of the local farmers to complain about their chicken flocks being raided, and bang, the nearest hunt has an excuse. Anyway, some of our horses are involved, so we have to have the vet in to certify them fit, and then the farrier comes tomorrow afternoon to do some re-shoeing. It’s going to be pretty hectic around here. If you want to stick around, that’s fine. But if you think you’ll be