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

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.”

    “Okay,” Nita said. “I’ll see how I feel... I’m still pretty tired.”

    “Traveling eastbound really 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 up, and cleared the table. “If you want to watch much TV late, you’ll probably want to do it in the house,” her aunt said. “We’ve got satellite in here, and there are hundreds of channels. But the little TV in the caravan only gets the local ground channels. Or most of them, anyway: the Irish-language one’s weak here, but the other three or four are okay.”

    “Uh, thanks. I thought I might read for a while. After that I may just go to sleep again... I’m still kind of tired.”

    “That’s fine. You make yourself completely at home.” Her aunt looked at Nita with an expression as thoughtful, in its way, as the cats’. “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. “We’re Callahans,” she said. “It’s what we’ve always done, for a long time now.” She smiled. “Anyway, if you get hungry or something later, just come 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 doing dishes above almost 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 straight away.

    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 trailer, and it was dim. She paused outside the door and looked up. 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 main road a mile away made no noise at all. It was as if everyone in this part of the country had gone to bed and turned out the lights all at once. There was only one light visible, about a mile away across the fields: someone’s house light. For someone who’d always lived in places where the street had streetlights on all night, this utter darkness was a shock.

    But the stars…!  Nita 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 trailer to get her jacket and her manual.

    Once she had them Nita 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 the bright yellow oilseed rape they’d seen on the way in—tall green plants with flowers at the top so extremely yellow that they’d made Nita’s eyes hurt to look at them in the sunshine. 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