Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition (20 page)

What made Dairine have to control herself very carefully for the next couple of minutes was Carmela’s response… because she perceived the winking, too. “You tease,” she said, and ran an affectionate hand through Filif’s needles. “Dairine, is it possible to become an item with a tree?”

“Uh,” Dairine said. Many, many possible responses went through her head. “Might be some splinter problems,” she said at last.

Carmela burst out laughing. “We’ll see. I’m just trying to resist the urge to take this kid home and decorate him. You and I,” she said to Filif, “we’re going to spend lots of time talking, because I want to know all about you.”

“That would be excellent!” Filif said. “I want to know about you, too.”

“I thought you said that people here didn’t know about wizards,” Sker’ret said to Dairine.

The teakettle boiled and started whistling: Dairine got it off the stove and poured boiling water on the tea bag in her mug. “Mostly they don’t,” she said. “Carmela’s an exception to the rule. Most rules,” she added, smirking slightly.

“I heard that, and I’m taking it as a compliment!” Carmela said.

Dairine heard footsteps on the basement stairs, and winced. The sound was too light to be her father’s tread, and he was probably at the shop already, anyway.
Let’s give Roshaun another chance,
she thought.
Maybe I just got off on the wrong foot with him yesterday.

Roshaun came into the kitchen, and at first sight of him, all of Dairine’s good intentions evaporated. He was even more splendidly dressed than he had been the day before. Today the long overjacket that he favored was in blue, and it was richly, even thickly, embroidered with jewels, in all shades of blue and green, some of them the size of marbles or quail’s eggs. Gauntlets, tunic, boots, all were in metallic blues and greens, and the fillet binding his brows was of some blue metal. The fillet—
an alloy? Or some metal we don’t know about?
—was the only part of the costume that really interested Dairine.
But no way am I going to show it!

“Good morning,” Dairine said to Roshaun.

Roshaun merely nodded at her and swept through the kitchen into the sunny dining room.
It’s hopeless,
Dairine thought.
I think
all
my feet with this guy are going to be the wrong feet. I wonder if the Powers would let me send him back and get another wizard?

Roshaun paused in the doorway, gazing in at his fellow wizards, and at Carmela. It was a second or so before Carmela turned, most casually, and looked Roshaun up and down. “A little early for such a big fashion statement,” she said, “but maybe some of us
need
to start early. And you would be?”

Roshaun straightened up even straighter and taller than he had been standing, if that was possible, and gazed at Carmela.

“That’s Roshaun,” Dairine said, doing her best to keep any kind of smile from showing.

“… ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Wellakhit,” Roshaun began, and this time went on reciting names for at least twice as long as he originally had with Dairine.

Carmela stood there watching Roshaun go through this performance with the vaguely impatient expression of someone who’s arrived at the movies on time and then has to sit through ten minutes of commercials and previews. Finally, Roshaun trailed off and stood gazing imperiously at Carmela, waiting for her response.

“He means he’s a prince,” Dairine said, not entirely kindly.
I’m sorry, Powers That Be. I haven’t had my breakfast yet; it’s the damn blood sugar again…

Carmela regarded Roshaun in the most leisurely manner possible. “No methane,” she said at last.
“Two
legs.” These she gave a last noncommittal glance, which suggested that perhaps he’d put them on backward that morning, but she wasn’t going to embarrass him by mentioning it. “Well, one out of four’s not bad,” Carmela said at last. “Let’s go for two. You wouldn’t have a battle fleet on you, would you?”

Peering out through the kitchen doorway while pretending to do something concerning toast, Dairine saw that even Roshaun was having trouble looking haughty and completely confused at the same time. “We have not yet been
formally
introduced, in that I—” Roshaun finally said, trying hard to sound chilly about it.

Dairine opened her mouth, but had no chance to say anything, for Carmela was once again looking Roshaun up and down, this time with the expression of someone who’s been asked a personal question by someone who should have been asking her “Paper or plastic?”
“Formally
introduced? I’ll let you know if and when I think we need to be,” Carmela said. She turned her back on Roshaun with a grim look and the merest twitch of a wink at Dairine. “Meanwhile,” she said to Dairine, “I need to use the bathroom. But make a note for me: When you next hear from my brother, tell him he and I are going to have a talk, because I see that he was pulling my leg, and I’m already planning numerous ways to make him pay.” She leaned over and whispered in Dairine’s ear—the “whisper” being something that could have been heard at twenty paces— “And whatever you do,
get me a date with that bush!”

Carmela then walked away toward the back of the house cloaked in a demeanor of complete unconcern, leaving Filif and Sker’ret sitting there exuding the pleasure of having met a wonderful being, while Dairine and Roshaun stared after her, both briefly mute with astonishment.

The moment didn’t last long for Roshaun. “Her brother was pulling her leg?” Roshaun said to Dairine. “Does this have some cultural significance?”

“I think it’s gonna be significant for
him
when he gets back,” Dairine said, making a mental note to be there when that happened.

“Who is she?” Roshaun said.

“She’s Carmela. Our neighbor,” Dairine said. “One of those lesser life-forms you don’t want anything to do with.”

There was a silence that lasted for several seconds, a noticeable period when dealing with Roshaun. “She’s magnificent,” he said at last.

Dairine burst out laughing. “Oh, boy,” she said, when she got enough breath back to speak, “does her brother ever need to hear that you said that!”
If he
does
ever hear about it,
she thought.
How do I make best use of a piece of information like this? The alien prince has the hots for Kit’s sister. This is too funny
—

“What did she mean,” Filif said, “she wanted to decorate me?”

Oh no,
Dairine thought, as the humor of the moment abruptly evaporated. “Some of us have a tradition here,” she said. “There’s a time of year when we bring trees into our houses”—she was
not
going to tell him that most of those trees had been severed from their roots—”and we put decorations on them. Pretty things… glass balls… lights… ”

There was a surprisingly long silence from Filif, at the end of which he said,
“I want to see!!”

“I’ll find you a picture,” Dairine said. “Shame you weren’t here at Christmas.” Then she wished she could take the line back.
To see thousands of slowly dying trees standing around in vacant lots waiting to be bought by my people and put on display until their needles drop off?! Do
not
put so much emphasis on this that he wants to come back someday and see this for himself!

“But if we, uh, if we go to the mall today,” Dairine said, desperately trying to cover by manufacturing a plan for his and everybody else’s distraction from the dangerous subject, “we can decorate you with
other
stuff.”

Carmela reappeared in the dining room as if by magic. “Someone mentioned the mall?”

“Let’s go!” Filif said. “I want to see the decorations!”

“You all need to put on your disguises first,” Dairine said, “because there will be no end of trouble if you go out the way you are. And I want to see the disguises before we go anywhere.”

“I’m sure
I
won’t need anything to pass unremarked in this culture,” Roshaun said.

Carmela started to laugh. “Oh, you are so funny!” she said, and the dry way that she said it brought Roshaun up short. “No, of
course
you don’t need to do anything! You look
just
like everyone around here! Oh, my.” She turned away, ostentatiously half covering her face with one hand and throwing a look at Dairine that Roshaun could not possibly have missed.

He didn’t miss it. “Perhaps the lady would show me the correct manner of a disguise for this world,” Roshaun said, all haughtiness again, “since we have seen so few examples of this world’s dress… ”

“Dairine,” Carmela said, “can we use the TV for a moment? I’ll show him a few things and lay a groundwork.”

“Be my guest,” Dairine said, drinking some tea. “If you think it’ll do any good… ”

She went in with her mug of tea and sat down at the table with Sker’ret and Filif as Carmela and Roshaun headed into the living room. “So how are you guys this morning?” Dairine said to them.

“Everything’s well,” Sker’ret said. “Though I’m getting hungry again… ”

“We’ll find you something,” Dairine said.

“And how about you?” Filif said. “Are
you
well?”

From the living room, Dairine heard Carmela’s muted chuckle. A moment later, Roshaun said, “Under
no
circumstances will I be seen in anything like
that
—”

Dairine grinned. “Getting better every minute,” she said, and drank her tea.

The mall was still fairly quiet when they got there later that morning. It was Sunday morning, and a lot of the most serious shoppers wouldn’t be in for some hours yet.

There were, however, going to be a lot of kids there who were also on spring break, getting an early start on their malling. It was meeting these that Dairine was secretly most dreading, but she refused to show any sign of her concern to her fellow wizards.

She had been nervous enough, earlier, over the prospect of simply getting them all out of the driveway. But in retrospect, that had worked well enough. Everyone’s disguises looked good, and stayed in place, repaying the hour or two of work that Dairine and Carmela had spent on their charges before letting them out.

Filif had needed the most coaching. His disguise was no shape-change, but a visual illusion keyed to a wizardry he built, with some assistance from Dairine, to mimic human limb action, facial affect, and clothing. The illusion would not withstand close examination, such as being touched. But Dairine had no plans to let anyone near enough to touch him, and told him so.

“Your people must be very easily shocked,” Filif said, in a pitying tone of voice. It sounded funny coming from the big, stocky, dark-haired guy that he’d become, partly with Carmela’s coaching.

“They are,” Dairine said, “and sometimes so am I. I
certainly
will be if your disguise falls off in the middle of the street because somebody bumps up against you. So keep your distance from people, and we’ll all be fine.”

“What about me?” Sker’ret said. “Do I look all right?”

“You look excellent,” Dairine said, sizing him up. Carmela had talked him more or less into the shape of a slim, redheaded surfer guy. “In fact, I’m not sure you need any advice from me. You may want to go talk to Carmela about that sweatshirt, though.” The sweatshirt was illusionary and looked perfectly orthodox, except for the words “Will Do Magic for Food,” which he had added to the front of the illusion, in the Speech.

And then there had been Roshaun. Carmela had worked him over most effectively, and without completely losing her temper—a feat Dairine had to admire. Roshaun was “wearing,” over some of his real clothes, a long, floppy shirt and large trousers that made him look rather like an unusually elegant rapper. “You’ve got the height to carry them,” Carmela had said, just a little admiring. “Not many people do.” And Roshaun had fallen for the line. Carmela had also made him reduce his epic ponytail to a more manageable length, at least in illusion. The two long front locks in front of his ears had given Carmela the most trouble; Roshaun adamantly refused to put them behind his ears, where they would show less. “They’re supposed to show!” he said.

“What they’re going to show here,” Carmela said “is that you look a little
too
different. All you need is for some wise guy to come along and pull one of those—”

Roshaun looked at her, indignant. “Who would dare?!”

“
I
would,” Carmela said, suiting the gesture to the concept. Roshaun winced. “And if it’s something I’d do, it’s something that will probably occur to other people. This is not your palace you’re going into, Your Royal Highness. This is a
mall
. You are entering a world where anything can happen—mostly having to do with people getting real judgmental about your looks.” She raised her eyebrows. “Fortunately, your looks are generally okay. But if I were you, I wouldn’t push your luck with the hair.”

“As you say,” Roshaun had muttered. But it was plain he was agreeing with ill grace, if any at all.

At the time, Carmela had thrown Dairine a look that said,
This boy is going to take some kicking into shape.
Dairine had kept her face very straight. But Carmela had caught her answering flicker of eyes, and knew that Dairine was in complete agreement.

With everyone’s disguises well in place, they had set out for the mall. Originally, Dairine’s plan had been to do a private-gating transit there, a variant of Kit’s and Nita’s “beam-me-up-Scotty” spell. She had long had several sets of prelocated coordinates laid in for each of the major malls nearby. But Dairine was astounded to come up against serious resistance to this concept from all her guests—even Roshaun, who she would’ve thought would resist so plebeian an option as walking on general principles.

“One cannot truly experience a place by doing fast transits to and from locations,” Roshaun said, looking down his nose at Dairine. “Having come all this way, I may as well see what this world looks like from the ground up.”