Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition (21 page)

“He’s right,” Sker’ret said. “I see enough gates as it is. Walking has got to be lots more fun.”

Dairine had sighed. “Just so you know that it’s not soft ground we’re going to be walking along,” she said, looking at Filif. “You can’t walk through it. It’s all concrete—”

“I can deal with that,” Filif said. “I haven’t had to walk through any of your floors here; I can manage.”

And as a result, they all walked down Dairine’s street toward Nassau Road, maybe half a mile away, and the bus stop there. It was beautiful, bright, sunny weather today—unusually warm for spring and much warmer than it had been in previous days—and people were out washing their cars, mowing their lawns, doing all the things that would make it easier for them to see that there were aliens walking down their street. Bizarrely, Dairine found herself praying for a return of the rain and gloom, a sudden hailstorm or blizzard—anything that would drive people in out of their front yards and reduce the chances of them seeing some part of her charges’ disguises slip.

To her eyes, they were a motley group… but then Dairine was looking for errors. People who lived on the street and chanced to be looking out their windows probably only saw five kids in a ragged group wandering down the sidewalk together. In particular, Dairine was admiring Sker’ret’s command of the human gait, which he seemed to have no trouble handling.
Probably,
Dairine thought,
it’s all of those legs. If you can manage about forty of them, you shouldn’t have that much trouble with two.

Neither thunder nor rain nor gloom of night answered Dairine’s prayer; but somehow, striding, gliding, or just approximating walking the best they could, everybody made it down to Nassau Road in one piece, and without causing peculiar looks from anybody—even the Nassau County police cruiser that went past them at one point. Dairine had sweated as the cops had gone by; she felt as if she had INSTIGATOR OF ALIEN MALL-CRAWLING FIASCO stenciled across her forehead. But the cops barely glanced at them, having better things to do with their time. Nonetheless, Dairine heaved a sigh of relief when they were gone.

On Nassau Road, they had stood for a while at the corner, waiting for the bus. One going to Roosevelt Field, one of the oldest shopping malls in the area, was scheduled to come by every half hour. “It used to be kind of a dump,” Carmela said, “but they fixed it up—it’s better now.”

“And what does one do in a mall?” Roshaun said.

“Walk around,” Dairine said. “Look at things.”

“What kind of things?” Filif said.

“Decorations,” Dairine said. “Like the kind we were talking about before. Not the seasonal stuff—but the kind of decorations you see in Roshaun’s and Sker’ret’s disguises, the kind that humans wear all the time. Personal ornamentation.”

“Clothes,” Carmela said with relish. “And there are all kinds of other places to buy things. Electronics and appliances, and there’s a food court—”

Sker’ret looked up, instantly fascinated. He was getting the hang of showing his emotions in the human expression.
Probably from watching us,
Dairine thought.
He’s a quick study. At the rate he’s going, we could pass him off as human in a few days…
“What kind of food?” said Sker’ret.

Some kinds that we should keep Filif away from,
Dairine thought, suddenly remembering the restaurant in the food court that had a huge salad bar. Fortunately, it was at about that point that Carmela began describing one of her favorite places up there—the ice cream stand. The others, even Roshaun, were enthralled by this.

“You freeze food, and then you eat it?” Roshaun said. “Don’t you break your teeth?”

“Not if you’re careful,” Carmela said. She went on talking about ice cream for some minutes, until the bus came. Dairine was fascinated by how much attention Roshaun was paying Carmela.
He’s not all
that
interested in ice cream,
Dairine thought.
Kit is just about going to bust a gut when he hears about this. I can’t wait for him to call
—
in fact, if I have a chance, I should message him myself from the mall.

The bus pulled up, and Sker’ret and Filif regarded it with wonder. Roshaun eyed it with some suspicion. “There are other people in this vehicle,” he said.

“Of course there are,” Dairine said behind him. “Wizards are supposed to support public transport. It’s not just that we’re not supposed to be wasting energy: it’s ecologically sound. Besides,
you
were the one who wanted to use ground transport and see your local environment. Well, here’s the environment for you. So get in, put the money I gave you in the box, and sit down!”

Roshaun did as he was told, though not without throwing a glance at Dairine that suggested he would discuss this impertinence with her later. She snorted and sat down herself.

The ride took about twenty minutes, which ranked among the twenty longest minutes of Dairine’s life. She had cautioned her colleagues not to speak in the bus more than they had to. Because they were using the Speech, the other bus riders would hear them exactly as if they were speaking in their own languages—and members of some of this area’s ethnicities might find that a little strange, in terms of the way the strangers looked.
Especially,
Dairine thought,
considering the
kinds
of things these guys are likely to be saying if they get started.

But, by and large, the visitors behaved themselves pretty well, at least in terms of not talking. Nothing Dairine could do or say would keep them from plastering their noses up against the window of the bus—at least in Filif’s and Sker’ret’s cases; Roshaun would not have done anything so déclassé, and sat there looking scornfully unfocused. But even he would steal the occasional glance of startled wonder out the windows, and the others gawked at everything they saw, exclaiming softly to themselves sometimes when they just couldn’t hold it in any longer. Everything was amazing to them. Storefronts, parked cars, parking meters, traffic lights, real estate signs in front of houses, trees and flowers, garbage in the street… and advertising.

Especially
advertising. Dairine spent nearly half the bus ride, from the point where they left her town to the point where they entered Hempstead town and drove through it toward the shopping center, explaining what milk was and why it was important that you should “got” some. Yet at the same time, the bus ride made Dairine nostalgic for the first time she’d gone off-planet, when everything had been new and strange. As they piled off the bus in the parking lot of the shopping center, Dairine remembered her first alien parking lot, and how she had nearly been killed by any number of alien vehicles before she got her bearings.
And how I talked to somebody’s luggage for the better part of five minutes,
she thought,
before I realized what I was doing.

It seemed like such a long time ago now. She’d almost forgotten what it was like. But she was quickly being reminded; and the other wizards’ attitude toward the strangeness of her world was beginning to affect her. She found herself looking at shopping-cart pens and sliding doors and the displays in the outer shop windows of the shopping center as if she had never seen such things before. It was refreshing.

They went into the mall, and in a matter of seconds, Dairine was being bombarded with questions. “What’s that for?” “Why is that colored that way?” “You mean people actually ride on those?” “They should fall off, shouldn’t they?” “Isn’t that beautiful!” “What’s that smell?” “Are those ‘decorations’?”

That was the question that got asked most frequently. Filif was fixated on the concept.
“Those
decorations,” Filif said, “those look especially nice… ” He moved over to the window in question and peered in.

Dairine came up behind him, not wanting to touch him—that always ran the risk of breaking the visual illusion—but she leaned over him and whispered, “Fil, I don’t think these are really you.”

“Why not?”

“Well… ” Dairine looked up at the sign over the store’s door. “Can you read that?”

Filif turned his human face up toward the sign, dutifully. Though he seemed to be looking at it with human eyes, somehow Dairine could still perceive the alert attention of a whole array of berries trained on the letters. “Victoria’s—did I pronounce that right? Secret.”

“That’s right,” Dairine said.

“Who’s Victoria?” said Filif. “And what’s its secret?”

“Never been really clear about that myself,” Dairine said. “But if you start wearing those, people are going to talk. Come on.” She turned away, already having a great deal of difficulty dealing with the image of a Christmas tree in a garter belt.

Filif moved away carefully, but not without a backward look at the bright colors of the lingerie in the window. Then Dairine saw Sker’ret hurrying ahead of them, and she began to fear the worst. “Sker’ret?” she said. “Wait up!”

She went after him as quickly as she could, with a glance at Carmela to suggest that she should keep an eye on the others. But Carmela already had her hands full. She and Roshaun had paused by a window display of clothes and were apparently discussing them. Sker’ret had moved a little farther away and was closely examining a freestanding gift stall stacked high with balloons, cards, gift plaques, and bright-colored candies.
Oh no,
Dairine thought.
What is it with the colors? These guys are like five-year-olds!

The sound of laughter came to Dairine from down the mall. A group of five older kids—high school juniors, Dairine guessed—came wandering along toward them, much more interested in the shoppers of their own age than in the merchandise. “Hey, sweet things!” one of them called to Carmela. “Who’s your skinny friend?”

Carmela didn’t respond. “Hey, elf boy!” shouted another of the guys. “Nice hair!” This was followed by a chorus of snickering and laughter.

Dairine saw Roshaun draw himself up to his full height and turn to favor the oncoming group with an expression of truly withering scorn. “‘Elf boy’?” he said softly. “What kind of disrespectful, speciesist—” One of his hands moved in a gesture that Dairine recognized as the preliminary to producing some predesigned wizardry. She gulped and hurried toward him.

But Carmela merely glanced over her shoulder at the approaching group. “Ah, ah, ah,” she said under her breath, and reached out sideways to take Roshaun’s hand in hers. Roshaun’s eyes went wide, and he stopped absolutely still, as if he’d been frozen that way.

Dairine slowed down a little, caught between surprise and admiration.
She may not be a wizard,
she thought,
but she’s got some moves.
Just loudly enough to be heard, as the five passed close by, Carmela said to Roshaun, “Don’t mind them. They’re just wonder-struck by your profound majesty and glory and all that yadda yadda. We don’t get a lot of princes around here, and when they see somebody like you and contrast your elevated station with their tiny antlike lives, it’s really hard for them to cope.”

Carmela said all this not in English, but in perfect Japanese, the language she’d been studying when she first started to pick up the Speech. As wizards, Dairine and Roshaun had no problem understanding her; they heard the language “through” the Speech and made sense of it that way. But the five guys were completely thrown off. They saw what seemed like a Japanese translator of some kind—who looked at them as coolly as if they were members of an alien species—who was apparently carefully translating what they’d said for someone who looked like a living anime star: someone whose expression was better suited to the last half hour of a samurai movie than anything else… the part where things really break loose.

Dairine saw faint unease ripple through the guys as they found themselves facing something they didn’t understand. The guys passed close to Carmela and Roshaun, who watched them with expressions of clinical interest and complete disdain, and didn’t stop—just headed on down the mall. It took a few moments for them to get their composure back, and as they did one of them muttered something under his breath.

Roshaun looked at Carmela in curiosity as Dairine came over to them. “‘Duckhead’?” he said. “He called me a duckhead. A… duck? That’s some kind of flying creature, isn’t it?”

Carmela had let go of Roshaun’s hand and was gazing after the five nonplussed guys with barely concealed amusement. Now she glanced over at Dairine, not saying anything.

“Uh,” Dairine said. “Yeah, it is. They swim, too.”

Roshaun looked thoughtful. “I see. The idiom suggests that a humanoid can share the same attributes of flexibility… the ability to adapt to multiple environments. I like that. Evidently they saw they’d misjudged me, even if it took them a few moments.”

Dairine was ever so glad that what Roshaun had said had come out as a statement rather than a question, but then it didn’t seem to be Roshaun’s style to ask a lot of questions.
Saved by a personal blind spot,
Dairine thought with relief. Normally she hated being saved by anyone or anything, but right now she was willing to make an exception.

Then Dairine remembered Sker’ret. She looked around in panic and saw him proceeding quickly up the mall ahead of them, looking in windows, while a shiny silver Mylar balloon bobbed and trailed along behind him.
Hey, he’s got the hang of money already,
she thought.
Maybe this isn’t going all that badly.

Ahead of her, Carmela was now actually strolling along arm in arm with Roshaun, pointing out things in the store windows to him.
How does she do it?
Dairine wondered.
She’s got him eating out of her hand. Maybe I don’t want to know…
She hurried off after Sker’ret.

He was going up one of the escalators at some speed. Dairine thought she knew why. The smell of fast food was coming from somewhere up ahead, and Sker’ret had targeted on that with the intensity of a heat-seeking missile looking for the tailpipe of a jet. “Sker’ret,” she called after him, “this is really no time for that. We can do this later! In fact we can
all
do it together!”