A/N: I'm back! Sorry if I've kept anyone waiting, but I haven't had time to write with my relatives over. Also, I know it's not very long, but I needed to post something. Another reason why it's taken me so long is that this chapter was originally larger, and a bit different, but I realized that it didn't really do anything for plot, so I cut a bit off of the end. That stuff will be showing up at the beginning of chapter four. Thanks to all who have read and reviewed so far; I really appreciate it and hope you continue!
Chapter 3: April Fool's!
Light streaming in through Nita's window woke her up. She stretched and yawned, not wanting to leave the comfort of her bed. Maybe I'll just go back to sleep, she thought. After all, it is a Saturday.
Something about that last thought made Nita blink her eyes open. It was Saturday, and she was supposed to be meeting Kit at his house around ten so that the two of them could transport over to Grand Central to help the gating team. Struggling to sit upright in her bed, Nita glanced at her alarm clock.
"Nine thirty!" she said, incredulous. She was not generally one for sleeping in. Hastily she got up out of bed and dashed to the bathroom, where she washed her face and pulled her hair back into a ponytail before running back to her room and pulling on jeans and a t-shirt. Nita grabbed her manual from its spot on the dresser and thundered downstairs into the kitchen, where her sister was sitting at the table reading the comics section of the paper.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" Dairine asked as Nita grabbed two slices of bread from the loaf on the counter and put them in the toaster.
"I'm supposed to be meeting Kit in fifteen minutes," she replied, taking out some jelly and a spoon to spread it with.
"Business?" Dairine queried, a bit too innocently for Nita's liking.
Nita responded by tossing her manual down on the kitchen table. "Rhiow wants our help at Grand Central. Basic gate maintenance, but they don't want to take any chances." The toaster popped the slices of bread up, and Nita snagged them and put them on a plate. "I'll probably be back before lunch, but if this takes more time, we'll just grab lunch in the city," she informed Dairine while putting jelly on her toast.
Finished, Nita sat down at the table to eat. She had just finished the first piece of toast and was about to start the second when the kitchen phone rang. "I'll get it," she said. "It's probably Kit."
She picked
up on the third ring and, sure enough, Kit was on the other end.
"Hello, is Nita there?" he
asked.
"Yeah, it's me," Nita said.
"Why aren't you over here yet? We shouldn't keep Rhiow and the rest waiting."
Nita sighed into the phone. "Long story. Listen, go on ahead; I'll meet you there."
"Okay," Kit said. "Remember, we're meeting at the gate by track thirty."
"Gotcha," Nita said, "see you there," and hung up. She picked up the second piece of toast and started in on it while setting her plate in the sink. When she finished her breakfast, Nita scooped up her manual, slipped on her shoes, and grabbed a light jacket from the closet before heading out into the back yard, slamming the door behind her.
It is so nice that this is a weekend! Nita allowed herself to think as she made her way over to her otherspace pocket. Most wizards, as they got further on in their Art, tended to accumulate spells and other useful bits and pieces. Many of them, like Nita, stored these odds and ends in little pockets that "cheated" science by not existing in the physical world until the wizard wished it to appear.
Since it didn't physically exist, Nita could technically access her pocket from wherever she was, but you had to anchor it to a certain location. Accessing the cache from its anchor position required a single word in the Speech; accessing it from elsewhere required a full-blown spell, the complexity of which varied depending on how far you were from the anchor point, among other things.
Nita had anchored hers above the birdbath in the back yard, where she now came to a stop. Reaching her hand out into the air, she said the appropriate word in the Speech and felt a tab of air form between her fingers. She slid it from left to right and stuck her hand in through the "unzipped" space. Familiar with the contents of her pocket, it only took her a few seconds to find what she was searching for, and she quickly withdrew a wand of greenish-white wood with the bark peeled off and a compact ball of tightly-wound writing in the Speech.
The transit spell to Grand Central was, by now, a familiar one. Without even bothering to take her manual out of her jacket pocket, she knelt down and inscribed a circle on the ground with the rowan wand. She began to write and characters appeared, delicate traceries of light left in the wand's wake. Nita finished writing the instruction part of the spell and, with a practiced flick of her wrist, unfurled the ball of Speech. The glowing characters of her name looked back at her, and she glanced over them quickly before attaching them to the spell diagram. Drawing the wizard's knot with her wand, she closed the spell circle, and began to read.
————————————————————————
Dairine, who had watched through the kitchen window as Nita had opened her cache and removed her name for use in the transport spell, smiled. Things were going better than she could have planned. Now that Nita had used the modified version of her name in a spell, it wouldn't be long before her behavior began to reflect the changes.
The only bad thing, Dairine thought wistfully, is that I can't sneak along and watch the mayhem unfold…and I don't get a chance to shout "April Fool's!" at her until she finds out.
Dairine easily brushed the thoughts aside. Nita would be finding out soon enough. Smiling wickedly, she went back to reading the comics.