DIANE DUANE - A Wizard Alone

Nita looked at it in horror as Tom dropped it to the table and flipped it open. Remind me never to become aSenior , she said.

As if you can avoid it when it happens, Tom said, sounding resigned. Nita, you wouldn t be the first wizard to get confused about the apparent differences between active and passive work in wizardry. But the Powers That Be don t see the distinction orThey see it as largely illusory. He paged through the book, stopping about halfway through to glance at something.

If you go through this, you ll see often enough where it says that wizards are told only what they need to know for the work at hand. Which leaves you with the question: What do they find in it when thereis no work at hand no official assignment You d be surprised. But it s never anything that goes to waste. Sooner or later, every wizard s work, however minor, does someone, somewhere, some good. It s an extension of the all is done for each principle.

So what I m doing isn t like withdrawal or anything Nita said. Not unhealthy

Oh, no.Don t forget, there are wizards who do nothingbut read the manual. Tom looked thoughtful. I wouldn t be that far down the road. My job tends more toward focused research. But I still spend maybe seventy percent of my theoretically inactive time reading these things. It s a big universe out there. Just this planet, for example: Think how much you can discover about it just by going to the library, or rummaging around on the Web. Then imagine you have access to a book that contains most of the salient facts about youruniverse . Wouldn tyou spend a lot of time between the covers

Uh, Nita said. Well, I guess I have been.

So, at the very least, even if you didn t have a goal you were working toward, which I think you have, I wouldn t consider your time wasted, Tom said. As for you not being on active assignment, that s between you and the Powers. They value the work we do sufficiently to avoid pushing us to function when it wouldn t be appropriate to the wizard s own best interests.

Emergencies do come up; butroutinely , if being on duty would impair your own status, you re not called up. He eyed Nita. If you re starting to feel the need to get back into the saddle, of course, that s not necessarily a bad thing. You d be the one to tell me.

Nita examined the floor in some detail for a few moments before she said anything. It s not like I actually feel all that much better, she said, hardly above a whisper. She was watching herself with great care to see if she was going to start crying again; she couldn t have borne it right this minute. Every now and then I forget to hurt but the rest of the time I keep seeing those last few hours with my mom, over and over. Then she frowned. But I can t just sit around. It s not bringing my mother back. And I keep getting the feeling she d be annoyed with me for, I don t know, for indulging myself in just sitting around and feeling bad when I should be busy with something important.Because this is important.

Tom nodded. I don t think I can argue with that, he said. Meanwhile, tell me what you ve been up to.

Nita spent a few minutes describing the contacts she d been having from the aliens, especially the last one the knight and the cryptic message he, or it, had left her.

When she was finished, Tom shook his head. What fights the Enemy he said. You re right, the phrasing s interesting.

You think this alien s a wizard

Hard to tell, Tom said. There are lots of creatures all over the universe who both use the Speech andwork to oppose the Lone Power without being wizards. He shrugged. For the time being, I d keep trying to get through, I suppose, and see if you can work inward to a mode where there s more clarity.

Yeah.I m going to try the lucid dreaming again tonight, I think. So far, that s where I ve had the best results. Nita frowned. I guess that s the other thing that s worried me. The possibility of getting stuck in adreamworld

I m not sure I see that as a danger for you, Tom said. I d almost suggest the danger would lie in too much hardheaded practicality in being too tough onyourself . For the time being, you seem to be okay. Let me know how you progress with your alien, anyway.

Yeah.

Nita got up and slipped into her parka, glancing at Tom s stack of manuals again. You have to learn that wholething this year

Andkeep Carl from blowing up the house, Tom said. Even wizardry may be insufficient to the task. See you later.

Kit,querido , Kit s mama said, ifyou feed that dog so many dog biscuits, you ll spoil his appetite for dinner.

In the kitchen, adding a last few seasonings to what would shortly be a pot of minestrone soup, Kit s father laughed out loud. Impossible.

Kit was sitting on the dining room sofa, trying to read one of the books on autism his mom had brought home for him. The language was pretty technical sometimes, but he was more than willing to struggle through it; the analysis of autism in this book was making some sense to him in terms of what he d been getting from Darryl. There were apparently autistic people who found the complications of life and emotion so threatening, the book said, that when they did artwork, it often featured landscapes that looked sterile and empty to a casual viewer but the artists intent was to express a desire for a little peace, for relief from the assault on their senses that caused them such pain. Since coming across this idea in the book, Kit had been doing his best to get the whole thing read, mining it for ways to make sure that he actually got some good out of his conversation with Darryl, when it finally happened.

Unfortunately the reading was being made difficult, if not impossible, by the large black muzzle that kept insinuating itself between Kit and the open pages, and the big brown eyes that looked beseechingly up into Kit s.Just one more ,Ponch said.

You regonna turn into a blimp, Kit said.

I llbe a happyblimp ,Ponch said.What s a blimp

Kit s mama laughed. Kit glanced up at her.

He s loud sometimes, honey, his mama said, handing Kit s papa the pepper shaker as he held his hand out for it. I don t know whyyou can t hear it.

Kit s pop shook his head as he looked down into the pot, grinding pepper in. From what Kit says, I don t know whyyou can hear it at all. None of us should be able to.

Maybe it s because I usually feed him in the mornings, Kit s mama said. I m used to hearing him complain that he s not getting enough. She made a kind ofrrrgh noise that went up into a whine at the end, a fair imitation ofPonch s reaction to an empty dish when there was someone around who could give him the rest of the can of dog food.

Ponch seyes moved at that, a sideways glance.Her accent s not bad. I could teach herCyene .

Let s not deal with this right now, Kit said. He could just see his mom going down the street to try to talk sense toTinkerbell .

One more!Ponch said.

One, Kit said. He gavePonch the last dog biscuit in the box, put the book aside, and got up to throw the box away.

The onions done yet his mama said.

Nearly, said Kit s pop, as Kit stomped the box flat to make it go in the trash can. Behind Kit, the emphatic crunching noises by the sofa came to an end, andPonch ran into the kitchen.Out

Sure, Kit said, opening the door. A fierce cold wind came in asPonch shot out.

Shut that, sweetie. It s freezing! Kit s mama said.

Gonnasnow tonight, they said on the TV, said Kit s pop, picking up the frying pan in which the onions had been sizzling, and scraping them out into the soup as Kit shut the door.

A lot Kit said.

Six to eight inches.

Kit sighed. It wouldn t be anything like enough to make them keep school closed on Monday. That would take at least a few feet. Not for the first time he wished that it wasn t unethical to talk a snowstorm into dumping three feet of snow onto his immediate neighborhood. It was fun to think about, but the trouble he would have gotten into with Tom and Carl, not to mention the Powers That Be, would have made the pleasure short-lived.

Still, if I told the snowstorm to dump, say, twelve feet of snow just on the school, and then only enough everywhere else so that everybody could have fun for a day; say six inches or so

Kit sighed again. Though such a course of action would be less trouble to the snowplow crews, the emergency services, and everybody else who wanted to go on about their lives, something like that would cause a whole lot of talk, and still get him in trouble. But the image of his school completely buried under a giant snowdrift made him smile. By the way, Pop, Kit said, is the TV still okay

Seems fine, his pop said. Every now and then the thing insists on showing me a news program from some other planet, but He shrugged. As long as nothing happens to interfere with the basketball games over the weekend, I don t mind seeing who s grown a new head or whatever.Darlin , you know what I need

Less time on the couch watching basketball Kit s mama suggested.

Dream on.Celery seed.

We re out of it.

You re just saying that because you hate celery.

Iknow celery seed is different from celery, or celery salt. But we re still out of it. Look for yourself.

Kit s pop went to the cupboard to look. Kit, looking at his mama, thought that her expression was far too innocent. She caught him looking at her, and said, Isn tPonch a long time out, Kit He hates being out this long when it s cold. But he hasn t scratched.

She had a point there, though Kit thought she was more intent on him not saying anything incriminating about celery seed. Kit grinned. I ll go see what he s doing, he said, and got his winter jacket off the hook.

He went out, shutting the door hurriedly behind him, and looked up and down the driveway forPonch . To his surprise,Ponch was sitting at the street end of the driveway, looking up at the sky.

Kit walked down to him, looking up, too. The clouds were, indeed, coming in low and fast from the south on that wind. Past and above the houses across the street, only a few streaks and scraps of the low sunset remained in the west, a bleak, bleached peach color against the encroaching stripes of dark gray. Westward, the reddish spark of Mars could just be seen through the filmy front edges of one of the incoming banks of cloud.

Ponchlooked over his shoulder at Kit as Kit came to stand next to him. You okay Kit said to him in the Speech.

Pretty much.

Kit wondered about that. I mean, about what happened the other day. He reached down to scratch the dog s head.

I think so.

The clouds drew together in the west, blanking Mars out, slowly shutting down the last embers of the sunset. Whatdid happen

Isaw something .

Yeah What was it

Not that way,Ponch said. Imean, I noticed something. I never really noticed it before .

Kit waited.

You get hurt sometimes,Ponch said.That makes me sad .

Yeah, well, I get sad when you re hurt, too.

That s right. And your dam and your sire and your littermates, they hurt sometimes, too. So does Nita. I noticed that. But it didn t seem to matter as much asyouhurting .

Ponchpaused for a long time.But then I saw him: Darryl. And what That One was doing to him, and how it hurt him. And he didn t do anything to deserve that. It was awful,the way he was hurting. And that started to hurt me. And then I thought,Why doesn t the others hurt make me feel like this And then I felt bad about myself .

Kit hardly knew what to say. It wasn t that it was a bad thing for his dog to learn about compassion, but that the lesson would come all at once, like this, came as a surprise.

And the others didn t deserve to be hurt, either,Ponch said, looking up at Kit.Nita didn t do anything bad, for her mother to die. Why should she be hurt like that Why shouldDairine Or your sire or dam