“I have not ‘got’ Nita,” Kit said through gritted teeth. “And as for taste, you shouldn’t be talking.
Tom and Jerry cartoons? Give me a break.”
“I’m waiting for the Road Runner,” Carmela said, managing to sound both pitying and incredibly stuck-up. “A symbol of innocence endlessly pursued by the banality of evil.”
Kit went back to his cornflakes. “I wish the evil I keep running into was a little more banal,” he muttered as he picked up his bowl and started eating. The Lone Power’s favorite tool, entropy, had already struck locally: His cornflakes had gone soggy.
Resigned, he sat down and ate them anyway. Shortly Carmela came wandering into the kitchen and stuck her head in the refrigerator. “You got today off, huh?”
“Yeah. ‘Business’ stuff.” He ate the last spoonful of cornflakes and went to rinse the bowl. “And I didn’t ’bust‘ the TV, either.”
“Well, it has a gigabillion new channels, looks like,” his sister said. “The one before this one looked pretty neat. They were selling some kind of eternal-youth potion.” She paused to primp herself unnecessarily in the dark glass of the microwave. “Might come in handy.”
“You have to grow up first before the fountain of youth’s going to do you any good,” Kit said, putting the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, “and anyway, what you need is the fountain of brains.”
Kit spent the next few minutes running around the house while his sister, in pursuit, whacked him as often as possible with a rolled-up boy-band fan magazine. He could have teleported straight out of there, but it was more fun to let her chase him, and it would keep her in a good mood. Finally eight-thirty rolled around, the latest time when she could leave and still get to homeroom on time, and Carmela got her book bag and headed out. “Bye-bye,” she said as she went out the back door.
“Don’t get eaten by monsters or anything.”
“HI try to avoid it.”
The door closed. Kit went off to get his manual, reflecting that things could be a lot worse for him. A resident sister who found wizardry freaky or annoying could cause endless trouble, forcing him to live like a fugitive in his own house, hiding what he was. But so many human wizards have to do that, anyway
, he thought, going into his room to get the manual off his desk, and carefully walking around Ponch, who lay on the braided oval rag rug beside his bed, still asleep. They have families they can’t trust, or who can’t cope
… The thought of telling someone you loved that you were a wizard, and then discovering that he or she couldn’t handle it and would have to have the memory removed, made Kit shudder. I was lucky. Not that it wasn’t a little traumatic at first, with Mama and Pop. But they got past it. And so did Helena, sort of.
His older sister had been the cause of some worries for Kit when he’d told her he was a wizard.
Helena had at first been dismissive, in an amused way: She hadn’t believed him. But when Kit had started casually using wizardry around the house, Helena had actually gone through a short period when she’d thought he’d done some kind of deal with the devil. Finally she calmed down when she saw that Kit had no trouble participating at church along with the rest of the family, and when Kit got Helena to understand that the Lone Power, no matter which costume It was wearing, was never going to be any friend of his. But Helena’s moral concerns had died down into a kind of strange embarrassment about Kit, which was as hard to bear, in its way, as the accusations of being a dupe of ultimate evil. When she went away to college and didn’t have to see what Kit was doing from day to day, their relationship got back to normal, if a rather long-distance kind of normal. What would it have been like if she’d stayed around, though
? Kit had found himself thinking, more than once. How would I have coped? It was a question he was glad not to have had to answer. And if that makes me chicken, fine. I’m chicken.
He glanced down at Ponch. He was still asleep, his muzzle and feet twitching gently as he dreamed. Kit sat down to wait until the dog finished the dream. The wizard’s manual lay on his desk; he flipped it open to Darryl’s page again and considered that for a few moments.
He’s only eleven
, Kit thought, looking over the slightly more detailed personal information that had added itself to Darryl’s listing since Kit had become involved. Eleven wasn’t incredibly young for a wizard— Dairine had been offered the Wizard’s Oath at eleven— but it was still a little on the early side: a suggestion that the Powers That Be needed Darryl for something slightly more urgent than usual. All we need to do is try to figure out what it is… try to help him find his way around whatever’s blocking him. Without getting in the way of whatever his Ordeal’s supposed to do for him.
That’s likely to be a tall order…
Ponch had stopped dreaming and was breathing quietly again. Kit hated to wake him, but free days like this weren’t something he got often. He nudged his dog’s tummy gently with one sneaker.
“Ponch,” he said. “C’mon, big guy.”
Ponch opened one eye and looked at Kit.
Breakfast!
His dog might be getting a little strange, as wizards’ pets sometimes do, but in other regards Ponch was absolutely normal. Ponch got up, stretched fore and aft, shook himself all over, and then headed for the hallway. Kit grinned, picked up the manual, stuck it into the “pocket” of otherspace that he kept things in for his wizardly work, and went after him.
In the kitchen, Kit opened a can of dog food and emptied it into the bowl. Ponch went through it in about five minutes of single-minded chowing down, then looked up. More?
“You’re only supposed to get one in the morning. You know that.”
But today’s a workday. Today we go bunting.
“So?”
I have to keep up my strength.
Kit rolled his eyes. “I’m being had here,” he said.
Boss
! Ponch looked pained.
“Oh, all right,” Kit said after a moment. “But if all this food makes you want to lie down and have a big long sleep all of a sudden…”
It won’t.
Kit sighed and opened the cupboard to get out another can of dog food. Not that one. The chicken this time
, Ponch said.
Kit looked at his dog, then at the label on the can. “When did you learn to read?”
I don’t have to read. I can hear you doing it, Ponch said. Anyway, the color’s different on the food with chicken in it.
Kit grabbed a different can and popped the top, shaking his head, and emptied it into Ponch’s bowl. “The color” he said after a moment. “I thought dogs saw only in gray.”
Ponch paused in his eating. Maybe we do, he said. But important things look different.
Kit shook his head. Whatever color his dog saw his food in, it didn’t matter much, as it all swiftly went inside him, where theoretically everything was the same color, especially after it was digested.
When he was finished eating, Ponch circled around a couple of times and lay down to start washing his paws.
“You’re not going to go to sleep, are you?” Kit said.
Ponch looked at him with some mild annoyance. If you ‘re going to hunt, he said, your feet have to be clean