Not bad, Kit thought. But there was still one thing missing. The place down at one end of the spell where his own name and personal information went was now full; Kit had pasted it in from the wizardry he and S'reee had just done. But as for Ponch... It embarrassed him to have to turn to his dog, who'd now returned from the bushes and was sitting and watching Kit with great interest. "Ponch," he said, "I can't believe I've never asked you this before. But what's your name?"
The dog laughed at him. "You just said it." "But Grrarhah down the street uses a Cyene name."
"If the people you lived with named you Tinker-bell," Ponch said in a surprisingly dry voice, "so would you."
Kit had to grin at that. "I don't mind the name you gave me," Ponch said. "I use that. It says who I am." He stuck his nose in Kit's ear again and started to wash it.
"Euuuu, Ponch!" Kit pushed him away...but not very hard. "Okay, look, give it a rest," Kit said. "I have to finish something here." "Let me see."
Kit showed him the wizardry. As Ponch watched, Kit pronounced the fifteen or sixteen syllables of the Speech that wound themselves into the visible version of Ponch's name, containing details like his age and his breed (itself a tightly braided set of links with about ten strands involved). Ponch nosed at the leash; it came alive with light as he did so. "There's the collar," Kit said, looping the end of the spell through the wizard's knot he had tied there, then holding the wide loop up. The similar loop at the other end, made up of Kit's name and personal information, would go around his wrist.
Ponch slipped his head through the wider of the two loops, then shook himself. The loop tightened down. "That feel okay?" Kit said. "Not too tight?"
"It's fine. Let's go."
"Okay," Kit said, and stood up. He slipped his wrist through the other loop and pronounced the six words that got the environmental and tracking functions of the wizardry going, the parts that would snap them back here if anything life threatening happened. The "chain" flickered, showing that the added functions were working. "Right. Show me how."
"Like this—"
Ponch took no more than a step forward, and without a moment's hesitation that darkness slammed silently down around them again. This time at least Kit was sure he had air around him and Ponch, and he had oxygenation routines ready to kick in if their bodies were affected by any kind of paralysis. Nonetheless, Kit still couldn't move, couldn't see anything.
Or could he?
Kit would have blinked if he could have, or squinted. Often enough before, in very dark places, he'd had the illusion that he could see a very faint light when there was actually nothing there. This was like that —yet somehow different, not as diffuse. He could just make out a tiny glint of light, far away there in the dark, distant as a star...
It faded. Or maybe it wasn't truly there at all. Oh well. Ponch?
Here I am.
And abruptly Kit really could see something, though he still couldn't move. Down just out of range of his direct vision, though still perceptible as a dim glow, he could tell that the "leash" was there, the long chain structure of the wizardry glinting with life as the power ran up and down it. It was unusual to be able to see it doing that, instead of as a steady glow; there was something odd about the flow of time here. Maybe that was the cause of the illusion of breathlessness.
Kit tried to speak out loud but again found that he couldn't. It didn't matter; the leash wizardry would carry his thoughts to Ponch. What do we do now? Kit said silently.
Be somewhere.
Kit normally would have thought that that was unavoidable. Now he wasn't so sure. Well, where did you have in mind?
Here.
And something appeared before them. It was hard to make out the distance at first, until Kit saw what the thing was: a small shape, pale gray against that darkness, except for a whiter underbelly.
It was a squirrel.
This was so peculiar that even if he hadn't been frozen in place, Kit still wouldn't have done much but stand and stare. There it was, just a squirrel, sitting up on its hind legs and looking at them with that expression of interest-but-not-fear you get from a squirrel that knows you can't possibly get near it in time to do anything about it.
Okay, Kit said in his mind, completely confused. Now what?
Shhh.
The instruction amused Kit. He wasn't exactly used to his dog telling him what to do. But suddenly, a little farther away, there was another squirrel, rooting around in the grass, looking for something: a nut, Kit supposed.
And another squirrel... and then another. They were all doing different things, but each of them existed absolutely by itself, as if spotlighted on a dark stage. Next to him, Ponch shifted from foot to foot, whimpering in growing excitement.
There were more squirrels every moment... ten of them, twenty, fifty. But then something else started to happen. Not only squirrels, but other things began to appear. Trees, at first. / guess that makes sense; where there are squirrels, there are always trees. They were unusually broad of trunk, astonishingly tall, with tremendous canopies of leaves. And slowly, underneath them, grass began to roll out and away into what built itself into a genuine landscape—grass patched with sunlight, wavering with the shadows of branches. The sky, where it could be seen, came last, the usual creamy blue sky of a suburban area near a large city, spreading itself gradually up from horizon to zenith, as if a curtain were being lifted. Finally, there was the sun, and Kit felt a breeze begin to blow.
Ponch made a noise halfway between a whine and a bark and leaped forward, dragging Kit out of immobility, as he tore off toward the nearest squirrel. The whole landscape now instantly came alive around them like a live-action version of a cartoon: squirrels running in every direction, and some of them rocketing up the trees, all of them in frantic motion—especially the one that Ponch was chasing as he dragged Kit along. This was an experience Kit had had many, many times before in the local park, and all he could do now was try not to fall flat on his face as he was pulled along at top speed.
Kit laughed, finding that his voice worked again. Briefly he considered just letting Ponch off the spell leash. But then that struck Kit as a bad idea. He still had no sense of where they were, or what the rules of this place were. Better just tell the spell to extend as far as it needs to, so he can run.
It took a few seconds to change the loci-of-effect and extensibility variables—longer than it normally would have taken, but then, Kit thought he wasn't doing badly for someone who was being hauled along through a forest at what felt like about thirty miles an hour. Finally Kit was able to extend the leash, then slowed down from the run until he was standing there in the bright sun between two huge trees, watching his dog go tearing off across the beautiful grass, barking his head off with delight.
He's found Squirrel World, Kit thought, and had to laugh. There was seemingly infinite running room, there was an endless supply of squirrels, and there were trees for the squirrels to run up, because there had to be some challenge about this for it to be fun.
He's found dog heaven. Or maybe Ponch heaven...
Ponch was far off among the trees now. Kit sat down on the grass to watch him. This space had some strange qualities, for despite the increased distance, Kit's view of Ponch was still as clear and sharp as if he were looking at him through a telescope. Ponch was closing on the squirrel he'd been chasing. As Kit watched, the squirrel just made it to the trunk of a nearby tree and went up it like a shot. Ponch danced briefly around on his hind legs at the bottom of the tree, barking his head off, then spotted another squirrel and went off after that one, instead.
Maybe this isn't exactly Ponch heaven after all, Kit thought. Could this be the dog version of a computer game? For there didn't seem to be instant wish fulfillment here. Ponch still wasn't catching the squirrels; he was mostly chasing them.