Diane Duane - Deep Wizardry

Nita slipped out the back door of the beach house, careful not to let the rickety screen door slam, and for a second stood silently on the back porch in the darkness. It was no use. “Nita”—her mother’s voice came floating out from the living room—“where’re you going?”

“Out,” Nita said, hoping to get away with it just this once.

She might as well have tried to rob a bank. “Out where?”

“Down to the beach, Mom.”

There was a sigh’s worth of pause from the living room, broken by the sound of a crowd on TV shouting about a base that had just been stolen somewhere in the country. “I don’t like you walking down there alone at night, Neets…”

“Nhhnnnnn,” Nita said, a loud noncommittal noise she had learned to make while her mother was deciding whether to let her do something. “I’ll take Ponch with me,” she said in a burst of inspiration.

“Mmmmmm…” her mother said, considering it. Ponch was a large black and white dog, part Border collie, part German shepherd, part mutt— an intrepid hunter of water rats and gulls, and ferociously loyal to his master and to Nita because she was his master’s best friend. “Where’s Kit?”

“I dunno.” It was at least partly the truth. “He went for a walk a while ago.”

“Well… okay. You take Ponch and look for Kit, and bring him back with you. Don’t want his folks thinking we’re not taking care of him.”

“Right, Ma,” Nita said, and went pounding down the creaky steps from the house to the yard before her mother could change her mind, or her rather, immersed in the ball game, could come back to consciousness.

“Ponch! Hey Poncho!” Nita shouted, pounding through the sandy front, through the gate in the ancient picket fence, and out across the narrow paved road to the dune on the other side of the road. Joyous barking began on the far side of the dune as Nita ran up it. He’s hunting again, Nita thought, and would have laughed for delight if running had left her any breath. This is the best vacation we ever had…

At the top of the dune she paused, looking down toward the long dark expanse of the beach. “It’s been a good year,” her father had said a couple of months before, over dinner. “We can’t go far for vacation — but let’s go somewhere nice. One of the beaches in the Hamptons, maybe. We’ll rent a house and live beyond our means. For a couple weeks, anyway…”

It hadn’t taken Nita much begging to get her folks to let her friend Kit Rodriguez go along with them, or to get Kit’s folks to say yes. Both families were delighted that their children had each finally found a close friend. Nita, and Kit laughed about that sometimes. Their families knew only the surface of what was going on — which was probably for the best.

A black shape came scrabbling up the dune toward Nita, flinging sand in all directions in his hurry. “Whoa!” she shouted at Ponch, but it was no use; it never was. He hit her about stomach level with both paws and knocked her down, panting with excitement; then, when she managed to sit up, he started enthusiastically washing her face. His breath smelled like dead fish.

“Euuuuw, enough!” Nita said, making a face and pushing the dog more or less off her. “Ponch, where’s Kit?”

“Yayayayayayayaya!” Ponch barked, jumping up and bouncing around Nita I in an attempt to get her to play. He grabbed up a long string of dead seaweed in his jaws and began shaking it like a rope and growling.

“Cut it out, Ponch. Get serious.” Nita got up and headed down the far side of the dune, brushing herself off as she went. “Where’s the boss?”

“He played with me,” Ponch said in another string of barks as he loped down the dune alongside her. “He threw the stick. I chased it.”

“Great. Where is he now?”

They came to the bottom of the dune together. The sand was harder there, but still dry; the tide was low and just beginning to turn. “Don’t know,” Ponch said, a bark with a grumble on the end of it.

“Hey, you’re a good boy, I’m not mad at you,” Nita said. She stopped to scratch the dog behind the ears, in the good place. He stood still with his tongue hanging out and looked up at her, his eyes shining oddly in the of the nearly full Moon that was climbing the sky. “I just don’t feel playing right now. I want to swim. Would you find Kit?”

The big brown eyes gazed soulfully up at her, and Ponch made a small beseeching whine. “A dog biscuit?”

Nita grinned. “Blackmailer. Okay, you find the boss, I’ll give you a biscuit-Two biscuits. Go get ‘im!”

Ponch bounded off westward down the beach, kicking up wet sand. Nita headed for the water line, where she shrugged off the windbreaker that had been covering her bathing suit and dropped it on the sand. Two months ago, talking to a dog and getting an answer back would have been something that happened only in Disney movies. But then one day in the library, Nita had stumbled onto a book called So You Want to Be a Wizard. She’d followed the instructions in the book, as Kit had in the copy he’d found in a used-book store — and afterward, dogs talked back. Or, more accurately, she knew what language they spoke and how to hear it. There was nothing that didn’t talk back, she’d found — only things she didn’t yet know how to hear or how to talk to properly.

Like parents, Nita thought with mild amusement. If her mother knew Nita was going swimming, she’d probably pitch a fit: she’d had a terrible thing about night swimming after seeing Jaws. But it’s okay, Nita thought. There aren’t any sharks here… and if there were, I think I could talk them out of eating me.

She made sure her clothes were above the high-water line, then waded down into the breakers. The water was surprisingly warm around her knees. The waxing Moon, slightly golden from smog, made a silvery pathway on the water, everywhere else shedding a dull radiance that made both land and sea look alive.

What a great night, Nita thought. She went out another twenty paces or so, then crouched over and dived into an incoming wave. Waterborne sand scoured her, the water thundered in her ears; then she broke surface and lay in the roil and dazzle of the moonlit water, floating. There were no streetlights there, and the stars she loved were bright. After a while she stood up in the shoulder-high water, watching the sky. Back up on the beach, Ponch was barking, excited and noisy. He can’t have found Kit that fast, Nita thought. Probably something distracted him. A crab, maybe. A dead fish. A shark…

Something pushed her in the back, hard. Nita gasped and whipped around in the water, thinking, This is it, there are too sharks here and I’m dead! The sight of the slick-skinned shape in the water stopped her breath — until she realized what she was looking at. A slender body, ten feet long; a blowhole and an amused eye that looked at her sidelong; and a long, beaked face that wore a permanent smile. She reached out a hesitant hand, and under her touch the dolphin turned lazily, rolling sideways, brushing her with skin like warm, moonlit satin.

She was immensely relieved. “Dai’stiho,” she said, greeting the swimmer in the Tongue that wizards use, the language that she’d learned from her manual and that all creatures understand. She expected no more answer than buzz or squeak as the dolphin returned the greeting and went about its business.

But the dolphin rolled back toward her and looked at her in what seemed to be shock. “A wizard!” it said in an urgent whistle. Nita had no time to answer; the dolphin dived and its tail slapped the surface, spraying her. By the time Nita rubbed the salt sting out of her eyes, there was nothing near her but the usual roaring breakers. Ponch was bouncing frantically on the beach, barking something about sea monsters to the small form walking beside him.