Диана Дуэйн - So You Want To Be A Wizard

In the middle of the description of things preserved in their fullest beauty forever, and still growing, Nita found herself feeling a faint tingle of unease. She was also getting tired. She dropped the book in her lap with an annoyed sigh, for there was just too much to absorb at one sitting, and she had no clear idea of where to begin. "Crud," she said under her breath. "I thought I'd be able to make Joanne vanish by tomorrow morning... "

Nita picked the manual up again and leafed through it to the section labeled "Preliminary Exercises."

The first one was set in a small block of type in the middle of an otherwise page. To change something, you must first describe it. To describe something, you must first see it. Hold still in one place for as long as it takes to see something.

Nita felt puzzled and slightly annoyed. This didn't sound much like magic. But obediently she put the book down, settled herself more comfortably against the tree, folded her arms, and sighed. It's almost too warm to think about anything serious… What should I look at? That rock over there? Naah, it's kind of a dull-looking rock. That weed. , look how its leaves go up around the stem in a spiral… Nita leaned her head back, stared up through the crabtree's branches. That rotten Joanne. Where would she have hidden that pen? I wonder. Maybe if I could sneak into her house somehow, maybe there's a spell for that… Have to do it after dark, I guess. Maybe I could do it tonight… wish it didn't take so long to get dark this time of year. Nita looked at the sky where it showed between the leaves, a hot blue mosaic of light with here and there the fireflicker of sun showing through, shifting with the shift of leaves in the wind. There are kinds of patterns — the wind never goes through the same way twice, and there are patterns in the branches but they're never quite the same either. And look at the changes in the brightness. The sky is the same but the leaves cover sometimes more and sometimes less… the patterns… the patterns, they… they… (They won't let you have a moment's rest,) the crabapple tree said irritably. Nita jumped, scraping her back against the trunk as she sat up straight. She had heard the tree quite plainly in some way that had nothing to do with spoken words. It was light patterns she had heard, and wind movements, leafrustle, fireflicker.

(Finally paid attention, did you?) said the tree. (As if one of them isn't enough, messing up someone's fallen-leaf pattern that's been in progress for fifteen years, drawing circles all over the ground and messing up the matrices. Well? What's your excuse?)

Nita sat there with her mouth open, looking up at the words the tree was making with cranky light and shadow. It works. It works! "Uh," she said, not knowing whether the tree could understand her, "I didn't draw any circles on your leaves—" (No, but that other one did,) the tree said. (Made circles and stars and diagrams all over Telerilarch's collage, doing some kind of power spell. You people don't have the proper respect for artwork. Okay, so we're amateurs,) it added, a touch of belligerence creeping into its voice. (So none of us have been here more than thirty years. Well, our work is still valid, and—)

"Uh, listen, do you mean that there's a, uh, a wizard out here somewhere doing magic?" (What else?) the tree snapped. (And let me tell you, if you people don't—) "Where? Where is she?"

(He,) the tree said. (In the middle of all those made-stone roads. I remember when those roads went in, and they took a pattern Kimber had been working on for eighty years and scraped it bare and poured that black rock over it. One of the most complex, most—) He? Nita thought, and her heart sank slightly. She had trouble talking to boys. "You mean across the freeway, in the middle of the interchange? That green place?" (Didn't you hear me? Are you deaf? Silly question. That other one must be not to have heard Teleri yelling at him. And now I suppose you'll start scratching up the ground and invoking powers and ruining my collage. Well, let me tell you—} "I, uh — listen, I'll talk to you later," Nita said hurriedly. She got to her feet, brushed herself off, and started away through the woods at a trot. Another wizard? And my God, the trees— Their laughter at her amazement was all around her as she ran, the merriment of everything from foot-high weeds to hundred-foot oaks, rustling in the wind — grave chuckling of maples and alders, titters from groves of sapling sassafras, silly giggling in the rasp-berry bushes, a huge belly-laugh from the oldest hollow ash tree before the freeway interchange. How could I never have heard them before! Nita stopped at the freeway's edge and made sure that there were no cars coming before she tried to cross. The interchange was one of those cloverleaf affairs, and the circle formed by one of the offramps held a stand of the original pre-freeway trees within it, in a kind of sunken bowl. Nita dashed across the concrete and stood a moment, breathless, at the edge of the downslope, before starting down it slantwise.

This was another of her secret places, a spot shaded and peaceful in sum-mer and winter both because of the pine trees that roofed the hollow in. But there was nothing peaceful about it today. Something was in the air, and the trees, irritated, were muttering among themselves. Even on a foot-thick cushion of pine needles, Nita's feet seemed to be making too much noise. She tried to walk softly and wished the trees wouldn't stare at her so.

Where the slope bottomed out she stopped, looking around her nervously, and that was when she saw him. The boy was holding a stick in one hand and staring intently at the ground underneath a huge shag-larch on one side of the grove. He was shorter than she was, and looked younger, and he also looked familiar somehow. Now who is that? she thought, feeling more nervous still. No one had ever been in one of her secret places when she came there. out the boy just kept frowning at the ground, as if it were a test paper and he was trying to scowl the right answer out of it. A very ordinary-looking kid, with straight black hair and a Hispanic look to his face, wearing a beat-up green windbreaker and jeans and sneakers, holding a willow wand of a type that Nita's book recommended for certain types of spelling.

He let out what looked like a breath of irritation and put his hands on his hips. "Cofones" he muttered, shaking his head — and halfway through the shake, he caught sight of Nita. He looked surprised and embarrassed for a moment, then his face steadied down to a simple worried look. There he stood regarding Nita, and she realized with a shock that he wasn't going to yell at her, or chase her, or call her names, or run away himself. He was going to let her explain herself, Nita was amazed. It didn't seem quite normal. "Hi," she said.

The boy looked at her uncertainly, as if trying to place her. "Hi."

Nita wasn't sure quite where to begin. But the marks on the ground, and the willow wand, seemed to confirm that a power spell was in progress. "Uh," she said, "I, uh, I don't see the oak leaves. Or the string,"

The boy's dark eyes widened. "So that's how you got through!" "Through what?"

"I put a binding spell around the edges of this place," he said. "I've tried this spell once or twice before, but people kept showing up just as I was getting busy, and I couldn't finish."

Nita suddenly recognized him, "You're the one they were calling crazy last week."

The boy's eyes narrowed again. He looked annoyed. "Uh, yeah. A couple of the eighth graders found me last Monday. They were shooting up the woods with BB guns, and there I was working.

And they couldn't figure out what I was doing, so at lunch the next day they said—"