Diane Duane - The Wizard's Dilemma

In the darkness, Kit stood very still. He had never seen or experienced a blackness so profound; and with it came a bizarre, anechoic silence in which not even his ears rang.

"Ponch?" he said.

Or tried to say. No sound came out. Kit tried to speak again, tried to shout...and heard nothing, felt nothing. It was the kind of effect you might expect from being in a vacuum. But he knew that feeling, having been there once or twice. This was different, and creepier by far.

Well, hang on, Kit thought. Don't panic. Nothing bad has happened yet.

But that doesn't mean that it's not going to. Come to think of it, am I even breathing? Kit couldn't feel the rise of his chest, couldn't feel or hear a pulse. What happens if there's nothing to breathe here? What happens if I suffocate?

True, he didn't feel short of breath. Yet, said the back of his mind. Kit tried to swallow, and couldn't feel it happening. Slowly, old fears were creeping up his spine, making his neck hairs stand on end in their wake. It was a long time since Kit had gotten over being afraid of the dark... but no dark he'd had to cope with as a little kid had ever been as dark as this. And those darknesses had been scary because of the possibility that there was something hiding in them. This one was frightening, and getting more so by the minute, because of the sheer certainty that there was nothing in it. I've had enough of this. Which way is out?!

... But no! Kit thought then. I'm not leaving without my dog. I'm not leaving Ponch here and running away!

But how do you run away when you can't move? And how do you find something when you can't go after it? The horror of being trapped here, wherever here was, rose in him. I'm not going to put up with this, Kit thought. I'm not going to just stand here and be terrified! He tried to strain every muscle, tried to strain even one, and couldn't move any of them. It was as if his body suddenly belonged to someone else.

So / can't move. But I can still think—

There was a spell Kit knew as well as his transit spells, so well that he didn't even bother keeping it in compacted form anymore; he could say it in one breath. It was the spell he used to make a small light for reading under the covers at night. Kit could see the spell in his mind, fifty-nine characters in the Speech, twenty-one syllables. Kit pronounced them clearly in his mind, said the last word that tied the knot in the spell, and turned it loose—

Light. Just a single source of light, pale and silvery. There was no way to tell for sure if it was coming from near or far; it looked small, like a streetlight seen from blocks away. Just seeing it relieved Kit tremendously. It was the first change he had managed to make in this environment. And if he could do that, he could do something else. Just take a moment and think what to do—

Kit realized he was gasping for breath. He also realized that he was able to feel himself gasping. He tried to move his arms, but it was like trying to swim in taffy. As he concentrated on that light, he thought he saw a change in it. The light's moving— But that was wrong. Something dark was moving in front of it. Oh no, what's that—

Suddenly he could move his hand a little. He reached toward his pocket to fish out something he could use as a weapon if he had to protect himself. It was taking too long. The dark thing was blocking the light, getting closer. Kit strained as hard as he could to get his hand into his pocket, but there was no time, and the dark object got closer, flailing its way toward him. Kit felt around in his mind for one other spell he'd used occasionally when he had to. Not one that he liked to use, but when it came to the choice between surviving and going down without a fight...

The dark shape blotted out the light, leaving it visible only as a faint halo around whatever was coming. Kit said the first half of the spell in his mind and then waited. He wasn't going to use it unless he absolutely had to, for killing was not something a wizard did unless there was no choice.

The dark shape was closer. Kit felt the spell lying ready in his mind, turning and burning and wanting to get out and do what it had been built for. But not yet, Kit thought, setting his teeth. Not just yet. I want to see—

The black shape was right in front of him now. It launched itself at him. Kit got ready to think the last word of the spell—

—and the dark thing hit him chest high, and started washing his face as it knocked him over backward.

The two of them came down hard together on blacktop. Suddenly everything seemed bright as day in the single light of the streetlight down at the end of the side street. There Kit lay in the road, with a bump that was going to be about the size of a phoenix's egg starting to form on the back of his head, and on top of him Ponch washed his face frantically, saying, "Did you see it? Did you see what I found? Did you? Did you?"

Kit didn't do anything at first but grab his dog and hug him, thinking, Oh, God, I almost blew him up; thank you for not letting me blow him up! Then he sat up, looking around him, and pushed Ponch off with difficulty. "Uh, yeah," he said, "I think so... But why are you all wet?"

"It was wet there."

"Not where / was," Kit said. "But am I glad you came along when you did. Come on, let's get out of the street before someone sees us." Fortunately this was a quiet part of town, without much traffic in the evening, and the two of them had the additional protection that most people didn't recognize wizardry even when it happened right in front of them. Any onlooker would most likely just have seen a kid and his dog suddenly fall over in the middle of the street, where they'd probably been playing, unseen, a moment before.

Kit got up and brushed himself off, feeling weird to be able to move. "Home now?" said Ponch, bouncing around him.

"You better believe it," Kit said, and they started to walk back down the street. "I'm hungry!"

"We'll see about something for you when we get in." "Dog biscuits!" Ponch barked, and raced down the street. Kit went after him. When he came in the back door, his father was just taking the spaghetti pot over to the sink to drain it. "Perfect timing," he said.

Kit looked in astonishment at the beat-up kitchen wall clock. It was only fifteen minutes since he'd left. His father looked at him strangely. "Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Kit shook his head. "Uh...I'm okay. I'll explain later. Leave mine in the pot for me for a few minutes, will you, Pop?" He headed into the living room and sat down by the phone.

That was when the shakes hit him. He just sat there and let it happen—not that he had much choice—and meanwhile enjoyed the wonderful normality of the living room: the slightly tacky lamps his mother refused to get rid of, the fact that the rug needed to be vacuumed. At least there was a rug, and a floor it was nailed to—not that terrifying empty nothingness under his feet. Finally Kit composed himself enough to pick up the phone and dial a local number.

After a few rings someone picked up. A voice said, "Tom Swale." "Tom, it's Kit."

"Hey there, fella, long time no hear. What's up?"

"Tom—" Kit paused, not exactly sure how to start this. "I need to ask you something about your dogs." "Oh no," Tom said, sounding concerned. "What have they done now?"

"Nothing," Kit said. "And I want to know how they do it."

There was a pause. "Can we start this conversation again?" Tom said. "Because you lost me somewhere. Like at the beginning."

"Uh, right. Annie and Monty—" "You're saying they didn't do anything?" "Not that I know of."

"Okay. This conversation now makes sense to Sherlock Holmes, if no one else. Keep working on me, though."

Kit laughed. "Okay. Tom, your dogs are always turning up in your backyard with... you know. Weird things."