The Misadventures of the Magician's Dog (15 page)

“You're here to make me human again?” The magician's eyebrows shot up.

“Yes.”

“Because . . . ? Hmm. Let me think. Because you're just a nice kid who spends his time rescuing his fellow magicians in their moments of need? That's it, right?”

Peter thought frantically. When he had decided to touch the rock, he had imagined bargaining with the magician, explaining that he would make the magician human again only if the magician would bring his father back. It had seemed like a logical plan at the time, but here, under the magician's cold gaze, Peter felt less sure. Still, he had to try.

“My father . . . He's at war. I don't have enough power to bring him home.” Peter stumbled over his words. “I thought maybe you—”

“That's what I thought,” said the magician. “You're here to steal my magic. I may be a rock at the moment, but I'm not going to allow that.”

Remembering that the magician was a rock gave Peter a trickle of courage. “I'm not here to steal your magic. I'm here to help you. You're powerless right now, and you need me if you want to change back.”

The magician snarled in fury, the sound echoing off the cave's walls until Peter had to cover his ears and drop to his knees. “I'm powerless, huh? Just see what I can do.” The magician smiled, and electricity began to gather in Peter's head, just as it had when he had first touched the rock: he had the same sense of enormous power rushing through his body, his brain nothing but a pain-filled conduit. In the distance, he could hear the muffled sounds of The Dog barking, his sisters screaming. And another sound . . . it was his own voice, shrieking.

And then the power shot out of him.

“What . . . what did you do?” Peter asked as soon as he could speak again.

“Woke up the rest of the dinosaurs,” the magician said smugly.

“I don't understand,” said Peter.

“You're not supposed to understand,” said the magician. “Instead of trying, why don't you just listen to your little sisters cry for help while a hundred or more predators attack them? Your cage was very clever. But the Dromaeosauruses, for instance, are small enough to fit between the bars.”

A moment before, Peter had been able to hear his sisters only when he concentrated fully on listening, and
even then the sounds he'd heard had been muffled. Now, though, their voices filled the cave, as if they were standing next to him.

“Do something, Dog!” Celia cried. “Oh, please, can't you do something?”

The Dog grunted. “I'm trying. There's just so many! A net over the cage . . . that might—but—”

Izzy screamed, “It's over your head, Celia!”

“Use the stick!” The Dog shouted. “Izzy, get behind me!”

Peter couldn't bear it. He launched himself against the cave's walls, pounding so hard his knuckles began to bleed.

The magician laughed.

Peter turned, his fists still raised.

“That won't do,” said the magician. “No violence in my rock.” Like that, Peter's body froze. The magician's eyes narrowed, and the voices of Peter's sisters disappeared. “So do you still think I'm powerless? How do you feel now, paralyzed and at my mercy? Would you like to see what else I can do?”

Though Peter didn't close his eyes, though he did nothing at all, everything changed. He was no longer in the cave. Instead, he was standing on a dusty road in a strange brown land, a road lined with dilapidated houses, most of which had broken windows. It was so hot that the air rippled. In front of Peter, a cluster of dark-haired men bent over something. Peter didn't remember deciding to move, yet he found himself walking toward them. He couldn't understand the words floating back to him;
not English
, he thought in the corner of his mind still capable of logic.

Then he heard the thrum of an approaching plane. And because in the dark hours of the night he had imagined this moment so many times, he knew what would happen next.

The men shifted, and a large rocket launcher became visible on the ground.
Run
, Peter told his legs, though he didn't know whether he meant to run toward the men, to try to stop them, or run away, so he wouldn't have to see what was about to occur. Either way, his legs didn't listen, just continued their calm walk forward, even as tears began to streak down his cheeks.

I'm about to watch my father die
, Peter thought. Because there was no question in his mind that his father was piloting the F-16 growing larger by the second on the horizon.

But why? Despite the men, the heat, the deafening roar of the airplane, Peter tried to shut out everything going on around him and instead replay what had happened since he had woken up in the cave. The magician had pretended to be his friend. He had wanted to race cars. He had awakened the dinosaurs to attack Peter's sisters. And now he was killing Peter's father. Why?

Based on the sound, the plane was almost directly above him. The men with the rocket were shouting now, their excitement and fear audible despite the harsh foreign words. Peter's feet stopped. That must mean he was perfectly positioned to witness his father's death.

Why? Because the magician wanted to distract Peter—to keep him from noticing something. Which must mean that there was something Peter could do to
end this; the magician must not be as all-powerful as he seemed.

The plane was overhead. The rocket boomed. There was a whistle like a dragon hissing, and flame streaked through the sky.

You can't find the right answers unless you ask the right questions
, Peter's father always said. How had the magician known about Peter's worst nightmare, which he was living through now? Why were all the details exactly the way Peter had imagined them when his fears took over in the night? For that matter, how did the magician know about Peter's sisters, about the cage? Why hadn't the magician changed himself back if he was capable of magic on this scale?

Peter could think of only one answer: because the magician was inside his mind, reading his thoughts and using his magic. Which meant that maybe, just maybe, none of what seemed to be happening now was real.

The explosion when the rocket hit F-16 was deafening. The echo of it was still in Peter's ears as pieces of the plane began to rain down on the road. Peter watched jagged hunks of metal fall through the azure sky; fear seemed to slow down time, so that to Peter's eyes, everything appeared to be drifting earthward. It all fell so slowly, Peter thought; it seemed as if a clever boy could run from spot to spot and catch each sliver of the wreckage. Through a mist of ashy snowflakes, a seat dropped almost wholly intact, its upholstery ablaze. And there. Wasn't that his father's helmet, tumbling through the smoky haze? In front of Peter, the men scattered, some
running into houses, others climbing into a faded blue pickup truck.

Ask the right questions
. What was the first thing Peter had done when he had awoken in the rock? He had opened his eyes, he thought, though something about that moment had felt wrong. So now he would open his eyes again.

Peter's eyelids felt heavy, as though they were battling his intention. Still, Peter forced them to work. Close, open. Close, open. At first the carnage in the desert was all he could see. Close, open. A plane's wing at an unnatural angle in the sand.
Concentrate. Concentrate harder
. Close, open. And then, a miracle. The inside of the cave, the magician staring at him, furious.

It was not enough, though. Close, open. Close, open.
Focus
, Peter told himself. His sisters' lives might depend upon it.

He tried one more time. Close, open. And this time, when he opened his eyes, he saw them: his own hands gripping the rock. As they had been this whole time, he now understood. He had never been in the rock; he had been standing here, in the magician's bedroom, while the magician used Peter's senses against him, stealing Peter's power and lodging himself like a parasite in Peter's mind. Next to Peter, The Dog was growling and Celia was yelling angrily. From every side came the high-pitched, bloodthirsty calls of dinosaurs. Peter's knees almost buckled as Izzy fastened herself around his legs, crying.

He ignored it all; waking himself from the magician's
dream was only half of what he must do. The magician had used Peter's mind, but didn't conduits flow both ways? Peter had felt the magician's power when he'd touched the rock before; it must be there now, literally at his fingertips. This was the knowledge the magician had been distracting him from.

There was no need to let his anger build this time.

Stop, dinosaurs!
Peter thought, and like that, magic flooded from the rock through his body, more magic than when the magician had awakened the Tyrannosaurus or the other predators, more magic than Peter had ever felt or imagined.

The power shot out of him, leaving what?
Pain
, Peter thought.
Grief
. Then emptiness. Peter watched his hands drop the rock; as it fell to the ground, he, too, fell, helpless to stop himself. But before he hit the dirt, Izzy's arms on his legs loosened, her crying abruptly ceasing. Celia cheered, and even The Dog let out a howl of triumph.
It must have worked
, Peter thought. He had stopped the dinosaurs, but he found it hard to care. The ground was cool and welcome against his face, and he was grateful for the blackness that swallowed him.

Peter was in the soup.

The soup was black and liquid and murky. It was neither hot nor cold; it was just soup, thick enough that even a strong boy couldn't swim through it. And a boy like Peter—well, he didn't stand a chance.

Occasionally, flickers of the outside world broke through. The pull of being dragged across a dirt floor. The discomfort of being slung across bony shoulders. And then, oddly, the cool of the desert wind rushing past his face. But these were flickers only, not enough to awaken Peter's interest.

The truth was, Peter
liked
the soup. It was quiet in the darkness, and peaceful, too, in its own way. No one asked anything of him; no one needed him to do, or be, anything. Most importantly, there were no roaring dinosaurs or terrified sisters in the soup. No magician with cruel eyes. No falling pieces of plane.

He thought he might stay in the soup forever.

A voice was talking. Peter's voice.

“Yeah, I threw up three times. I don't feel so good.”

A low murmur . . . could that really be his mother?

“Uh-huh. I think I'd better stay home today. I was awake all night. . . .”

More words, then cool lips brushing his forehead, the smell of citrus in his nose. The smell was enough to stir a flash of awareness in him; for a moment, he floated closer to the soup's surface. Emotion tugged at him. But he didn't want to feel, so he didn't.

His voice was speaking again. “Poor Izzy. And Celia, too, huh? I can't believe we all got sick at once. Sure, I'll keep an eye on them while you're gone. Don't worry, Mom—you go teach. We'll be okay without you.”

Then it was quiet again. With relief, Peter slipped downward once more.

Time passed.

“Peter . . . Peter . . . Please wake up, Peter! It's getting late. We need to talk to you. Peter!”

The voice was insistent, the frantic words coiling around and around Peter and dragging him upward.
Leave me alone!
he wanted to tell Celia, but you can't speak when you're in the soup. Inside his own head, he curled into a ball, humming softly, trying to drown out her voice.

“Peter? Please, Peter? When are you going to wake up?”

More darkness.

This time, it wasn't words that pulled him up. Something cold was on his knees. Something he couldn't ignore.
He knew that feeling, he thought.
Izzy
. Of course. Izzy's toes. She must be curled up next to him, her feet on his legs.

But Izzy didn't belong in the soup. And he couldn't be in the soup if Izzy was next to him.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

Light came flooding in. He blinked against the brightness, and what had been blotches of color resolved into familiar sights. The water stain on his bedroom ceiling, which he'd stared at as he'd gone to sleep for the past six months. The dark-blue flannel of his pajamas (had his sisters put them on him?). The top of Izzy's blond head. Although he could feel magic buzzing on every surface, jangling his nerves and demanding his attention, he told himself to ignore it. At least the room was silent. Maybe, he thought, he would be able to handle this.

And then suddenly Celia's face was inches from his own, her expression incredulous. “You're awake!” she shouted, her voice so loud after the quiet of the soup that Peter wanted to clap his hands over his ears. “It's about time! I didn't think you were ever going to open your eyes. Mom's going to be here in a couple of hours, and we've still got to figure out what to do about the rock, and Henry, and . . . and . . .” Out of nowhere, Celia burst into tears.