Duane, Diane - Wizards - Young Wizards 01 - So You Want To Be A Wizard

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Prologue

Part of the problem, Nita thought to herself as she tore desperately down Rose Avenue, is that

I can't keep my mouth shut.

She had been running for five minutes now, hopping fences, sliding side-ways through

hedges, but she was losing her wind. Some ways behind her she could hear Joanne and

Glenda and the rest of them pounding along in pursuit, threatening to replace her latest, now-

fading black eye. Well, Joanne would come up to her with that new bike, all chrome and

silver and gearshift levers and speedometer/odometer and toeclips and waterbottle, and ask

what she thought of it. So Nita had told her. Actually, she had told Joanne what she thought of

her. The bike was all right. In fact, it had been almost exactly the one that Nita had wanted so

much for her last birthday—the birthday when she got nothing but clothes.

Life can be really rotten sometimes, Nita thought. She wasn't really so irritated about that at

the moment, however. Running away from a beating was taking up most of her attention.

"Callahan, " came a yell from behind her, "I'm gonna pound you up and mail you home in

bottles!"

I wonder how many bottles it'll take, Nita thought, without much humor. She couldn't afford

to laugh. With their bikes, they'd catch up to her pretty quickly. And then...

She tried not to think of the scene there would be later at home—her

father raising hands and eyes to the ceiling, wondering loudly enough for the

whole house to hear, "Why didn't you hit them back?"; her sister making

belligerent noises over her new battlescars; her mother shaking her head,

looking away silently, because she understood. It was her sad look that would

Nita more than the bruises and scrapes and swollen face would. Her

mom would shake her head, and clean the hurts up, and sigh....

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Crud! Nita thought. The breath was coming hard to her now. She was going to have to try to hide,

to wait them out. But where? Most of the people around here didn't want kids running through

their yards. There was Old Crazy Swale's house with its big landscaped yard, but the rumors

among the neighborhood kids said that weird things happened in there. Nita herself had noticed

that the guy didn't go to work like normal people. Better to get beat up again than go in there. But

where can I hide?

She kept on running down Rose Avenue, and the answer presented itself to her: a little brown-

brick building with windows warmly alight—refuge, safety, sanctuary. The library. It's open, it's

open, I forgot it was open late on Saturday! Oh, thank Heaven! The sight of it gave Nita a new

burst of energy. She cut across its tidy lawn, loped up the walk, took the five stairs to the porch in

two jumps, bumped open the front door and closed it behind her, a little too loudly.

The library had been a private home once, and it hadn't lost the look of one despite the crowding of

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all its rooms with bookshelves. The walls were paneled in mahogany and oak, and the place

smelled warm and brown and booky. At the thump of the door Mrs. Lesser, the weekend librarian,

glanced up from her desk, about to say something sharp. Then she saw who was standing there and

how hard she was breathing. Mrs. Lesser frowned at Nita and then grinned. She didn't miss much.

"There's no one downstairs, " she said, nodding at the door that led to the children's library in the

single big basement room. "Keep quiet and I'll get rid of them. "

"Thanks, " Nita said, and went thumping down the cement stairs. As she reached the bottom, she

heard the bump and squeak of the front door open-ing again.

Nita paused to try to hear voices and found that she couldn't. Doubting that her pursuers could hear

her either, she walked on into the children's library, smiling slightly at the books and the bright

posters.

She still loved the place. She loved any library, big or little; there was something about all that

knowledge, all those facts waiting patiently to be found that never failed to give her a shiver.

When friends couldn't be found, the books were always waiting with something new to tell. Life

that was getting too much the same could be shaken up in a few minutes by the picture in a book

of some ancient temple newly discovered deep in a rainforest, a fuzzy photo of Uranus with its up-

and-down rings, or a prismed picture taken through the faceted eye of a bee.

And though she would rather have died than admit it—no respectable thirteen-year-old ever set

foot down there—she still loved the children's li-brary too. Nita had gone through every book in

the place when she was younger, reading everything in sight—fiction and nonfiction alike, fairy

tales,

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD

science books, horse stories, dog stories, music books, art books, even the encyclopedias.

(Bookworm, ) she heard the old jeering voices go in her head, (foureyes, smartass, hide-in-the-

house-and-read. Walking encyclopedia. Think you're so hot. ) "No, " she remembered herself

answering once, "I just like to find things out!" And she sighed, feeling rueful. That time she had

found out about being punched in the stomach.

She strolled between shelves, looking at titles, smiling as she met old friends, books she had read

three times or five times or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be enough to summon

up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smoky London

day-light of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and

new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never

conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like

sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked

one an-other....

I used to think the world would be like that when I got older. Wonderful all the time, exciting,

happy. Instead of the way it is—

Something stopped Nita's hand as it ran along the bookshelf. She looked and found that one of the

books, a little library-bound volume in shiny red buckram, had a loose thread at the top of its

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spine, on which her finger had caught. She pulled the finger free, glanced at the title. It was one of

those "So You Want to Be a... "books, a series on careers. So You Want to Be a Pilot there had

been, and So You Want to Be a Scientist... a Nurse... a Writer...

But this one said So You Want to Be a Wizard.

A what?

Nita pulled the book off the shelf, surprised not so much by the title as by the fact that she'd never

seen it before. She thought she knew the whole stock of the children's library. Yet this wasn't a

new book. It had plainly been there for some time—the pages had that yellow look about their

edges, the color of aging, and the top of the book was dusty, so you want to be a wizard.

hearnssen, the spine said: that was the author's name. Phoenix Press, the publisher. And then in

white ink, in Mrs. Lesser's tidy handwrit-ing, 793. 4: the Dewey Decimal number.

This has to be a joke, Nita said to herself. But the book looked exactly like all the others in the

series. She opened it carefully, so as not to crack the binding, and turned the first few pages to the

table of contents. Normally Nita was a fast reader and would quickly have finished a page with

only a few lines on it; but what she found on that contents page slowed her down a great deal.

"Preliminary Determinations: A Question of Aptitude. " "Wizardly Pre-

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occupations and Predilections. " "Basic Equipment and Milieus. " "Introduction to Spells,

Bindings and Geasa. " "Familiars and Helpmeets: Advice to the Initiate. " "Psychotropic Spelling.

Psychowhat? Nita turned to the page on which that chapter began, looking at the boldface

paragraph beneath its title.

WARNING

Spells of power sufficient to make temporary changes in the human mind are always subject to

sudden and unpredictable backlash on the user. The practitioner is cautioned to make sure that

his/her motives are benev-olent before attempting spelling aimed at...

I don't believe this, Nita thought. She shut the book and stood there holding it in her hand,

confused, amazed, suspicious—and delighted. If it was a joke, it was a great one. If it wasn't—

No, don't be silly.

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But if it isn 't—

People were clumping around upstairs, but Nita hardly heard them. She sat down at one of the low

tables and started reading the book in earnest.

The first couple of pages were a foreword.

Wizardry is one of the most ancient and misunderstood of arts. Its public image for centuries has

been one of a mysterious pursuit, practiced in occult surroundings, and usually used at the peril of

one's soul. The modern wizard, who works with tools more advanced than bat's blood and beings

more complex than medieval demons, knows how far from the truth that image is. Wizardry,

though exciting and interesting, is not a glamorous business, especially these days, when a wizard

must work quietly so as not to attract undue attention.

For those willing to assume the Art's responsibilities and do the work, though, wizardry has many

rewards. The sight of a formerly twisted grow-ing thing now growing straight, of a snarled

motivation untangled, the satisfaction of hearing what a plant is thinking or a dog is saying, of

talking to a stone or a star, is thought by most to be well worth the labor.

Not everyone is suited to be a wizard. Those without enough of the necessary personality traits

will never see this manual for what it is. That you have found it at all says a great deal for your

potential.

The reader is invited to examine the next few chapters and determine his/her wizardly potential in

detail—to become familiar with the scope of the Art—and finally to decide whether to become a

wizard.

Good luck!

WANT TO BE A WIZARD

It's a joke, Nita thought. Really. And to her own amazement, she wouldn't herself—she was too

fascinated. She turned to the next chapter.

PRELIMINARY DETERMINATIONS

An aptitude for wizardry requires more than just the desire to practice the art. There are

certain inborn tendencies, and some acquired ones, that enable a person to become a wizard.

This chapter will list some of the better documented of wizardly characteristics. Please bear in

mind that it isn't necessary to possess all the qualities listed, or even most of them. Some of

the greatest wizards have been lacking in the qualities possessed by almost all others and have

still achieved startling competence levels....

Slowly at first, then more eagerly, Nita began working her way through the assessment

chapter, pausing only to get a pencil and scrap paper from the checkout desk, so that she could

make notes on her aptitude. She was brought up short by the footnote to one page—

Where ratings are not assigned, as in rural areas, the area of greatest population density will

usually produce the most wizards, due to the thinning of worldwalls with increased population

concentration...

Nita stopped reading, amazed. "Thinning of worldwalls"—were they saying that there are other

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worlds, other dimensions, and that things could get through? Things, or people?

She sat there and wondered. All the old fairy tales about people falling down wells into magical

countries, or slipping backward in time, or forward into it—did this mean that such things could

actually happen? If you could actually go into other worlds, other places, and come back again...

Aww—who would believe anybody who came back and told a story like that? Even if they took

pictures?

But who cares! she answered herself fiercely. If only it could be true....

She turned her attention back to the book and went on reading, though skeptically— the whole

thing still felt like a game. But abruptly it stopped being a game, with one paragraph:

Wizards love words. Most of them read a great deal, and indeed one strong sign of a potential

wizard is the inability to get to sleep without reading something first. But their love for and

fluency with words is what makes wizards a force to be reckoned with. Their ability to convince a

piece of the world— a tree, say, or a stone — that it's not what it thinks it is, that it's something

else, is the very heart of wizardry. Words skillfully used,

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the persuasive voice, the persuading mind, are the wizard's most basic tools. With them a

wizard can stop a tidal wave, talk a tree out of growing or into it — freeze fire, burn rain —

even slow down the death of the Universe.

That last, of course, is the reason there are wizards. See the next chap-

ter.

Nita stopped short. The universe was running down, all the energy in it was slowly being used

up; she knew that from astronomy. "Entropy, " the process was called. But she'd never heard

anyone talk about slowing it down before.

She shook her head in amazement and went on to the "correlation" sec-tion at the end of that

chapter, where all the factors involved in the makeup of a potential wizard were listed. Nita

found that she had a lot of them — enough to be a wizard, if she wanted to.

In rising excitement she turned to the next chapter. "Theory and Implica-tions of Wizardry, "

its heading said. "History, Philosophy, and the Wizards' Oath. "

Fifty or sixty eons ago, when life brought itself about, it also brought about to accompany it

many Powers and Potentialities to manage the business of creation. One of the greatest of

these Powers held aloof for a long time, watching its companions work, not wishing to enter

into Cre-ation until it could contribute something unlike anything the other Powers had made,

something completely new and original. Finally the Lone Power found what it was looking

for. Others had invented planets, light, gravity, space. The Lone Power invented death, and

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bound it irrevocably into the worlds. Shortly thereafter the other Powers joined forces and cast

the Lone One out.

Many versions of this story are related among the many worlds, assigning blame or praise to

one party or another. However, none of the stories change the fact that entropy and its

symptom, death, are here now. To attempt to halt or remove them is as futile as attempting to

ignore them.

Therefore there are wizards — to handle them.

A wizard's business is to conserve energy — to keep it from being wasted. On the simplest

level this includes such unmagical-looking actions as paying one's bills on time, turning off

the lights when you go out, and support-ing the people around you in getting their lives to

work. It also includes a great deal more.

Because wizardly people tend to be good with language, they can also become skillful with

the Speech, the magical tongue in which objects and

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD 17

living creatures can be described with more accuracy than in any human language. And what

can be so accurately described can also be preserved—

freed to become yet greater. A wizard can cause an inanimate object or

animate creature to grow, or stop growing—to be what it is, or something

else. a wizard, using the Speech, can cause death to slow down, or go

somewhere else and come back later—just as the Lone Power caused it to

come about in the first place. Creation, preservation, destruction, transformation--all are a

matter of causing the fabric of being to do what you

want it to. And the Speech is the key.

Nita stopped to think this over for a moment. It sounds like, if you know what something is,

truly know, you don't have any trouble working with it. Like my telescope—if it acts up, I

know every piece of it, and it only takes a second to get it working again. To have that kind of

control over—over everything—live things, the world, even... She took a deep breath and

looked back at the book, beginning to get an idea of what kind of power was implied there.

The power conferred by use of the Speech has, of course, one insur-mountable limitation: the

existence of death itself. As one renowned Se-nior Wizard has remarked, "Entropy has us

outnumbered. " No matter how much preserving we do, the Universe will eventually die. But

it will last longer because of our efforts—and since no one knows for sure whether another

Universe will be born from the ashes of this one, the effort seems worthwhile.

No one should take the Wizards' Oath who is not committed to making wizardry a lifelong

pursuit. The energy invested in a beginning wizard is too precious to be thrown away. Yet

there are no penalties for withdrawal from the Art, except the knowledge that the Universe

will die a little faster because of energy lost. On the other hand, there are no prizes for the

service of Life—except life itself. The wizard gets the delight of working in a specialized

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area—magic—and gets a good look at the foundations of the Universe, the way things really

work. It should be stated here that there are people who consider the latter more of a curse

than a blessing. Such wizards usually lose their art. Magic does not live in the unwilling soul.

Should you decide to go ahead and take the Oath, be warned that an ordeal of sorts will

follow, a test of aptitude. If you pass, wizardry will ensue....

Yeah? Nita thought. And what if you don't pass?

"Nita?" Mrs. Lesser's voice came floating down the stairs, and a moment

18 SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WIZARD

later she herself appeared, a large brunette lady with kind eyes and a look of eternal concern.

"You still alive?"

"I was reading. "

"So what else is new? They're gone. "

"Thanks, Mrs. L. "

"What was all that about, anyway?"

"Oh... Joanne was looking to pick a fight again. "

Mrs. Lesser raised an eyebrow at Nita, and Nita smiled back at her shame-facedly. She didn't

miss much.

"Well, I might have helped her a little. "

"I guess it's hard, " Mrs. Lesser said. "I doubt I could be nice all the time, myself, if I had that

lot on my back. That the only one you want today, or should I just have the nonfiction section

boxed and sent over to your house?"

"No, this is enough, " Nita said. "If my father sees too many books he'll just make me bring

them back. "

Mrs. Lesser sighed. "Reading one book is like eating one potato chip, " she said. "So you'll be

tack Monday. There's more where that came from. I'll check it out for you. "

Nita felt in her pockets hurriedly. "Oh, crud. Mrs. L., I don't have my card. " "So you'll bring

it back Monday, " she said, handing her back the book as

they reached the landing, "and I'll stamp it then. I trust you. "

"Thanks, " Nita said. "Don't mention it. Be careful going home, " Mrs. Lesser said, "and have

a nice read. "

"I will. " Nita went out and stood on the doorstep, looking around in the deeping gloom.

Dinnertime was getting close, and the wind was getting cold, with a smell of rain to it. The

book in her hand seemed to prickle a little, as if it were impatient to be read.

She started jogging toward home, taking a circuitous route—up Washington from Rose

Avenue, then through town along Nassau Road and down East Clinton, a path meant to

confound pursuit. She didn't expect that they would be waiting for her only a block away from

her house, where there were no alternate routes to take. And when they were through with her,

the six of them, one of Nita's eyes was blackened and the knee Joanne had so carfully

stomped on felt swollen with liquid fire. Nita just lay there for a long while, on the spot where

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they left her, behind

the O'Donnells' hedge; the O'Donnells were out of town. There she lay, and cried, as she

would not in front of Joanne and the rest, as she would not until she was safely in bed and out

of her family's earshot. Whether she provoked these situations or not, they kept happening,

and there was nothing she could

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD 19

do about them. Joanne and her hangers-on had found out that Nita didn't like to fight,

wouldn't try until her rage broke loose—and then it was too late, she was too hurt to fight

well, all her self-defense lessons went out of her head with the pain. And they knew it, and at

least once a week found a way to sucker her into a fight—or, if that failed, they would simply

ambush her. All right, she had purposely baited Joanne today, but there'd been a fight coming

anyway, and she had chosen to start it rather than wait, getting angrier and angrier, while they

baited her. But this would keep happening, again and again, and there was nothing she could

do about it. Oh, I wish we could move. I wish Dad would say something to Joanne's

father—no, that would just make it worse. If only something could just happen to make it

stop!

Underneath her, where it had fallen, the book dug into Nita's sore ribs. The memory of what

she had been reading flooded back through her pain and was followed by a wash of wild

surmise. If there are spells to keep things from dying, then I bet there are spells to keep people

from hurting you....

Then Nita scowled at herself in contempt for actually believing for a moment what couldn't

possibly be more than an elaborate joke. She put aside thoughts of the book and slowly got

up, brushing herself off and discovering some new bruises. She also discovered something

else. Her favorite pen was gone. Her space pen, a present from her Uncle Joel, the pen that

could write on butter or glass or upside down, her pen with which she had never failed a test,

even in math. She patted herself all over, checked the ground, searched in pockets where she

knew the pen couldn't be. No use; it was gone. Or taken, rather—for it had been securely

clipped to her front jacket pocket when Joanne and her group jumped her. It must have fallen

out, and one of them picked it up.

"Aaaaaagh!" Nita moaned, feeling bitter enough to start crying again. But she was all cried

out, and she ached too much, and it was a waste. She stepped around the hedge and limped the

little distance home.

Her house was pretty much like any other on the block, a white frame house with fake

shutters; but where other houses had their lawns, Nita's had a beautifully landscaped garden.

Ivy carpeted the ground, and the flowerbeds against the house had something blooming in

every season except the dead of winter. Nita trudged up the driveway without bothering to

smell any of the spring flowers, went up the stairs to the back door, pushed it open, and

walked into the kitchen as nonchalantly as she could.

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Her mother was elsewhere, but the delicious smells of her cooking filled the place; veal

cutlets tonight. Nita peered into the oven, saw potatoes baking, lifted a pot lid and found corn-

on-the-cob in the steamer.

Her father looked up from the newspaper he was reading at the dining-room table. He was a

big, blunt, good-looking man, with startling silver hair and large capable hands—"an artist's

hands!" he would chuckle as he pieced

20 SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WIZARD

together a flower arrangement. He owned the smaller of the town's two flower shops, and he loved

his work dearly. He had done all the landscaping around the house in his spare time, and around

several neighbors' houses too, refusing to take anything in return but the satisfaction of being up to

his elbows in a flowerbed. Whatever he touched grew. "I have an understanding with the plants, "

he would say, and it certainly seemed that way. It was people he sometimes had trouble

understanding, and particularly his eldest daughter,

"My Lord, Nita!" her father exclaimed, putting the paper down flat on the table. His voice was

shocked. "What happened?"

As if you don't know! Nita thought. She could clearly see the expressions going across her father's

face. MiGod, they said, she's done it again! why doesn't she fight back? What's wrong with her?

He would get around to asking that question at one point or another, and Nita would try to explain

it again, and as usual her father would try to understand and would fail. Nita turned away and

opened the refrigerator door, peering at nothing in particu-lar, so that her father wouldn't see the

grimace of impatience and irritation on her face. She was tired of the whole ritual, but she had to

put up with it. It was as inevitable as being beaten up.

"I was in a fight, " she said, the second verse of the ritual, the second line of the scene. Tiredly she

closed the refrigerator door, put the book down on the counter beside the stove, and peeled off her

jacket, examining it for rips and ground-in dirt and blood.

"So how many of them did you take out?" her father said, turning his eyes back to the newspaper.

His face still showed exasperation and puzzlement, and Nita sighed. He looks about as tired of this

as I am. But really, he knows the answers. "I'm not sure, " Nita said. "There were six of them. "

"Six!" Nita's mother came around the corner from the living room and into the bright

kitchen—danced in, actually. Just watching her made Nita smile sometimes, and it did now,

though changing expressions hurt. She had been a dancer before she married Dad, and the grace

with which she moved made her every action around the house seem polished, endlessly

rehearsed, lovely to look at. She glided with the laundry, floated while she cooked. "Loading the

odds a bit, weren't they?"

"Yeah. " Nita was hurting almost too much to feel like responding to the gentle humor. Her mother

caught the pain in her voice and stopped to touch Nita's face as she passed, assessing the damage

and conveying how she felt about it in one brief gesture, without saying anything that anyone else

but the two of them might hear.

"No sitting up for you tonight, kidlet, " her mother said. "Bed, and ice on that, before you swell up

like a balloon. "

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"What started it?" her dad asked from the dining room.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD 21

"Joanne Virella, " Nita said. "She has a new bike, and I didn't get as excited about it as she

thought I should. "

Nita's father looked up from the paper again, and this time there was discomfort in his face,

and regret. "Nita, " he said, "I couldn't afford it this month, really. I thought I was going to be

able to earlier, but I couldn't. I wish I could have. Next time for sure. "

Nita nodded. "It's okay, " she said, even though it wasn't really. She'd wanted that bike,

wanted it so badly—but Joanne's father owned the big five-and-dime on Nassau Road and

could afford three-hundred-dollar bikes for his children at the drop of a birthday. Nita's

father's business was a lot smaller and was prone to what he called (in front of most people)

"cash-flow prob-lems" or (in front of his family) "being broke most of the time. "

But what does Joanne care about cash flow, or any of the rest of it? I wanted that bike!

"Here, dreamer, " her mother said, tapping her on the shoulder and break-ing her thought. She

handed Nita an icepack and turned back toward the stove. "Go lie down or you'll swell worse.

I'll bring you something in a while. "

"Shouldn't she stay sitting up?" Nita's father said. "Seems as if the fluid would drain better or

something. "

"You didn't get beat up enough when you were younger, Harry, " her mother said. "If she

doesn't lie down, she'll blow up like a basketball. Scoot, Nita. "

She scooted, around the corner into the dining room, around the second corner into the living

room, and straight into her little sister, bumping loose one of the textbooks she was carrying

and scattering half her armload of pink plastic curlers. Nita's father raised his eyebrows and

turned his attention back to his paper as Nita bent to help pick things up again. Her sister, bent

down beside her, didn't take long to figure out what had happened.

"Virella again, huh?" she said. Dairine was eleven years old, redheaded as her mother, gray-

eyed as Nita, and precocious; she was taking tenth-grade English courses and breezing

through them, and Nita was teaching her some algebra on the side. Dairine had her father's

square-boned build and her mother's grace, and a perpetual, cocky grin. She was a great sister,

as far as Nita was concerned, even if she was a little too smart for her own good.

"Yeah, " Nita said. "Look out, kid, I've gotta go lie down. "

"Don't call me kid. You want me to beat up Virella for you?"

"Be my guest, " Nita said. She went on through the house, back to her room. Bumping the

door open, she fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on. The familiar maps and pictures

looked down at her—the National Geographic map of the Moon and some enlarged Voyager

photos of Jupiter and Saturn and their moons.

22 SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WIZARD

Nita eased herself down onto the bottom bunk bed, groaning softly—the deep bruises were

beginning to bother her now. Lord, she thought, what did I say? If Dari does beat Joanne up, I'll

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PrologueProloguePartoftheproblem,Nitathoughttoherselfasshetoredesperatelydow\nRoseAvenue,isthatIcan'tkeepmymouthshut.Shehadbeenrunningforfiveminutesnow,hoppingfences,slidingside\waysthroughhedges,butshewaslosingherwind.Somewaysbehindhershecouldhear\JoanneandGlendaandtherestofthempoundingalonginpurs...

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Duane, Diane - Wizards - Young Wizards 01 - So You Want To Be A Wizard

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