So You Want to Be a Wizard, New Millennium Edition (2 page)

Psycho
what? Nita turned to the page on which that chapter began, and stared 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 benevolent 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…

Oh, come on. Don’t be an idiot!

But if it isn’t…?

People were clumping around upstairs, but Nita hardly heard them. She sat down on 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 that of a mysterious pursuit practiced in occult surroundings, usually 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 any pop-culture demon, knows how far from the truth that image is. And wizardry, though exciting and interesting, is no glamorous business—especially in most of today’s cultures, where most wizards must work quietly so as not to attract undue attention.

However, for those willing to assume the Art’s responsibilities and do the work, wizardry has endless rewards. The sight of a formerly twisted growing thing now growing straight, 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 evaluate 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!

It’s a joke,
Nita thought.
Really.
And to her own amazement, she wouldn’t believe 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 predispose a person to become a wizard. This chapter will list some of the better-documented 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 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.
Wow, there’s so much of this to keep track of!
She got up to get a ballpoint pen and some scrap paper from the checkout desk, then softly pulled out one of the low chairs from the table she’d been sitting on, settled down onto it, and started making notes on her aptitude. A few minutes later Nita 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 populati on concentration….

Nita stopped reading, amazed. “Thinning of worldwalls?”
Are they saying that there really
are
other worlds, other dimensions, and that things, or even people, can get through into
this
world from them?

She sat there and wondered. It wasn’t just a question of all the TV shows that featured the idea these days. The concept was old. All those fairy tales about people falling down wells into magical countries, slipping backward in time or forward into it— Could it be that somehow the news that wizards did such things be the source of the stories?
And if you can actually go into other worlds, other places, and come back again….

Nita stared at the page and shook her head.
Oh, come on. If somebody said they’d come back from some other universe, even if they brought back what they said was proof
—
pictures or something
—
nobody’d ever believe them! You’d think right away that they’d faked it.

Yet the page just sat there with its bald black-and-white words, as if it had nothing to prove. And a sudden fierce feeling rose up inside Nita and said,
But who cares! If only it could be true!
Even with all the things that were wrong with it, a world with truths like
that
in it would be really worth living in….

She turned her attention back to the book and went on reading. Nita was doing her best to hang onto her skepticism, trying to treat this whole concept as if it was a joke or 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, 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, of course, being the reason there
are
wizards. See the next chapter.

Nita looked up from the page and stared unseeing at a Big Bird poster hanging between the bookshelves across from her. The universe was running down; all the energy in it was slowly being used up. She knew that from studying astronomy. The process was called
entropy.
But she’d never heard anyone talk about slowing it down before.

She shook her head in amazement and went on to the “correlation” section at the end of that chapter, where all the factors involved in the makeup of a potential wizard were listed. Nita worked her way down the checklist.
I’ve got a lot of these. More than half. If that means I could be a wizard…!

In slowly rising excitement, she turned to the next chapter. “Theory and Implications of Wizardry,” the 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 Creation 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 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. But 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 involves such unmagical-looking actions as paying one’s bills on time, turning off the lights when you go out, and supporting the people around you in getting their lives to work. It also involves a lot 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 living creatures can be described with more accuracy than in any human language. And what can be so accurately described can also be preserved—or 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 getting 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 doesn’t take long to get it working again. To have that kind of control over
live
things – over 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 insurmountable limitation: the existence of death itself. As one renowned Senior 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 can or 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 with the only true magic, and routinely getting a good look at the foundations of the Universe and the way things really work. It should be stated here that some people 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 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 later she came through the door. “You still alive?”

“I was reading.”

“So what else is new? Anyway, they’re gone.”

“Thanks, Mrs. L.”

“What was all that about?”

“Just Joanne picking another fight.”

Mrs. Lesser raised an eyebrow at Nita.

Nita smiled back at Mrs. Lesser shamefacedly. She
didn’t
miss much. “Okay… I might have helped her a little.”

“I guess it’s hard to resist,” Mrs. Lesser said. “I always had trouble just taking it when the mean kids went after me. Fighting back ought to be the right answer, but it can backfire… and trying to be nice and not descend to their level can be tough when a bunch like that is on your back.” She sighed, glanced down at the book Nita was holding. “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. “Never mind, you’ll be back Monday. There’s more where that came from. I’ll check it out for you.”

Nita felt in her pockets hurriedly. “Oh, crap. Mrs. L, I don’t have my card.”

“When you’re in on Monday, I’ll stamp it then,” she said, handing Nita back the book as they reached the landing. “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 deepening 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 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, no way to escape. And when they were through with her, the six of them, Nita’s non-black eye was blackened, and the knee Joanne had so carefully stomped on felt swollen with liquid fire.

Nita just lay there for a long while, on the spot where they left her, behind the O’Donnells’ hedge; the O’Donnells were out of town. There she lay and just cried into the ground, as she would have died rather than do in front of Joanne and the rest, as she wouldn’t do again until she was safely in bed and out of her family’s earshot… though it was more likely that by then she would have settled down to a more tear-free form of misery. Whether she provoked these situations or not, they just kept happening. Joanne and her hangers-on had found out that Nita really didn’t like to fight, wouldn’t try until her rage broke loose—and then it was too late to fight well: the pain of getting beat up pushed all the self-defense lessons out of her head. Joanne and her crew knew it, too, so at least once a week they found a way to sucker her into a fight. Or if that failed, they’d simply ambush her for fun. All right, she’d purposely baited Joanne today, but there’d been a fight coming anyway, and
she’d
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!