The Misadventures of the Magician's Dog (4 page)

“Can you just give me a minute?” Peter asked. “To think about this?”

“Sure,” said The Dog. “My ear itches, anyway.”

The Dog scratched his ear. And Peter thought. The Dog might be sarcastic, Peter realized, but he was also patient. He let Peter think as long as he wanted.

It was maybe five minutes later when Peter said, “Okay.”

“Yes?” drawled The Dog.

“I've been trying to think about this logically,” said Peter, taking a deep breath. “And I know for a fact that most dogs don't speak. And since you do, I'm pretty sure you're not an ordinary dog.”

“That seems like a reasonable conclusion,” said The Dog. Perhaps it was Peter's imagination, but The Dog's posture seemed a little less condescending than it had—or maybe it was just that one of his ears had turned inside out. “Tell me more.”

“I think you made me adopt you,” said Peter. “Something made me adopt you, anyway, and who else would but you? So that means you have some sort of powers, too. What I want to know is if you're really a dog. And whoever you are, what it is you want from me.”

“Well,” said The Dog, “now you're asking good questions, at least. In answer to your first question, yes, I am a dog. Really, truly a dog, born to a dog mother and destined to die a dog death.”

“So how did you . . . ?”

“How did I make you take me home? And how come I can talk? That's a little more complicated. I'm an ordinary dog, but I haven't had an ordinary life. Up until about a month ago”—The Dog paused for dramatic effect—“I was a magician's assistant.”

Peter laughed.

The Dog looked hurt. “Why are you laughing?”

Peter would have answered, but he couldn't stop laughing. It was strange, because he couldn't remember
the last time something had struck him as funny, and he wasn't even sure this
was
funny, but it made him laugh anyway. The idea of a talking dog was bad enough. The idea of a dog—of this scruffy, ugly dog!—as a magician's assistant was ridiculous.

The Dog watched him for a minute, then growled. “Fine. Don't believe me.” As Peter's laughter turned to hiccups, The Dog closed his eyes. And suddenly he wasn't there anymore.

Instead, in the middle of Peter's carpet stood an eight-foot-tall greenish-blue dragon, its wings folded tight against its back so it could fit in the room. A dragon with a wart on the side of its nose. A dragon that stretched its neck toward Peter, put its face right in front of Peter's face, and roared.

Peter screamed, but no sound came out.

He was catching his breath to scream again when the dragon disappeared, replaced once more by The Dog.

“Peter, did you hear that?” called Peter's mom from the living room.

“P . . . P . . . Plane,” Peter answered, but his voice was still too quiet for his mom to hear. He cleared his throat. “I think it was a plane,” he repeated. “Over the house. It roared.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

The Dog was lounging on the floor with a smug look on his long face.

“You were a magician's assistant?” Peter asked, his voice quivering only slightly.

“Uh-huh.”

“And you know how to do magic?”

“Uh-huh.”

Peter rubbed his eyes, then glanced above The Dog to the spot where a moment before the dragon had stood. His heart was racing so fast it felt as if his chest might explode. He ought to be terrified, and he was. But he felt something else, too, something that took him by surprise.

“How did you do it?” he asked.

“The magician taught me,” The Dog said.

Peter wasn't sure where the words he said next came from. They weren't the sort of words he would have imagined he would ever say. Maybe it was because this all felt so unreal. Maybe it was because today was his birthday, and if magic things were going to happen, weren't they more likely to happen on this day than on any other? “Can you teach me?”

The Dog's ears shot up. “How did you . . . That was actually what I was planning to do. Teach you magic, I mean. Seeing as it's your birthday and all.”

Peter felt a shiver climb his spine. He couldn't imagine why The Dog was offering such an amazing gift; all he knew was that he wanted The Dog to teach him quickly, before he chickened out or The Dog changed his mind. “You will? Really? When?”

“Why not now?” said The Dog, standing up and wagging his plumy tail.

Peter told his mother he was going to bed. This was The Dog's suggestion. He said learning magic might take a while, and it would be better if they were left alone.

“So early?” said Peter's mother, glancing at her watch. “It's not even nine yet.”

Peter faked a yawn. “I'm pretty tired.”

Peter's mother yawned as well, and her yawn wasn't faked. “I guess I'm tired, too. But I've got another twenty papers to grade tonight.” Peter's mother taught history at a nearby high school; she had been lucky to find a job, she told Peter, but he knew she missed her old school district in New Jersey, where his father's last base had been. They had spent two years there, the longest Peter had ever lived in one place in his life.

“Listen, Peter,” his mother said, pushing her reading glasses up so that they rested on top of her head. “I wanted to ask you—was it a good birthday?”

“It was great,” said Peter. “Thanks for the cake. And the new video game, too.”

“And the dog?” his mother asked. Thin lines of worry formed between her brows.

“Thank you especially for The Dog,” said Peter, and he sounded as though he meant it, even to his own ears. He still didn't quite believe that any of this was real, but if it was a dream, he didn't think he wanted to wake up—not yet, anyway. “I know he's . . . well, he's going to make life more interesting, anyway.”

“I'm glad,” Peter's mother said. She leaned forward to kiss Peter lightly on his forehead, and he smelled the citrus scent of her shampoo mixed with the sharp tang of the mint tea she'd been drinking. They were his favorite smells, the ones he'd been breathing all his life. “I know it was hard this year, having your dad gone and all. You were really brave about it.”

“I'm not brave,” said Peter. “I'm scared of more things than anyone.”

“You're brave in the ways that count,” said his mother. “And today—well, today you adopted a dog!”

“I guess,” said Peter.

“Sweet dreams,” said Peter's mother.

“Thanks,” said Peter, and he headed back to his room.

The next magic The Dog did was to make three pillows and a stuffed animal look like a sleeping Peter and a sleeping Dog. “Put them there,” The Dog told Peter. “That's right. Close to each other on the bed.”

“My mom would never believe I'd let you sleep near me,” Peter objected.

The Dog snorted. “Don't worry: when it comes time
to actually go to bed, I'll find a nice spot on the floor. But if the illusions are close together, I can do one spell instead of two, and illusions can be tricky to maintain if you're not next to them. And your mom will probably think it's cute that we're sleeping next to each other.”

“Was it an illusion when you changed into a dragon?”

The Dog gave the dog equivalent of a shrug. “Maybe. But I could turn into a real dragon if I wanted to.”

Peter wanted to ask more about this, but before he could, The Dog focused his attention once again on the bed. Peter wasn't sure exactly what he expected to happen next: incantations, tail waving, something grandiose. Instead, The Dog closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as if he were taking a poop.

Peter leaned over to check the carpet, just in case. When he looked back, The Dog was grinning wickedly. And there on the bed was another dog, and next to him another Peter.

“Wow,” said Peter. He could even see his own chest rising and falling as he breathed.

The Dog tilted his head at a cocky angle. “Nice work, huh? They won't last forever, though, so we'd better get going.”

Peter went to the window and very quietly pulled it open, then lifted out the screen. The Dog immediately leapt through, while Peter followed more slowly. He put the screen back so none of the neighbors would notice. Then he looked around for The Dog.

“Arrooo!”
echoed from down the street. And then again,
“Arrooo!”

Peter started off toward the sound.

It was a beautiful night. Peter did not in general like the weather in Arizona: the hot days of the previous summer had left him sticky and miserable, and even in September and October, it had been too warm for him to enjoy being outdoors. But nighttime was another story. Once the sun set, the desert cooled off, the darkness seemingly absorbing the heat. Tonight, Peter felt almost cold as he hurried down the sidewalk, and for a moment he wished he had changed out of his shorts and into jeans. The street was empty except for him, and through the windows of the passing houses, each identical to his own, he could see the blue flickers of televisions; it was easy enough to imagine his neighbors parked on their couches, remotes in their hands. They were inside, staring at screens, all of them the same as the others, and he was out here, in the night, following a magic dog. He sucked the cool night air into his lungs, astounded by his own daring.

“Arrooooo!”
The Dog howled again. He stalked out from the shadow of a cactus. “There you are. Finally. What took you so long?”

Peter didn't bother to answer. “Where are we going?”

“Someplace private,” The Dog said. He turned right at the end of the block, Peter following. A few houses later, he turned right again.

“Here,” he said finally, his beard bobbing in satisfaction.

“The golf course?” Peter asked in confusion.

“The golf course,” repeated The Dog.

The first thing The Dog did was pee on the green. His urine ran down the flag and into the hole.

“Gross,” said Peter.

“It's not gross,” said The Dog. “It's friendly. Like leaving a note when you visit a friend who's not home. It's letting them know I was here.”

“Pee is not the same as a note,” said Peter.

“It is if you're a dog,” said The Dog.

Peter sighed. “I still don't understand why we're here. Why the golf course?”

“It's private,” answered The Dog. “It's quiet. It has a lot of open space. And I've always wanted to pee in one of those holes. So are you ready to get started?”

Peter shivered. He didn't know whether or not it was from the cold. “Yes.”

“This is the thing about magic,” The Dog said. “It's really just a question of using your brain in a way that you don't normally use it. For example, if you weren't ever taught to read, then that would be a capability of your brain that you weren't using. Magic is kind of like that.”

“So anyone can do magic?” Peter asked. “I mean, if they're taught?”

“It's not quite as straightforward as that,” The Dog replied, raising his nose to sniff experimentally at the breeze. “My old master had this theory. You know how some people are able to do incredibly complex math in their heads, without calculators? Or to compose music from a very young age? Well, it's the same with magic, which comes naturally for some people and doesn't for others. The only difference is that most people are able to learn to perform math or music
to some degree, while only a few people—a very, very few people—are able to learn to do magic at all.”

This all sounded rather complicated to Peter. But he understood what The Dog was saying clearly enough that his mood immediately plummeted. “So you're one of the few who are able to use their brains to do magic?”

“Me? Of course not. I'm a dog, not a human. I can do magic because the magician wished it.”

“Oh.”

“Why so glum?” The Dog asked after a moment.

“If only a very, very few people can learn to do magic, what makes you think I can?”