The Misadventures of the Magician's Dog (12 page)

“Finally!” said a familiar voice.

Peter turned. There was Celia, wearing her nightshirt, with a book in one hand and a stick in the other.

“You brought my sisters?”

From under him, The Dog said, “Will you . . . 
mmph
 . . . get off me, you oaf?”

“I can't believe you brought my sisters!” yelled Peter, not budging. “You have to send them back!”

Izzy woke up. “Peter!” she said, smiling. Her smile faltered, though, as she noticed her unfamiliar surroundings. “Where are we?”

“Oh, no,” groaned Peter, not moving off The Dog. “Please send them back. Please. You don't know what you've done.”

“I can't send them back,” said The Dog smugly.

“What do you mean, you can't?”

“I mean I can't. I've done too much magic today. I told you that transporting people takes a lot of power. I can
only do it for short distances, and it uses pretty much every bit of power I have. If I tried to send them back right now, it wouldn't be safe.”

Peter buried his face in his hands.

“So you might as well get off me,” The Dog added.

“Besides,” said Celia, “I don't want to go back. Not until I know where I am, anyway.”

“What's going on?” asked Izzy. “I don't think I like this place.”

“I can't breathe,” said The Dog. “I'm going to have to bite you if you don't move.”

Peter moved. He didn't get off the floor, though. He felt weighed down by despair.

“Obviously you don't want us here,” said Celia, “but would you tell us what this place is anyway?”

“Yes, please,” said Izzy, looking a little more awake. Creeping closer to The Dog, she entwined her small fingers in the fur at the back of his neck. The Dog didn't seem to mind. In fact, after a moment, he slumped over so his head was in her lap.

“We're in the house where The Dog's master lives,” said Peter, trying to think how to quickly summarize the events of the last few hours. “He accidentally turned himself into a rock, and The Dog wants to change him back. The reason The Dog taught me magic is that he needs my help.”

Celia grinned. “Sounds exciting.”

“It might be exciting,” said Peter, “except for the fact that there's a good chance the magician will kill us if I manage to make him human.”

“Oh,” said Celia.

Izzy's hand on The Dog's neck froze. “You promised you wouldn't do more magic.”

And there it was: the moment Peter had most been dreading, the real reason, he realized, that he had felt so sick when The Dog had brought his sisters to the magician's house. There was no hiding the truth. “I lied to you,” he said, more roughly than he intended. “I've done magic more than once already, and I'm going to do it again. And it
is
changing me—making me angrier and meaner, and not just when I'm doing the magic, but all the time.”

“But you knew that was going to happen,” said Celia. “That's what The Dog told you. But you decided to do it anyway so that you could bring Dad home, right?”

“Is that why you did magic?” asked Izzy. “For Daddy?”

“The Dog says I'm not powerful enough to bring Dad back myself,” Peter said. “But he thinks the magician might help us if I make him human again. Or he might kill us; The Dog doesn't know. I thought it was worth the chance.”

For a minute, Izzy sat silently. Then she put her face down low, so her nose was right against The Dog's. “Isn't there another way Peter could do magic? So he doesn't have to be mean?”

The Dog gave a barking laugh. “I really, truly wish I knew how.”

“Oh, Izzy,” said Celia. “You're too little to understand. Peter has to protect Dad if he can.”

Peter felt a wave of gratitude toward Celia.

Izzy looked unhappy, but after a moment she nodded.

“Great! Now that that's settled,” said Celia, blowing her bangs out of her eyes, “let's get going! I want to see more of the house.”

“It's about time,” said The Dog. He gave a shake and stood up with great dignity, as though he had not spent the last five minutes being petted by a six-year-old. He walked to the door with Izzy and Celia following.

Peter came last. He should be happy, he thought: he had gotten Izzy to agree to let him do magic. That was what he wanted, right? But he didn't feel happy. They were still in the magician's house, after all, and their father wasn't even close to being home safely.

When they exited the concrete box that had been Peter's room, they found themselves in the long hallway once again. The Dog trotted in front, leading the way, with Celia following eagerly. Peter trailed behind, and after a minute Izzy did, too, slipping back to walk next to him. Peter wanted to grab her hand, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. They walked in silence, all four of them, down the empty hallway; each step Peter took required an effort of will.

And then, just as the quiet became more than Peter could bear, he noticed something and burst out laughing.

Izzy, Celia, and The Dog stopped immediately.

“What is it?” asked The Dog. “Is something wrong?”

Peter tried to answer, but he couldn't squeeze words past the laughter bubbling up in his chest.

“Are you okay, Peter?” asked Celia.

It was hopeless. “You're . . . you're holding
Harry Potter
!

Celia glanced down as if noticing the book in her hands for the first time. A flush climbed her cheeks.

“And . . . and a stick,” he choked out.

“I don't understand,” said Izzy. “What's so funny?”

Celia stood there, blushing and watching Peter laugh. Then slowly her shoulders started to shake. The corners of her mouth twisted up. And she, too, was laughing, laughing as uncontrollably as Peter. Her laughter set Peter off again, and his did the same to her, so that for several minutes neither of them could stop.

“Why are you laughing, guys?” Izzy demanded.

“Well,” said Peter, wiping his eyes, “I
think
the funny part is that when The Dog brought Celia here, she was trying to learn to do magic by reading
Harry Potter
and pretending a stick was a wand.”

“I wasn't pretending the stick was a wand!” protested Celia. “I was using it to poke myself in the head. To try to find the right spot.”

This made Peter laugh so hard he almost fell down. “But why would you want to learn to do magic anyway?” he asked when he could speak again. “And what made you think
Harry Potter
would help?”

“I figured anyone who wrote so much about magic probably knew about real magicians,” Celia said, “and I still think I'm right. I bet there's more hidden in this book than we know. And I wanted to learn to do magic because you were leaving me out, and I was pretty sure you'd need me sooner or later. I know you don't like me, but I told you: I'm a part of this. The Dog knows it, too;
that's why you brought us here, right?” she asked, turning to The Dog.

“Something like that,” said The Dog. “Although I have to tell you: I doubt if you could learn to do magic.”

“I'm good at using my brain,” said Celia, bristling.

“No,” said The Dog, “I didn't mean the problem was you. But most people aren't able to do magic, you know. When my master went looking for other magicians, he only found five in the whole world. Seems unlikely that one family would have two potential magicians in it. What are the odds?”

“Oh,” said Celia. Her lips turned down in disappointment.

Peter was still absorbing what Celia had said. “I like you,” he said. “You're the one who doesn't like me. Because I embarrass you.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “You and Izzy leave me out all the time. You only include me when you have to. Like now.”

“That's not true,” said Peter, but even as he said it, he realized she was right. “Besides, you always have so many friends and stuff.”

“I still don't like to be left out,” Celia said. “That's just mean.”

No one had ever called Peter mean before, and he had never imagined that was how Celia saw his actions. “I'm glad you're here now,” he said. “Really.”

“Now that we've got that out of the way, do you think we could get going again?” asked The Dog. If he'd had a wristwatch, thought Peter, he would have been frowning at it and tapping his paw on the carpet.

They started down the hallway once more, but the mood was different than it had been before. Now the children walked side by side, occasionally giggling when someone bumped into someone else. Once Peter found himself squeezing Celia's hand, almost as if she were Izzy. He dropped it quickly, but not before Celia smiled.

The Dog stopped in front of one of the doors.

“This is it?” asked Celia.

“This is it,” said The Dog. He touched his nose to the door: it swung open immediately. Only darkness was visible beyond the doorway, darkness that swallowed The Dog piece by piece, nose to tail, as he stepped through. Peter took a deep breath. It was really going to happen. He was going to confront the magician.

“Izzy and Celia, I think you should wait in the hallway,” he said, trying to sound appropriately big-brotherish. “I'll just be a minute.”

“Really?” said Celia. “Okay. If you think that's best.”

Peter's shoulders sagged in relief. He couldn't believe it had been that easy.

Then Celia smiled, a slightly wicked smile that Peter knew all too well, and she disappeared through the doorway after The Dog. “Celia!” Peter shouted, but it was too late.

Izzy turned to Peter. “I don't want to wait all by myself.”

Peter didn't want to take Izzy with him, but he didn't want to leave her alone in the magician's house, either. He grasped her hand, and they stepped into the blackness together.

One moment they were in the hallway, the next they were standing next to Celia, whose mouth had dropped open in surprise. Peter, too, stared at the room in astonishment. “Holy cow,” he said under his breath.

Izzy edged closer to him. “What are all these monster bones?” she whispered.

“They're not monster bones,” said Peter. He blinked, unable to fully believe what he was seeing. “They're dinosaur fossils.”

“It's like a museum,” breathed Celia. “Only not at all boring.”

No museum in the world had this many fossils, Peter thought; and no museum felt so, well,
alive
. Vines hung from the ceiling, thick-leafed and glossy; trees grew from the dirt floor, their branches curving and twining like prehistoric snakes. Unlike the carnival, which had had no ceiling or walls, this was distinctly a room, but a room like none Peter had seen before. It was as big as a stadium, he thought: it had to be, because how else could it hold so many dinosaurs?

The dinosaurs stretched beneath trees. They peered out from bushes. They hung frozen in the air, paralyzed in midflight. Everywhere Peter looked, dinosaur bones stood as though the flesh had just dropped from them, leaving behind only the whitened skeletons of the great and terrifying beasts. Peter remembered his dreams of a rocket bedroom. That was nothing compared to the magnificence of this place.

“There must be a thousand dinosaurs in here,” he whispered. There was something weighty about the silence that made it hard to speak in a normal voice. “Do you see that? The tall one? It's an Allosaurus. That's a Coelophysis over there—the little guy. That's a Pteranodon . . . not strictly a dinosaur, but close enough. Those look like Microraptors, maybe?”

“That one's definitely a Velociraptor,” said Celia, pointing to her left. “We learned about those last week in school.”

“What's the one behind the bed?” asked Izzy.

Peter had been deliberately avoiding looking at the bed, which stood directly in front of them, positioned as if the room's owner wanted to watch the door even in his sleep. Now Peter glanced at the bony figure towering above it. One foot was planted on either side of the headboard, as if the dinosaur were guarding what slept beneath. “See how it has only two fingers?” said Peter. “That means it's a Tyrannosaurus rex. The king of the terrible lizards.”

The Dog nodded. “The dinosaurs were the magician's big project,” he explained. “He used magic to pull fossils from the earth, piece by fragmented piece.
Each of these dinosaurs took days of his time, which is a lot for a magician. I think the intensity with which he worked on them is probably what allowed him to stay himself as long as he did. Assembling the dinosaurs wasn't an angry or hateful task, and it required intense concentration.”

Something had been tugging at Peter's consciousness since they'd walked into the room. “They're all carnivores.”

The Dog laughed, a short, dry bark. “Yes, they're all carnivores.”

Peter sighed. It was no use delaying any longer. His eyes went back to the Tyrannosaurus, and then to the even more terrifying sight resting, as Peter had known it would, between the dinosaur's feet. “It's the rock on the bed, right?”