The Misadventures of the Magician's Dog (11 page)

“You!” Peter demanded. “Stop there. Wait for me.”

The waiter stood quivering until Peter caught up. “Yes, sir?” he asked. His dark eyes darted from floor to door to wall to ceiling, but never to Peter.

The idea of servants was appealing in the abstract. In reality, Peter couldn't figure out quite how to address a trembling boy who looked perhaps five years older than he was. “I want to know what sort of plant you are,” he demanded.

The boy's eyes darted more rapidly than ever. “I'm not a plant.”

“Oh.” Peter thought for a moment. “Then what are you?”

“I'm . . . I'm a mouse, sir.”

“A mouse.” This made perfect sense but sent a shiver of revulsion climbing Peter's spine. A mouse forced to be a human. There was something wrong with that, wasn't there? But no, why would that be wrong? The mouse probably liked being a human. He also probably liked getting to work for a powerful magician, a magician like Peter.

“Well, keep going,” said Peter. “We haven't got all night. But walk more slowly this time, so I can keep up.”

“Yes, sir.” The mouse-waiter scurried forward again, looking just as fearful as before but moving less quickly.

Peter, following, rapidly became lost in thought. For the first time, he started to wonder what would happen to this house and its inhabitants if he wasn't able to change the magician back. Who knew what astonishing things hid behind each of these doors? Perhaps if Peter failed in his task, the house would eventually revert to its original state, just as the illusion of Peter and The
Dog had disappeared in the morning light. The carnival would crumble; these doors would disappear; the waiter would once more be a mouse. The magician must have put years of work into creating something this magnificent. And soon it might be gone.

Peter thought of his own house, identical to all the others on his block, with white paint that didn't fully disguise the dings and nail holes left by other people's pictures. In all of their moves from base to base, his family had never had a house that was truly
theirs
.

Magic could change all that. Peter could wish his mother a library and his father a gym. Celia might like a roller rink, and as for Izzy, Peter would build her a butterfly garden, filling it with flowers and fluttering wings. For himself, Peter would create a rocket room, with windows that showed the stars and planets the way they actually looked from space. It would be easy enough to do; there was, after all, that electricity hovering around him, just waiting to be used, wanting to be used. . . .

Would it be so bad, he wondered, if he thought himself a Snickers bar? He was just focusing his anger to do magic when his clumsiness saved him. One of his feet somehow ended up in front of the other, sending him sprawling onto the carpet. The fall knocked the breath out of him, and the shock of it knocked something else out of him as well. As he lay there on the carpet, trying to breathe, he realized he had stopped feeling so angry; in fact, he felt pretty much like the old Peter, though he could sense that Angry Peter was still there under the surface.

From his new vantage point, he could see the red
high-top sneakers of the trembling waiter, shifting uneasily as if he wanted nothing more than to be off. Looking at those sneakers, Peter realized that he had been following the waiter for a long time. A really long time. He lifted his head, but he still couldn't see an end to the hallway. What sort of magician created a house where it would take hours for his servants to reach him?

Peter sat up but didn't get to his feet. “Could you please tell me what's behind all these doors?” he asked the mouse-waiter.

The mouse-waiter looked confused by the change in Peter's tone. “Oh, I wouldn't know that.”

“So which door will we go through?”

The mouse-waiter tilted his head sideways. Peter could almost see quivering whiskers. “Umm . . . the open one?”

“Which open one?” asked Peter.

“There's only ever one open one.”

“And that's to the magician's bedroom?”

“That's to wherever the magician is. How else could we find him?”

The mouse-waiter's roundabout logic was beginning to make a certain amount of sense. “So you walk until you see an open door, and then you go through, and that's how you find the magician?” Peter asked.

“Yes. Of course.”

“When was the last time you saw the magician?”

The mouse-waiter's dark eyes went wide with fright. “It was the last time I saw him!” he said. “The last time I saw him was the last time I saw him!”

The Dog had played a trick on him, Peter saw at once. He had let Peter leave with the mouse-waiter, knowing
full well that the mouse-waiter couldn't find the magician until the magician opened a door, which the magician—being a rock—couldn't do. And if Peter hadn't tripped . . . Well, Peter might have ended up walking down this hallway forever, adrift in daydreams and angry thoughts.

Peter stood up, brushing off his pants, and when the mouse-waiter started once more down the hallway, he didn't follow. Instead he reached out his hand, grabbed the nearest knob, and twisted.

He half expected it to be locked—in fact, that was probably why he was brave enough to try it in the first place. But the knob turned, and the door swung open.

And that was when the most magical thing of all happened.

Behind the door was a room. But it wasn't just any room: it was Peter's bedroom at home, with his piles of moving boxes and his homework half done where he had left it on his desk. There was the model F-117 Nighthawk he'd made with his dad when he was seven. The chessboard he'd gotten for his birthday last year. The fish tank that had been empty since they'd moved.

There wasn't anything beautiful about the scene in front of him: it was just the slightly messy bedroom of a now-twelve-year-old boy. But seeing it made Peter's heart light. His mind whirled, trying to put what he knew or thought he knew together in a way that made sense. This was what became clear:

1. His room could not be in the magician's house.

2. Peter could therefore not be in the magician's house.

It followed logically that all of this, these crazy events that had seemed so incredible and unlikely, must in fact
be
incredible and unlikely. Peter had wondered if it was a dream, he remembered, when The Dog had first started talking. And standing in his room, Peter knew he had been right then, and that he was just now waking up to find himself once more at home.

As his certainty grew, he could feel an involuntary smile spread across his face. On the other side of his walls, he thought, Celia, Izzy, and his mother must be at this moment sleeping in their beds. Tomorrow morning he would wake up and eat pancakes with his family; everything would make sense once more. For now, he found his favorite pajamas in his drawer, changed out of his clothes, and crawled between his flannel solar system sheets. His bed had never felt so comfortable and welcoming in his life.

He woke to the sound of dog laughter.

“No,” Peter said, his eyes still closed. “You're a dream. Go away. I don't want to dream you anymore.”

The snorty laughter continued, a soft, genuinely amused sound. “Is that what you're telling yourself now?” asked The Dog.

“That's what I know,” said Peter. “I refuse to believe in you. I'm not going to talk to you anymore, because you're not even here.”

The laughter died away, and the room fell silent. Peter, warm between his sheets, thought after a minute that perhaps his words had worked; that all he needed to banish his dream was the sheer willpower to tell The Dog to go. He was just starting to settle back to sleep when The Dog said, “I find it pretty funny that you're in this room.”

“There's nothing funny about it,” said Peter, who hadn't meant to answer. “It's my room. Where else should I be?”

“It's not actually your room,” said The Dog. “You know you're still in the magician's house, right?”

“I can't be in the magician's house,” said Peter, stubbornly unwilling to open his eyes to talk to someone who he knew was just in his head. “Why would the magician build my room in his house? It's nothing special, just my room. The fact that I found it here means you're not real and this is just a dream. I won't let you convince me otherwise.”

“Whatever you say,” said The Dog, and yawned. “If I'm not real, then I might as well take a nap.”

“Fine,” snapped Peter.

“Fine,” said The Dog, and the room got quiet again.

It wasn't the same quiet as before, though. Try as he might, Peter couldn't recapture his previous sense of peace. The thing was, it didn't make sense. Dreams didn't come to pester you and try to wake you up. They didn't argue with you. They certainly didn't take naps. The wise thing to do, Peter thought, would be to see if his sisters and mother were sleeping in their rooms; if they were, he would know that his bedroom was real. Sighing, he opened his eyes, then pushed back his blankets stealthily, hoping The Dog wouldn't notice.

“Where are you going?”

“To the bathroom,” Peter lied.

“Peter, this is all very sweet,” said The Dog, getting up from where he'd been sitting on the carpet next to Peter's bed, “but it's getting close to dawn, and I'm going to need your help with the magician soon.”

“I don't understand,” said Peter. “What's sweet?”

“This,” said The Dog, gesturing around the room with his nose. “It's not your room. Shall I show you?”

The Dog closed his eyes. He made a face as if he were pooping. And Peter found himself sitting on the cold, rough floor of what appeared to be a room-sized concrete box.

And he was naked.

Shivering, Peter scrambled toward his clothes, which were piled in the corner where a few moments before his laundry hamper had been. As soon as he had pulled on his jeans, he turned to The Dog accusingly. “What did you do to my room? Why do you keep doing these things to me? Why can't you just leave me alone?”

The Dog looked surprisingly regretful. “I wish I could. But your room was never here, you know. You were always lying on the concrete. Do you remember when you asked me if the carnival was real or an illusion? Well, the carnival was real, but your room was an illusion, a very fancy illusion.”

“Why would the magician create an illusion of my room?”

“He didn't. Or didn't exactly. The spell creates an illusion of whatever a person most desires. Some kids walking in would find themselves suddenly movie stars; others might discover an arcade filled floor to ceiling with video games or other toys.”

Peter tried to imagine the enormous power it would take to create a spell like that. Changing a plant into a person was one thing, but how could someone create an illusion that changed depending on who walked through a door? “That doesn't make any sense,” he argued. “I didn't find any of that stuff. I just found my room.”

“I know. That's what I thought was funny. You could have been anywhere—but the place you most wanted to be was your own house.”

Now that Peter understood, he knew why The Dog had been laughing at him, and it angered him to realize how his innermost self had been exposed for The Dog's amusement. The anger in turn brought a bit of that other Peter, the mean one. Peter could feel it in the way his back suddenly straightened.

“You've had your laugh,” he said, shrugging on his T-shirt. “Now let's get on with the magician. As you said, it's close to dawn.” He stalked toward the door.

“Wait,” said The Dog. “There's something I wanted to ask you.”

“What?” Peter couldn't help sounding angry. He
was
angry.

“Do you remember when we were flying? And you were so mad?”

“Yes . . . ,” said Peter, confused by the change in subject.

“Did something in particular snap you out of it? The anger, I mean? Or did it just gradually wear off?”

Peter remembered the moment perfectly. “It was Izzy. I heard her voice asking me for a drink of water. Which didn't make any sense, because she was miles away, but that was when I started feeling more . . . well, more like me.” Even talking about Izzy now made him feel less angry, Peter realized.

“I wonder . . . ,” murmured The Dog. “It's possible, I suppose.”

“What's possible?”

“I'm going to do it,” The Dog said. “It's worth the risk.”

“What risk? What are you going to do?”

Instead of answering, The Dog closed his eyes and made that face again. Some part of Peter must have sensed what was coming; the moment he realized that The Dog was performing magic, he leapt toward The Dog's back, as if flattening him might stop him. But it was too late.

As he landed on The Dog, both of them collapsing onto the concrete, Peter saw that sleeping on the floor in front of him was Izzy, her hands cradling her head as if she were grasping a pillow. And behind him . . .