The Misadventures of the Magician's Dog

by Frances Sackett

  Bewildered, Daniel stared around the room. At first, he seemed confused, as if he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. Then he began to remember. Peter could see it on his face—the way his eyes grew wide and fearful, his lips parted, and tears began to slide down his cheeks.

  “I didn’t mean to!” he wailed. “I’m so sorry. So sorry about everything!”

  It was awful to watch. Peter opened his mouth, hoping to say something that might comfort the crying boy, but he couldn’t think of any words. Izzy’s hands flew to her lips, and even Celia looked horrified by Daniel’s pain.

  Without saying a word, The Dog trotted to Daniel’s side, then butted his head against Daniel’s legs. “Oh,” said Daniel, and he dropped to his knees on the rug, burying his face in The Dog’s fur.

  And then Daniel was gone.

  “Where did he go?” asked Peter.

  Alone in the middle of the floor, The Dog sighed. “I sent him home.”

  “He was so sad,” said Izzy. “Will he be all right?”

  “I think so,” said The Dog. “I took his memory away. I felt bad doing it, but it seemed like the only choice. In just a moment, he’s going to walk into his parents’ bedroom, and they’ll be overjoyed to see him. And neither he nor they will ever be able to figure out where he’s been these past months. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do.”

  In all Peter’s planning to change the magician back to his former self, he had never thought to wonder what would happen to him after that. Now he imagined what it must be like for the magician, standing by his parents’ bed and not remembering any of the terrible things he’d done. Not remembering the power he’d had, the way the magic had tasted on his tongue, the way it had felt to wish and know that what you wanted would come true . . .

  “Magic can do that?” Peter asked. “I thought you said magic couldn’t change who someone was.”

  The Dog swiveled his ears reflectively. “Magic won’t change who a person is fundamentally. But forgetting: that’s a relatively minor thing. Just a shift in the surface, not a rebuilding of someone’s core.”

  For a moment, they all stood there, staring at the spot on the floor where the rock had been. “So we did it,” said Izzy. “We saved the magician, just like The Dog wanted!” She patted The Dog’s head; he thumped his tail.

  “What’s next?” asked Celia.

  The Dog looked around. “I guess the next thing is to clean up this room. And then go to bed. See what tomorrow brings.”

  Celia grinned. “We’re going to have some awesome adventures, aren’t we?”

  “I want to be a bird again!” said Izzy. “Peter, can we do that tomorrow?”

  “No,” said Celia. “The first thing we ought to do is visit Dad. If Peter can’t bring him here, we could go there, couldn’t we? There must be some way. Maybe The Dog could turn into a dragon again and we could ride on his back.”

  “Could we do that, Dog?” said Izzy. “It sounds like fun!”

  The Dog cocked his head. “It’s a long way. Too long to fly, I think, even for a dragon. But maybe—”

  “No,” said Peter.

  Three sets of eyes turned to stare at him. “What do you mean, no?” asked Celia.

  “I mean, I don’t want to do any more magic. Not for anything.”

  “But, Peter,” said Izzy, “I know I made you promise, but that was when magic was making you horrible.”

  “Think of how much fun we could have,” said Celia.

  “No,” said Peter again, his voice weaker this time. He couldn’t think how to explain what he felt to his sisters. All he knew was that this planning, this daydreaming, felt utterly wrong to him.

  “But, Peter—” said Celia.

  The Dog interrupted. “Peter, can you tell us what it is you want?”

  There it was, the same question The Dog had asked him on the golf course. “I want . . .” For a moment, Peter got stuck, trying to put words to what he felt. The Dog thought he might end up like Merlin, but that wasn’t what Peter wanted. He closed his eyes and what he saw was himself, sitting at the kitchen table with his mother and sisters, arguing about dinosaurs and green beans. “I want to be myself again. The kid who didn’t know how to do magic.”

  “Like the magician,” said The Dog.

  “Yes,” said Peter, finally recognizing the emotion he’d been feeling when he thought about the magician. It was envy. “Like the magician.”

  Celia stared at Peter as though he had gone crazy. Izzy, on the other hand, turned to The Dog. “Can you do that?” she asked.

  The Dog looked thoughtful. “It would be more complicated than it was for the magician. It wouldn’t make sense for all three of you—and your mother!—to forget the last three days entirely. But it seems possible that we could alter your memories to make it as if this had never happened. If that’s really what you want, Peter.”

  At The Dog’s words, Peter hesitated. Did he really want to make it as though this had never happened? He thought again about the kid at the dinner table three days earlier: how powerless that boy had felt. How angry he had been. He was, Peter realized, a different person now, and he liked the ways in which he had changed. Still, he didn’t want to be a magician. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. “Okay,” he said resolutely.

  Izzy’s hand flew to her shoulder, where Henry lay nestled in her hair. “Does everything have to go back to the way it was? Every single thing?”

  The Dog gave a quiet snort of doggy laughter. “Maybe we can find a way for someone to keep her pet mouse, if that’s what she wants.”

  “Yes, please,” said Izzy.

  Celia opened her mouth as if she might object. Peter braced himself for a storm of recriminations. But Celia surprised him. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” said Peter.

  “We won’t get to see Dad.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “I know.”

  Celia studied him a moment longer. Then she sighed. “All right, then. Let’s get it over with.”

  Chapter Twenty

  It took a little planning. But within what seemed to Peter to be a remarkably short time, they were ready. Holding hands again, Peter, Celia, Izzy, and The Dog began putting things right.

  There was a lot to undo. First the plants that had been servants, which Peter left sitting in pots on a nearby nursery’s doorstep, and the fossils, which he sent deep underground, wishing them back where they belonged. Then the magician’s house, which Peter happily crumbled to dust. Some details were practical, like cleaning up the mess in Peter’s bedroom. Others were less so: Be happy, Peter thought into the dreaming minds of the magician’s old neighbors, the ones whose lives he had messed up. Peter didn’t know if this would work, but it seemed worth trying.

  When it was all done, Peter turned to his sisters, whose hands were still clasped in his.

  “This is really okay with you?” he asked. To choose to lose his own memories was one thing: to force his sisters to lose theirs was something else.

  “It’s okay,” Izzy said. “As long as Henry gets to stay.”

  Celia pressed her lips together. “Go ahead.”

  Forget, Peter thought, staring at their faces. Forget the mushroom in the box, forget the room full of dinosaurs, forget driving through the night in a little yellow car. Forget the magician. Forget magic. Izzy’s and Celia’s suddenly confused expressions told Peter that the magic had worked. Bed, he thought, and they were gone.

  “I guess that’s it,” he said.

  The Dog snorted. “Well, almost. You still have to do something about me.”

  “Umm. Yes.” This was the one thing they hadn’t talked about, any of them. Peter cleared his throat. “I’m assuming . . . I mean, you didn’t say . . . but you’ll need to tell me how to send you back. To your old master, I mean. Do you want me to take away your memories, too?”

  “I could go back,” said The Dog. There was a long pause. “But it might be logical to conside
r other possibilities, too.”

  “Other possibilities? Like what?”

  The Dog pawed at the carpet. “Well, for instance, I could stay here. With you.”

  Peter felt a tightness in his chest suddenly loosen. “Really? You’d want to stay with me? What about Daniel?”

  “I wanted to help Daniel,” The Dog said. “And I’m really glad he’ll be okay. But I’d like to stay with you. I mean, if you’ll have me.”

  “I’d like it if you stayed,” said Peter.

  The Dog’s tail curled. “Good. Then that’s settled.”

  “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “You won’t mind if you have to go back to being an ordinary dog? Because if I’m going to go back to being the boy I used to be, I can’t have a talking dog. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “I know,” said The Dog. “I think it will be a relief to just be a dog again, actually. Dog biscuits and fetch: it’s not a bad life, after all. I do get a little tired of kibble, but if every now and then you slipped me a bite of steak and onions, well . . .” He tilted his nose thoughtfully. “But you do know, Peter, you’ll never be exactly the same as you were? You can forget what happened. But you won’t be the same.”

  “I wondered,” said Peter. “Do you think I’m making a mistake?”

  “I think the reason you’re so powerful,” The Dog said, “is that you don’t really want to be a magician. You want to be you. That’s the reason you’re capable of great things—but I don’t think you need magic to do them.”

  “Thank you,” said Peter. “For everything you’ve done.”

  “You’ve got it wrong,” said The Dog. “I should be the one thanking you.” He settled his haunches on the carpet. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “What are you waiting for? Make me ordinary, already.”

  Peter stared down at The Dog’s face. The long, warty nose, the sharp, pointed ears. The dark dog eyes. He remembered how those eyes had scared him the first time he and The Dog had sat here: it was only three days ago, but it seemed like a lifetime. What would The Dog be like if he weren’t, well, The Dog? No point in worrying about it, Peter told himself; soon Peter wouldn’t remember that he’d ever been different.

  And with that, Peter concentrated on the spot two inches behind his right temple and thought the magic out of The Dog.

  When he was finished, he looked down. The Dog was still sitting on the floor, in the exact spot he’d been in a moment earlier. “Dog?” Peter said softly.

  The Dog thumped his tail but otherwise didn’t respond.

  Peter reached down to scratch between The Dog’s ears. He hadn’t, he realized, ever done that before. The fur was rougher than he expected, but it felt good against his fingertips, and for several minutes he kept scratching. Eventually, The Dog’s eyes closed, and he fell asleep, his growling snores echoing through Peter’s bedroom.

  And then Peter was alone.

  The Dog had told him what to do; now it was up to Peter to do it. He settled back in his bed and pulled his covers up. Think, he told himself. But something felt wrong, and he didn’t do the magic. Instead he lay there a moment, staring at his ceiling, the hole in it repaired, now back to what it had always been: water-stained and imperfect. It was once again itself, just as Peter soon would be himself. Which was what he wanted. Right?

  And then Peter knew what he had to do.

  He slipped out of bed and walked to his desk, stepping lightly past the sleeping dog. He powered on his computer, then watched his emails download. His father’s morning email hadn’t yet arrived, he saw: it was too early. That didn’t matter. Peter hit the New Mail button, then started typing.

  Hi, Dad,

  I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. I miss you. Izzy and Celia and Mom do, too. It isn’t the same here without you. Nothing ever feels all the way right, you know? I bet you miss us, too. Sometimes I wonder why you left. I know you’ve always been in the air force. But you love us, right? So why did you go? Maybe you don’t have an answer. But if you do, will you tell me? Because it’s something I think about all the time, and sometimes it makes me angry. And it might make me feel better if I understood.

  I hope you had a good day. I’ll try harder to write you real letters from now on.

  Love,

  Peter

  There. It wouldn’t matter if he woke up tomorrow to find out he was once more the boy he had been three days ago; he still would’ve written this. He moved to hit the Send button but didn’t; instead, he let the cursor hover there, above it. He didn’t know exactly who he would be tomorrow, but whoever he was, it seemed right to let that kid decide whether he had the courage to tell his father how he felt. Hoping the answer would be yes, Peter pictured his father’s face. Be safe, he thought.

  Leaving the file open on his desktop, he went back to his bed. He slid between his sheets and lay back on his pillow. Then he thought away his memories of the last three days.

  Epilogue

  I wake up in the middle of the night: the floor is cold and hard, and for a moment I can’t quite think where I am. Then I see Peter in the bed, and the last few days come back in a rush.

  Dogs don’t smile. I know that better than anyone. But for the first time in years, I’ve woken up happy.

  I lick my tail and wonder when I’m going to tell Peter that the spell he did on me may not have worked the way he intended. Maybe I’ll give it a week or two, or a month, even. The kid’s had a crazy few days. But eventually I’ll tell him. I’m thinking his heart wasn’t in it—you’ve got to really want something when you do magic. Or maybe it’s just that some people, no matter how much they think they ought to be ordinary, are meant for something more. And Peter, well, he was meant for me.

  And I don’t do boring.

  I jump up next to him and curl into a ball, pressing myself against his side. Tomorrow’s a new start, isn’t it? Might as well begin by making it clear that I get a spot on the bed. I go to sleep trying to imagine what name Peter will give me. It better not be Darling.