The Way of the Wizard

by John Joseph Adams

  “Nothing,” Marvyn mumbled. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, which didn’t help. He said, “Only I get scared, Angie. It’s scary, doing the stuff I can do.”

  “What scary? Scary how? A minute ago it was more fun than you’ve ever had in your life.”

  “It is!” He moved closer, strangely hesitant: neither witch, nor pirate nor seraph, but an anxious, burdened small boy. “Only sometimes it’s like too much fun. Sometimes, right in the middle, I think maybe I should stop, but I can’t. Like one time, I was by myself, and I was just fooling around . . . and I sort of made this thing, which was really interesting, only it came out funny and then I couldn’t unmake it for the longest time, and I was scared Mom and Dad would come home—”

  Angie, grimly weighing her past French grades in her mind, reached back for another raisin cookie. “I told you before, you’re going to get yourself into real trouble doing crazy stuff like that. Just quit, before something happens by magic that you can’t fix by magic. You want advice, I just gave you advice. See you around.”

  Marvyn wandered forlornly after her to the door of her room. When she turned to close it, he mumbled, “I wish I were as old as you. So I’d know what to do.”

  “Ha,” Angie said, and shut the door.

  Whereupon, heedless of French irregular verbs, she sat down at her desk and began writing a letter to Jake Petrakis.

  Neither then nor even much later was Angie ever able to explain to anyone why she had written that letter at precisely that time. Because he had slapped her shoulder and told her she—or at least her music—was cool? Because she had seen him, that same afternoon, totally tangled up with Ghastly Ashleigh in a shadowy corner of the library stacks? Because of Marvyn’s relentless teasing? Or simply because she was fifteen years old, and it was time for her to write such a letter to someone? Whatever the cause, she wrote what she wrote, and then she folded it up and put it away in her desk drawer.

  Then she took it out, and put it back in, and then she finally put it into her backpack. And there the letter stayed for nearly three months, well past midterms, finals, and football, until the fateful Friday night when Angie was out with Melissa, walking and window-shopping in downtown Avicenna, placidly drifting in and out of every coffeeshop along Parnell Street. She told Melissa about the letter then, and Melissa promptly went into a fit of the giggles, which turned into hiccups and required another cappuccino to pacify them. When she could speak coherently, she said, “You ought to send it to him. You’ve got to send it to him.”

  Angie was outraged, at first. “No way! I wrote it for me, not for a test or a class, and damn sure not for Jake Petrakis. What kind of a dipshit do you think I am?”

  Melissa grinned at her out of mocking green eyes. “The kind of dipshit who’s got that letter in your backpack right now, and I bet it’s in an envelope with an address and a stamp on it.”

  “It doesn’t have a stamp! And the envelope’s just to protect it! I just like having it with me, that’s all—”

  “And the address?”

  “Just for practice, okay? But I didn’t sign it, and there’s no return address, so that shows you!”

  “Right.” Melissa nodded. “Right. That definitely shows me.”

  “Drop it,” Angie told her, and Melissa dropped it then. But it was a Friday night, and both of them were allowed to stay out late, as long as they were together, and Avicenna has a lot of coffeeshops. Enough lattes and cappuccinos, with double shots of espresso, brought them to a state of cheerfully jittery abandon in which everything in the world was supremely, ridiculously funny. Melissa never left the subject of Angie’s letter alone for very long—“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen? Him reading it and maybe figuring out you wrote it? Listen, the really worst thing would be you being an old, old lady still wishing you’d told Jake Petrakis how you felt when you were young. And now he’s married, and he’s a grandfather, and probably dead, for all you know—”

  “Quit it!” But Angie was giggling almost as much as Melissa now, and somehow they were walking down quiet Lovisi Street, past the gas station and the boarded-up health-food store, to find the darkened Petrakis house and tiptoe up the steps to the porch. Facing the front door, Angie dithered for a moment, but Melissa said, “An old lady, in a home, for God’s sake, and he’ll never know,” and Angie took a quick breath and pushed the letter under the door. They ran all the way back to Parnell Street, laughing so wildly that they could barely breathe . . . .

  . . . and Angie woke up in the morning whispering omigod, omigod, omigod, over and over, even before she was fully awake. She lay in bed for a good hour, praying silently and desperately that the night before had been some crazy, awful dream, and that when she dug into her backpack the letter would still be there. But she knew dreadfully better, and she never bothered to look for it on her frantic way to the telephone. Melissa said soothingly, “Well, at least you didn’t sign the thing. There’s that, anyway.”

  “I sort of lied about that,” Angie said. Her friend did not answer. Angie said, “Please, you have to come with me. Please.”

  “Get over there,” Melissa said finally. “Go, now—I’ll meet you.”

  Living closer, Angie reached the Petrakis house first, but had no intention of ringing the bell until Melissa got there. She was pacing back and forth on the porch, cursing herself, banging her fists against her legs, and wondering whether she could go to live with her father’s sister Peggy in Grand Rapids, when the woman next door called over to tell her that the Petrakises were all out of town at a family gathering. “Left yesterday afternoon. Asked me to keep an eye on the place, cause they won’t be back till sometime Sunday night. That’s how come I’m kind of watching out.” She smiled warningly at Angie before she went back indoors.

  The very large dog standing behind her stayed outside. He looked about the size of a Winnebago, and plainly had already made up his mind about Angie. She said, “Nice doggie,” and he growled. When she tried out “Hey, sweet thing,” which was what her father said to all animals, the dog showed his front teeth, and the hair stood up around his shoulders, and he lay down to keep an eye on things himself. Angie said sadly, “I’m usually really good with dogs.”

  When Melissa arrived, she said, “Well, you shoved it under the door, so it can’t be that far inside. Maybe if we got something like a stick or a wire clotheshanger to hook it back with.” But whenever they looked toward the neighboring house, they saw a curtain swaying, and finally they walked away, trying to decide what else to do. But there was nothing; and after a while Angie’s throat was too swollen with not crying for her to talk without pain. She walked Melissa back to the bus stop, and they hugged goodbye as though they might never meet again.

  Melissa said, “You know, my mother says nothing’s ever as bad as you thought it was going to be. I mean, it can’t be, because nothing beats all the horrible stuff you can imagine. So maybe . . . you know . . . ” but she broke down before she could finish. She hugged Angie again and went home.

  Alone in her own house, Angie sat quite still in the kitchen and went on not crying. Her entire face hurt with it, and her eyes felt unbearably heavy. Her mind was not moving at all, and she was vaguely grateful for that. She sat there until Marvyn walked in from playing basketball with his friends. Shorter than everyone else, he generally got stepped on a lot, and always came home scraped and bruised. Angie had rather expected him to try making himself taller, or able to jump higher, but he hadn’t done anything of the sort so far. He looked at her now, bounced and shot an invisible basketball, and asked quietly, “What’s the matter?”

  It may have been the unexpected froggy gentleness of his voice, or simply the sudden fact of his having asked the question at all. Whatever the reason, Angie abruptly burst into furious tears, the rage directed entirely at herself, both for writing the letter to Jake Petrakis in the first place, and for crying about it now. She gestured to Marvyn to go away, but—amazing her further—he stood stolidly wait
ing for her to grow quiet. When at last she did, he repeated the question. “Angie. What’s wrong?”

  Angie told him. She was about to add a disclaimer—“You laugh even once, Ex-Lax—” when she realized that it wouldn’t be necessary. Marvyn was scratching his head, scrunching up his brow until the eyepatch danced; then abruptly jamming both hands in his pockets and tilting his head back: the poster boy for careless insouciance. He said, almost absently, “I could get it back.”

  “Oh, right.” Angie did not even look up. “Right.”

  “I could so!” Marvyn was instantly his normal self again: so much for casualness and dispassion. “There’s all kinds of things I could do.”

  Angie dampened a paper towel and tried to do something with her hot, tear-streaked face. “Name two.”

  “Okay, I will! You remember which mailbox you put it in?”

  “Under the door,” Angie mumbled. “I put it under the door.”

  Marvyn snickered then. “Aww, like a Valentine.” Angie hadn’t the energy to hit him, but she made a grab at him anyway, for appearance’s sake. “Well, I could make it walk right back out the door, that’s one way. Or I bet I could just open the door, if nobody’s home. Easiest trick in the world, for us witches.”

  “They’re gone till Sunday night,” Angie said. “But there’s this lady next door, she’s watching the place like a hawk. And even when she’s not, she’s got this immense dog. I don’t care if you’re the hottest witch in the world, you do not want to mess with this werewolf.”

  Marvyn, who—as Angie knew—was wary of big dogs, went back to scratching his head. “Too easy, anyway. No fun, forget it.” He sat down next to her, completely absorbed in the problem. “How about I . . . no, that’s kid stuff, anybody could do it. But there’s a spell . . . I could make the letter self-destruct, right there in the house, like in that old TV show. It’d just be a little fluffy pile of ashes—they’d vacuum it up and never know. How about that?” Before Angie could express an opinion, he was already shaking his head. “Still too easy. A baby spell, for beginners. I hate those.”

  “Easy is good,” Angie told him earnestly. “I like easy. And you are a beginner.”

  Marvyn was immediately outraged, his normal bass-baritone rumble going up to a wounded squeak. “I am not! No way in the world I’m a beginner!” He was up and stamping his feet, as he had not done since he was two. “I tell you what—just for that, I’m going to get your letter back for you, but I’m not going to tell you how. You’ll see, that’s all. You just wait and see.”

  He was stalking away toward his room when Angie called after him, with the first glimmer both of hope and of humor that she had felt in approximately a century, “All right, you’re a big bad witch king. What do you want?”

  Marvyn turned and stared, uncomprehending.

  Angie said, “Nothing for nothing, that’s my bro. So let’s hear it—what’s your price for saving my life?”

  If Marvyn’s voice had gone up any higher, only bats could have heard it. “I’m rescuing you, and you think I want something for it? Julius Christmas!” which was the only swearword he was ever allowed to get away with. “You don’t have anything I want, anyway. Except maybe . . . ”

  He let the thought hang in space, uncompleted. Angie said, “Except maybe what?”

  Marvyn swung on the doorframe one-handed, grinning his pirate grin at her. “I hate you calling me Ex-Lax. You know I hate it, and you keep doing it.”

  “Okay, I won’t do it anymore, ever again. I promise.”

  “Mmm. Not good enough.” The grin had grown distinctly evil. “I think you ought to call me O Mighty One for two weeks.”

  “What?” Now Angie was on her feet, misery briefly forgotten. “Give it up, Ex-Lax—two weeks? No chance!” They glared at each other in silence for a long moment before she finally said, “A week. Don’t push it. One week, no more. And not in front of people!”

  “Ten days.” Marvyn folded his arms. “Starting right now.” Angie went on glowering. Marvyn said, “You want that letter?”

  “Yes.”

  Marvyn waited.

  “Yes, O Mighty One.” Triumphant, Marvyn held out his hand and Angie slapped it. She said, “When?”

  “Tonight. No, tomorrow—going to the movies with Sunil and his family tonight. Tomorrow.” He wandered off, and Angie took her first deep breath in what felt like a year and a half. She wished she could tell Melissa that things were going to be all right, but she didn’t dare; so she spent the day trying to appear normal—just the usual Angie, aimlessly content on a Saturday afternoon. When Marvyn came home from the movies, he spent the rest of the evening reading Hellboy comics in his room, with the Milady-kitten on his stomach. He was still doing it when Angie gave up peeking in at him and went to bed.

  But he was gone on Sunday morning. Angie knew it the moment she woke up.

  She had no idea where he could be, or why. She had rather expected him to work whatever spell he settled on in his bedroom, under the stern gaze of his wizard mentors. But he wasn’t there, and he didn’t come to breakfast. Angie told their mother that they’d been up late watching television together, and that she should probably let Marvyn sleep in. And when Mrs. Luke grew worried after breakfast, Angie went to his room herself, returning with word that Marvyn was working intensely on a project for his art class, and wasn’t feeling sociable. Normally she would never have gotten away with it, but her parents were on their way to brunch and a concert, leaving her with the usual instructions to feed and water the cat, use the twenty on the cabinet for something moderately healthy, and to check on Marvyn “now and then,” which actually meant frequently. (“The day we don’t tell you that,” Mr. Luke said once, when she objected to the regular duty, “will be the very day the kid steals a kayak and heads for Tahiti.” Angie found it hard to argue the point.)

  Alone in the empty house—more alone than she felt she had ever been—Angie turned constantly in circles, wandering from room to room with no least notion of what to do. As the hours passed and her brother failed to return, she found herself calling out to him aloud. “Marvyn? Marvyn, I swear, if you’re doing this to drive me crazy . . . O Mighty One, where are you? You get back here, never mind the damn letter, just get back!” She stopped doing this after a time, because the cracks and tremors in her voice embarrassed her, and made her even more afraid.

  Strangely, she seemed to feel him in the house all that time. She kept whirling to look over her shoulder, thinking that he might be sneaking up on her to scare her, a favorite game since his infancy. But he was never there.

  Somewhere around noon the doorbell rang, and Angie tripped over herself scrambling to answer it, even though she had no hope—almost no hope—of its being Marvyn. But it was Lidia at the door—Angie had forgotten that she usually came to clean on Sunday afternoons. She stood there, old and smiling, and Angie hugged her wildly and wailed, “Lidia, Lidia, socorro, help me, ayúdame, Lidia.” She had learned Spanish from the housekeeper when she was too little to know she was learning it.

  Lidia put her hands on Angie’s shoulders. She put her back a little and looked into her face, saying, “Chuchi, dime qué pasa contigo?” She had called Angie Chuchi since childhood, never explaining the origin or meaning of the word.

  “It’s Marvyn,” Angie whispered. “It’s Marvyn.” She started to explain about the letter, and Marvyn’s promise, but Lidia only nodded and asked no questions. She said firmly, “El Viejo puede ayudar.”

  Too frantic to pay attention to gender, Angie took her to mean Yemaya, the old woman in the farmer’s market who had told Marvyn that he was a brujo. She said, “You mean la santera,” but Lidia shook her head hard. “No, no, El Viejo. You go out there, you ask to see El Viejo. Solamente El Viejo. Los otros no pueden ayudarte.”

  The others can’t help you. Only the old man. Angie asked where she could find El Viejo, and Lidia directed her to a Santeria shop on Bowen Street. She drew a crude map, made sure Angie had money with he
r, kissed her on the cheek and made a blessing sign on her forehead. “Cuidado, Chuchi,” she said with a kind of cheerful solemnity, and Angie was out and running for the Gonzales Avenue bus, the same one she took to school. This time she stayed on a good deal farther.

  The shop had no sign, and no street number, and it was so small that Angie kept walking past it for some while. Her attention was finally caught by the objects in the one dim window, and on the shelves to right and left. There was an astonishing variety of incense, and of candles encased in glass with pictures of black saints, as well as boxes marked Fast Money Ritual Kit, and bottles of Elegua Floor Wash, whose label read “Keeps Trouble From Crossing Your Threshold.” When Angie entered, the musky scent of the place made her feel dizzy and heavy and out of herself, as she always felt when she had a cold coming on. She heard a rooster crowing, somewhere in back.

  She didn’t see the old woman until her chair creaked slightly, because she was sitting in a corner, halfway hidden by long hanging garments like church choir robes, but with symbols and patterns on them that Angie had never seen before. The woman was very old, much older even than Lidia, and she had an absurdly small pipe in her toothless mouth. Angie said, “Yemaya?” The old woman looked at her with eyes like dead planets.

  Angie’s Spanish dried up completely, followed almost immediately by her English. She said, “My brother . . . my little brother . . . I’m supposed to ask for El Viejo. The old one, viejo santero? Lidia said.” She ran out of words in either language at that point. A puff of smoke crawled from the little pipe, but the old woman made no other response.

  Then, behind her, she heard a curtain being pulled aside. A hoarse, slow voice said, “Quieres El Viejo? Me.”

  Angie turned and saw him, coming toward her out of a long hallway whose end she could not see. He moved deliberately, and it seemed to take him forever to reach her, as though he were returning from another world. He was black, dressed all in black, and he wore dark glasses, even in the dark, tiny shop. His hair was so white that it hurt her eyes when she stared. He said, “Your brother.”