Deep Wizardry

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Nita slipped out the back door of the beach house, careful not to let the rickety screen door slam, and for a second stood silently on the back porch in the darkness. It was no use. “Nita”—her mother’s voice came floating out from the living room—“where’re you going?”

“Out,” Nita said, hoping to get away with it just this once.

She might as well have tried to rob a bank. “Out where?”

“Down to the beach, Mom.”

There was a sigh’s worth of pause from the living room, broken by the sound of a crowd on TV shouting about a base that had just been stolen somewhere in the country. “I don’t like you walking down there alone at night, Neets…”

“Nhhnnnnn,” Nita said, a loud noncommittal noise she had learned to make while her mother was deciding whether to let her do something. “I’ll take Ponch with me,” she said in a burst of inspiration.

“Mmmmmm…” her mother said, considering it. Ponch was a large black and white dog, part Border collie, part German shepherd, part mutt— an intrepid hunter of water rats and gulls, and ferociously loyal to his master and to Nita because she was his master’s best friend. “Where’s Kit?”

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