A Wizard Alone

“But I can’t go out there!” Darryl cried. “It’s in me! If I go out there, It’ll be loose in the world in the worst possible way!”

Nita’s heart squeezed inside her. “It’s loose out there already,” she said. “Your coming out, or not coming out, won’t make the slightest difference to that. You can die with It at the bottom of your heart, out in the world with the rest of us, or you can die with It at the bottom of your heart, in here, alone.”

He stood there, silent, his eyes averted.

“It’s better not to do it alone,” Nita said.

Darryl didn’t look up.

“There’s strength in numbers, Darryl,” Kit said. “It’s easy to forget that.” He glanced at Nita a little shamefacedly. She gave him an amused look and raised her eyebrows. He turned back to Darryl. “There are a whole lot of us out in the world, giving It a hard time.

You were real good at doing that just when you were stuck inside and didn’t have any clues about how the rest of us manage it. Come on out and give It a run for Its money! When you get right down to the bottom of it, that’s nearly all we do. Which wizardries we use to do it… that’s the cool part.“

Darryl was silent for a long while. Eventually he looked up again, and as Darryl slowly started to let himself believe that this was the right thing to do, that innocent joy and delight in life simply poured off him, so that once more Nita had to brace herself against it.

She saw Kit wobble, too. Only Ponch stood there untroubled, wagging his tail.

“All right,” Darryl said. “I’ll come.”

Ponch started to bark for joy.

Nita had to smile. “But one thing,” Nita said, glancing at the kernel, “before you do anything final with that.”

Darryl looked up at her, confused.

“If you have to leave part of you here,” Nita said, “think about which part you might leave.”

Darryl looked at her in confusion. “Which part?” he said. “I know I can be in both places with all of me, but splitting parts off—”

“Don’t make reasons you can’t do stuff, Darryl,” Kit said. “Find reasons you can.”

“You made this world,” Nita said. “That’s powerful stuff. And you can make the rules in here.

You made them so strongly, without even being clear on what you were doing, that the Lone Power Itself got stuck in here with you and couldn’t get out until you let It.

Now It’s gone… and you’re fully conscious, with the operating system for your own universe in your hands. You’re not just inside the game anymore: You’re outside it, too, now — you’re in control of it when you’ve got the kernel. Even from in here, you can make this world anything you want!“

Darryl looked from Nita to Kit, and slowly, surmise dawned in his eyes.

“The autism…”

“Why not? You started ditching it the first chance you got,” Nita said. “You ditched it on Kit, for example.”

Darryl looked embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Darryl, I know you didn’t mean it personally,” Kit said. “It’s okay. You were doing a sane thing, getting rid of it!” Then he glanced at Nita. “I still don’t know why you didn’t get it.”

“It could have been that a lot more boys are autistic than girls,” Nita said. “Or that Darryl and I already had something in common.”

She wouldn’t say it out loud. She didn’t have to.

The pain

, Darryl said silently. The pain of being alone.

Nita had to glance away.

“Yeah,” Darryl said. “But giving it up…” He looked distressed. “I don’t know if I can! It’s part of me.”

“So?” Kit said. “Is it a part you need?”

‘No! Darryl said.

And then he fell silent.

“I hear a but coming,” Nita said.

“I don’t know if I know how to live without it,” Darryl said.

They were all silent for a few breaths.

“It’s how I stood being alive,” Darryl said. “It’s how I didn’t have to see the Lone Power at the bottom of everyone’s soul, all the time. If I go back without it, I’m going to have to see that. Every day. Every time I look at my mom, or my dad…”

“Believe me,” Nita said, very softly, “I’d look at my mom all day and every day no matter how much It looked out of her, if she were here to look at. Some things are a lot more important than others, Darryl.”

“We all see It sometimes,” Kit said. “We all run into It every day, in the people we know, in the things that happen around us. There’s no escape. That’s life. That’s Life: what we serve. It’s worth it.”

Darryl was silent. “I don’t know if I can stand how much it’s going to hurt,” he said. “I might lose it. I might fall back into being that way… and that would kill my folks.”

“I’m guessing your folks are tougher than you think,” Nita said, remembering the voices she’d heard on the way in. “Give them a chance. Give yourself a chance. If it does happen…” She grinned.

“You’re a wizard. Listen to the Silence. Pick yourself up and do what it tells you. You’ll get out again… because you’re tough, too. Tougher than you think.”

Darryl looked at Nita with eyes that were beginning to believe. “Besides,” Kit said, “imagine how funny it’ll be when It finally gets back in here, and locks Itself in, and then discovers that what It’s locked in with isn’t you. It’s your autism.“

Darryl looked from Kit to Nita with that expression of absolute delight, edged again with mischief.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Let’s do it.”

“I don’t think there’s a lot of ‘let’s’ about this,” Kit said. “I think you get to do this part yourself.

Otherwise, it’s not going to take.”

“Use the kernel,” Nita said. “You set the configuration into it for the way you want this world to behave. The Silence will show you how. I had to take classes to find out, but this is your own world that you made. You’re not going to need authorizations to work with it.”

Darryl nodded, looking down at the kernel for a moment.

Then, “Oh,” he said. “Oh!”

He was quiet for a long time. While he was concentrating, Kit bent his head over to Nita’s and said, “Thanks.”

“It was my turn to save you,” Nita said, “that’s all. Now I want a few weeks off.”

Kit smiled a crooked smile at her.

Nita looked down at Ponch. “I thought you said you weren’t going to take the boss out again without me,” Nita said.

Ponch dropped his head a little. He went, he said. So I had to go, too. Then he brightened. But you got here when I thought you would, so it’s all right!

Nita gave Kit a look. “Your dog has me on a schedule” she said.

Kit shrugged. “He has a very well-developed time sense,” Kit said. “Ask him about feeding time, for example.”

Ponch began to jump up and down in excitement.

“Speaking of time,” Darryl said suddenly, “I think this looks right…”

Nita glanced over at the kernel in his hands, judging the way the tangle of light looked and felt.

“The parameters feel right,” she said. “You ready?”

Darryl nodded, looking nervous and elated.

“Do it!” Nita said.