"Hey, you're a good boy, I'm not mad at you," Nita said. She stopped to I scratch the dog behind the ears, in the good place. He stood still with his tongue hanging out and looked up at her, his eyes shining oddly in the of the nearly full Moon that was climbing the sky. "I just don't feel playing right now. I want to swim. Would you find Kit?" The big brown eyes gazed soulfully up at her, and Ponch made a small | beseeching whine. "A dog biscuit?"Nita grinned. "Blackmailer. Okay, you find the boss, I'll give you a biscuit-Two biscuits. Go get 'im!"Ponch bounded off westward down the beach, kicking up wet sand. DEEP WIZARDRY 169headed for the water line, where she shrugged off the windbreaker that had been covering her bathing suit and dropped it on the sand. Two months ago, talking to a dog and getting an answer back would have been something that happened only in Disney movies. But then one day in the library, Nita had stumbled onto a book called So You Want to Be a Wizard. She'd followed the instructions in the book, as Kit had in the copy he'd found in a used-book store —and afterward, dogs talked back. Or, more accurately, she knew what language they spoke and how to hear it. There was nothing that didn't talk back, she'd found—only things she didn't yet know how to hear or how to talk to properly.Like parents, Nita thought with mild amusement. If her mother knew Nita was going swimming, she'd probably pitch a fit: she'd had a terrible thing about night swimming after seeing Jaws. But it's okay, Nita thought. There aren't any sharks here . . . and if there were, I think I could talk them out of eating me.She made sure her clothes were above the high-water line, then waded down into the breakers. The water was surprisingly warm around her knees. The waxing Moon, slightly golden from smog, made a silvery pathway on the water, everywhere else shedding a dull radiance that made both land and sea look alive.
