So You Want to Be a Wizard, New Millennium Edition Read Online Free PDF Page B

for a new car, and nearly as complex. There were tables and lists of needed resources for working spells. There were formulas and equations and rules. There was a syllabary and pronunciation guide for the 418 symbols used in the wizardly Speech to describe relationships and effects that other human languages had no specific words for.
    The information went on and on—the book was printed small, and there seemed no end to the things Nita was going to have to know about. She read about the hierarchy of practicing wizards—her book listed only those practicing in the U.S. and Canada, though wizards were working everywhere in the world—and she scanned down the listing for the New York area, noticing the presence of Advisory wizards, Area Supervisors, Senior wizards. She read through a list of the “otherworlds” closest to her own, alternate earths where the capital of the United States was named Huictilopochtli or Lafayette City or Hrafnkell or New Washington, and where the people still called themselves Americans, though they didn’t at all match Nita’s ideas about the word.
    She learned the Horseman’s Word, which gets the attention of any member of the genus Equus, even the zebras; and the two forms of the Mason’s Word, which give stone the appearance of life for short periods. One chapter told her about the magical creatures living in cities, whose presence even the nonwizardly people suspect sometimes—creatures like the steam-breathing fireworms, packratty little lizards that creep through cracks in building walls to steal treasures and trash for their lair-hoards under the streets. Nita thought about all the steam she had seen coming up from manhole covers in Manhattan and smiled, for now she knew what was causing it.
    She read on, finding out how to bridle the Nightmare and learning what questions to ask the Transcendent Pig, should she meet him. She read about the Trees’ Battle—who fought in it, who won it, and why. She read about the forty basic classes of spells and their subclasses. She read about Timeheart, the eternal realm where the places and things people remember affectionately are preserved as they remember them, forever.
    In the middle of the description of things preserved in their fullest beauty forever, and still growing, Nita found herself feeling a faint tingle of unease. She was also getting tired. She dropped the book in her lap with an annoyed sigh, for there was just too much to absorb at one sitting, and she had no clear idea of where to begin. “Crap,” she said under her breath. “I thought I’d be able to make Joanne vanish by tomorrow morning.”
    Nita picked the manual up again and leafed through it to the section labeled “Preliminary Exercises.”
    The first one was set in a small block of type in the middle of an otherwise empty page.

    To change something, you must first describe it. To describe something, you must first see it. Hold still in one place for as long as it takes to see something.

    Nita felt puzzled and slightly annoyed. This didn’t sound much like magic. But obediently she put the book down, settled herself more comfortably against the tree, folded her arms, and sighed. It’s almost too warm to think about anything serious…. What should I look at? That rock over there? Naah, it’s kind of dull-looking. That weed … look how its leaves go up around the stem in a spiral. Fibonacci series… Nita leaned her head back, stared up through the crabapple tree’s branches. Damn Joanne. Where’d she have hidden my pen? I wonder, could I sneak into her house somehow, after dark? Maybe there’s a spell for that. Maybe I could do it tonight…. Wish it didn’t take so long to get dark this time of year. Nita looked at the sky where it showed between the leaves, a hot blue mosaic of light with here and there the fire-flicker of sun showing through, shifting with the shift of leaves in the wind. There are patterns, kind of. The wind never goes through the