Mark Reads ‘The Wizard’s Dilemma’: Chapter 17

In the seventeenth chapter of The Wizard’s Dilemma, Nita tells Kit the truth. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Young Wizards. 

It’s amazing to me what an outside perspective can do to help change my mind. We’ve spent so much time in Dairine’s head, and even I admit that there’s a logic to her choices here. Duane has come up with a dilemma that practically anyone could understand. What are we willing to do to save someone we love?

It’s important that Duane opens this chapter with Dairine because I now realize what a hint it was towards Nita’s ultimate decision. When she brings up the possibility of giving up her wizardry to save their mom, Nita is honest with her sister. And Dairine is honest right back at her. What does she ask?

“Are you sure it would work?” Dairine said after a while.

Even after learning that literally everything that they’d shared would disappear from Nita and Dairine, Dairine says:

When she looked up, her face was wet. “If you were sure…”

She doesn’t deny Nita the option. She just cares about the certainty of the chance. It was heartbreaking to read Dairine tell Nita that she’d miss her, but it was also her way of saying, “Do it.” What else did Nita need? If we think of this chapter in those terms, then it makes a whole lot of sense that Nita would argue so vehemently with Kit. Yes, she wanted his perspective, but I also don’t believe she was ready to truly accept it.

And gods bless Kit for trying. He brought up a lot of things I had no considered, namely this:

“Neets, you’re not thinking straight right now. You even missed something as simple as the mechanism the Lone One’s using to hide inside Pralaya. How can you be so sure about your thinking on everything else?”

It’s a frightening thing because… oh my god, what if Nita’s internal narration was affected by the Lone One? What if all those desires she has to work this wizardry alone are because of It??? THAT MESSES ME UP SO BAD TO CONSIDER, especially when Nita starts rejecting any bit of sense that Kit makes. This line should have been the sign I needed to know that Nita had already made up her mind, at least subconsciously:

“Kit, you’ve got to believe me. It’s not like that. You don’t really understand what’s going on here.”

Except he does, at least in the Big Picture sense. The fact that his mother is not dying is important because he’s not biased in that regard. Instead of valuing that perspective, however, she rejects him. And look, there are certainly aspects of this that Kit doesn’t understand at all! Yet instead of trying to explain that part to him, she just gives up. I should have known; SHE HAD ALREADY MADE UP HER MIND. Maybe she doesn’t consciously realize it until later, but I think it had happened within her before this part:

But the moment decided her. Kit or no Kit, Lone one or not, she would do anything she had to do to save her mother: give up her wizardry, agree to whatever had to be agreed to. She was lost.

But at least I know now, she thought.

THIS BOOK GOT MORE MESSED UP. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_wKz_SVmfQ

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