I m not wild about sneaking around in his house,

Kit said.  School, yeah. I d thought about that, too. But there are still too many ways to be noticed. I was considering another option.

 Oh 

 Ponchhas been able to treat someone s interior landscape like an exterior universe before,  Kit said.  He can go into Darryl s head and take me with him  and maybe Darryl will find it easier to talk to me that way.

Tom brooded over that for a moment.  My initial reaction,  he said,  is to say no. We re uncertain enough about how the heckPonch does what he does. Add that set of imponderables to whatever s going on inside Darryl s head   He shook his head.  It starts getting uncomfortably complex.

 We re wizards,  Kit said.  We re supposed to learn how to get comfortable with the uncomfortably complex.

Tom gave Kit a look that would have seemed annoyed if there hadn t been a resigned quality to it as well.  In theory,  he said,  of course, you re right.But turning theory into practice without taking due care and attention can screw things up big-time.

Kit sat quietly, knowing better than to argue his case too hard with aSenior : That was a sure way to make it seem like he had some kind of ulterior motive.

Tom looked off into the middle distance, pondering.  Yet here s this very atypical Ordeal,  he said,  and we can t just let the kid go on suffering unnecessarilyfor the sake of caution and correctness. Some more information gathering, at least, seems prudent. But I want you to be very,very cautious, and watch yourself at least as carefully as you re watching him. Even normal Ordeals are subjective, and getting another entity s subjectivity involved with one, even temporarily,brings considerable dangers with it.This Ordeal, where the candidate is autistic   Heshook his head.  It might be an attempt to resolve the autism, which is likely to be incredibly traumatic for Darryl whether it works or not or it might simply be about some mode of wizardry we haven t seen before, one that involves Darrylstaying autistic.