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Within the bag he had found some infant clothing, a Johnny-Jump-Up infant swing, a worn pair of hunting boots too small for him, and the neatly folded blanket. It was dark blue, of thickly woven woolly stuff, with only two worn spots. But it had been a gift. Not all gifts were given to bring joy to the receiver. At the time, he had felt the blanket had been sent to him, but not for his bed. The stretched sheets, even layered three deep, still permitted a streaking of his candlelight to escape. The blanket would seal him in, protect both his light and his darkness, and shield him from the grey city-night outside. When he had put it up, it had baffled the light, sealing in every speck and ray. Not one fingering beam of the city-night seeped in. He had slept in safety.
And awakened to terror. His cardboard had been wrenched clear of his window to lie atop the clotting puddle of blanket on the gritty floor.
The cracked window was not transparent. Rising street dust and grime had given it a milky wash. Stalactites of pigeon droppings graced it à la Jack Frost. The recent pattering of rain against it had smeared it more, making it impossible to see out. But the ghostly black-grey that passes for night in the city seeped in, making shadows that oozed from the edges of his possessions and slunk from beneath the brick and board shelves.
A smear of harsher light in the lower left corner of the window was flung from the vulturing streetlamps of South Jackson. The light striated across the cracked window, destroying even his memories of the blessed empty darkness of true night. Sweet night of star-specked skies and tree-breathed air had been replaced by a crouching greyness that emanated from the city. It came as much from the gutters and dumpsters as from headlights and streetlamps. It was more than the fogging breath of huddled winos and the grey puffing of exhaust. It was not inanimate.
Wizard kept his breathing steady, but from the skin in he trembled. His heart longed to gallop, his lungs screamed for more oxygen, faster. He smothered them, choking on fear, and tried to think.
It was grey. And now that he so desperately needed to recall everything he had ever known about it, he could remember nothing. Nothing. Except…Mir. A name, he wondered, and chased the wonder away. No time for it. All he could do right now was to defend. But at least it thought he was sleeping. He reined his power back, risking no contact. It wanted him. He didn’t move. If he trembled, if he flinched, if his power just brushed it, it would suck at him. It would drag him from his bed to the window. It believed he still slept; he felt its tenuous probings. It sought to find his dreams and slip in the unguarded back door of his mind. Not again. Like the shock of a bright flashlight in the eyes, an unbidden memory came to him. Once it had forced him to come to it. It had never forgotten its triumph over him. But Wizard had. He could not keep the memory, let the force of the recollection assault him. He couldn’t let it weaken him. If he harked to that memory, it would sense his awareness. Without a reason to hover and sneak and wait, it would leap in and fasten itself to him. Right now, it hunted his dreams.
It pressed against the cracked window pane. He saw the glass bend with its weight, heard a slight scratch as the rough edges of the crack grated against each other. His first night in this room, he had pressed the edges of the glass back into smooth alignment. Now he saw lengthening cracks race across the glass to meet the dried putty in the frame with a final click. The tip of the broken wedge of glass began to veer slowly in. It separated from the window, swinging on the putty edge like a hinge, pointing at him like an accusing finger.
Wizard held himself in check. He had a chance, if he kept his defences tight. Let it think he slept. Let it pray and peer for the easy way into him. He could wait it out. He poised his power, waiting for it to extend itself into the room. Let it think he was defenceless; he was ready for it.
Black Thomas betrayed him. Some questing tendrils of the Grey’s power must have brushed his feline senses. From a curled ball of damp fur and warmth, the cat catapulted into panic. His hind legs and razor claws flashed down Wizard’s bony back. The black tom bounded from the mattress to crouch in awful fury between Wizard and the thing at the window. Deep growls scraped from Black Thomas’s throat as his tail lashed defensively. He did not know what threatened him, but he defied it.
‘Thomas!’ Wizard warned, too late. The thing outside the window bellied and gusted in its power, delighted at the cat’s foolish bravery and Wizard’s wakefulness. Wizard flung up his power as he heard the gathering forces race down the long alley beneath his window and bellow through the broken pane. Wizard held his position, but poor Thomas could not. It was too much for any cat. He broached Wizard’s defences, springing out from that protection into the heart of the oncoming malice. In terror he flung himself toward the connecting door and the other room. That way had always been escape, but now escape was the bait in the trap. Mir roared menacingly into the room. A wedge of glass leaped from the broken window. It sliced the foot off the fleeing tom’s right hind leg as easily as a knife slices butter.
The moment was frozen and offered to Wizard. He stared at the slicing glass falling intact to the floor. The small black foot bounded and tumbled to a stop. It twitched on the floor like a witchery charm. Yowling terror and spraying blood, Black Thomas fled to the other room and down the fire escape. Impulsively Wizard reached after him. He sealed off the pumping veins in the stump of the leg as the cat ran. But grey Mir had known he would reach after the cat. With a roaring of triumphant mirth, it fell on him.
It closed on him like a fist. Wizard balled himself into a tiny hard nut in its grasp. It might hold him, but it would not have him.
The winds of eternity screamed past his soul. Wizard shivered, then shuddered in their chill. They forced his eyes open, though he had not closed them. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes, streaking into his hairline. He was peering down through a hole in the sky. In a barnyard, three boys were killing chickens. He fell into them.
The dark-haired boy holding the chicken’s feet did not look at what they were doing. He looked away from the bird, wincing each time the axe bit into the chopping block beneath the bird’s outstretched neck. He flung the beheaded body from him, his lips pinched in a tight white line. Then he stooped down to the gunnysack he held shut with one foot. He reached into the struggling bag to extract another squawking victim. He drew out a black and gleaming rooster. He knew this one. He had been a multicoloured chick, with dark stripes on his head and wings. The dark-haired boy remembered a morning when he went out to feed the stock, and discovered that this chick and one other had gone into the wrong nesting box at night. The mother hen had taken the other chicks into another nesting box and covered them. When he had found the two chicks, they were cold. Their little feet bent stiffly against his fingers. Their eyes were lidded with white covers. He had stuffed them inside his shirt so his little sister wouldn’t see them and cry. The feel of their cold fuzziness and their scratchy little legs had given him the creeps. Dead chicks against his bare belly. He had three more pens of chickens to feed. By the time he was pouring the feed in the second pen, he thought he felt a twitch. When he finished the third pen, there was a definite stirring inside his shirt. He had crouched in the dung and straw to lift the chicks out of his shirt and breathe on them. They had revived in his hands, and soon their earsplitting peeps had their mother flying in a fury against the mesh of her pen. He returned them to her. The little hen chick blended right in with the rest of the flock, but the striped one was always easy to spot. The dark-haired boy placed the shining black rooster on the chopping block. He gripped the two yellow legs firmly, letting the young spurs dig into his palms. He turned away and clenched his jaws.
A rusty-haired boy with freckles was holding the heads. He had a method of pinching the heads firmly on the ear spots and drawing the necks long and straight until the neck feathers stretched flat. He had never killed chickens before; his speckled face was glistening with excitement. Some chickens were silent as soon as he stretched them out on the block; others kept squawking even as the hatchet fell. Then, when they threw the bodies aside, it was the bodies that still gobbled and honked as they jigged about. The heads were voiceless as they lay on the block, their beaks opening and closing soundlessly, the eyelids still blinking as if to focus the vision of a bodiless brain. He wondered what they saw. The solitary heads reminded him of goldfish gaping on a table top. He brushed them from the block onto the short grass, and found it sort of a shame when specks of dust fell on the clear eyes that still blinked and puzzled. His hands and forearms were wet with chicken blood. No matter how fast he jerked his hands back, the jumping gout of blood splashed him. Then, when the bodies hit the ground, there was no telling where they’d stagger and run. Two had crashed right into him, and one had run right between his legs, squirting blood all over his socks and sneakers. Wait until the other kids saw it! Geez, he wished he could live on the farm with the cousins. They had only done four chickens, and already his ribs ached from laughing. His dad had once told him that chickens were the stupidest creature God ever invented, and now he knew why. He gripped the black rooster’s head firmly and pulled its neck out straight. ‘I got dibs on the tail feathers!’ The lush red comb flopped over his fingers; the bright yellow eye winked at the falling hatchet.
A stocky boy wielded the tool; its handle was slick with blood. As the eldest son, he was supposed to be careful enough to be trusted with it. A maniac smile sat upon his lips and he laughed at Red’s gross jokes. Under his striped t-shirt, his stomach felt cold. At least this time he was doing it out under the sun, in the open where it all could disperse afterwards. In winter, he had to do it alone, in the straw-shed, lit by a single bulb turned on with a pull string. No matter how he swept the floor afterwards, there was always the wash of dark blood across the old boards, the stray wet feather caught in the cracks in the floor or snagged around a loosened nail. It was never warm in there, even on the hottest days. In winter it was a dark and comfortless place, feeling more like a dank cave than a wooden shed. He did not like to go into the straw-shed, even in summer. He always left the wide door open, and hurried in and out again, fleeing with the heavy bale thumping against his legs.
Once he had tried to confide in his cousins. ‘Don’t you feel it in there?’ he had whispered to Red one night. ‘Like clusters of little spirits, little feathery ghosts wanting to know why you fed them and cared for them and then smacked their heads off one day? Can’t you feel them?’
‘Chicken ghosts?’ his cousin had hooted, and must have spread the joke to the neighbour kids, for the next night he awoke to drawn-out moans outside his bedroom window: ‘Cluh-uh-uh-uh-cluck! Cluh-uh-uck!’ But the mockery could not quell the fear or the guilt. He chopped their heads off because his dad was busy and he was old enough and his mom said that if she could do the dressing out, he could do the chopping and the plucking. Go free, Rooster Spirit, he thought, go up into the blue sky and spread out across the pasture. After he had finished killing this batch of chickens, he would split up the chopping stump into firewood and stack it to be burned. The rain would wash the blood down into the soil, the wind and wild birds would carry off the stray feathers. Nothing would be left for the forlorn little souls to congeal around. He lined up his hatchet carefully and brought it down so hard that it wedged firmly into the chopping stump, trapping a few bright feathers with it.
One of them was you, Mir accused, but Wizard still refused to answer. He had been trapped that way before. Past guilt was better forgotten, lest it be savoured. He blinked his eyes and was three places at once.
The eldest son had just finished all the plucking. The bright blue sky of early afternoon had waned into a greyness that promised rain. He pulled the black plastic garbage sack full of feathers free of the plastic trash bin and dragged it around the chopping block. Kneeling, he searched through the grass for the discarded heads. Blood had smeared and spoiled the bright plumage. Some had eyes or beaks open; others were closed. He did not flinch from them, but he picked them up as delicately as sleeping butterflies and dropped them in the sack. Rural trash pick-up would take away the heads and the feathers. The rest could be cleaned by sun and rain. But he found only twelve heads. Scour as he might the grass, two heads were missing. He cursed softly to himself. If his little sister found one and screamed, there would be hell to pay. If the dog ate one and got sick, he would get a licking for it. A few stray drops of rain spattered on his back. He gave it up. He knotted the plastic sack tightly shut and toted it over to the grey metal cans.
The dark-haired boy slipped silently out of the kitchen. Deep in his denim jacket pocket were the bright tail feathers that Red had snatched from the dead rooster’s body. In his other pocket was the rooster’s head, wrapped in a paper napkin. He hurried from the yard before Red could notice the theft of the tail feathers. He’d have to hurry; it was going to rain soon. He crossed the pasture, avoiding the moist brown cow flops, slipped through a barbed wire fence, crossed a survey cut, and fled into the woods. He followed a rabbit trail that wound beneath the trees until he came to a stand of spruce trees. Dropping to his knees, he crawled under the low swoop of outer branches until he came to a place in the centre of the thicket. He could see the sky, and a tiny patch of sunlight reached the ground. This was his best place, his sitting and thinking place. He used a stick to brush away a year’s layer of spruce needles. He dug down into the rich humus, the ripe smell of summer earth rising past him. He dug until he could thrust his entire hand and wrist into the hole. That was deep enough. He took the head from his pocket and unwrapped it to look a last time into the golden-orange eyes. But death had spoiled their colour; he could not bring himself to try and close the lids. Instead he rewrapped it carefully in the paper napkin and placed it in the bottom of the hole. He buried it, squishing the earth down firmly with a clenched fist. When the hole was packed full, he sprinkled a layer of spruce needles across the scar. The tail feathers he stuck up in a small circle around the tiny grave. They kept falling over, but he patiently stood them up again and again, until the circle was complete. He never spoke as he did it; he made no sound at all. He bowed his head gravely to the circle of feathers and backed out of the grove, the trailing branches scratching his back and neck. He never went there again.
Red got in trouble. The school suspended him for three days after it became known that he had wrapped a chicken head in tinfoil and slipped it into a girl’s lunch bag. His father claimed the chicken feathers for tying flies, and his mother bleached the blood stains out of his sneakers. His whole weekend at the farm, flushed! He wished he lived on the farm and killed chickens every day. He imagined setting their heads up on a little row of stakes by the driveway, or giving foil-wrapped chicken heads to trick-or-treaters, or stringing heads and feet on thread and trimming the Christmas tree with them. Some kids had all the luck.
You were one of them, Mir insisted. Which one were you?
Wizard would not answer. He would not wonder if it were true. He made himself as hard and solid as a macadamia nut. He made his soul so dense that it could not be compressed any further. He huddled within, knowing that it could not hold him prisoner forever. A pang echoed through his heart as he thought of Black Thomas, but he stilled it quickly. No avenue of vulnerability could be left unguarded.
Come, it demanded and seduced. Look some more.
Wizard refused; he would not look. But he could not stop feeling, and he felt the damp, clinging walls of the tunnel. He wanted to howl. It had put him back in the tunnel. He was not a big man, but he was too big for the tunnel. It had been made for ones smaller than he. It gripped him like a child’s sticky fist grips a bar of candy. He was wedged in it, with blackness and danger before him, and no way to wriggle backward. He worked his toes in his heavy boots, but they were laced too tightly. His ankles cramped with the effort.
He tried not to think that the tunnel might have to end, that there might not be a path back to the hot sunlight. He steeled himself. He could not go back, so he would go on. He felt for his hands and arms. They were trapped under him. His arms were stretched flat under him, his full weight pressing them against the damp floor of the tunnel. He had no idea how it could have happened. He flexed his fingers of his hands helplessly, felt the tunnel soil grate into the rawness of knuckles and joints and wrists. His neck was cramped from the exertion of holding his head up. But if he relaxed, he knew that his face would go into the mud floor of the tunnel. He’d suffocate. Panic swelled inside him like a balloon being blown up inside his rib cage. He couldn’t breathe; his inflated chest was too big for the tunnel, but his lungs weren’t getting any air. He couldn’t get his breath.
Wizard surrendered. He opened his eyes, but nothing changed. Blackness before him and the grip of the tunnel around him. He had no breath left to scream, but he wept, his tears choking his throat and his nose swelling shut with mucus. No air. This had never happened, he told himself, and it wasn’t happening now. It was just a sham and a cheat, a corruption of all he had struggled to become. He couldn’t let it drag him back to a past he had never had. He wouldn’t. He would not. With an effort of will, he ceased to struggle against it. He let his neck go limp and his face fell into the mud of the tunnel floor.
Wizard’s forehead hit the floor with a resounding thump. As suddenly as it had possessed him, it had left him. He remained motionless, savouring the mildewy smell of the peeling linoleum. His face felt stiff as a mask and his head ached with the sensation of having cried for a very long time. At last he peeled his reluctant eyes open.
A thin dawn was seeping in the window through the shattered pane. Cautiously he turned his head to put his cheek against the floor. Inches from his face, his eyes barely able to focus on it, was the star of blood Black Thomas had left. Dread rose in his heart as he peered beyond it for the severed foot. But it was gone. Gone. Taken as a trophy, he didn’t doubt. Wizard felt sick. He started to rise, but found part of his dream carried over into waking; something constricted his body, binding his arms to his torso. He rolled cautiously over, bending his neck to look at himself. It was the window blanket. He was swaddled in it like a cocoon. And dawn was already seeping in the window.
Working in silence, he wriggled free of the blanket. He must be out of here, down on the streets, before people began to open up the shops two floors below him. He never remained in his den during the day, never entered or left it during the hours of light. The upper floors of this building had been abandoned for years. The floor below him was mostly storage. He did not want anyone to hear a suspicious noise or see him on the fire escape and decide to investigate. The first thing Cassie had taught him was never to take chances, at all, at all. Grey Mir had forced him into this foolishness.
The floor was cold beneath his socks. First, the shard of glass. He glanced quickly out into his alley. No one yet. Working quickly but carefully, he pushed the wedge of glass back into its putty nest and then tapped his finger against it until it was nearly flush with the rest of the pane. Surely no one would notice that the cracked window now had new and larger cracks in it. Now the cardboard. It was soft with age and would not stand alone. It needed support. After a moment’s hesitation, Wizard picked up the blanket. Surely it had done him all the harm it could. And he had nothing else to use. The thumbtacks were still wedged through it, save a few rolling on the floor. He got the two upper corners, then the lower ones. It was while he was securing the side tacks that he noticed it.
He did not remember a closet being there. He did not remember it at all. The rest of the room was his, as it had always been. No item was changed. There were his few books on his crude shelves, his mattress, the two cardboard boxes that held his wardrobe. A sturdier wooden crate held his few food supplies and sundries. High on the walls were the pigeons’ shelves, where they nested and roosted. All of that he remembered, and it was exactly as he recalled it. But he did not recall the closet whose open door now gaped at him. He closed his eyes and tried to picture that section of smooth wall, the painted surface pocked with careless nail holes and scuffed and stained. He was sure of it, until he opened his eyes again and the closet yawned at him laughingly.
A murky daylight filled his room, seeping in from the next chamber. He tried to remember opening the door to that room, as he did every pre-dawn, to allow his pigeons to exit. He was sure he had not. It should have been closed still, shut tight as he shut it every night before he slept. But it, too, gaped at him, allowing in the light that delineated the horrors of the closet.
Wizard’s heart felt like it was beating naked on a bed of gravel. A footlocker crouched inside the closet. Its hasp was still in place, but the padlock to secure it was closed on the floor before it. Only two metal buckets kept the footlocker shut. It was finished in dull olive drab paint, scratched and gouged from use and miles of travel. Three letters were stencilled on the front in white paint. Whoever had done it had made a poor job of it. The letters were uneven and a white haze outside their outlines showed where the spray paint had drifted. Wizard stared at them. MIR. Mir. It made no sense, but a far death bell sounded in his brain.
He swallowed queasily. The footlocker seemed to swell to fill his room, muttering its ugly secrets to itself. He wiped his sweating palms down the front of his longjohns. Dust was heavy on the top of the footlocker. Whatever was inside, it had been sealed in for a very long time. Why should he fear that it could get out now? But such arguments did not comfort him. It seemed to him that the only thing more important than getting away from it was making sure that no one else ever got near it. Just touching the closet door made his flesh crawl. It swung a few inches before it screeched against its warped doorjamb. Push as he might, lift up or press down on the handle, the door would not shut. He had to content himself with wedging it as tightly as its twisted wood permitted.
The next part was the most dangerous and foolish of all. The sun was half up. He knew that his wisest course would be to lie back on his bed and be still for the day. He could abide his hunger and aching bladder until the sun had left the skies and the darkness cleared the streets. But he wouldn’t. He needed to talk to Cassie. Even more strongly, he yearned to be away from the unclosed closet and the crouching secrets within.
He dressed hastily. Carrying his shoes, he slipped into the next room. He longed to shut the connecting door to his den, but knew he had to leave it ajar so the pigeons could come and go. The window in this room was intact but heavily streaked with pigeon droppings. It was also jammed open about six inches from the bottom. Through this opening the cats and pigeons came and went. Wizard slid it silently wider to permit his own departure. Fortune finally pitied him on this miserable day. The alley below was clear. He stepped out onto the fire escape, easing the window down to its usual stuck position.
He padded lightly down the fire escape, moving almost as silently as the cats did. At the bottom, there was a drop. He landed lightly on the old red bricks that paved his alley. As he stepped into his shoes he remembered, too late, that he had brought no change with him. True, his magic prohibited him from carrying more than a dollar’s worth of change at any time, but he could at least have started the day with enough coins for coffee. Once he had found a fifty-dollar bill pinned inside the sleeve of a Goodwill coat. He had not squandered it, but had parcelled it out, fifty-seven or sixty-two cents at a time, for coffee. He only drew from his hoard in gravest need. His battle last night had drained his power to the dregs. He needed coffee and warmth and a washroom with hot water and taps that stayed turned on. He was not ready for this day. Survival would be that much tougher.
But not impossible. Some days he flowed with his power. Today the current of the magic roared against him, and he was hard pressed to cling to a rock in the rapids. But he would survive, like a one-legged pigeon, by keeping a new balance. This was his city; it would feed him and shelter him and lead him to Cassie. The rock in the current.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8a706951-ecee-5dca-ba3e-d63fadb6fb34)
Wizard left his alley, hit Jackson Street and tried to put some purpose in his lagging stride. First of all, he had to stop looking like an urban blight resident. There was a public restroom near the fire station, only a block and a half away now. But he dreaded its stainless steel walls and fixtures and the bizarre patrons it attracted. Instead he steered toward the Amtrak passenger station on Third and Jackson. Its tall tower and severe clock face reared up above the other buildings like a red brick daffodil. It had been months since he had last been there. It was an ‘emergencies only’ stopping place, by his own rules. But today was a day for breaking rules it seemed, and he had saved the train station for plights such as this.
He pushed through the heavy doors. Within was a stale smell, like an unused car with full ashtrays. It was not busy right now. The inside of the building was as generic as the outside was distinctive. Nothing about it suggested trains and railroads. It was a faceless place, with vinyl covered chairs and metal ashtrays that could have come from any airport or bus station or hospital waiting room. The bright Amtrak posters were unconvincing. Wizard believed they were neither current nor real; the waiting passengers looked artificial, too.
The lavatory boasted a small sitting room. A weary janitor was mopping this area, swirling his mop strands around the legs of the stuffed chairs. He didn’t spare a glance for Wizard. The room stank of bleach and disinfectant. Wizard skidded on the damp floor, then walked more carefully.
After relieving himself, Wizard stood before a mirror and eyed himself critically. It was not bad, he decided, considering his quick exit from his den, but it was scarcely professional. Taking off his overcoat, he folded it carefully and set it on the tiled counter. He adjusted his conservative tie over his pastel yellow shirt. Damping a paper towel, he sponged away a spot of mud on the cuff of his polyester jacket. The one thing an expert scavenger could not look like was a scavenger. Leave that for the dreary men in overcoats perched on their benches. Strange, how they looked like scavengers, but were not. They were not even survivors, except in the briefest sense of the term. Wizard was. He inspected his clothing. He could now pass for anything from a car salesman to a food service supervisor. Almost.
From the pocket of the tan overcoat he drew a small vinyl case. Once it had protected someone’s pocket camera. Now it housed a straight razor, neatly folded; a small bar of hotel soap; a sample size bottle of Old Spice Lime cologne; a small toothbrush and a comb. He washed, brushed his teeth, and shaved quickly but carefully. Finished, he rinsed the straight razor and dried it carefully before folding it shut. He had found it long ago and cherished it because it never needed a new blade. There was the added bonus that while his shaving in public restrooms occasionally drew more than a passing glance, as long as he had used the straight razor, no one had ever bothered him about it. He used the cologne very sparingly; it was not easy to obtain, and was nearly as important a prop as the newspaper. On his way out of the terminal, he snagged yesterday’s Seattle Times from one of the plastic chairs.
It took an effort of will to rein his mind away from last night’s visitation. No sense in focusing on it. Not until he had seen Cassie and asked her advice. She would know all about it and what to do. He hurried down the street, looking as preoccupied as he was. His tan overcoat flapped convincingly against his polyester slacks. The November day was damply brisk, stinging his newly shaven cheeks. The city smelled almost clean.
On Second Avenue, a neon Keystone Kop beckoned to him with an offer of coffee. He turned toward Duffy’s. It was a little place, sandwiched between more prosaic businesses. It was not his ideal milieu, but he thought he could handle it, even on a day like this. He entered the narrow little shop.
It didn’t offer much cover. It was set up as a cafeteria. One took a tray and pushed it along shining steel rails past displays of carrot cake and potato salad and weeping Jell-O and sandwiches, to where one could order a hot sandwich or a warmed sweet roll, if one wished to do so and one had money. Wizard didn’t and hadn’t. He wanted coffee. And here they refilled your cup for you. If you had a cup. He squinted his eyes and looked down the short row of small tables pushed up against the wall. They had red-checked table cloths, their tops weighted and protected by sheets of clear plexiglas. The scarred hardwood floors and aged red brick walls looked ashamed of the huge colour TV mounted high in one corner of the café. At least today it was turned off. A sign near it proclaimed that Duffy’s was OPEN FOR KING DOME EVENTS. Wizard hastily scanned the tables. He had to be settled before he was noticed.
There were no promising openings. For one thing, there weren’t enough customers. It was the wrong time of day, and the help was busy restocking the shelves and cases. He was on the point of retreat when luck struck. As if in response to a mental command that Wizard hadn’t sent, a man rose abruptly. He gulped his coffee down while standing, shrugged into his tan overcoat, and strode out, giving the door a shove it didn’t deserve. Wizard instinctively stepped out of his way, then dodged in behind him. The coincidence of the overcoats was too much to resist. In two steps Wizard had the man’s mug and half of a cinnamon roll he had left. One more step backed him up to the next table; he settled himself quietly. No one in the place glanced at him. Good. He was now established. He kept the overcoat on and concentrated on being unremarkable.
A girl came in from the back, bearing a hot pot of coffee. Smiling, she poured down the line of little tables. A frown divided her brows for a moment when she came to the table where Tan Overcoat had been sitting. She paused fractionally and glanced about. Then her head went up, her jaw firmed, and her waitress smile returned. She stepped to Wizard’s table and poured for him.
The steaming coffee sloshed down, drowning the white interior of the brown mug. He breathed deeply of the aroma. As soon as she stepped away, he wrapped both his chilled hands around the mug and lifted it like a chalice. It was a bit hotter than drinking temperature, but this early in the day it didn’t deter him. He took down half the mug, feeling it hit his empty stomach and spread its warmth. Setting the mug down with a sigh, he added sugar from the dispenser and turned to the cinnamon roll. It was poor fare, being too sweet, too stiff, and lacking in raisins. But it made a comfortable little cushion for the next draught of coffee.
Wizard had just lifted his mug in signal for a refill when disaster fell on him. The Tan Overcoat stepped back into the door. He did not have to turn to see him. His shadow fell on the floor beside him. Wizard drew his folded newspaper from his pocket and began to shake it out. He sheltered in the sports section as the man took another step and then another. The storm broke over the table he had vacated and Wizard had cleared.
‘Can’t wait to get me out of your life, can you?’ Tan Overcoat’s voice was like a bellowing bull as he slammed a set of keys onto the table. ‘Well, you can bring me another goddam cinnamon roll and a fresh cup of coffee. You can kick me out of your apartment, but you got no right to steal my breakfast!’
In two quick steps the waitress stood before him. Her eyes flashed, and she seemed to relish this confrontation rather than fear it. Small and steady she stood before him, clutching her coffee pot in front of her like the shield of Truth and Virtue. ‘I never touched your damn breakfast!’ Her hand swooped down to snatch up the keys. ‘And that’s another reason why I want you out; you never give anyone a chance to explain anything. You jump to conclusions and then you jump on me. I’m sick of it! Find a new patsy, Booth. I’m done with you!’
The older man behind the counter didn’t even look up from the meat he was slicing. ‘Lynda. Can it. This is neither the time nor the place. Booth. I don’t want no trouble in here. You can have a reorder or your money back. Take your pick.’
‘Screw you!’ Booth snapped at the man, who never flinched. ‘And you too, bitch. I’m glad to be gone.’
The glass door wheezed shut behind him. The stirring in the room simmered back to a near normal level.
‘Lynda,’ the counter man said reasonably. ‘One more scene like that in here, and I’m letting you go. Get two more carrot cakes out of the freezer, would you?’
‘Sure, Dan.’
For an instant before she left, Wizard thought he felt her eyes on him, touching and finding him. But when she came back to thunk the carrot cakes down on the back counter, she paid no attention to him. Her trim back was to the customers as she clattered out another order. He watched with admiration as she loaded one hand with three plates of food and deftly scooped up the coffee pot with the other. She moved gracefully down the line of tables, filling cups, landing two of the plates without disturbing the third, remembering the creamer for coffee for one and artificial sweetener for another. Then she was by his table, filling his cup from a freshly brewed pot. He kept his face behind the paper, carefully shielding himself, until he heard the incredible thunk of a loaded plate being placed on his table. He twitched the paper aside to see what was going on, to find himself impaled on her eyes.
He swallowed drily and tried to maintain his identity. ‘I didn’t order –’ he began, but she cut in.
‘Eat while it’s hot,’ she told him softly in a voice that knew everything. Then she moved on to the next table.
Steam was rising from a golden waffle. A scooped ball of butter was melting in the centre, surrounded by a ring of gently warmed strawberries that were in turn ringed by an edging of whipped cream. His stomach leaped with hunger. He turned to look after the waitress, but she didn’t look at him. I do not see you at all, her straight back told him as plainly as if she had spoken.
Such a thing had never happened to him before; he did not know what to feel or how to react. Ashamed, to have been caught? Humiliated, to be considered a charity case? Should he be too proud to accept it, should he rise and stalk from the café? But he was hungry, and the coffee was hot, and he could not remember when anything had ever smelled so good to him. Lynda disappeared behind the counter and his trembling hand picked up a fork. He tasted a tiny bit of the whipped cream and then began to eat as he had not eaten in days. Whole bites of sweet food, washed down with gulps of hot coffee. It was hard to restrain himself from gobbling. In a remarkably short time he was finished, and felt almost heavy with the unaccustomed weight of a full meal inside him. There was a mouthful of coffee left, just enough to finish on. He glanced shyly about, but there was no sign of Lynda. Some other waitress had come in and was clearing tables at the far end of the room. He hesitated before rising. He would have liked to leave her some sign of his appreciation, a tip or a note. But he had neither coins nor pencil, even if his natural wariness had not forbidden such contacts. So he rose, folding his newspaper in a leisurely manner, and stuffing it into his overcoat pocket. The door didn’t even sigh as he passed through it. No one watched him go.
He shuddered out a sigh as he strode down Second. That had been a closer call than he liked to think about. Suppose she had pointed to him as the breakfast thief? Suppose someone had noticed him moving the roll and the mug? Even her giving him food had felt wrong; there was nothing of power or magic in her gesture toward him; only pity. He walked faster. Had he thought himself struggling against the current? No, it was more like being caught in a riptide. He had best beach himself before he made any more dangerous mistakes. He longed to feel safe, to have a sheltered spot in which to catch his breath. But there was an oppression in the air today, as if that thing called Mir was lurking overhead, watching and spoiling everything. He thought of getting on a metro bus and cruising the Ride Free area all day. He knew it well. From Jackson Street on the south to Battery Street on the north, from Sixth Avenue on the east to the waterfront. He could ride the bus all day and watch the city from the window. But it could not take him out of danger. At every stop the greyness of Mir would be hovering, waiting for the moment when he would be alone with his guard down. He had to find Cassie, with no more stupid mistakes. He set out on his rounds.
Pioneer Square Historical District. Not because he expected to find her there, but because it was closest. Occidental Park was the name of this particular section of it, but no one in this part of town much cared. Wizard doubted if they even knew they were in Seattle. The ‘park’ was a chunk of Occidental Avenue just above the King Dome area that had been closed off to all but pedestrian traffic. Now they called it a park. It was paved with rough grey bricks, gone uneven. Stubborn grass sprouted up between the grey bricks, and lichen and moss clung to their crumbling edges. The slightest amount of rain left the bricks damp and a frost turned them treacherous. There were trees, of course, sprouting from rings of bricks and looking as natural as mastodons in such a setting. In their shade, benches sprouted from the bricks like toadstools. Discarded humans and pigeons perched and loitered there.
Cassie was not on any of the benches. Men in dark-coloured coats hunched on them, their chests huffed out against the chill. Pigeons perched on the wrought iron rails of the benches, their feathers fluffed against the cold. The pigeons looked more competent. Brick buildings fronted the park, offering small cafés, book stores, a Western Union office, a bank, and other shops even more unlikely. Wizard’s favourite building was a four-storey red brick one with tall arched doors and windows. Ivy climbed up the side of it. The tall glass and wrought iron doors opened into a mini-mall. One could descend a flight of steps for underground shopping after browsing the ground floor shops. The Bakery with its good hot coffee was right inside the door. There was even a gas fireplace with wooden tables near it. Inside the Arcade it was warm. Outside, the bench people were cold. And not too bright, Wizard thought, not harshly but not pityingly.
A tall, skinny black man wearing two pairs of pants moved in aimless despair from a shaded bench to one that soaked up the thin sunlight. Wizard shook his head. Now, any fool should have known that if you must wear two pants against the cold, you should wear the shorter ones on the inside where they didn’t show. No animal would have flaunted such vulnerability. If only the man had attended to that detail, he could have passed for a starving grad student from the university. Didn’t he know about the gas fireplace that burned by the wooden tables just beyond those tall doors? With an old text book salvaged from the dumpster behind the used book store, and the price of a cup of coffee, that man could have passed a warm morning. But if he had to be taught that, he’d never learn it.
Cassie had told him that, the first time they’d met. Wizard had been sitting on one of the sunnier beaches here, but it hadn’t taken the chill off him. The cold had soaked him, saturated his flesh. He remembered little of himself on that day, other than how cold he was, and the terrible sadness that welled from him like water from an inexhaustible spring. He could almost see the sadness puddling out around him, filling the cobblestoned park with his melancholy. The pigeons had come to him, and he had reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled bag of stale popcorn and fed them. They clustered at his feet, looking like small grey pilgrims seeking out his wisdom. They perched on the bench beside him and walked on his body, but soiled him not. One fat grey fellow with iridescent neck feathers had stood before him and puffed himself out, to bob and coo his ritual dance to his mate, which promised that life went on, always. He had fed them, never speaking, but feeling a tiny warmth come from the feathered bodies clustered so closely about him. A strange little hope was nourished by the sight of such successful scavengers surviving.
Suddenly, Cassie had stood before him. The pigeons had billowed up, fanning him with the cold air of their passage. ‘They know I’d eat ’em,’ she laughed, and had sat down beside him. She had been a stout lady, her feet laced up in white nurse’s shoes. Her nylon uniform was too long for current styles; her nubbly black coat didn’t reach to the hem of it. A sensible black kerchief imprisoned her steel wool hair. She had heaved the sigh of a heavy woman glad to be off her feet.
‘That’s a strange gift you have,’ she’d said. It was her way, to start a conversation in the middle. ‘Can’t say as I’ve ever seen it before. Must be based on the old loaves and fishes routine.’ She had laughed softly, showing yellowed teeth. Wizard had not answered her. He remembered that about himself. He had known that small survival trait. Talk makes openings, and openings admit weapons. Given enough silence, anyone will go away. Unless she’s Cassie.
‘Been watching you,’ she’d said, when her laugh was done. ‘These last nine days. Every day you’re here. Every day is the same bag of popcorn. Every day it holds enough to fill up these feathered pigs. But even when they’re stuffed, they don’t leave you. They know that you won’t harm them. Can’t harm them, without harming yourself. And if you know that much, you’d better know me. Because there aren’t that many of us around. You either have it, or you don’t. And if you have to be taught it, you can’t learn it.’
Ironically, that had been what she had taught him. That he had a gift, and that gift meant survival. That was what he could not teach to others, unless they already knew it. He was of the pigeons, and they were his flock. But it was a non-transferable bond. He couldn’t teach anyone else to feed his pigeons, for he had never learned it himself. Nor would he ever know why that particular gift was the one bestowed on him. Cassie would only shrug and say, ‘Bound to be a reason for it, sooner or later.’
Today there was a carelessly dressed woman standing beside a trash bin. Three winos were grouped respectfully around her. Wizard kept his distance as they each produced their small coins. Only then did the woman stoop, to drag out the hidden bottle from beneath the trash bin. She poured them each a measure into a much crumpled paper cup. When the last wino was drinking, and the two others were licking their lips, he approached them. They regarded him with hostile alarm. He was too well dressed to voluntarily speak to them. What did he want?
‘Seen Cassie?’ he asked gently. They stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘If you see Cassie, tell her I’m looking for her.’
‘If yer lookin fer a woman, whasamatter with me?’ the woman demanded boldly. She gave a waggle of her body that reminded Wizard of a labrador retriever shaking off water.
‘Mononucleosis.’ He wished she had not asked him. Now Truth was on him and must be told. ‘You got it from a wino you served last week. But if you go to a clinic now, they can help you before you spread it to all Seattle. Tell Cassie I’m looking for her.’
Wizard walked briskly away just as one wino got up the courage to hold out his hand, palm up. He wished the woman had not asked him, but once he was asked, he had to answer. All powers had balancing points, and all sticks were dirty on at least one end.
Down to First Avenue and the bus. A derelict accosted him at the bus stop. He was a heavy, jowly man dressed in a black overcoat, black slacks, and brown shoes. ‘I’m just trying to get something to eat. Can you help me?’ The man held out a pink hand hopefully. ‘No,’ Wizard answered truthfully. He could smell the Bread of Life Mission meal on the man’s breath. The man stumped off down the sidewalk, blowing like a walrus on an ice floe. Wizard’s bus came.
It took him north up First and farted him out at the intersection of Pine. The wind off the water wafted the sound and smell of the Pike Place Public Market to him. He strolled toward it, savouring anticipation. He never saw it with jaded eyes. The market bore her eighty-odd years as well as any eccentric grande dame. It never showed him the same face twice. Depending on how he approached, it was a bower of flowers, or a banquet of fresh fish, or a tower of shining oranges. From Alaskan Way at the bottom of the Hillclimb, it was the magic castle rising up at the top of an impossible flight of stairs. He knew there were twelve buildings and seven levels, all interwoven with misleading ramps and stairs. He had taken care to never memorize the layout of the market; to him it was always an enchanted labyrinth of shops and vendors, a maze of produce, fish, and finery. In this part of Seattle, he chose to be forever a tourist, sampling and charmed and overwhelmed. He strode gracefully through the maze like a dancer on the kaleidoscope’s rim.
Fish from every U.S. coast sprawled in tubs and buckets of ice, inside glass counters, and in boxes lining the walkway. Their round eyes stared at him unblinking as he hurried past. The vendors in the low stalls begged him to taste a slice of orange, a piece of kiwi fruit, a bit of crisp apple. He did, and smiled and thanked them, but did not buy today. At the bakery, he helped himself to a sample of flaky croissant. Every little bit helped him, and the market lined up to feed and entertain him. He admired vintage comic books, magicians’ accessories, a hat from the ’forties, stationery block printed this morning, and fresh ground spices in fat apothecary jars. In their own sweet wandering, the halls and tunnels of the market surprised him by spilling him out on a landing on the Hillclimb.
Euripides was already at work. Wizard approached respectfully. The small dark man had opened his fiddle case on the sidewalk before him and was playing merrily. Several landings below, a clarinet was competing with but not matching him. Euripides skipped and hopped his bow from one tune to the next. Wizard felt proud to have seen him and Known his gift without Cassie pointing him out. As Euripides fiddled, bright quarters would bounce off the worn blue lining of his instrument case, he had a knack for playing the tune that was running through your head for weeks at a time. To those who walked by with no music in their souls, he gave a note or two, kindly. He was not a pure scavenger, but Wizard still admired him. Each man had his own calling. Cassie would say, yes, and every woman, too.
Wizard waited politely for Euripides to pause between tunes. He watched the passing folk, those who tossed a quarter and those who didn’t. A little girl in Seattle Blues jeans and a Kliban cat sweatshirt was coming down the steps. Her mother was walking behind her, a rather annoyed look on her face, for the child was going very slowly. A second glance showed the mother’s face to be more anxious than angry, irritated by some unseen threat. The girl was thin, and her dark skin seemed to be darkest in the wrong places. Euripides played for her. The girl gave two skips and stopped to listen.
She drew closer and closer to the fiddler, paying no attention to the mother who warned, ‘Sarah! Come on now, or I’ll leave you.’ Her ears belonged to the fiddler as his bow danced through the Arkansas Traveller. Closer still she came, bobbing like a little bird to the music. When Euripides made his final flourish, she did not hesitate. From her pants pocket she tugged a crumpled one-dollar bill. Hastily she smoothed it, and stooped to place it in the fiddler’s case. Euripides had put the bow to his fiddle again but, at the sight of the green paper, he paused.
‘That’s a lot of money to give a beggar,’ he said. His voice was not like his fiddle. It sawed and creaked.
‘I liked your music,’ she said simply.
He played a few errant notes thoughtfully and gave a glance at the mother, whose face was not approving. ‘Well, I don’t think I can take it. Not that much money.’
‘But I liked your music that much,’ the girl insisted.
‘And I like you.’ Euripides looked at her deeply. ‘Tell you what. I gave you a tune, and you gave me a dollar. Let me give you one more thing. A wish.’
She laughed. ‘I’m too big for that. Wishes aren’t real.’
Euripides was serious. ‘This one is. One of the very few real ones left in the world. And I’m giving it to you. One wish. For you alone to have and make. So you must promise me to use it wisely. Don’t wish it today, for a ball of green yarn or a blue rose. Don’t even wish it tomorrow. Because you must think it through carefully and not be like all the foolish folk in the old tales. Think of all the consequences of the wish. And when you’re sure you know what to wish for, wait three more days, just to be positive. Will you promise me that?’
The girl’s face had changed as he spoke. From the laughing face of a little girl who is just a tiny bit annoyed to be mistaken for such a baby, her expression had changed to one of doubt, and then wonder. Euripides’s earnestness had taken its effect. By the time he finished, there was belief and awe in her face. The crumpled dollar bill seemed a paltry thing indeed compared to what she had been given.
‘He’s given me a wish, Mommy,’ she exclaimed excitedly as she turned to her mother.
‘So I heard.’ Mommy was not completely sold on the wish idea, but she did not look as annoyed as she had a few moments ago.
‘One more thing!’ Euripides’s rusty voice stopped them as they turned away. He focused himself on the child. ‘A wish takes belief and heart. You have to believe you’ll get your wish. That means being prepared for it, and working to help it grow. The wish is like a seed. I can give you a seed and tell you there’s a tree inside it. But it won’t come out unless you believe it, too, and believe it enough to plant it and water it and keep weeds and bugs away. So care for your wish.’
‘I will,’ she promised, eyes shining.
‘Sarah,’ her mother prodded gently.
They left. Wizard moved closer to Euripides. ‘What was it?’ he asked softly.
‘Leukaemia.’ He sighed. ‘I just hopes she remembers the wish. They don’t know, yet. And when the chemo-therapy has taken away all your pretty curls, it’s hard to remember a ragged old fiddler in Pike Place Market.’
