Wizard of the Pigeons Read online

  “See,” he told himself aloud. “It’s an illusion.” He let his arm fall back to his side. He was warm and incredibly sleepy.

  He closed his eyes and started to let consciousness slide away.

  A pigeon fell to the floor with a soft thud. And another.

  Wizard sat up. His face pushed up into dense gray smoke that choked him mercilessly. He fell back onto the mattress., into a cooler strata of air. His mind raced. The pipe! Where had Lynda left it?

  He rolled onto his belly and gazed around wildly. There seemed to be no flames yet, but he was sure that when they came, it would be as a single flash, engulfing the room in an instant. He had only moments to get out.

  His cracked window might offer fresh air, but no chance of escape. The fire escape was under the other window, in the next room. From his window it was a sheer four-story drop.

  He began a wriggling belly-crawl to the connecting door. His seeking hand fell on a small feathered body. Its legs twitched against his palm. The cooler air near the floor was reviving it.

  He became aware of other thuds as more pigeons fell, overcome by smoke and fumes. He wondered where Black Thomas and Ninja were. But they were smart animals, smart enough to leave a burning building. Weren’t they? Not like the stupid goddamned pigeons that couldn’t take care of themselves. Stupid, useless, shitty birds. He scooped up another body from the floor. His burden made crawling difficult. He crept on. The floor was getting warmer. And when he finally reached the connecting door that should have led to escape, he found the wood of it nearly too hot to touch. It must have started in there, somehow. He thought of the stacked cardboard boxes. He heard helpless flutterings on the floor behind him, felt soft pinions brush his bare legs.

  “Oh, shit, shit, shit!” he roared suddenly, wasting precious breath. He scuttled in a circle on his belly, the stupid wizard’s robe winding up around his legs and hobbling him. He gathered up the little bodies as he crawled, putting them into the sling of his cloak. He took the tall wizard cap from the table and filled it with birds. They were heavy. How many did he have?

  He had no idea how many roosted in his room at night. The idiot things struggled against his rescue, hopping out of his reach as the gray ceiling pressed ever closer.

  At last he had them all. His cloak was a heavy sling over his arm, his bird-stuffed hat tossed in as well. The cooing, rustling, struggling load dragged beside him, snagging on the old flooring. He could feel heat on his bare legs. The air in the room was warming up, the temperature rising every second.

  He would have to crawl for the hall door and down the corridor and try to find a way to escape.

  Outside his room in the foreign corridor, he kicked the door shut behind him. He came cautiously to his knees. But the smoke was thick here as well, stinging his eyes and choking him. He dropped again and resumed his frantic crawl. He didn’t know this part of the building. He had never explored it other than to determine that it and the stories above him were unoccupied. Now he regretted his lack of curiosity. The loose fabric of the robe dragged and tangled around his knees, snagging against the floor. The sling full of pigeons occupied one arm completely. But at last he reached a door and felt cautiously up the wood for the knob. The cold brass refused to turn. Locked. He banged his fist against the solid wood panels. Good, sturdy, old-fashioned door. No exit this way.

  He coughed heavily and could draw in no clean air to calm his lungs. To breathe now was to choke. His belly scraped the floor as he wriggled along with his cooing, rustling load. His eyes were running tears, and even if there had been light he would have been blind. The smoke smelled acrid and poisonous; he wondered what was smoldering. The basic structure of the building was brick, but the interior, with its hardwood floors and fine old paneling, would burn merrily. His groping fingers encountered another doorframe. He was so horribly tired. If only he could lie still for a moment and catch his breath. One cool breath of air and he knew he could keep going. His leaden fingers walked up the door panels. His wandering hand finally encountered the knob. He rattled it, but it did not turn. Locked. But above it he felt the smoothness of a pane of glass. This room had been an office of some sort once.

  He dropped back to the floor and sucked in a long breath of the marginally cooler air. His lungs tried to cough it out, but he held it down as he reared up, a fold of the cloak looped over his free arm. The glass was thick, frosted stuff, but two blows of his elbow shattered it. He thrust his arm into the opening to turn the knob from the other side. The hot air of the corridor was flowing past him into the cooler room like smoke seeking a chimney.

  He staggered into the room and stumbled into heaped boxes piled nearly ceiling high. He pushed toward where the windows must be, wriggling between towers of boxes and over lower stacks. He began dragging boxes away from the wall of them that blocked his way. Behind him, he heard the boom as his room ignited and the laughing roar of the fire as it rushed down the comdor after him. He threw boxes awkwardly, one arm still encumbered by the sling of pigeons. If he dropped them, he could… He choked, and then the pane before him was reflecting the orange of flames in the hall behind him. He didn’t bother with the window catch. His elbow took out the glass and then he was struggling out the snaggle-toothed opening into the blessed cold of the night air. The sirens began. The fire department was only a few blocks away. They’d be here almost instantly, with the police right behind them. The iron railings of the fire escape were icy against his hand as he rushed down two flights, his sling of pigeons thumping against him as he fled. The next set of stairs was only a half set. He halted, some nine feet in the air above the Great Winds Kite Shop.

  The bright kite was still tethered to the platform of the fire escape. Its gay streamers tangled around him as he made his leap. His stockinged feet met the cement too solidly, jolting him to the very base of his skull, but he could not have rolled without crushing his pigeons. The sirens weren’t more than half a block away, screaming and wailing. He took a tighter grip on his sling of pigeons, hiked up his robes and ran, his bare legs flashing in the night. His socks became soaked at once, so that he splotted with every step. The lighted expanse of Occidental Square offered him no hiding place, but at least it led away from the firemen and police.

  He looked back over his shoulder at orange and yellow flames shooting out the upper-story windows of the Washington Shoe Manufacturing Company building. The whole thing would be gutted. All his fault. On his next stride, the cold iron lamppost leaped out of the darkness before his fire-blinded eyes.

  Cold iron smacked his left temple and thumped his ribs. He fell into a windy darkness full of the whirring of wings.

  “FOR GOD’S SAKE, will you please quit crying!”

  Wizard yelped like a kicked dog as the book bounced off his shoulder and skidded across the Indian prayer rug on the floor. He raised astounded eyes to Cassie, silenced by the sheer shock of her outburst. As she retrieved her book, he rubbed at his stiff face and wet eyes and took a deeper breath. His head felt less foggy, but he was still more than half-stoned. He knew there was nothing more unpleasant to be around than a drunk on a crying jag, but he was too confused to be ashamed. Cassie sagged back into her overstuffed chair and regarded him as if he were a wet dog in a freshly made bed.

  They were in the library, a pleasantly dark room with bookshelves growing up to an unseen ceiling and fat furniture crouching on thick rugs. Floor lamps cast their puddles of yellow light near the chairs. It was a cozy room, if you ignored the cobwebs and the rustling of mice in the corners. Cassie did. So did Rasputin, who sat flat in a corner, swaying softly in his eternal dance as he teased Ninja with a string. They were ignoring Wizard, too. Or had been.

  Euripides had left hours ago, right after he helped Rasputin drag Wizard up the endless stairs. After they had dumped him in the middle of the floor, he had looked at Wizard sadly shaking his head. “I don’t think it was entirely his fault,” Euripides had begun cautiously, but the looks Cassie and Rasputin gave him si
lenced the defense. Euripides had tossed a shrug at Cassie and left. Wizard wished he had stayed. No one had spoken a word to him since then, though he vividly recalled Rasputin shaking him violently just before they dragged him in. “Acting like you the last wizard in the world, and the only one going to get hurt by your crap. You dumb shit fuck-head!”

  “I know, I know!” Wizard had wailed, and that was when he had begun to cry. He hadn’t wanted to, had been ashamed of it, but he was too drunk, stoned, and disoriented to do anything else. That was when Rasputin had slammed him up against the wall, not hard enough to really hurt him, but forcefully enough to let him know that he could just as easily have put Wizard through the wall. Only Euripides’s hand on the black wizard’s arm had stopped the demonstration. Euripides was the only one who had shown any sympathy at all for Wizard’s plight. Fresh tears stung his eyes at the thought, but Cassie’s glare dried them.

  She set her cup of tea down on the lamp stand by her chair and rose to cross the room to him. She towered over him, a sturdy woman in her thirties dressed in jeans and a faded cotton shirt. “Get up!” she ordered him sternly.

  He sniffed and dragged himself to his feet. “You are a mess,” she observed without rancor. He bowed his head. The robe was torn from the jagged window glass and bloody where he had cut his elbow on the second window glass. Pigeon droppings streaked the fold of cloak where he had carried them, and he stank of smoke. When he rubbed his face again and looked at his hands, he saw stains of damp soot. “What happened to you?” she demanded, and he knew she was not asking about the fire.

  “I don’t know,” he replied hoarsely.

  “Ah doooon’t knoooow!” Rasputin drawled out in a mocking croon. He rose to waltz lazily around them both. When he reached the door, he said, “Hate to say, ‘I told you so,’ Cassie. This one’s on you, like stink on shit.” His dark eyes snagged for a moment on Wizard’s doleful face. “Hey, Wizard. No hard feelings, huh? If you live, come see me. You’ll be welcome.”

  He curtsied gravely and spun out the door.

  “Thanks for bringing him to me!” Cassie called after him. Wizard wondered if she was sincere. She dragged a bandana handkerchief from her hip pocket and handed it to him. He wiped his eyes and nose dutifully. “What am I going to do with you?” she wondered aloud.

  “I don’t—” he began.

  “That was rhetorical!” she snapped, stopping him cold. “I’ve had enough of your crying and saying ‘I don’t know.’ Say or do anything you please, but not that.” She meant it. He took a ragged breath.

  “I thought crying was good, especially for us inhibited males.” A little of his frustration and anger leaked into his voice.

  For a second Cassie looked pleased. “Well, at least you still have your wits. I was beginning to think your mind was gone. Sure, crying is good. It’s a great tension relieving response to impossible situations. But when you substitute it for action, it’s no more appropriate than beating your head against a wall. As Rasputin tried to demonstrate. What are you crying about, anyway?”

  “I don’t—” Her look stopped him. “Everything. I feel like I just fell down the rabbit hole again, Cassie. It’s not that I don’t like you or the others. But, Cassie, I had it all straight in my head, finally. I was going to move in with Lynda and get a job or welfare or something, and forget all this stuff.” A frown divided her brows, but she was nodding for him to continue. “All this stuff… all this pretending about magic and Truth and Knowing and pigeons. I was going to be like everyone else. And then my place catches fire and burns up everything I own. And when I come to, Rasputin is hauling me up those damned impossible stairs of yours, and I am back to this… place.” Words failed to describe for him the gears of his two worlds grinding together.

  Cassie looked pained. “A job or welfare. Shit, Wizard. Look at yourself. You can’t change your residence and put on new clothes and be what you aren’t. You’d still be a wizard, and you’d still have responsibilities to your magic.”

  “My magic’s gone, anyway.” Wizard crushed his eyes shut as he made this final admission. He dangled once again in the abyss of that loss.

  “Hold it!” Cassie’s voice snapped him back from it. She looked incredibly tired. “What a tangle,” she murmured, mostly to herself. She managed a tired smile for him. “Let’s take this one thing at a time. Go clean up. Maybe it will sober you up a little, too. Go on. You’ll feel better.”

  She picked up her book again. He blundered about the place, discovering a closet and an office with dusty files and a typewriter and then a short corridor with a door ajar at the end of it. The bathroom was small, little more than a sink, toilet, and shower stall. He untied the silver tassels of the cloak slowly.

  He draped it and the soiled robe over the sink and turned on the shower to the hottest water he thought he could stand. He shut the glass door behind him and stood in the stinging rain, letting it batter his face. His brain slowly cleared. He began to soap himself, finding numerous small abrasions he had been unaware of. They stung. The hot water loosened the newly clotted blood on his elbow and it bled again, slightly. With cautious fingers he explored the tender lump on one temple.

  He stayed under the shower until the water turned suddenly cold. Then he shut it off and stood dripping in the stall. It seemed so safe in here. Getting out of the shower and drying off meant facing up to whatever came next. But after a few moments he began to shiver. Best face it. He blotted himself dry and then glanced about for something to put on. There was only the robe and cloak. He slipped the robe over his head, expecting the smell of smoke and pigeons. But there was only the soft blue robe spangled with stars and moons. But for the small rips from the glass, the events of the past few hours might have been dreams. That was not reassuring. He pulled on his socks, slung the cloak over his arm, and emerged in search of Cassie.

  He stood silently until she looked up from her book and nodded approvingly at him. “That looks better. Feel any better?”

  “Some,” he admitted, and suddenly he didn’t want to feel better. As long as the events were overwhelming, no one could expect him to assume responsibility for them. Cassie seemed to sense his reluctance.

  “So what is still so awful?” she demanded.

  “Everything. My den is gone, with everything in it. And—”

  “Wait. One at a time. What did you lose in that fire that you can’t replace? You’re wearing the only unique thing you possessed. The rest of it could be replaced by a few strolls down dumpster row. Am I wrong?”

  She wasn’t, but it seemed cruel of her to state it so baldly.

  He racked his brains for a defense. “Black Thomas. I got the pigeons out, but I didn’t find him.”

  Cassie gave him a disparaging look. “Black Thomas! Come here, tomcat!” Wizard followed her gaze up to one of the bookshelves. Thomas sat up slowly. He yawned disdainfully, showing a red mouth, pink curling tongue, and white teeth.

  He surveyed them both with disgust, then rearranged himself with his front paws tucked neatly against his breast. His stump was tidily wrapped in a clean white bandage. He closed his eyes to slits and made Wizard and Cassie disappear.

  “He’s still angry,” Cassie observed. “At you, for bringing a stranger into his home. And at me, for holding him down while I dressed that stump. But he didn’t even stick around for the fire to start.”

  Wizard felt relieved. And guilty. “He wouldn’t let me clean and wrap it for him.”

  “You didn’t even try,” Cassie stated factually.

  “Well, I was afraid I’d hurt him,” he said defensively. Had she no sympathy for him at all? His magic was gone.

  “Sometimes you have to hurt someone to help him. When I cleaned that stump with peroxide, he screamed like a baby. But it’s clean now, and he won’t get gangrene.”

  “I’m glad he’s all right.”

  “I know. Now. What upsets you most? That your magic is gone, or that you got caught before you could run out on us?”
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  Wizard’s breath caught. The question was as cold and unexpected as a knife in the spine. Cassie’s blue eyes continued to bore into his.

  “Well, what would you call it?” she asked him at last, sounding a bit defensive. “Only days ago, you and I discussed this gray thing of yours, this Mir. That it had come to Seattle, and that you are the only one that will have its balancing point. That it will come to you, and you must stop it. And if you fail, it will take us all down. What happens next? Next we have Wizard forsaking the duties of his magic, claiming that he has no magic, and contemplating moving in with a waitress, to watch TV and drink beer and line up for payments from a window. So what should we think? What were you thinking? That you could roll over on your back and Mir would pass you by? Even if it did, which you well know it won’t, where did you think it would satisfy its hungers?”

  The enormity of it settled on him. He could only look at her. The grave sadness in her eyes was more than he could bear.

  “You know,” he said slowly, “that those things never crossed my mind. I never saw it that way, that I was abandoning a position. I only saw that my magic was gone, that I was Wizard no more. Somehow, I… forgot about it.”

  “I know,” she conceded. She walked away from him to drop back into her chair, but then waved him into its mate on the other side of the lamp stand. His legs and back were stiff, and his ribs ached from the collision with the lamppost. The wound her words had dealt him was worst of all. He was glad to ease into the chair instead of standing. He smoothed his robes over his knees.

  “You look like you’re already comfortable wearing that,” Cassie observed softly.

  He looked down at the soft blue cloth. “It seems natural,” he admitted. “Right.”

  “Are you sure your magic’s gone?”

  He nodded, tired of repeating it.

  “Then the worst part is that you are sure. How did you lose it?”