Wizard of the Pigeons Read online

  “I don’t do that.” Wizard’s voice was firm.

  “Don’t do what?” Rasputin teased innocently. “Screw or tell lies?”

  “I tell lies only to stay alive. I tell the Truth when it’s on me.” Ice and fire in his voice, warning the black wizard.

  “Say what?” Rasputin sat up straight on the bench, and his fingers suddenly beat a dangerous staccato rhythm on the bench back. Wizard felt his strength gather in his shoulders and watched the play of muscles in the black hand and wrist on the bench back. He felt the edge and dragged himself back from it. This man was his friend. He forced his voice into a casual scale.

  “Remember who you’re talking to, Rasputin. I’m the man who knows the Truth about people, and when they ask me, I’ve got to tell them. I have my own balancing points for my magic. One of them is that I don’t touch women. I don’t touch anyone.”

  “That so?” the black wizard asked skeptically. Wizard looked at him stony-eyed, “You poor, stupid bastard,” Rasputin said softly, more to himself than to his friend. “Drawing the circle that shuts it out.” He flopped back into his earlier, careless pose, but his dancing fingers jigged on the bench back, and Wizard felt his awareness digging at him.

  The pigeons roared up suddenly around them, their frantically beating wings swishing harshly against Wizard’s very face. Cassie stood before them, slender and smiling. She was very plain today, dressed all in dove gray from her shoes to the softly draped cloth of her dress. Her hair was an unremarkable brown, her features small and regular. But when she flashed Wizard her smile, the blue voltage of her eyes stunned him. She proffered him a couple of gray tail feathers. “Nearly had myself a pigeon pie for tonight,” she teased, tossing the feathers in his face. Wizard winced, fearing there was more truth in her jest than he approved. “Come on,” she cajoled, sitting down between the men. “If lions are majestic and wolves are noble and tigers are princely, what’s so cruddy about a person who snags a few pigeons for a meal now and then?”

  She bent suddenly to wipe a smudge from her shoe. and Rasputin grabbed Wizard’s eyes over her bent back. “Stupid shit!” he mouthed silently at Wizard, but composed his face quickly as Cassie sat up between them. She gave her brown bobbed hair a shake, and the scent of wisteria engulfed Wizard and threatened to sweep him away. But she had fixed those eyes on Rasputin and pinned him to the bench. “Give it to me!” she demanded instantly.

  “Right here?” His reluctance wasn’t feigned. “It’s a heavy one, Cassie. Bad. I didn’t like hearing it, and I don’t like repeating it.”

  “All the more reason I should have it. Out with it.”

  “It was these two cute little girls, one in pigtails, down in Gas Works Park, and they were jumping rope, and I was hardly listening, cause they was doing all old ones, you know, like ‘I like coffee, I like tea, I like boys, why don’t they like me,’ and ‘Queen Bee, come chase me, all around my apple tree…’”

  “Oldies!” Cassie snorted. “Get to the good stuff.”

  “It didn’t sound so good to me. All of a sudden, one starts a new one. Scared the shit out of me. ‘Billy was a sniper. Billy got a gun. Billy thought killing was fun, fun, fun. How many slopes did Billy get? One, two. three, four…”’ Rasputin’s voice trailed off in a horrified whisper. Wizard’s nails dug into his palms. The day turned a shade grayer, and Cassie nibbled her hands as if they pained her.

  “It has to come out somewhere,” Cassie sighed, ripping the stiff silence. “All the horrors come out somewhere, even the ones no one can talk about. Look at child abuse. You know this one, so it doesn’t bother you anymore. But think about it. ‘Down by the ocean, down by the sea, Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me. I told Ma, Ma told Pa, and Johnny got a licking with a ha, ha, ha! How many lickings did Johnny get? One, two, three,’ and on and on, for as long as little sister or brother can keep up with the rope. Or ‘Ring around a Rosey’ that talks about burning bodies after a plague. Believe in race memory. It comes out somewhere.”

  “‘When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,’” whispered Wizard.

  “ ‘Take the keys and lock her up,’” Rasputin added.

  The day grew chillier around them, until a pigeon came to settle on Wizard’s knee. He stroked its feathers absently and then sighed for all of them. “Kids’ games,” he mused. “Kids’ songs.”

  “Jump rope songs they’ll still be singing a hundred years from now,” Cassie said. “But it’s better it comes out there than to have it sealed up and forgotten. Because when folks try to do that, the thing they seal up just finds a new shape, and bulges out uglier than ever.”

  “What do you do with those jump rope songs, anyway?” Rasputin demanded, his voice signaling that he’d like the talk to take a new direction.

  Cassie just smiled enigmatically for a moment, but then relented. “There’s power in them. I can tap that magic, I can guide it. Think of this. All across the country, little girls play jump rope. Sometimes little boys, too. Everywhere the chanting of children, and sometimes the rhymes are nationally known. A whole country of children, jumping and chanting the same words. There’s a power to be tapped there, a magic not to be ignored. The best ones, of course, are the simple, safe-making ones.”

  “Like?”

  “Didn’t you ever play jump rope? Like ‘Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, go upstairs. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say your prayers. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say good-night. Good night!’”

  The last words she shouted as gleefully as any child ever did. Both men jumped, then smiled abashedly at one another.

  The simple words were full, not of awe-inspiring power, but of glowing energy. When Cassie chanted them, her voice made them a song to childhood and innocence, suggesting the woman’s magic she wielded so well. Wizard and Rasputin exchanged glances, nodding at the sudden freeness in the sky and the fresh calm that settled over them. They settled back onto the bench.

  “Something bad’s come to Seattle,” Cassie announced suddenly.

  Rasputin and Wizard stiffened again. Rasputin’s feet began to keep time with his hand, to dance away the threat that hovered. Wizard sat very still, looking apprehensive and feeling strangely guilty.

  “What you want to be saying things like that for?” the black wizard abruptly complained. “Nice enough day, we all come together for some talk, like we hardly ever do. I bring you a new jump rope song, and then you go ‘Boogie-boo!’ at us. Why get us all spooked up when we just got comfortable?”

  “Oh, bullshit!” Cassie disarmed him effortlessly. “You knew it when you came. That jump rope song scared the shit out of you. You knew it didn’t mean anything good when kids in the city start singing stuff like that. So you brought it to me to hear me say how bad it was. Well, it’s bad.”

  “Just one little jump rope song!”

  “Omens and portents, my dear Rasputin. I have seen the warnings written in the graffiti on the overpasses and carved on the bodies of the young punters. There are signs in the entrails of the gutted fish on the docks, and ill favors waft over the city.”

  “Just a strong wind from Tacoma.” Rasputin tried to joke, but it fell flat. The small crowd of pigeons that had come to cluster at Wizard’s feet rose suddenly, to wheel away in alarm. Startled at nothing.

  “What kind of trouble, Cassie?” Wizard asked.

  “You tell me,” she challenged quietly.

  “Ho, boy!” Rasputin breathed out. “Think I’m gonna dance me off to somewheres else. Give a holler when the shit settles, Cassie. I’ll tell the Space Needle you said hi!”

  She nodded her good-byes as Wizard sat silent and stricken.

  Rasputin stroked off across the cobbled square, his gently swaying hips and shoulders turning his walk into a motion as graceful as the flight of a sea bird. He vanished slowly among the parked cars and moving pedestrians. Wizard was left sitting beside Cassie. Her body made him uneasy. It had taken him a long time t
o accept that every time he saw Cassie she would be a different person. Today she seemed too young and vibrantly feminine, radiating a femaleness that had nothing to do with weakness or docility. He wished she had come as the bag lady, or the retired nurse, or the straggly-haired escapee from the rest home. Those persons were easier for him to deal with.

  Looking at her today was like staring into the sun. Yet anyone else passing by their bench might have tagged them as a very nondescript couple. He suddenly wished desperately to be somewhere else, to be someone else. But he was Wizard, and he was sitting beside Cassie, and he felt like a small and scruffy kid in spite of his magic. Or maybe because of it.

  “Your den is the storm’s eye,” she said without preamble. “Whatever it is, it’s coming for you. You want to tell me about it, so I can at least warn the rest of us?”

  Wizard shook his head, trying to breathe. “I can’t. Not because I won’t, but because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, I don’t know anything about it. Not exactly. Anyone with any magic at all can tell that there’s something hanging over the city. But I don’t know what it is, and—”

  “It’s coming for you.” Cassie’s voice brooked no denial.

  There was a chill in it that was not the absence of feelings, but the hard edge of emotions kept in check. “Whatever it is, it’s yours. If it has a balancing point, only you will be able to reach it. The sooner you stop it, the better for us all. But you can’t stop it until you give it a name. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I know you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

  “Good. Then you do understand. Be on your toes. Keep your rules.”

  “I do. You know I do.” He added the last reproachfully.

  “Yes. As I keep mine. I suppose I know that best of all.”

  There was regret in her words. It stung him.

  “Cassie. I’m not holding out on you. If I knew anything, wouldn’t I tell you?”

  She leaned back on the bench, not speaking. Silence fell between them. Thin Seattle sunshine, a mixture of yellow and gray, cautiously touched the uneven paving stones. A sea bird flew overhead, too high to be seen against the sun’s glare, but its mournful cries penetrated the city sounds to echo in Wizard’s soul. A terrible foreboding built within him, forcing words out.

  “There was something, once. Like a hunger, an appetite. Something like that. I don’t remember.”

  “It didn’t have a name?”

  “It was gray,” he admitted uneasily.

  “So it was.” Cassie sighed heavily. “So you’ve told me. Listen, Wizard. If you needed help, you’d come to me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Who else would I go to? But you’ve got something backward, Cassie. I heard about the gray thing from you.”

  “You did? well, if you say so, it must have been so. Just remember, Wizard. If you need help, I’m your friend. Just let it out that you need me, and I’ll come to you. And… it doesn’t have to be danger. If you just want some company, that’s fine, too. If you just want to see me…”

  “If I need a friend. I know that, Cassie.”

  She lifted a slender hand that hovered uncertainly for a moment before falling to gently pat the bench between them.

  “Listen,” she said suddenly. “You want a story? I’ve got a story for you if you want it.”

  “Sure,” he lied, covering his reluctance. He never liked what Cassie’s stories did for him.

  Cassie settled in. She took a breath, and after a moment began, “Once there was a war, where a guerrilla force was fighting an army from across the seas that was struggling to keep a government in power.”

  “If you mean Viet Nam, say Viet Nam,” he said with a bravado he didn’t feel.

  “I didn’t say Viet Nam, so shut your mouth and listen!”

  When Cassie was interrupted, she was as fierce as a banty on eggs. “There was an old man in a village. He had an old rifle, and whenever the foreign soldiers came near, he would fire a few shots in the air. This was because the guerrilla forces expected him to snipe at the foreign soldiers. He could not bring himself to do that. So he would fire a few wild rounds at nothing in particular, and the guerrillas would hear the shots and be satisfied he was doing his part. The foreign soldiers understood. Sometimes they’d even let off a burst or two, to make things sound lively. And the old man’s family slept safely at night.

  “But into this there came a very young foreign soldier who didn’t understand the rules of the game. So when he saw the old man fire the old rifle, he took him seriously. He killed him.”

  Wizard’s mouth was dry. Cassie had stopped talking as suddenly as the jolt of a rear-ended vehicle. He sat silently, waiting for more, but she said nothing. After a moment she bent her head to dig through her purse, and offered him a Lifesaver.

  “The moral?” he asked, taking one. His voice cracked slightly.

  “There isn’t one.” She spoke to the roll of candy she wag peeling. “Except that the next week, the guy sniping at them from that hamlet wasn’t shooting into the air.”

  Another electric jolt from those incredible eyes. He withstood their voltage, gripping the edge of the bench to keep his hands from shaking. She rose and walked away, leaving as silently as she had come. He tried to watch her go, but the sunlight was making his eyes water, and it seemed that she just melted into the passing foot-traffic.

  “Cassie,” he sighed softly, feeling empty. And wondered why.

  WIZARD CAME AWAKE. His blanket, tucked so carefully under the edge of thin gray-and-white striped mattress, had pulled free. A large damp tomcat had insinuated itself between the flap of the blanket and the small of his back, to curl in contented sleep. November’s chill damp of night infiltrated his unheated room; the cold air condensed on his unprotected back. But neither the cat nor the cold had awakened him. Behind his closed eyelids, his mind had clicked into instant awareness.

  Something was out there.

  His fingers tightened on the fraying edge of the blanket, his knuckles white. Without opening his eyes, he turned his concentration in, to hold his breath to the steady cadence of sleep and keep his strung muscles from a betraying twitch. No one, nothing, could have known that he was now awake. Even Mack Thomas, curled serenely against him, was unaware of his watchfulness. Reassured that his personal perimeter was intact, Wizard cautiously deployed his senses.

  A subtle wrongness pervaded his room. To his nostrils came the familiar mustiness of the dank walls, the city cat stink like damp wool, and beyond that the cheesy odor of pigeon droppings. A light rain had fallen on Seattle since he had drowsed off. It had cleaned the metropolitan air and cooled it, the falling drops pressing down the fumes of the cars and buses and rinsing the oily gutters. Beneath the streetlamps, the drops would sparkle on the green glass sides of discarded wine bottles. He could find the sparkle breaking into a thousand night sequins beneath a bench in Pioneer Square. But all of this was absolutely and totally as it should be. The very rightness of it stiffened his spine with dread. Whatever it was, it was very clever.

  But sound would betray it. He smiled without a twitch of muscle. Hearing was his gift, Cassie had told him. His ears could pick up the tortured hum of a fluorescent light, could sense the shop-lifting detectors that framed the doors of so many stores these days. He could feel the rumble of a diesel truck in his skull when it was yet blocks away. He passed his power to his ears and let them quest outward. But his ears were filled with his own deep breathing and the rising thunder of his heart. Be still! he bade it angrily, but it would not heed.

  Danger pressed all around him, waiting for such an internal betrayal. Fear soured his stomach, sending his heart thudding high in his chest, hammering against his throat, making his pulse leap. He had to waste precious strength and time by turning his power on himself, to quiet his fearful body. He gave his heart a slow count and repeated it until it could hold the rhythm of a natural sleep. His lungs sighed in harmony.

  Secured, he peered from his p
osition, listening.

  There was the whoosh and hiss of traffic on Jackson and Occidental Avenue South. Less traffic than usual, far less than on a King Dome night, and it was moving cautiously over the dampened streets made treacherous by a slightly suspended film of oil. He could hear the rainbow arching of spattering water as fat tires spun past. Subjugated to the traffic sound was the gentle creaking and grumbling of the old building itself.

  But these normal groanings he knew as well as he knew the thump and rush of his own blood. He blotted these sounds from his consciousness and listened anew.

  He listened for the halted footstep, for the creak of sagging floor boards under unaccustomed weight. He listened for the whisper of shirt fabric against jacket lining as the intruder breathed silently in the dark. He hoped for an unwary sniff, for the catch of breath in a nervous throat. But he heard only the breathing of himself and Black Thomas, only the flick of the old tom’s ear as a nocturnal mite nibbled.

  So slowly it could scarcely be called a movement, Wizard eased his lashes open. He bared the tiniest slit of eyeball, too narrow a gap to glitter in the darkness. In his swath and huddle of blankets, his chin tucked to his chest, his eyes were pits of darkness. His pupils adjusted to the room.

  Horror clutched at his throat.

  When he had pinched out his final candle, his cardboard and blanket screen had been perfectly adjusted across the window. The blanket was a recent addition, replacing three old, sheets that had previously bolstered the cardboard’s tattered morale. Wizard had stretched the blanket tight across the window frame and fastened it in place by silently pressing tacks gleaned from bulletin boards through the blanket and into the wooden sill. From outside the building, the cardboard appeared to be still wedged in place inside the cracked window where it had been taped many years before. Within, the blanket supported it firmly against the pigeon-streaked glass.