Wizard of the Pigeons Read online

  “Right. Bring on the rabbits with pocket watches.”

  “Not quite. More like bring on the wizards and wicked witches.”

  “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  “Precisely!” and she laughed delightedly. He laughed with her, uneasily, and rose as he did so.

  “I think I’d better be going.”

  She shook her head with bemused tolerance. “I think you’d better stay. You need dry clothes, a haircut and a shave, and another meal or two before you’re fit to try your wings. It’s going to be a different world for you out there. Most of all, you need to understand who you are.”

  Her amusement stung him. “Listen, lady. I already understand myself just fine. Maybe if you understood me a little better, you wouldn’t feel so cosy about what you’ve just dragged up to your apartment in the middle of the night. Picking up someone like me off the streets isn’t a smart way to get your kicks.”

  “Maybe if you understood a little better just who had picked you up, you wouldn’t feel so comfortable about being here, either. Now sit down and stop ruffling your feathers at me. No one has to feel threatened. Does the idea of dry clothes and a bath hurt your feelings?”

  “No. But then what?”

  “Then whatever. We’ll take each step as it presents itself. Look, uh… what is your name?”

  She had him there. He just stared at her, knowing he knew it, knowing he could remember it if he had to, if he wanted to. Then he tried to remember it, even wanted to remember it, and couldn’t. And remembered that this had happened to him before.

  “You see?” she said softly, and he suddenly felt the trap he had fallen into. She didn’t push it. “The bathroom’s down that hall, to the left. We’ll talk later.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, thinking of a dozen possible courses. He could walk out the door, or insist that they talk right now, or throw the coffee table against the wall, or… She didn’t break away from his stare, but held him steady until it had alt passed. He felt suddenly hollow and old.

  “To the left?”

  She nodded.

  He had been terrified that it would be all pinks and posies, with tiny bars of soap and ice white towels and delicate crystal soap dishes and figurines. It wasn’t. The hot water steamed the big mirror in its wooden frame. The soap filled his hand, white and unscented. The towels were huge, brown, and mildly scratchy. But even shaved and washed he looked something of a wild man. Rough brown hair straggled over his ears and forehead. His eyes were rimmed with pink. He broke a toothbrush from an envelope of plastic and scrubbed at his teeth until his gums bled. He dug grime from under his fingernails, paying attention to each minute detail of cleansing himself so he wouldn’t have to think.

  His clothing had disappeared while he showered. Fresh jeans and a soft blue sweatshirt supported white underwear and socks.

  Eventually he had to emerge, feeling strangely vulnerable and light-headed in his cleanliness.

  She was not in the living room, nor in the kitchen when he peered around the door. He stood still, wondering whether he should sit down quietly on the couch and await her return, or call to her. He sat, but no sooner had he sunk into the couch’s soft embrace than he felt he had to find the woman. Cassie.

  There were too many unanswered questions, and in the silence they were ganging up on him. He peered into the kitchen again, and saw a second door. He went to it, tapped and called softly,

  “Cassie?” There was no reply. He turned the knob and pushed it open.

  A black wind was blowing past it, its whistle rising and falling in pitch. All beyond the door was dark, with a total darkness deeper than any he had ever glimpsed before. He stared out into it, petrified and fascinated. He felt neither cold nor warm in the wind that passed him, but neutrally at peace.

  Breathing took a little more effort, but somehow he didn’t really mind that. His lungs pumped deep and steady, and he finally saw, infinitely far in the darkness, a pinprick of light. He gripped the edges of the doorjamb and leaned out, trying to see it better. It reminded him of the snowflakes in front of the streetlamp. There was that feeling again, of journeying rapidly to a place so far away that despite one’s dizzying speed, one might never get there. Or was the pinprick of light actually getting smaller? He leaned further out.

  She gripped him, not by the collar of his shirt, but by the back of his neck. Her hand was cold and strong, her nails sharp. He felt himself drawn firmly back from the pinhole of light, pulled back into light and kitchen fragrances and warmth on his skin. She jerked the door shut as soon as he was completely within it. Then she turned to him, shaking her head.

  “Is there any kind of trouble you don’t get into?” she asked with some asperity.

  “I was looking for you. What was that?”

  Cassie shrugged. “The part of the Seattle we’re in has gaps like that. No one understands them, but we all know they’re dangerous. If we open a door or a window and there’s nothing there, we shut it. That’s all.”

  “I know,” he said, and then stopped suddenly.

  “That’s right. And I know that you know, too. You probably really knew it before you even turned the knob. So back to question one. Is there any kind of trouble you don’t get into?”

  He felt suddenly foggy again, lost and confused as he had felt for so many days—or was it weeks? “I was only looking for you,” he said, trying not to make it sound like an apology.

  She looked disappointed. “You’re going to fight it all the way, aren’t you? I can tell you there’s no going back, but you aren’t going to believe me. Look, Wizard. Nothing is going to get any easier until you start accepting things, and being who you are now. It’s natural to be a bit confused at first, when your potential starts making you aware of it. Hiding from it and denying it won’t make it go away; it will only make it take longer for you to reach your capacity, and possibly cause you a lot of pain in the process.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand what the hell is going on at all. Who are you, anyway, and why did you bring me here?”

  She shook her head and turned away from him. He trailed behind her into the living room. She dropped onto one corner of the couch and sat looking up at him. He started to sit down on the other end, but then retreated to the far side of the room, to lean on a mantelpiece and return her stare. He felt he had scored a small victory when she finally gave a sigh and then spoke.

  “We’ll do it one more time. I’m Cassie. And you are Wizard, And I went out tonight, through a hell of a lot of dangers that you refuse to recognize, and dragged you back here in the hopes that you’d live long enough to be worth something. It could be so simple, if you’d only let it. Just relax, man, and be yourself. The city will take care of you. And you take care of the city. That’s all Seattle wants of you. That’s all any of us want from you. Why are you being so damn stubborn?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Frankly, lady, I think you are almost as crazy as I think I am.”

  “How crazy is that?”

  “I don’t know!” he roared, exasperated with the conversation.

  “Is there anything you do know?”

  “I don’t know!” The screech tore his throat. A rush of fear engulfed him, followed by the adrenalin strength that knotted his muscles and made him capable of anything. He took two steps toward her, knowing he could spindle that fragile body, smash the delicate skull that housed the pulpy gray brain, put an end to her and to her questions and statements that made no sense.

  She looked up at him, eyes wide with curiosity, not fear. A twitch was jumping in his cheek and there was the sound of roaring wind in his ears. “Harness that, and you’d have something,” she said at last.

  Her voice wrapped itself around his chafed nerves, soothed and calmed him. As quickly as his anger had risen, it drained from him. “Can’t you start at the beginning, and go slowly?” he found himself asking.

  “There are no
beginnings,” she said, almost sadly. “It happened the same way to all of us. Perhaps that’s the only universal thing about it. You wake up the day after, and know that nothing will ever be the same. Some hear voices, and some are suddenly aware of the total silence of the world. Some of us are filled with awesome purpose, and some of us are emptied of ambition and opened to time. I can tell you a story, if you like. That was one of the things given to me. Sometimes they help. Listen. Once upon a time there was a young girl who lived in a crude hut on the edge of a great forest. Her parents were dead, and though she was not quite old enough to live by herself, she was too old for anyone in the village to feel they had to take her in. So she lived alone. She made a marginal living with her small flock of chickens and the herb garden that she tended. Her mother had possessed a gift for herbs, so the girl had plants there that were quite rare, with virtues unknown to many more learned folk. So not only the folk of the village came to her for herbs and spices, but also the Great Folk that could afford to travel afield for such luxuries.

  “One day a great company of the folk, with some of the men dressed in rich robes, and some dressed in shining metal, and the women clad in rich dresses that near trailed the ground, even from the backs of their horses, rode past. They were talking and jesting among themselves, and three minstrels were singing, so that they made a fine noise and dust as they passed the little hut. None noticed the little maid in her garden, until at the very end of the company there came an old man, dressed in robe and mantle of blue. His hair and beard were as gray as sword metal, but he carried no such weapon. He stopped at the gate and sat his horse, looking down at her, while the rest of the Great Folk followed the King’s Road into the forest. He was so quiet that at first she didn’t even notice him. When he spoke, she started, and nearly uprooted the tiny plant she was weeding around. ‘So you’ve been chosen, and I see you’ll do very well indeed,’ he said. He came down from his tall horse and entered the maid’s garden and life. No harm did he offer her, but taught her much of herbs and all that grows, things beyond the teachings of any other mortal. Rules he gave her that she recognized as her own. ‘You can offer,’ he told her, ‘but not with words, and until what you offer is accepted, you cannot give it. You must tend the plants wherever they may grow, and what you must ask of others is the most they can give. You can take all, except for the things you desire most, and those you must not touch until they are given freely.’ These were the sort of things he taught her. For five years and a day he stayed with her. and neither of them ever regretted a day. Then one day they both knew that he had to go, for there were portentous events brewing, and a place in them for him. And so he left her, and never again was she the same person.”

  He had shifted impatiently all through the story, not wanting to be touched by it, not wanting to hear any of the silliness.

  She was so solemn as she told it, as if she were revealing the secrets of the universe. The mood she had created stretched like a bubble around them both, and he felt a compulsion to pop it.

  “And the old man was Merlin, and the little girl was Cassie. The End.”

  But his mocking words did not shatter the bubble, nor even dent it. Cassie sat looking at him with cat-green eyes (hadn’t they been brown a moment ago?) and smiling to herself. He had missed something, and his smart-ass remark hadn’t made him seem any the wiser to it. He had only embarrassed himself and would have called his words back into his mouth if he could.

  “You need a haircut,” was all she said. “Shall I get the scissors?”

  He nodded, and later sat on a straight-backed chair in the kitchen, looking at the newspapers on the floor that told the news of a Seattle that never existed. He felt the cold of the shears against the back of his neck and the tickling brush of his own hair as it fell.

  And still later, he stood awkwardly by the couch as she unfolded it into a bed and brought out a stack of clean white linens and soft blue blankets. “I want to thank you. But there’s no way I can ever repay you for any of this.”

  “There are many coins to repay kindness.”

  “I don’t have any money,” he told her, momentarily taken aback by her words. She had smiled and shook her head over him, and left him to sink into warmth and sleep. He had dreamed that in the night she came to lie beside him and watch over him while he slept. He had dreamed that he felt her warm breath on his skin, felt her eyes touch his face.

  And he had awakened shivering in the melting snow behind a blue dumpster in an alley.

  THE HOMER was already perched on the back of his bench when Wizard arrived. He saw no sign of Cassie, but then he hadn’t expected to. She would come when she was ready. The pigeons rose in a gray cloud to greet him. They wheeled once over the park and settled around his usual bench. His flock awaited him.

  He waded through his congregation to set his bag and overcoat on the bench and seat himself beside them. He took the crumpled bag of stale popcorn from the overcoat pocket. The pigeons surged forward in anticipation. But he was not to be rushed. He pushed his hand into the soft wrinkled bag and pulled out a handful of popcorn fragments. Leaning down, he sprinkled them in a wide swath before his feet. The multitude came to feed. The cocky young homer fluttered into his lap and tried to stuff his head into the bag. Wizard gently restrained him, but did allow him a small pile on the seat beside him.

  About every five minutes he scattered another handful of feed. The flock surged and retreated around his feet like a feather ocean. As individual birds became sated, they came to perch sleepily on the bench beside him. Several young ones pushed under the fold of his overcoat and huddled there, enjoying the warmth and security. Their immature beaks were pink and too wide for their heads. Tiny yellow hairs stuck out from the unfinished plumage on their necks.

  Wizard gazed over his flock, at the majority of gray pigeons with black striped wings and iridescent blue neck feathers. and at the minority of escapees whose selective breeding showed.

  Darwin had concluded that if any naturalist had come across these results of controlled selection in the wild, he would not even classify them as pigeons. There was a black fan-tail strutting his peacock-span tail, and here a brown King pigeon, twice the size of any other bird there. There was an owl pigeon with a stubby black beak. yellow eyes, and half its feathers on backwards. There were three helmets, brown caps and tails looking like uniforms on their white bodies. And there were a number of renegade homers, drop-outs from some city race.

  A few showed feathered feet and legs, and one wore a tiny metal band around one leg. Given a generation or two of nonselective breeding, and their offspring would return to the gray and black uniforms of sidewalk pigeons everywhere.

  Time dissipated. Wizard felt no chill as the gray afternoon wheeled overhead, and dipped slowly away. A break in the cloud cover let in the slanting light of a setting sun. Like ancient lovers, the gray light touched the cobbled face of the park. One sensed rather than saw the beauty between them. They took one another on faith.

  The pigeons rose suddenly, gusting cold wind past him and disappearing into the sky. Slowly Wizard folded his popcorn bag and stuffed it back into his coat pocket. Leaning back on the bench, he surveyed the square leisurely. It was all but deserted. Those who still hunched on the benches were as gray as the cobblestones. It only seemed fitting to leave them out all night. Then he became aware of Cassie.

  Down the gray park strip she came like the last ray of daylight. Her gray sweatsuit was trimmed in yellow; a yellow sweatband held her mahogany hair back from her gray-blue eyes and high cheekbones. The bright flush on her cheeks showed that she was ending, not beginning, her run. Her pace became a jog as she passed his bench. She paid him no attention. He rose and gathered his things. He saw her vanish through the tall wrought iron doors of the Grand Arcade. He followed, and as the doors closed behind him, he glimpsed her going down the stairs to the underground shopping. She strode quickly away, her sneakers making no sound as she fled.

  Sighing at th
is whim of hers, he gave chase. Where was she going? He needed to talk to her. The footlocker leaped into his mind, submerging him in panic. Cassie gleamed before him like a lifeline. He bit down on his tongue to keep from calling her name aloud. Clutching his bag and overcoat, he went down the steps two at a time.

  She threaded her way through the maze of underground shops and he gave chase. Past the Fireworks Art Gallery she strode, not even tarrying for a glance at the pottery. Wizard sidestepped a couple strolling arm in arm. She was hurrying up the stairs that led back to street level. That particular staircase would let her out in the cobbled square, scarcely a block from where she had entered the mall. Mystified, he raced up the steps after her. He reached the street level landing and stood panting as he stared about.

  A door to his left was just closing. He tucked his bag more securely under his arm as he watched it swing toward him. It could not be there. The glass door in front of him revealed the cobbled square. The stairway emerged in the square, well clear of any buildings. There was nowhere for this door to lead. He caught it just before the catch snicked.

  It opened onto a staircase, wooden and very dusty. The walls were white, lit by a single bulb that glared down at him.

  He thought he caught a whisper of her sneakers far above him.

  He panted up the steps, dust coating his mouth and throat. The steps went straight on, and on, with no. windings or turns, lit at intervals by identical bare lightbulbs. The steps became steeper with every light be passed; there were no landings or hand rails to rest on. Wizard tried to calculate how far he had climbed, and failed miserably. He heard a far laugh. Shifting his coat and bag to his other arm, he hurried on. The light changed subtly. The next fixture he passed was a gas lamp in a glass chimney. Six of these he passed, and then he came to a sconce with white beeswax tapers. Wizard’s face throbbed; he hoped his nose wouldn’t bleed. His shirt stuck to him.

  The stairs began to be in poor repair. He slipped twice on their worn edges, barking his shins. The wood creaked ominously, and once he snatched his foot up just as a rotting riser gave way beneath him. He passed bare windows, curtainless, with glass shattered away. Outside was blackness and stars; nothing else. He hurried past their empty stares. The lights were farther apart now; he climbed in a dusky twilight.