Wizard of the Pigeons
Megan Lindholm

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About The Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

On the far western shore of a northern continent there was once a harbour city called Seattle. It did not have much of a reputation for sunshine and beaches, but it did have plenty of rain, and the folk who lived there were wont to call it ‘The Emerald City’ for the greenness of its foliage. And the other thing it boasted was a great friendliness that fell upon strangers like its rain, but with more warmth. In that city, there dwelt a wizard.

Not that folk recognized him as a wizard, for even in those days, wizards were becoming rarer with each passing year. He lived a simple life upon the streets of the city, passing among the folk like the wind passes among the flowers, unseen but not unfelt. He was known, to the few who knew him, simply as Wizard.

Little was known of his past, but atoning for this lack was a plenitude of rumours about it. Some said he had been an engineer and a warrior who had returned from some far battle with memories too fearsome to tolerate. And some said no, that he had been a scholar and among those who had refused to go to that far strife, and that was why he dwelt nameless and homeless in the streets. And some said he was older than the city itself, and others that he was newly arrived, only a day or so ago. But what folk said of him mattered little, for it was what he did that was important. Or didn’t do, as Cassie would have quickly pointed out.

To Seattle there come blue days in October, when the sun shines along the waterfront and one forgives the city its sins, both mortal and venial. On such a day the cries of the gulls seem to drown out the traffic noises, and the fresh salt breath of the ocean is stronger than the exhaust of the passing cars. It was such a day, and sunlight shattered brilliantly against the moving waters of Elliott Bay and the brisk wind blew the shining shards inland over the city. It was a day when no one was immune to magic, and a wizard might revel in its glories. The possibilities of the day tugged at Wizard’s mind like a kite tugs on a string. So, although he had been standing for some time at a bus stop, when the bus finally came snorting into sight, he wandered away from the other passengers, letting his feet follow their own inclination.

When he reached the corner of Yesler Way, he turned and followed it downhill, toward the bay. The sidewalk was as busy as the narrow crowded street, but Wizard still halted in the middle of it, forcing the flow of pedestrians to part and go around him. He gazed up fondly at the peak of the Smith Tower. A merry little flag fluttered from the tip of its tall white tower. Mr L C Smith, grown rich from manufacturing typewriters, had constructed the tower to be the tallest building west of the Mississippi. The flagpole had been added in an attempt to retain that title for a little longer. The tower was no longer the tallest, of course, but its proud lines gave Wizard the moral courage to pass the notorious structure known as the Sinking Ship parking garage. This was a triangular monstrosity of grey concrete wedged between Yesler and James Street. When one considered it as a memorial to the Occidental and the Seattle, the two old hotels torn down to allow for its construction, it became even more depressing. The hill’s steepness always made it appear that the garage was foundering and would vanish into the earth tomorrow, but, alas, it never did. Wizard hurried past it.

Safely beyond it, he slipped back into a stroll again, gazing around himself and taking more than a minor satisfaction in knowing his city so well. He knew it not as a common street survivor might, but as a connoisseur of landmarks and their history. How many skid row denizens, he wondered, of all the skid rows across the nation, knew that Seattle had boasted the original Skid Road, after which all others were named? From the hills above the city, logs had once skidded down that nearly vertical street to Yesler’s Sawmill. Living conditions in the area had been so poor that an eastern reporter had taken his impressions and the name Skid Road home, to coin a brand new cliché.

Wizard passed under the grey thunder of the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a small claustrophobic shudder, and emerged into the sun, wind, and sea smell of Alaskan Way South. He turned north and plodded up the waterfront, watching the tugs, ferries, and gulls with equal interest. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. That was what was luring him. He hadn’t chatted with Sylvester for days; the old coot would be wondering where he was.

By the time he reached the glass doors of the shop, he was just chilled enough that the warmth of the interior made his ears tingle. He stood, rubbing the chill from his fingers, and let his eye rove over the shop. It was a marvellous place. It was so crammed that not one more item could be packed into it, yet each time Wizard dropped by, something new had been added. The place was a cross between a museum and a shop, with rarities on display, and bargains for browsers. The aisles were cluttered with machines that, for a single shiny coin, would let you test your strength, find your weight, take a peek at the lady in her bath, or hear the nickelodeon tunes of the olden days. For fifty cents, another machine would squish a penny into a souvenir of the shop. One could buy postcards and shells and knick-knacks and jewellery, carvings and pottery, toys and trinkets. Suspended from the rafters were trophies of the seas, including a mermaid’s body. But Wizard walked past all of these fascinating things, straight to the back of the shop.

The very best things were in the back of the shop. The shrunken heads were here, and the ancient skulls in glass cases. A baby pig with two heads was pickled in a large jar atop a player piano. To the left of this piano was a Gypsy fortune-teller holding her tarot cards and waiting for the drop of a dime to deal out your fortune card to you. To the right of the player piano was Sylvester.

‘So how’s it going, old man?’ Wizard greeted him softly.

Sylvester gave a dry cough and began, ‘It was a hot and dusty day…’

Wizard listened, politely nodding. It was the only story Sylvester had to tell, and Wizard was one of the few who could hear it. Wizard looked through the glass into the dark holes behind the dry eyelids and caught the gleam of his dying emotions. The bullet hole was still plainly visible upon Sylvester’s ribby chest; his dessicated arms were still crossed, holding in the antique pain. His small brown teeth showed beneath his dry moustache. Sylvester was one of the best naturally preserved mummies existent in the western United States. It said so right on the placard beside his display case. Sylvester had met with success in death, if not in life. One could buy postcards and pamphlets that told all about him. They told everything there was to know, except who he had been, and why he had died in the sandy wastes from a bullet wound. And those secrets were the ones he whispered to Wizard, speaking in a voice as dry and dusty as his unmarked grave had been, in words so soft they barely passed the glass that separated them. Wizard stood patiently listening to the old tale, nodding his head slightly.

Sylvester was not alone. There was another mummy in a glass case next to his, her shrivelled loins modestly swathed in an apron. She listened to Sylvester speak to Wizard with her mouth agape in aristocratic disdain for his uncouthness. She had died of consumption and been entombed in a cave. She still wore her burial stockings and shoes. Privately Wizard did not think her as well preserved as Sylvester, but she was definitely more conscious of social niceties.

Sylvester finished his account, and Wizard stood nodding in grave commiseration. Suddenly, raucous laughter burst out behind him. Wizard gave a startled jump, and turned to find that two teenage girls had slipped a coin into Laughing Jack. The runty little sailor with the fly on his nose and the cigarette dangling from his lips guffawed on and on, swaying in the force of his hilarity and wringing answering giggles from the girls. The girls had eyes as bright as young fillies’. They were incredibly young, even for a bright October day in Seattle. Wizard could only marvel at it. When the coin ran out and Jack was mercifully still, they stepped up to Estrella the Gypsy.

‘Oh, I did her before. Come on, Nance. That’s a dumb one. She just gives you this little printed card.’

‘It’s my dime,’ Nance declared loudly, and slipped the coin in the slot. Estrella lifted her proud head. She gave the girls a piercing look and then began to scan the tarot cards before her. She made a few mystic passes and a small white card dropped from a slot in the machine. Estrella bowed her head and was still. Nance picked up the card. Haltingly, she began to read Estrella’s prophecies aloud. ‘“Your greatest fault is that you talk too much. Learn to –”’

‘Geez, Nance! You coulda learned that from me and saved your dime!’ Her friend rolled her eyes, and with much giggling the two girls departed, Nance waving the little black and white printed card before her like a fan. Wizard shook his head slightly after them. Sylvester breathed a small and dusty sigh. Estrella lifted her head and gave Wizard a slow wink. A second card emerged from the slot.

Wizard stooped cautiously to take it up. He glanced at the brightly painted tarot card in his hand, and then peered sharply at Estrella. But she was as still as a painted dummy, her eyes cast modestly downward. Wizard stared at his card. It was more than twice the size of the one the girls had received. Depicted on one side in gaudy colours was a man, caught by one heel in a rope snare and dangling upside down. Wizard was fascinated. Slowly he turned the card over. In ornate letters of dark red was printed A WARNING! That was all. Estrella wouldn’t meet his eyes, and Sylvester gave a hollow groan. Even the pickled piglet in its glass jar squirmed uncomfortably.

Wizard tucked the card into his shirt pocket and gave a farewell nod to Sylvester. The wind hit him as he emerged from the shop, pushing him boisterously as it rushed past him. He strode down the street, letting the exercise warm him. A tiny pang reminded him that he had not yet eaten today. Time to take care of that. He heard the approaching rumble of a bus. Tucking his shopping bag firmly under one arm, he sprinted to the stop just ahead of it.

The bus gusted up to the stop and flung its door open before him. Wizard ascended the steps and smiled at the bus driver who stared straight ahead. He found a seat halfway down the aisle and sat looking out the window. ‘“…Cannot rival for one hour October’s bright blue weather,”’ he quoted softly to himself with satisfaction. He stared out the window.

The bus nudged into its next stop and five passengers boarded. The four women took seats together at the back, but the old man worked his slow way down the aisle to stop beside Wizard’s seat. Wizard felt his presence and turned to look at him. The old man nodded gravely and arranged himself carefully in the seat as the bus jerked away from the kerb. The old man nodded to the sway of the bus, but didn’t speak until Wizard had turned to stare out the window again.

‘My boy isn’t coming home from college for Thanksgiving this year. Says he can’t afford it, and when we said we’d pay, he said he needed the time to study. Can you beat that? So I asked him, “What are Mother and I supposed to do, eat a whole turkey by ourselves?” So he said, “Why don’t you have chicken instead?” No understanding. He’s our youngest, you see. The others are all long moved away.’

Wizard nodded as he turned to look at the old man, but he was staring at the back of the next seat. As soon as Wizard turned back to the window, he started it again.

‘Our second girl had a baby last spring. But she won’t come either. Says she wants to have their first Thanksgiving together, just her family alone. So when I said, “Well, aren’t we family, too?” she just said, “Oh, Daddy, you know how small our place is. By the time you drove clear down here for Thanksgiving, you’d have to spend the night, and I just don’t have any place to put you.” Can you beat that?’ The old man gave a weary cough. ‘Eldest boy’s in Germany, you know. Stationed there fourteen months now, and only three letters. Phoned us three weeks ago, though. And when his mother asked him why he didn’t write to us, he says, “Oh, Mom, you know how it is. You know I love you, even if I don’t find time to write.” After he hangs up, she says to me, “Yes, I know he loves us, but I wish I could feel him love us.” It’s for her I mind. Not so much for me. Kids were always a damn nuisance anyway, but it hurts her when they don’t call or write.’

The bus pulled into Wizard’s stop. He kept his seat with his jaw set against the grumbling of his stomach. As soon as the bus lurched forward again, the old man resumed.

‘I guess I wasn’t around that much when they were growing up. I guess I didn’t put as much into them as she did; maybe I didn’t give them as much as I should have. So perhaps it’s only fitting that they aren’t around when I’m feeling my years. But what about Mother? She gave them her years, and now they leave her alone. Can you beat that?’

Just as the old man’s voice trailed out, the Knowing came to Wizard. He always wondered how the talkers knew to come to him, how they sensed that he had something to tell them. Even Cassie had no answer to that question. ‘Every stick has two ends,’ she had mumbled when he had asked her. ‘Mumbo-jumbo!’ he had replied derisively. But now he had something for the old man, and it must be delivered. He took his eyes from the window, to stare at the seat back with the old man. He whispered as huskily as a priest giving absolution in a confessional.

‘Buy the turkey and the trimmings. Tell her that with or without kids at the table, you wouldn’t miss her holiday cooking. Your eldest son got some leave time, and he’ll be flying in from Germany. But he wants to surprise her. So keep it to yourself, but be ready to go to the airport on Thanksgiving morning. Don’t spill the beans, now.’

He never looked at Wizard. At the next stop the old man rose and made his slow way to the door in the side of the bus. Wizard watched him go and wished him well. At the next stop he hopped off himself and went looking for the right sort of restaurant.

It took him a moment to get his bearings, and then he recalled a little place he had used before. He mussed his hair slightly, took his newspaper from his shopping bag and tucked it under his arm, and clutched the plastic bag by its handle. His stomach made him hurry the block and a half to the remembered location.

With a flash of light and a roar of wind, he appeared in the door of the restaurant. A secretary hurrying through her half-hour lunch break paused with her burger halfway to her lips. Framed by a rectangle of bright blue October, the man in the door blazed blue and white and gold. A strange little squirt of extra blood shot through her heart at the sight of him. Wasn’t he the illustration of the wandering prince from some half-forgotten book in her childhood? Sunlight rested on his hair like a mother’s fond benediction. He was too vital and sparkling for her to break her stare away.

Then the tinted glass door on its pneumatic closer eased shut behind him, revealing to her the cheat. Bereft of wind and sun at his back, the man who had seemed to fill the doorway was only slightly taller than average. The gold highlights on his hair faded to a brown tousle; even this boyishness was denied by a sprinkling of grey throughout it. His lined and weathered face contradicted his youthful stance and easy walk. Just some smalltime logger from Aberdeen who had wandered into Seattle for a day of shopping. His longsleeved wool shirt was a subdued blue plaid; thermal underwear peeked out the open collar. Dark brown corduroy slacks sheathed his long legs. The blue spark of fascination in his eyes was only something she had imagined. When the secretary realized her gaze was being returned with interest, she stared past him, scowling slightly, and returned to her hamburger. Wizard shrugged and strolled to the end of the line at the counter.

Once in line, he took the folded Seattle Times from under his arm and stuffed it into the top of his plastic shopping bag. He scanned the restaurant expectantly. The place was an elegantly disguised cafeteria. The tables had donned red-checked cloths and boasted small guttering candles in little red hobnail holders. Their dimmed gleam was augmented by the shining fluorescent light over the stainless steel salad bar. The girl clearing tables wore a lacy little apron and a dainty starched cap. But the fine masquerade was betrayed by the metal dispenser for paper napkins on the condiment bar, and the swing-front plastic trash containers that crouched discreetly beneath potted plants. Wizard was not deceived. He caught the glance of a small girl seated at a corner table with her brother and parents. His face lit when he spotted her. With a broad grin and a wink, he reduced her to giggles.

‘Ready to order, sir,’ the cashier informed him. Her square plastic name tag introduced her as Nina Cashier Trainee.

‘Coffee.’ He tried a melting smile on her, but she was too nervous to thaw. He jingled the change in his pocket as her finger wiped his order into her machine.

‘You want that to go,’ she told him.

‘No, I’ll drink it here.’ He refocused the smile on her. ‘It’s pretty nippy outside.’

She mustered an uncertain authority. ‘You can’t sit in a booth with just coffee and be alone.’ She gabbled the words as her pen jabbed up at a sign posted high above anyone’s eye level. In stout black letters it proclaimed LONE PATRONS OR PERSONS ORDERING LESS THAN $1.50 EACH ARE NOT PERMITTED TO SIT IN BOOTHS BETWEEN 11:00 AND 2:00 PM, DUE TO LIMITED TABLE SPACE. THE MANAGEMENT REGRETS THIS NECESSARY MEASURE IN OUR EFFORTS TO KEEP OUR PRICES LOW. So did Wizard. The sign had not been there last month.

‘But I’m not alone, Miss Nina.’ His use of her name unbalanced her. ‘I’m joining some friends. Looks like I’m a bit late.’ He winked at the little girl in the corner booth, and she squirmed delightedly. ‘Isn’t the kid a doll? Her mom looked just like that when we were kids.’

Nina hastily surrendered, barely glancing at the child. ‘A real cutie. Fifty-seven cents, please. Help yourself to refills from our bottomless pot.’

‘I always do.’ He pushed mixed coins onto the counter to equal exactly fifty-seven cents. ‘I used to be a regular here, but the service got so bad I quit coming in. With people like you working here, maybe I’ll become a regular again.’

For an instant a real person peered out of her eyes at him. He received a flash of gratitude. He smiled at her and let the tension out of her bunched shoulders. She served him steaming coffee in a heavy white mug. He let her forget him completely as she turned to her next customer.

Wizard took his mug to the condiment counter. He helped himself to three packets of cream substitute and six packets of sugar, a plastic spoon, and four napkins. He sauntered casually over to the corner booth where the small girl and her brother pushed their food about on their plates as their parents lingered over coffee. He halted just short of intruding on them and allowed himself a few silent moments to make character adjustments. ‘Turning the facets of your personality until an appropriate one is face up’ was how Cassie described it when she had taught him how. Prepared, he took the one more pace that put him within their space, and waited for the husband to look up. He did so quickly, his brown eyes narrowing. The muscles in his thick neck bunched as the man hiked his shoulder warningly, and set down his coffee mug to have his fists free. Very territorial, Wizard decided. He smiled ingratiatingly, cocking his head like a friendly pup.

‘Hi!’ he ventured in an uncertain voice. He cleared his throat and shifted his feet awkwardly. A country twang invaded his voice. ‘I, uh, I hate to intrude, but I wonder if I could share your table. I’m waiting for my lady friend.’

‘Then wait at an empty table,’ the man growled. His wife looked both apprehensive and intrigued.

‘Uh, I would, but, well, look, it’s like this. The first time I ever took her out, we wound up here, sitting at this table until three in the morning. Since then, we’ve always sat here whenever we come in. And well, today is kind of special. I think I’m going to, you know, ask her. I got the ring and the whole bit.’ He patted his breast pocket with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. His soft voice was awed at his own boldness.

The seated man was not moved. ‘Buzz off,’ he growled, but his wife reached quickly to cover his hand with hers.

‘Come on, Ted, show a little sense of romance. What harm can it do? We’re nearly finished anyway.’

‘Well…’ She squeezed his hand warmly as she smiled at him. Ted’s hackles went down. ‘I guess it’s okay.’ Ted gave a snort of harsh laughter. ‘But maybe I’d be doing you a bigger favour if I refused. Look how they get, once you marry ’em. Changing my mind before I can even decide. Yeah, sit!’ Ted pointed commandingly at the end of the booth bench, and Wizard dropped into it obediently. He leaned his shopping bag carefully against the seat, and smiled with a shy tolerance at Ted’s rough joking.

‘Well, you know how it is, sir. I’ve been thinking it’s about time I took the step. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I want to do this thing while I still got the time to get me some pretty babies like yours and be a daddy to them.’ He spoke with a farm boy’s eloquence.

‘Hell, ain’t never too old for that, long as you find a woman young enough!’ Ted laughed knowingly.

‘Yessir,’ Wizard agreed, but he blushed and looked aside as he did so. Ted took pity on him. Poor sucker couldn’t keep his eyes off the door, let alone make conversation. ‘Eat up, kids. I want to be on the road before the traffic hits, and your mom still has three more places she wants to spend my money.’

‘Oh, Ted!’ the woman protested, giving their visitor a sideways glance to assure him that women were not as bad as Ted painted them. The stranger smiled back at her with his eyes, his mouth scarcely moving. Then his eyes darted back to the door.

Ted pushed his plate away. Leaning back into the booth seat, he lit a cigarette. ‘Finish your lunch, kids,’ he repeated insistently, a trace of annoyance coming into his voice. ‘Clean up those plates.’

The boy looked down at his hamburger in despair. It had been neatly cut into two halves for him. He had managed to eat most of one piece. ‘I’m full, Dad,’ he said softly, as if fearful of being heard. His sister pushed her salad plate aside boldly. ‘Can’t we have dessert before we go?’ she pleaded loudly.

‘No!’ snapped Ted. ‘And you, Timmy, just dig into that food. It cost good money and I want it eaten. Now, not next week!’

‘I can’t!’ Timmy despaired. ‘I’m full! If I eat anymore, I’m gonna throw up.’

Ted’s move was so casual it had to be habit. His right hand, with the cigarette in it, stayed relaxed, but his left became a claw that seized Timmy’s narrow shoulder. It squeezed. ‘If I get that “throw-up” bit one more time, you are going to regret it. I said eat, boy, and I meant it. Clean up that plate, or I’ll clean you up.’

Cold tension rushed up from the children. The little girl made herself smaller. She took a carrot stick in both hands, like a chipmunk, and quickly nibbled it down. She refused to look at her father or brother. The boy Timmy had ceased trying to squirm away from Ted’s white-knuckled grip. He picked up his hamburger half and tried to finish it. His breath caught as he tried to chew, sounding like weeping, but no tears showed on his tight face.

The woman’s face flushed with embarrassment, but Ted was too focused on his dominance to care if he caused a scene. The stranger was oblivious, anyway. His long narrow hand had fallen to the table, where he toyed with the candle in its scarlet holder. He lifted it and swirled it gently, watching the flame gutter and leap as the wax washed around the wick.

‘It’s a very big hamburger for such a small boy.’ The stranger did not speak in his self-effacing country twang. His tone made him an interloper at the table, drew Ted’s eyes to him and refocused his anger. Wizard’s eyes met his. Their stares locked. Wizard’s eyes blazed an unnatural electric blue. Abruptly he switched his gaze to Timmy. Ted’s startled gaze followed his.

Wizard had continued to toy with the candle. The light from his candle faded, then leaped up with a white intensity. It became the only important light in the dimmed restaurant. It licked over the boy’s face, playing games with his features. His round child’s chin jutted into the firm jaw of a young man; his small nose lengthened; the brows on the ridges above his eyes thickened, and deepened the eyes themselves into a man’s angry stare. The anger and hurt in his face were not the emotions of a wilful brat. Ted was looking into the eyes of a young man being forced to act against his own judgement and resenting it keenly. One day he would have to justify himself to that man. His hand dropped limply from his son’s shoulder.

The candle flickered down, but Ted’s vision did not pass. How long since he had last looked at this boy? There had been a baby, like an annoying possession, and then a toddler, like an unruly domestic pet. They were gone. This was a small person. Someday he would have to confront him as an adult. Ted’s jaw gave a single quiver, then stiffened again. Wizard set the candle down on the table.

‘If you’re full, Tim, don’t eat the damn thing. But next time, tell me before I order it for you. It’ll save us both a hell of a lot of trouble.’ Ted leaned forward angrily to grind out his cigarette on the untouched hamburger half. Wizard flinched slightly, but made no remark. The woman was looking from face to face in consternation. A message had passed, a change had been wrought; she knew it, but she also knew she had missed it. She began helping her daughter into her coat. She gave the stranger a long look from the corners of her eyes. He met it full face and nodded to acknowledge her uneasiness. Ted was moving to leave, almost fleeing. She rose and gathered her purse and bags. Nodding to the stranger, she managed, ‘Best of luck to both of you.’

‘And to you, also,’ Wizard replied gravely. He watched them walk to the door, the girl holding her mother’s hand, the boy walking out of his father’s reach. They would need more than his luck wish. He gave a small sigh for them, and turned his attention to more immediate matters. Nina was busy taking orders; the aproned girl had just carried a tub of dirty dishes back to the dishroom. Wizard assembled his lunch.

Only the top of Tim’s hamburger had been fouled. He discarded it and placed the rest on the woman’s plate beside the handful of crisply dark french fries she had rejected. Both the children had been served from the salad bar. Their two plates were a trove of broccoli spears, cauliflower florets, sweet pickles, and garbanzo beans. They had devoured the more prosaic radishes and carrot sticks, but left these adult-bestowed vegetables for him. Ted’s plate donated a wedge of garlic toast, one corner slightly sogged with spaghetti sauce, and two sprigs of parsley. Not a feast, he reflected, but certainly far from famine. And he needed it. The candle business had drained his reserve energies. It hadn’t been wise. If Cassie heard of it, she’d call him a meddler, even as her eyes sparkled with the fun of it.

He ate without haste, but he did not dawdle. He had to remember that he was the man who had arrived late for a lunch date. No reason to rush. In the course of his meal, he refilled his mug four times, feeling with pleasure the hot rush of caffeine that restored him. During his fifth and final cup, he neatly stacked the dishes out of the way. He drew his newspaper from his shopping bag, folded it to the want ads and studied it with no interest. He had possessed the paper for several days now. It was beginning to look a little worn; best replace it today. So essential a prop was not to be neglected.

As he gazed unseeing at the dense black type, he reviewed his morning. The Celestial Seasonings Sampler was the high point today. He had found the box of tea bags in the dumpster in the alley behind the health food store. The corner of the box was crushed, but the tea bags were intact in their brightly coloured envelopes. The same dumpster had yielded four Sweet and Innocent honey candy suckers, smashed, but still in their wrappers. In a dumpster four blocks away, he had found two packets of tall candles, each broken in several places, but still quite useful. An excellent morning. The magic was flowing today, and the light was still before him.

Wizard drained his mug and set it on the table. With a sigh he folded his paper and slipped it once more into his shopping bag. The bag itself was an exceptionally good one, of stout plastic and solid green, except for the slogan, SEATTLE, THE EMERALD CITY. It, too, had come to him just this morning. Rising, he glanced around the place and left his best wishes upon it.

He paused at the pay phone on the way out, to put the receiver to his ear, then hit the coin return and check the chute. Nothing. Well, he could not complain. Magic was not what it once had been. It was spread thinner these days; one had to use it as it came, and never quite trust all one’s weight to it. Nor lose faith in it.

He stepped back into October and the blueness of the day fell on him and wrapped him. The brightness of it pushed his eyes down and to one side, to show him a glint between the tyre of a parked car and the kerb. He stooped for a shining silver quarter. Now, two more of these, and a dime, and he could have his evening coffee in Elliott Bay Café, under the bookstore. He slipped it into his shirt pocket. He took two steps, then suddenly halted. He slapped his pocket, and then stuck his fingers inside it and felt around. The tarot card was gone. Worry squirmed inside him. He banished it. The magic was running right today, and he was Wizard, and all of the Metro Ride Free Zone was his domain. He believed he would find two more quarters and a dime today.

A sidewalk evangelist with a fistful of pamphlets caught at his arm. ‘Sir, do you know the price of salvation in Seattle today?’ He flapped his flyers in Wizard’s face.

‘No,’ Wizard replied honestly. ‘But the price of survival is the price of a cup of coffee.’ He pulled free effortlessly of the staring man, and strolled toward the bus stop.

CHAPTER TWO

Rasputin sunned himself on the bench, making October look like June. He was wearing sandals, and between the leather straps his big feet were as scuffed and grey as an elephant’s hide. His blue denims were raggedy at the cuffs, and the sleeves of his sweatshirt had been cut off unevenly. His eyes were closed, his head nodding gently to the rhythm of his music, one long-fingered hand keeping graceful time. Black and Satisfied, Wizard titled him. Blending in with the bench squatters like a pit bull in a pack of fox hounds. The benches near him were conspicuously empty of loiterers. Wizard shook his head over him as he sat down at the other end of the bench.

Rasputin didn’t stir. Reaching into a pocket, Wizard drew out a crumpled sack of popcorn fragments. He leaned forward to scatter a handful. Rasputin shifted slightly at the fluttering sound of pigeon wings as a dozen or so birds came immediately to the feed.

‘Don’t let them damn pests be shitting on me,’ he warned Wizard laconically.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it. Don’t you think you should carry a radio or something?’

‘What for? So folks would quit looking for my headphones? Ain’t my fault they can’t hear the real music. They too busy covering it up with their own noises.’

Wizard nodded and threw another handful of popcorn. Rasputin’s hand danced lazily on the back of the bench. Muscles played smoothly under his sleek skin, sunlight played smoothly over it. The day arched above them, and Wizard could have dreamed with his eyes open. Instead, he asked, ‘So what brings you to Pioneer Square?’

‘My feet, mostly.’ Rasputin grinned feebly. ‘I’m looking for Cassie. Got a present for her. New jump rope song. Heard it just the other day.’

Wizard nodded sagely. He knew Cassie collected jump rope songs and clapping rhymes. ‘Let’s hear it.’

Rasputin shook his head slowly in a graceful counterpoint to the dance of his hand. A passerby slowed down to watch him, then scurried on. ‘No way, man. Not going to repeat it here. Sounded new, and real potent in a way I don’t like. Gonna tell it to Cassie, but I’m not going to spread it around. Won’t catch me fooling with magic not mine to do.’ Rasputin’s words took on the cadence of his concealed dance, becoming near a chant. Wizard had known him to speak in endless rhymes, or fall into the steady stamp of iambic pentameter when the muse took him. But today he broke out of it abruptly, the rhythm of his hand suddenly changing. A grin spread over his face slowly as he gestured across the square to where a woman in a yellow raincoat had just emerged from a shop.

‘See her? Walking like rain trickling down a window glass? She makes love in a waltz rhythm.’ A black hand waltzed on its fingertips on the bench between them. Wizard glanced from it to the tall, graceful woman crossing the square.

‘That doesn’t seem possible,’ he observed after a perusal of her swinging stride.

‘The best things in this life are the ones that aren’t possible, my friend. ’Sides, would I lie to you? You don’t believe me, you just go ask her. Just walk right on up and say, “My friend Rasputin says you can make a man’s eyes roll back in his head while your thighs play the Rippling River Waltz.” You go ask her.’

‘No thanks,’ Wizard chuckled softly. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Don’t have to, man. She’s one generous lady. Picked me up off the bus one rainy night, took me home and taught me to waltz horizontal. Kept me all night, fed me breakfast, and put me out with her cat when she left for work. Best night of my life.’

‘You never went back?’

‘Some things don’t play well the second time around; only a fool takes a chance at ruining a perfect memory. ’Sides, I wasn’t invited. Kinda lady she is, she does all the asking. All a man can say to her is “yes, please” and “thank you kindly.” That’s all.’

Wizard shifted uncomfortably on the bench. This kind of talk made him uneasy, stirring places in him better left dormant. ‘So you’re looking for Cassie,’ he commented inanely, looking for a safer topic.

Rasputin gave a brief snort of laughter. ‘Did I say that? Stupid way to put it. No sense looking for her. No, I’m just waiting to be found. She’ll know I got something for her, and she’ll come to find me. Don’t you know that about her by now? Think on it. You ever been looking for Cassie and found her? No. Just about the time you give up looking and sit down someplace, who finds you? Cassie. Ain’t that right?’

‘Yeah.’ He chuckled slightly at the truth of it. ‘So what you been doing lately?’

‘I just told you. Getting laid, and listening to jump rope songs in the park. How ’bout you?’

Wizard shrugged. ‘Not much of anything. Little magics, mostly. Told a crying kid where he’d lost his lunch money. Went to visit Sylvester. Saw an old man hurting on a street corner. Asked him the time, the way to Pike Place Market, and talked about the weather until he had changed his mind about stepping in front of the next bus. Was standing in front of the Salvation Army Store and a man drove up and handed me a trenchcoat and a pair of boots. Boots didn’t fit, so I donated them. Trenchcoat did, so I kept it. Listened to a battered woman on the public dock until she talked herself into going to a shelter instead of going home. Listened to an old man whose daughter wanted him to put his sixteen-year-old dog to sleep. Told him “Bullshit!” Old dog sat and wagged his tail at me all through it. That’s about it.’

Rasputin was grinning and shaking his head slowly. ‘What a life! How do you do it, Wizard?’

‘I don’t know,’ the other man replied in a soft, naive voice, and they both laughed together as at an old joke.

‘I mean,’ Rasputin’s voice was thick and mellow as warm honey, ‘how you keep going? Look how skinny you getting lately! Bet Cassie don’t appreciate that in the sack; be like sleeping with a pile of kindling.’

Wizard shot Rasputin a suddenly chill look. ‘I don’t sleep with Cassie.’

The big man wasn’t taking any hints. ‘No, I wouldn’t either. No time for sleeping with something that warm and soft up against you. You don’t know how many times Euripides and I sat howling at the moon for her. Then you come along, and she falls into your lap. Her eyes get all warm when they touch you. First time she brought you to me, I saw it. Oh, oh, I say to myself, here come Cassie, mixing business with pleasure. Now you telling me, oh, no, ain’t really nothing between us. You sure you wouldn’t be telling me a lie?’ An easy, teasing question.

‘I don’t do that.’ Wizard’s voice was hard.

‘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 sceptically. 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 grey 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 grey 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 wistaria 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 greyer, and Cassie rubbed 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 Rosie” 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 key 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 signalling 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 punkers. There are signs in the entrails of the gutted fish on the docks, and ill favours 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 somewhere 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 to 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 grey, 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 grey,’ 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 grey 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 was 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.

CHAPTER THREE

Wizard came awake. His blanket, tucked so carefully under the edge of thin grey-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 Black Thomas, curled serenely against him, was unaware of his watchfulness. Reassured that his personal perimeter was still 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 odour 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 position, 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 tyres 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.

His heart foundered as he remembered the blanket had been a gift, freely given. Cassie had taught him how to be open to such gifts. He had been standing by the Goodwill drop box when the woman in the blue Chevy drove up. As she opened her car door and picked up the brown paper sack from the seat beside her, he had smilingly approached her, asking, ‘Would you like to give that to me?’ She had nodded, pushed it into his hands, and driven away.

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

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.’

‘Maybe you should have given it to her mother, to hold for her.’

‘Naw. She wouldn’t…couldn’t believe in it. She would have thrown it away, or forgotten it.’ He cleared his throat huskily. ‘You know, Wizard, that was the last one I had, too. God only knows when I’ll be given more. I hate to think it might be wasted.’

‘She’ll remember it,’ Wizard said comfortingly. ‘Kids remember the oddest things.’

‘Do you Know that?’ Euripides demanded of him, eyeing Wizard keenly. ‘Or are you just talking?’

Wizard couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Just talking, this time. The Knowings are like your wishes, fiddler. When you’ve got a wish to give away, you feel it. And when I Know, I just know it. But not this time. I do hope it, though.’

‘Me, too.’

‘Hey, seen Cassie?’

The fiddler grinned. ‘Not today. Three, four days back, she was here. She was the Gypsy girl, in a flaming skirt that wouldn’t stay down, and a white blouse that clung to her shoulders like mist. She started to dance, and I couldn’t stop playing. Played tunes I didn’t even know. My fingers are still sore. I had so much silver in my case, the coins were bouncing off each other and ringing with the music. Some old dude in a black suit and whiskers even joined in the dance, ’til his granddaughter hauled him away wheezing. And when Cassie was all done, she wouldn’t take a dime. Let me buy her some potatoes and carrots, and a red rose to carry in one hand as she walked down the street, but that was all. That Cassie!’

Wizard grinned. ‘Sorry I missed it. But if you see her, tell her I’m looking for her.’

‘Will do. By the bye, my friend, the garbage truck broke down. It didn’t get to the end of its rounds, and the replacement truck missed a dumpster. That green one, with “not all men are rapists” spraypainted on it. You know the one. Some good stuff, from the look of it. Everyone cleaned out their Hallowe’en stock.’

‘Thanks.’

The clacking of feet coming down the steps sounded. Euripides lifted his bow and set it dancing to the same rhythm. Wizard merged back into the flow of people and disappeared.

At the top of the Hillclimb, he stopped to survey his domain. The steps spilled down the open hillside amidst plantings and landings. In the summer, some landings had little white and yellow tables with people laughing and eating. But the chill wind off Elliott Bay had blown away such diners today. A shame, thought Wizard. The wind was juggling seagulls for an empty grandstand. Past the grey chute of Highway 99, there were the piers of the Aquarium and Waterfront Park. The waterfront Streetcar clanged past, elegant in green and gold. Wizard had ridden it once, for the extravagant sum of sixty cents. He had stayed on for the full ninety minutes allowed, touching the shining woodwork and gleaming brass, smelling the past in the vintage 1927 genuine Australian trolley car. They were a recent import to Seattle, but already he loved them as much as he loved Sylvester and the pigeons and the market itself.

At the bottom of the Pike Street stairs, he sauntered along past parked cars to the dumpster. Even from a distance, he could see it wouldn’t yield much. Two men with green plastic trash sacks were working it for aluminium cans. He slowed his pace to allow them to finish. It was painful to watch their pitiful efforts. They had the basic idea of scavenging, but could not surrender their belief in money. There were too many steps to their survival. Find the cans, crush the cans, haul the cans, sell the cans, and go buy a cup of coffee. They wouldn’t have too much luck; the dumpster looked as if it had already been worked several times that morning. Ironically, there would be more in there for a pure scavenger than for a can hunter.

He watched them plod off with their sacks over their shoulders before he approached the dumpster. He gave a snort at Euripides’s idea of good stuff. Fish bones and stray socks, empty cans and crumpled newspaper. A ripped tutu. Seven squished tubes of Vampire Blood, complete with plastic fangs. Empty cardboard boxes and packing. A plastic fright wig. A box of brown lettuce. A brown paper sack labelled WIZARD.

It was cold, suddenly. Not that the wind came any swifter off the bay. The seagulls were still screaming as they wheeled, the traffic still rushed and rumbled. A breeze, half of power and half grey, stirred his hair. The cold began in the pit of Wizard’s stomach and emanated outward. His ears rang and he cringed from the expected blow.

A pigeon swooped down suddenly to alight on the edge of the open dumpster. He eyed Wizard anxiously. He was very young, his beak still wide and pink. ‘I’m all right,’ Wizard reassured him. ‘Just give me a moment. I’ll be fine.’ The pigeon fluttered closer, to peck at the fish bones, and reject them. A sudden jab of his beak rustled the paper sack. ‘Yes, yes, I see it. It just took me a bit by surprise, that’s all. Go along now. Popcorn later, at the park. If you see Cassie, tell her I’m looking for her. No, on second thought, stay clear of her. You’re still tender, and you aren’t fast enough to get away from her. Just pass it on to anyone. I’m looking for Cassie.’

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