The Gypsy

EPILOGUE
The Wolf and the Cub

Bells fasten to your feet.

That you needn't be alone,

And I'll dance with you the Gypsy Dance

That you have always known.

"GYPSY DANCE"

"… not really surprised… No, it's what I'd expect her to do… Because if she waited for the kid to ask her, she'd wait forever. So, what did he say?…Yeah, that's about what I'd expect. Well, maybe they would be smarter to wait until this whole mess got cleaned up, but smarter isn't always best, Marilyn,you tell Tiffany that for me." Stepovich listened while he thumbed through his statement again. He started to switch the phone from one ear to the other, then remembered that shoulder no longer worked. "Yeah.I know, it is quite a mess. They said they could have saved my arm if the quack who fixed my shoulder the last time hadn't bungled it… Well, thanks, I appreciate that… I guess I'll have to, won't I?…No, I don't mean to sound bitter, I'm just tired of all the damn questions about… sure I understand, I didn't mean you, ask whatever you want… What makes it so bad is that I'm so foggy about what happened after I got hit… Ed? I don't know. From what I can gather, he was under a coffee table or behind a couch or some damned thing while Durand had all the fun… I was being sarcastic, Marilyn.But as I say, after I got hit, I didn't know much of anything that happened… Yeah, I knew about Ed's friend Madam Moria, but.. yeah, I'd heard that the guy who shot me was the one who did the liquor store clerk, but I don't know why he was at Moria's place,… Me? I told you, Ed just wanted to introduce Durand and me to Madam-Huh? Yeah, as far as I know, the killer just happened to show up while we were there. These things happen…, Holes? Who are you. Internal Affairs?… No, really… No, really… Okay, well, tell you what, Marilyn, soon as I'm feeling better, I'll buy you a cup of coffee and tell you the whole story… that's right, the whole story… Yeah, I guess I do owe you that much, but don't blame me when you don't believe it. Hell, I was there, and I don't believe half of it… Yeah, I guess that's a promise. Okay, dinner, not coffee… Okay. Hey, I've got company right now, though, so I got to get off the phone… huh? You bet, Marilyn. A beautiful woman." As he said this, Stepovich's visitor gave an exaggerated look around the hospital room and harrumphed. He bravely waggled his eyebrows at her. "Right… much better, hell, you know cops are made of unbreakable plastic… How should I know, Marilyn? Maybe. I don't even know if they'll offer me a desk job after they read my statement… Yeah, they finally got it out. It ended up lodged between two ribs… bounced all over hell inside me getting there, I guess, they say I'm lucky I'm even… Right. I will. No, really, I will, I promise. You, too. Thanks for calling… Bye."

As soon as Stepovich hung up the phone, she said,"Cut the cards, three times."

He sighed and obeyed her. It was awkward, one-handed. They were peculiar cards, even for the kind of deck it was. Thick edges gone soft with age and handling, smelling like some old spicy perfume. Not even their backs matched. She shifted the piles, muttering to herself as she did so. He watched her practiced fingers lay the cards out in a careful pattern on the white hospital sheet beside him. She bent over them, her hair falling forward like a curtain. "Of course," she muttered. "I can see it."

"See what?" Stepovich asked crabbily.

Her fingernail tapped a card, two people exchanging chalices. "I see Durand asking a woman with red hair to join her fortune with his. She hesitates, but not for long."

"Actually, Tiffany Marie asked him," Stepovich pointed out. She ignored his interruption.

Her hands moved again, jabbing at the ornate cards. "This one, the Queen of Stars? She receives gifts soon, gifts due her. A kettle, perhaps, and a new cane. Perhaps a pound of good tea."

Stepovich harrumphed.

Her fingers wandered on. "An older man close to you opens new doors, or finds a new opportunity."It was a hand coming out of a cloud holding a flowering stick. Stepovich noticed that it was a single arm,then threw the thought away.

"You knew Ed got himself a part-time job. Down at the Classic Caddy. Spends all day arguing about cars with a bunch of other old farts." He coughed slightly, winced from the bruises the bullet had made inside him and the pull of the healing wounds. He took a quick breath, reached to tap a Moon card-"What's this?"

She shook her head. "One we don't wish to speak of. She is gone from here, but not so far as to give me any comfort. But there is another," she tapped a card with a guy upside down on a cross. "One who is not far behind her. This, the six of Swords, nearby?He does not travel alone." A card with ten circled stars overlay a man on a horse carrying yet another star. Her fingers stroked the two, then lifted away.

"Here," she said. "This is you. The Fool."

"Oh, thank you."

"No. Trust me. It's the right card for you. The beginning of knowledge, the beginning of a spiritual journey"-Stepovich rolled his eyes-"and someone who can walk through danger and not be harmed."

"Not be harmed?" He gestured at where his arm had been. "What do you call this, a dimple?"

"And this," she continued quickly, "the five of Cups beside it? That's disappointments, but they're past now. This is the future." It was a woman in a garden with a bird on her finger. "She's enjoying the good things in life. Alone, but getting wiser about herself."

He suddenly thought of Marilyn, then chided himself. If he wasn't careful, he could start taking this stuff seriously, and then what? Can't go out on patrol today, the cards say it isn't auspicious. But no, he wasn't going to be going out on anymore patrols. Shit. Aloud, he said skeptically, "You can tell all this from a deck of cards?"

She fixed him with a steady gaze. "The knowing is already within me. The cards are like guideposts for my Seeing." Her gaze went distant. She had aged since he had last seen her, but not in a way that was bad. Almost, he could see as she claimed to. A sadness, a regret in your past, he'd say to her, but something you've learned from.

"I have the gift, you know," she told him, in a voice gone soft with mystery. Then Laurie grinned suddenly, spoiling the effect. "Or so Madam Moria tells me."

"You should stay away from that old witch," Stepovich chided her. "Filling your head full of superstition."

"Daddy!" Laurie objected heatedly. "She does not.And she's going to take me and Jeffrey to the Farmer's Market. That's where she buys the spices to put in her teas."

"That okay with your mom?"Laurie shrugged. "She said she'd think about it."

"I bet. Don't go telling her it was my idea."

"Don't you want to see me in the layout?" Laurie changed the subject.

"Where are you?" Stepovich asked grudgingly.

"Here." She tapped a card of a young man with a fish in his cup. "This is me. Page of Cups. It means a captivating young person, studious and drawn to the arts. And you know what this means, here, in my future?" A man with a crown on his head, holding a wand. Green was the color of his jerkin.

"I'm almost afraid to ask."

"It means like beginning an apprenticeship. Learning something." Laurie gathered up the cards carefully.

"Learning what?" Stepovich asked guardedly.

"Music lessons," she said matter of factly. "That card almost always means music lessons."

And the street lights never waver.

And the red lights never dim.

And the neon always glitters;

And it was better me than him.

"RED LIGHTS AND NEON"

The End

STEVEN KARL ZOLTAN BRUST was born in 1955. His hobbies include arguing and drumming. He plays psychedelic rock n' roll for Cats Laughing, twisted trad and quirky Celtic for Morrigan, and Sufi drumming for Sulliman's Silly Surfing Sufi Circus, as well as doing the occasional solo act with guitar and banjo. He supports his music habit by writing, and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

For information on ordering "Another Way to Travel"by Cats Laughing (tape or CD) or "Queen of Air and Darkness" by Morrigan (tape), send a self-addressed,stamped envelope to:

Steel Dragon Press

Box 7253

Minneapolis, MN 55407

MEGAN LINDHOLM lives on a small farm in rural Roy, Washington with her four children and occasionally her fisherman husband, Fred. Hobbies include cleaning up after the children and intending to have a garden. Her tastes in music include psychedelic rock n' roll, twisted trad and quirky Celtic, and Sufi drumming. She highly recommends the soundtrack from the movie that should have been made,"Another Way to Travel." Said soundtrack can be ordered from:

Steel Dragon Press

Box 7253

Minneapolis, MN 55407

Oh, she also writes.

AN id=subtitle»

PROLOGUE

I hope you don't mind

If I rest inside your door

Please forgive the snowy footprints

I'm tracking on your floor.

"RED LIGHTS AND NEON"

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek…

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

There is something about the sound of the tambourine.The zils rattle or ring in the same tones and pitches as the kettles in which you heat the water or stew the meat, and the calfskin head that is as old as Nagypapa will predict the rain by saying dum or the dryness by saying doooooom. When the tambourine is played well, the feet move on wings of their own, and the heart leaps with them, while the lips, distant observers above, cannot help but smile a little, no matter how somber the mood. This is why the dance and the laughter are one, and whoever says different is either deluded or in the service of You Know Who.And You Know Who has many servants.Some are weak, some are strong. Some need guidance day by day; others, well, others can work their evil on their own, and bring more souls into the sway. For example, there is the Fair Lady, Luci, who-

No. We will not dwell on that now, there is plenty of time later. Now, we are remembering the tambourine, which is as perfect a match for the fiddle as the onion is for the bacon, and the memory of the ear and the tongue is forever, which is as it should be. These things stay with a person, no matter how many years have passed, or what paths he has trod. Once those sounds are in his blood, he can never forget-

Never forget-

Umm…

Somewhere, perhaps half a mile to his left, a siren divided the evening into sections. Why do they call them sirens, he wondered. What sort of sailor would be attracted to them? The question was rhetorical and ironic. He wasn't worried. He had no reason to think the siren was for him, so he continued to stroll down Saint Thomas, which seemed to be the street where appliance stores gathered, with a few grocers and liquor stores interleaved between them like the thick cloth that keeps the pottery from breaking against itself when-

Umm…

He had been a sailor once-twice? Something like that. He remembered rope burns on his hands; endless buckets of fish soup; toothless, fair-haired men with food in their beards shouting to him in Dutch;salt water in his mouth; the sick-sweet smell of rum;earplugs so the batteries wouldn't deafen him; scraping sounds of a too-small tool against an ugly green metal hull; salt water in his mouth. He almost remembered meeting a small shark once, but this could have been a dream. He'd never met a siren, in any case.

It was coming closer. He almost ducked into a storefront from some urge to flee, but there was really no reason to think they were looking for him. He kept walking.

A wooden door opened almost in his face and a burly figure in a red plaid jacket walked away from him. He noticed the jacket and thought. Is it cold, then?He could see his breath, and there was a light coating of snow on the sidewalk, so it must be. He looked at his own clothing and saw only a very thinly woven cotton shirt, pale yellow with a few blue threads for embroidery. He wore baggy blue pants of the same material, and high doeskin boots. These should not be enough to keep him warm. Perhaps he ought to go inside. A sign above the door said ST. THOMAS BAR, which meant it was a public house. The door had opened before him, which could as easily be a Sign as it could be a Trap or nothing at all, and the siren, which ought not to have anything to do with him, was getting closer. He opened the door and stepped inside, entering another alien world, which is what any new place is, after all, isn't it?

Cigarette smoke, an anemic blue, hung over a pool table, entwined with a neon BUDWEISER sign, and crept over to a long bar where a fat man in an apron was talking with a smiling patron. The fat man's features were not unpleasant, and his nose had been broken at least twice; the patron hunched his shoulders as if the world had been too much for him for along time, and he had a large scar down the side of his neck-a knife scar.

The fat man noticed him and said, "What'll it be?"

"I… that is, brandy."

"How d'you want it?"

"How-?"

"You all right, buddy?"

"I think so."

"Want me to call someone?"

"No. Just let me sit down."

"Sure. Sit down. Maybe you shouldn't have anything right now."

"Maybe you're right."

"You driving?"

"What?"

"You got car keys?"

"Car… keys? I don't think so."

"Good. Just sit there for a while and I'll call you a cab. You got any money?"

"Well, I-I don't know." He put his hands in his pockets and began removing things; An oddly formed lump of heavy grey metal, the key to room fourteen of some hotel somewhere, an empty bottle for sixtyfive milligram pills of Darvon, a nickel and three pennies, He stared at this collection, wondering if it had any significance. The pill bottle; he remembered something about that-he had just been trying to get more pills, when-what happened? He shook his head, frustrated.

The fat man said, "Shit. Never mind, now. What's your name?"

"Ummm, Chuck-Charles, I think."

"Yeah, you look like a Charles. Okay, just sit tight. No one here will hurt you. You'll feel better in awhile. I'm Tony, by the way."

"Thank you. Tony. Do not write the letter."

"What?"

"Do not write the letter. It will bounce three times and bite three times and leaving you kissing dust."

"Is that a poem or something?"

"It is for you."

"What letter are you talking about?"

"I don't know."

The man with the scar looked up. "He some kind of nut. Tony?"

"Hell if I know."

"Did you write a letter?"

The bartender paused, glanced at Charles, then back at the patron. He cleared his throat. "I just told you about my daughter."

"The dyke?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Hey, you said it first."

The bartender stared at a soapy glass in his hand."I was gonna write and tell her not to bother coming home for winter break, but…"

"This guy gives me the creeps. Tony."

"So go to the other end of the bar. He ain't bugging nobody."

"I guess not."

But Charles, after replacing his possessions in his pocket, decided he should be the one to move to the other end of the bar, as a result of which he spotted the policemen before they spotted him. His throat tightened. They can't be looking for me. They can't be looking for me. Can they? One was very young and made Charles think of the phrase, "One hand grabs for the reins while one foot runs for the ditch." Who had said that, and in what language? The other policeman was like an old wolf-leader, whose eyes miss nothing even if they appear closed.

Charles turned away, hoping to be missed in the blue fog, but he felt the old policeman's eyes seize the back of his neck. This was pursuit, and pursuit led to capture, and capture led to-

No, there was no time for that, now, either.

The room was heavy with tobacco smoke; it could become heavier, he knew that. He could hide himself in it, although there would be a price to pay.

He did what was necessary, vaguely aware that he was losing something as he did.

There was a back way, and he found it, and he was gone. His headache returned, bringing with it the memory that it had been an almost constant companion for a long time. He felt pursuit, and it frightened him, but at least now he knew it was not an irrational fear which had gripped him since-

–Since-

Blind man's night is music to the deaf, and everyone has two paths, not one, whence comes tragedy and comedy, forsooth and damn straight, son.

He stood just within the flap of the tent and the old woman saw him and he saw her and the statuette,and it would be hard to guess who was more surprised of these two strangers who somehow knew. And, oh, the things they said without speaking or moving; the anger, the pain, the justifications, all silent, perhaps all imagined, until he ran, once more,never stopping until he reached the river, which agreed to carry him, once more, away from one set of troubles into another. Out of pangs of the heart and into torments of the flesh.Hell of a way to run a coach service.

–Since-

After all, they had entered the bar, and, more importantly, he must trust his instincts, which had gotten him out of as many fixes as they'd gotten him into. The same could be said of his knife, and perhaps there's a moral there.

Was this time going to be any different? Of course.They all are. He was breathing heavily but not painfully, his strides were long and even, though he was tired. He stopped and rested for a moment beside a high wrought-iron fence, with a lower chain-link fence outside it, then he walked on, looking back frequently.

There was a gate in the fence, and someone stood beside it. His first thought was. It is Luci; I am caught.But no. He could make out little of her form in the gloom, but her face had the stamp of beauty with suffering etched into the lines over her brows and next to her eyes. A squirrel at her feet chittered loudly as he approached, started to run, then relaxed. The woman turned at his footstep. He looked into her eyes and she into his. He felt a slight tingle at the base of his skull. Her eyes glittered. She said, "You are hereto replace me, that I may rest?"

"I don't understand."

"Why are you here?"

"I am merely walking. Running, in fact. You?"

"I guard this place, so none may pass who should not. You should not, I think, unless you are to replace me."

He looked past her, through the high wrought-iron fence, and understood. "No, I still live. You must wait for the next to die to take your place."

"How then can you see me?"

"Because I am who I am."

"Who are you?"

"I'm not certain. Who are you, and how did you come to die, so young?"

"Leukemia," she said dreamily, as if it made no difference to her at all, and perhaps it didn't. "My name is Karen."

"How long have you stood vigil here?"

"I'm not certain. Only a few days, I think. I relieved a tired old man who had been here four days."

The squirrel jumped closer to him, then back again.

"You will not have to wait long, I think. Then you may rest."

"Yes," she said. "Will you see to my man? We lived together for three years, and he was very kind when I was dying, but it was hard for him. Harder than for me, I think."

"What is his name?"

"Brian MacWurthier. We lived at three twenty-seven Roosevelt, upstairs."

He repeated the name and address to himself, so he wouldn't forget it. "Very well," he said. "I will-"

"A light fell upon him. He turned and his heart jumped as he saw the police car. He began to run, knowing already that it was too late."

"I'm sorry," he heard her say. The squirrel bolted between the bars of the cemetery as if escaping from a cage.

"It is nothing," said Charles softly as the two policemen took his arms and threw him against the chain-link fence. Their hands were rough and thorough as they searched him. What are their feelings at such times, he wondered. Boredom? Professional pride?

"My head hurts," he said softly. They didn't seem to hear him.

The older one found his knife and let it fall with a gesture half careless and half deliberate. Charles winced as he heard it strike the sidewalk. The younger one held his upper arms in a grip like steel. It was painful- He thought about resisting then and there,but he couldn't decide, and soon it was too late, for they wrenched his arms behind him and put handcuffs on him.

This felt familiar. Why? A piece of the Sight, or the shards of real memory? The policemen pushed him into the back of the car. He had to sit sideways because of the cuffs. He tested them, and found that they were connected by a rigid bar, rather than a mere chain. They knew him then. He frowned, his shoulder pressed uncomfortably against the seat back.There was a time when it would have pleased him that they showed such fear. There was a time,…

He walks aimlessly upon the Old Manor Way, his feet twisting in the coach tracks. He sees her before him-the one whom he had loved, and who betrayed him to marry a rich man.

"You have destroyed me," he cries. "You have broken my heart." He reaches into his chest, then, and pulls his heart from his body to show her, but she, filled with shame or pride, won't look, so he flings it down onto the road.

Soon, an old dry-nurse comes along and sees it. "Well, "she says. "We can't have this." And she calls three times like a raven and screams three times like an owl, and a shape appears beside her. The apparition, a woman who is younger than the nurse and older than the lover, takes the heart from the roadside, and brushes the dirt from it and holds it to her bosom. He looks closely, and sees that it is the ghost of his mother, still watching out for him from beyond the grave.

Lover, dry-nurse, and mother all vanish into the mist,into the dust. He takes back his heart and replaces it in his chest and continues on his way.

The holding tank was seven paces by nine. The walls were of tile, to chest height. The floor was of cement, with a large drain in the middle so the place could be hosed down. A tiled bench, perhaps eight inches off the floor and eighteen deep, was built into two of the walls. Across from it was an aluminum toilet, all of one piece. Charles, realized, after a moment's thought, that this was to ensure no one could use the toilet seat as a weapon. The sink was also aluminum. There were neither soap nor towels. The cold water worked, the hot didn't. A chest-high wall next to the toilet provided a token measure of privacy from the thick, wired-glass window next to the door.

Two pair of fluorescent light fixtures, two bulbs in each, made the tank very bright. The fixtures we recovered in heavy plastic shielding. To protect them when the place was hosed down, perhaps, since the ceiling was far too high for anyone to reach.

There were two others in the tank with him. For just a moment, Charles thought of his brothers, but,though he no longer remembered what they looked like, he knew these were not they. One prisoner was in his later thirties, perhaps. He had already been there when Charles was brought in. He was tall,stringy, with dark hair that was graying just a bit at the temples. He was sitting on the bench and he wore a black tee shirt. The other looked to be in his middle fifties. He'd been let in just a few minutes before, and Charles had the impression that this wasn't his first time in this place. His grey hair was slicked back, he had a bit of a potbelly. He wore a faded red shirt with fake pearl buttons, very old jeans, and cowboy boots. He paced in a lazy oval near the door. He was shorthand he stank very badly when Charles got too close.Charles wondered if he'd been fished out of a sewer. All three of them avoided proximity with each other, so staying away wasn't difficult-

He tried to reconstruct the events since he'd been picked up, but they blurred and faded and slipped through his fingers. He had been thoroughly searched by two bored guards with a camera watching, and there had been an old, sour-faced woman who took his picture and fingerprints while a fresh-scrubbed clerk with a weak attempt at a blond mustache had asked him questions he mostly couldn't answer, and then his possessions and even his boots had been taken and he'd been put into the tank by a guard who looked like a Nazi and carried the largest key Charles had seen since-

–Since-

He'd been a child, and his mother carried a huge ornate key on a chain around her neck. "What is that for, Anya?" he had asked.

"It is the key to our palace," she said.

"Palace?"

"We are royalty, you know. And someday we will take our place, and you will be a great king." She smiled and winked as she said it.

"Will I like being a king?" he had asked, all somber and earnest.

She had smiled, like the rippling laugh the fiddle made when Sandi led the csardas. She said, "Ah, my little man, sometimes I think you will never like anything you do, because you must suffer to be happy."She hugged him, and his face pressed against the ornate iron key she wore, and he wondered.

–Since-

He sat down on what could perhaps be called a bench, and looked at his companions. He wondered what their crimes were. It came to him then that not everyone put in this place was innocent. A shiver began somewhere low down on his spine and shot up it like a rocket. To be innocent of a crime and to be in this place, stripped of identification, dignity, and shoes, with people who smelled like pigs, behind wired glass, yes, that would truly be damnation. A man could panic in here-think that he'd been forgotten, that no one would ever come for him. There was no way to see the sky, nor was there a clock.

Suddenly desperate to take his mind from these thoughts, he addressed his companions. He said carefully, "Do either of you know how long they're likely to keep us here before something else happens?"

Echoes echoes echoes, banging around inside his head, which now hurt so badly he wanted to scream. If the police, for some reason, wanted to listen in to conversations in this place, they would be unable to hear anything but echoes, Charles wasn't sure if his companions had understood his question, but he had no wish to repeat it. The one who stank glowered at him, and Charles was startled by the deep blue of his eyes. The younger, taller one shook his head and went back to contemplating the floor between his arms.

Charles closed his eyes and took two deep breaths.He assessed his options as best he could. From the way he was treated by the policemen, and the diligence of their search, he was considered dangerous,and was wanted for a serious crime. Had he, perhaps,killed someone? His feelings gave him no answer, except that the idea of having take a life filled his heart with no sense of denial.

If he left himself in their hands, could he expect justice? Did he want justice? The answer to that was:Yes, but it was doubtful that they would see justice in the same way he did. The bench was hard, but the floor not as cold as he would have expected. He waited, his eyes fixed on the door, hardly blinking,hardly breathing. The younger of his companions spared him one curious glance, almost a grimace. The older continued to pace.

Charles could not say how long it was before the door opened once more. A policeman with a straight back and a grey mustache stood with the huge key in his hand and called out, "Jeffrey Simmons." The taller one stood and moved toward the door. The policeman said, "Vincent Petersen," and the smelly one looked up and shuffled to the door. The policeman's eyes locked with Charles' for just a moment, but he couldn't see anything in them.

The cell door shut, sending off echoes like a stone thrown into a pool. The echoes, hard and metallic,set off a ringing in his ears. The ringing continued,too high to sing comfortably, like the long screeching note of the violin at the end of a wild csardas. In his mind, he filled in the tambourine. Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek. Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek. His throat burned and he tasted his tears. He reached out,as if to touch his home, and then squeezed, as if to tear apart anything that would keep him from it.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

The ringing became louder still, until it filled all of the world that was or ever could be, and he breathed with the imaginary tambourine.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

He wrapped himself in his arms, and, as he did,the rhythm became buzzing of bees and the ringing became church-bells. He let it take him, fill him, expand him, and move him in a way that was more physical then he would have thought.

Movement?

Music.

His headache was gone.

The fiddle came to accompany the tambourine once more, and, just for an instant, he remembered his brothers. But then, the instant was enough, that time.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.