Wizard of the Pigeons

ON THE FAR WESTERN SHORE of a northern continent there was once a harbor city called Seattle. Jt did not have much of a reputation for sunshine and beaches, but it did have plenty of nun, 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 me 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 rumors about it. Some said he had been an engineer and a warrior who bad 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 me 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 niggled 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 me 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 gray 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 (he city, logs had once skidded down dial 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 cliche.

Wizard passed under the gray 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 cool would be wondering where be 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 eyes rove over the shop. It was a marvelous place. It was so crammed thai 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 me 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 jewelry, 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 me shop.

The very best things were in the back of the shop. The shrunken beads 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 fortuneteller 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 diy 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 (here 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 shriveled 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 ninty?? 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 me 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 m gaudy colors 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 me 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 nimble 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 curb. 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 be 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 be, 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 be didn’t write to us, he says, ‘Oh, Mom, you know how it is.

You know I do 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. “Mumbojumbo!” he had replied derisively. But now he had something for the old roan, 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 men 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 handles.

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 me door of the restaurant. A secretary hurrying through her halfhour 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 me illustration of me 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 me cheat. Bereft of wind and sun at his back, the man who had seemed to fill me 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 gray 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 me 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 swingfront 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 older, 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 onto 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 boom 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 $I.50 EACH ARE NOT PERMITTED TO SIT IN BOOTHS BETWEEN II:00 AND 2:00 PM. DUE TO LIMITED TABLESPACE THE MANAGEMENT REGRETS THIS NECESSARY MEASURE IN OUR EFFORTS TO KEEP OUR PRICES LOW. So did Wizard.

The sign bad 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 me 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 mink 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,” be 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 favor if I refused. Look how they get, once you many ‘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!” me 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 me door.

Ted pushed his plate away. Leaning back into me 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. ff 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 me 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 scariet 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 me candle. The light from his candle faded, then leaped up with a white intensity. It became me 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 willful brat. Ted was looking into the eyes of a young man being forced to act against his own judgment 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 comers 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, me 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 me 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 tires 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 me 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 colored 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 on 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 me 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 tire of a parked car and the curb. 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 Cafe, 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 cam 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.

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 gray 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 nun. Blending in with me 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 me 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 loves 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 all.“

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 tolling me a lie?“ An easy, teasing question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It has to come out somewhere,” Cassie sighed, ripping the stiff silence. “All the horrors come out somewhere, even the ones no one can talk about. Look at child abuse. You know this one, so it doesn’t bother you anymore. But think about it.

‘Down by the ocean, down by the sea, Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me. I told Ma, Ma told Pa, and Johnny got a licking with a ha, ha, ha! How many lickings did Johnny get? One, two, three,’ and on and on, for as long as little aster or brother can keep up with the rope. Or ‘Ring around a Rooe that talks about burning bodies after a plague. Believe in race memory. It comes out somewhere.“

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

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

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

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

“What do you do with those jump rope songs, anyway?”

Rasputin demanded, his voice signaling that he’d like the talk to take a new direction.

Cassie just smiled enigmatically for a moment, but men 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 me 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 me 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 freencss 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 me 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 (be warnings written in the graffiti on the overpasses and carved on the bodies of the young punters. There are signs in me entrails of toe gutted fish on the docks, and ill favors waft over the city.”

“Just a strong wind from Tacoma.” Rasputin tried to joke, but it fell flat. The small crowd of pigeons that had come to cluster at Wizard’s feet rose suddenly, to wheel away in alarm.

Startled at nothing.

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

“You tell me,” she challenged quietly.

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

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

Rasputin stroked off across the cobbled square, his gently swaying hips and shoulders turning his walk into a motion as graceful as the flight of a sea bird. He vanished slowly among the parked cars and moving pedestrians. Wizard was left sitting beside Cassie. Her body made him uneasy. It had taken him a long time 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 me straggly-haired escapee from the rest home. Those persons were easier for him to deal with.

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

“Your den is the storm’s eye,” she said without preamble.

“Whatever it is, it’s coming for you. You want to tell me about it, so I can at least warn the rest of us?”

Wizard shook his head, trying to breathe. “I can’t. Not because I won’t, but because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, I don’t know anything about it. Not exactly.

Anyone with any magic at all can tell that there’s something hanging over the city. But I don’t know what it is, and—“

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was regret in her words. It stung him.

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

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

“There was something, once. Like a hunger, an appetite.

Something like that. I don’t remember.“

“It didn’t have a name?”

“It was gray,” he admitted uneasily.

“So it was.” Cassie sighed heavily. “So you’ve told me.

Listen, Wizard. If you needed help, you’d come to me, wouldn’t you?“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I didn’t say Viet Nam, so shut your mourn 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, be took him seriously. He killed him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something was out there.

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

A subtle wnmgness pervaded his room. To his nostrils carae the familiar mustiness of me dank walls, the city cat stink like damp wool, and beyond that me cheesy odor of pigcoo 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 tightness 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 nimble of a diesel truck in his skull when it was yet blocks away. He passed his power to his ears and let mem 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 me dampened streets made treacherous by a slightly suspended film of oil. He could near me rainbow arching of spattering water as fat tires spun past. Subjugated to the traffic sound was the gentle creaking and grumbling of the old building itself.

But these normal groanings he knew as well as he knew the mump 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 me 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 Ft 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 gray 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 citynight 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. Staiacities of pigeon droppings graced it a la Jack Frost. The recent pattering of nun against it had smeared it more, making it impossible to see out. But me ghostly back-gray that passes for night in me 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 grayness that emanated from the city. It came as much from the gutters and dumpsters as from headlights and streetlamps. It was more than me fogging breath of huddled winos and the gray puffing of exhaust. It was not inanithate.

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 gray- 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 defenses 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 defenseless; he was ready for it.

Black Thomas betrayed him. Some questing tendrils of me Gray’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 torn bounded from the thattress 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 defenses, 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 gray Mir had known he would reach after the cat. With a roar 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 comers 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 me 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 multicolored 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 ttfcm 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 (bought he felt a twitch. When he finished the third pen, mere 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 mem 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 Mock. 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 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 thatter 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 me 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 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 afterward. In winter, he had to do it alone, in the straw-shed, lit by a single bulb turned on with a pull string. No thatter 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 cousin. “Don’t you feel it in there?” he had whispered to Red one night. “Like clusters of little spirits, lime feathery ghosts wanting to know why you fed them and cared for them and men 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 neighbor kids, for the next night he awoke to drawn-out moans outside his bedroom window: “Clubuh-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 cany 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 thai-way before. Past guilt was better forgotten, lest it be savored. 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 grayness 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 cleansed 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 gray 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 center 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 goldenorange eyes. But death had spoiled their color; 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 me Christmas tree with them. Some kids had all me 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 me 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, savoring 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.

Gray 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 comers, 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 peeked 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 me 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 buckles kept the footlocker shut. ft was finished in dull olive drab paint, scratched and gouged from use and miles of travel. Three letter’s were stenciled 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 has 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 snick 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 be 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 parceled it out, fifty-seven or sixty-two cents at a time, for coffee. He only drew from his hoard in gravest need. Today, he had surpassed gravest need. His battle last night had drained his power to the dregs. He needed coffee and warmth and a wash 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.

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 paste) 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 smelted 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-0 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 color TV mounted high in one corner of the cafe. 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 girt 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 finned, 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 me 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 me 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 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 me 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 center, 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 “dl, her straight back told him as plainly as if she had spoken.

Such a dung 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 me cafe? But he was hungry, and me 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 me 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 grayness 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 gray bricks, gone uneven- Stubborn grass sprouted up between the gray 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-colored 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 cafes, book stores, a Western Union office, a bank, and other shops even more unlikely. Wizard’s favorite building was a four-story 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 tail doors? With an old text book salvaged from the dumpster behind me 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 benches 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 gray pilgrims seeking out his wisdom. They perched on the bench beside him and walked on his body, but soiled him not. One fat gray fellow with irridescent neck feathers had stood before him and puffed himself out, to bob and coo his ritual dance to his thate, 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. Whoa 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, whasathatter 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 waited the sound and smell of the Pike Place Public Market to him. He strolled toward it, savoring 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 bow he approached, it was a bower of flowers, or a bouquet 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 a 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 completing with but not thatching him.

Euripides skipped and hopped his bow from one time 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 even before you saw him. It was a subtle gift. Keep your quarter in your pocket, and the same tune might run 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 Traveler. 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 yam 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.

“Leukemia,” 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 alt men are rapists’ spraypainted on it. You know the one. Some good stuff, from the look of it. Everyone cleaned out their Halloween 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 gray 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. We had stayed on for the full ninety minutes allowed, touching the shining woodwork and gleaming brass, smelling the past in me 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 newspapers. 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 labeled 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 gray, 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. III 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.”

The young bird was gone in a clap of wings. A lot of homer in that one. Wizard thought, watching his soaring, careless flight.

He flicked the fish bones away from the bag and extracted it from the dumpster. It was not heavy. He felt it cautiously.

Cloth, perhaps. He walked slowly away with it. He was not ready to look inside the bag. Not yet. It swung ominously at the end of his arm and disturbed him. It didn’t thatch his clothing. It betrayed him. No one in this suit and shoes would carry a dumpster-stained crumpled brown bag. He could get away with trash digging in a suit; people were always throwing things away by mistake and digging through dumpsters for them: lottery tickets and car registrations and phone numbers scribbled on the backs of envelopes. But men dressed as salesmen did not wander around the city carrying dirty paper bags labeled WEARD. He felt the cold touch of the power on him again, both a threat and a consolation. If he could find the balancing point, he could use whatever force was working here.

If he failed to find it, it would smash him.

Today he had had enough of shadows and the rumble of Highway 99 overhead. He needed sunlight. He crossed Alaskan Way recklessly and wandered out onto me pier of the Aquarium.

The sky was overcast, but he sensed the sun behind the clouds and took comfort from it. He sat down on the guard mil of the dock and looked down at the sloshing water. The bag leaned against his leg, rustling secrets whenever the wind touched it.

People were slowing to stare at him. It would be a very stupid place to try to commit suicide, but he felt them wondering if he were going to jump. He rose and took up his bag.

Privacy, he reflected as he strolled down Alaskan Way, was in damned short supply in the city. Whatever was in this bag, it was not something to be poked through on a crowded sidewalk, or investigated in the closed stall of a men’s room. No, it demanded solitude. And the only way to be alone in a city was to be where no one else wanted to be. Someplace cold and windy and smelly with nothing worth looking at- He hiked along Alaskan Way, past the fireboat station and the ferry terminal, past Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Beyond it was a small grab-and-run diner in a sort of kiosk in a bare parking lot.

There was a dumpster behind it, redolent of old grease and fish. Not even the cold wind off the bay could disperse the stink. Wizard stood in the lee of the dumpster and opened his bag.

It took his breath away. For a moment he forgot the stink and the cold and the traffic sounds. He touched with a cautious finger.

The long robe was dark blue, spangled with stars and crescent moons that sparkled silver when the cloth moved. It had long, loose sleeves and a high collar. There was no need to hold it up against himself. He knew it would fit. The cloak was the same blue, but unadorned except for silver trim at the collar and throat. It tied with little silver tassels.

Wizard looked into the bag again. The hat. It was blue, one shade short of black. It had a broad brim, floppier than he had supposed it would be, and a tall, pointed peak. But the tip of this lofty spire was bent. He reached into the bag and attempted to straighten it. The touch of the hat on his hand was like the touch of ice against teeth, like the unfelt slicing of a razor blade against callused skin. Slowly Wizard drew back his hand. The tip would not straighten. It was meant to be bent, and the power in it had let him know it. He felt it as a rebuke to him, some sort of subtle mockery that the tip of his wizard’s hat should be bent at such a rakish angle. He remembered to breathe and took a long draw of air. Meticulously he refolded the robe and cloak and replaced them in the bag, packing them around the tall hat. He was carefully folding the mouth of the bag shut when the flutter of wings jarred him.

“Stupid!” Wizard rebuked him. “I warned you that you weren’t fast enough for her.”

The young homer’s feathers were still ruffled, and two of his pinions were missing. In spite of his rakish appearance, he cocked his head at Wizard, fluffed his throat out and gave a bob and coo.

“I’m coming. Next time, don’t be such a show-off. No, no popcorn until I get to my bench. Go on, now. I’ll see you there.”

The young homer soared off. Wizard watched the flick, flick, glide of his wings silhouetted against the lowering sky.

Despite the chill of the day, he took off his tan overcoat and draped it over his arm, concealing the bag. That done, he headed for the bus stop.

HE STARED UNSEEING out the bus window, trying to still the small moth of excitement that always fluttered inside him when he knew he was going to rendezvous with Cassie. Rasputin’s remarks of a few days ago came into his mind to haunt him.

He pushed the ideas away angrily. As if he would ever endanger his relationship with Cassie that way, let alone the magic she had shown him how to unlock. That he had always had the ability to be a wizard he did not doubt; but without Cassie it would never have developed past the stages of odd hunches and strange turns of fortune. He had not been anxious to develop it either.

The second time Cassie had come to him, he had thought he was having a vision. He tried to remember the exact alley. but all his memories from that time were shadowed, like portrait proofs slowly darkening in his mind. It had been winter. That much was certain.

It had been snowing as it did in Seattle once or thrice a winter, with large wet white flakes that spiraled down from the sky. For the first hour, the flakes had melted as soon as they touched the gray streets or the red bricks that cobbled the alleys.

Then the snow had begun to unite in ridges of gray slush in the streets, and in trackless white strips down the centers of the alleys. Soon even the edges of the streets turned white, and the snow filled in the black footprints of the few pedestrians as quickly as they passed. Tomorrow there would be school closures, and the buses would run on emergency schedules and refuse to stop in the middle of the steep streets. He had wiped a drop of moisture from the tip of his nose and slid his numbed hands back into the small warmth between his cramped thighs.

He had been crouching between the back of a dumpster and“ the brick wall of a building, where only the most persistent of the breezes could find him, and none of the snow. But the cold radiated from the bricks at his back and rose from the cobbled street beneath him. The earth was a cold fickle bitch that had turned her icy back on him. The seams of his old black boots were cracked and the faded denim of his pants was as stiff and rough as sandpaper against his chilled skin. His flannel shirt was not long enough to stay tucked in, and the denim jacket he wore was short, barely touching the top of his hips. The collar was turned up to chafe against his reddened ears whenever he turned his head.

He had been watching the snow as it fell past the glow of a streetlamp, trying to dream. There were two parts to the dream. The first was that if he sat still enough, crouched on his heels behind the dumpster, an envelope of body heat would form around his still body and protect him. Whenever the wind was still, he felt the warmth seeping out of his body and resting against his skin like a benign and transparent spirit. But then the wind would stir and rip his warmth away, and he would shiver again. The shivering made his spine ache and his muscles cramp. Every so often, his legs would give way beneath him and he would find himself sprawled flat on the damp, cold pavement. The bricks sucked greedily at his body heat until he raised himself to crouch on his heels again, his body in a shivering curl over his knees.

The other part of the dream was more frightening. When he stared at the swirl of flakes in front of the streetlamp, his perception of distance and speed changed. The flakes seemed to be originating in the lamp and zooming toward him in a dizzying rush. Stare a little longer, and he would feel teal he was the one in motion, journeying to that far-off tight, and me white bits of matter that rushed past him were (he bright stars of a thousand galaxies. He could feel himself drawn to me light like a moth to the candle flame, could fed the pull as he was lifted from his aching crouch and rushed through a thousand nights. Then his body would fall with a crash, jarring him from both dreams, and he would have to begin again. Each time he felt he was getting closer to the light. He did not know what he would find when he arrived there, but he hoped it would be warm.

Without warning, his dream changed. He frowned to himself in annoyance. What business had this vision in coming between him and the brightness of his light? She floated toward him, white face and dark eyes, dark hair outlined and tipped with silver white, wearing a long dark garment that sparkled and shifted with the wind and whirling flakes- She seemed familiar, and yet he was equally certain he had never met her before.

As she got closer to him, she became darker and darker, until she was a black shape between him and the light, nearly blocking out the glow of the street lamp. He blinked up at her.

“So here you are.” There was relief in her voice, tinged with exasperation. “I was beginning to think it was a fool’s errand to try and find you tonight. Rasputin told me not to waste my time. I told him there was a wizard lost in the city, and close to being dead. ‘If he’s a wizard, Cassie,’ he told me, ‘he’ll find himself, and then come looking for us.’ He can be so hard sometimes. But I told him no, I didn’t think you would.

I don’t think you believe in yourself yet. Maybe because you don’t want to. But it doesn’t work that way, wanting or not wanting to be a wizard. You just are. Look at me!“

He had been trying to see past her, to focus on the streetlamp again. Her sharp nudge sent him sprawling to the cold damp pavement. Pins and needles shot through his cramped legs. He couldn’t move, couldn’t crawl away from her if he tried. She towered over him, darker than the night, and silver. He cowered, awaiting the finishing blow.

“You know who I am.” It was an accusation.

He struggled with his mind, longing for his dream to come back, wishing that he were more stoned. But there was something about her that would have forced an answer from a rock.

“You’re the woman from the park bench,” he said, his words thick as settling snow. “The one who talked about popcorn.”

“Damn right I am. But only a wizard could have known that.”

She stooped beside him suddenly and he cringed away. “No.

Please, no!“ What was he denying? The charge of being a wizard, or the easy way she gripped him by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet? His knees, numb from his long inactivity and the cold, started to buckle under him. She slipped under one of his arms, bearing him up and taking charge of him. She staggered him along, he knew not where. The streets were silent, black and white and silver with snow and night and streetlights. Nothing else moved. No car passed, no other pedestrians struggled against the wind. Seattle was deathly silent, paused and poised between one moment and the next.

“Where arc we going?” he managed. Their feet made tracks in the pristine white sidewalks, and the snow filled them up behind them, making their passage a fantasy. He wanted so badly to lie down in the soft clean snow and rest.

“To shelter,” she told him, and in her voice he heard the telltale pant of effort. She was strong, but he was no easy burden for her.

“! don’t want to go to a shelter,” he half groaned. He had been to one of me shelters once. They had given him two pajama bottoms, one to sleep in and one to use as a towel after his shower. They had given him a box to put his own clothes in, and a piece of soap to wash himself. He had slept on a flat mattress on the floor with a rough blanket over him, listening to the coughs and rustlings and mutterings of a score of other men. The noises had brought back the old dreams and fears, so that he had sweated through his pajamas and blanket, soaking the mattress with sour fear stench. Never again. Better to freeze to death in the snow than to endure that long night again.

To my shelter. This way.“

The feeling came back to his legs and he supported his own weight, but she did not release his arm. He began to take note of the buildings they passed. Uneasiness sandpapered his nerves.

This was no Seattle he knew. The patterns of brick in the buildings suggested vague faces, the fireplugs that hunched beneath snow caps were like cossack trolls. It was all alive and watching, awareness in the details like a Kay Nielsen illustration for a metropolitan fairytale. Cassie’s grip was firm on his arm and he was suddenly grateful for it, sure she guided him past dangers and pitfalls. This was no place of dead stone and bare pavement, though thousands might walk its streets by day and believe so. This was an ecosystem, vital and aware, of interdependent life. of predators and prey and parasites. Wizard’s heart nearly stopped as be thought how blindly he had wandered through these streets.

“This way. Down this way.”

An alley mouth, and a wooden door in a brick wall. And then stairs. Stairs that barked his shins and cramped his cold calf muscles. He followed her up them, and through a door into a place that pressed him with silence and warmth. He noticed little more than that at first. He sank into the corner of a fat couch upholstered in cream cloth with large blue flowers on it. He let his head sag back against the cushioned support, feeling warmth and smelling dust. He heard her close the door, and men she moved into his field of vision again. She swirled a dark cloak free of her body, ridding it of snow with a snap.

The tack. tack of her boots faded into another room, and was followed by the homey clatter of pans and cups. His cheeks and forehead tingled as his skin began to warm. Somewhere a kettle whistled, and a spoon stirred against ceramic mugs. A refrigerator opened and closed. Then he heard the soft tread of bare feet on carpeting and suddenly smelled rich chocolate.

He opened his eyes, wondering when he had closed them. She was placing a tray on a low coffee table before me wide couch.

“Hungry?” she asked.

He dragged himself upright. The smell of the food beckoned him, but he hesitated, wary as the wolf lured to the trap. He stared at the woman.

She was dressed in a long soft robe as white as the snow they had come from. It fell to her bare feet and then puddled wound them as she suddenly sank down to sit gracefully on the floor by the table. Her long dark hair, dampened by the soow, hung straight past her shoulders, but short tendrils of it wisped around her face- And her face was classic, oval, with a straight nose and chiseled mouth such as one might expect to find stamped on ancient coins. Her eyes were darker than brown but not black, and the chill of the night had flushed her cheeks. He suddenly felt dirty and uncouth.

Behind her was a jungle. Hants lined and banked the wall, plants that trailed or climbed or stood upright on their stalks.

Some bore blossoms in a rainbow of colors and some were innocently green- He recognized none of them. Turning his head, he discovered more plants, in tubs and pots and basins.

Yet me room did not feel crowded. There was a harmony to this interior garden that he had never sensed before- They took in tension and breathed out peace.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked, and he realized she was repeating herself. He nodded dumbly and took the mug she offered.

It was a most unorthodox meal. There was hot chocolate topped with dollops of cream, small rich hiscuits swirled through with cinnamon and brown sugar, and little oranges she peeled for him because his hands were stilt too cold to manage them.

He watched the long curls of rind, more green than gold, trail from her graceful fingers. The oranges were sweet and tart, and strangely right with the chocolate. He had not realized how cold he had been until he abruptly stopped shivering, and breathed a deep sigh as his body relaxed.

“Warmer now?” she asked, and when he nodded, smiled and said, “A quick shot of sugar will do that for you. Helps the body chase off the chill.”

“You’re gentler this time,” he said suddenly, and then wondered what had prompted it from him.

“Am I? Sometimes I am. It depends on my mood more than on my form. Why, did I scare you before?”

“A little. I guess I’m just not that used to dealing with people anymore. I still don’t understand what’s happening, or who you are, or why I’m here. I’m just glad to be warm.”

“For now, that’s probably enough. But I’ll give you a little more than that to think on tonight. I’m Cassie. And you’re here because you have a lot to find out, and you won’t find out what you already know by crouching behind a dumpster and freezing to death.”

He nodded as if that made sense. “And where are we?”

“In my place. One of my favorite Seattles. We’re in the one that would have been if the great fire hadn’t happened at the turn of the century.”

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

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

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

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

“I think I’d better be going.”

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

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

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

“No. But then what?”

“Then whatever. We’ll take each step as it presents itself.

Look, uh… what is your name?“

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

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

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

“To the left?”

She nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How crazy is that?”

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

“Is Acre anything you do know?”

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

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

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

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

“One day a great company of the folk, with some of the men dressed in rich robes, and some dressed in shining metal, and the women clad in rich dresses that near trailed the ground, even from the backs of their horses, rode past. They were talking and Jesting among themselves, and three minstrels were singing, so that they made a fine noise and dust as they passed the little hut. None noticed the little maid in her garden, until at the very end of the company there came an old man, dressed in robe and mantle of blue. His hair and beard were as gray as sword metal, but he carried no such weapon. He stopped at the gate and sat his horse, looking down at her, while the rest of the Great Folk followed the King’s Road into the forest. He was so quiet that at first she didn’t even notice him. When he spoke, she started, and nearly uprooted the tiny plant she was weeding around. ‘So you’ve been chosen, and I see you’ll do very well indeed,’ he said. He came down from his tall horse and entered the maid’s garden and life. No harm did he offer her, but taught her much of herbs and all that grows, things beyond the teachings of any other mortal. Rules he gave her that she recognized as her own. ‘You can offer,’ he told her, ‘but not with words, and until what you offer is accepted, you cannot give it. You must tend the plants wherever they may grow, and what you must ask of others is the most they can give. You can take all, except for the things you desire most, and those you must not touch until they are given freely.’ These were the sort of things he taught her. For five years and a day he stayed with her. and neither of them ever regretted a day.

Then one day they both knew that he had to go, for there were portentous events brewing, and a place in them for him. And so he left her, and never again was she the same person.“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There are many coins to repay kindness.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The walls of the staircase began to show cracks. Some were as wide as his fist. He caught glimpses of cold stars through them and felt the icy breath of night. He no longer dared to rest his hand against the wall. Once a whole step was missing.

In the semi-darkness, he nearly didn’t notice. His heart clutched at his throat as he stepped over a black eternity. He glanced back the way he had come. Behind him the lights were snuffed; the staircase down was a black tunnel.

He climbed on. Just as his calves hopelessly cramped, he reached a tiny landing. A door upholstered in red velvet was lit by a small bayberry candle guttering in a yellow glass globe.

Wizard took a deep breath and lifted an ornate brass knocker.

He let it fall twice. The door was opened instantly, and he stumbled in to sink onto low fat cushions.

“No wind,” Cassie chided him. “I keep telling you to get more exercise. You could be a Sunday jogger.”

“I don’t have the wardrobe,” he panted. Slowly his breathing steadied. He looked around an unfamiliar chamber furnished with a multitude of red and yellow cushions. Tall windows framed In sumptuous drapes let in the night and the constellations. The ceiling rose in a dome whose interior was calligraphied with gilt characters. Light came from various choirs of candles grouped around the chamber, and from a small bright fire in a squat brazier in the center of the room.

He took the tall glass she handed him and sipped from it.

Clear, cold spring water, icy as a glacier, revived him. He smiled at her gratefully, beseechingly. “Cassie,” he ventured.

“I think I’m in terrible trouble.”

“I know you are,” she replied succinctly- She parted some draperies and disappeared. He stared at the banked candles until she returned, clad now in a white gown kirtled with green, and bearing a large tray- Tray and woman sank down gracefully beside Wizard. The tray had short legs that put it at kneeling height. The brazier warmed them born. She did not wait for him, but plunged ravenously into the meal.

Wizard picked up a thick meat sandwich on homemade bread and eyed it suspiciously. “You attacked one of my pigeons today,” he accused her gravely.

“So what?” Cassie asked around a mouthful. “We all have to eat. Besides, I just rumpled his feathers. This meat isn’t squab, if that’s what you’re worried about. Eat now, talk later.

You’re as skinny as a pile of kindling.“

Wizard ate. He never asked her where she got things from.

Beside the sandwiches were slivers of smoked salmon poked into cream cheese balls, crisp sour tiny pickles, cashews and almonds, and small pastry rolls with a mysterious spicy filling.

As he ate, he felt his strength and calmness expanding to fill him. His fear had hidden inside him all day, nibbling away at his power. But at Cassie’s he was safe, and the food she fed him gave him back his mind. With a sigh, he finished and leaned back to look at her.

Tonight she was young, perhaps in her early twenties. Her hair was caught back in a loose roll at the nape of her neck, but tendrils of it had pulled free to soften her grave features.

She lapped cream cheese off a fingertip, and caught his eyes on her. “So?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at him.

“So,‘ he agreed. The weight of his worry pressed down on him again. ”I had a visitor last night, Cassie. An unpleasant one. It calls itself Mir.“

“I know.” She stopped his voice with a look. “I overheard it. Anyone with a shred of Power must have felt it last night.

I imagine people had nightmares for blocks around here.“

“Sorry,” he murmured, feeling guilty about the overflow.

“Don’t be. They should consider it fair warning. If you fall to it, not a street in the Ride Free Area will be safe. So it concerns them as much as it does you. What you are going to do about it?”

He shook his head slowly, haying no answer. The Pimp entered, slipping between me drapes like perfume, strolling across the room with his orange tail held high. He glanced with green eyes at the ravaged tray and leaped to Wizard’s lap, purring loudly. Wizard stroked his sleek sides, and the big cat stood up against him to rub cheeks with him. Sitting down fat on his lap. The Pimp gave a quick scrub at his face with one paw and uttered a questioning meow-

“Sony,” Wizard laughed gently. “We ate it all.”

The Pimp was not slow. He sank his claws into Wizard’s thighs and burned out across his chest, leaving clawmarks instead of smoking rubber. Wizard gave a yell and fell away from him as the angry cat vanished. Cassie only laughed. “You see where he got his name. Bring him something home and he’s your sugar man. But greet him empty-handed. -.. That’s The Pimp.”

“Black Thomas lost a paw last night.”

Cassie flinched. “I didn’t pick up on that. Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“I did what I could for him. That’s how Mir got me. reached after Thomas past my own shield, and couldn’t pull back fast enough.”

“I had wondered what made you go out there naked. Well.

I suppose you want me to look into it?“

“Would you?‘

“Why do you think I changed? I wasn’t about to play seer in a sweatsuit. It would be akin to a priest granting absolution-, without a stole. I guess there’s no sense in putting it off. Come on,then.”

Cassie wiped her fingertips and mouth with a napkin and dropped it on the tray. Wizard rose slowly to follow her- As he picked up the bag and his coat. she focused on the bag.

“What’s that?”

“I found it in a dumpster, with my name on it.” He held it out to her. As quickly as she had put out her hand, she drew it back. Wonder and dread mingled in her voice.

“There’s power there, but not for me to touch, nor use- It’s harmless right now, but the right spark…”

“Just like plastic explosive.”

“If I were one to give advice on things that aren’t in my realm, I’d tell you to leave it in that bag until the moment comes. Don’t touch it until then. Don’t mantle yourself with its power until you are ready to pick up the gauntlet.”

“Is this a Seeing?”

“Don’t tease. No, it’s just my opinion.”

“If I didn’t know better. I’d say you knew what was in the bag.”

“Well, I don’t. And I don’t want to. Not any more than I want to ask you this. But I don’t dare do a Seeing without knowing. Have you broken faith with me magic?”

Wizard stared at her, feeling slashed that she would even ask him such a thing. Did she suppose that he had forgotten the rules, unique to himself, that he must obey to retain his own special powers? He shook his head numbly.

“Are you sure? Not even by accident? Have you spoken the Truth when it was on you? When people ask, and you Know, have you always answered? Have you kept your pigeons safe and secure?”

He bobbed a nod at each question, but as she pressed on, he felt his control break. When she paused, he asked in a cold, uncertain voice, “Aren’t you going to ask me if I’ve carried more than a dollar in change? If I’ve turned my strength loose upon others? If I’ve been with a woman?”

An abyss of dread opened in Cassie’s eyes and was as quickly masked. “Do I need to ask those things?” she inquired evenly.

“No! Because you know I haven’t. Can’t we get on with this? That damn thing up in my den… I know it’s from gray Mir. I Know it.”

Cassie’s calm held. “Then if you Know it, it must be so.

Tell me: What do you remember of this Mir, from before?“

He shrugged heavily. “Nothing, I guess. Sometimes I feel like my life rolls itself up behind me as I live it. I try to look back, but it’s all hidden inside itself. I see my yesterdays, but only so many at a time. Before that, there’s nothing.”

Cassie nodded quickly, seeming eager to stop his words.

“Let’s find out the worst, then. Come on.”

“Cassie?” His anxious tone swung her eyes back to him.

“It was a while back. Estrella the Gypsy gave me a tarot card.

It said ‘A Warning’ and showed a man dangling upside down by one heel. But then it was gone, so I—“

“The Hanged Man.” The silence that followed her words had a chilling eloquence. She swept across the room.

Wizard tucked the bag securely under his arm and followed.

She parted the hanging drapes and waved him through. The next room was in darkness. Wizard smelled dust and mildew and heard the chitter and scuttling of mice alarmed by his approach. Cassie came behind him, bearing a candelabra. The flames of the candles didn’t waver with her movement; they didn’t light much more than her path, either. He trailed along behind her through a maze of rooms and corridors. Most of the chambers they passed through were dusty and abandoned, but some were strangely and sumptuously furnished, twined and draped with Cassie’s ever-present plants, and lit by a pale yellow light that blinded Wizard until he passed into the darkened chambers beyond.

When they entered a carpeted room with many gilt-framed portraits on the wall, Cassie set her candles down on a low table. Wizard put his bag and coat on a loveseat beside it.

Cassie was silent, so he watched her quietly as she went to a scarred roll-top desk. She wound her hair into a black scarf.

A black cloak from a peg by the desk quenched her white robe.

She began to take objects from the drawers. Stepping a little closer, he watched her arrange them on a little lacquered tray.

There was a round mirror in a red frame with no handle; a thin ring of shining silver; four cats-eye marbles; a little pile of popcorn; five pennies polished copper bright; and white tail feathers from a pigeon.

“One never knows what they’ll fancy,” she murmured without looking at him. Taking the tray, she crossed the room to slide open a heavy wooden door on tracks. Beyond was a-, dizzying view. The lights of Seattle were impossibly small and spread out below them. But tree limbs reached up past the tiny rickety balcony which Cassie stepped onto. Wizard crept to the door and peered out. He longed to go to the edge and catch some glimpse of what supported them up here, but dared not.

The gray wood of the railing was splintering and twisting away from its supports. The deck creaked under Cassie’s weight. He followed her gaze up to the full moon and felt his heart squeeze.

The moon had been only a quarter full last night; Wizard was sure of it. He swallowed drily.

Cassie’s hair and body had vanished, dark cloth into dark night. Her pale face was full and shining as the moon herself.

She set the tray down at her feet and straightened with the minor cupped in her hand. Slowly she twisted and angled the mirror until the white moonlight filled it. She stared into it and began:

“Light of the sun, reflected in the moon’s face:

Light of the moon, reflected in my hand;

Hear me now, and bring to me at this place Those I would consult, those I would command.“

As simple as a jump rope song, but Wizard’s knees shook.

The whole front of his body tingled as if painted with a sudden frost. He backed stealthily away from the open door and fled back to the candelabra. He put on his coat and held his bag on his lap before him like a shield- The brush of woman’s power left his skin, but he seated himself firmly on the small couch to wait.

He sat watching-the candle flames. He longed suddenly for coffee with an unsurpassed desire, but knew that Cassie never kept any. He shifted restlessly. Any company, even The Pimp’s, would have been welcome, but he was alone. Cassie was singing softly on the balcony; he resisted hearing her. He passed me time by making the candle flames flare up tall and thin, until the tips of me flames broke off and winked out in the dark room. When he noticed the tapers melting low, he calmed the flames, reducing them to tiny tongues on the tips of the wicks.

“Mental masturbation,” she scoffed.

He turned to find Cassie unwinding the cloth from her hair.

Her hair fell in damp tendrils past her shoulders. As she swung the cloak free of herself and onto the hook, he caught the musk of her efforts. There was a hint of a tremble in her iron control as she sank onto the loveseat beside him.

“There are more candles in the lefthand cubbyhole of the desk,” she told him.

As he fetched them, he glanced at her tray. The mirror was blackened as if by fire. The pigeon feathers were gone. He took the candles to her, and she kindled them to replace me softening stumps in the holder. Her lips looked chapped, her face windburned. ‘“Give me space,” she requested gently. Hastily he cleared his bag from the seat and moved to sit on me floor near her feet. She looked down at him almost fondly.

“Why did you have to come to Seattle? she wondered in soft rebuke.

“Was I someplace else before I was here?” he asked in reply.

“Never mind. You-are in Seattle, and it is here you will face it. Your battles with this grayness go back past your memories. In some, you have done well- From others, you bear the scars. Vfe won’t prod them now. I have only paltry things that I may tell you outright. There will be a final confrontation.

Very soon. You must guard the weapons you have forged. If you guard them well, they may be just enough to defeat this Mir. Your edge will be a small one; if you do win, it will be by a tiny margin. This grayness is too clever to let you hone your weapons long. It will come for you soon. If it wins, it keeps you- If it loses, it leaves you alone.“

‘“Can I not vanquish it completely, destroy it all?”

“Listen to him!” Cassie hooted. “Vanquish it! Have you any idea what you ask to do? No man may do that for any other.

You can win yourself free, and no more than that.“

“Then, if I lose, I will be the only loser.”

“You know better.” Cassie’s voice went deadly soft. “Through you, the grayness could rout us all, as easily as shoving a hose down a molehill. There’d be no escaping for any of us. But if it comes to that, it would no longer be you, nor any of your doing. You’d only be the tool. Let’s see.” She signed heavily.

“What else was there?”

“Cassie. you’re not telling me anything new.”

“I know that. I’m telling you what you knew and were afraid to admit to yourself. Listen. I can give you a story. Would you like a story?”

“‘Go ahead,” Wizard said grumpily. Cassie’s stories usually obscured more than they illuminated.

“Good. Because I have a good one for you. No, two. This is the first. Once upon a time. a long, long time ago, in France during World War Two, not that it matters, there were some people being shelled. Among them were a young French woman and her two small children. The two children were very, very frightened. So the mother, to distract them from their terror, began to make silly faces for them, and funny noises. It worked.

The children paid attention to her and were no longer afraid.

But suddenly a shell exploded very near them, and a tiny fragment of shrapnel struck the woman in the throat. She choked and gurgled in her own blood, making terrible grimaces of pain, but unable to call aloud for help. How the children laughed to see the funny,faces Mama made, and hear the silly noises‘

She died to the sound of her children’s laughter.“

Cassie paused expectantly. Wizard just stared, his face gone white. “I didn’t say the stories wouldn’t hurt,” she said softly.

“But they may help, too. Once upon a time, in England, during World War Two, a bomb fell on an old folks’ home. After the raid was over, rescuers came to dig them out and see if there were any survivors. They found one old man sitting on a toilet, still holding the pull chain in his hand, and laughing uproariously. ‘I pulled the chain,’ he said. ‘And the ’ole bloody building came down on me ‘ead.’

“There’s one more I’ll throw in for free,” Cassie added quickly before Wizard could speak, “it was the first bombing raid over Norwich in World War Two. We were all running for the shelters, when I saw one man come dashing up with an armload of white lilies. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘If they get you, at least you’ll have your lilies ready.’ He threw down the flowers with a look of horror and dashed down the shelter steps.”

Cassie stopped and looked at Wizard expectantly.

“Were you really there? In Norwich, the first time it was bombed?”

She looked disgusted. “That story is always told in the first person. Well. Do you understand now?”

“Understand what?”

“Everything. Why the grayness came to you to test you last night and what weapons you must keep safe and keen.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ponder your stories a bit more before ft all comes clear,” he extemporized. Never call Cassie obscure to her face. “But there is one more thing that I have to ask.

Something that has troubled me. Cassie, do you know what Mir showed me? About the boys and the chickens, I mean?“

Cassie nodded, turning her head away. “I couldn’t help but overhear, my friend. I’m sorry to intrude.”

“I don’t mind. Perhaps I would mind more if I understood more. It seemed so monstrous a task for young boys to do.”

“Some say it’s the root of all domestic violence.”

Wizard looked befuddled, so she continued.

“Don’t you see? Teach a child that it’s fine, even necessary, to gently raise an animal, seeing to its every need, protecting its well-being. Of course, along the way, you cut off the end of the chicken’s beak, so it can’t peck other chickens. The same for the rooster’s spurs. Then you make a couple of incisions, and reach in and cut his balls out so he’ll get nice and fat.

Then, after he’s nice and fat, you whack off his head and devour him. Now, how far is it from that logic to loving your wife, but beating her into submission if she goes against your wishes.

Or feed, clothe, and shelter your kids, but kick the crap out of them for their own good when it suits you? Answer me that.“

Wizard considered the connection a bit far-fetched. “I’ve never heard that theory before. Who did you say advanced it?”

“Well.” Cassie shifted. “Me. But I’m someone, and it makes sense to me.”

“I’d have to think it through, thoroughly. But there is still something I’d like to ask you. Mir said I was one of them, that I was there. Was it true?”

Cassie had to nod.

“Which one, then? I remembered being all those boys, as soon as the grayness showed them to me. But surely I could have been only one of them. Yet having seen them from the inside, I would not choose to have been any of them.”

“Poor Wizard.” Cassie put a hand to her face to scratch me bridge of her nose and then rub at her eyes. “Don’t you see?

You were there, yes. But you were the Black Rooster.“

WIZARD SHIFTED IRRITABLY in his sleep. The room was cooling off. He had been comfortable enough when he had dozed off, even though he had scrunched himself to fit onto the loveseat.

He had stared at the tracing of tree branches against me moon’s face until she had blinded him and he closed his eyes. How long had he slept? He opened his eyes a slit. The branches still twined before the moon’s round face, but even as he stared at her, she winked out.

He struggled to rise but felt the world tilt; he fell. Cold cobblestones slammed up against his hands and knees. After a shocked moment, he clambered back up to a seat on the park bench and sat rubbing his scraped palms against his trouser legs. He glanced once more at the globe light fixture at the top of the pole. Tree limbs did twine between it and him, and he would have sworn they were in the same pattern as the ones seen from Cassie’s chamber. But he was here, in the cold predawn of Occidental Square. He found that he had been using his bag for a pillow. He picked it up and stood yawning in the chill air. Such were the awakenings after an evening with Cassie. They always left him wondering where reality and sanity touched.

He walked slowly through me square, easing the softness of cold muscles, and groaned softly to himself as he realized just how awful this day was to be. He could not return to his den to get clean clothes and stash his bag. Daylight was too close. So here he was; no change, his overcoat wrinkled from a night on the bench (or wherever), his suit beneath it showing a day and a night of wear, and a crumpled paper sack for a companion. He tried to weigh his alternatives. Most places with public restrooms were not open yet. There was the train station, but he had been there only yesterday, and his present attire would not make him welcome. He considered trying it anyway, but sternly rejected his impulse. He had to live strictly by his rules now; Cassie had said as much. He could not cut any more comers.

In an alley between buildings, he stopped to run his comb through his hair. He took off his overcoat and shook it zealously to remove as many wrinkles as possible. He brushed at his jacket and slacks as best he could. He didn’t need a mirror to know how inadequate it was. He took a deep breath and tinned himself against the day. He was a scavenger and a survivor, he told himself firmly. He must either seize the day and accept what it offered him, or go join the other bench squatters.

He spent the first hour walking the alleys, inspecting the dumpsters the trucks had not emptied yet. They didn’t have what he was looking for. He needed a raincoat or an overcoat of some sort, in reasonably decent condition, to replace the crumpled one he wore. He found assorted small items of marginal usefulness, but took few of them, only what could fit in a pocket. He didn’t want to crowd anything else into his wizard bag. As the sky shifted from gray of dawn to gray of overcast, he found a plastic Pay N Save shopping bag. He dumped out its load of tissue paper and cellophane shirt wrapping. This was how it was to be today, he mused as he fit his brown paper sack inside it. A day of coping, of imperfect camouflage, of minimal surviving.

As soon as his bag was protected, he fell better. In the next dumpster, he found an unstained, unrumpled newspaper. He rolled it casually, and stuck it out the top of the bag. He strolled on, eating half an orange and throwing the moldy part into the next dumpster. He would make it, he cheered himself on. He just had to keep moving today, had to flow with the day as it presented itself to him. With a little faith, a little work and a touch of imagination, Seattle would take care of him.

He was at Pike Place Market at nine when it opened, having scavenged all the alleys between it and Occidental Square. He had precious little to show for his efforts, other than a bit of food in his belly and a plastic sack. His head was starting to ache; he needed a shot of coffee. But he wouldn’t get it looking as he did right now.

He had never liked the bathrooms at the market. For one thing, too many people passed through them; they were never truly clean or in the best repair. Although they were not dim, they were scarcely lit for shaving, even if they had boasted mirrors. He had to do a quick job by touch. He shook out his jacket, tucked his shirt in tightly, straightened his tie, and wiped his shoes over with a damp paper towel. Frantically, he tried to decide who he could be today. He looked, he decided, like a salesperson whose wife kicked him out of the house last night. No. The Pay N Save bag didn’t fit. Perhaps he worked in a slightly sleazy pawn shop, or adult book store. So what would he be doing in Pike Place Market in the middle of the day?

It didn’t work. He couldn’t get into it. The day had begun badly and would run badly. He ran over his mental list of sanctuaries and decided on the Klondike Gold Rush Memorial Park. That strange designation meant a storefront building on South Main where a bored man in a ranger suit presided over memorabilia of the Gold Rush. But Wizard could spend time there, sitting in a darkened room while the park ranger ran educational films about the Gold Rush era, or perhaps about the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. It didn’t matter which today, for he wouldn’t be watching. He’d only be marking time until evening when he could make a run for his den.

He boarded the bus and sat staring out the window. Depression stuck to him like old gum on a shoe. Hiding would not make him less vulnerable. One had to blend, to be unnoticed.

The bus paused to let two more people board- Both of them walked past the empty seat beside Wizard to stand in the aisle at the back of the bus. When he realized it, he tried to keep the anger and panic out of his eyes. So be wasn’t passing today.

So I’m a derelict, he thought savagely. Well, then I’ll damn well be one today. There’s camouflage, and there’s camouflage.

So today he’d be a bum on a park bench, looking just as defeated and incompetent as the rest of them. He could tough it out until nightfall. He discarded the shopping bag and paper on the bus, wedging them down between the seats. When he stepped off at his stop with his wadded paper bag and wrinkled suit, he scowled at the people boarding. No beggar asked him for money today.

Resentment seethed through him as he stumped back to Occidental Square, and he didn’t try to resist it. A sense of being wronged by everyone fit well with this new character.

He’d enjoy it. So why hadn’t Cassie put him out last night so he could have headed for his own den? Why hadn’t he thought of it himself? She warned him to conserve his strength and guard his weapons, then kept him at her place with small talk until he dozed off, and had to awaken and fade this day. If only he had dressed a little more casually yesterday, in jeans and a sweater, it wouldn’t have mattered today. But no, he had followed Cassie’s idea for him. “Always dress up, never down.

A little bit of class implies authority and intimidates. Besides, dressy clothes are discarded before they are worn out, and a truly classic style varies little from year to year. Take the blazer, for example, or a man’s black raincoat. How much have they changed in the last ten years? Now, if you went to the secondhand store and looked for jeans, you’d only find worn ones with the knees and crotch gone, and new ones in improbable sizes. But dress slacks are given away because hubby got a bit too chubby, or they don’t go with the new jacket. It’s the same for dress shoes. You ‘II never find decent sneakers in a dumpster, but one out of every ten dumpsters will yield a perfectly good pair of loafers or oxfords. Keep looking and you’ll find a size close to yours.“

He could almost hear her. She was right, usually, he grudgingly admitted. He had once spent an entire day in the Elliott Bay Bookstore, looking at the shelves, and no one had asked him to leave. He’d had a tie on.

His pigeons dipped and wheeled to meet him; his black mood lifted slightly. Then he noticed the heaviness of the clouds that made up their backdrop. It was going to rain today, rain as only Seattle knew how. “Like a cow pissing on a flat rock,” someone had hitched to him once. He tried to catch the fleeting memory and got a confusing image of a triple-canopy jungle and a sweating black man with rain dripping off his chin. He blinked away the non sequitur and sat on his bench to begin his methodical scattering of popcorn. Lost in thought, he watched the feathered backs before him as the birds pecked and scrabbled for the feed. Their tidy industriousness sank him further into bleakness. He was failing today, defeated by himself before he had even confronted the grayness of Mir. If only he had a cup of coffee.

He was unaware of the woman until the pigeons swirled up in alarm. He shot her a quick scowl as she seated herself on the end of his bench with her own sack of popcorn. It wasn’t so unusual for this to happen, but usually it was a kid who didn’t have the patience to dole out feed a bit at a time and acquire his own following of birds to feed. He didn’t muur-it when kids honied in on his flock; kids weren’t supposed to have patience. But this woman was a grown adult and should have had more courtesy, if not patience. She was almost as rude as those who walked right through the middle of a flock of feeding birds.

He glared at her again and felt the bottom of his stomach tilt. He knew her. He scrabbled frantically through memories, his alarm building. He had no business knowing her; she wasn’t even a street person. It was as dangerous for him to know a regular person like her as it was for him to be known to one.

He turned slightly away from her and tried to calm himself.

He was being foolish. Maybe he had sat next to her oh the bus last week, or stood behind her in line at some coffee shop.

Maybe. But he didn’t think so. She was danger.

“Bet you thought you were cute yesterday,” she said.

Wizard stiffened. Carefully he took another handful of popcorn from his bag and scattered it for his pigeons. He had not heard her.

“You coulda cost me my job, you know that? I don’t know why I didn’t give the whole thing away. Yes, I do. It was because I was so pissed at Booth for right away assuming it was me. And because I knew he woulda knocked you right outa your chair. He loves to show his muscles when he gets mad. Showed them to me once too often. So I showed him mine.” The quaver in her voice belied the toughness of her words.

“He came home from the night shift, and found his junk piled up on the staircase. So he comes down to where I’m working and tries to raise a fuss. So I tell him to leave my key, ‘cause the lease is in my name, and if he doesn’t, I’m calling the cops. Booth knows he can’t afford to talk to me cops about nothing. He’s got a bunch of speeding tickets in the glove compartment of his car. Oh, he still thinks he’s tough. He phoned me last night and threatened to come by and ’see‘ me.

But I told him I had told Mrs. McWhirter to call the cops if she even seen him come in the lobby. And I did, too, and she will, too. So he can blow it out his ass for all I care.“

Worse and worse. Wizard’s hands shook slightly as he scattered popcorn. Should he stand up, gather his bag, and leave?

That was admitting too much. Silence and the back of his shoulder for her. He wasn’t even listening to her monologue.

The pigeons pecked at his feet-

“I'm sposed to be working afternoon shift today. But I forgot and got here early, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll go feed me pigeons and kill a little time. Then I seen you out here already feeding them, and figured I’d let you know (hat I knew what went down. Waitresses aren’t as dumb as most people think.

You gotta really know people to be a waitress. And you gotta have a good memory, especially for thatching up faces and orders. That black one sure has a funny tail, don’t he?“

The black pigeon’s mother had been a full fan-tail, but Wizard wasn’t going to chat about it. She was a talker. So let her talk as much as she liked, and when she ran down, she’d leave. She’d have to go to her job soon, anyway. He’d never set foot in Duffy’s again, and that would be the end of this whole sorry mess.

She had already fallen silent. He saw, from the corner of one eye, a handful of popcorn pelt the ground with more than necessary force. A short moment later he heard a light gasp, as if someone had poked her with a pin. She took a husky breath and was silent again. Now she would go away. But she didn’t. He wished he could stop thinking about the waffle and me strawberries and whipped cream. It wasn’t as if he had asked for it. She had given it to him, of her own free will, and (here was no reason for him to feel guilty or obliged to her.

He intended to take only a quick peek at her, to see if she showed signs of leaving. But when he turned his head for a glimpse of her, she was already staring at him. Her eyes were too shiny; he saw her stuff a tissue back into her pocket.

“So go ahead and stare,” she said bitterly. “Stare at a stupid woman who sits on a bench and talks to some bum like he’s listening and then starts to fall apart. Go ahead and stare. See if I give a damn.”

He had snatched his eyes away as soon as their gazes met, but that was already too late. She had seen him look at her and knew she had his attention. Now she would talk until the clock made her go to work. It was through his own fault, his most grievous fault, and his penance would be to listen to it. He threw more popcorn.

“I don’t know why I keep going. Why the hell should I keep going? I get up. I go to work, I get my pay, I eat, and I sleep. What the hell kind of a life is that? You know how bad it is? It’s so bad that when some shit like Booth treats me so lousy that I throw him out, after he’s gone, I cry. You know what my sister says when I’m like this? She tells people, ‘Don’t mind Lynda, she’s just between men now.’ She says it in this bitchy, whiney voice, like someone else would say, ‘She’s on the rag.’ And she’s my own sister. She thinks it’s just terrible that I’m not married. So is that my fault? I like men. It’s not my fault I haven’t found the right one just yet. Does that mean I’ve got to live like a nun to keep her happy? Women have needs. We’re not supposed to, but we do. you know. When Booth welted on me and I called her up. do you know what she said? You know what she said to me? She said, ‘You sure can pick ’em, Lynda, can’t you? You got yourself into it with that creep, so you get yourself out of it.‘ And she hung up on me. Well, I did get myself out of it. I wasn’t asking for her goddamn help anyway. I just wanted someone to talk to. C’merc, birdie.”

He felt more than saw her abrupt movement. He kept his eyes on the ground before him. hoping she had missed. For a moment all was silence and he started to relax. Then he heard the frantic flapping of wings. It was the crisp sound of wing pinions beating against hands, of delicate flight feathers bending against a relentless grip. Wizard’s stomach turned over.

“Let him go.” He spoke before he knew he was going to, turning to confront her. She held his gaze, their knees nearly touching as they shared the bench. The pigeon she held was a young one; its beak was shell pink and looked too large for its head. Its feathers were white with gray splotches and an even shading of black across the end of its tail. It was frantic. It struggled with all its strength against Lynda’s hands, panic in its round orange eyes. Lynda had one wing pinned neatly to its body. She had partially trapped the otherwing with her hand and was trying to fold it back down. But the struggling pigeon was still trying to open it. Lynda was pushing on it, not roughly, but relentlessly. It folded beneath her strength, but not naturally.

Lynda’s face was calmly preoccupied.

“Oh, so you can talk? I thought you were pan of the bench.”

“Let the bird go. Its wing doesn’t fold like that.”

“I just want to hold it for a minute. Come on, little bird, quiet down, put your wing down.”

“You’re going to hurt it. Its heart will burst from terror.

That’s no way to handle a bird. Give it to me.“

“I’m not hurting it.”

Wizard reached, not swiftly, but efficiently, and took her right wrist between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

He caught it right at the soft spot between the wrist and the hand itself, just past the knobby little bones. Before she knew what he was up to, he squeezed firmly. “Hey!” she exclaimed, but she had already released the pigeon. It floundered away from her in wobbly flight to the top of a tree. The rest of the flock had fled as soon as the flap had begun.

“Why’d you do that?” she demanded angrily. He dropped her wrist hastily and leaned back on the bench. He found he was breathing heavily. Terrified. He had come so close to giving the twist and jerk that would have disabled the hand completely.

He stared at her, looking deeply at himself and what he had just done. He felt sick and his hands were gray. For a long moment the world was tilting and sliding past him. His stomach squeezed acid up into the back of his throat.

“You would have killed him,” he whispered hoarsely.

“I would not. Now look what you done. Now I got to start all over again. Here, birdies!” Lynda’threw more popcorn that bounced off the cobblestones and threw a penetrating look that struck deeply into him. “You don’t look so good. You eaten today?”

Having spoken to her once, nothing was to be gained by silence. “Not much.”

“I didn’t think so. You look worse than these pigeons. Oh, look, here they come. Not too bright, are they?”

“No, they’re not,” Wizard admitted sadly. She was right.

They were coming, the hungriest ones dropping from the trees like leaves, dipping down to peck at the farthest outreaches of the popcorn she had scattered. They were stupid, but they were his. He knew what would happen. They would come, a few at first and wary, to nip up the pieces of popcorn. Then they would get greedy, and more would come, and in the competition for the feed, they would forget the danger from the feeder.

They would jostle and push, crowding ever closer to her, until some unwary one was under her squeezing, gripping hand.

He shuddered. He picked up his own bag of popcorn and reached deep into it for a large handful. He flung it with a snap of his wrist that sent the seeds and popped corn scattering far beyond Lynda’s tossed food. His flock swooped to it, feeding well outside her perimeter- Lynda dropped plump kernels right at her feet and sat perfectly still. He felt a sweat break out on the back of his neck as the birds ventured closer. He took another handful and threw it, deliberately pelting the birds that were daringly close to her. They started back, raising reproving eyes to him. He kept his face stony. Back‘ he thought at them-

Back, you fools!

“You’re doing that on purpose‘” Lynda accused him, but she laughed as she said it. She was very pretty when she laughed, all her sulkiness fuming to softness. Like a different woman. She smiled at him looking at her, and gave her head a toss that sent her hair dancing. “Look. I give up, okay? You win. If you won’t let me feed your birds, how about you? Why don’t you let me buy you some breakfast?”

“No. Thank you. I’m not that type of person.”

She didn’t understand him and laughed at what she thought a joke. “Yeah, me neither. Let’s just go grab a sandwich and some coffee or something. I was so upset this morning, I hardly ate a thing myself. I hate to eat alone. Look, we can go right inside to the Bakery. Ever been there? Right inside the doors?

Good coffee.“ She tilted her head toward the tall glass and metal doors. Her eyes had brightened, and in her red jacket she looked like a bright bird perched on the end of the bench.

“I’ve been there,” he admitted grudgingly.

“You are such a stone-face. It wasn’t so hard to get you to eat yesterday. Look, don’t feel awkward about it. It’s just the way I am with people. I like you. I don’t even know why I say that, but it’s true. Even not knowing you much, I can tell we could be friends. Guess I knew it when I came to sit down over here. Rats!” She threw a handful of popcorn. “That’s the last of mine. Share with me, okay?”

She tweaked the bag of popcorn from his grip and put her small hand into it. His heart tried to burst from his chest. She pulled out a fistful of fragments and threw them on the ground.

“Hey, look, yours was all gone, too.” She shook the little bag upside down over the cobblestones. An errant wind carried away a few fragments of popcorn from it. Wizard stared with uncomprehending eyes. He reached numbly to take me empty bag from her fingers, but she wadded it up nimbly and stuffed it into her own empty bag. She thrust both into her pocket.

“So, that’s that! No more popcorn, so no more birds. Really, you might as well come and eat with me.”