Wizard of the Pigeons

“Don’t tell me sony,” she murmured against his chest. “Show me sony.” He closed his eyes to her brushing touch, blacking out the memories.

“I don’t like the man I was,” he tried to explain. “It’s him or me in the gray place. I won’t go back to being him. I don’t have to, and I won’t.

“All right, baby, all right. It doesn’t matter, it’ll be fine now. Lynda’s not angry.” She wasn’t listening to him, any more than he was tuned into her hands and mouth on him. He kept himself divorced from it, holding back the touching and feeling that could unleash the pain. It was a fair trade. If he let himself be reached, she would hurt him, would drive him with agony until he destroyed the source of me pain. No touch of pleasure, no touch of pain. Being numb was the key to it all. He found the balancing point again and felt a certain bitter satisfaction with it. He was safe from her now. She’d get nothing from him. He felt her squirm against him, heard the rustle of clothing as she arranged her body against his. He let her, unwonted. There were other things he could think about, things that were safe to remember.

“IF YOU COULD DO ANYTHING, be anything, what would you do?”

It had been an expansive afternoon, roaming the city with Cassie. He was beginning to get the hang of this new life, starting to realize the possibilities. It was a heady sensation.

She was in a tweed skirt; he wore a corduroy jacket with learner patches at the elbows. They had gone everywhere that eccentric scholars could go, with numerous side trips en route. They had merged unnoticed with a group touring underground Seattle, and had nearly managed to be left behind in the dank dark below the streets. She had shown him a bakery where a kindhearted assistant set out the discarded baked goods on a tin foil tray atop the dumpster to save the street people the trouble of digging for them. They had explored what was left of the old plant at Gas Works Park and sampled five kinds of coffee at Starbucks. Cassie had taken him to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Museum on Main, and introduced him to me ranger there as her associate. Eh“. Reynolds. The ranger had shown them films and opened the display cases for them, to let them handle the relics of that remote time. Wizard had promised to return soon, and spend more time talking about the Gold Rush era and how it had affected Seattle.

“Especially on rainy days.” Cassie had offered as soon as they were on the sidewalk again, and they had giggled together like wayward truants.

It had been a very mellow day. No schedules to keep and no assigned tasks. They had turned down every street that had appealed to them, in their conversations as well as in their wandering. He had learned that she loved roses and pansies, but thought orchids a cold flower. She knew that he liked green grapes more than wild blueberries, and commercial blueberries not at all. So now, as they strolled, he asked her the childish question, and waited for her answer. She disappointed him.

“I’d be Cassie, and do what we did today,” she replied blandly.

“Not me!” Wizard had been expansive, risking her displeasure. “I’d be a hero, a saint, or a mystic. When I was small, I always wanted to be a prophet. Sackcloth and thunder. I’d drive violence from Seattle and let peace reign.”

Cassie snorted. “And under your protection, no seagull would peck another, no children would quarrel over marbles, no drunk would bloody another drunk’s nose over a baseball pitcher’s reputation.”

“Not that kind of violence. You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t. You keep acting like I’m some sort of mystic myself, some seer who knows all. Well, I’m not. I’m just Cassie, and while I know more than some, I don’t know it all.

I’ve only just met you, though I’ve been noticing your presence in Seattle for weeks. I suppose you could say our paths have crossed before. But that doesn’t mean I know you from the soul out. So tell me. What kind of violence do you mean?“

“The sickest kind. I mean the kind where someone strong finds someone weaker and hurts him. And hurts him and hurts him and hurts him. Hurts past the point of damage, past retaliation, hurts him past the point of resistance, and beyond.

Like parents who beat infants, tike rapists who batter bodies and minds, like men who turn on other men too confused or different to defend themselves, and hurt them. -.“

“Which end were you on?” Cassie had muttered the question, looking at him with eyes both sympathetic and wary. His voice had thickened as he spoke, some emotion choking him, but the words tumbled from him, refusing to stop until he clamped his teeth and closed his eyes. Cassie slipped her arm under his, drew him aside to a bench and sat him down. He sat far-eyed, kneading his hands together, rubbing at the tiny scars that marred them.

“I’m sony,” he said finally. “I don’t know…”

“Me, neither,” she cut in. “But listen. Number one. You arc taking on too large an opponent. Do you think you’re Saint Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland? No. At most you’re Saint Wizard, feeding the pigeons. Number two. You’re too close to it to fight it. Not yet. I won’t ask you how or why you’re so close to it, but I’ll remind you of this. When the enemy’s on top of you, you can’t win by bombing his position.”

He wished she had asked him then. Back then, he might have been able to tell her about it, while she was still the stranger Cassie, before she became so important to him. In days to come he swallowed his secrets in large, choking lumps, lest she discover his flaws. He struggled to learn it all, to be the best at it as he had been the best at his tasks before. His failures he kept to himself. He coped, living hand to mouth at times, trying to believe her when she told him the city would open to him as soon as he opened himself to it. At first she fed him often, and he was sheltered many a night in her various domiciles. But he began to fee) overexposed, fearful that he might be revealing more of himself than he wished her to know.

And he began to have days when he ached with a dull hunger to be even closer to her. Never mind that it would destroy all she had made of him. Never mind that it would drive her completely from his life. The depth of me sudden need that would come upon him was terrifying. Lust he could have dealt with- But this was the forbidden hunger, the desire to be less alone. He found his strength before it was too late; he knew he had to separate his life from hers.

His wits and the skills she showed him helped him create his own niche. If she missed his daily presence, she never rebuked him for it. He suspected she was relieved by his independence, and he worked for her respect- For an instant he wondered where she was this night.

His eyes rolled open of their own accord- Lynda lay atop him, her hair straggling across his face. Sleeping. Stoned or drunk, she had finally given up her attempts to arouse him. It gave him a perverse satisfaction to have defied her. Her body was heavy and lumpy, her perfume oppressive. He reached up to wipe her hair away from his nose and mouth. He shifted to heave her chin off his collarbone. She stiffened suddenly and wriggled to get her wrist up to her nose.

“Oh my god!” She peeled her body off his, letting the cold in to fill the places she had made warm. “Look at the time!” She shook her dress back down over her hips, tugged the hem straight. “It’s okay, baby. Don’t lay and worry about tonight. You were just tired, that’s all. I read about it in this book, says it’s normal, can happen to any guy when he’s tired, and being stoned might have made it worse. Promise me you‘’ aren’t going to get all depressed about it. I really don’t mind.

Really. Are you okay?“

He nodded, feeling the total hypocrite. He watched her scoop her pantyhose from the floor and ball them up to stuff them in her purse. She didn’t seem all that disappointed. Was her lust a game she played with herself as well; the wild and wanton woman who must always be eager?

“I’ve got to get up at six! If I don’t go now, I’ll be too beat to shower and wash my hair before bed. That’s another thing I bet you’ll like about my place: hot showers and clean bedding.

Look, I got the early shift tomorrow.“ She wipped a brush through her hair, sleeking it back from her face. ”But as soon as I’m off, I’ll come to pick you up. Just take the stuff you really want. Leave the rest of this shit here. One trip should do it. You want I should borrow my sister’s car?“

“No,” he replied absently. She sat down on the makeshift table to drag on her boots. He couldn’t even remember when she had taken them off.

“Right. Look, I’ll bring a suitcase for your clothes, put the rest in grocery bags, and we’ll take the bus. Oh, the cat. I can’t have pets in my place.”

“I don’t have any pets.” Black Thomas belonged to himself.

He’d been a resident of the building before Wizard moved in, and would be after he was gone. For an instant he worried about Ninja and the pigeons. A foolish worry; they’d all have to take care of themselves from now on.

“Good.” Lynda had rekindled the pipe and was taking a farewell hit from it. She waved it at him, but he shook his head. She shrugged, then regarded him more closely. Her boots thumped as she crossed the room to suddenly crouch down beside him. “Look. You look so worried about it. Don’t be.

So we didn’t make it tonight. It doesn’t change anything between us. You told me you were tired and cold and a little too stoned. I should have listened to you and not pushed it. I mean, hey, if a woman can say no when she’s too tired, why can’t a guy? So it’s not a big deal, okay? Not like a failure or anything Okay?“

He nodded wearily, wishing she were gone. All he wanted Was sleep. She rose then to snatch up me window blanket from the floor and snap it out over him. “Okay, then. Now don’t worry. Sleep tight, baby. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he echoed. Irrevocable commitment. She muffed the candle as she went and disappeared into the next room, closing the connecting door as softly as a burglar leaving the scene of a crime. He listened. There was the sliding of the window, then the thunk of her boots hitting the pavement. The city silence flowed back in as soon as she was gone. The traffic noises and far muffled voices of a sleeping city filled his ears.

The street lamp light seeped in around the cardboard and bathed his room in a dark gray wash. Gray light of the city burning up the night with cold, duty fire. It was hard to see me stars over Seattle at night. Too much light pollution and more every year. He wondered if the air pollution and the light pollution would ever meet in the middle. He imagined a city never night nor day, only a uniform grayness in the sky overhead. He envisioned gray people slipping through its streets, their voices swathed in fog, their clothing damp with gray mist. Gray as OK ceiling.

He stared up at it and suddenly fell horrible. Guilty. He had cheated and deceived Lynda by not performing tonight. But he hadn’t wanted to. Still, what must she be feeling now? Did she guess he did not find her desirable? But he did; it was only when she got close that he was repelled by her. She was an attractive woman, generous and willing. Only a crazy man would turn away from her. So what was wrong with him? He didn’t know. He just knew that he hadn’t wanted to be that close to her. So. Would it have hurt him to have given in to her needs, let her keep intact the image she had of herself?

But what about his own feelings, his desire to keep his body private from her? Weren’t they just as valid as hers? And if he had served her, like a cow brought to a random bull; what then would he be feeling? Would he be lying here, gazing at the ceiling and wishing he had not so shamefully deceived her?

His mind chased the questions and guilts in a hamster wheel of bad feelings. “No right answers,” he tried to console himself, and coughed. This was life back in the real world. The walls of it were closing in on him already. But this time tomorrow, he would be running through his own maze, back on the track with the rat race.

The ceiling was coming down on him. He blinked, willing the illusion away. No more playing games with my mind, he warned himself sternly. No magic, no Truth, no Knowing. No scary things in the closets waiting to get me. Kid stuff. Like being small and being afraid to close the bedroom curtains at night because you might accidentally look out the darkened window and see something. Never look in the bathroom mirror when you’re getting a drink of water in the middle of the night; you might see what is standing behind you. But he was an adult now, and back in the real world. He wasn’t going to play that kind of mental hide-and-seek anymore. He stared up at the gray ceiling, daring it to come closer.

It did.

It did not, he insisted to himself. He was just sleepy. That was true, he was tired, but now he found he could not close his eyes. For if he looked away from the ceiling, perhaps it would dare to come closer- Even with his eyes opened, he could see the grayness of his ceiling descending on him. Impossible. Summoning every ounce of courage he possessed, he extended his arm and hand straight up and touched… nothing.

“See,” he told himself aloud. “It’s an illusion.” He let his arm fall back to his side. He was warm and incredibly sleepy.

He closed his eyes and started to let consciousness slide away.

A pigeon fell to the floor with a soft thud. And another.

Wizard sat up. His face pushed up into dense gray smoke that choked him mercilessly. He fell back onto the mattress., into a cooler strata of air. His mind raced. The pipe! Where had Lynda left it?

He rolled onto his belly and gazed around wildly. There seemed to be no flames yet, but he was sure that when they came, it would be as a single flash, engulfing the room in an instant. He had only moments to get out.

His cracked window might offer fresh air, but no chance of escape. The fire escape was under the other window, in the next room. From his window it was a sheer four-story drop.

He began a wriggling belly-crawl to the connecting door. His seeking hand fell on a small feathered body. Its legs twitched against his palm. The cooler air near the floor was reviving it.

He became aware of other thuds as more pigeons fell, overcome by smoke and fumes. He wondered where Black Thomas and Ninja were. But they were smart animals, smart enough to leave a burning building. Weren’t they? Not like the stupid goddamned pigeons that couldn’t take care of themselves. Stupid, useless, shitty birds. He scooped up another body from the floor. His burden made crawling difficult. He crept on. The floor was getting warmer. And when he finally reached the connecting door that should have led to escape, he found the wood of it nearly too hot to touch. It must have started in there, somehow. He thought of the stacked cardboard boxes. He heard helpless flutterings on the floor behind him, felt soft pinions brush his bare legs.

“Oh, shit, shit, shit!” he roared suddenly, wasting precious breath. He scuttled in a circle on his belly, the stupid wizard’s robe winding up around his legs and hobbling him. He gathered up the little bodies as he crawled, putting them into the sling of his cloak. He took the tall wizard cap from the table and filled it with biros. They were heavy. How many did he have?

He had no idea how many roosted in his room at night. The idiot things struggled against his rescue, hopping out of his reach as the gray ceiling pressed ever closer.

At last he had them all. His cloak was a heavy sling over his arm, his bird-stuffed hat tossed in as well. The cooing, rustling, struggling load dragged beside him, snagging on the old flooring- He could feel heat on his bare legs. The air in the room was warming up, the temperature rising every second.

He would have to crawl for the hall door and down the corridor and try to find a way to escape.

Outside his room in the foreign corridor, he kicked the door shut behind him. He came cautiously to his knees. But the smoke was thick here as well, stinging his eyes and choking him. He dropped again and resumed his frantic crawl. He didn’t know this part of the building. He had never explored it other than to determine that it and the stones above him were unoccupied. Now he regretted his lack of curiosity- The loose fabric of the robe dragged and tangled around his knees, snagging against the floor. The sling full of pigeons occupied one arm completely. But at last he reached a door and felt cautiously up the wood for the knob. The cold brass refused to turn.

Locked. He banged his fist against the solid wood panels.

Good, sturdy, old-fashioned door. No exit this way.

He coughed heavily and could draw in no clean air to calm his lungs. To breathe now was to choke. His belly scraped the floor as he wriggled along with his cooing, rustling load- His eyes were running tears, and even if there had been light he would have been blind. The smoke smelled acrid and poisonous; he wondered what was smoldering. The basic structure of the building was brick, but the interior, with its hardwood floors and fine old paneling, would bum merrily. His groping fingers encountered another doorframe. He was so horribly tired. If only he could lie still for a moment and catch his breath. One cool breath of air and he knew he could keep going. His leaden fingers walked up the door panels. His wandering hand finally encountered the knob. He rattled it, but it did not turn. Locked., But above it he felt the smoothness of a pane of glass. This room had been an office of some sort once.

He dropped back to the floor and sucked in a long breath of the marginally cooler air. His lungs tried to cough it out, but he held it- down as he reared up, a fold of the cloak looped over his free arm. The glass was thick, frosted stuff, but two blows of his elbow shattered it. He thrust his arm into the opening to turn the knob from the other side. The hot air of the corridor was flowing past him into the cooler room like smoke seeking a chimney.

He staggered into the room and stumbled into heaped boxes piled nearly ceiling high. He pushed toward where the windows must be, wriggling between towers of boxes and over lower stacks. He began dragging boxes away from the wall of them that blocked his way. Behind him, he heard the boom as his room ignited and me laughing roar of the fire as it rushed down the comdor after him. He threw boxes awkwardly, one arm still encumbered by the sling of pigeons. If he dropped them, he could… He choked, and then the pane before him was reflecting the orange of flames in the hall behind him. He didn’t bother with the window catch. His elbow took out the glass and then he was struggling out the snaggle-toothed opening into the blessed cold of the night air. The sirens began. The fire department was only a few blocks away. They’d be here almost instantly, with the police right behind them. The iron railings of the fire escape were icy against his hand as he rushed down two flights, his sling of pigeons thumping against him as he fled. The next set of stairs was only a half set. He halted, some nine feet in the air above the Great Winds Kite Shop.

The bright kite was still tethered to me platform of the fire escape. Its gay streamers tangled around him as he made his leap. His stockinged feet met the cement too solidly, jolting him to the very base of his skull, but he could not have rolled without crushing his pigeons. The sirens weren’t more than half a block away, screaming and wailing. He took a tighter grip on his sling of pigeons, hiked up his robes and ran. his bare legs flashing in the night. His socks became soaked ai once, so that he splotted with every step. The lighted expanse of Occidental Square offered him no hiding place, but at least it led away from the firemen and police.

He looked back over his shoulder at orange and yellow flames shooting out the upper-story windows of the Washington Shoe Manufacturing Company building. The whole thing would be gutted. All his fault. On his next stride, the cold iron lamppost leaped out of the darkness before his fire-blinded eyes.

Cold iron smacked his left temple and thumped his ribs. He fell into a windy darkness full of the whirring of wings.

“FOR GOD’S SAKE, will you please quit crying!”

Wizard yelped like a kicked dog as the book bounced off his shoulder and skidded across the Indian prayer rug on the floor. He raised astounded eyes to Cassie. silenced by the sheer shock of her outburst. As she retrieved her book, he rubbed at his stiff face and wet eyes and took a deeper breath. His head felt less foggy, but he was still more than half-stoned. He knew there was nothing more unpleasant to be around than a drunk on a crying jag, but he was too confused to be ashamed- Cassie sagged back into her overstuffed chair and regarded him as if he were a wet dog in a freshly made bed.

They were in the library, a pleasantly dark room with bookshelves growing up to an unseen ceiling and fat furniture crouching on thick rugs. Floor lamps cast their puddles of yellow light near the chairs. It was a cozy room, if you ignored the cobwebs and the rustling of mice in the comers- Cassie did. So did Rasputin, who sat flat in a corner, swaying softly in his eternal dance as he teased Ninja with a string. They were ignoring Wizard, too. Or had been.

Euripides had left hours ago, right after he helped Rasputin drag Wizard up the endless stairs. After they had dumped him in the middle of the floor, he had looked at Wizard sadly shaking his head. “I don’t think it was entirely his fault ”

Euripides had begun cautiously, but the looks Cassie and Rasputin gave him silenced the defense. Euripides had tossed a shrug at Cassie and left. Wizard wished he had stayed No one had spoken a word to him since then, though he vividly recalled Rasputin shaking him violently just before they dragged him in. “Acting like you the last wizard in the world, and the only one going to get hurt by your crap. You dumb shit fuck-head!”

“I know, I know!” Wizard had wailed, and that was when he had begun to cry. He hadn’t wanted to, had been ashamed of it, but he was too drunk, stoned, and disoriented to do anything else. That was when Rasputin had slammed him up against the wall, not hard enough to really hurt him, but forcefully enough to let him know that he could just as easily have put Wizard through the wall. Only Euripides’s hand on the black wizard’s arm had stopped me demonstration. Euripides was the only one who had shown any sympathy at all for Wizard’s plight. Fresh tears stung his eyes at the thought, but Cassie’s glare dried them

She set her cup of tea down on the lamp stand by her chair and rose to cross the room to him. She towered over him, a sturdy woman in her thirties dressed in jeans and a faded cotton shirt. “Get up!” she ordered him sternly.

He sniffed and dragged himself to his feet. “You are a mess,” she observed without rancor. He bowed his head. The robe was torn from (he jagged window glass and bloody where he had cut his elbow on (he second window glass. Pigeon droppings streaked the fold of cloak where he had carried them, and he stank of smoke. When he rubbed his face again and looked at his hands, he saw stains of damp soot. “What happened to you?” she demanded, and he knew she was not asking about the fire.

“I don’t know,” he replied hoarsely.

“Ah doooon’t knoooow!” Rasputin drawled out in a mocking croon. He rose to waltz lazily around them both. When he reached the door, he said, “Hate to say, ‘I told you so,’ Cassie.

This one’s on you, like stink on shit.“ His dark eyes snagged for a moment on Wizard’s doleful face. ”Hey, Wizard. No hard feelings, huh? If you live, come see me. You’ll be welcome.“

He curtsied gravely and spun out the door.

“Thanks for bringing him to me!” Cassie called after him. Wizard wondered if she was sincere. She dragged a bandana handkerchief from her hip pocket and handed it to him. He wiped his eyes and nose dutifully. “What am I going to do with you?” she wondered aloud.

“I don’t—” he began.

“That was rhetorical!” she snapped, stopping him cold. “I’ve had enough of your crying and saying ‘I don’t know.’ Say or do anything you please, but not that.” She meant it. He took a ragged breath.

“I thought crying was good, especially for us inhibited males.”

A little of his frustration and anger leaked into his voice.

For a second Cassie looked pleased. “Well, at least you still have your wits. I was beginning to think your mind was gone.

Sure, crying is good. It’s a great tension relieving response to impossible situations. But when you substitute it for action, it’s no more appropriate than beating your head against a wall.

As Rasputin tried to demonstrate. What are you crying about, anyway?“

“I don’t—” Her look stopped him. “Everything. I feel like I just fell down the rabbit hole again, Cassie. It’s not that I don’t like you or the others. But, Cassie, I had it all straight in my head, finally. I was going to move in with Lynda and get a job or welfare or something, and forget all this stuff.” A frown divided her brows, but she was nodding for him to continue. “All this stuff… all this pretending about magic and Truth and Knowing and pigeons. I was going to be like everyone else. And then my place catches fire and bums up everything I own. And when I come to, Rasputin is hauling me up those damned impossible stairs of yours, and I am back to this… place.” Words failed to describe for him the gears of his two worlds grinding together.

Cassie looked pained. “A job or welfare. Shit, Wizard. Look at yourself. You can’t change your residence and put on new clothes and be what you aren’t. You’d still be a wizard, and you’d still have responsibilities to your magic.”

“My magic’s gone, anyway.” Wizard crushed his eyes shut as he made this final admission. He dangled once again in the abyss of that loss.

“Hold it!” Cassie’s voice snapped him back from it. She looked incredibly tired. “What a tangle,” she murmured, mostly to herself. She managed a tired smile for him. “Let’s take this one thing at a time. Go clean up. Maybe it will sober you up a little, too. Go on. You’ll feel better.

She picked up her book again. He blundered about the place, discovering a closet and an office with dusty files and a typewriter and then a short corridor with a door ajar at the end of it. The bathroom was small, little more than a sink, toilet, and shower stall. He untied the silver tassels of the cloak slowly.

He draped it and the soiled robe over the sink and turned on the shower to the hottest water he thought he could stand. He shut the glass door behind him and stood in the stinging rain, letting it batter his face. His brain slowly cleared. He began to soap himself, finding numerous small abrasions he had been unaware of. They stung. The hot water loosened the newly clotted blood on his elbow and it bled again, slightly. With cautious fingers he explored the tender lump on one temple.

He stayed under the shower until the water turned suddenly cold. Then he shut it off and stood dripping in the stall. It seemed so safe in here. Getting out of the shower and drying off meant facing up to whatever came next. But after a few moments he began to shiver. Best face it. He blotted himself dry and then glanced about for something to put on. There was only the robe and cloak. He slipped the robe over his head, expecting the smell of smoke and pigeons. But there was only the soft blue robe spangled with stars and moons. But for the small rips from the glass, the events of the past few hours might have been dreams. That was not reassuring. He pulled on his socks, slung the cloak over his arm, and emerged in search of Cassie.

He stood silently until she looked up from her book and nodded approvingly at him. “That looks better. Feel any better?”

“Some,” he admitted, and suddenly he didn’t want to feel better. As long as the events were overwhelming, no one could expect him to assume responsibility for them. Cassie seemed to sense his reluctance.

“So what is still so awful?” she demanded.

“Everything. My den is gone, with everything in it.

And—“

“Wait. One at a time. What did you lose in that fire that you can’t replace? You’re wearing the only unique thing you possessed. The rest of it could be replaced by a few strolls down dumpster row. Am I wrong?”

She wasn’t, but it seemed cruel of her to state it so baldly.

He racked his brains for a defense. “Black Thomas. I got the pigeons out, but I didn’t find him.”

Cassie gave him a disparaging look. “Black Thomas’ Come here, tomcat!” Wizard followed her gaze up to one of the bookshelves. Thomas sat up slowly. He yawned disdainfully, showing a red mouth, pink curling tongue, and white teeth.

He surveyed them both with disgust, then rearranged himself with his front paws tucked neatly against his breast. His stump was tidily wrapped in a clean white bandage. He closed his eyes to slits and made Wizard and Cassie disappear.

“He’s still angry,” Cassie observed. “At you, for bringing a stranger into his home. And at me, for holding him down while I dressed that stump. But he didn’t even stick around for the fire to start.”

Wizard felt relieved. And guilty. “He wouldn’t let me clean and wrap it for him.”

“You didn’t even try,” Cassie stated factually.

“Well, I was afraid I’d hurt him,” he said defensively. Had she no sympathy for him at all? His magic was gone.

“Sometimes you have to hurt someone to help him- When cleaned that stump with peroxide, he screamed like a baby.

But it’s clean now, and he won’t get gangrene.“

“I’m glad he’s all right.”

“I know. Now. What upsets you most? That your magic is gone, or that you got caught before you could run out on us?”

Wizard’s breath caught. The question was as cold and unexpected as a knife in the spine. Cassie’s blue eyes continued to bore into his.

“Well, what would you call it?” she asked him at last, sounding a bit defensive. “Only days ago, you and I discussed this gray thing of yours, this Mir. That it had come to Seattle, and that you are the only one that will have its balancing point.

That it will come to you, and you must stop it. And if you fail, it will take us all down. What happens next? Next we have Wizard forsaking the duties of his magic, claiming that he has no magic, and contemplating moving in with a waitress, to watch TV and drink beer and line up for payments from a window. So what should we think? What were you thinking?

That you could roll over on your back and Mir would pass you by? Even if it did, which you well know it won’t, where did you think it would satisfy its hungers?“

The enormity of it settled on him- He could only look at her. The grave sadness in her eyes was more than he could bear.

“You know,” he said slowly, “that those things never crossed my mind. I never saw it that way, that I was abandoning a position. I only saw that my magic was gone, that I was Wizard no more. Somehow, I… forgot about it.”

“I know,” she conceded. She walked away from him to drop back into her chair, but then waved him into its thate on the other side of the lamp stand. His legs and back were stiff, and his ribs ached from the collision with the lamppost. The wound her words had dealt him was worst of all. He was glad to ease into the chair instead of standing. He smoothed his robes over his knees.

“You look like you’re already comfortable wearing that,”

Cassie observed softly.

He looked down at the soft blue cloth. “It seems natural,” he admitted. “Right.”

“Are you sure your magic’s gone?”

He nodded, tired of repeating it.

“Then the worst part is that you are sure. How did you lose it?”

He heard a test in her question. Did she think he would lie about it? “I broke the rules.” he said simply. “And it went away.”

Cassie was shaking her head slowly. From somewhere, a bit of needlework had come into her hands. Embroidery. He watched her bite off a thread and select a new color. “You’re wrong, you know,” she said conversationally- He leaned forward to catch her words. “The rule? broke you.”

He bowed his head to that rebuke. “I suppose I never really had the strength, the discipline, to be a wizard.”

Cassie snorted. “Idiot. No. You knew what would break you. You knew what rules you couldn’t keep, so you made those rules and then you broke them. To get away from the magic. It’s scared you shitless since the first day I told you it was yours.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No. No, you don’t understand. Cassie, I broke the rules that had brought the magic to me, and so it went away. I kept more than a dollar in change, I’ve lain with a woman, I’ve turned my strength loose upon others.” He was babbling, close to falling apart again. Cassie poked her needle through the heavy linen. He heard the rip-drag of the embroidery floss as it followed. She kept her eyes on her work, making no reply as he catalogued his sins, but only shaking her head. He told her all, all since the night she had done the Seeing for him, croaking out the tale when his mouth grew too dry to speak.

When be finally ran down. she spoke.

“Where did you get the rules?”

“The magic gave them to me.”

“No. Not those ones. You invented those ones yourself, knowing you couldn’t keep them. You wanted to break yourself so me magic would go away, so you wouldn’t be a wizard and have a duty to it. But even in your desire to be free of it, the magic went too deep in you for you to destroy it. Otherwise you would have taken the easy way out. Stomp one of those stupid pigeons. That would really have done it, really have blown the magic away. Or turn your back and walk away when one came seeking you. But you didn’t. You made up your own rules to break. We all knew you were in trouble (he minute you stated putting extra rules on yourself. Rasputin thought be could rattle you out of it. Maybe I should have let him. But I said you would snap out of it on your own. So we watched you, hoping. Until it was damn near too late.”

He was staring at her, refusing to believe her. She met his eyes calmly.

Think back. What rules did Rasputin give you? Hold me pigeons sacred and never harm them. Listen to me ones who came to talk to you, and when you have comfort for them, speak out. Tell the Truth when it comes on you. and when you Know, admit you Know. That was all. Those were the rules of your magic, given you by the only one of us who can look at a wizard, see his magic, and tell him me rules of it. The rest of it was your own petty fences, put up to keep others at a distance. When you came to me for a Seeing, I hoped you would see how silly they were. Even Estrella tried to warn you.“

“Didn’t anyone ever mink of just coming out and saying it?”

“You being such an easy person to talk to and all?” Cassie asked sarcastically.

“I’m not that hard!” he replied indignantly.

“Oh, aren’t you, now?” There was something else in her voice now. A more personal hurt that baffled him. He didn’t want to explore it. Cassie stabbed her needle into the cloth and dragged it swiftly through. She didn’t look at him and he sat without speaking. At last he beard her give a long sigh. When she spoke again, it was in her ordinary, well-modulated voice.

“Are you still sure your magic is gone now? Remember, you haven’t broken any rules.”

He hated to disappoint her. “I’m sure. It’s gone, Cassie. I can’t feed me pigeons. When people talk to me, I’m not sure what to say to them I was helpless against Lynda and what she did to me.”

Cassie snorted. “Lynda. She’s another matter entirely. Don’t blame it on her. So you’re sure it’s gone. Then you’re a fool and no one can help you.” She finished a leaf and knotted off her thread. She suddenly crumpled her work into her lap and sat up straighter. “I have an idea about you. I may be completely wrong. Want to hear it?”

“Why not?” What could she say that would be worse than what had been said?

“This gray thing, this Mir. It scared the hell out of you. So, rather than face it, you tried to pretend it was only imaginary.

Something inside your head, some neurotic disorder from your past. It isn’t. It’s as real as I am.“

“How real is that?” he asked lightly, but she brought a pointing finger to bear on him.

“Never doubt me, not even in jest. I’m real, real enough to kick your ass if I bear another comment like that out of you tonight. That would have been me next step, wouldn’t it? And you damn near took it. You would have convinced yourself nut Rasputin and Euripides and I ”were all—I don’t know what—imaginary, or fragments of your own disordered mind.

I mink: you could have actually made yourself believe it, too.

You’re a very young wizard, as wizards go, and tonight you nearly lost your chance to get any older. But you had better believe this, now. This gray thing of yours, this Mir. It’s real.

Real enough to tear you into shreds. Real. And smart enough to start with your mind first, if you leave it an opening. Or it can stand back and watch you chase your own tail until you’re exhausted, and men it can step in and take you without a fight.

And use you for its own ugly ends.“

“I think it’s already begun,” he admitted cautiously.

“Bullshit.” Cassie smoothed out her needlework and picked up a skein of yellow thread. “You’re scaring yourself. Searching your soul for bogey-men. So you have a temper. So your body has been trained as an effective weapon and steps in to save you’when your mind is out to lunch. Maybe you even have a few kinks that the right person can trigger with the right sort of behavior. Well, don’t we all? Don’t blame the gray thing or the magic. Don’t even blame Lynda. though she sounds like she could piss off a saint. Blame yourself. You set it all in motion.”

“Meaning what?” He demanded. He didn’t like the way this was going. Not matter what he said, Cassie seemed to circle back to where it was all his fault. But she couldn’t know what it was really like. She hadn’t been there.

“You deliberately unbalanced your magic. When Lynda came to you on the bench that day, she had a problem. You listened to her, but you didn’t tell her what you Knew. Nor did you turn her away. You kept what you Knew to yourself, like it was some ponderous secret. Hell, even I could have told her the answer. I would have said, ‘Lynda, it’s fine to like men, any number of men, as long as you still like yourself.’ But you didn’t. So you owed her, and she became a danger to you. Mir has used her as a channel to get to you- Hell, didn’t you wonder at a waitress that could jump up to a bar and chin herself up to a fire escape? Mir used her to move you away from the rest of us, to get you out on your own. But even though the magic was unbalanced when you didn’t give more than you got, it didn’t go away. Didn’t you Know that Booth would follow and attack?”

“It wasn’t me same. I couldn’t feed the pigeons.”

“Did you try?”

“She took the fucking bag!” he roared in sudden exasperation. “What was I supposed to do? Make popcorn appear out of nowhere?”

“Exactly. Did you try?”

“No!” he snapped. “I just knew I couldn’t. And you can’t shrug it off like it’s nothing when I say that I’ve been hurting people. I had stopped doing that.”

“I know. Because you didn’t need to. Who did you hurt?

A mugger? A murderer? A man who attacked you from behind?“

“And Lynda. And I hurt them all more than I needed to.”

Cassie shook her head. “You hurt them as much as you had to, to make them stop what they were doing. In the case of the knife-man, not quite enough. And Lynda? Lynda is like a rat pushing a bar to cam a feed pellet. She sized you up right away without even being conscious of it. She can push your buttons and you give her a little scare that puts an edge on things If you wens really a danger to her. do you think she’d stick around? She was already smart enough to dump one man that got too rough. You’re the key to the candy store for her. She sets the scenes and you say your lines. While the gray thing uses her to undermine you.”

“You don’t understand anything!” He rose so suddenly that he nearly upset the lamp. Fists clenched, he paced the room twice and stopped in front of her chair. “It’s different for me.

Maybe you can never understand. I don’t just lose my temper and slug someone. I Know what I am capable of, in a way most people never realize. I’ve killed, Cassie, with a rifle and with my hands. And I’m good at it. Very good. So good that when I am crossed, it’s the first solution I think of, not the last. And Lynda. I don’t like what she triggers in me, what she makes me want to do to her.“

Cassie shrugged easily. “Then get away from her. Find someone else. But don’t blame it on the magic.”

He shook his head. It was so simple for her. And so hard for him. “I’m a violent man.”

“You are also a man sickened by violence. A man triggered by violence to violence. Do you suppose I am so different? If I saw a mugging in progress, do you mink I would turn away?

If I were attacked, wouldn’t I defend myself? Wizard, there is only one rule about violence. Do whatever you must do to make it stop.“

He was so far beyond what she could imagine. It made her seem vulnerable and young as be told her, “I can’t agree with that.”

“I can’t make you. I can’t force you to believe that the magic hasn’t deserted you, either. And because of that, you just may the.”

His eyes snapped to her face. She suddenly looked very old. He crossed the room to her and sat at her feet, looking up at her. There was something in her eyes he knew. “Were you in Viet Nam?” he asked suddenly.

“My friend, I have been in them all since the wooden horse was dragged into Troy. They haven’t unproved them any.”

“Viet Nam was the worst.”

“It was different,” she agreed. She leaned her cheek on her fist and looked at him sadly. “Do you know, since I met you, I haven’t eaten a pigeon.”

He was touched. “Don’t look so sad. I feel like you’re saying last words to me. I’ve listened to you, I really have- I’m going to go back and get it all straightened out. It’s going to be alt right.”

“Fool,” she said fondly. “The time I can shelter you here is ticking away. Then I must put you out, back into the streets.

And Mir will have you. Tonight. This is the night it takes you away.“

“I’m not ready.” His mouth was dry. “You threw away your weapons to pretend there was no war.”

“Cassie, what am I going to do?”

“You’re going to get yourself killed. And maybe take down the rest of us as well.” She slid forward off her chair to sit on the floor beside him. “Why didn’t I ever see what a child you are?”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t think so, perhaps.” Her fingers traced the pattern on the nig. “But when did you really have the chance to grow up? You were just a kid when they took you. And when you came back, you were older than God, but without the wisdom.

Only the knowing. Not adults, but wizards. You and Rasputin and Euripides. The difference is they found themselves sooner, and have put in enough time to do some growing. You’re not going to have the chance.“

Her words were chilling. He wrapped himself in bravado, leaning back against her chair as he spoke. “And just what makes you so different, then?” ‘

“Me? I remember the befores.” Soft as a challenge, those words.

A silence fell. Meaning hummed in me words sinking into the quiet, but Wizard could not quite extract it. He only knew it had immense importance to him. It dangled tantalizingly out of his reach. There were only Cassie’s eyes begging him to pick up on it. He shook his head at her. “So what should I do?”

“Pick up your weapons. Call out the allies you’ve groomed for this battle. Stop pretending that you’ve been pretending.”

She was talking in riddles. Despair washed over him. “ don’t know how. I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

‘The I-Don’t-Know Wizard.“ There was no mockery in her voice. She leaned forward to put her hand against his cheek.

The touch of her skin against his tingled, like an exchange of electricity. It was both heady and familiar. Yet he could not recall that she had ever touched him before. He found himself leaning into it. moving his face against her hand.

“Why can’t you just tell me?” he begged in frustration, and was surprised at his own words.

“I’ve tried, in every way that I’m allowed. Don’t you think ay magic has its own rules?” A fierce edge to her voice.

That stopped him cold. “Oh. Then there’s nothing left but for it to happen. I suppose I should leave now.”

“I suppose.” Her hand fell from his face. She picked up both of his hands in hers and looked at them, as if marveling at their emptiness. A tear fell into his hand and the wet touch galvanized him.

“Don’t. Please, don’t. I never wanted to make you sad.”

“You never wanted to make me anything!” she accused suddenly in an anguished voice. She pushed suddenly into his arms and he found himself holding her. She smelled like spices, ginger and vanilla. Closing his eyes, he pulled her closer. She pressed her face into the side of his neck and her arms clung to him. Startled, he loosened his hold. She didn’t. He patted her awkwardly. Her voice came from the hollow of his shoulder, sounding below his ear. “Do you remember the first story ever told you?”

He cast his mind back. “No. There have been so many.

Wait—about a little girl in a garden“

He felt her nod. It rubbed wetness against his neck. He sighed and pulled her in close again.

“That’s all you remember of it. You don’t remember the rules she was given,” She probed hopelessly.

“Not really.” So long ago, and it had seemed like a pointless little story at the time. Her breath caught raggedly as he admitted his lack of memory. Could it have been that important to her?

“They were all about giving and taking,” he hedged. “She couldn’t take what she wanted most because it wasn’t offered to her.”

“Until it was freely offered. Not that it makes any difference now.”

“And she couldn’t offer anything…”

“She could offer…” Cassie hissed angrily.

“Right,” he amended. “She could offer, but she couldn’t give, because…”

“Because no one wanted it.” She pushed away from him abruptly, but he caught at her wrist and dragged her back down to his side.

“Because someone was too stupid to know what was being offered. And too scared to accept it. And too afraid of what might come of it if he did; afraid of himself.”

Her eyes met his, stubbornly hurt. Refusing all comfort that he offered now, too late.

“Cassie,” he said brokenly. “I never meant to refuse what you offered. I didn’t realize it. Or maybe I did, I suppose, but it was forbidden to me. I don’t do—”

“Yes, you do!” she replied fiercely. “You just refuse to enjoy it. Or to do it with me!”

“It’s not safe to be with me.”

“Nothing is safe anymore. And me time is gone.” She began untangling herself from him. The finality of her words slapped him. The feel of Cassie moving away from him was more grievous than the departure of his magic. As she rose, he clutched at her hand.

“Cassie. Come back.”

She turned to his words, her face strangely uncertain. Wistful. She looked down at him. “You don’t remember the garden at all,” she said sadly.

He was confused. “Not the whole story, but—”

“Never mind,” she said abruptly. For a long moment she stood stiffly apart from him. Colder than frozen. Then she turned to look at him, and a sudden smile flooded her face. A decision had been reached in her mind and her face mirrored it. She came back to him and he rose to take her in his arms.

She was trembling.

“Are you scared?” he asked her.

“Not as scared as you are. And it’s not you I’m scared of.”

She was right. He held her and as she put her arms around him, he felt her magic wrap them both like a mantle. Within that shelter, all was safe and right. Her breathing became slow and steady as the sea swells, calming them both. He closed his eyes. This was right.

And more than right, her magic promised. It was the pathway back to where a touching was not a hurting. It was the missing arc of the circle that took him back to an unspoiled beginning. To a garden on a summer day, with bees buzzing in honeysuckle on the garden wall.

“Cassie?” he asked, the last of his uncertainty in his voice.

“I’m right here.” she whispered. “I’ve always been right here.”

He journeyed to the heart of woman’s magic, and found it was the journey home.

THE RAINY STREETS shone under the streetlamps. The squall had passed, leaving wily an icy wind wandering the streets and alleys. He heard the final click of Cassie’s door as it closed behind him. He turned back to it, but it was already gone, fading into darkness. She had left him alone to face it, turned him out like a stray cat to take his chances with me street dogs.

He knew that she’d had to. But the night still seemed the colder after Cassie’s warmth.

At least mere was nothing about. Whatever gray Mir was, it wasn’t bold enough to strike on Cassie’s doorstep. He shivered and began to walk. He sensed the city around him, the living entity of each building he passed, me vacant windows that nonetheless watched him. He had not felt it so alive since the night Cassie had come for him through the snowstorm. Nor so ominous. It was as if he walked through a maze of spectators come to witness his execution. “Bring on the hatchetman,” he muttered to himself. He had screwed his courage to the pitch of being able to go forth and meet Mir. But he didn’t know how long it would stand up to the tension of having to seek Mir out. That wasn’t something he had prepared for.

His socks soaked up the rain water like wicks. The hem of his wizard robe and cloak dragged slightly. Soon they had absorbed a weight of mud and water that slapped unpleasantly against his ankles. He squelched along, feeling uncomfortable and slightly foolish- It was either very late or very early. Traffic was less than sparse, and the vehicles that did pass did not slow at the sight of him. He settled his wizard’s hat more firmly onto his head.

Cassie’s words replayed endlessly in his mind. and he fancied for an instant that he could still feel the warmth of her touch on his skin. She had left her scent upon him, like the colors of a high-born lady on her knight-errant. There had been a few precious moments when be had fancied himself in the garden she had mentioned. He had felt the grass and fragrant leaf mold under his palms, and a summer sun warmed his naked back. Her mouth had smiled beneath his. Never had he felt so full of a woman.

Or so clear in his mind of what he must face now. He was going to his death, Cassie’s certainty of his magic notwithstanding. He wished he had been able to make her understand before he left her. He could tell her what he had done and felt, but he couldn’t make her feel what he had. Did she think he hadn’t tried to reclaim his magic? Could she imagine that he didn’t ache for it? Gone and beyond him now. Despite her calm certainty, he was sure he knew more of Mir than she did. Mir had touched him; had already bent him to its will. He shuddered with the knowledge. It had touched him as intimately as she had. It would again.

“But when?” he asked aloud of the watching city, flinging the challenge to the night. Nothing answered it. He passed gray parking meters with empty faces, reviewing the cold and passionless troops of the streets. Faces in the brick alleys and the black storefront windows changed and stretched as he passed them, peered after him until he was out of their sight. He felt no heaviness of evil in the air. Where was Mir hiding? The wind kept the night clear of the gray fog he had come to associate with its wickedness. A reckless boldness settled on him. So he was going to defeat, was he? Gray Mir wasn’t making it easy for him to meet his fate. He shrugged his shoulders and drew his cloak more closely around himself. It was warmer. than he expected it to be, and for an instant he imagined he felt a rippling of power through it. But it was only the wind tugging at me blue cloth- He paced on.

He could always run away. He tempted himself with possibilities. He could hide from il, could leave the city on foot and take to the woods. It would have to come and hunt him down. He shook his head. He had been hunted before and remembered it only too well. He would meet it face to face in the night, not be dragged out from behind some dumpster in an alley.

He had been walking without thinking, but his feet had led him well. He stood at the mouth of his old alley. It was. littered with charred rubbish from the fire. Well, why not here? Me had felt it here more often than any other place. He ventured into the alley and turned his eyes up to his fire escape. There was a terrible smell here, of wet charred wood and melted plastics. It was the burned odor of ruin and decay. No heat remained of the fire that had gutted the upper stories of the building. All was silent and dark. More than hours had passed since the fire. A day and most of a night, he guessed. That would fit in with the lightheaded weariness he felt. He was running on nerves and adrenalin, his reserve energy long spent.

He wouldn’t last much longer. It seemed to him that his strength had been slowly leeching away from him since the day Estrella had warned him. When Mir chose to attack, it would find him no adversary at all, crushable as a dried-out eggshell.

“Where are you?” he called out bravely into the darkness, but the alley swallowed his challenge without an echo.

He crouched beneath his fire escape, tensing himself for me spring. Then he straightened slowly and shook his head. Not up there, on charred floorboards, if any remained at all. Not before the burned specter of a foodocker, if it had survived.

No. He would not be hunted, but he would not be lured into ambush either. He turned soundlessly and let his body do what it had been clamoring to do. He opened it to the night. His senses expanded and he walked as one with the darkness. No magic this; a skill learned in a night that had shrilled with insect noises and screamed with sudden silences. An easy awareness spread out around him, searching as any light of flare. It had guided him alive through trees and vines and grasses. Could brick and steel and glass be any worse? He moved with slow grace, in no hurry at all. Let it come to him.

He could not have told what made him turn and look up.

There might have been a rustle of cloth, some scuff of skin against metal. He was in time to see the figure leave the fire escape, see it silhouetted, however briefly, against the far lights of the King Dome. It landed lightly, its legs bending nearly double to take up the shock. He pivoted slowly and silently to meet it- He had not expected a human form, but he sensed it an electric prickling along the edges of his perimeter. A chill of readiness ran over him. He smiled in the dark, and when he felt it looking at him, he gave a slow nod of acknowledgment. Mir.

0h, there you are!“ she cried and rushed at him, her arms held wide. In the next instant she had engulfed him and was covering his face with wet, panting kisses. ”My god, I am so glad you’re safe! I saw it in the papers this morning, and it said signs of recent habitation, but no remains discovered yet, and when I read the address I just about collapsed. The first thing that hit me, was, oh, god, he did it on purpose because we didn’t make it last night! and I felt like I had killed you myself. I had to sit down and the boss asked if I was taking my break now, and I couldn’t even talk, all I could do was point at the paper and shake. I guess I really looked bad, because he told me to take a day off, sick time. So I did and I looked for you everywhere. I musta fed those stupid pigeons ten pounds of popcorn, hoping you’d show up, and everyone kept walking by and staring at me; I guess I looked pretty stupid, sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons and bawling.

I am so glad you’re safe.“

As she talked, she kissed, hugged, and shook him at intervals. He could conjure no emotional reaction to her greeting.

It reminded him of the noisy greetings of a sheepdog he had known in his childhood, complete with wet tongue and cold nose. He knew he had to feel something for her, but all he could find was a quiet acceptance of her. This was what she was. No more man that, but certainly no less.

“Lynda!” he told her firmly. He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her out to arm’s length. She waggled happily in his arms and tried to move into his embrace, but he held her back. After an instant of struggle, she calmed and looked at him. He tried to catch her eyes, to peer past the dumb devotion and electric lust to see what else might be lurking there. But she focused on his doming instead and gave a squawk of dismay.

“Have you been running around dressed tike that all day?

It’s a wonder they didn’t lock you up! Look at your feet! Poor baby! Come on, you’re going home with me.“

There was an energy to her that verged on a natural magic.

She had taken his arm and turned him and was walking him away before he realized that she was taking command. Her tongue was rattling like a pocketful of loose brass, and she plowed down the center of the sidewalk as if nothing in the world could wish her harm. Wariness was impossible with her around. When he tuned in to her words, she was still going on about hot showers and clean sheets. He dug his heels into the sidewalk and brought her around to face him. The look on his face stopped her chatter.,

“What is it?” she demanded. “There’s nothing back there to go back for, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

He took a deep breath. “Lynda. There is nothing wrong with liking men, any number of men, as long as you still like yourself.”

Annoyance creased her brow. “What’s that crack supposed to mean? Hey, I’ve been walking around down here all day, crying my eyes out over you, and when I finally find you, you say something like that. What do you think I am? Do you think I’d take in just anyone?”

“That’s not what I meant!” he protested.

“Then just what the hell did you mean?” Color was staining her cheeks, and with amazement he realized he had hurt her.

He was surprised at the strength of the remorse he felt. He touched her face quickly, stroking the hair back from her cheek as he might smooth a pigeon’s rumpled feathers. She quieted under he touch. He took a deep breath.

There’s no way I can explain dial you will understand. But I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve got to put me magic back in balance.

That means I have to give more man I get, always. There were questions you asked me when we first met. You asked me why you should keep on going, you asked me if you had to live like a nun because your sister thought you should.“

“I don’t remember any of that,” Lynda began, but he put a soft finger over her lips.

“Maybe not in those exact words, but you asked me. And I had things to tell you, but I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to talk to anyone who might endanger me later. I unbalanced things, and I owed you. The more you gave me, me further unbalanced it became. After tonight, mere may never be another chance for me to put things back in balance. So I have to do it now.”

“You are really sweet, you know that?” She leaned forward to kiss him again, with no more regard for his words than if they had been empty sweet-talk. She didn’t know me difference. he realized. Had other men tried to reach her mind, only to have her shelve their words as verbal foreplay? He felt pity for her and wondered who had taught her dial men and women never really spoke to one another. She was rattling on. “You don’t have to say thank you to me. It’s okay. Let’s get you to my place now and run you through a hot shower and head for beddy-bye, I’ve got to work tomorrow, baby. Hey, it’s already tomorrow, isn’t it? I was going to say we could talk about all (his tomorrow, but I guess it’ll have to wait for the next tomorrow. Hey, that sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

“This is the last tomorrow I have,” he told her desperately.

He was selfishly relieved to find that he felt only pity for her.

Loving a woman like her would have been hell. She believed all the old myths: Men have no feelings such as women harbor;

(hey can share your home, your bed, and your money, but not your life. She knew all about ‘how men are,’ but she had never really spoken to one. She wasn’t going to let him get through.

He made a final effort. “Lynda. I have things I have to say to you. For my sake, if not for yours, let me. You are a giver, and it brings you joy- Don’t let your sister shame you out of it, for the world would be a barren place without those who give as you do. But it can also be a form of giving when you take- Let them give to you, the men that come into your life.

The giving must flow both ways for the bond to be real. All your life, you’ve believed in only one kind of relationship; that in each pair, there is one who is loved, and one who does the loving. It doesn’t have to be that way. Give yourself by taking.

Then you’ll find—“

“Can’t we at least walk while we’re talking? I’m freezing, baby, and I’ve got to get home and get some sleep before work.

I’m going to be dead on my feet as it is.“

He fell silent, allowing her to take his arm and tow him along. Perhaps the time for him to speak to her had passed, irretrievably. Perhaps the magic granted only that one moment of exchange, when me strange man with the pigeons could have spoken to her and she would have felt his words. Now he was too close. He was just another man to her, to feed and support and screw and, on occasion, when bored, to pester and irritate to the very edge of a violent confrontation. She would never hear him again, and he would never know any more of her than he did at this moment. Why was he going with her?

He stopped abruptly- She rounded on him. “Now what?

Baby, I have to—“

“I’m not going home with you, Lynda. We have nothing for one another. There is a thing I have to do tonight, and I have to do it alone. Go along, hurry home to where you’ll be safe. And if you can remember what I said to you, think about my words. I meant them.”

“I don’t believe this! What’s me matter with you, are you crazy or what? You can’t just walk off like that, running off in a Hallowe’en suit with no shoes on! You can’t just walk out on me- You can’t treat me this way! You’ve got no right to treat me like this.”

“I’ve got no right to treat you any other way, either.” She wouldn’t hear him. How can you say good-bye to someone who never even heard you say hello?

For a moment she stared at him, her face an ivory mask in the darkness. Then she burst into tears, stamping her fed on me sidewalk. When he impulsively reached to comfort her, she hammered him with quick, forceless blows of her fists. “Go away, men. Go away! Leave roe alone! I knew you would anyway, sooner or later Everyone always leaves me, or makes me throw them out! All men use roe! And you’re no different.”

She continued to hammer at him wordlessly. He caught one of her flying wrists and restrained it. With her free hand, she dealt him a slap on me side of me head that clapped his ear painfully and stung his cheek. “Lynda‘” he protested, but she swung again, a backhanded slap that smashed his lips against his teeth. Damn, she was strong. He tasted blood. Anger coursed through him and he squeezed the captured wrist and began to turn it. The night pressed close all around diem. Electrically gray-

He let go and sprang back from her so suddenly that she fell. “No!” he told her frenziedly.“No!” He turned and ran from her. She shrieked obscenities after him and the sodden hem of his robe flapped against his ankles as he ran. He fled through the night, a hunted thing. Mir had stalked him well, from a perfect blind. Its raking claws had touched his soul and marked him. It would have him this night.

The city marked his cowardice and turned on him. He collided with dumpsters in alleys. At an intersection a yellow light winked suddenly green, and a car roaring from nowhere blasted its nom at him. He raced up streets that were all uphill. A passing squad car suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree and squealed a u-turn to pursue him. He darted up a crowded alley, knocking over garbage cans as he fled, then turned left and ran half a block before dropping to roll into hiding beneath a parked truck. He lay flat and still, the front of his robe absorbing an oily puddle of rainwater. He held his breath until he could force himself to breathe silently. He thought of Lynda’s eyes gone huge and gray and hungry in the night. He shuddered.

Cassie bad been wrong. It was hiding, not only in the city, but within him. Like was calling to like, and when they united, it would have him. Lynda had come perilously close to letting it out. It had been stalking him all this time.

The cold water met his skin and chilled it painfully. He endured it, lying still until he was sure that the patrol car was far away. Then he rolled from under the truck and stood again in the bitter November wind. There was a heaviness inside him, a sense of carrying as if he bore the seed of a deadly disease. It hid in his chest and in the muscles of his back, questing tentatively into his biceps, probing into his wrists and hands. Waiting. It could materialize in his fingers, or use his feet as its tool. His body was rotten with it. The knowledge disgusted him. It was worse than the idea of internal parasites.

He would have preferred intestines full of tapeworms or the cellular anarchy of cancer, leprosy, or plague. But he had not been given a choice.

“ ‘And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off,’” he muttered.

He laughed bitterly. It was past the stage of a hand or an eye.

He would have to cast his whole body aside to be free of it.

Now, how did one go about that? The word was like a snake sliding through dry summer grasses. Suicide. The cold certainty of it settled on him even as he denied it. Cassie would never have sent him out to face it if that were the only way he could win. But, men, Cassie had not known as much as she thought she did. She would not believe that it lurked inside him: not as a figment of his imagination, but as a fragment of himself.

Maybe Estrella had known more than she had been able to tell.

The Hanged Man. A helpful suggestion from your friendly neighborhood fortune-teller. But it wouldn’t be his foot in the loop. The plan did not please him, but there was a bitter satisfaction in knowing that by losing, he would win.

One detail disturbed him, and it took him a moment to find it. There it was- He did not want anyone weeping over his body. Not Lynda, dramatic in black, not Cassie, shaking her head. A vision came to him, clear and cold as ice. He saw himself standing on one of Seattle’s bridges, the rope looped several times around his throat, simply looped, not a noose at all. He would jump, and the weight of his body at the end of the rope would be enough to break his neck. Then the slow turning of the body at the end of the rope from the natural torque of the woven strands; the rope unwinds itself from me throat, and me body drops neatly down, to be carried away by the moving water. In the morning, an empty rope dangling from a bridge. He was almost positive it would work. If it didn’t, he’d never know. Tidy, he congratulated himself, and tried to ignore the gray chuckling in me back of his mind. As for me rope—had not me dumpsters of the city always provided him with all his needs before? So would they this night. His stride was purposeful.

The scream ripped his decision. It was a strange cry, thin and short, terror with no breath to vent it. He could not decide if it came from deep inside himself or only echoed mere. It was a sharp sound, pained and despairing and gray. He crossed his arms on his chest, holding it in and muffling it- He heard three quick scuffs, soles against pavement, and me gong of a heavy body colliding with a dumpster. Then silence. Fear rolled through Wizard. He wanted to stopper his ears and keep walking. He had reached a decision for his gray Mir, and he wanted it to be a final one. He doubted he had the strength to face anything else this night. But his traitorous ears brought him the harsh breathing of a predator on a blood trail. It came from an alley mourn, less than a half a block away.

Wizard kept walking, his steps reflexively silent. He would reach the alley mourn and pass it, search for his rope elsewhere.

His own burden was all he could carry, and his mission was clear in his mind. If other evil walked in Seattle, that was no affair of his. Someone else would have to handle it. He was already doing as much as he could-

The alley loomed on his right, blacker than me night itself.

It was a deadend alley, walled up so that it offered no light or escape at the far end. Entering it was a one-way journey to me pit. Coldness emanated from it. He kept his eyes down and straight, watching me sidewalk in front of him. He walked soundlessly past the mourn of me alley and continued walking.

The grayness wriggled inside him, chuckling. He clenched his arms tighter around it.

“Oh. please!”

The cry, whimpered with no hope of clemency, halted him.

The stalker had found his prey and was upon her. The grayness giggled inside him, rejoicing in wickedness and the turmoil in Wizard’s soul. If it was no affair of his, why did he Know that me plea was directed to him?

“Ah!” A soft little sound, beyond terror or pain. He knew it well. Once. in a small hot black place, he had made that sound, not once, but many times. Death was better than me uttering of such a sound. He had to turn to it.

The alley was black, the grayness inside him a cold, heavy thing be must guard. He stepped with care, straining all his senses. Soft, ugly sounds were coming from a far black end.

With no wanting, he felt me knife. It was hot and keen, and its razor edge was being scraped slowly up and down his throat, paring away layers of skin thai left exposed new cells stinging.

It had not drawn blood yet. It made a paralyzing whispering against his skin that left him powerless to dunk of anything else, not even the fingers (hat prodded and probed in a parody of tenderness.

It was too real. It froze Wizard for a long instant, until he realized it was a Knowing. This was happening, but not to him. To someone who lay amid the trash at me end of me alley, knowing that to scream was to the, and that to keep silent was to the more slowly. The magic had come back to him, but he could not rejoice in it. What it was showing him was too great an atrocity. “If this be Knowing, I would rather walk in ignorance,” he muttered soundlessly. And Knew it was not me first time he had made that decision. But this time the magic ignored his wishes and pressed the Knowing into his brain, if he touched the man, me knife would kill her. He must draw the attack to himself.

“Stand up!” he barked. “Drop me knife and put your hands above your head.”

He didn’t expect obedience and he wasn’t disappointed. But the man was quicker man Wizard expected a man interrupted in such a game to be. He turned, rose, and attacked in one motion. Wizard made me perfect counter, a kick that would take his attacker in the chest and keep his knife at a distance.

It would have stopped the man dead, if Wizard had been wearing pants.

The robe was cut full and loose, but not loose enough to allow for the full swing of the kick. It snapped tight, jerking the balance from Wizard’s other leg. He staggered sideways and me hungry knife went slipping past his ear. He caught himself and spun to face it, but me knife was already before him, weaving a song of blood as it hovered before his face.

Like a steel hummingbird, it moved faster than his eyes could follow. Feet planted, hands loose and ready. Wizard shifted and wove before it. The magic limned it for him, setting it glowing with a toadstool light in the blackness of the alley. He saw nothing of the one who held it and commanded the dance.

The mind behind the blade trusted its cutting edge implicitly.

There would be no kicks, no sudden jabs of fist to spoil the perfection of the knife’s killing skill. Wizard’s eyes followed the blade as hands hung loose and ready, slightly away from his body. He tried to remember there was a man behind the blade, but the magic forced his attention back to the steel edge.

He struggled with it and then, with relief, let go. The knife, then. Counter to all his embedded training, he would fight the knife and not the man behind it. He relaxed and felt the tingling of power run over his limbs and up his spine.

From hand to hand the knife leapt nimbly in its wriggling, gliding dance. Wizard himself moved with it, in a swaying counterpoint that kept all parts of his body just beyond the knife’s leap. The knife, the knife! Why was the magic focused on me knife? Was he supposed to grab the damned thing? He imagined a sudden successful clutch, and the fingers slipping silently from his hand. No. That couldn’t be it. Silence but for two men panting, the soft scuff of wet socks against the pavement, and the far whimpering of the one who huddled at the end of the alley. The knife flickered and flashed, burning before his eyes. He reached and felt for it with the magic.

This knife was a Ruana, a fine old blade shamed by this new owner. Its tempered steel haft was enclosed on both sides by bone grips. It was balanced, it was boned, it was a joyous tool perverted to butchery. It fit the killer’s hand like an extension of his body. He sensed the man’s twisted soul pulsing in the blade.

So he froze it.

Swifter than any kick of leg, than any twitch of muscle could ever be, as swift as the flicker of a thought, the Knowing came to Wizard and he used it. As simple as snuffing a candle flame with a pinch. He reached and froze it, the metal cooling past imaginable temperatures and then exploding into icy shards in the killer’s grip. The man screamed aloud, clutching at his wrist with his other hand and squeezing it, trying to hold out the pain invading his body. He doubled over with the agony of it, holding the mangled hand out away from his body as if he were bowing and offering it to Wizard.

Wizard stepped back from his glimpse of that familiar face.

The killer bolted past him, grunting with the pain of every jolting step. Wizard smiled and followed him. The man heard his shadowing steps and moaned in terror. He staggered on, pain dazing him, the terrible warmth of his own blood soaking him as he tottered. When he fell, mere was the awful shape of the man from his nightmares, the man cloaked and robed with UK night sky itself. The stars and crescent moons glittered balefully, but the man’s face was shadowed into blackness by the broad brim of his hat. He did not find me bent tip of that hat-amusing. It pointed at him like an accusing finger. And when Wizard spoke, his eyes glittered like two chunks of blue glacier ice. He whispered.

“If ever thou takes! up a knife in thy hands again, be it even for so innocent a thing as the buttering of bread, the metal of me knife shall find revulsion in my touch, and break again into a thousand splinters. But those splinters will pierce thy eyes and my heart. Go now. Remember I have granted thee mercy this time, but justice will be mine the next time.”

He nodded, he wept, and in agonized fear he thanked the man who had maimed him, groveling away from his feet.

Wizard stood, watching him go. Power swelled in him, pulsing through his veins. This was a better way, so much a better way.

In the instant he had frozen the knife, he had seen the killer’s maggoty little soul. He would take up a knife again; not tonight, or even this month. But when the hunger became too much for him, he would take up the knife and perish by it, even as Wizard had foretold. He had wielded his power fearlessly and permanently. No knife would tolerate his touch.

He felt more man satisfaction as he watched the staggering figure retreat. Exultation. The wheel of his existence had rotated a half turn, carrying Wizard from the bottom to the top.

The magic was back, in such strength as he had never known.

He who had been the prey was the hunter; from being at the mercy of circumstances he had risen to be the controller. He had found his strength and his dreams would fall into his hands.

So heady was this feeling he could not keep the smile from his lips. Suddenly he had it all: the magic, Cassie, and the strength to conquer his enemy.

He turned his strength inward, found the lurking gray inside himself, and squeezed it to a thing of infinite smallness. So simple once one knew how and was not afraid. Was this what Cassie had been trying to tell him? Pick up your weapons, indeed! Had even she guessed at the new strength of his magic?

Like a butterfly pumping fluid into his wet wings, he stretched to feel the limits of his power and laughed aloud.

The gasp of a quickly drawn breath recalled him to himself.

A small shame nibbled at the edge of his conscience. So enraptured had he been by his vanquishing of the killer that he had forgotten the victim.

“Come out now,” he called softly to her, peering into the darkness of the alley. “You’re safe now.”

There was no answer. Concern that she had been hurt more than he suspected creased his brow. He stepped quickly back to the place where the killer had crouched over her. “Where are you?” he called again, and spun as she broke cover behind him. He caught a fleeting glimpse of her under the streetlamp as she ran, her torn clothing clutched around her bruised body.

“Wait! I won’t hurt you!” he called after her and started to follow, only to stumble over leather straps. He nearly fell.

Reaching down, he untangled her shoulder bag from about his stockinged feet. Her purse, torn from her grip by her attacker and forgotten in her panic. He heard the jingle of keys, felt the lump of wallet inside it. She’d need it. He tucked it under his arm and ran after her.

By the time he reached the mouth of the alley and looked around, she had already turned a corner and was out of sight.

He stood still, perplexed, flinching at the thought of her fleeing through the dark streets with no way to get home, not even a quarter for the phone. Who else might target her as a victim?

Then he chuckled at his own foolishness. Could he forget so soon? He reached after her. There. The scent of her fear was as distinctive as perfume in the cold air. He ran lightly after her, his robe and cloak rippling soundlessly behind him.

Terror had spurred her, and she had fled like a rabbit, turning as corners presented themselves to throw off her pursuer. Wizard felt a touch of pity for her- She couldn’t know as yet that he meant her no harm. Yet her pathetic efforts to elude him had a touch of humor he could not deny. It was like a toddler trying to hide from the night things by putting a pillow over his head. In his night, in his city, no one could evade him. For two blocks she eluded him with the winged feet of fear. He caught full sight of her at last and called to her. “Wait!”

With a smothered shriek, she was off again. He paused and took a breath in exasperation. The damp front of his robe clung to him annoyingly. With an impatient shake of his head, he dried it and chased the chill from his body. He stooped to pull Up his socks, then wished them dried and water repellent. All was as he ordered it. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He supposed he had grown long accustomed to discomfort and inconvenience. Now, where had the girl gone? He closed his eyes and groped after her. He was getting better at this with every passing instant. He located her easily this time, running through an alley some block and a half distant and weeping as she ran. No need to pursue her. He could now predict, even guide her course. It would be child’s play to cut her off. He lifted his long robe and ran lightly down the sidewalk to his planned interception point, chuckling soundlessly as he ran.

He appeared in the mouth of the alley before her, leaping out silently with outstretched arms to catch her. She screeched in horror, pursued beyond sanity. She stopped so swiftly she fell to her knees. Without trying to rise, she Jerked herself around and scrambled away from him on all fours. The alley was cluttered with garbage cans and dumpsters. An inordinate amount of plain junk was scattered about, as if the contents of a room had been thrown down from above. She scuttled and hid from his eyes but he could see her. He didn’t mean to laugh; she was so scared, when all he meant her was good. But it was too ridiculous a situation; no doubt when she realized she had been fleeing her benefactor she, too. would see the humor.

And he was tired of the pursuit. Poor little fool; best for her if she were captured and it was over.

He waved his hand, and the other end of the alley closed before her. The wall he had called up glowed with a fungus light, and dark shapes coalesced beyond its translucence. She snatched herself back from it, breathing in little moaning pants.

She fell and cowered upon the paving stones, huddled in on herself.

Come here, now,“ he ordered her in a kindly voice.

She only whimpered.

“No harm will come to you if you do as I say. Come to me.

She rolled herself into a tighter ball. He frowned at her stubbornness- He began to pick his way through the junk and clutter, then halted. It would be better for her to come out and face her fears, he decided abruptly. For her own good.

Having been driven himself, he well knew how to drive.

With a gesture he freed a sinuous gray shadow from the wall of light. It oozed toward her like a monstrous slug, elongating itself to surround her and force her to its master. She screamed at its touch and staggered up and forward a step before she collapsed again. Wizard shook his head. She had so little stamina. Was this the woman he had risked his life for? Idly he held his creature in check to see if she would rally. She didn’t.

Very well, then. He would have to go to her. He banished the creature back to the wall and began clambering over junk to the woman. But as he stooped over the cringing woman, he realized his creature had not returned to the wall as he had commanded it. Instead, the wall had come to it. It pushed even closer.

He gasped in recognition.

Mir laughed in acknowledgment and surged forward to join him over their prize.

He wavered then, in a moment as long as his life. Kinship and camaraderie and the electrical excitement of being the conqueror seethed within the wall. Come forward to join Mir and be no longer alone. Nagging doubts would vanish, and he would know, not peace, but headlong decisiveness and life burned to the socket. At last they had found one another. His long exile was over.

Revulsion, sudden as an explosion, rushed over him. He threw his strength against it, every strand of power be had discovered and tested this night. He flung it up before gray Mir in a restraining web and rushed forward to lift the woman with his human hands. She staggered up and leaned against him, unable to stand. He could not bring himself to look into that tortured face. A rush of shame burned him as he pushed her purse into her nerveless hands. She took it, seeming scarcely aware of what she did. Tottering free of him, she pulled ineffectually at her torn clothes, trying with feeble hands to hide her nakedness from the November wind.

Grayness lunged for her. Wizard pressed it back, feeling the far snapping of restraints as small bits of his magic gave way before it. It laughed like the wind booming through tattered sails, and the world swayed beneath Wizard’s feet. Impossibly, the magic he had woven to hold it back was falling in on him, like a net dropping onto a tiger. The chase had stirred its appetite; it would have both of them this night. Wizard squeezed his eyes to slits and threw the last of his power up before it.

The great mass of power he had so shortly wielded had been thrown back against him. What was his own small magic against that omnipotence? He could not win. It knew it- It leaned into him, enjoying me slow crumbling of his defenses.

“Run!” he gasped to the woman, but she only stared at him, blank-eyed. When his strength failed, she would be helpless before the grayness. His demon would rend her.

He reached to the silver tassels at his throat. His fingers were stiff claws that ripped them free of their knot. One-handed, he swirled the cloak free of his shoulders and over her. He felt a part of his strength go with it, a peeling away like a layer of skin. The woman stood up within the cloak, finding the presence of mind to clutch it around her chilled body.

“Run!” he commanded her again, and this time she seemed to hear him. Enough sanity returned to her face that her fear was rational. She saw Wizard with his hand upraised before the gray shape in the gathering mist. Her wide eyes smote him, echoing of Cassie’s. She turned and ran away. He was glad.

Cheated of its second victim, Mir fell on him with me weight of the earth itself. Real, Cassie had said. She was right. A talon or tooth or blade penetrated Wizard’s guard, slashing at him. Blood welled along his ribs. The cloak would have protected him, he realized vainly, and let the thought run away unconsidered. He tried to focus his own powers to a jabbing point, but it was like trying to roll a quilt into a spear. It could buffer the attacks of the grayness, but it could not prevent them, and it was no weapon. Mir surrounded him, its pressure building. His eardrums pressed in against his brain. He felt me leap of Mood from his nose, felt his lungs squashing up high in his chest. He went as small and hard as a nut in its grasp.

For a second he felt relief. Then the trick failed him. The pressure mounted again; he had nowhere left to flee. He could not close his eyes, had no breath left to scream.

A softness that smelled like ginger and vanilla settled over him, forcing Mir back and offering respite. He took a breath, opened bloodshot eyes.

Mir loomed over them both. Cassie was wrapped in his cloak, her black hair spilling down her back and gleaming like polished ebony. One of Wizard’s hands clutched at the crumpled front of his stained robe; his hat with its crooked point was sliding down over one of his ears. Her hand was on his shoulder, joining them. He drew a breath, and with it Knew that Cassie’s power was strained to its limits, was screaming with the load of the grayness against it. Even together, they were not enough.

She had come on a fool’s errand, to go down with him. It was Just as hopeless, but slower. He wished be had the breath to tell her so.

“Hold on!” she shouted, and her voice reached him from across a vast dark plain. “They’re coming. Night makes it hard for them.”

He gave his head a minuscule shake, taking no meaning from her words. But he took the last reserve of his power, the small bit he had not known he was saving, the piece that meant he expected to live, and flung it into the face of the grayness.

Mir laughed with triumph.

And screamed with sudden pain.

Pigeons are not nocturnal. At night they are plump puffs of feathers perched in high sheltered places, sleeping more soundly than fat cats on sunny window ledges. They do not see well at night. They seem weaponless, lacking the taloned feet and hooked beaks of me raptors. But a mower pigeon can accurately crack (he knuckles of an intruding hand venturing into her nest with a sharp stroke of her wing. The pointed pink or black beak that pricks out bits of popcorn from cracks in cobblestones occasionally jabs even the soft palm of one who offers largesse.

And the battering wings and Jabbing beaks of a thousand hungry pigeons in competition for food are not to be ignored. By anything.

They had heard, had received the call of Wizard summoning them to be fed- So they came, hungry always, blundering through the darkness. They dove to his feast, squabbling and crowding one another as they fought for the writhing threads and juicy gobs of grayness. Plucking and gulping, they dismantled it. Mir roared its agony through Wizard’s bones. Its pain exploded inside him in the place where it had sheltered, burning like phosphorous in his guts. The night turned black and red before his eyes. To his ears came only the cooing and fluttering of pigeons, pecking one another in their eagerness as they snatched up wet, gray chunks. The agonized roar inside him became a shriek that rose up in pitch, passing through the scales of his hearing until it reached a shrillness that his ears could no longer perceive. Wizard sat rocking in the darkness, his hands over his tortured eardrums, wondering if it had stopped, or if it would scream on endlessly inside him, too high to be consciously perceived.

The wondering was his own. When he recognized that, he opened his clenched eyes to the grayness of city night. A simple grayness, unthreatening. Just the gray light of streetlamps, blessedly empty of any cognizance. He wished he could sit and bask in it and rest. Not yet. It was not quite finished. He heaved himself up, wiping blood from his face onto the sleeve of his robe. Cassie he saw leaning against the wall of me alley, beside the Great Winds dumpster. She looked drained, but he sensed that she strained still to hold Mir at bay.

He reached her side and touched her arm gently. “No need,” he whispered hoarsely. “That part is done.”

Her legs gave way beneath her and she sank to the cold pavement. He crouched beside her on nerveless legs that trembled with weariness. Together they watched the pigeons clean it up. It seemed to take forever, but Wizard did not mind.

Cassie was leaning against him, warning him, and her soft hair beneath his chin smelled of the garden. They sat silently, watching the busy beaks of the pigeons. He knew they both thought of that summer day when he had left the cavalcade to find her. Threads of gold and silver, woven together so seldom, and always so briefly. He pulled her closer, thinking of the befores they shared.

When at last me pigeons were sated, no bones or teeth remained at the core of the thing. The plump birds sat about on the paving stones, blinking sleepy round eyes, full to capacity at last- In the center of the alley, untouched by beaks, rested a small gray document box. -

“This part’s for me,” Wizard sighed. He dragged himself to his feet, reluctantly pushing Cassie back when she would have joined him. He stepped softly up to the box and stood over it. When he nudged it with his toe, he heard a ghastly scuttling inside it. “Still,” he marveled. He lifted his foot and brought it down sharply, concentrating on smashing the paving stones that lay beneath the box. The shock of the blow jolted up through his spine. He felt the lock and lid give way, to crush down upon whatever was in there. The heel of his sock grew warm and heavy with his own blood.

But when he nudged the box again, all was silent within.

“What was in there?” Cassie wondered.

“You don’t want to know,” he assured her.

He picked it up with dirty newspapers from me dumpster and dropped it into a smoke-blackened footlocker lying underneath the fire escape. He touched the lid and it fell, to shut with a thud over the thing. He knelt before it to fasten the catches shut.

“Give me a hand?” he asked Cassie.

There were handles on either end of the fire-blackened footlocker. The load within was heavier than it had any right to be. The shape of the footlocker was awkward and their disparate heights made it no easier. They walked side by side down the night sidewalks, each gripping a handle and dodging parking meters. Cassie did not need to be told they were heading for the public dock.

They spoke very little at all. Once Cassie said, “They were all sleeping in high places, or I could have reached them sooner.

They would have come right away, if you had thought of calling (hero yourself. I used your voice, but they were still wary of believing me.“

And once he observed, “This has been the longest night of my life,” to which she replied, “The dawn is wise enough to wait some snuggles out.”

The sea splashed and heaved beneath the public docks.

Wizard stared down at the lacy tops of the waves. “Is it deep enough here?” Cassie worried.

“I don’t think it will stop at me bottom,” he assured, her.

Together they swung it, once, twice, three times and away.

There was no splash, no rising of bubbles. It was gone. The sea wind made streamers of their doming.

Beside him, Cassie fussed with the silver tassels of the cloak.

They came undone in her fingers and she slipped from its shelter. Bruises were shadows on her white skin, revealed by her own torn clothes. Wizard winced. She draped me cloak over his arm, but when he tried to put it again about her shoulders, she stepped away from him. “I’ve borrowed your strength long enough. Take it again, and give back to me what is mine.

Puzzled, be slung the cloak around his shoulders. The warmth of her body clung to it still, and be had to smile sadly as he met her eyes. Then he felt me slow peeling away of something, like a tight garment being drawn off his body. For an instant he felt naked and chilled, and men his own power nose to protect him again.

“I’ve been using your magic tonight,” he said, finally grasping it. She nodded, looking down at the rough wood of me dock.

“I put it upon you when I held you, knowing it was forbidden, but too fond of you to let you go unsheltered. If I had known me strength of me grayness, I would not have had the courage to do so. But I did not. I thought I was wise. I set my own trap for it, never guessing how easily it could overpower me once I had tent my strength to you. I did not guess the hold it had on you.” She paused suddenly, shaking her head violently. “You had hidden your torment too well. You were right, you know. It was within you as well as without, just as real in both places. And when I saw it upon you, saw you transformed in it…I thought I would go mad with horror. I fled. Even now, when I think of now easily it hunted me down using you… But it is done. You are free now.”

She was giving him me pieces faster than he could fit them together. “It was your power I used, men, when I faced it down?”

She shook her head, not looking at him. “You used mine upon me knife; did not you guess that ferocity was woman’s magic? The soaring rush you felt afterward; that was seduction of me grayness. I saw you swept away from me. But when you cloaked me in your protection and sent me away, I took my magic with me as well. I needed it, to find and rouse your pigeons, and call them to you. Then, when I returned… I know you felt me join you.”

The spice scent. He nodded slowly, beginning to understand as Cassie fitted me pieces together for him. But Cassie never explained anything- Something was terribly wrong. He reached and turned her face up to his. Moonlight and streetlights touched her tears.

“Why are you crying?” Her tears hurt him as nothing else had.

“Because I am hurt!” She cried out. She pulled gently free of him, wrapping herself tightly in her arms. She stood so alone. “Why do you think the rules are given us, if not to keep us from hurting ourselves? But me decision was mine. I took it upon myself, to give you what you would not ask for. My magic. To call for you the allies you had prepared so well for this battle. I unbalanced my magic. But I could have done nothing else. Could I have watched you destroyed? Knowing that for all the times and tomorrows dial might ever come, never again would our paths cross? Shall I be sorry for what I did? But it hurts. Yes. All the old scars have come unhealed.

I had forgotten it could hurt this bad. All the old pains are new again.“

He nodded stiffly, knowing what she meant. The pains that came out of the past and haunted, hurting past toleration. A pain that made you explode at a touch. He could not reach after her as she walked to the edge of the dock. The full moon was over the sea, sending a wrinkling silver path across the waves to diem. Cassie gave him one anguished look and then stepped down onto that path. He hurried to the edge of the dock and stood looking after her. She walked steadily away, her small feet leaving no impression on the ocean’s salty face.

Her silhouette grew small against the moon.

“I’ll see you later!” he cried after her.

She never answered.

“SEEN CASSIE?” asked Rasputin.

Wizard shook his head slowly. It had become a ritual greeting among them. Always one asked,‘and one denied silently.

Nothing more than this was ever said about her. Wizard had all the memories now, and he clung to them. He had given up trying not to hope.

“So what you want me for, I-Don’t-Know Wizard?”

It was June again, and Rasputin shone in the pleasant weather.

Enamelled red hoops glittered in his earlobes, and his bare chest was decked in successions of bright red seed necklaces. They rattled when he danced, and even when he was still, they clicked softly against one another, maintaining the secret rhythm of his endless dance. A light wind rustled the leaves of the trees in Occidental Square.

“See her?” Wizard nodded at a bench across the way from them. He flung another handful of popcorn from the withered bag on the seat beside him. Pigeons fluttered and scrabbled around their feet. Rasputin nudged them away from his bare toes and scowled.

“See who?”

“On the left end of the bench. Move your eyes just a little, to catch her at an angle. See her now?”

“I don’t see nothing but an empty bench. You getting snaky on us. Wizard?”

Wizard made an impatient motion of his head and caught up one of his pigeons. He whispered to it for an instant and then flung it aloft. It fluttered frantically, made altitude, then wheeled and came sliding down to light on me empty bench.

“A chameleon!” Rasputin gasped.

Her startkanent?? had betrayed her. When she moved, she was visible. But as soon as she was still again, she began to blend back into her surroundings. Subtle ripplings of color crossed her. In a moment, she was invisible again.

“I’ll be damned!” Rasputin whistled low. “Looks like maybe you found one. You talked to her yet?”

Wizard shook his head. “I’ve been watching her for about a week. She’s completely unaware of what she is doing. I thought I’d get your opinion before I approached her.”

Rasputin shrugged. “Ain’t my department. You go talk to her, take her around a little. Run her past Euripides and see if she Knows him. The usual stuff. If she pans out, bring her by me- I’ll give her the rules.”

Two wizards leaned back on their park bench. The blue robes of one fluttered against his bare feet. The other’s fingers twitched in his endless dance. No one gave them a second glance. It was a fine June day in the Emerald City.