IGMS Issue 17 (7 page)

"You should've seen it, Dad!" Matt was thin as a rail, too excited to want to bother with the soup that was all he could keep down lately. "Spring's coming and the sparrows -- I saw them! There's some other bird that's been trying to build a nest over my window, and the sparrows were chasing him off. It was great! The sparrows are crazy, they were all over the place!" He swung his hands through the air, making noises better suited to dog-fighting jet planes than songbirds, thoroughly delighted by the battle, though he couldn't say who won. Steve should have been grateful, but felt a seeping sense of guilt instead. He'd never kept secrets from Matt before.

But what was the alternative? There was no question of waking Matt up, introducing him to the junkie. Steve didn't even know her name. He knew nothing about where or how she lived. He spent hours talking with her every night, but let her in off the fire escape? Let those shadowed eyes meet Matt's?

No, and no.

Matt dragged Steve out of his reverie with both hands. He caught hold of his sleeve, giving it several urgent tugs.

"I said I want some mealworms, Dad!" he said.

Steve laughed. "Instead of soup?"

"Gross!" Matt said, giggling, too. "No. For on the fire escape. For different kinds of birds. You can get them at the bird food store." He'd gotten that much out of the Leah, it seemed, or maybe they'd been searching on the internet. "I feel bad," Matt continued. "The sparrows are picking on him, and that kind of bird really likes the worms. Please, Dad? You can take the money out of my piggy bank if you don't have enough."

"Save your money. Leah called me at work." Part of Leah's charm as a babysitter was her willingness to help Steve with little surprises like these. "I picked some up on the way home. I used to buy those things for your mom," Steve added. "She kept a bird feeder at our old house . . ."

How long had it been since he'd mentioned Sharon to Matt? He couldn't remember. "But you'll wash your hands after you've finished eating them."

"Ew, Dad!" protested Matt, and the moment passed.

After supper, they made a big deal of pouring dried mealworms into the feeder on the fire escape. The sun set behind the overcast sky, staining the clouds in uncertain shades of orange and violet. Later, the tide of Matt's fever rose up again, and made bath time more of a battle than it ought to have been. Matt was fretful when Steve tucked him into bed, spitting and pretending to gag at the taste of his medicine. Steve wanted to growl with frustration when the third pill skittered under the bed, and had to take a long, deep breath to stop grinding his teeth. He dragged his hands back through his hair, all too conscious of the shadow-slim figure waiting on the fire escape. . .

It was story time.

Matt wanted "The Juniper Tree," or, as he called it, "The one where the bird drops things on the stepmother's head."

Steve shook his head. "That one's too long," he said. "I'm tired. You're tired. How about Goldilocks?"

"I hate Goldilocks," said Matt. He crossed his arms across his thin chest, glaring, stubborn. "I want the one with the bird."

Steve knew that look, that mood. Matt was underfed and overtired, winding himself up for a battle, and if Steve kept protesting, there was going to be a knock-down, drag-out shouting match. Matt knew how to stick to his guns; he'd be perfectly happy yelling, "The bird! The bird!" at the top of his lungs for an hour if it got him his way. Just because he was sick didn't mean he was an angel. He could be as obnoxious as any kid. Steve supposed if he were a better father, he'd stick to his guns and give Matt a good, life-lesson here, but he was impatient, and caved in with bad grace.

Usually, The Juniper Tree was one of their favorites. There was so much to talk about: trickery, decapitation, and cannibalism, not to mention their usual debate over the physics of a songbird carrying a millstone. Not tonight. Steve skimmed over the dialogue, touched on only the barest bones of the story and buried the rest with a swift goodnight kiss on Matt's flushed cheek.

"Sweet dreams," Steve said, an order rather than a wish. "I love you."

He barely waited for Matt's sulky expression to smooth away before he rose and crossed to the window.

She was there, waiting, as he'd known she would be. The weather was changing. It was no longer bitterly cold on the fire escape, and though it wasn't raining at the moment, a storm hung heavily in the sky overhead. The air, though fresh, was charged with tension and offered no relief for Steve's aching head. Conversely, the junkie looked better than he had ever seen her. She was still thin, but had lost that brittle, desperate look, now appearing supple rather than starved. She had taken time to comb her fair hair, and her skin was smooth, unblemished and almost translucent. She seemed filled with her own radiance, though that might have been a trick of the night.

"Tell me a story," she said.

Steve felt his shoulders tense, as though knotted together. "Not tonight," he said. He'd wanted to see her, needed to see her, and what kind of world was it, that this was what he sought for a measure of sanity? "I'm so burnt after wrestling my temper and Matt's tantrums, I don't think I have the energy. Can't we just talk?"

He wanted to hear her voice, an adult conversation. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled, and his pulse throbbed in response. He could feel the question hanging between them, and ran his hand across his eyes in weariness.

"Just a small one," she said softly, the flicker of a smile passing across her face like lightning. "Goldilocks is fine with me."

He'd guessed she listened to him through the window some nights, but hearing it confessed like that, knowing for certain, felt worse than intrusion. His jaw clenched. He was angry. A surge all at once. Bad day gone worse.

"There was a line at the coffee place this morning," he said. "And I spilled half of it trying not to be late for work. All down the front of my suit, and I couldn't focus at work without the caffeine. Boss gave me one of those looks. Then to come home and have to deal with Matt . . ."

"Please," she said.

The word was polite enough, but he thought he heard impatience in her tone, and so refused to bend. He didn't know where the anger came from, but it was in full force now. Who was she? Out of all the souls in the city, why had she chosen him? She gave nothing, took everything.

Tomorrow, he'd apologize, but he was done tonight. No more. Normally, he was so cautious in front of her, careful not to give away too much, and yet here he'd thrown out Matt's name twice in the same minute, flinging small talk at her just to watch her flinch.

"We're living check to check as it is," Steve said. "I can't afford to slip up and lose this job. We'll wind up on the street, and no insurance."

"A story," she said. "A story first, before you go . . . a true one."

He pulled the corners of his mouth up in a grim mockery of a smile. "You know, I think I should just call it an early night and go to bed. Tomorrow, maybe. Night."

"Steven," she said. "Steven, I need . . ." Had he given her his name? He must have, though he couldn't remember when. He had no idea what to call her, and was too angry even to guess.

"Night," he repeated, neither good nor bad, promising nothing at all. He closed the window, feeling a spiteful satisfaction at the flash of anger in her eyes as he closed the curtain, knowing all the while that it was unfair, and probably cruel of him. He was in no mood to care. . He went off to bed with misery for company, but lay awake a long time, unable to rest while his mind churned over anger and guilt, a sick, hot sludge of unpleasant emotion that melded at some point with an ugly dream of Matt's birds stabbing at each other in a fierce, bloody battle over a crooked nest.

In the small hours just before dawn, Matt's fever spiked, and Steve found him retching and gasping on the floor outside the bathroom, unable to catch his breath and shaking with chills. Matt didn't even resist when Steve bundled him into a blanket and threw him into the car, even though he hated the hospital and everything it represented.

Steve drove like a madman all the way, and spent the day pacing the antiseptic-smelling halls in his pajamas, raincoat, and slippers. And all the while, the doctors ran test after test to see whether it was the old cancer, a reaction to the medicine, or some new demon, twisting through Matt's fragile body, trying to break it from within.

Matt had no resistance any more. The drugs they gave him made him sleep, and the nurses sent Steve home to take a shower and change his clothes. There was nothing he could do, they said, but wait, and see what the test results showed in the morning.

The weather had changed while he was inside the hospital. The storm was gone, and in its place, a vast and shifting fog seemed to have swallowed the world. It was as though he and his car were the only things left on the planet. Familiar streets looked strange. Buildings were no more than indistinct shadows, looming almost into view, and skulking away again when he turned to look them full on. The car's headlights barely cut through the gloom, and Steve drove home at twenty miles an hour, afraid of hitting something.

By the time he got home, he had grown used to the nothingness and isolation. The bright lights in the lobby made everything seem surreal by comparison. He chalked it up to his own weariness. His whole body was a grinding exhaustion, which a shower did little to alleviate. He pulled on clean clothes and heated and ate some leftover soup without any real, conscious thought. They had a cot waiting for him in Matt's room at the hospital, and his plan was to bring a few of Matt's favorite toys and books back with him. But when he closed his eyes to rest them for a moment, and then opened them and found himself standing at the window to the fire escape in Matt's room, he wasn't surprised.

She was waiting.

He had known she would be.

"No more games," he said. "I can't stay. Matt's in the hospital. He needs me. I should never have let you --"

He choked on the words. It was one thing to suspect she had been using Matt as bait for nothing more than a handful of fairytales. It was another to say the words aloud.

"I can cure him." She had no such reticence. She stood taller than he had ever seen her, her black coat changed for one of grey. It made her look even more sparrow-like. Though the fog was all around them and the air was dead calm, the clothes she wore and the strands of her hair moved as if touched by some otherworldly wind. Her eyes burned like the hidden stars; her lips were nearly as red as blood. She was beautiful, terrible and as untouchable as the fog itself. "For a price."

"What?" Steve said. "What price? I'll pay it." He was too tired to be angry. Too worried to be careful.

"Yourself," she replied. "If you swear to come away with me, to live with me and tell me stories always. To be mine, and mine alone," she said. "For that, I will use my magic. I will cure him."

"You want us to go with you so I can tell you stories?" he asked, feeling slow and stupid. There had to be a catch to it. It couldn't be this easy.

"Not the child," the sparrowjunkie answered. "Just you. It's you I need, Steven. Without you, I will fade away again. Worse than what you first saw of me. I will die."

"Why?" he asked.

"You believe," she said.

He blinked. His eyelids felt like sandpaper, scraping against his eyes. Believe. He did -- yes. He believed in the stories, believed in her magic. Was that what had been feeding her? Was that her addiction? Had she been haunting him simply because he believed in the stories he told? Was that what she needed?

"All right," said Steve. He heard the words almost before he'd even realized he'd spoken them. There really was no other choice. He did believe, and believing, knew her promise was a better chance for Matt than any combination of drugs and doctors.

"My life for his. I can agree to that."

It would leave Matt an orphan, alone in an unfamiliar city, but it was better than dying. It had to be. "You'll cure him? He'll be healthy, once and for all?"

"This I swear," she said. She held out her hand. The soft pad at the tip of each finger had been pierced by something. She was bleeding -- a slow, red trickle against her white skin.

"You won't hurt him," Steve said. His own hand was extended, but he hesitated, inches separating their fingertips.

"He will take no harm from me," she promised. "But you will never speak to him or touch him again. You may look upon him, from a distance," she said, granting a lone concession. "But he will never know you. All your stories, all your love, will belong to me."

"Yes," said Steve. "Alright. I promise." He touched her then, palm to palm, their fingertips aligned. Her skin was cold as ice, but her blood burned. He drew a long, hissing breath. It felt as though hot wires had been thrust into his bones His arm jerked and twisted. The nerves leapt under his skin. She leaned forward, touched her lips to his. They were soft, cool, and unexpectedly sweet. Like the clasp of her hand, the kiss burned, but Steve did not pull back.

In the end, she was the one who let go.