Wizard of the Pigeons (26 page)

‘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 humour 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 at 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 humour. 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 before 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 grey 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 acknowledgement 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 he had discovered and tested this night. He flung it up before grey 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.

Greyness 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 the slow crumbling of his defences.

‘Run!' he gasped to the woman, but she only stared at him, blank-eyed. When his strength failed, she would be helpless before the greyness. 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 grey 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 the 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 greyness, 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 the leap of blood 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 greyness 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 he 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 greyness. 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 the raptors. But a mother pigeon can accurately crack the 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 dived to his feast, squabbling and crowding one another as they fought for the writhing threads and juicy gobs of greyness. 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, grey 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 greyness of city night. A simple greyness, unthreatening. Just the grey 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 the 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, warming 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 the 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 centre of the alley, untouched by beaks, rested a small grey 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 marvelled. 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 the 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 them yourself. I used your voice, but they were still wary of believing me.'