She looks quizzically at me. In memory I hear a happy voice chirping “I got a secret” and smile.
“Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge,” I reply, nodding.
“Let’s test this out,” Abalone says, leaping to her feet. “Sarah, can you hear anything talk?”
Again I am at a loss how to answer honestly. I am beginning to believe I might be able to hear anything speak if I try hard enough, but on the occasions I have—such as the terrible day in the Jungle when memory of Dylan opened my mind—the rush of voices has been more than I can handle without being overwhelmed.
I shake my head, reluctantly telling a half-truth.
“I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls,” I suggest, proffering Betwixt and Between.
“You’re saying you can hear them?” Abalone confirms.
When I nod, she goes on, “What I have in mind is for Sarah to go into her room and close the door. Then we’ll whisper something to Betwixt and Between and if she can really communicate with it, she’ll be able to tell us what we said.”
“I’ll agree,” Professor Isabella says, “if we use a quote from some work that Sarah knows. I’ve noticed that she can’t parrot anything—she needs to attach importance to it. I suspect that this is a side result of her empathy.”
“Flash with me,” Abalone agrees. “Are you game, Sarah?”
“Yes.” I nod solemnly.
“Us, too,” Between says, “and thanks so much for asking while you’re at it.”
I go to my room and sit on my bed, contemplating the oddness of this all. Around me, I can hear the comfortable grumbles of the building’s brick walls as they twinge and settle in the chill and damp.
A rap on the door summons me. Abalone and Professor Isabella look expectant and Betwixt and Between sit in the middle of the rug, looking smug.
I pick them up and scratch Between’s eye ridge and Betwixt’s jawline coaxingly. The dragons sigh happily.
Between says, “Merchant of Venice, One, three. The bit about the devil and scripture.”
I smile, aware that the dragons are salvaging their pride by being a bit difficult. Then I look at Abalone and Professor Isabella.
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul, producing holy witness, is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
“She got it!” Abalone says excitedly.
“This is hardly a controlled experiment,” Professor Isabella murmurs, “but, ruling out telepathy and other unlikely phenomena, I agree. She does seem to have it.”
They are so excited that even Betwixt and Between willingly accede to further tests. When we have finished some hours later and are sipping tea with honey, Abalone suddenly looks apprehensive.
“If Sarah can talk to things, does that mean she can, like, well, learn stuff about people? Private stuff?”
Professor Isabella smiles softly. “Probably. But the question isn’t really ‘can she?’ it is ‘would she?’ isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Abalone says, scuffing her feet on the linoleum. “Once I learned how to crack files, I got really interested in finding out what other people were hiding. I guess I’m wondering if Sarah is like that, too.”
“Ask her,” Professor Isabella suggests.
“Well, Sarah, I figure you know I’ve been kinda secretive about some stuff. Did you ever, like, check me out?”
I shake my head, patting her hand. “A secret’s safe ‘twixt you, me, and the gatepost.”
“Does this make me the gatepost?” Professor Isabella chuckles. “Honey, you didn’t even ask, did you?”
I shake my head. “Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.”
Abalone squeezes me. “You’re all right, Sarah. Y’know, weird as they make them, but all right.”
Smile fading, Professor Isabella says, “I’m worried. If Ivy Green let Sarah go something like fifteen years ago, why do they—or someone—want her back now?”
“Now?” Abalone shakes her head. “I’m not sure, but I can think of lots of reasons for wanting someone who can do what she can do.”
“We can keep asking questions,” Professor Isabella says, “but you do realize what this means. We have to get Sarah out of here—this is no longer just keeping her from getting recommitted. This is keeping her from getting kidnapped.”
Abalone considers this. “What do you have in mind?”
“I was thinking we could go out into the countryside, get Sarah to a place where she doesn’t have to be walled in but where she can go out of the house without someone identifying her as the Brighton Rock girl.”
“I’m not sure that she’ll be any safer,” Abalone objects, “and I’ll find hiding my tracks harder away from a city. Here I can go to any of a thousand places to link my computer—anyone traces me and they find a rented room or a closed office. Out there…”
As Abalone trails off, Professor Isabella nods.
“Perhaps there is safety in numbers. We’ll need to dye Sarah’s hair and she’ll need to wear contacts to recolor her eyes. We can’t take risks with wigs now.”
I strike a pose. “I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair.”
“I was thinking of red—a less-flamboyant shade than those that Abalone favors—it would go well with your coloring. Perhaps we can manage dark brown eyes.”
I nod, well pleased with the image. I had been disappointed that they hadn’t disguised me more thoroughly earlier—the romantic image of it enthralled me, but then I had heard Professor Isabella saying, “It broke my heart to have to hide her this way—at least at home she can be herself.”
But two days later finds me with auburn hair and dark brown eyes and red corneas. The cosmetic contacts that Abalone has brought me burn somewhat. She promises me that she will bring me other sets.
And then we go on living. Professor Isabella takes me to museums and as February moves into March, the Brighton Rock ads are withdrawn from the market. The candy stays on, however. Apparently, the ad campaign had been useful for something.
One afternoon, I am changing myself into the brown-eyed stranger in the mirror when there is a banging in the direction of the living room window. One contact in, one contact out, I rush into the living room, bumping into Professor Isabella.
As we are jostling to get through the door, Abalone, still scrubbing sleep from her eyes, steps into the room.
“Damn!”
She runs forward and shoves the window open. Two small figures fall into the room. I recognize Chocolate’s dreadlocks and hear Conejito Moreno cursing indignantly from the bottom of the pile.
“Peep! Chocolate!”
Forgetting that we are in hiding, I joyfully raise the boys to their feet, removing Conejito Moreno’s ears from beneath Peep’s foot and handing him to his friend.
Close to tears, the little Tail Wolf clings to me.
“Abalone! Sarah! We be of one blood, ye and I, and Madre de Dios, they have the Head Wolf!”
Her eyes widening and suspicion bordering her mouth, Abalone checks outside before shutting the window. Flicking the lock into place, she turns.
“Slow, Peep. Don’t flip. How’d you find us?”
“We look for two days, Abalone,” Chocolate says. “It not easy to find you, but we got lotta ears and eyes, but this no matters. What we here for is not friendly visit. They got Head Wolf.”
“They?” Professor Isabella asks, simultaneously with Abalone.
“Yeah,” Peep is shaking too hard to continue, so Chocolate fills in.
“They, the Home from where Sarah come. Two days ago. Come and get him with the police and all when he go to do some fix-up on the tromp the eye painting over the east Jungle entrance. Take him so fast that not even the Four can help. We come here ’cause Sarah know that Home, maybe she know why they want Head Wolf.”
“Shit!” Abalone has h
ooked up her tappety-tap and is fingering icons and pulling files. “Let me tap into the Home.”
Professor Isabella leads the frightened boys to the sofa and I go for coffee with lots of sugar and cream. As I pour and mix, I listen.
“What is the Pack doing about this?” Professor Isabella asks.
“Not much good,” Peep says. “Most of the lupos were sleeping when Head Wolf got taken—y’know the Law.”
“Why was Head Wolf out in the daytime?” Professor Isabella asks. “He’s usually fairly strict about keeping his own rules.”
“Some gang come and slash and spray,” Chocolate says. “The canvas need quick fix now and then Head Wolf was checking how much work he need to do.”
“Then the police come,” Peep says. “We saw it all, ’cause we had stayed out for breakfast at Jerome’s place.”
“Too damn little,” Chocolate mutters angrily. “We too damn little and too damn scared and by the time we get some of the Four it too late. But we run after fast and check that what we hear is true. They take Head Wolf to the nuthouse.”
My pulse is beating too fast. This is too much to be coincidence. My hands start trembling so hard that I slosh the hot, sweet coffee onto the rug. No one but the rug notices.
“Got it!” Abalone growls through bared teeth. “The boys are cool. Head Wolf is in the Home. By the Opened Door that freed me! They have a record on him, an old one.”
“Really old or fabricated, Abalone?” Professor Isabella asks.
Abalone taps and new characters and colors overlay the ones already on the screen. She studies for a moment.
“Really old, I think. Some of these programming commands are outdated. Only a truly paranoid forger”—she grins briefly—“would bother to write a new file in an obscure older mode—especially if all they needed was a reason to grab him.”
“Do you know where they got him?” Peep asks.
“Pretty good idea,” Abalone says, “and I can narrow it down.”
“Good! Then we go, we get the man out of there,” Chocolate says, already on his feet.
“Not yet,” Professor Isabella countermands, pressing him back to his seat. “We need to think on this.”
Abalone raises cold eyes, her hand rests on her shirt, touching the hidden tattoo. The Tail Wolves look guardedly at the older woman. Even I am aware of feeling a sudden flash of hostility.
“We aren’t leaving him there,” Abalone states.
“No, I didn’t expect you would,” Professor Isabella looks stern. “And neither do ‘They’—Brighton Rock failed. Now they’re asking us to bring Sarah to them. Head Wolf is just bait, an engraved invitation.”
Abalone nods impatiently. “I guessed, but we don’t need to bring Sarah. Me, the Four, the boys—we can bust him out. Sarah’ll be safe.”
I squeak indignantly. Professor Isabella smiles coldly.
“Why have they taken him to the Home? Because only Sarah knows it well—even my information, if they even know of me, is dated. My guess is that the only way we will get in is if Sarah is with us.”
“Us?”
“I may be of one blood with no Wolf,” Professor Isabella says with another cold smile, “but even Kaa fought with the Seonee Wolves when his friend was in danger. I’ll help as I can.”
Professor Isabella insists that the Tail Wolves sleep. Agreeing, Abalone arranges for a message to be sent to the Jungle. Later, she will slip out to meet with the Four. Meantime, she calls up files on the Home, on Head Wolf.
“My oh My oh My oh My,” Abalone murmurs. “Shoulda known. Shoulda known this is how they’d see him.”
Her hand covers the picture between her breasts, a picture I suddenly realize was drawn by needle and pain and dye by Head Wolf himself with the same art through which he makes stone into wood and metal into paper. A twinge of envy touches me as I sense an intimacy beyond mere sex between this wild forger and her chosen lawgiver.
Professor Isabella leans over to look at the screen. Her tongue touches her dry lips as she reads the data.
“Ah, yes,” Professor Isabella agrees. “I suspected as much: paranoid with delusions, homicidal. Chemical equalizers unsuccessful. Quite a record here.”
Her musing trails off and she gestures with sudden urgency for Abalone to scroll the data upward.
“Did you see this?” she includes me with a glance. “He was once within the Mental Rehab system, a resident of the Home like both of us. But he was never released; he escaped.”
“Escaped?” Abalone scrolls the data. “Why would he have stayed so close? That’s crazy!”
“Precisely,” Professor Isabella chuckles dryly.
I blush as I recall a monologue, half-forgotten in the drowsy indolence following lovemaking.
“To pull the very whiskers of death,” I say.
Abalone looks at me, “Head Wolf said that to you?”
I nod.
“He got a kick out of it then,” she says, “out of knowing he was hidden right under their eyes and that they couldn’t touch him.”
“Couldn’t?” Professor Isabella tilts her head. “Or didn’t care to? Still, Abalone, I recognize this code. It means they have him scheduled for transfer within twenty-four hours. They may have decided that we weren’t going to respond and wanted him out of the way.”
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,” I say.
“Macbeth, Act One, scene seven,” Abalone replies, reaching for her night cloak.
“Lines one and two,” Professor Isabella adds, her words punctuated by the sharp, closing snap of the door as Abalone heads out into the night.
Nine
THE NEXT NIGHT COMES COLD AND DARK, DARK, THAT IS, IN the shadows and alleyways through which we make our approach on the Home. In the skies above, where we might seek omens of favor, the ambient city lights have washed out the stars as too much milk washes the taste from coffee.
We rattle through the subway tunnels to a rendezvous point where Abalone says we will be met by the Four.
“They’ve abandoned the Jungle,” she had told us when she returned the night before. “The place isn’t safe any longer. Even the social workers are daring to come there now—got a couple of the Cubs. Gray Brother told me that he and Head Wolf had anticipated such possibilities and that there are other hideouts. None so good as the Jungle, but they’ll do for now.”
When we skulk our way to the rendezvous point, we are met almost immediately by a slight figure, white and grey in the shadows: Edelweiss. Murmuring the Master Words for greeting, she slips a hood over her icy hair and beckons for us to follow.
We do. Me, once again cream-haired and jade-eyed, though the former is mostly concealed by a cap and the latter behind tinted shades. Betwixt and Between ride in a day-pack that leaves my hands free. Professor Isabella is next, incongruous in her tidy tweed slacks and matching jacket. Her soft-soled pumps click slightly against the sidewalk as she walks, her breath coming a little fast. Abalone is once again blue-lipped and fire-topped, her wolf tattoo shows through a cutaway in her charcoal skintights, her tappety-tap hanging from a broad belt around her waist.
I nearly do not recognize where we have come until Edelweiss is pushing the door open. Then the scent of stale coffee and cream of mushroom soup wafts from the humid interior and I know.
Professor Isabella whispers, “When I Was Hungry.”
I can hear puzzlement in her voice.
We walk down an L-shaped hallway, through the darkened kitchen, toward the rumble of voices. I recognize several and realize that my heart is quickening in anticipation of rejoining the Pack.
Anticipation flips into dismay as Edelweiss leads the way into the pale fluorescent light of the main cafeteria. The long plastic tables have been shoved into a rough U and the Pack members lounge on tabletops, chairs, and floor. In the center of the group, sitting stiffly on a garish orange chair, is Jerome.
No bonds restrain him, yet he sits as if tied. Only his eyes
move, watching the young men and women with fear and betrayal. I wonder to how many he has given food and shelter.
Although Edelweiss means to keep us in the L, I circle right and run forward, skidding on the linoleum floor and ending up on my knees by Jerome’s chair.
He puts out a hand to steady me and though his grip is strong, I feel an almost imperceptible trembling.
“You know these people, Sarah?”
I nod. “I was a stranger and ye took me in.”
“So that’s where you went. In all your visits, you never told me.” Jerome’s hand does not leave my arm, but his attention shifts outward. “What do all of you want here?”
Grey Brother, the leader of the Four, runs his finger along the wide scar beneath his right eye. The scar is genuine, his lime green hair and orange eyes are not. He caresses the howling wolf tattooed on his left forearm before speaking.
“We’re gonna free Head Wolf,” he says, “and you’re going to get us in to him. We know you work in the nuthouse.”
“The nuthouse—the Home, y’mean?” Jerome asks, and at Grey Brother’s nod continues. “Sure, I work there, but in the cafeteria. I never go much beyond the kitchen areas. I don’t know where your friend is.”
“No?” Grey Brother weighs and dismisses this. “So, you gotta have a pass. Open the door for us and draw us a map. We’ll go from there.”
“Pass? Sure, but it’s only good if the security computer clears it and at this hour they won’t clear me without some personnel checking.” Jerome chuckles without humor. “They’re always worried about the staff stealing from the place.”
The gathered Pack members mutter angrily, nervously.
“Shit!” Grey Brother says, flipping open his knife. “You’re no good to us.”
I stand and spread my arms, interposing myself between Jerome and the angry youth. Words are not necessary and I stare, willing him to remember me as one of Head Wolf’s favorites.
Whether he does or not, he steps back and the knife vanishes up his sleeve.
“Sarah, I won’t hurt him—now—but what are we going to do about getting to Head Wolf?”
I meet the orange eyes. “The next way home’s the farthest way about.”
Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls Page 10