Wizard of the Pigeons

by Megan Lindholm

  Dark cold pressed against the back of his neck as be headed up South Jackson. Strips and rags of-fog drifted past him and tried to surround him. Gray as Mir. Wizard walked faster. His heart was beating hard in his chest when he reached the mouth of his alley. He glanced furtively about, but he was alone.

  A light toss of the wizard bag took it to the landing of the old fire escape. The chicken bag followed it. He bounced once or twice on the balls of his feet, trying to limber up muscles chilled stiff. He sprang, caught the old pipe, braced a foot lightly against the bricks, and pushed up until his hands could shift suddenly to the edge of the fire escape. He hauled himself up silently. Moments later he was sliding open the propped window, and then he was inside the outer chamber of his den.

  He stumbled into the inner room where he slept. He was tired. Too tired. Too tired to light his can of sterno and brew a hot cup of tea. Too tired to do anything but put his sodden wizard bag safely into his wardrobe box. He let his clothing fall to the floor around him. It was too wet and dirty to use again. Tomorrow he would redonate it to the Salvation Army.

  He shivered as he pulled on his quilted long-Johns and a dry pair of socks. Black Thomas was nowhere to be seen or felt. He wished he were here to share the cold chicken. Wizard burrowed into his bedding, shivered himself into a warm ball, and then felt the growlings of an unappeased stomach. He reached out into the darkness to the chicken bag and found a thigh piece. His nose and ears were cold, but he didn’t want to pull the blankets over his head. He dropped the greasy bone beside the mattress for the cat and sat up to reach for a woolen cap from his wardrobe box.

  It watched him. It gloated. Wizard stared back, but it didn’t go away. Because it was real. A cold separate from night slunk through his bones. Who was the prisoner and who was the guard? It had nearly had him tonight; it knew it, too. They both knew and sat staring at one another, knowing it together.

  Wizard’s hand found the cap. Slowly he drew it to him and dragged it on over his ears. Ever so slowly he eased himself down, never taking his eyes from it. The closet door hung broken on one hinge. It would not be shut in again. It glowed faintly in the dark with a rotten, mildewed light. The accusing letters never blinked. MIR.

  NINJA WOKE HIM an hour before dawn grayed the skies. Wizard never heard her light steps. What shocked him out of sleep was the thunderous clapping of wings as the pigeons fled for their lives. They thudded blindly into the walls of the dark room, calling pathetically to one another. He rolled from his mattress and leaped at a darker patch of moving night. Ninja gave a howl of dismay and released a flapping bird. Wizard gripped the big black cat by the scruff of her neck. “How did you get in here?” he demanded of her, but she only growled murderously in her throat. Tucking her under his arm, he gathered up last night’s chicken bones. He took Ninja into the next room and then dumped her unceremoniously outside the window of the fire escape. The bones followed. A piece of old plywood kept for just such occasions blocked the window and her reentry. Wizard went back to his den.

  In the blackness he groped for his can of Sterno. Ninja growled and crunched bones outside the window. Inside, the pigeons rustled on their high shelves and cooed reassuringly to their mates. He set the Sterno inside the punctured coffee can that served as a light shield and stove. He stared through the dimness at the Sterno surface and focused his mind. Flames.

  He sat still, recalling the perfect flickering details of a tongue of fire. He was still sleepy and it took longer than usual to bring the magic to bear. It came as dancing sparks that finally and suddenly coalesced into a single fat flame.

  He shivered as he set the pan of rainwater over the mouth of the can. Little bits of light escaped from the holes in the can’s sides, spattering dots of light on the wall but not illuminating the room. He was grateful. He didn’t need light to sense the hulking presence of the footlocker in its closet; it crouched beside the half-fallen door like a gray predator awaiting unwariness. He herded his eyes and mind away from it and immersed himself in his routine.

  As his tea brewed, he dug out a pair of corduroy pants and a Pendleton shirt. Mandarin Orange Spice was an herbal tea with no caffeine, but he spiked it heavily with pilfered sugar packets. The sweetness warmed him and calmed his shivering.

  The last piece of cold chicken became his breakfast. A quick check of the fire escape revealed that Ninja had eaten and left.

  He set his boots down by the window and opened the connecting door between the rooms for the pigeons. By ones and twos they fluttered past him and sought the dawn sky. Returning to his own room, he kindled a candle from his hoard and extinguished his precious supply of Sterno. Time to tidy up the den, he admonished himself as he slipped ninety-nine cents into his pants pocket. Yesterday’s clothing went into a bag to be disposed of today.

  He smoothed the crumpled sides of the wizard bag and set it carefully atop his wardrobe box. He shook and respread his blankets atop his thin mattress He tidied his books, bringing their spines even with the front of the shelf and carefully wiped out his tea mug. The crumpled wrappings from the cold fish and chicken were placed beside his boots for disposal in the dumpster. A glance out his window showed him that his darkness was still holding. He dug out his pocket mirror and shaved with the warm water from the kettle. He detested shaving without running water, but today he resolved to be fully prepared before he set foot out the window. He finished his cleanup with time to spare and extinguished the candle. The skies were Just beginning to lighten.

  Secure and satisfied, he looked around his room. His gaze ran aground on the footlocker’s stark grayness. Its foreign presence mocked him, blowing away the homey comfort of his small den and meager possessions like an icy gale through a broken window. It turned his departure into a rout. He tied his boots, glanced back over his shoulder at it, and left laden with items to dispose of. As he exited, he propped the window for the pigeons.

  He walked briskly, propelled by dread of the thing in his room. His mind sought refuge in a detailed schedule for his day. Everything would be planned, each step completed carefully, so that nothing might derail this day and make it a repeat of yesterday’s disaster. First, he would dispose of the soiled clothing. Then, coffee and food; he had eaten only sparsely yesterday, and his stomach was a growling burden. Then Cassie. He set his teeth tightly together as he imagined admitting to her the loss of the popcorn bag. Well, it couldn’t be helped. The sooner he faced up to it, the sooner it would be remedied.

  He refused to wonder if Cassie would be able to help him with it. Of course she could, he told himself firmly. Of course she could.

  On Second Avenue, he left the bag of soiled clothes leaned up against the door of the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Someone else had left a bag there also, but it held only baby clothes. He neatly refolded its top and placed it against the door.

  The trash went into the next dumpster. He walked another brisk two blocks, pumping his blood to dispel the last traces of sleepiness and apprehension. Coffee. That was what he needed to burn the night fears from his mind. The hot tea had warmed him, but it lacked caffeine and the rich brown taste with the bitter edge that let him know it was coming. He jingled the emergency coins in his pocket and toyed with temptation. Elliott Bay Cafe. It should be open by now. The spirit of hot espresso plucked at his sleeve. With a sigh, he denied it. The coins would only cover coffee there, and it was a difficult place to cadge a meal. No, today was not a day for a fling. Today was a day to be very conscientious, to obey every rule and take every step with absolute correctness. Wizard wanted no part of days like yesterday.

  He waited alone at the bus stop, taking comfort from his surroundings. It was his favorite bus stop, under an iron and glass Victorian pergola at First and Yesler. The Pergola, in Seattle. Since 1909, it had sheltered folk, first for trolleys and cable cars, now for the bus. A Tlingit totem pole shared its sidewalk island, and a bronze bust of Chief Seattle presided over the area. The drinking fountain offered facilities for people, hor
ses, and dogs. When Wizard stood in this small triangular plot of history, he felt as if the spirit of Seattle flowed through him, backwards and forwards in time, with him as a sort of intelligent filter. This was his city, and he knew it as well as any. Much of his knowledge had been gained by following city tours at a discreet distance, or eavesdropping on the benches here as the guides went through their spiels. The details amused him. The totem pole was the second one to stand here. The first had been stolen from a tribal burial ground in 1899, but was lost to fire in 1938. When the city sent a five-thousand dollar check to pay for the carving of a new pole, the Tlingits had served their revenge cold and sweet. “Thanks for finally paying for the first one,” the cancelled check was endorsed. “A new pole will cost you another five thousand.” Wizard grinned softly to himself at the thought of it. The bus thundered up in front of him in a belch of heat. The doors hissed open and the driver scowled down on him.

  “This ain’t a flophouse,” he commented sourly as Wizard came up the steps. “So don’t even think about going to sleep in here.”

  Wizard kept his aplomb. No bus driver had ever dared speak to him like that before, though he had heard similar comments made to derelicts on stormy days. He tried a jaunty smile. “The night was late, but not that late.”

  “Surprised you knew it was daytime.” The driver didn’t wait for him to be seated, but jerked the bus back into traffic.

  Wizard kept his balance and made for a seat near the back. As he stared out the window, he mentally reviewed his appearance.

  He was shaven, washed, and tidily, if casually, attired. So why had the driver been able to pick him out as a resident of the streets? No matter how he puzzled over it, he could find no loophole, no crevice in his protective armor. He should have been immune to such hassles. He stooped to retie his bootlaces and to force himself to calmness. He refused to heed a little voice that warned of impending disaster. No doubt the driver had simply had a rough night of his own and had unerringly assumed that Wizard was a safe target. No matter. He would not let it ruffle him. He sat up straight. A wave of illness swept over him.

  Perhaps he had straightened up too fast, driving the blood from his brain. He closed his eyes to let it pass. A blacker darkness closed on him and Mir laughed. His mind was flooded with images, stark, terrifying, and disgusting. Like a series of slides, the women appeared and disappeared before him.

  Knowing came, filled with sadness. They were real. Each slashed face, each savaged body had led a life and been part of a whole.

  Mothers, sisters, friends, and lovers. Their deaths went on forever in the gaping holes left by their passing. Each a precious gear snatched from the clockwork of a family. Wizard forced his bile back down and tried to study them. The backdrops were not western Washington. He saw the red banks of a wide muddy river and trees he had no names for. Wizard lost count of how many faces passed before him. He wondered desperately what was happening to him. Had Mir trapped him forever in this dreadful Seeing? Would his comatose body be taken from the bus and placed on a narrow bed somewhere, so his mind could sink into the nightmares and never return? He set his teeth stubbornly as his magic took him deeper into horror.

  No. The knife. He was suddenly aware of the knife. He jerked his eyes open to the daily reality of the bus, to men in overcoats and women chatting together. But the knife did not go away. This knife was a thing to be felt, not seen. The women had felt it with their bodies; he touched its cutting edge with his mind, felt with horror the traces of blood and skin worn into its wooden handle. Someone on the bus had it and was dreaming of using it again. Wizard started to rise, then forced himself to sit still and feel. He groped about in the swaying bus, and finally focused on a man, three seats in front of him.

  He was a swarthy, heavyset man who flinched suddenly as if a pin had jabbed him. As the bus eased into its next stop, Wizard located the knife. It was suspended by a leather thong around his neck. Beneath the man’s faded shirt, it nestled by his heart.

  At the stop the man rose hastily, glancing about. Wizard suppressed a groan and stood up to follow him. What now? he asked of his magic, but, having shown him, it was silent. It was not, Wizard reflected, the same as a stranger pouring out his heart and the magic giving him the words of comfort to speak. The swarthy man hit the sidewalk and strode off with Wizard a timid shadow.

  For two blocks he followed, debating a course of action.

  The man glanced back once and Wizard cringed, but he was only checking a street sign. He sensed how secure the killer was, content in his invulnerability. A new territory and unalerted victims by the score. He slowed to watch a high school girl hurry past and Wizard felt ill.

  Anger flared suddenly in him, searing him to determination.

  The hot pain of it felt good. The knife. It had been given to him for a reason; he was suddenly sure the magic had shown it to him for a purpose. In some far place, Mir chuckled gleefully, but Wizard blocked him. He zoomed in on the knife, feeling the oiled grain of the hickory handle and the sleek steel of the blade. Steel. He felt deeper, sensing molecules in sleepy motion. He lost them when, in his concentration, he walked into a parking meter. The swarthy man glanced back again at his involuntary exclamation. Wizard felt himself noticed. Well, there was no help for it. He matched the man’s increased stride and went back to the knife. Little tiny molecules, drifting like particles of sand in lake water. Wizard stirred them. Faster they swirled. The temperature of the steel crept up a fraction of a degree. Wizard’s face hardened in a tight smile. So that was how. He set his mind on the metal and stirred frantically.

  Sweat sprang out on his face and back. A headache crept up from the base of his skull and spread like a net over his head. He followed the dark killer through a red mist. Never had he felt such a strain as this magic demanded. He fueled it with his anger. The killer increased his pace and Wizard stumbled after him, narrowly dodging other pedestrians and always focused on the knife, the knife. He imagined it molten hot, dripping and scalding the man’s chest. His breath was coming dry in his throat and now the man was definitely fleeing. He glanced back frequently at Wizard’s set face, but was unwilling as yet to break into a full run.

  Wizard felt a sudden drop in ability. He groped after the magic like a receiver seeking after a fading FM signal. Everything dimmed and slowed. He found it again, but thinner. He locked himself into it and fed it to the molecules in the knife. Just a little more now and the killer would become aware of the knife’s heat against his skin. His own blade would sear his chest, the hot metal eating through his skin.

  But the knife was cooling. The thread of the magic was too finely spun and Wizard was suddenly weary. Mir laughed. He would have to get closer to once again hasten the perpetual dance of the molecules in the steel. Wizard stepped up his pace. Hot and blind as a hound on the scent, he trailed the man into the deadend alley. The man and the magic stopped at the same instant. Wizard stood alone.

  “Are you following me?” The man’s voice was low, almost melodic. His smile was ethereal as a blessing.

  “Yes. I am.” Wizard spoke distractedly. He could see the swarthy man edging closer to him in the narrow alley, but he felt blinded. Bereft of his magic, the edges of the world dimmed and the colors all ran together in muddiness. He groped after the magic and the knife, but it was like trying to reach without arms. There was only an emptiness he scrabbled in, as gut wrenching as a missing step on a dark staircase. “The Knife!” Wizard suddenly cried aloud, imploring the magic’s return. But it was deaf to him, the abandonment total. He sensed the loss fully in that instant, and it was so tearing a thing he could not focus on the more immediate problem of the smiling man lifting the loop of leather over his head.

  As the man reached inside his shirt for the knife. Wizard moved. A training older than the magic took over, lessons learned more harshly and thoroughly. The man stepped into it.

  Three fast kicks while Wizard’s upper body leaned away, beyond the knife’s leap. The first k
ick went to the man’s knee cap, the second two to his torso as he staggered in pain. His dark hands never ceased tearing at his shirt, trying to bring free the knife that would solidify his courage. Wizard gave him no time. His boot connected with the man’s floating ribs, pushing them in solidly against softer organs and wringing a gasping grunt from the man. “Never hit a man when he’s down; it’s always easier to kick him.” Was the quote Mir’s? There was no time to wonder.

  “Drop it!” Wizard commanded in the same voice he might tell a dog to sit. “Drop it!”

  But the swarthy man believed in the knife too strongly to surrender it. He gripped its hilt firmly, the blade pointed toward Wizard as he began a desperate roll that would take him back to his feet. But Wizard did not cringe from that shining point as all his other victims had. Nor did he try to fight the blade as a few desperate ones had. His attention was focused on the man behind the weapon. He stepped into the man’s range and shot out a kick that smashed into his shoulder, numbing his arm and sending the knife clattering onto the worn paving stones.

  With an incoherent roar halfway between outrage and terror, the man staggered to his feet. Cold-eyed and gaunt as Death, Wizard stepped over the knife, ready to close with him again.

  Expert eyes searched for openings. The man’s eyes flickered from the fallen blade to his opponent, making a swift evaluation. He feinted at Wizard, then spun on his heel and fled from the alley, cradling his injured arm as he ran.

  Two strides Wizard took after him and then halted, swaying on his feet. The winds of Mir’s triumphant laughter blasted him. Knifing realization ripped through him, disembowelling his strength so that he would have gone to his knees but for his frantic clutch at a dumpster. He leaned against its sticky side, breathing its foulness and trying to come to terms with his loss. He was emptied. What magic he had left after his loss of his popcorn bag had been burned away. He was a stick man now, flimsy and impotent. Gutted by his own anger. He stared at the fallen knife on the pavement, trying to tell himself that it was a fair trade. But the knife was nothing, and he knew it now. The knife was just an ordinary knife, such as could be found in the kitchenware section of any supermarket. The killer could replace it in less than an hour. Would replace it. For an instant he Knew it, but then that power faded, too. All systems down, he told himself, feeling the blackout in his soul. It was only half a step short of dying.