Stephen Brust - The Gypsy

So maybe the best thing to do was to take the knife back to the cemetery gates where they'd rattled the gypsy. Dump it there, kick it under the bushes. He sure as hell didn't want to keep it. He'd thought about tossing it into a dumpster or slipping it down a sewer. But those solutions didn't feel right either. No, he'd take it to the cemetery, and toss it in the bushes,where it would have ended up if they'd overlooked it when they shook the gypsy down.

"Step?"

"Yeah?" He didn't look away from the street. He was kind of watching their car, and kind of watching the loungers in front of the motorcycle shop down the street. Were they lounging, or were they watching?Looking out for what? Protecting what? And was it worth his while to make an effort to find out?

"Step. you think maybe this dead gypsy's got anything to do with the one we booked last week?"

He shrugged. "City's full of gypsies this time of year. Come in from God knows where, renting old storefronts, selling cheap tapestries from Japan in rundown bars, making up futures for people who don't have any. A week or a month from now,whoosh, they're all gone to God knows where. Makes you wonder if they were really here in the first place. And that's why we'll never know who killed this one,or where the other one went."

"Step?"

"No, I doubt if they're connected." He sighed and turned away from the window.

"Wish we knew what happened to that one we dragged in. I got a gut feeling he was the one blew away the liquor store clerk."

"Yeah? Well, I got a gut feeling he wasn't."

"How come?"

"Just because." He turned back to the window. An unmarked car pulled in behind theirs. A man in a, for God's sake, trench coat got out. He didn't know him,but the other detective was Scullion, Good. Scullion was fast and thorough. They'd be out of there in no time. A meat wagon was turning the corner.

"You know," said Durand softly. "I really think she was the same gypsy. The one that told my fortune."

Walkin' down an empty street

In a city I don't know,

Whistlin' something catchy

As I make my way through snow.

Ain't got no gloves so

I keep my hands

Balled up in fists;

I'm trying not to think

How it all came down to this.

"NO PASSENGER"

The Coachman awoke, realizing that he'd been drunk again. This made him laugh, until it came to him that he was no longer drunk, and yet he was awake. This puzzled him. Next to him was a bottle labeled Mr. Boston Five-Star Brandy. There was about a third of the bottle left. He started to unscrew the cap, then closed it again. He blinked.

He remembered that he had dreamed that he'd had a passenger.

And now he was suddenly, inexplicably sober. He stood up, looked around the shabby room he could afford from money he begged and what he didn't drink, and suddenly laughed. Something was happening, somewhere.

He unscrewed the cap, smelled it, and decided it wasn't good enough. If it had been, he'd have poured a shot into a glass and drunk it that way, to celebrate,but it wasn't so he didn't. He checked his pockets and found almost three dollars in change, which would be enough to get him coffee and a Danish.Good. He whistled as he showered, no longer minding the low water pressure and he wondered how and where he would find his coach.

I haven't seen or heard from them

In far too many years,

But banging from the copper pans

Still echoes in my ears.

"RAVEN, OWL, AND I"

The Gypsy went walking, as he had so often before,not so much looking for anything as just looking, only he was walking where there was nothing to see and nowhere to go. He wore yellow, but it was brighter than he thought it should be, and his boots felt softer,although it was too much effort to look at them.

A hand halted him, and he, oddly, recognized the ring on it; he couldn't remember from where. A pair of familiar dark eyes locked with his, but then the light in them went out. The thought came to him that he'd just been saved from something.

He walked further, and there was a wolf, growling and bristling. He paused, and looked closer; the wolf's foot was trapped. He thought that he would release the foot, but the wolf snapped at him. He stopped then, puzzled. "Why snap at me?" he said."Am I your enemy? No. I'm the one who is trying to help you."

The wolf stared at him with old, intelligent eyes.He continued, "I will let you go, but you must not attack me; you must find your proper prey. Will you do that?"

The wolf studied him carefully, suspiciously, and it occurred to him that the wolf wondered, not if he could be trusted, but if he were capable of releasing him. The Wolf is no fool, he thought to himself, staring into its eyes.

The eyes contracted and became one, against a field of darkness, then they resolved until they became a single pinpoint of light, which became the universe,and it pulsed a very pale blue. His concentration was total, his questions, none. A moment ago, it had seemed, he could hear that pinpoint, that blue, that pulsing. A moment ago it had been the beat of the tambourine, zils laughing merrily, head thrumming. It had been that way forever, a moment ago, and now it was a pinpoint of light, and had been that, too,forever.

There was the smell that came from cars, and it was stifling. The pinpoint grew into a flower as sound returned, and he opened his eyes to the dryness of his mouth and gravel against his cheek, and a beam of evening sunlight striking his face, as he tried to remember what he had just escaped. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Visions came at his bidding, and then wouldn't leave: something scary chased him,then became his brother with a knife, then became his other brother, crying, yet he knew it was not from his brothers that he had fled.

One vision was of an old woman, who pointed her finger at him and said, "Do not squander my gift,"to which he had replied, "It was not just to me you gave it, Mother, yet I'll make the best use of it I can."

Another was of a small girl, who seemed to be the old woman with brown eyes at the same time, only she laughed as if she knew it were only a game. Another was of a man in an apron asking his name, and he being unable to remember. That was strange; he knew who he was. He was.,. Charles? No, that wasn't right. What did they call him? Umm… "Cigany," he said aloud, and began coughing from the dust. He swallowed several times, but was still very thirsty.

Overhead, a cement bridge held up a freeway; next to him a street passed below it, and around him was a retaining wall, which had kept him hidden, in the open, in the middle of a large city. He smiled at this,in spite of his discomfort. The day seemed to be ending. He realized that he had lain there for more than a day, perhaps several. Could he have died from exposure? Why not? He needed water, a toilet, and food, in that order.

He almost relieved his bladder in his protected cement grove, but this felt wrong, as if by doing this he would be sacrificing something he couldn't afford to lose, now that he lived in the wilds of the city. He pulled himself to his feet, braced himself against the wall, and began walking. He saw a filling station just across the street and knew that he would live.

I look for troubles all over town,

My nerves are shot but it don't get me down.

"STEPDOWN"

He wanted chicken and biscuits for dinner. Like they used to have, the chicken braised and then cooked in a gravy, and Jennie's white biscuits with the crispy brown points on top, and Jennie laughing as she told Jeffrey and Laurie that by God she never wanted to see them sopping up gravy with biscuits like their dad did. And then he'd laugh and tell her his manners were her fault, for making the gravy so good he didn't want to waste a smear of it.