Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

Cassie nodded quickly, seeming eager to stop his words.

“Let’s find out the worst, then. Come on.”

“Cassie?” His anxious tone swung her eyes back to him.

“It was a while back. Estrella the Gypsy gave me a tarot card.

It said ‘A Warning’ and showed a man dangling upside down by one heel. But then it was gone, so I—“

“The Hanged Man.” The silence that followed her words had a chilling eloquence. She swept across the room.

Wizard tucked the bag securely under his arm and followed.

She parted the hanging drapes and waved him through. The next room was in darkness. Wizard smelled dust and mildew and heard the chitter and scuttling of mice alarmed by his approach. Cassie came behind him, bearing a candelabra. The flames of the candles didn’t waver with her movement; they didn’t light much more than her path, either. He trailed along behind her through a maze of rooms and corridors. Most of the chambers they passed through were dusty and abandoned, but some were strangely and sumptuously furnished, twined and draped with Cassie’s ever-present plants, and lit by a pale yellow light that blinded Wizard until he passed into the darkened chambers beyond.

When they entered a carpeted room with many gilt-framed portraits on the wall, Cassie set her candles down on a low table. Wizard put his bag and coat on a loveseat beside it.

Cassie was silent, so he watched her quietly as she went to a scarred roll-top desk. She wound her hair into a black scarf.

A black cloak from a peg by the desk quenched her white robe.

She began to take objects from the drawers. Stepping a little closer, he watched her arrange them on a little lacquered tray.

There was a round mirror in a red frame with no handle; a thin ring of shining silver; four cats-eye marbles; a little pile of popcorn; five pennies polished copper bright; and white tail feathers from a pigeon.

“One never knows what they’ll fancy,” she murmured without looking at him. Taking the tray, she crossed the room to slide open a heavy wooden door on tracks. Beyond was a-, dizzying view. The lights of Seattle were impossibly small and spread out below them. But tree limbs reached up past the tiny rickety balcony which Cassie stepped onto. Wizard crept to the door and peered out. He longed to go to the edge and catch some glimpse of what supported them up here, but dared not.

The gray wood of the railing was splintering and twisting away from its supports. The deck creaked under Cassie’s weight. He followed her gaze up to the full moon and felt his heart squeeze.

The moon had been only a quarter full last night; Wizard was sure of it. He swallowed drily.

Cassie’s hair and body had vanished, dark cloth into dark night. Her pale face was full and shining as the moon herself.

She set the tray down at her feet and straightened with the minor cupped in her hand. Slowly she twisted and angled the mirror until the white moonlight filled it. She stared into it and began:

“Light of the sun, reflected in the moon’s face:

Light of the moon, reflected in my hand;

Hear me now, and bring to me at this place Those I would consult, those I would command.“

As simple as a jump rope song, but Wizard’s knees shook.

The whole front of his body tingled as if painted with a sudden frost. He backed stealthily away from the open door and fled back to the candelabra. He put on his coat and held his bag on his lap before him like a shield- The brush of woman’s power left his skin, but he seated himself firmly on the small couch to wait.

He sat watching-the candle flames. He longed suddenly for coffee with an unsurpassed desire, but knew that Cassie never kept any. He shifted restlessly. Any company, even The Pimp’s, would have been welcome, but he was alone. Cassie was singing softly on the balcony; he resisted hearing her. He passed me time by making the candle flames flare up tall and thin, until the tips of me flames broke off and winked out in the dark room. When he noticed the tapers melting low, he calmed the flames, reducing them to tiny tongues on the tips of the wicks.

“Mental masturbation,” she scoffed.

He turned to find Cassie unwinding the cloth from her hair.

Her hair fell in damp tendrils past her shoulders. As she swung the cloak free of herself and onto the hook, he caught the musk of her efforts. There was a hint of a tremble in her iron control as she sank onto the loveseat beside him.

“There are more candles in the lefthand cubbyhole of the desk,” she told him.

As he fetched them, he glanced at her tray. The mirror was blackened as if by fire. The pigeon feathers were gone. He took the candles to her, and she kindled them to replace me softening stumps in the holder. Her lips looked chapped, her face windburned. ‘“Give me space,” she requested gently. Hastily he cleared his bag from the seat and moved to sit on me floor near her feet. She looked down at him almost fondly.

“Why did you have to come to Seattle? she wondered in soft rebuke.

“Was I someplace else before I was here?” he asked in reply.

“Never mind. You-are in Seattle, and it is here you will face it. Your battles with this grayness go back past your memories. In some, you have done well- From others, you bear the scars. Vfe won’t prod them now. I have only paltry things that I may tell you outright. There will be a final confrontation.

Very soon. You must guard the weapons you have forged. If you guard them well, they may be just enough to defeat this Mir. Your edge will be a small one; if you do win, it will be by a tiny margin. This grayness is too clever to let you hone your weapons long. It will come for you soon. If it wins, it keeps you- If it loses, it leaves you alone.“

‘“Can I not vanquish it completely, destroy it all?”

“Listen to him!” Cassie hooted. “Vanquish it! Have you any idea what you ask to do? No man may do that for any other.

You can win yourself free, and no more than that.“

“Then, if I lose, I will be the only loser.”

“You know better.” Cassie’s voice went deadly soft. “Through you, the grayness could rout us all, as easily as shoving a hose down a molehill. There’d be no escaping for any of us. But if it comes to that, it would no longer be you, nor any of your doing. You’d only be the tool. Let’s see.” She signed heavily.

“What else was there?”

“Cassie. you’re not telling me anything new.”

“I know that. I’m telling you what you knew and were afraid to admit to yourself. Listen. I can give you a story. Would you like a story?”

“‘Go ahead,” Wizard said grumpily. Cassie’s stories usually obscured more than they illuminated.

“Good. Because I have a good one for you. No, two. This is the first. Once upon a time. a long, long time ago, in France during World War Two, not that it matters, there were some people being shelled. Among them were a young French woman and her two small children. The two children were very, very frightened. So the mother, to distract them from their terror, began to make silly faces for them, and funny noises. It worked.

The children paid attention to her and were no longer afraid.

But suddenly a shell exploded very near them, and a tiny fragment of shrapnel struck the woman in the throat. She choked and gurgled in her own blood, making terrible grimaces of pain, but unable to call aloud for help. How the children laughed to see the funny,faces Mama made, and hear the silly noises‘

She died to the sound of her children’s laughter.“

Cassie paused expectantly. Wizard just stared, his face gone white. “I didn’t say the stories wouldn’t hurt,” she said softly.

“But they may help, too. Once upon a time, in England, during World War Two, a bomb fell on an old folks’ home. After the raid was over, rescuers came to dig them out and see if there were any survivors. They found one old man sitting on a toilet, still holding the pull chain in his hand, and laughing uproariously. ‘I pulled the chain,’ he said. ‘And the ’ole bloody building came down on me ‘ead.’