Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

The day was cooling and the rain had finally managed to soak through his clothes. He shivered. Walking was no longer enough to warm him, not even fast walking. The paper sack under his arm had started softening. Now he wished he had folded up the plastic shopping bag and stuffed it in his pocket.

He didn’t know what he would do if the tired seams of the bag gave way and the wizard things dropped out on the wet sidewalk. He snuggled it protectively against him and walked a little faster. Streetlamps began to come on, blossoming overhead against the gathering darkness.

He almost made it safely home. As the darkness and rain intensified, he broke into a wolf-trot, trusting to the night to keep him anonymous. His feet ate up the blocks, carrying him up Alaskan Way under the length of the viaduct. The highway and traffic overhead could not keep the rain off him, nor could their noise keep the thoughts from pelting down on his mind.

There was a hypnotic effect to the regular beat of his feet against the ground, the whoosh of traffic overhead and beside him, and the totally miserable weather. He could move himself doggedly along and keep his consciousness away from how acutely miserable he was. But he could not keep his thoughts from chewing at the edges of his mind, shredding his calm with a threat of gray Mir out there somewhere in the night, stabbing his soul with the loss of his popcorn bag. It was almost a relief when his quick ears picked up the sounds of a scuffle and a single, sharp cry.

Under the viaduct it was dark, making a Jest of the lights that lined Alaskan Way. This time of night, it should have been deserted. The noises were coming from the shadows behind a dumpster- Wizard felt the familiar unwelcome surge and was running the zigzag path before he was aware of it, his bag tucked tightly to him. As he passed the corner of the dumpster, he gave me bag a toss that carried it safely under it. His feet made no sound as he approached the struggle, and he gave no cry of warning.

He hit the tangled knot like a striking eagle. The boy dropped and skidded on the pavement, but the narrow man snaked away into the darkness. The old man on the ground gave another cry and tried to crawl away. Wizard ignored him. Damn, but he wished that me adult one had not escaped. Now he would have to worry about him coming from behind. But for now…

“Let me go, please, mister!” the boy wailed suddenly as the dead-faced man towered over him. He tried to scrabble away, but he was on his back, and his arms and legs refused to work properly when glowing blue eyes stared down at him.

Three kicks. To throat and belly and armpit, and then he could pursue the other black-clad man melting into OK night.

Or he could push his fingers down fast as a snap against the soft hollow of the boy’s throat, to crush the tiny fishlike bones within and flood blood all through the secret caverns of his flesh. Wizard smelled the pungent odor of urine as the scrabbling boy wet himself. Snatches of gray fog were drifting in off Elliott Bay and floating through the night. There was no solution so simple and beautiful as death. He could put him out and be done with him, never have to worry about this particular one again. No one would ever see what was going to happen here. The boy was like a cake waiting to be cut. “ god o god o god,” he was praying, sobbing and sniffling already, before Wizard had ever touched him. But now be touched and the boy squealed long. Wizard looked at the rag of shirt in his hand, marveling at how easily the cloth had torn. A tendril of fog passed between the boy-and himself, drifting like blood in water. The gray fog stank in his nostrils, worse than the urine, and he shook it from his nose.

For the first time he heard the old man’s repeated words.

“I’m all right. Let him go and help me. Please.” Wizard stared down at the boy. His eyes were squeezed shut and water from them was leaking down his cheeks. He felt suddenly and intensely sick.

“Get out of here, kid- Go!”

Wizard stood up, but the boy was gone even before he stepped back. He stared after his vanishing prey.

“Please. Please help me.”

The gray sheaf of hair that was supposed to be combed to cover the old man’s bald spot had draggled down one side of his head. His old brown sweater was muddied at the elbow and one knee of his gray pants was torn. Wizard raised him gently, smelling the unmistakable odor of fried chicken and fish clinging to him. “Are you hurt?”

“No. God be thanked, I’m not hurt. Boys today. Only a boy that was, did you see? I told them I didn’t have any money.

But they said they had watched me carrying a bag home every night, and they wanted the deposit. Deposit! Leftover chicken and fish from the restaurant for my cat. For that they put a knife to my throat.“

“So why did you tell me to let him go?” Wizard spoke softly, his voice a deeper nimble than the traffic overhead.

“So maybe it’s not that different, if he kills me over leftover chicken, or you kill him. Or maybe it’s the delicate ecological balance I was worrying about.” A quavery laugh shook the old man’s voice. “Look at it this way. I’ve just had the rare opportunity of seeing a fullgrown Mugger in its natural surroundings as it taught its young to stalk and attack its natural prey.

Think of what might have happened if you had killed it. Why, there might be a mother Mugger, and a whole liner of little baby Muggers at home in the den, waiting for those two to bring home their kill. Oh, God!“

The old man started shaking suddenly. Wizard helped him to the dumpster and he leaned against it until the belated adrenalin shudders had passed. He tried for another laugh, but it failed. “Or think what it could have done to you, if you had killed him. Or to me.”

“Would it be worse than what’s been done to you?” Wizard asked. He didn’t want to be speaking to him like this, especially not in this chilly soulless voice, but the words were swelling out of him like blood from a wound.

“I’m not hurt. Well, not much. It would be nothing to a man your age. Oh, I’ve bruises that won’t heal for a week, and a scrape that’s going to keep me awake all night. But if it hadn’t been for you. I might be headed for the hospital. Or the morgue. But you came along and stopped it. I’ll be fine.”

“Will you? And will you walk home with your kitchen scraps tomorrow night?”

For a moment the only sound other than the roar of traffic overhead was the labored pumping of me old man’s lungs.

“No. I guess I won’t be doing that anymore,” he admitted slowly. “I guess I’ll call a cab, or get me cook to drop me off on his way. No, I don’t suppose I’ll be walking home after work anymore.”

“Then that’s what they took from you tonight, old man. Not your money nor your life, not even your cold chicken. They took your private walk home of an evening, through the streets that should belong to you. You’ve been robbed and you don’t even know it.”

With a trembling hand the old man flipped his hair back into place and patted it down. He was over the worst of his fright now, and dignity was coming back to his voice.

“I know it, young man. I knew it before they had even knocked me down. But do you think it would be different if you had killed that boy? Then on the walk home at night I could look at this dumpster and say to myself, ”That’s where (hat young bastard died for trying to rob me.‘ I saw you- You weren’t going to rough him up or hold him for the cops. You were on the killing edge. Do you think I’d be thinking of punks and muggers as I walked up this street alone at night? No. I’d be winking of you. Good evening.“

There was strength in the old man. Rebuked, Wizard stepped back to let him pass. He didn’t even look back at Wizard as he continued his interrupted walk home. Shame, weariness, and cold flooded up through Wizard, rising like a cold dde??? from the pavement. He wished no one had seen him tonight.