Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

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 Sealth presided over the area. The drinking fountain offered facilities for people, horses, 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 me 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 me 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, me 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, mere was no help for it. He thatched 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 me 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 me molecules in the steel. Wizard stepped up his pace. Hot and blind as a hound on me scent, he trailed the man into the deadend alley. The man and the magic stopped at the same instant. Wizard stood alone.