Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

“Hey!” The voice came from below. “Aren’t you going to give me a hand up?”

WIZARD ROLLED OUT of her way as she scrabbled up onto the platform. The aging iron landing groaned complainingly under the unaccustomed extra weight. Wizard sat up slowly to look at her. The climb had mussed her hair, but other than that she looked remarkably collected. She had clambered up the wall unaided. Now she brushed her hair back from her face and gave him a grin that was one part defiance to one part mischief.

“See? It’s not that easy to get rid of me. I should have known better than to leave you alone. Why’d you run out on me?”

“I don’t feel good.” Wizard didn’t want to talk, didn’t want her up here, didn’t want to do anything but crawl into an isolated place and curl up around the emptiness and sickness inside him. The magnitude of this disaster was such that he could not comprehend it. If only she would go away he could lie still and understand how awful it all was. Bent nearly double, he began his climb up the flight of metal steps. He heard her following. Well, let her. He couldn’t stop her. Silently he raised his window wider and wriggled inside. It was dark. but not so dark that he couldn’t make out his familiar path through the stacks of cardboard boxes stored in this room. He groped his way to the door of his den. There was a slight rustle from the roosting pigeons as he stepped through the door, but they settled again almost immediately. Behind him, Lynda had snagged her coat on the windowsill. She was muttering curses as she tugged at it, but he had no energy to hush her. He took four steps to his bed and dropped onto it. He could undress later.

Slowly he drew his knees up to his chest and tried to make his muscles go slack. His feet were horribly cold, but his fingers were too fuddled to manage the bootlaces. Best to just lie still for awhile. He heard a questioning mew; Black Thomas was on the pillow beside his head. He had narrowly missed him in the dark, and me big cat was not pleased with his carelessness.

Wizard set one apologetic hand on his dark, damp fur. Thomas gave a growl of pain and moved carefully closer to the warmth of Wizard’s body. He smelled like wet wool and clotted blood.

The two huddled together, snaring misery.

“Jesus H!” Lynda blotted the faint light from the doorway.

She seemed to fill the frame, looming over the room. He cringed deeper into his bed. “My God!” she went on. “I never imagined anything like this. What is that smell?”

She fumbled her way to the door and tried the light switch.

Nothing happened. She clicked it a few times and began to dig in her purse. Black Thomas was growling low at the intruder.

The pigeons huddled closer to one another on their shelves, cooing worriedly to one another. Wizard lay small and still, praying she would leave, praying this was just an evil dream.

Then she blasted them all with the flame of her cigarette lighter.

Wizard rolled to his knees, heedless of the pains that lanced through him and the nausea that swelled inside him. “Turn it down!” he hissed at her. “We’ll be seen!”

“Up here?” Lynda scoffed, but she whispered and adjusted the lighter to a smaller flame. “Look. don’t you have candles or something? I can’t see my way around in here.”

“Sit down and be quiet!”

“Where?” she demanded. He gestured furiously and she clunked and rumbled her way across the room to his mattress.

She lowered herself onto it with a snort of disgust and let the lighter go out. Wizard moved carefully through the darkness.

He found his candle and holder and set it on the floor. In the darkness he slipped to his entry window to put the plywood in place, and to his second window to make sure the blanket was tight. Soundlessly he moved back to me candle and knelt before it. He began the slow concentration of self, stealing his attention bit by bit from his aching body and tortured mind, and putting it toward a flame- His hands clutched one another to still their trembling- He slowed his breathing to quiet the demands of his body. The flame. He could see it, he could smell it. he could feel it, could sense its warmth. It was coming now, about to blossom on the wick, the perfect orange and yellow flame.

With a click and a hiss the flame appeared, searing his eyes and exploding new pain in his head. The candle flared and Lynda leaned back, taking her thumb off the lever of her lighter. ‘

In the glare of me little flame, he watched her slip her lighter back into her purse- Her candle flame dazzled his eyes. The flame in his mind was still there, focused, with nowhere to go.

It might be the last bit of magic left to him. Gradually it crumbled into bits inside him, falling like ash into the firepit of his soul. He sat on his heels, blinking away the black spots that danced before his eyes. Black Thomas moved up beside him to ask “Mrow?” Wizard put his hands on the cat’s rough fur, feeling the ribs beneath the layer of tough meat and muscle and feeling the life beneath that. It was strangely comforting to feel how strongly life beat in the rickety little body.

Lynda stooped and took the candle. She moved slowly around his small room with it. “Jesus H.” A few more steps. “My God!” She stooped to examine his small library on his homemade shelf. “I just don’t believe it.” She moved to the crate and inspected his slender stores of food. Then she rose and drifted back to him, exclaiming all the way. “I just don’t believe it, I never suspected that anyone could live like this I mean, I’ve seen bum’s beds under the overpass and people living under bridges and stuff, but never like this. It’s unreal!”

From her tone he knew she was not admiring his ingenuity at surviving, but disparaging his lack of success at it. He blinked and looked around his den. It had never seemed shabbier. The mattress. and blankets beneath him felt dank. There were spots of mold on the spines of his books and pigeon droppings spattered on me floor. He had never noticed them before. The cardboard box that held his wardrobe was softening and sagging at me comers. Even Black Thomas looked like a battered stuffed toy. As Lynda sank down beside them on the mattress., the cat uttered a warning growl. He did not like her. Wizard put a soothing hand on him, but the tensed muscles didn’t loosen.

Thomas focused his great yellow eyes on her and wished her all me evils the depths of his fuzzy little soul could imagine.

Wizard was shocked.

“You poor baby!” Lynda said sympathetically. Black Thomas increased slightly the pressure of his hand to hold him in place. and Thomas flattened his ears at her. “Is this your kitty?”

“No.” Black Thomas belonged solely to himself. Wizard increased slightly the pressure of his hand to hold him in place.

“I wouldn’t admit I owned him either. What a nasty looking animal. He doesn’t smell so good. either. What’s his name?”

“He had one of his paws cut off in an accident a few days ago,” Wizard hedged. At the mention of names. Black Thomas had extended one of his front paws and sunk the claws into Wizard’s thigh. He wanted no name-sharing with this intruder.

“What’s your name, kitty-kitty?” Lynda pressed, reaching across Wizard to try and touch the cat. Wizard hastily blocked her hand and held it firmly away from the cat. Black Thomas squirmed from under his grip and gimped disgustedly from the room into the darkened entry chamber.

“Call him Tripod,” Wizard suggested callously. If Thomas wanted to be rude, so could he. Lynda stared after the three legged cat in a sort of frozen horror and then began to giggle.

Wizard released his own rusty chuckle. Really, this wasn’t so bad. He wondered why he had never before admitted anyone to his den. Not even Cassie had been here. Cassie.