Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

Rasputin’s eyes were not brown- They were black, blacker than his skin, and they crackled. Wizard flinched from their spark. “I’m not sure yet,” he said softly. “Cassie says I am. I don’t much feel like it- I’m not looking for power.”

“Aho!” Rasputin leaped and whirled. “Not looking for power.

Then you are starting at the right place, man. ‘Cause the magic doesn’t give power, it takes it. And it can’t make you strong, but it can find your strength. Can find your weaknesses, too.

Sounds doubtful, Cassie, but maybe you got one this time. Let me see his hands.“

Wizard held out his hands, palms up, to Rasputin. Rasputin slipped his large pinky-black palms under Wizard’s hands, moving them slowly and carefully as he studied them. Wizard’s hands became a part of Rasputin’s dance as he manipulated him. Slowly his own hands became strangers to him under Rasputin’s scrutiny. They looked like pale fish. His fingers were long and thin, but the joints were large, like knots in skinny twigs. Odd little scars on the backs of his hands were like little landmarks in strange terrain. Suddenly Rasputin’s hands flashed from under Wizard’s to slap his palms with a loud clap.

“He’s got the hands, man. The man’s got the hands. Got the power in his hands. Power-handed man. He’s got the power in his hands, and in his eyes he got the Nam.” He had danced a shuffle-footed, hip-wriggling dance all around Wizard during his chant. But at me last line he stopped and stood still as his black eyes waltzed right into Wizard’s soul. “And in his eyes he got the Nam, man,” he whispered. Wizard stood steady.

The afternoon was hot and still around them, the blue sky cupping them under its sweaty palm, holding in the secrets Rasputin whispered.

“Know why there ain’t been so many wizards, lately? Know why? I got a theory, brother. Got myself an idea about that.

Back in the Middle Ages, them Dark Ages, they got plagues and battles and poverty and tyrants as far as the eye can see.

Know what else they got? Wizards. That’s what makes us, man. Gotta take a man with nothing else left; then you can make a wizard out of the leftovers. That what you got to have to make a wizard. They got the Black Death, and we got the Nam. But one part of my theory I don’t got done yet. Maybe we’re all wizards, see, but you got to have a Nam to wake it up. Like a catalyst, see. And maybe we all came back wizards, but only a few of us crazy enough to know it. Or maybe only a few of us can be wizards, but it don’t develop without a Nam. Like steel. We got hard in the fire, and wizardry is the cutting edge we put on ourselves. Other guys melt, other guys don’t even feel the flames. Not us. We feel the flames and we hurt until we’re hard. And we come back and we cool down, and then—wizards! What you think. Wizard?“

“I don’t know,” Wizard replied foolishly.

Rasputin danced away in disgust. “So you got a wizard, Cassie- You got an I-Don’t-Know Wizard. What the hell good is that kind? What does he do?”

“He feeds the’pigeons,” Cassie retorted. “People know they can talk to him, and he listens to them. The Truth comes out of him. And sometimes he Knows. Isn’t that enough?”

“What do you do?” Wizard, made bold by Cassie’s defense of him, dared to ask.

“I dance!” Rasputin retorted loftily. “And that’s enough, the way I dance. While I dance, I keep the bogey-man away. You got a bogey-man, I-Don’t-Know Wizard?”

Wizard shivered. “There’s something gray,” he confessed, and the summer air turned cold-

“Sounds about right. Well, what you gotta do is this. You got to feed the pigeons. Pigeons sacred to you now, hear me?

Never harm a pigeon. And you got to listen to people that come up and start talking to you. Can’t turn away when what they say hurts- You got to tell them what they need to know. And you got to speak me Truth inside you. And when you Know, you got to admit you Know. Got to balance the magic, I-Don’t know Wizard. Got to give away more than you get, all the time. If you don’t, that gray thing going to get you. And if that happens, don’t yell, well, Rasputin didn’t warn you. Now get him out of here, Cassie. I got to dance.“

They watched him leaping and whirling away. flashing black and silver in the sunlight. “Is dancing all he does?” Wizard had asked Cassie naively.

“Yeah.” she said mockingly. “All he does is Dance. And look at derelicts and find out if they’re wizards or not. And give wizards the rules of their magic. And keep the bogey-man away from the Seattle Center. Come on. Wizard.”

He trailed at her heels as they moved on the paths between the hillocks of grass. She stopped at a bench that overlooked water and ducks. She dropped into it gratefully and he copied her.

“Well?” she demanded suddenly. “What did you think of him?”

Wizard shrugged. “What I think of Rasputin is that what I think of him makes no difference at all. It’s like asking what I think of Mount St. Helens. It’s there, and it’s a hell of a lot bigger than me.”

Cassie laughed softly. “I never thought of him quite that way before, but you’re right. What I really meant was, what did you think about his theory on wizards?”

“Just what I said. I don’t know.”

“And you don’t want to make any guesses, do you? Well, I do. I have my own ideas on it. Think about this for a minute.

Think about the threads of color in a tapestry. When you need a bit of silver, for the shine on a river or the snow on a mountain top, you bring the silver threads up to the surface where they can be seen. Or if you need gold for the sheen on a princess’s hair. or the spark in a unicorn’s eyes, you bring that thread up.

But it’s not like the threads come and go. It’s more like they’re seen and unseen.“

He gave another shrug. He could tell she was getting into one of her obtuse moods. It was all going to be stories and parables for the rest of the day. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Cassie laughed wryly. “Rasputin named you well. Well, that’s how I think of us. And another thing. Imagine these special threads, silver and gold, say. The tapestry weaver doesn’t need them often. Maybe they’re hardly ever used together, but there they are, running along together behind the tapestry, and sometimes coming out on the front together to light up a mountain or deck the princesses’ robes. Think of what it would be like for those threads. Do you suppose they miss one another white they’re apart? And when they come together in the tapestry, do you suppose they’d remember the times before when they’d been woven together?”

She had lost him again. “Do you suppose,” he asked, “that we could scrounge some lunch? I’m starving.”

“I suppose,” she had laughed easily, but her eyes searched his with a hunger that was not for food.

Wizard opened his eyes and stared down at the pipe in his hand. He held his throat shut against the hot smoke and passed the pipe to Lynda. “You are feeling fine,” she told him. “I can tell by your eyes. Isn’t it funny. Mitch? When we get stoned, I talk even more and you get even quieter. I don’t think you’ve said a word since you finished the wine. Are you still in there?”

“I don’t know.” He gave her a sad and foolish smile. The I-Don’t-Know Wizard. That was him- He watched her drawing on the pipe and holding it down and then whistling smoke. She passed it back to him and rose languidly.

He was still holding his hit when she flapped the hat in front of him. “Put it on,” she demanded with a giggle. “I’ve just got to see you in the complete outfit. When I first saw the hat in the bag, I didn’t realize it went with the robe and cloak.