Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

“I don’t know,” he replied hoarsely.

“Ah doooon’t knoooow!” Rasputin drawled out in a mocking croon. He rose to waltz lazily around them both. When he reached the door, he said, “Hate to say, ‘I told you so,’ Cassie.

This one’s on you, like stink on shit.“ His dark eyes snagged for a moment on Wizard’s doleful face. ”Hey, Wizard. No hard feelings, huh? If you live, come see me. You’ll be welcome.“

He curtsied gravely and spun out the door.

“Thanks for bringing him to me!” Cassie called after him. Wizard wondered if she was sincere. She dragged a bandana handkerchief from her hip pocket and handed it to him. He wiped his eyes and nose dutifully. “What am I going to do with you?” she wondered aloud.

“I don’t—” he began.

“That was rhetorical!” she snapped, stopping him cold. “I’ve had enough of your crying and saying ‘I don’t know.’ Say or do anything you please, but not that.” She meant it. He took a ragged breath.

“I thought crying was good, especially for us inhibited males.”

A little of his frustration and anger leaked into his voice.

For a second Cassie looked pleased. “Well, at least you still have your wits. I was beginning to think your mind was gone.

Sure, crying is good. It’s a great tension relieving response to impossible situations. But when you substitute it for action, it’s no more appropriate than beating your head against a wall.

As Rasputin tried to demonstrate. What are you crying about, anyway?“

“I don’t—” Her look stopped him. “Everything. I feel like I just fell down the rabbit hole again, Cassie. It’s not that I don’t like you or the others. But, Cassie, I had it all straight in my head, finally. I was going to move in with Lynda and get a job or welfare or something, and forget all this stuff.” A frown divided her brows, but she was nodding for him to continue. “All this stuff… all this pretending about magic and Truth and Knowing and pigeons. I was going to be like everyone else. And then my place catches fire and bums up everything I own. And when I come to, Rasputin is hauling me up those damned impossible stairs of yours, and I am back to this… place.” Words failed to describe for him the gears of his two worlds grinding together.

Cassie looked pained. “A job or welfare. Shit, Wizard. Look at yourself. You can’t change your residence and put on new clothes and be what you aren’t. You’d still be a wizard, and you’d still have responsibilities to your magic.”

“My magic’s gone, anyway.” Wizard crushed his eyes shut as he made this final admission. He dangled once again in the abyss of that loss.

“Hold it!” Cassie’s voice snapped him back from it. She looked incredibly tired. “What a tangle,” she murmured, mostly to herself. She managed a tired smile for him. “Let’s take this one thing at a time. Go clean up. Maybe it will sober you up a little, too. Go on. You’ll feel better.

She picked up her book again. He blundered about the place, discovering a closet and an office with dusty files and a typewriter and then a short corridor with a door ajar at the end of it. The bathroom was small, little more than a sink, toilet, and shower stall. He untied the silver tassels of the cloak slowly.

He draped it and the soiled robe over the sink and turned on the shower to the hottest water he thought he could stand. He shut the glass door behind him and stood in the stinging rain, letting it batter his face. His brain slowly cleared. He began to soap himself, finding numerous small abrasions he had been unaware of. They stung. The hot water loosened the newly clotted blood on his elbow and it bled again, slightly. With cautious fingers he explored the tender lump on one temple.

He stayed under the shower until the water turned suddenly cold. Then he shut it off and stood dripping in the stall. It seemed so safe in here. Getting out of the shower and drying off meant facing up to whatever came next. But after a few moments he began to shiver. Best face it. He blotted himself dry and then glanced about for something to put on. There was only the robe and cloak. He slipped the robe over his head, expecting the smell of smoke and pigeons. But there was only the soft blue robe spangled with stars and moons. But for the small rips from the glass, the events of the past few hours might have been dreams. That was not reassuring. He pulled on his socks, slung the cloak over his arm, and emerged in search of Cassie.

He stood silently until she looked up from her book and nodded approvingly at him. “That looks better. Feel any better?”

“Some,” he admitted, and suddenly he didn’t want to feel better. As long as the events were overwhelming, no one could expect him to assume responsibility for them. Cassie seemed to sense his reluctance.

“So what is still so awful?” she demanded.

“Everything. My den is gone, with everything in it.

And—“

“Wait. One at a time. What did you lose in that fire that you can’t replace? You’re wearing the only unique thing you possessed. The rest of it could be replaced by a few strolls down dumpster row. Am I wrong?”

She wasn’t, but it seemed cruel of her to state it so baldly.

He racked his brains for a defense. “Black Thomas. I got the pigeons out, but I didn’t find him.”

Cassie gave him a disparaging look. “Black Thomas’ Come here, tomcat!” Wizard followed her gaze up to one of the bookshelves. Thomas sat up slowly. He yawned disdainfully, showing a red mouth, pink curling tongue, and white teeth.

He surveyed them both with disgust, then rearranged himself with his front paws tucked neatly against his breast. His stump was tidily wrapped in a clean white bandage. He closed his eyes to slits and made Wizard and Cassie disappear.

“He’s still angry,” Cassie observed. “At you, for bringing a stranger into his home. And at me, for holding him down while I dressed that stump. But he didn’t even stick around for the fire to start.”

Wizard felt relieved. And guilty. “He wouldn’t let me clean and wrap it for him.”

“You didn’t even try,” Cassie stated factually.

“Well, I was afraid I’d hurt him,” he said defensively. Had she no sympathy for him at all? His magic was gone.

“Sometimes you have to hurt someone to help him- When cleaned that stump with peroxide, he screamed like a baby.

But it’s clean now, and he won’t get gangrene.“

“I’m glad he’s all right.”

“I know. Now. What upsets you most? That your magic is gone, or that you got caught before you could run out on us?”

Wizard’s breath caught. The question was as cold and unexpected as a knife in the spine. Cassie’s blue eyes continued to bore into his.

“Well, what would you call it?” she asked him at last, sounding a bit defensive. “Only days ago, you and I discussed this gray thing of yours, this Mir. That it had come to Seattle, and that you are the only one that will have its balancing point.

That it will come to you, and you must stop it. And if you fail, it will take us all down. What happens next? Next we have Wizard forsaking the duties of his magic, claiming that he has no magic, and contemplating moving in with a waitress, to watch TV and drink beer and line up for payments from a window. So what should we think? What were you thinking?

That you could roll over on your back and Mir would pass you by? Even if it did, which you well know it won’t, where did you think it would satisfy its hungers?“

The enormity of it settled on him- He could only look at her. The grave sadness in her eyes was more than he could bear.

“You know,” he said slowly, “that those things never crossed my mind. I never saw it that way, that I was abandoning a position. I only saw that my magic was gone, that I was Wizard no more. Somehow, I… forgot about it.”