Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

“I know,” she conceded. She walked away from him to drop back into her chair, but then waved him into its thate on the other side of the lamp stand. His legs and back were stiff, and his ribs ached from the collision with the lamppost. The wound her words had dealt him was worst of all. He was glad to ease into the chair instead of standing. He smoothed his robes over his knees.

“You look like you’re already comfortable wearing that,”

Cassie observed softly.

He looked down at the soft blue cloth. “It seems natural,” he admitted. “Right.”

“Are you sure your magic’s gone?”

He nodded, tired of repeating it.

“Then the worst part is that you are sure. How did you lose it?”

He heard a test in her question. Did she think he would lie about it? “I broke the rules.” he said simply. “And it went away.”

Cassie was shaking her head slowly. From somewhere, a bit of needlework had come into her hands. Embroidery. He watched her bite off a thread and select a new color. “You’re wrong, you know,” she said conversationally- He leaned forward to catch her words. “The rule? broke you.”

He bowed his head to that rebuke. “I suppose I never really had the strength, the discipline, to be a wizard.”

Cassie snorted. “Idiot. No. You knew what would break you. You knew what rules you couldn’t keep, so you made those rules and then you broke them. To get away from the magic. It’s scared you shitless since the first day I told you it was yours.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No. No, you don’t understand. Cassie, I broke the rules that had brought the magic to me, and so it went away. I kept more than a dollar in change, I’ve lain with a woman, I’ve turned my strength loose upon others.” He was babbling, close to falling apart again. Cassie poked her needle through the heavy linen. He heard the rip-drag of the embroidery floss as it followed. She kept her eyes on her work, making no reply as he catalogued his sins, but only shaking her head. He told her all, all since the night she had done the Seeing for him, croaking out the tale when his mouth grew too dry to speak.

When be finally ran down. she spoke.

“Where did you get the rules?”

“The magic gave them to me.”

“No. Not those ones. You invented those ones yourself, knowing you couldn’t keep them. You wanted to break yourself so me magic would go away, so you wouldn’t be a wizard and have a duty to it. But even in your desire to be free of it, the magic went too deep in you for you to destroy it. Otherwise you would have taken the easy way out. Stomp one of those stupid pigeons. That would really have done it, really have blown the magic away. Or turn your back and walk away when one came seeking you. But you didn’t. You made up your own rules to break. We all knew you were in trouble (he minute you stated putting extra rules on yourself. Rasputin thought be could rattle you out of it. Maybe I should have let him. But I said you would snap out of it on your own. So we watched you, hoping. Until it was damn near too late.”

He was staring at her, refusing to believe her. She met his eyes calmly.

Think back. What rules did Rasputin give you? Hold me pigeons sacred and never harm them. Listen to me ones who came to talk to you, and when you have comfort for them, speak out. Tell the Truth when it comes on you. and when you Know, admit you Know. That was all. Those were the rules of your magic, given you by the only one of us who can look at a wizard, see his magic, and tell him me rules of it. The rest of it was your own petty fences, put up to keep others at a distance. When you came to me for a Seeing, I hoped you would see how silly they were. Even Estrella tried to warn you.“

“Didn’t anyone ever mink of just coming out and saying it?”

“You being such an easy person to talk to and all?” Cassie asked sarcastically.

“I’m not that hard!” he replied indignantly.

“Oh, aren’t you, now?” There was something else in her voice now. A more personal hurt that baffled him. He didn’t want to explore it. Cassie stabbed her needle into the cloth and dragged it swiftly through. She didn’t look at him and he sat without speaking. At last he beard her give a long sigh. When she spoke again, it was in her ordinary, well-modulated voice.

“Are you still sure your magic is gone now? Remember, you haven’t broken any rules.”

He hated to disappoint her. “I’m sure. It’s gone, Cassie. I can’t feed me pigeons. When people talk to me, I’m not sure what to say to them I was helpless against Lynda and what she did to me.”

Cassie snorted. “Lynda. She’s another matter entirely. Don’t blame it on her. So you’re sure it’s gone. Then you’re a fool and no one can help you.” She finished a leaf and knotted off her thread. She suddenly crumpled her work into her lap and sat up straighter. “I have an idea about you. I may be completely wrong. Want to hear it?”

“Why not?” What could she say that would be worse than what had been said?

“This gray thing, this Mir. It scared the hell out of you. So, rather than face it, you tried to pretend it was only imaginary.

Something inside your head, some neurotic disorder from your past. It isn’t. It’s as real as I am.“

“How real is that?” he asked lightly, but she brought a pointing finger to bear on him.

“Never doubt me, not even in jest. I’m real, real enough to kick your ass if I bear another comment like that out of you tonight. That would have been me next step, wouldn’t it? And you damn near took it. You would have convinced yourself nut Rasputin and Euripides and I ”were all—I don’t know what—imaginary, or fragments of your own disordered mind.

I mink: you could have actually made yourself believe it, too.

You’re a very young wizard, as wizards go, and tonight you nearly lost your chance to get any older. But you had better believe this, now. This gray thing of yours, this Mir. It’s real.

Real enough to tear you into shreds. Real. And smart enough to start with your mind first, if you leave it an opening. Or it can stand back and watch you chase your own tail until you’re exhausted, and men it can step in and take you without a fight.

And use you for its own ugly ends.“

“I think it’s already begun,” he admitted cautiously.

“Bullshit.” Cassie smoothed out her needlework and picked up a skein of yellow thread. “You’re scaring yourself. Searching your soul for bogey-men. So you have a temper. So your body has been trained as an effective weapon and steps in to save you’when your mind is out to lunch. Maybe you even have a few kinks that the right person can trigger with the right sort of behavior. Well, don’t we all? Don’t blame the gray thing or the magic. Don’t even blame Lynda. though she sounds like she could piss off a saint. Blame yourself. You set it all in motion.”

“Meaning what?” He demanded. He didn’t like the way this was going. Not matter what he said, Cassie seemed to circle back to where it was all his fault. But she couldn’t know what it was really like. She hadn’t been there.

“You deliberately unbalanced your magic. When Lynda came to you on the bench that day, she had a problem. You listened to her, but you didn’t tell her what you Knew. Nor did you turn her away. You kept what you Knew to yourself, like it was some ponderous secret. Hell, even I could have told her the answer. I would have said, ‘Lynda, it’s fine to like men, any number of men, as long as you still like yourself.’ But you didn’t. So you owed her, and she became a danger to you. Mir has used her as a channel to get to you- Hell, didn’t you wonder at a waitress that could jump up to a bar and chin herself up to a fire escape? Mir used her to move you away from the rest of us, to get you out on your own. But even though the magic was unbalanced when you didn’t give more than you got, it didn’t go away. Didn’t you Know that Booth would follow and attack?”