Megan Lindholm - Wizard of the Pigeons

A softness that smelled like ginger and vanilla settled over him, forcing Mir back and offering respite. He took a breath, opened bloodshot eyes.

Mir loomed over them both. Cassie was wrapped in his cloak, her black hair spilling down her back and gleaming like polished ebony. One of Wizard’s hands clutched at the crumpled front of his stained robe; his hat with its crooked point was sliding down over one of his ears. Her hand was on his shoulder, joining them. He drew a breath, and with it Knew that Cassie’s power was strained to its limits, was screaming with the load of the grayness against it. Even together, they were not enough.

She had come on a fool’s errand, to go down with him. It was Just as hopeless, but slower. He wished be had the breath to tell her so.

“Hold on!” she shouted, and her voice reached him from across a vast dark plain. “They’re coming. Night makes it hard for them.”

He gave his head a minuscule shake, taking no meaning from her words. But he took the last reserve of his power, the small bit he had not known he was saving, the piece that meant he expected to live, and flung it into the face of the grayness.

Mir laughed with triumph.

And screamed with sudden pain.

Pigeons are not nocturnal. At night they are plump puffs of feathers perched in high sheltered places, sleeping more soundly than fat cats on sunny window ledges. They do not see well at night. They seem weaponless, lacking the taloned feet and hooked beaks of me raptors. But a mower pigeon can accurately crack (he knuckles of an intruding hand venturing into her nest with a sharp stroke of her wing. The pointed pink or black beak that pricks out bits of popcorn from cracks in cobblestones occasionally jabs even the soft palm of one who offers largesse.

And the battering wings and Jabbing beaks of a thousand hungry pigeons in competition for food are not to be ignored. By anything.

They had heard, had received the call of Wizard summoning them to be fed- So they came, hungry always, blundering through the darkness. They dove to his feast, squabbling and crowding one another as they fought for the writhing threads and juicy gobs of grayness. Plucking and gulping, they dismantled it. Mir roared its agony through Wizard’s bones. Its pain exploded inside him in the place where it had sheltered, burning like phosphorous in his guts. The night turned black and red before his eyes. To his ears came only the cooing and fluttering of pigeons, pecking one another in their eagerness as they snatched up wet, gray chunks. The agonized roar inside him became a shriek that rose up in pitch, passing through the scales of his hearing until it reached a shrillness that his ears could no longer perceive. Wizard sat rocking in the darkness, his hands over his tortured eardrums, wondering if it had stopped, or if it would scream on endlessly inside him, too high to be consciously perceived.

The wondering was his own. When he recognized that, he opened his clenched eyes to the grayness of city night. A simple grayness, unthreatening. Just the gray light of streetlamps, blessedly empty of any cognizance. He wished he could sit and bask in it and rest. Not yet. It was not quite finished. He heaved himself up, wiping blood from his face onto the sleeve of his robe. Cassie he saw leaning against the wall of me alley, beside the Great Winds dumpster. She looked drained, but he sensed that she strained still to hold Mir at bay.

He reached her side and touched her arm gently. “No need,” he whispered hoarsely. “That part is done.”

Her legs gave way beneath her and she sank to the cold pavement. He crouched beside her on nerveless legs that trembled with weariness. Together they watched the pigeons clean it up. It seemed to take forever, but Wizard did not mind.

Cassie was leaning against him, warning him, and her soft hair beneath his chin smelled of the garden. They sat silently, watching the busy beaks of the pigeons. He knew they both thought of that summer day when he had left the cavalcade to find her. Threads of gold and silver, woven together so seldom, and always so briefly. He pulled her closer, thinking of the befores they shared.

When at last me pigeons were sated, no bones or teeth remained at the core of the thing. The plump birds sat about on the paving stones, blinking sleepy round eyes, full to capacity at last- In the center of the alley, untouched by beaks, rested a small gray document box. -

“This part’s for me,” Wizard sighed. He dragged himself to his feet, reluctantly pushing Cassie back when she would have joined him. He stepped softly up to the box and stood over it. When he nudged it with his toe, he heard a ghastly scuttling inside it. “Still,” he marveled. He lifted his foot and brought it down sharply, concentrating on smashing the paving stones that lay beneath the box. The shock of the blow jolted up through his spine. He felt the lock and lid give way, to crush down upon whatever was in there. The heel of his sock grew warm and heavy with his own blood.

But when he nudged the box again, all was silent within.

“What was in there?” Cassie wondered.

“You don’t want to know,” he assured her.

He picked it up with dirty newspapers from me dumpster and dropped it into a smoke-blackened footlocker lying underneath the fire escape. He touched the lid and it fell, to shut with a thud over the thing. He knelt before it to fasten the catches shut.

“Give me a hand?” he asked Cassie.

There were handles on either end of the fire-blackened footlocker. The load within was heavier than it had any right to be. The shape of the footlocker was awkward and their disparate heights made it no easier. They walked side by side down the night sidewalks, each gripping a handle and dodging parking meters. Cassie did not need to be told they were heading for the public dock.

They spoke very little at all. Once Cassie said, “They were all sleeping in high places, or I could have reached them sooner.

They would have come right away, if you had thought of calling (hero yourself. I used your voice, but they were still wary of believing me.“

And once he observed, “This has been the longest night of my life,” to which she replied, “The dawn is wise enough to wait some snuggles out.”

The sea splashed and heaved beneath the public docks.

Wizard stared down at the lacy tops of the waves. “Is it deep enough here?” Cassie worried.

“I don’t think it will stop at me bottom,” he assured, her.

Together they swung it, once, twice, three times and away.

There was no splash, no rising of bubbles. It was gone. The sea wind made streamers of their doming.

Beside him, Cassie fussed with the silver tassels of the cloak.

They came undone in her fingers and she slipped from its shelter. Bruises were shadows on her white skin, revealed by her own torn clothes. Wizard winced. She draped me cloak over his arm, but when he tried to put it again about her shoulders, she stepped away from him. “I’ve borrowed your strength long enough. Take it again, and give back to me what is mine.

Puzzled, be slung the cloak around his shoulders. The warmth of her body clung to it still, and be had to smile sadly as he met her eyes. Then he felt me slow peeling away of something, like a tight garment being drawn off his body. For an instant he felt naked and chilled, and men his own power nose to protect him again.

“I’ve been using your magic tonight,” he said, finally grasping it. She nodded, looking down at the rough wood of me dock.

“I put it upon you when I held you, knowing it was forbidden, but too fond of you to let you go unsheltered. If I had known me strength of me grayness, I would not have had the courage to do so. But I did not. I thought I was wise. I set my own trap for it, never guessing how easily it could overpower me once I had tent my strength to you. I did not guess the hold it had on you.” She paused suddenly, shaking her head violently. “You had hidden your torment too well. You were right, you know. It was within you as well as without, just as real in both places. And when I saw it upon you, saw you transformed in it…I thought I would go mad with horror. I fled. Even now, when I think of now easily it hunted me down using you… But it is done. You are free now.”