Megan Lindholm: Wizard of the Pigeons

She was giving him me pieces faster than he could fit them together. “It was your power I used, men, when I faced it down?”

She shook her head, not looking at him. “You used mine upon me knife; did not you guess that ferocity was woman’s magic? The soaring rush you felt afterward; that was seduction of me grayness. I saw you swept away from me. But when you cloaked me in your protection and sent me away, I took my magic with me as well. I needed it, to find and rouse your pigeons, and call them to you. Then, when I returned… I know you felt me join you.”

The spice scent. He nodded slowly, beginning to understand as Cassie fitted me pieces together for him. But Cassie never explained anything- Something was terribly wrong. He reached and turned her face up to his. Moonlight and streetlights touched her tears.

“Why are you crying?” Her tears hurt him as nothing else had.

“Because I am hurt!” She cried out. She pulled gently free of him, wrapping herself tightly in her arms. She stood so alone. “Why do you think the rules are given us, if not to keep us from hurting ourselves? But me decision was mine. I took it upon myself, to give you what you would not ask for. My magic. To call for you the allies you had prepared so well for this battle. I unbalanced my magic. But I could have done nothing else. Could I have watched you destroyed? Knowing that for all the times and tomorrows dial might ever come, never again would our paths cross? Shall I be sorry for what I did? But it hurts. Yes. All the old scars have come unhealed.

I had forgotten it could hurt this bad. All the old pains are new again.“

He nodded stiffly, knowing what she meant. The pains that came out of the past and haunted, hurting past toleration. A pain that made you explode at a touch. He could not reach after her as she walked to the edge of the dock. The full moon was over the sea, sending a wrinkling silver path across the waves to diem. Cassie gave him one anguished look and then stepped down onto that path. He hurried to the edge of the dock and stood looking after her. She walked steadily away, her small feet leaving no impression on the ocean’s salty face.

Her silhouette grew small against the moon.

“I’ll see you later!” he cried after her.

She never answered.

“SEEN CASSIE?” asked Rasputin.

Wizard shook his head slowly. It had become a ritual greeting among them. Always one asked,‘and one denied silently.

Nothing more than this was ever said about her. Wizard had all the memories now, and he clung to them. He had given up trying not to hope.

“So what you want me for, I-Don’t-Know Wizard?”

It was June again, and Rasputin shone in the pleasant weather.

Enamelled red hoops glittered in his earlobes, and his bare chest was decked in successions of bright red seed necklaces. They rattled when he danced, and even when he was still, they clicked softly against one another, maintaining the secret rhythm of his endless dance. A light wind rustled the leaves of the trees in Occidental Square.

“See her?” Wizard nodded at a bench across the way from them. He flung another handful of popcorn from the withered bag on the seat beside him. Pigeons fluttered and scrabbled around their feet. Rasputin nudged them away from his bare toes and scowled.

“See who?”

“On the left end of the bench. Move your eyes just a little, to catch her at an angle. See her now?”

“I don’t see nothing but an empty bench. You getting snaky on us. Wizard?”

Wizard made an impatient motion of his head and caught up one of his pigeons. He whispered to it for an instant and then flung it aloft. It fluttered frantically, made altitude, then wheeled and came sliding down to light on me empty bench.

“A chameleon!” Rasputin gasped.

Her startkanent?? had betrayed her. When she moved, she was visible. But as soon as she was still again, she began to blend back into her surroundings. Subtle ripplings of color crossed her. In a moment, she was invisible again.

“I’ll be damned!” Rasputin whistled low. “Looks like maybe you found one. You talked to her yet?”

Wizard shook his head. “I’ve been watching her for about a week. She’s completely unaware of what she is doing. I thought I’d get your opinion before I approached her.”

Rasputin shrugged. “Ain’t my department. You go talk to her, take her around a little. Run her past Euripides and see if she Knows him. The usual stuff. If she pans out, bring her by me- I’ll give her the rules.”

Two wizards leaned back on their park bench. The blue robes of one fluttered against his bare feet. The other’s fingers twitched in his endless dance. No one gave them a second glance. It was a fine June day in the Emerald City.