He watched them plod off with their sacks over their shoulders before he approached the dumpster. He gave a snort at Euripides’s idea of good stuff. Fish bones and stray socks. empty cans and crumpled newspapers. A ripped tutu. Seven squished tubes of Vampire Blood, complete with plastic fangs.
Empty cardboard boxes and packing. A plastic fright wig. A box of brown lettuce- A brown paper sack labeled WIZARD.
It was cold, suddenly. Not that the wind came any swifter off the bay. The seagulls were still screaming as they wheeled, the traffic still rushed and rumbled. A breeze, half of power and half gray, stirred his hair. The cold began in the pit of Wizard’s stomach and emanated outward. His ears rang and he cringed from the expected blow.
A pigeon swooped down suddenly to alight on the edge of the open dumpster. He eyed Wizard anxiously. He was very young, his beak still wide and pink. “I’m all right,” Wizard reassured him. “Just give me a moment. III be fine.” The pigeon fluttered closer, to peck at the fish bones, and reject them. A sudden jab of his beak rustled the paper sack. “Yes, yes, I see it. It just took me a bit by surprise, that’s all. Go along now. Popcorn later, at the park. If you see Cassie, tell her I’m looking for her. No, on second thought, stay clear of her. You’re still tender, and you aren’t fast enough to get away from her. Just pass it on to anyone. I’m looking for Cassie.”
The young bird was gone in a clap of wings. A lot of homer in that one. Wizard thought, watching his soaring, careless flight.
He flicked the fish bones away from the bag and extracted it from the dumpster. It was not heavy. He felt it cautiously.
Cloth, perhaps. He walked slowly away with it. He was not ready to look inside the bag. Not yet. It swung ominously at the end of his arm and disturbed him. It didn’t thatch his clothing. It betrayed him. No one in this suit and shoes would carry a dumpster-stained crumpled brown bag. He could get away with trash digging in a suit; people were always throwing things away by mistake and digging through dumpsters for them: lottery tickets and car registrations and phone numbers scribbled on the backs of envelopes. But men dressed as salesmen did not wander around the city carrying dirty paper bags labeled WEARD. He felt the cold touch of the power on him again, both a threat and a consolation. If he could find the balancing point, he could use whatever force was working here.
If he failed to find it, it would smash him.
Today he had had enough of shadows and the rumble of Highway 99 overhead. He needed sunlight. He crossed Alaskan Way recklessly and wandered out onto me pier of the Aquarium.
The sky was overcast, but he sensed the sun behind the clouds and took comfort from it. He sat down on the guard mil of the dock and looked down at the sloshing water. The bag leaned against his leg, rustling secrets whenever the wind touched it.
People were slowing to stare at him. It would be a very stupid place to try to commit suicide, but he felt them wondering if he were going to jump. He rose and took up his bag.
Privacy, he reflected as he strolled down Alaskan Way, was in damned short supply in the city. Whatever was in this bag, it was not something to be poked through on a crowded sidewalk, or investigated in the closed stall of a men’s room. No, it demanded solitude. And the only way to be alone in a city was to be where no one else wanted to be. Someplace cold and windy and smelly with nothing worth looking at- He hiked along Alaskan Way, past the fireboat station and the ferry terminal, past Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Beyond it was a small grab-and-run diner in a sort of kiosk in a bare parking lot.
There was a dumpster behind it, redolent of old grease and fish. Not even the cold wind off the bay could disperse the stink. Wizard stood in the lee of the dumpster and opened his bag.
It took his breath away. For a moment he forgot the stink and the cold and the traffic sounds. He touched with a cautious finger.
The long robe was dark blue, spangled with stars and crescent moons that sparkled silver when the cloth moved. It had long, loose sleeves and a high collar. There was no need to hold it up against himself. He knew it would fit. The cloak was the same blue, but unadorned except for silver trim at the collar and throat. It tied with little silver tassels.
Wizard looked into the bag again. The hat. It was blue, one shade short of black. It had a broad brim, floppier than he had supposed it would be, and a tall, pointed peak. But the tip of this lofty spire was bent. He reached into the bag and attempted to straighten it. The touch of the hat on his hand was like the touch of ice against teeth, like the unfelt slicing of a razor blade against callused skin. Slowly Wizard drew back his hand. The tip would not straighten. It was meant to be bent, and the power in it had let him know it. He felt it as a rebuke to him, some sort of subtle mockery that the tip of his wizard’s hat should be bent at such a rakish angle. He remembered to breathe and took a long draw of air. Meticulously he refolded the robe and cloak and replaced them in the bag, packing them around the tall hat. He was carefully folding the mouth of the bag shut when the flutter of wings jarred him.
“Stupid!” Wizard rebuked him. “I warned you that you weren’t fast enough for her.”
The young homer’s feathers were still ruffled, and two of his pinions were missing. In spite of his rakish appearance, he cocked his head at Wizard, fluffed his throat out and gave a bob and coo.
“I’m coming. Next time, don’t be such a show-off. No, no popcorn until I get to my bench. Go on, now. I’ll see you there.”
The young homer soared off. Wizard watched the flick, flick, glide of his wings silhouetted against the lowering sky.
Despite the chill of the day, he took off his tan overcoat and draped it over his arm, concealing the bag. That done, he headed for the bus stop.
HE STARED UNSEEING out the bus window, trying to still the small moth of excitement that always fluttered inside him when he knew he was going to rendezvous with Cassie. Rasputin’s remarks of a few days ago came into his mind to haunt him.
He pushed the ideas away angrily. As if he would ever endanger his relationship with Cassie that way, let alone the magic she had shown him how to unlock. That he had always had the ability to be a wizard he did not doubt; but without Cassie it would never have developed past the stages of odd hunches and strange turns of fortune. He had not been anxious to develop it either.
The second time Cassie had come to him, he had thought he was having a vision. He tried to remember the exact alley. but all his memories from that time were shadowed, like portrait proofs slowly darkening in his mind. It had been winter. That much was certain.
It had been snowing as it did in Seattle once or thrice a winter, with large wet white flakes that spiraled down from the sky. For the first hour, the flakes had melted as soon as they touched the gray streets or the red bricks that cobbled the alleys.
Then the snow had begun to unite in ridges of gray slush in the streets, and in trackless white strips down the centers of the alleys. Soon even the edges of the streets turned white, and the snow filled in the black footprints of the few pedestrians as quickly as they passed. Tomorrow there would be school closures, and the buses would run on emergency schedules and refuse to stop in the middle of the steep streets. He had wiped a drop of moisture from the tip of his nose and slid his numbed hands back into the small warmth between his cramped thighs.
He had been crouching between the back of a dumpster and“ the brick wall of a building, where only the most persistent of the breezes could find him, and none of the snow. But the cold radiated from the bricks at his back and rose from the cobbled street beneath him. The earth was a cold fickle bitch that had turned her icy back on him. The seams of his old black boots were cracked and the faded denim of his pants was as stiff and rough as sandpaper against his chilled skin. His flannel shirt was not long enough to stay tucked in, and the denim jacket he wore was short, barely touching the top of his hips. The collar was turned up to chafe against his reddened ears whenever he turned his head.