“I don’t understand. I don’t understand what the hell is going on at all. Who are you, anyway, and why did you bring me here?”
She shook her head and turned away from him. He trailed behind her into the living room. She dropped onto one corner of the couch and sat looking up at him. He started to sit down on the other end, but then retreated to the far side of the room, to lean on a mantelpiece and return her stare. He felt he had scored a small victory when she finally gave a sigh and then spoke.
“We’ll do it one more time. I’m Cassie- And you are Wizard, And I went out tonight, through a hell of a lot of dangers that you refuse to recognize, and dragged you back here in the hopes that you’d live long enough to be worth something. It could be so simple, if you’d only let it. Just relax, man, and be yourself. The city will take care of you. And you take care of the city- That’s all Seattle wants of you. That’s all any of us want from you. Why are you being so damn stubborn?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Frankly, lady, I think you are almost as crazy as I think I am.”
“How crazy is that?”
“I don’t know!” he roared, exasperated with the conversation.
“Is Acre anything you do know?”
“I don’t know!” The screech tore his throat. A rush of fear engulfed him, followed by the adrenalin strength that knotted his muscles and made him capable of anything. He took two steps toward her, knowing he could spindle that fragile body, smash the delicate skull that housed the pulpy gray brain, put an end to her and to her questions and statements that made no sense.
She looked up at him, eyes wide with curiosity, not fear. A twitch was jumping in his cheek and there was the sound of roaring wind in his ears. “Harness that, and you’d have something,” she said at last.
Her voice wrapped itself around his chafed nerves, soothed and calmed him. As quickly as his anger had risen, it drained from him. “Can’t you start at the beginning, and go slowly?” he found himself asking.
“There are no beginnings,” she said, almost sadly. “It happened the same way to all of us. Perhaps that’s the only universal thing about it. You wake up the day after, and know that nothing will ever be the same. Some hear voices, and some are suddenly aware of the total silence of the world. Some of us are filled with awesome purpose, and some of us are emptied of ambition and opened to time. I can tell you a story, if you like. That was one of the things given to me. Sometimes they help. Listen. Once upon a time there was a young girl who lived in a crude hut on the edge of a great forest. Her parents were dead, and though she was not quite old enough to live by herself, she was too old for anyone in the village to feel they had to take her in. So she lived alone. She made a marginal living with her small flock of chickens and the herb garden that she tended. Her mother had possessed a gift for herbs, so the girl had plants there that were quite rare, with virtues unknown to many more learned folk. So not only the folk of the village cams to her for herbs and spices, but also me Great Folk that could afford to travel afield for such luxuries.
“One day a great company of the folk, with some of the men dressed in rich robes, and some dressed in shining metal, and the women clad in rich dresses that near trailed the ground, even from the backs of their horses, rode past. They were talking and Jesting among themselves, and three minstrels were singing, so that they made a fine noise and dust as they passed the little hut. None noticed the little maid in her garden, until at the very end of the company there came an old man, dressed in robe and mantle of blue. His hair and beard were as gray as sword metal, but he carried no such weapon. He stopped at the gate and sat his horse, looking down at her, while the rest of the Great Folk followed the King’s Road into the forest. He was so quiet that at first she didn’t even notice him. When he spoke, she started, and nearly uprooted the tiny plant she was weeding around. ‘So you’ve been chosen, and I see you’ll do very well indeed,’ he said. He came down from his tall horse and entered the maid’s garden and life. No harm did he offer her, but taught her much of herbs and all that grows, things beyond the teachings of any other mortal. Rules he gave her that she recognized as her own. ‘You can offer,’ he told her, ‘but not with words, and until what you offer is accepted, you cannot give it. You must tend the plants wherever they may grow, and what you must ask of others is the most they can give. You can take all, except for the things you desire most, and those you must not touch until they are given freely.’ These were the sort of things he taught her. For five years and a day he stayed with her. and neither of them ever regretted a day.
Then one day they both knew that he had to go, for there were portentous events brewing, and a place in them for him. And so he left her, and never again was she the same person.“
He had shifted impatiently all through the story, not wanting to be touched by it, not wanting to hear any of the silliness.
She was so solemn as she told it, as if she were revealing the secrets of the universe. The mood she had created stretched like a bubble around them both, and he felt a compulsion to pop it.
“And the old man was Merlin, and the little girl was Cassie. The End.”
But his mocking words did not shatter the bubble, nor even dent it. Cassie sat looking at him with cat-green eyes (hadn’t they been brown a moment ago?) and smiling to herself. He had missed something, and his smart-ass remark hadn’t made him seem any the wiser to it. He had only embarrassed himself and would have called his words back into his mouth if he could.
“You need a haircut,” was all she said. “Shall I get the scissors?”
He nodded, and later sat on a straight-backed chair in the kitchen, looking at the newspapers on the floor that told the news of a Seattle that never existed. He felt the cold of the shears against the back of his neck and the tickling brush of his own hair as it fell.
And still later, he stood awkwardly by the couch as she unfolded it into a bed and brought out a stack of clean white linens and soft blue blankets. “I want to thank you. But there’s no way I can ever repay you for any of this.”
“There are many coins to repay kindness.”
“I don't have any money,” he told her, momentarily taken aback by her words. She had smiled and shook her head over him, and left him to sink into warmth and sleep. He had dreamed that in the night she came to lie beside him and watch over him while he slept. He had dreamed that he felt her warm breath on his skin, felt her eyes touch his face.
And he had awakened shivering in the melting snow behind a blue dumpster in an alley.
THE HOMER was already perched on the back of his bench when Wizard arrived. He saw no sign of Cassie, but then he hadn’t expected to. She would come when she was ready. The pigeons rose in a gray cloud to greet him. They wheeled once over the park and settled around his usual bench. His flock awaited him.
He waded through his congregation to set his bag and overcoat on the bench and seat himself beside them. He took the crumpled bag of stale popcorn from the overcoat pocket. The pigeons surged forward in anticipation. But he was not to be rushed. He pushed his hand into the soft wrinkled bag and pulled out a handful of popcorn fragments. Leaning down, he sprinkled them in a wide swath before his feet. The multitude came to feed. The cocky young homer fluttered into his lap and tried to stuff his head into the bag. Wizard gently restrained him, but did allow him a small pile on the seat beside him.
About every five minutes he scattered another handful of feed. The flock surged and retreated around his feet like a feather ocean. As individual birds became sated, they came to perch sleepily on the bench beside him. Several young ones pushed under the fold of his overcoat and huddled there, enjoying the warmth and security. Their immature beaks were pink and too wide for their heads. Tiny yellow hairs stuck out from the unfinished plumage on their necks.