He sat watching-the candle flames. He longed suddenly for coffee with an unsurpassed desire, but knew that Cassie never kept any. He shifted restlessly. Any company, even The Pimp’s, would have been welcome, but he was alone. Cassie was singing softly on the balcony; he resisted hearing her. He passed me time by making the candle flames flare up tall and thin, until the tips of me flames broke off and winked out in the dark room. When he noticed the tapers melting low, he calmed the flames, reducing them to tiny tongues on the tips of the wicks.

“Mental masturbation,” she scoffed.

He turned to find Cassie unwinding the cloth from her hair.

Her hair fell in damp tendrils past her shoulders. As she swung the cloak free of herself and onto the hook, he caught the musk of her efforts. There was a hint of a tremble in her iron control as she sank onto the loveseat beside him.

“There are more candles in the lefthand cubbyhole of the desk,” she told him.

As he fetched them, he glanced at her tray. The mirror was blackened as if by fire. The pigeon feathers were gone. He took the candles to her, and she kindled them to replace me softening stumps in the holder. Her lips looked chapped, her face windburned. ‘“Give me space,” she requested gently. Hastily he cleared his bag from the seat and moved to sit on me floor near her feet. She looked down at him almost fondly.

“Why did you have to come to Seattle? she wondered in soft rebuke.

“Was I someplace else before I was here?” he asked in reply.

“Never mind. You-are in Seattle, and it is here you will face it. Your battles with this grayness go back past your memories. In some, you have done well- From others, you bear the scars. Vfe won’t prod them now. I have only paltry things that I may tell you outright. There will be a final confrontation.

Very soon. You must guard the weapons you have forged. If you guard them well, they may be just enough to defeat this Mir. Your edge will be a small one; if you do win, it will be by a tiny margin. This grayness is too clever to let you hone your weapons long. It will come for you soon. If it wins, it keeps you- If it loses, it leaves you alone.“

‘“Can I not vanquish it completely, destroy it all?”

“Listen to him!” Cassie hooted. “Vanquish it! Have you any idea what you ask to do? No man may do that for any other.

You can win yourself free, and no more than that.“

“Then, if I lose, I will be the only loser.”

“You know better.” Cassie’s voice went deadly soft. “Through you, the grayness could rout us all, as easily as shoving a hose down a molehill. There’d be no escaping for any of us. But if it comes to that, it would no longer be you, nor any of your doing. You’d only be the tool. Let’s see.” She signed heavily.

“What else was there?”

“Cassie. you’re not telling me anything new.”

“I know that. I’m telling you what you knew and were afraid to admit to yourself. Listen. I can give you a story. Would you like a story?”

“‘Go ahead,” Wizard said grumpily. Cassie’s stories usually obscured more than they illuminated.

“Good. Because I have a good one for you. No, two. This is the first. Once upon a time. a long, long time ago, in France during World War Two, not that it matters, there were some people being shelled. Among them were a young French woman and her two small children. The two children were very, very frightened. So the mother, to distract them from their terror, began to make silly faces for them, and funny noises. It worked.

The children paid attention to her and were no longer afraid.

But suddenly a shell exploded very near them, and a tiny fragment of shrapnel struck the woman in the throat. She choked and gurgled in her own blood, making terrible grimaces of pain, but unable to call aloud for help. How the children laughed to see the funny,faces Mama made, and hear the silly noises‘

She died to the sound of her children’s laughter.“

Cassie paused expectantly. Wizard just stared, his face gone white. “I didn’t say the stories wouldn’t hurt,” she said softly.

“But they may help, too. Once upon a time, in England, during World War Two, a bomb fell on an old folks’ home. After the raid was over, rescuers came to dig them out and see if there were any survivors. They found one old man sitting on a toilet, still holding the pull chain in his hand, and laughing uproariously. ‘I pulled the chain,’ he said. ‘And the ’ole bloody building came down on me ‘ead.’

“There’s one more I’ll throw in for free,” Cassie added quickly before Wizard could speak, “it was the first bombing raid over Norwich in World War Two. We were all running for the shelters, when I saw one man come dashing up with an armload of white lilies. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘If they get you, at least you’ll have your lilies ready.’ He threw down the flowers with a look of horror and dashed down the shelter steps.”

Cassie stopped and looked at Wizard expectantly.

“Were you really there? In Norwich, the first time it was bombed?”

She looked disgusted. “That story is always told in the first person. Well. Do you understand now?”

“Understand what?”

“Everything. Why the grayness came to you to test you last night and what weapons you must keep safe and keen.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ponder your stories a bit more before ft all comes clear,” he extemporized. Never call Cassie obscure to her face. “But there is one more thing that I have to ask.

Something that has troubled me. Cassie, do you know what Mir showed me? About the boys and the chickens, I mean?“

Cassie nodded, turning her head away. “I couldn’t help but overhear, my friend. I’m sorry to intrude.”

“I don’t mind. Perhaps I would mind more if I understood more. It seemed so monstrous a task for young boys to do.”

“Some say it’s the root of all domestic violence.”

Wizard looked befuddled, so she continued.

“Don’t you see? Teach a child that it’s fine, even necessary, to gently raise an animal, seeing to its every need, protecting its well-being. Of course, along the way, you cut off the end of the chicken’s beak, so it can’t peck other chickens. The same for the rooster’s spurs. Then you make a couple of incisions, and reach in and cut his balls out so he’ll get nice and fat.

Then, after he’s nice and fat, you whack off his head and devour him. Now, how far is it from that logic to loving your wife, but beating her into submission if she goes against your wishes.

Or feed, clothe, and shelter your kids, but kick the crap out of them for their own good when it suits you? Answer me that.“

Wizard considered the connection a bit far-fetched. “I’ve never heard that theory before. Who did you say advanced it?”

“Well.” Cassie shifted. “Me. But I’m someone, and it makes sense to me.”

“I’d have to think it through, thoroughly. But there is still something I’d like to ask you. Mir said I was one of them, that I was there. Was it true?”

Cassie had to nod.

“Which one, then? I remembered being all those boys, as soon as the grayness showed them to me. But surely I could have been only one of them. Yet having seen them from the inside, I would not choose to have been any of them.”

“Poor Wizard.” Cassie put a hand to her face to scratch me bridge of her nose and then rub at her eyes. “Don’t you see?

You were there, yes. But you were the Black Rooster.“

WIZARD SHIFTED IRRITABLY in his sleep. The room was cooling off. He had been comfortable enough when he had dozed off, even though he had scrunched himself to fit onto the loveseat.

He had stared at the tracing of tree branches against me moon’s face until she had blinded him and he closed his eyes. How long had he slept? He opened his eyes a slit. The branches still twined before the moon’s round face, but even as he stared at her, she winked out.