Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls

by Jane Lindskold

  I tense, waiting for the flashing lights, the warning “Classified!”

  Nothing happens and slowly I let my muscles unknot, realizing that Abalone has failed to alert the warning.

  “Ivy Green Institute,” Professor Isabella muses. “Yes, that’s where Sarah was brought from. I remember hearing something about it. Did you check them out?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to see if I could get into Sarah’s file at the Home. I avoided a Classified flag—it was pretty plain, meant to keep out peeping staff grunts.”

  “What did you find?”

  Abalone’s smile vanishes. “It’s been rewritten, look.”

  The screen flickers. The same picture is there, but in the swimming characters is information that makes Professor Isabella gasp.

  “To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant,” I hint, tired of being ignored.

  “Sorry, Sarah,” Professor Isabella apologizes. “Ignorance may be bliss, here. Abalone’s right, the file describes a young woman of about your age and appearance, but nothing else is the same. The woman is not listed as a possible autistic, but as a probably dangerous paranoid. Your little identifying traits—like speaking in quotes—are completely missing.”

  I look with puzzlement at Abalone and she wrinkles her brow. “I don’t know, Sarah, but I got out of that file as fast as I could. I checked the recall on Ali and Francis—not much help there except that Dr. Haas issued it. I think she’s behind the search for you—well, at least involved with it.”

  Professor Isabella is still looking at the altered file.

  “This frightens me, girls. The woman depicted here is dangerous—if she was ‘accidentally’ killed or, worse, doped to the gills, there aren’t many who would question the wisdom of the action. By then, she could not defend herself.”

  “Wolf’s Heart!” Abalone cries, kicking a chair leg. “Can Sarah, anyhow? You really need to listen to follow her as it is. She could be dragged off before anyone could understand her and decide to step in.”

  “That he is mad”—I point to myself—“’tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity; And pity ’tis ’tis true.”

  “Sarah, honey”—Professor Isabella pats my hand—“there is a method to your madness but Abalone is right, not many will take time to find it. Abalone, how long until they find she is in the Jungle?”

  “Peep says Edelweiss knows someone wants Sarah. That means others do, too. My guess is until Sarah gets more time with Head Wolf than the others like. The Law doesn’t forbid Pack members to fight, just demands that the fight is ‘alone and afar.’”

  “’Lest others take part in the quarrel and the Pack be diminished by war,” I finish, remembering with a pounding heart the conversation Betwixt and Between had reported.

  “We may not have much time.” Professor Isabella looks sharply at Abalone. “I may be asking too much, but Sarah needs to be taken away from this area. The city is large. We can lose ourselves easily and yet keep tabs on the search. When the interest dies down…”

  “We can move back into our old hunting grounds.” Abalone nods. “I’m with you. She’s my Cub still, even if she has won her wolf. I’m not leaving her now, but will she go with us?”

  “Ask her,” Betwixt and Between hiss together, unheard as always.

  Professor Isabella looks at me.

  “You’ve heard all of this, Sarah. Will you leave the Jungle and come with us to a safer place?”

  Memories of the musky Jungle, warm even in winter’s chill, of swinging free above the Pack, of Head Wolf’s hands and dark mad eyes engulf me, but I know that the Jungle is no longer a safe lair for me. I know, too, that a search there may threaten the Pack and provide an excuse for our enemies.

  I square my shoulders and manage a smile. “Elysium is as far as to the nearest room, if in that room a friend await felicity or doom.”

  “Brave words.” Abalone smiles. “Head Wolf needs to know this, but it is best we move quickly and without alerting the Pack. Leave it to me. You two rest. I’ll be back.”

  She flees before we can protest. Reluctantly, I wait, pacing the confines of walls that did not bind until this moment.

  Seven

  THE APARTMENT IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE. ABALONE HAS DISCARDED the sky-reaching metroplexes as too institutional and has chosen instead a refurbished older building. We each have our own bedroom and share a living room and kitchen. There are even two bathrooms.

  Despite the lovely old brick walls that whisper to me as I relax into sleep, the building has modern computer security. As an added measure against our standing out from our new neighbors, Abalone no longer paints her lips blue and has let the flame-tone of her hair fade somewhat. Without her paint, she is changed. I cannot tell if she looks older or younger, but she looks sadder—a spring flower wilted and bleached by a late frost.

  Professor Isabella does not ask how the rent is being paid but once. Abalone meets the inquiry with silence and then walks out.

  I touch Professor Isabella’s arm. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?”

  “And would we want her to?” Professor Isabella replies. “No, as long as she is careful. Sarah, that girl is nearly as great a mystery as you and, yet, perhaps none at all.”

  She shakes herself and straightens the neat skirt and blouse that have replaced her ragged layers. I like her better this way; she smells sweet, like roses, but she radiates tension.

  I remember that, like me, she has been insane. I wonder if the retreat from the streets and relief from the daily battle for food and heat have left her with too much to reflect upon.

  “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches,” I say, balancing Betwixt and Between on the window ledge so that they can see the sparrows eating bread crumbs on the crusty snow below.

  “Are you twigging me, Sarah?” Professor Isabella looks astonished, then amused. “You have become sharp. Fine, if Abalone is going to support us, I will teach you—and her if she wishes. Perhaps if I get enough into your pretty head, we’ll have the monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare.”

  I puzzle over the last, but do not worry about references. Professor Isabella is happily opening her worn poetry anthology and the crisis is over for now.

  Later, when she has nodded off over the book and Abalone has vanished out into the night, I lie on the floor with my dragons on my stomach.

  Head Wolf had come with Abalone when she had returned to our hideout in the motel. He bowed to Professor Isabella and embraced me. Strangely, I wanted to weep. There was little discussion, nor did he seem angry.

  “The Law says ‘For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.’”

  I nodded, wishing never to leave those arms.

  “Do you want to go, Sarah?”

  The dark eyes overwhelmed me. The ache I felt was loneliness, love, and lust. His skin smelled of cinnamon and salt. Hurting, I managed to nod. Then I pushed myself away.

  “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,” I managed, fighting tears.

  “Well, then.” He hugged Abalone, bowed again. “Good Hunting!”

  The memory hurts no less now for having been reviewed a dozen times. I rock to my feet and pace from wall to wall, in and out of my room, the kitchen, each of the bathrooms, and around again. When I am weary, I needlepoint a pattern I am making for Professor Isabella. Abalone has promised me that she will take me hunting again soon.

  I drift off and dream of sharks with golden hair and hard, green eyes. They smile with pearly teeth and sing a deadly requiem.

  Some days later, the weather turns with one of those warm spells that January brings, teasing with forty degrees and sunshine as a stripper tosses away a thigh-high stocking. Not even Blake, who has delighted me until now, can keep my attention. Abalone is asleep and so I whine like a puppy at Professor Isabella.

  “Well, I suppose we could go walking in the Park, perhaps over to one of the museums.
Would that suit you?”

  I nod, clapping my hands. Then I dart off for my shoulder bag and winter coat. Neither Abalone nor Professor Isabella seem to mind Betwixt and Between as much if I keep the dragon covered.

  Professor Isabella takes longer to get ready, pausing to write Abalone a note. When we are out in the fresh air, she perks up and trots next to me.

  Pointing across the grey-brown lacework of barren treetops, she says, “We’ll walk that way, take a look at the museum, and then be rested to come back.”

  Although the walk invigorates me, the museum overwhelms me. From the moment we walk through one of the vast doors that empty into a cathedral-like hall, I hear voices whispering to me. I must remind myself that I am insane, that nothing is wrong.

  This first visit, we go into a central gallery that smells of spice and dust. The exhibit is a Christmas tree decorated with angels in flight, their draperies fluttering with unfelt winds, their serene faces strangely passionate. Although they seem small against the spreading evergreen’s boughs, I realize that each is larger than Betwixt and Between.

  Professor Isabella draws my gaze downward to the figures at the base of the tree. Animals and people, exotic and so ordinary that they seem to be people I have seen, all travel to visit an infant Jesus who beams beatifically from his manger, sheltered beneath the prayerful gaze of his parents.

  “The museum will leave the crèche up until after the Feast of the Three Kings,” she notes. “Aren’t the little people wonderful? Look at the detail of Mary’s face.”

  I nod agreement. The Holy Family is beautifully done, but I find myself drawn to the ordinary figures: the almost too-whimsical donkey, the dog who pauses to sniff a shrub, the group of men drinking by a ruined fountain.

  If I try, I can hear the song they are singing, not a carol, something lustier.

  My mouth moves, shaping the words, trying to sing with the infectious melody. One of the men is leaning to hand me his wineskin, his dark eyes glint with mirth and more. I reach…

  A sharp sting breaks the sound of the singing. Bewildered, I find myself in the gallery beside the Christmas tree. Professor Isabella is shaking me, her face creased with worry; her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. A few of the other patrons are staring at me. A security guard has halted his step forward, seeing Professor Isabella has quieted me.

  We walk outside. I am trembling with embarrassment and the lingering sensation that I have been torn from another world. Afraid to look at Professor Isabella, I shuffle along, my hands buried in my pockets, my eyes fixed on the grey pavement in front of my feet.

  “Sarah?”

  I do not answer.

  “Sarah, are you all right?”

  Daring to look, I see that her expression shows only concern. Biting my upper lip, I try for words. There are none—no eloquent apologies lurk in my memory waiting to be recycled by a sincere heart.

  “How do you feel, Sarah?” Professor Isabella asks gently.

  “I cannot sing the songs I sang long years ago,” I try. “For heart and voice would fail me, and foolish tears would flow.”

  “Sad and foolish?” She smiles. “I’ve been there. It isn’t fatal, my dear. Feeling foolish is like having a head cold: you don’t die from it, you only wish you could.”

  I smile and suddenly hug her, not caring who sees. Then I link my arm through hers and we go this way back home.

  Abalone is awake and greets us with a warm smile.

  “Where you been?” she says around a bite from a sandwich.

  “Sarah wanted out and we walked over to the museum.”

  “Flash. How’d it go? Did she like it?”

  “I think so.” Professor Isabella hangs up her coat. “She had one of her spells while we were looking at the Christmas tree. Started singing in Italian.”

  “Italian? Where’d she learn that? I thought that she didn’t speak anything at all until you started teaching her.”

  “As far as I know, she didn’t,” Professor Isabella pauses, “but I think a common error we make with the mute is thinking that those who cannot talk also cannot hear.”

  I grin. “More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang’d to hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days.”

  Professor Isabella groans and Abalone laughs, though I suspect more at my teacher’s expression than at my joke.

  Several days later, when I indicate that I want to go to the museum again, Professor Isabella is clearly reluctant, but when she learns that Abalone is planning on incorporating me into another vehicle heist, she is swayed by this, rather than by my borrowed eloquence.

  “We’ll go again,” she agrees, wagging her finger at me, “but for my reasons and those alone. I’d better do what I can to get you at ease in a crowd. You are still too prone to your spells. And, if Abalone is going to make a thief of you, then I had better get in my lessons while I can.”

  I giggle. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.”

  “Something like that,” she replies. “Abalone will teach you well how to build up the treasure we all need to survive in this sorry world—and she’ll do it far better than I ever could. But”—again the finger wags—“man does not live by bread alone. Sometimes, once those physical cravings are satisfied, the real hunger for ‘why’ rather than ‘what’ and ‘how’ awakens and that’s a much harder hunger to satisfy.”

  We hurry across a Park to which cold has returned. Professor Isabella has a roll of charge slips ready in her pocket and whenever we pass a person sheltering under a roadway or in a door, she drops one. I can see the guilt on her face and know that she wonders why she, rather than one of them, is comfortable in an apartment with heat and plenty to eat.

  Today, the Christmas tree and its soaring angels are gone and we concentrate on the medieval Christian art that is displayed in the gallery. Professor Isabella quietly tells me tales about saints, apostles, and martyrs.

  I soak up the stories and look at the figures: Peter, well-meaning but humanly flawed; bald Paul, with the fanatic’s light in his eyes; beloved John, younger than the rest; Mary Magdalene, the Tail Wolf who loved Jesus. The novelty of face and form given to figures I know from the vast amount of Biblical lore in my memory fascinates me. My delight is so great that I can nearly ignore the voices that whisper to me from the gilded statues and the flat faces in the large-eyed paintings.

  Wisps of prayers come to my ears, offered by the devout to the god and saints they could not help but believe stood before them embodied in stone or painted wood. Processional statues mourn the loss of garlands and finery and the pomp that attended them on their special days. Censers breathe out memories of the pungent scents that once seeped in heavy white clouds from the red/white charcoal within them to perfume cathedrals and small wood and thatch churches alike.

  I shake my head and grab Betwixt and Between, letting their spikes dent my hand, the dull pain helping to clear my head. I concentrate on the pictures of the four evangelists on the corners of an altarpiece. The words attributed to them are engraved in my memory and I love these men for giving me tongue. Each is shown as a symbol: ox, man, eagle, and lion.

  Professor Isabella comes up beside me, slipping easily into her role as lecturer.

  “These symbols are probably adapted from the Assyrians, an ancient people from one of the regions through which the Hebrews journeyed. Archaeologists, that is people who study a culture by trying to guess what it was like from the ruins, have found these same emblems in the Assyrian ruins. They have painfully pieced together what we believe they represented for the people who made them: gods, heroes, sacred guardians. If only the stone and clay could speak!”

  I wrinkle my brow. “The very stones prate of my whereabouts?”

  She misunderstands my question. “Yes, exactly—the archaeologists study the stones to make them ‘prate’ of the people who once built with them. Come along, Sarah, I’m tired, and a cup of t
ea would ready me for our walk home.”

  Still reflecting, I trail after her. As we sip tea and hot chocolate in the museum cafe, I am silent, busy making plans. I don’t believe that Professor Isabella, tired as she is, even notices.

  The museum gives faces and personality to many of the people whose words live in my brain. Portraits show me faces of people famous and not. Some of these are only remembered because they were the subject of a famous artist. These continually mutter indignantly of their lives: the rooms in which they hung, the history of those they glorify. Over the course of many trips, I am learning to listen without becoming lost in the chatter of the inanimate spirits.

  Sometimes I come out of listening to what a painting or sculpture has been telling me and find Professor Isabella quizzically watching me. I wonder what she makes of the questions that I whisper sotto voce to the art treasures. Does she hear reason in them or are they hopeless ravings of one walking the borderline of insanity?

  During many visits Professor Isabella teaches me, often reading to me both before and after a visit to a certain gallery to give me reference points.

  Abalone begins to participate in these lessons, first sitting with her own work on the fringes of our discussion and listening covertly, later giving up even the pretense of not attending. Sometimes she comes along to the museum, but more often she continues to live the schedule ordained by the Jungle Law of dusk to dawn.

  As I grow more confident in my strange ability, I notice that Betwixt and Between are very cautious with me. They still tease me, but there is a gentleness in their words. And, even when I ask directly, they refuse to tell me about the Ivy Green Institute.

  This annoys me some, for Abalone is having trouble finding records of the place. When she has time away from forgery and code-breaking, she has been searching record-bank after record-bank for some mention of the place. Occasional references have convinced her that the place did once exist, but equally, she is certain that someone or someones wish it to be forgotten.