wizard-of-the-pigeons

She was trembling.
“Are you scared?” he asked her.
“Not as scared as you are. And it’s not you I’m scared of.”
She was right. He held her and as she put her arms around him, he felt her
magic wrap them both like a mantle. Within that shelter, all was safe and right.
Her breathing became slow and steady as the sea swells, calming them both. He
closed his eyes. This was right.
And more than right, her magic promised. It was the pathway back to where a
touching was not a hurting. It was the missing arc of the circle that took him
back to an unspoiled beginning. To a garden on a summer day, with bees buzzing
in honeysuckle on the garden wall.
“Cassie?” he asked, the last of his uncertainty in his voice.
“I’m right here.” she whispered. “I’ve always been right here.”
He journeyed to the heart of woman’s magic, and found it was the journey
home.
THE RAINY STREETS shone under the streetlamps. The squall had passed,
leaving with an icy wind wandering the streets and alleys. He heard the final
click of Cassie’s door as it closed behind him. He turned back to it, but it was
already gone, fading into darkness. She had left him alone to face it, turned him
out like a stray cat to take his chances with the street dogs.
He knew that she’d had to. But the night still seemed the colder after Cassie’s
warmth.
At least there was nothing about. Whatever gray Mir was, it wasn’t bold
enough to strike on Cassie’s doorstep. He shivered and began to walk. He sensed
the city around him, the living entity of each building he passed, the vacant
windows that nonetheless watched him. He had not felt it so alive since the night
Cassie had come for him through the snowstorm. Nor so ominous. It was as if he
walked through a maze of spectators come to witness his execution. “Bring on
the hatchetman,” he muttered to himself. He had screwed his courage to the
pitch of being able to go forth and meet Mir. But he didn’t know how long it
would stand up to the tension of having to seek Mir out. That wasn’t something
he had prepared for.
His socks soaked up the rain water like wicks. The hem of his wizard robe