Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls (2 page)

F
OR MANY HOURS I WANDER THE DARK
,
WET STREETS
,
COMFORTED
only by Betwixt and Between's witticisms. At last, hungry and wet, even the little dragon falls silent, and I huddle disheartened in a doorway. The cold metal security bars press against my back and the damp pavement seeps through the soles of my shoes and the seat of my pants. Still, I am tired enough that I drowse.

In my dreams, I hear chattering voices. Only when they persist and grow shriller do I begin to suspect that I am not dreaming. Reluctant to relinquish sleep's shelter, I open one eye. Quickly, I open the other, for I cannot believe what is before me.

A girl crouches on the sidewalk, her head level with mine. Her hair is shaved short and dyed flaming orange; her lips are iridescent blue. She wears tight pants of bright purple leather and a short cape of the same material. When she leans forward to prod me again, her long, silver earrings
jingle and I see that she is not wearing a shirt—instead a wolf's-head tattoo peers out from between her small, round breasts.

I stare at this harlequin, so amazed that I forget to be afraid. Her blue lips curl in a smile both innocent and merry.

“Hey,” she says. “What's your name?”

“Sarah.”

“I'm Abalone.”

She looks as if she expects me to question this. When I don't she goes on, “I haven't seen you before. Are you new on the streets?”

Confused, I can only shrug.

She tries again. “Is this your home?”

I shrug again. “The foxes have their holes and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.”

Abalone grimaces. “You're not a preacher, are you?”

I shake my head.

“Wolf's Heart!” she exclaims suddenly, touching her tattoo. “I've got it! You're from the nuthouse, aren't you?”

I tilt my head inquiringly.

“The Home, right?” Abalone's glee is apparent.

“Yes,” I say, happy to please this merry miss.

“Great! Beer and pizza for me,” she says, leaping to her feet. “And Head Wolf will be proud of me. Come on?”

I hesitate.

“C'mon, you don't want to sleep in the rain, do you?” she asks, putting out her hand to draw me up.

I am familiar with following other's commands. Taking her hand, I get to my feet. Abalone is shorter than I am. I
wonder how old she is. From their place in my travel bag, Betwixt and Between study Abalone.

“What a piece of work is man!” Betwixt chortles.

Between hisses. “She said beer and pizza. It's better than being cold, wet, and starving.”

I let my guide hustle me away. As she takes me down side streets and alleys, I quickly lose whatever bearings I had. Finally, she pauses before a dark, narrow concrete arch.

When she has unlatched a door, she looks up at me, her face somber. “Walk where I do; step as I do. Do you understand?”

I nod.

She slips through the arch and I follow. The building is empty, the interior dimly lit from a streetlight outside that shines through a broken window. I follow Abalone, matching her step for step as she walks directly down the center of the room. A few steps before the center, she makes an abrupt right turn and continues in a straight line.

Now that we are deeper in, I can see that the floor is cracked and worn. There are many holes from which the bitter mustiness of dampness wafts up. A misstep would land me in the pit, followed by a shower of concrete.

Abalone leads the way through several more turns in this markless maze until we come to an apparently blank wall. Now she finds her grin again and pushes aside a heavy canvas curtain. I gasp—it is so perfectly painted that I must touch it to reassure myself that she has not somehow transformed stone so that it will bend.

“Head Wolf made it,” she says, again with the touch between her breasts. “He calls it tromp le eye.”

She gestures me past her and I step onto a narrow platform that extends over Chaos. Abalone is beside me in a moment and she gestures down.

“That's the Jungle—Welcome home!”

I cannot move. I cannot speak. I can only look down and, as I do, the colors resolve themselves into shapes and people.

Abalone has brought me to a great cylindrical room made all of metal welded along lumpy seams. Electric lights ring the middle heights, illuminating all but the highest curve.

There are holes scattered randomly and some of these are patched. Others lead to wooden platforms like the one on which we perch. Ladders of rope and wood and metal cling more or less firmly to the sides. Heavy ropes and cables web the cylinder's heights. From some of these, hammocks are suspended, with people asleep in them or swinging gently back and forth.

On the ground level more people mill. Some are eating; others are singing around a small camp stove. Along one edge, a three-quarters-naked couple wrestle, oblivious to the action around them. I guess that there must be three or four dozen people within the cylinder and that most are adolescents.

To one side, with a cleared area around it, is a small domed tent, beautifully painted with lush jungle foliage and bright, impossible flowers.

Abalone tugs me and half leads, half drags me to the nearest ladder. Knees shaking, I follow her to the floor. She does not pause to praise me, but simply walks directly toward the painted tent.

Overwhelmed, I clutch my travel bag and, with my eyes downcast, walk behind Abalone. Even so, I see little things that tease my curiosity: an ebony recorder with the loving polish of hundreds of hands, a worn doll, a pair of new shoes with the tag still on them, again and again, the wolf emblem. I hear soft comments as we thread our way to the tent, but no one addresses us directly. Sometimes, only Abalone's strut tells me that we are the center of many eyes.

We halt before the tent and Abalone motions for me to keep silent.

Then she squares her shoulders, thrusts out her little breasts, and proclaims: “We be of one blood, ye and I!”

Her words have barely been completed when the tent's door-flaps open and a young man walks out. He is dark-haired and dark-eyed, with brown skin and fine features like those of a Hindu doctor at the Home. He wears nothing but a loosely wrapped bit of cloth around his slender hips. His skin is lightly beaded with sweat and I smell clean, male musk.

He is trailed out by a petulant-looking girl with pure white hair and slate grey eyes, wearing nothing at all but a wolf tattooed on one buttock. As she walks across to get water from a tap, I see that the wolf chases a doe tattooed on the other buttock.

But this is peripheral, for the man is speaking to Abalone and with his words, chatter and song melt into silence in waves around us.

“What have you brought to me, Abalone?”

“One of the people from the Home. A woman. Her name is Sarah.”

“Sarah,” he tastes my name, “from the Home. What do you have to say for yourself?”

His black eyes meet mine and something like lightning flashes through me. I have seen such eyes time and again in the Home. Always the clear, piercing gaze was dulled sooner or later by drugs. The Head Wolf is mad—utterly and completely mad, but it is a glorious madness.

Almost too late, I recall that he has demanded a response from me and I struggle to find one.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.”

As Abalone had, Head Wolf stares at me. Then he smiles and gracious lips curve in a gracious smile.

“A fine reply, Sarah. Do you mean what you say?”

“Head Wolf wants to fuck you,” the white-haired girl snickers. “Do you know what that means, fruitcake?”

Without turning, Head Wolf backhands her. His eyes never leave me.

“Edelweiss is correct. I would like to fuck you. You are strangely beautiful, Sarah. But I think that you need food and sleep more. I will wait, for now.”

His too-brilliant eyes leave me and turn to Abalone.

“You have done well, sister wolf. You may have beer and pizza enough for you and Sarah. Let her sleep in a hammock near yours or if she fears the Heights, you may claim lair rights for her on the ground. Guard her well and bring her to me next twilight and we will teach her the Law of the Jungle.”

He reenters his tent. Minutes later, Edelweiss follows him, the handprint still bright against her pale cheek.

Abalone brings us pizza and beer. She doesn't laugh when I feed some to my dragon.

I find that I can sleep in a hammock and with daylight the electric lights are turned off and the Jungle lapses into a sleepy lull. Despite the novelty of sleeping twenty feet above the ground, I am exhausted enough that I sleep until the electric lights come on again.

When Abalone sees me moving, she climbs over and takes me below, where I can wash. She even helps me to comb my hair. Then we climb back into the Heights and study the Jungle while we await the time to meet with the Head Wolf.

“Careful, Sarah,” she cautions me when I get overbold. “We're up a bit and there's no net to catch you.”

“Life,” I say with a shy smile, “is performed daily without a net.”

She smiles her blue smile. “That's the spirit, Sarah. You'll like it here in the Jungle if you really think that way. You must be burning up with curiosity, but can you ask questions?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” I offer hesitantly.

“Right, but cats like it in the Jungle. Cats and dogs and children, all of us strays, but we're happy here.”

She sits next to me and shows me how easily the hammock becomes a swing. I put Betwixt and Between on my lap so that they can see the panorama of the Jungle come to life.

“Hey, Sarah.”

Abalone's voice is tentative and already I know enough about her to feel surprised. I turn to look at her face and realize that she is blushing. I raise one eyebrow and she blushes more.

“Sarah, about sex—fucking. Do you understand it?”

I search for a reply.

I am hardly a virgin. The first man to empty himself into me was a psychiatrist brought in by the Home to discover if I really was mute. When he decided that I was, he raped me. It was easily done—all I was wearing was a paper gown. He finished, cleaned himself up, and then me. When someone commented that I seemed distressed after the session, he dismissed it as trauma related to the testing. I was twelve.

Later, other men and a few women discovered what can be done to a mute. When I learned to speak—in my fashion—the assaults diminished some.

Abalone, I realize, is fearful for my presumed innocence. I wonder what this fire-haired girl has seen.

“Man, biologically considered,” I reply at last, “is the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species.”

Abalone laughs. “Oh, it's not that bad.”

“The evil that men do lives after them,” I parry feistily.

“Yeah, I guess you've seen a bit,” she says after a moment's reflection. “Head Wolf isn't too bad and he won't fuck you unless you ask him. Some of the others…They know the Law, but still, watch out.”

Motion from Head Wolf's tent distracts her. She begins to climb to the nearest ladder.

“Follow me, Sarah. We can't keep Head Wolf waiting.”

I follow, afraid to go again before those mad black eyes, yet tingling with anticipation. This time, when Abalone stops before the tent there is no shouted challenge. Head Wolf is waiting and with a toss of his head he gestures us to a cleared open space where many of the other Jungle residents are gathering.

“This is our Council Rock,” Head Wolf says. “Here we give our Law. Some of the Pack must go out and hunt, but the rest have stayed this little while to help me teach you.”

He puts out his hand and a tattered green book is put into it. The oversized cover is dark, forest green, painted with a beautiful young man seated beside a wolf, a black panther, and a bear. Head Wolf holds up the cover so that I can see it.

He smiles. “What do you see, Sarah?”

The Jungle becomes silent. I can sense that how I answer will shape all my interaction with these people. Frightened, I tighten my grip on Betwixt and Between until the spikes along their back dent my hand.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?” I stammer.

Someone chuckles. Abalone kicks out. My eyes never leave Head Wolf. Will he understand me?

“What is the mirror, Sarah?” he asks softly.

I point to the book, my finger just touching the beautiful boy.

“And what does the mirror reflect, Sarah?”

I move my hand and gently brush his face.

“Very good,” he purrs, “very good. This Book holds our Law. Listen. We will tell it to you.”

He faces his people and I turn with him. For the first time, I notice that each one wears the sign of the wolf. Sometimes it is a piece of jewelry, others a patch on clothing, a few a tattoo proudly displayed.

Head Wolf raises his hand and like a conductor signaling a downbeat drops it. A chant rises.

“Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky. And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.”

They go on, verse after verse. Abalone's eyes are wide and serious. The boy who kneels next to her screws his eyes shut with concentration. A tall black girl beats her hand between her breasts. I search futilely for one face that is less than impassioned. The words burn themselves into my mind. By the end, I know them all perfectly.

“That is our Law,” Head Wolf says with a proud smile for his people. “Can you learn it, Sarah?”

I hesitate. Edelweiss already does not like me. Perhaps I should take care not to gain Head Wolf's favor.

“Go for it, girl!” Betwixt hisses.

“That memory of yours is the best thing you have going for you,” Between adds.