Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls (4 page)

In my month and more in the Jungle, I have gotten beyond sore muscles and fear of falling to where I move through the Web as easily as the long-term residents. I am at her feet practically before she has lowered her hand.

“Head Wolf was—receptive—to my suggestion.”

She nervously licks her lips. I realize that she must have done this frequently in the last hour, for the blue eyeliner with which she paints them is nearly worn away in some places. I scan her for bruises or teeth marks and find none.

She continues. “He wants to speak with you alone and make certain that you really want to do this. It's up to you to prove to him how much you want it.”

I nod, my options thinning into one line. My heart beats wildly, as I know what I must do.

“Go on.” Again Abalone gives me the strange look she had in the Park. “Head Wolf wants you.”

I hardly hear the snickers from the few Pack members still lounging around the camp stoves. With a hand I hope is steady I scratch the tent door as I have seen others do. The painted surface looks smooth, but is ridged and uneven to the touch.

“Who is there?”

“Sarah.”

“Enter, Sarah.”

Lifting the flap, I duck and enter. Once in, I kneel on the cushioned softness and wait.

“Make yourself comfortable, Sarah. I only have a few questions for you.”

I look up and move to sit on the cushion he has indicated. The dark eyes seek for and hold mine. I can only bear to hold their gaze for a moment and am grateful that Abalone has taught me that a Cub must never hold the gaze of a se
nior Wolf, nor any Wolf the gaze of Head Wolf. But when I look away, it is not from courtesy, but from a sense that if I look too long, I will be swallowed.

“Abalone tells me that you are learning well, but that you have much to learn. Did you always live in places like the Home before you came here?”

I nod.

“So you cannot read or drive or even work a simple terminal?”

I blush and shake my head, ashamed.

He quizzes me further about what I can and cannot do, always thoughtfully phrasing his questions so that a “yes” or “no” will do and so that I will not need to struggle for an answer. His kindness relaxes me and I find that I can look at him as we talk.

Finally, he says, “I can see the reason for what Abalone has suggested. With your current assets, however, you could still do very well as one of the Tail Wolves. Surely, you do not scorn that way of hunting.”

I do, but I shake my head, knowing that the Tail Wolves are the most reliable providers in the Jungle.

“Sometimes I think that Abalone does,” he continues. “I hope she has not passed that attitude on to you.”

His eyes say more than his words and my heart knows it is time. Words swim in my head in a chaotic pattern. My hand reaches out and touches him lightly on the cheek.

He waits with dark eyes hooded. I stretch out my other hand, hold his face between them.

Words I know are not needed for this form of communication. I make him as mute as I am, cover his mouth with
mine. When next he speaks, there are no words at all, but I know perfectly what he desires. With only a small sorrow, I give in to him.

Indeed, he is glorious in his madness.

T
HE NEXT DAY
,
AS
A
BALONE BEGINS MY LESSONS
, I
CAN
hardly keep from touching the ivory wolf's head that dangles from a silver loop in my left ear.

The ceremony promoting me from Cub to Wolf had been simple yet moving. Head Wolf and Abalone shared the cry “Look well, O Wolves.” The Pack members questioned Head Wolf and were satisfied as to my fitness. Even Edelweiss was more friendly after the inspection was passed and the token presented.

Yet, I realize that I still must prove myself more than a hanger-on. Thus, I bend my head over the model control panel that Abalone has cobbled together for me. The letters and numbers mean nothing to me and have a disconcerting tendency to squirm and move upon the surface.

Abalone deals with her frustration with my inability by focusing the lesson on developing manual skills. What I will do with them comes after.

My determined concentration is shattered as if it is a smoke ring when a thin voice pierces the Jungle with the Stranger's Hunting Call: “Give me leave to hunt here because I am hungry.”

I have dropped my practice panel into a holding bag and am sliding to the floor even as Head Wolf's deep voice answers, “Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure.”

Thumping to the floor, I race across and embrace the little, bent woman who has entered the Jungle and stands before Head Wolf unintimidated by the Four who hover over her.

She embraces me in turn, “Easy, Sarah, love, in all things moderation. You will strangle me.”

“Professor Isabella! Professor Isabella!” I repeat over and over.

“Dear child,” she says. “Certainly I have taught you to speak better than that. But I won't leap you through
Othello
and Chaucer quite yet; this charming gentleman with lupine pretensions wants to speak with me.”

Head Wolf has watched me greeting Professor Isabella, amusement replacing his initial anger at her invasion. Abalone has joined us, those few members of the Pack who are not out hunting circling round.

Professor Isabella pats me and I sink down to sit at her feet. From this familiar post I study my old teacher. I had believed her unchanged from when I had known her in the Home, but now I see differences.

She still has snow-white hair and delicate, tissue paper skin faintly threaded with blue veins. But her frame is more bent and her hands are swollen, the knuckles shiny with
arthritis. My initial joy had numbed me to the fact that she smells strongly, as if she has not bathed in weeks.

The Law of the Jungle insists, “Wash daily from nose tip to tail tip.” I wonder why Professor Isabella is not taking better care of herself.

“Professor Isabella.” Head Wolf cocks an eyebrow. “May I call you that?”

She twinkles. “Professor Isabella Lacey, once of Columbia. I quit during the budget crisis of the nineties. Met Sarah in the Home where I was ‘resting.'”

Head Wolf nods. “You don't look like a professor.”

“She's a Tabaqui,” chirps one of the new cubs, a little boy called Peep. “I seen her by the train station.”

Professor Isabella smiles, but I see a flush underneath her weather-worn skin. The truth hits me suddenly.

Head Wolf is speaking. “I recognize the lady, Peep. I simply did not know her distinguished credentials. I recognize you, Professor Lacey. But why have you found hunting in our Jungle necessary?”

“Eloquent.” Professor Isabella shakes her head wonderingly. “I would have enjoyed you as a speaker in some of the meetings I have been bored through. I am here because you have one of my students, my last student.”

“Sarah.” Head Wolf nods. “Lovely Sarah. If you wish to speak with her, you are welcome, but after this, meet her elsewhere.”

Head Wolf steps back, the interview over. The Pack disperses and when Abalone would drift away, I reach out and snag her cape.

“Stay a while, that we may make an end sooner.”

Abalone stops at my lightest touch. Professor Isabella studies her quizzically. Abalone's return gaze is cool.

“So, you are Sarah's friend,” my teacher asks.

“I'm Abalone. Yeah, I'm her friend.”

Their words are calm; their tones are even, friendly. But their budding animosity comes to me as a strong scent, like urine in a subway tunnel. My heart tears. I cannot bear that these two, at least, will not love each other, will torment each other over their possession of me.

I step between them, touch Professor Isabella's arm, then Abalone's. They let me turn them like dolls. I take Professor Isabella's hand.

“Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.”

“Pope,” she says. “Yes, I was and am, Sarah.”

Now I take Abalone's hand in my left. “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.”

“Hamlet,”
she says, but the look that she flashes Professor Isabella is playful. “Act One, scene three.”

“Spoken by Polonius,” Professor Isabella concludes. “Sarah has surrounded herself with people of sophistication and culture, it appears. I would be a fool not to listen to her judgment.”

“It's still just a bit after dark,” Abalone says. “Let me take you both to a diner.”

I smile, feeling genuine curiosity flavor their new accord and dissolve the jealousy. When we are out in the cool night air, I walk between my friends and listen to them talk, taking pleasure that one can tell the other what I lack words to explain.

“…so when the word came that the Free People had adopted a peculiar, lovely woman who spoke only in strange fragments and carried a rubber dragon around, I knew she had to be Sarah. I tried to stay away, but I finally gave in.”

We arrive at the diner and Abalone takes a corner booth, where our conversation will go unremarked. She slides me a jelly packet for Betwixt and Between.

“Ah, I see you know Betwixt and Between,” Professor Isabella chuckles.

“Is that its name?” Abalone giggles. “Neat. She always feeds it, so I've given in.”

“You and me and everyone else,” Professor Isabella sighs. “Sarah is amiable but she turns mean if anyone tries to take Betwixt and Between away. She will leave them for short periods of time—if she must—but heaven forbid if they are not where she left them when she returns.”

Between comments, in a dreamy voice, “Remember the goons who hid us in the linen cupboard?”

“How can I forget?” Betwixt retorts. “You wouldn't stop whimpering and I knew we would need both of our heads to yell loud enough for Sarah to hear us.”

“Me whimpering?” Between is indignant. “You whimpered! I planned how to get Sarah to us!”

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

“Not!”

“So!”

Abalone and Professor Isabella keep talking as if they cannot hear the dragons.

“You seem to be Sarah's protector,” Professor Isabella
continues and Abalone swells a little. “Have you kept your Head Wolf from prostituting her yet? I know that you personally don't streetwalk.”

Abalone seems at a loss before her bluntness. “Head Wolf isn't any common pimp.”

“Certainly not.” Professor smiles wickedly.

Aware that the words have somehow offended Abalone, I interrupt.

“If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men,” I say in agitation.

“Blessed are the peace makers,” Professor Isabella replies, patting my hand. “Abalone, Sarah seems to want us to be friends. Forgive me for my assumption, but Sarah's beauty is extraordinary. I could not help but believe that she would be encouraged to sell that beauty or at least trade on it to gain Head Wolf's protection by becoming his mistress.”

“Half-right,” Betwixt chortles.

Blushing, I swat him.

Abalone keeps some poise. “I'd be lying if I didn't agree that Head Wolf is hot for Sarah—but so are half the guys and girls in the Pack.”

Professor quirks an eyebrow at her and Abalone colors.

“Not me, I don't go for girls and, anyhow, Sarah is like my kid. I'm her Baloo. I don't have any place messing with her that way.”

“I
do
like you, girl,” Professor Isabella says. “You are almost as weird as Sarah. Can you tell me what you do have in mind for Sarah?”

Abalone bites her lip. “Better if I didn't, but I'm not go
ing to pimp her unless she really wants to be a Tail Wolf. And the same goes for begging.”

“I'll rest with that for now.” Professor Isabella suddenly looks tiny, frail. “But I hope you'll let me see her.”

“We are the Free People and she is a Wolf of our Pack. No one will stop her.” Abalone laughs at her tone. “Sure she can see you—every night if she wants. I'll bring her to you even.”

“Blessed are you among women!” I glow, squeezing her hand.

Professor Isabella finishes her coffee and scoops all the sugar packets on the table into her pockets. Almost as an afterthought, she takes the remaining jelly packets and the crackers left from Abalone's soup.

She stands. “And thank you both for the best meal I have had in a long while. I had best get some sleep if I'm to be up for the commuter rush in the morning.”

My earlier suspicions return and I struggle to find a way to ask. We are just outside the diner when I find something I hope will do.

“Oh woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”

Both she and Abalone stop and study me. Fearing I will fail, I pluck Professor Isabella's sleeve, tug at her layers of tattered and mismatched clothes, pat her pockets with their hoarded treats.

Professor Isabella presses her lips into a thin line. When she opens her mouth, the blood rises into them, making them seem painted.

“They threw me out, too, Sarah. Earlier than you, but just the same. Did they tell you that I had returned to Columbia?”

I nod, tears running down my face unchecked.

“No, dear, they lied. I have been living on the streets.”

“Oh, it was pitiful!” I manage between my sobs. “Near a whole city and she had none.”

Abalone is clearly troubled. “I would ask you into the Jungle, but…”

“I know, Abalone, ‘Feet that make no noise; eyes that see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, and sharp white teeth, all these are the marks of our brothers, except Tabaqui and the Hyaena whom we hate.' I know the scorn Head Wolf has for beggars. He would rather see an eight-year-old boy reamed by perverse business executives than have the lad stay a beggar. I'll go my way, but please bring Sarah to me.”

Abalone grows solemn. “By the opened Lock that freed me, Professor Isabella, I promise.”

I hug Professor Isabella once more and trot beside Abalone to the Jungle. Once I look over my shoulder and see my teacher trudging away, her shoulders bent against a wind that I don't feel.