Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls (6 page)

“Thanks.” Abalone rolls onto her back. “Do you think you can do it, Sarah?”

I ignore the tears she's wiping away and settle for nodding my agreement.

We part that dawn, quiet and reflective, promising to meet Professor Isabella when the deed is done. In the Jungle, I worry that my tension will keep me awake, but I fall asleep as soon as I have climbed into my hammock. In my dreams, I drive down streets of the deserted financial
district. My car mirror shows me a face with golden hair and bright emerald eyes.

The next evening, we go through the secret subway and end in the locked rest room. This time I change my clothing as well, putting on a tidy maple jumpsuit. Abalone fits an ash blond wig over my hair.

“Your eyes will do—no one will believe that color is natural anyhow, but combined with cream-colored hair you are just too memorable.” She shrugs. “When you first came to the Jungle, I kept waiting for it to grow out, but it's real, isn't it?”

Watching the stranger in the mirror move, I nod.

“Strange color,” Abalone muses, pulling on her own nondescript outfit. “I've only seen it on palomino horses and cats. Cream and jade.”

We head out, Betwixt and Between in the neat pseudosuede bag swinging from my shoulder.

The damp sidewalks seem to stick to my shoes as we walk. Once again, I am following Abalone; this time I know what we are seeking. I don't need Abalone's slight nod to tell me when we have reached the target.

A sign with a painted ideogram tells me that we have reached where the car is parked in a small garage. The first test of Abalone's skill will be here. Without a glance at her, I turn, fumble in my bag past Betwixt and Between, and find the brown Moroccan leather wallet Abalone had given me. Nervously, I pull a plastic slip out and slide it into the guard door. It swallows it and then the door slides open. On the other side, I retrieve it.

A fruity male voice says, “Thank you, Ms. Rena.”

As the door closes behind me, the aloneness that had left when Abalone picked me up from the street rushes back, chilling me. I know I must move quickly, yet I turn slowly as if wading in icy slush up to my knees.

It waits for me: sleek, predatory, silver and black, seeming to drift on parking jets. I wade toward it and am sliding the key strip into the lock when I come up short. A woman is already in the car—her gaze meets mine and when I see pale green jade the picture falls into place. The woman is me.

I know this, but my hand still is shaking nearly too hard to match the flimsy slip and its slot. I manage and step in, feeling the car bob on its jets.

The dashboard is different than the one I have been so patiently studying. I cannot find the start button; I cannot find the acceleration shift; I cannot find the brake. Only the steering crescent is familiar.

When I place my hand on the soft curve, perception chimes. The brake is beneath my right foot as Abalone had promised. Now I find the start button—a few inches higher than I had been taught. The acceleration shaft is snapped into a recess right of the driver's seat. I find the release tab, press it, and the shaft rises beneath my right hand.

Abalone has written a navigation program and I drop this into the consol. The silver-and-black shark bites and I can drop, shaking, into the padded seat while the program reels us to our destination. Outside, rain on the tinted windows stars the streetlights and headlights, beginning to shoot as the car picks up speed.

When the car idles to a stop in the driveway of a used ve
hicle lot, I am enough in control to steer us to a fairly graceful park outside the sales office door. The shark has barely fallen quiet when the office door slams up and a small Korean man emerges.

Touching my throat, I hand him the note Abalone has written for me. He takes it, wrinkling his brow as he reads. I see confusion, amazement, and, finally, greed travel across his features. The face he turns to me is bland and gently friendly.

“I am sorry to hear,” he chuckles at his own joke, “that you have lost your voice, Ms. Rena. Do you have a copy of your license and registration? I need to check them before we negotiate a possible sale.”

I nod and dig again for my wallet and pull out the paperwork.

As I drop the wallet in Betwixt and Between puff reassuringly at me. I notice as I snap my bag shut that they have gotten into a roll of breath mints and curls of silver paper roll around their stout, stocky ankles.

Mr. Joon invites me into this office, pours me coffee, and offers me a selection of magazines. Then he disappears behind a burlap-textured screen. I strain and hear the snap as the forged identities are run. Beyond fear, I wait in confidence of Abalone's skill, sipping coffee and leafing through a magazine. Blushing, I realize that I have it upside down and flip it over just as Mr. Joon reemerges.

Pushing shiny black bangs from his forehead, he smiles.

“All looks fine, Alice,” he says.

I almost look around, but remember that the name on the car's papers is Alice Rena. Instead, I nod and gesture with my head toward the shark.

“I'll need to run a diagnostic on the vehicle itself,” Mr. Joon says, taking an oval box from a cabinet by the door, “but if everything proves in as good shape as it appears, I am interested in making you an offer.”

We walk outside and he plugs the oval into an aperture in the dashboard. Abalone has explained to me that this small computer will talk with the shark's computer and provide a systems analysis. Mr. Joon will combine this with his own visual inspection and certain trade standards will set his price.

I watch as he caresses seat covers, fingers the wear on the floor mats, and plays with the sound system. The whistle from his oval box blends into the sound pouring from the vehicle and Mr. Joon ignores it until he sees the amber readout flashing a completed operation and pops it free.

Face professionally neutral, he scans the readouts and then courteously shows them to me.

Biting my inner lip to keep from revealing my growing insecurity, I wait a moment as if studying the figures and holodiagrams and then nod, looking at him with what I hope is a decisive expression.

Mr. Joon's patter about the shark's condition flows over me. Caught in the crosscurrents of his voice and my own fears, I wait for the numbers Abalone had promised me would come. I know what is acceptable and what is not—or did when I left the Jungle. I pray inarticulately that I will not forget.

He names a figure. Resisting the urge to grab at it as a life-line, to nod “yes” and flee, I weigh it against Abalone's lessons.

I do not even need subtlety. The number is far too low. Extending my hand, I shake my head and gesture upward with my thumb.

The next figure Mr. Joon names is better, but I hazard one more raise. He does, not as much as I might wish, but within the range Abalone had set. I nod agreement. We close the deal and I walk away with a slip showing that Alice Rena is thousands richer—as am I.

I walk quickly toward the subway entrance and find Abalone lurking where she promised to be. We vanish down into the smelly tunnels and in ten minutes Alice Rena is gone and only Sarah and the thousands remain.

Abalone waits until we are safely away to ask me how things went. “Were you scared, Sarah?”

“True nobility is exempt from fear,” I reply, winking at her.

She throws her arms around me and together we laugh until the laughter shakes away all memory of my fears and leaves only the triumph of my success.

A
FEW DAYS AFTER THE HUNTING OF THE SHARK
, H
EAD
W
OLF
lets me know that he would be pleased if I wanted to spend some of the day with him in his lair. I gladly agree and, after informing Abalone where I would be, I go. As I had resolved previously, I leave my dragons behind.

I return to my place in the Reaches somewhat sooner than I had planned (Bumblebee had decided to join us and while Head Wolf welcomed her, I was not interested in female honey).

Abalone is gone. Searching quickly, I find that her tappety-tap is also gone. Around me, the Free People sleep, so very softly I whisper to the dragons.

“Abalone?”

“We're not Abalone!” Between says indignantly. “Where is little blue lips, anyway?”

“Weren't you staying to screw Head Wolf?” Betwixt asks, his red eyes shining.

I can tell that the dragons are hurt by my abandoning them, so I hold my questions until I have fed them some jelly and crackers from my hoard. The food sweetens them.

Betwixt finishes the last crumbs of his share. “Scratch my eye ridge, would you, Sarah?”

When I do so, not neglecting Between, the dragon relaxes. The ruby eyes seem to glow amiably rather than burn.

“Soon after you left,” Between says, “Abalone got bored with her magazine. She didn't seem sleepy and I heard her mutter something about going to the Park.”

“That was a while ago,” Betwixt adds. “I guess she'll be back soon.”

I try to relax and agree. Abalone has done well without me; certainly I must be a trouble to her—a constant shadow. I stretch out on my hammock and set myself gently rocking. Balanced on my stomach, the dragons drowse.

“Go to sleep, Sarah,” Between says soothingly. “You're beat. We'll take turns watching and wake you when Abalone comes back.”

I can feel exhaustion stealing through me and yawn nodding my acceptance of the dragon's plan.

“For some must watch, while some must sleep: so runs the world away.”

Pulling my blanket over me, I position the dragons so they can watch. My last sensation is their claws, like little needles, gripping for purchase as we gently swing.

I do not awaken when Abalone makes her stealthy return, but true to their promise, the dragons hiss me awake. Even in my pleasure at seeing Abalone safely returned, I do not miss that they are more agitated than seems warranted.

“Say ‘Hello' quickly, Sarah,” Betwixt urges, “and don't let her drop off yet. We've got to tell you something and I think she should hear it, too.”

“Abalone!” I call, reaching out across the space between our hammocks. I struggle, but I cannot find words for my irrational concern for her safety and my joy at her return and must settle for smiling.

“Hush, Sarah,” she whispers. “You'll rouse all the Jungle. I didn't expect to see you here so early.”

“Hide me from day's garish eye,” I comment softly, hoping she will read my grimace into my words, “while the bee with the honied thigh…”

“Oh,” Abalone chuckles. “Bumblebee came calling. She's been watching you, my friend. I'm surprised she waited this long.”

She begins to snuggle into the down-filled sleeping bag that lines her hammock. Betwixt and Between hiss urgently at me.

“Tell her we heard Edelweiss saying that someone is looking for you. Someone from the Home from what she said. We heard her telling Tapestry while you were sleeping.”

My mouth opens and shuts like a clam in an old cartoon. There are no words in my mind for this fragmented message. Still, I reach and shake Abalone.

She yawns at me. “Yeah?”

“I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls,” I start.

“Sarah, I'm tired,” Abalone sighs. “I know about the dragon.”

“Charity begins at home!” I try again, my voice breaking above a whisper.

“Hush!”

“'Tis ever common that men are merriest when they are from home,” I mutter futilely to myself.

Abalone falls asleep. I lie swinging, too awake and hunting for words.

“You'll never take me alive,” I murmur as I finally fall asleep.

In the evening, Abalone sleeps past the time the Tail Wolves and the Four rise and leave. Their activity awakens me and I lie in my hammock watching them dress and depart, a nighttime rainbow. My mind tries to find words to tell Abalone of Betwixt and Between's warning, wishing for not the first time, that my friends could talk to the dragon.

When the commotion below has thinned, I slide down to the floor level and go to wash. I am soaping in one of the showers rigged in a curve of the Jungle tank when I hear soft cursing from down by my feet.

“Damn, damn, damnety, damn!”

Tilting my face into the gentle fall of water, I rinse my eyes and look down. A small stuffed rabbit sits in a puddle half-hidden by the edge of the shower curtain. The water has soaked into the plush and one ear is limp and bedraggled.

Recognizing that it belongs to Peep, who has recently left begging to become a Tail Wolf, I scoop it up and wash off the soap scum before wringing out what water I can.

“Ouch!” the bunny yells as I wring one ear. “
Madre de Dios
, that smarts!”

“And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,” I
chuckle, hanging it by the ears to drip while I continue rinsing myself free of soap.

“You heard me?” the bunny says incredulously.

I nod, reaching for a towel and wrapping my hair.

“How did you do that? No one ever heard me before except for Peep sometimes.” The soggy bunny appears to sag. “And he hears less and less these days, now that these buggering hedonists have him by the
cojones
.”

I shrug and finish drying, but am pleased to have found another friend. The things that talk to me have never done so in the condescending fashion that even the best humans do. Betwixt and Between get bossy, but that's different.

Once I am covered, I take Peep's bunny and ascend to the Heights. Abalone is only starting to stir, so I sit on the hammock swing-style and wrap the bunny in the drier of my two towels. Betwixt and Between express lively interest in the soggy toy, especially when it refuses any breakfast.

“What's your name?” Betwixt asks.

“Conejito Moreno,” the bunny replies. “Do you belong to this strange
señorita
?”

“We watch out for her,” Between says. “We took up with her first back in the Institute. One of the other patients had us first and talked to us all the time. Like Sarah, this fellow could understand us, but he was wilder than her. He could talk to almost anything, even people. It ripped…”

Between halts, suddenly aware that I am listening, Betwixt hesitates, then takes up the story.

“It ripped his mind up sometimes. I think he might have
gone crazy, but they moved Sarah to the Home and he gave us to her before she went, so we never saw him again.”

When the conversation drifts to more general things, I stop listening. I barely remember the Institute; something like cotton is wrapped around the memories. Still, I know that it was different than the Home. Since I couldn't talk at all, I was pretty much left alone.

My few memories of the place are a jumble of corridors and things that sometimes spoke and erratic sessions with intense people whose words said less than did their actions, whose favorite pen or lucky coin might warn me to never ever speak with them or they would drive me as mad as they had Dylan.

Dylan. I had not even realized that I knew his name, but now I recalled him. Skinny, eyes full of fear. Ears full of voices that he could answer in a way I could not.

I bite on the knuckle of one balled fist, fighting a certain urge to scream. For in that moment, everything in the room is talking to me—Abalone's tappety-tap, the hammock beneath me, the walls, the painted tent from which Head Wolf is emerging, Edelweiss's pillow.

Clamping my hands over my ears, I scream, “Much learning doth make thee mad!”

Abalone comes awake so suddenly that only habit keeps her from falling. Those of the Free People who have not gone hunting grow silent and then their eyes turn to me, the buzz of their voices rising.

Head Wolf grabs a ladder and swarms upward. He lands beside me, gesturing the eyes away, but it is Abalone's shoulder on which I weep, burying my eyes and aching
senses in her sweet-smelling skin as if it will smother this sudden awareness.

As she pats me, muttering soothing nonsense, the voices fade until all I hear are hers and Head Wolf's. Concerned, Betwixt and Between whisper softly to each other and Conejito Moreno.

Grabbing a guide rope for stability in a way I have not since I graduated from the cubwalks, I finally sit up, wiping my eyes on my shirt. Neither Head Wolf nor Abalone ask me to explain what happened. Perhaps they know I could not find the words.

“She was stressed out when I came in this morning,” Abalone offers, searching for an explanation. “Did something happen to her while I was gone?”

“Bumblebee made a move on her, but she handled it well.” Head Wolf considers, swinging back and forth, his feet anchored on a cable. “You have been working her hard. Give her a rest—I'll absorb the fee.”

“Thanks.” Abalone's tone is threaded with emotions I am too drained to reach after. “Beer and pizza.”

That dawn, we are heading back to the Jungle after spending the night with Professor Isabella when Peep intercepts us. He draws us away into the trash-filled alcove between two rusting tanks with a conspiratorial jerk of his head.

Something in me hurts as I look at the transformation the Tail Wolves have wrought in him. He has been poured into a skintight yellow tank top and a pair of matching pants that hug his little boy's ass. His sun-bleached brown hair has been styled so that his bangs drop coquettishly over his left
eye and his M&M eyes have been ringed with eyeliner. The pupils are wider than they should be, even in the dim light.

“Edelweiss said keep quiet and the Tail Wolves, they say so, too. The Four, they not so sure, but I make up my own mind.”

He smiles at us, an innocent boy's smile from which the streetwise cynicism vanishes for a moment. Then he draws us closer.

“I decide for me”—he pokes himself in the chest—“I hear you saved my
conejito
for me, when I left it this nighttime.”

I nod, quivering at the memory of what Betwixt and Between's talk with Conejito Moreno had released. Abalone steadies me.

“She did,” she confirms. “You thanking her?”

“Yes, I pay my dues.” Peep hesitates, then, “The Home is hunting Sarah—they want to take her back.”

Inadvertently, I tense, but Abalone is still holding my hand.

“How do you know this, Peep?”

“The word's out.” He shrugs. “The Home has room and wants back those that they let loose—like her. Some might be real happy, but I don't think she'd be—she's one of the Free People, like you an' me.”

He touches the running wolf that fastens his belt and Abalone raises a finger to her tattoo.

“Yes, Sarah's one of us,” she agrees. “Thanks, Peep, I'll check this out.”

“We be of one blood ye and I,” he confirms, and with a brotherly grin for me, moves out into the street.

Abalone and I wait to let him get clear before following.

“The Tail Wolves never have liked that you didn't join them—but don't take that personally,” Abalone says. “They're still your Pack. We'll sleep on this—no one'll find you here. In the evening, we'll go and see if Professor Isabella has heard more. We can also speak with Jerome or Balika and ask how hard the Home is looking or if this is just a gesture to make peace with the public for throwing nutcases out into the streets.”

We duck into the halogen-lit tangle of the Jungle, alive with the Pack returning from the night's hunting. Music dins from a dozen sources; lithe bodies with hair and skin in every color planned by God, and many never anticipated, hang from the Web. Laughter and joking compete with the music.

Peep, Conejito Moreno snuggled under his arm, sucks his thumb in his hammock while Bumblebee rocks him. Deep in conversation with Midline of the Four, Head Wolf pauses from painting a denim jacket. Edelweiss and Chocolate arm wrestle near a camp stove.

An ordinary dawn before sleep stills the Free People. I climb to my place, loving the colorful chaos with my eyes as I cannot with words.

Abalone tucks me in with a tenderness she has rarely shown since her earliest days as my Baloo. She makes certain that Betwixt and Between are near at hand.

Despite her tenderness, fear that I will lose all of this makes me shudder.

“You okay, Sarah?” she asks.

“There's no place like Home,” I say, struggling for her to understand.

“Don't worry, Sarah. I won't send you back unless you want to go.”

Reassured, I drift off to sleep, hearing the Jungle settle in around me. My dreams are peaceful.

When night comes, with amazement Betwixt and Between tell me that Head Wolf had spent the day perched in the Reaches near my head, unmoving, but ready to battle my demons should they trouble my sleep.

That evening we go out into a night already dark, crisp, and cold. Christmas lights shine from windows and reflect off the ice and dirty snow that clumps in corners and potholes in the streets and walkways.

Professor Isabella is late to meet us and when she does, she is uncommonly quiet. Finally, Abalone coaxes from her that she had been at the funeral of another street person, an older man who had frozen to death when the damp from the grate on which he typically slept so saturated his clothing that the faint heat was not enough to keep him from catching pneumonia.

“They buried him in a pauper's grave—unmarked except for a code number in case anyone ever traces him and matches whoever he was to his file. Only a few of us came and…”