Mulberry Wands (4 page)

The landscaping, from what he could see, was
all creepers and vines, and the paths were lit with short lanterns
whose bluish glow seemed to emphasize the darkness. “The office
fits in.”

“Yeah,” Carlos said, laughing. “Residents
love that it’s open from sunset to midnight. Thinking about doing
that for our other apartments. Makes sense, you know? People want
to look for apartments in the evening, after work.”

The last time he had seen Carlos, they’d both
been twenty years old. He’d been a scrawny kid, with thick black
hair and eyes set just a little too close together, making him look
either astute and intense or weaselly, depending on whether you
liked him or not. They had been best friends in high school, and
had continued that friendship after they graduated. They got the
same job working for the same gas station, and when Carlos got
fired, Paul quit so they could both work together somewhere else.
Carlos was a harder worker than Paul, but since he was the Mexican,
he always got fired first, especially in the summer when ASU closed
and the town emptied of both students and snowbirds.

They’d done just about every job they could
possibly have, from selling ice cream to kids (in a blazing hot
truck that played ‘Music Box Dancer’ loud enough to deafen) to
loading up bales of alfalfa and cotton with the migrant workers.
They’d made grand plans for the future, while hitching a ride back
home every evening, shivering in the back of the flat bed truck or
station wagon as the heat of the desert turned to chill minutes
after the sun went down. They were gonna make it big somehow, be
there when opportunity struck and make so much money that they
could buy a new Chevy every year, and give the old ones to whoever
was nice to them when they were poor. And when they sat in the
Yucca Tap Room in the evening, drinking Budweiser and waiting for
Carlos’ girlfriend to give them a ride the rest of the way home
when she got off work, Paul and Carlos swore that they’d always be
friends, no matter what.

Paul’s mom was a nurse, and she taught them a
trick to get them medical deferments from the army. But when they
turned twenty, the war had heated up, and they got reclassified
1-A. Paul had money which would pay for college so he could get a
deferment, but Carlos did not.

He tried to make a gift of the money to
Carlos, and when Carlos wouldn’t take it, he called it a loan and
closed his friend’s fingers around the cashier’s check that
contained the sum of the bank account. He tried to explain to
Carlos where he was going, though he wasn’t sure he succeeded.
Carlos enrolled at ASU, and Paul got drafted. They saw him get on
the bus to boot camp, and even though Paul told Carlos he would
never set foot in Vietnam, it didn’t look like Carlos believed
him.

Then Paul walked into the light, vanishing
from society. He never came home from boot camp. Never even
arrived, in fact. As far as anyone knew, he was dead.

Carlos led him around a corner to a door in a
shadowy alcove, and unlocked the door with a rattle of keys and the
creak of underused hinges. Stale air and the reek of mildew wafted
out of the apartment. “This one has been empty since we kicked the
last guy out. Among other things, he let the tub overflow. The
bedroom and half the drywall in the hallway got ruined, so I
figured I’d work on filling the other apartments before I worry
about fixing this one. You can stay as long as you need.”

The apartment had high ceilings and a floor
that looked like travertine until he knelt and discovered it was
just an amazingly convincing porcelain. A metal spiral staircase
led to a miniscule mezzanine with narrow French doors opening to a
balcony barely big enough for a chair. The rooms were quite small,
and a bit gloomy, but it was so sumptuously detailed it felt like a
single bite of an upscale artisan truffle rather than a slab of
cheap waxy discounted Easter rabbit. If the walls hadn’t been
painted blood red, he would have liked it very much.

Paul toed the corner of the hallway, where
the bottom of the wall bloused out with sagging plaster and mold.
“I know how to hang drywall.”

Carlos hesitated.

“Let me do something.” Paul gave him a
look.

Carlos looked at him, paused for a moment,
then nodded. “Okay. Yeah, that’d be great. I’ll talk to Hector,
make sure he gets you some supplies. There’s wireless in the
building,” Carlos said. “And someone left a futon and a couch in
another apartment when they moved out. They’re in storage right
now, I’ll let Becky know I said you could have them. Becky’s the
manager.”

“Wireless? Wireless radio?” Paul asked.

“No, you know, wireless Internet,” Carlos
said.

Paul just shook his head.

“Jesus, you really were off the planet,
weren’t you? I thought you were in jail, but that doesn’t explain
how you look so damn young.”

“I told you a long time ago,” Paul said. “I
was chosen by a goddess.”

“I thought you meant a woman,” Carlos said.
His voice was low, full of wonder and something like remembered
pain. “I mean, you called her a goddess, but I figured you’d met
some girl and were going to travel around with her.

“Word got around that you’d given away all
your stuff. Some figured you’d died somewhere. Some people just
figured that you were living abroad. I mean, the way you looked
when you told me you were going away … I’ll never forget the day
when you dropped off your stuff at the Salvation Army. I would have
thought you were about to shoot yourself in the head with how final
you were being, except you just looked so damn happy.”

“I was happy,” Paul said. “I’ve been
happy.”

“Mama thought you’d gone to Canada. I let her
believe that after a while. I started to think that myself, except
now here you are, and you haven’t aged a day.”

“I explained it as best I could when I left.”
Paul opened a closet and saw rodent droppings. Maybe he could
invite Fox over. She liked mice. “I’ve been pulled out of time.
That’s part of what it means to go into the light. When I’m with
her, I don’t age. I don’t exist except as part of her.”

“Yeah,” Paul said. He was still looking
around at the place. It had small round windows near the ceiling
with stained glass panels in them. There was a pressed tin ceiling,
painted dark gray, with an antique chandelier hanging from the
center. The small living room area had a gas fireplace and a stone
mantel. Above the mantel hung an oil of a magnolia in a gilded
frame. A white chipped corner on the frame gave a clue as to why it
had been abandoned. “How much these apartments normally go
for?”

Carlos told him, and Paul almost choked on
his tongue he was so surprised.

“I can’t pay you back.”

“Quit being so white.” Carlos gave him a wad
of cash. “Here. This should get you some clothes and food for a
week. Let me know if you need more.”

Paul looked at the cash in his hand. He did
need it, as he had no way of falling back into society without a
little charity of some kind, but it felt wrong to accept so much of
Carlos’ money, no matter how rich his friend was.

“Just say thank you,” Carlos said.

“Thank you.” He’d have to get a job soon, and
hope that he could find one that earned more than what he was
getting back before he left. He’d just tell the owls that a job
would help with his cover.

“You’re welcome,” Carlos replied, with mock
exasperation. “And my mama’s probably going to invite you over for
dinner in a week or two, as soon as she gets over thinking you’re a
ghost. You still gonna be here?”

“This thing I’m doing might take a couple
months.”

“So you’re going back after that?” Carlos
said. He sounded a little hurt, like when an out-of-town guest
comes to your party and only stays fifteen minutes. “To Mars or
wherever?”

Paul just nodded, wishing he could say
something to explain how much he’d changed. He was a Sunward; he
belonged in the light. He knew from the first moment he vanished
into the sunrise that he didn’t belong on earth anymore, except
occasionally. He never wanted to be one of those who spent every
night in their body and never learned to speak to owls, or
shapeshift, or any of the other powers that the lady had promised
they’d learn eventually.

“Okay, man. I’ll see you around.”

“Thanks again, Carlos.”

“Joey died, you know,” Carlos said, pausing
at the door. “Joey Esconito died two months after he got sent to
‘Nam. They say a mortar shell hit him.”

Paul was spared having to come up with a
response for that by the sound of the door closing behind his
friend.

He took a shower, luxuriating in how much he
missed it. As he stepped out and dried himself with his jacket he
realized he’d washed Susan’s number off his skin. Well, he knew her
last name, all he had to do was find a phone booth and look up her
number in the phone book. He put his old clothes back on, put the
keys and the cash Carlos had given him in his pocket, and headed
out.

It took him a mile and a half of walking
before he found a single phone booth. Luckily, it had a phone book
in it with the S section of the residentials still intact.
Unluckily, there was only one Stillwater name, and it said “Maggie”
not “Susan.”

He went for a walk until he found a grocery
store, surprisingly still open at quarter till ten. He bought an
overpriced sandwich, and ate it as he walked. There were a few
people on the streets after dark, and even though they didn’t talk
to him, it was nice to have company. He felt bored and lonely, and
wished he were in the light again. He also wished he’d bought a
small television, even if it was just a little black and white tv,
but he had to make Carlos’ money last.

The next day he managed to go out into the
sunlight long enough to get hired as a night janitor. He used most
of the rest of Carlos’ money to buy some clothes and some cans of
food to last him until he could collect a paycheck. There wasn’t
enough for a television or magazines, so when he was done for the
evening, he went for a walk.

The owls had it easy. When they came back to
the darkness, all they had to do was hunt to eat. People weren’t
made like that. Owls were okay with being alone. For them, the
parliament was an aberration in normal owl behavior. They tolerated
one another’s society as a condition of being Sunwards.

The parliament. Everything was about the
parliament. He still wasn’t sure exactly what they hoped he’d find
out from Susan. What did the owls want? Power, maybe? That had been
motivation for him. As much as he loved the lady, and loved being
in the light, it was power she’d seduced him with. He wanted to be
able to shapeshift. He wanted to be able to talk to owls, at the
very least. Honestly, what was he supposed to ask Susan, if he
didn’t know exactly what the owls wanted? Hello, I know you’re a
mage. Are you also a murderess?

The only thing he had in common with the owls
was that they both wanted power, and they both were awake at night.
And of course, the lady chose them too.

He walked for a long way, so far that he
wondered if he was going to get lost. After a while he came to the
railroad tracks and decided he’d walk along them. The railroad, at
least, hadn’t changed. As he cut through a park, he noticed he was
being followed by a Sunward wearing a canine shape. He liked dogs,
so he waited for it to catch up. It was a skinny little thing,
small, with large pointed ears. When it came closer, he saw it
wasn’t a dog after all, but his friend a kit fox, dusty yellow and
terribly thin, with ears larger than the rest of her head. She held
a stick in her mouth.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey fellow Sunward,” Fox responded. She
wasn’t talking, she was doing the body-language-and-pheromone thing
that foxes do. He was good at understanding foxes. Mammals were so
much easier than birds.

“What’s up?” Paul asked. The grass was soggy
from irrigation so he crouched instead of sitting.

Whenever he had a chance to talk to a fox or
a coyote, or rarer still, a dog that had been chosen as a Sunward,
he always found them friendly and conspiratorial, in a sort of ‘Us
against the owls’ kind of way.

“I told the owls that I’ve already helped you
with your mission, and now I want you to help me with mine.”

“You found out if Susan killed the
translator?” He felt disappointed that Fox had already finished the
parliament’s wishes. All the effort he put forth to fall back into
society, and now it might not even be necessary?

The fox barked in laughter, but didn’t drop
the stick between her teeth. “No, but I sniffed around the mage’s
house just so I’d have plausible deniability.” Plausible
deniability was a phrase that sounded even more natural in
fox-speak than in English. If foxes took human form and got desk
jobs, they’d have the highest salary, never do any work, and steal
from petty cash without anyone the wiser. “I heard you took on
human form and I got to thinking, why were we both pulled back into
the darkness, when we’d barely been in the light for half a
lifetime? The parliament has got a burr in its fur about something,
and I think that we’re both looking at different sides of the same
situation.”

“What have you been sent to work on?”

Fox dropped the stick at Paul’s feet. He
picked it up. It was still warm and moist from her mouth.

“Tell me about this. Human magic all smells
the same to me.”

Paul held the wand and concentrated. He
wasn’t a mage, but being in the light had changed him enough to
give him sensitivity to things normal people didn’t have.

His first ability as a newly turned Sunward
was that he could tell how recently sunlight fell on something. A
completely useless skill. This stick had been in the sunlight as
recently as sunset the previous night. He could tell that
automatically, just by brushing his fingertips along the bark. To
detect magics, he had to look a little closer. He peered at the
wand, letting his third eye tingle as though he were trying to see
hidden gnosti.