Vassa in the Night (15 page)

It sounds insane at first, but as I think it over I have to admit I wouldn't put it past her. I'm looking for the swans, and at last I spot them: they've formed a new huddle on the store's roof, a white bulk that seethes with every leap and jiggle. They're watching me and I wave to them.

“We've done the calculations,” Pangolin assures me, and I turn back to him. “We've cast bones and analyzed hidden secretions from the bellies of bridges. Everything points to this location as the epicenter of the stark auroral limitations under which Kings and Queens counties presently labor. This
location,
miss. And by a
most
peculiar chance a branch of BY's has been likewise found at the heart of the distended dark in every city we've investigated thus far. The situation threatens to upset certain balances … between certain communities … that Picnic and I are charged with maintaining, if you will.” He scowls as the motorcyclist sweeps by again. “There was another of these blind, hodgepodged watchmen at the crux of the trouble in Pittsburgh. In Newark as well. I saw them myself.”

I guess by
blind
he means that no one could see through that visor? “So—just to clarify—can you explain exactly what I should tell Babs?”

“I have to press the papers into her own hands. Into her hands
personally
. I have to see to it that the words leave an indelible imprint on her palms. Perhaps scars. Then she can peruse them at her convenience.” Pangolin sounds fretful now. “If only Picnic were here—he's
supposed
to be here, but punctuality is hardly his—and the lawsuit isn't only against your Miss Yagg, my dear, although to be quite frank we suspect her of being something of a ringleader. A guiding spirit, if you will, who's incited her fellow BY's owners to imitate her rather regrettable course of action. Oh, no, our suit is against the entire organization. We propose to bring BY's to its knees!” I might not have realized this was a joke, but he laughs; it sounds like someone scraping a bucket with a saw blade. “Its
fowl
knees!”

Laughter jars his body enough that his papers finally slop free in a pale cascade. I bend down to gather them for him. “Those are
legal
documents!” Pangolin calls reproachfully.

“I know,” I say. “I'm just picking them up for you. I won't read them!”

“And are you an attorney, miss? You look rather juvenile for the part.”

I'm just standing up with a mass of papers in my arms when I feel an awful prickly burning in my palms, my wrists: all the skin that isn't protected by my jacket. It sears into my flesh like a parade of blazing ants, and I scream and dump the papers onto Pangolin's outstretched paw. He drops half of them again.

“Oh my God, what
is
that?” I hold up my hand and see the skin emblazoned everywhere with backward letters, too mushed and muddled to read, but bright scarlet and already blistering.

“I take it you haven't yet passed the bar,” Pangolin says. “You should have known better.”

“The ink is like
acid
.…”

“Those are legal documents! I did inform you of that fact, but you saw fit to throw caution to the winds! Ah, Picnic, perhaps you'll have some remedy to offer? This young lady was reckless enough to handle legal documents without obtaining the proper qualifications first.”

“Snow first,” a voice informs me. “Cry later.” Someone grabs my wrists and pulls me to my knees, then plunges my hands into the snow. I'd be angrier if I weren't so relieved to feel the pain receding.

I look at the stranger, Picnic I guess. A weedy, seedy middle-aged guy with pale orange tufts of hair and a long, pink face. A plaque identical to Pangolin's sways from his neck. He's wearing a truly hideous red-and-white-checked suit. It seems kind of unprofessional. Pangolin looks a lot more like my idea of a lawyer.

“I was just trying to help,” I say. “Pangolin kept dropping them.”

“Was
that
your concern?” Pangolin says in astonishment. “Oh, but I've trained them very well. I've devoted endless hours to teaching them
beck
and
call,
beck
and
call
 … they'll turn somersaults if I ask them to. They'll wipe the perspiration from the night's own brow and then swift their way back to me. Loyal to a fault, are my documents!”

“Fly first,” Picnic says in tones of warm agreement. “Write later.” His long flabby nose is running copiously and he bends down to rub it on the snow, then straightens up snorting. I'm still on my hands and knees trying to quench the burning pain. Behind me BY's dances, tramping chicken-prints into the slush.

I suddenly feel like I might be getting the hang of things.

“Pangolin,” I say, “if
at large
encompasses the night, then it must include sleep as well? You can operate among the sleeping any time you want, I guess.”

Pangolin stares at me. “Sleep
and
dreams. Certainly.
Large
is a very inclusive territory.”

“That's not my expertise,” I say. “I don't have the right qualifications, so I can only deal with people when they're awake. That's why I can't disturb Babs now and fetch her for you. But you can go in and knock on her door yourself. Because for you it doesn't matter if she's sleeping.” Babs might hack my head off for bothering her, but I'm guessing Pangolin can hold his own.

Picnic and Pangolin give each other significant glances of the she's-not-as-stupid-as-she-looks variety.

“I'll walk right
through
her door and teach her to festoon our lives in blocks of darkness! I'll hand her papers that will explain matters directly to her epidermis! Miss Yagg will rue having brought matters to such a pass that Picnic and Pangolin were forced to take notice! Ah, she thought it was enough to foil those authorities of a—shall we say—woefully prosaic nature! She thought that befuddling those law firms of a—shall we say—quite restricted mentality would be enough! Ah, but she forgot about Picnic and Pangolin.
We
are not so constrained.” He claws the pavement triumphantly. No shoes, of course. “But there is one small matter where we might … be grateful for your assistance.” He looks up, vividly expectant.

“Yes?” I say. Neither of them says anything, just stare wide-eyed waiting for me to understand what they're talking about. “What would you like me to do?”

They don't say anything, just smile a little more brightly. It reminds me of how cagey and weird Erg gets when certain subjects come up, like anything about the motorcyclist for instance.

“I'd be happy to help,” I try, “but I need some specifics on what I can do for you. Like, in word-pictures.”

Pangolin's face splits in an unnerving grin and he curls his long-clawed toes. Picnic swings his pale eyes toward BY's, dances a few fidgety steps, and then stops. Pangolin turns and glares at him in a manner suggestive of just-shut-up-you-fool.

“I see,” I say. I haul myself to my feet; the right one still feels all wrong, but the pain in my hands has faded to a dull fizzling. “Come with me.” I'm ready to bet a ventricle that they're somehow not allowed to stop the store from dancing, but they're too embarrassed to admit it. “I'll escort you to the door. And while we walk maybe I could ask you for some professional advice?”

Pangolin flusters. I'm walking at a decent pace and his claws scrape rapidly beside me. “Advice? I suppose … as long as protocol was
precisely
observed, we might…”

“Babs is planning to chop my head off in the morning,” I explain, “unless I can get every trace of blood out of the snow. I'd run away, but if I try it I'll turn into a swan. So I just wanted to ask, is it legal for her to kill me?”

Pangolin starts and paws his own face as if I had just presented him with some sadistic riddle. “Are you asking me this … simply to mock the limits of my legal perspicacity? To cast me in a labyrinth and laugh while I strain to decipher each flex and bar of the way?”

“No, no,” I say. “I'm totally sincere. I'd really like to know.”

He flicks a worried glance from the corner of his eyes and his snout twitches. “I'll … give the question my most careful consideration,” he promises, and I nod. I didn't really imagine that he'd be any help. We're deep in the store's orange glow now; it's compounded by the snow's reflections, almost buzzing with brightness. Joel's head is nearby, watching me with sad dead eyes.

“Hey!” I call to the store. “Are you really going to make me sing the jingle? I thought we knew each other better than that.” The store stops and pivots, bending until its big window is practically brushing the tops of our heads. I get the feeling it's not so sure about my companions. “Oh, they're not
here
as lawyers,” I explain. “They're bargain hunters. It would be bad for business not to let them in!” It hesitates, straightens up, then gives a kind of brusque nod and kneels in front of us. I'm starting to feel pleased with myself. It's all in the wrist and so on. “So, Pangolin? The entrance to Babs's … apartment is just past the counter. On the left, kind of back in the corner. You'll see it.” I hope he will, anyway; sometimes things in BY's can be hard to spot.

Pangolin turns to me with a grandfatherly smile and whaps me gently on the head with his spiny paw. “Nicely done, miss. You might strive to improve your qualifications so that sleep slips within your ken. I believe you show promise enough for that if you practice.”

“Dream first,” Picnic suggests fondly. “Die later.” I'm not sure how helpful that is. I watch while they go shuffling hand in paw through the glass door. Then BY's stands again and cuts off my view of them.

As soon as they're gone the night feathers itself in falling white and the swans coil around me. I stroke their elegant throats, their sleek black bills, and they nuzzle me. The gauze wrapping the bandaged birds is dotted in red, but it does look like the bleeding is finally slowing down. They'll be okay; I wasn't lying when I told them that. I lead them to the stump and get back to work, cleansing and wrapping the ones that are still bare and dripping. The bandages are getting a little thin, but since they're not bleeding as badly now I might have just enough after all. The motorcyclist growls around and around; his tires have crushed blood into the snow so that he follows a track of slurred pink soup. I imagine he's cracked the tips off a few snowflakes, too. Babs will be horrified. I wonder if Pangolin is right about her, but when I think over everything he said I'm not actually surprised. Maybe he's right, and I'm entombed in the night's perfect center, stuffed into its core.

As for me, I care for my swans, because they're warm and hurt and, unlike Pangolin, I'm not
at large
at all. I'm not qualified to batter down the night or handle legal documents. It might even be the case that I'm
at small,
imprisoned by a ring of severed heads and a pile of rustling birds; my territory is an island of blood and snow shimmered by the sunset-colored light misting out of BY's. My country is the stump where I unwrap the candy bar for Erg and set it on my thigh. She eats in a living, shifting cathedral of arched white necks.

Maybe it's small, my territory, but inside it I can still love what's in front of me with all the heart I have left.

 

CHAPTER 9

By the time I'm done bandaging my whole flock I'm getting sleepy again. After all her talk about helping me Erg's already passed out in my pocket. I've been out here in the cold for what, by conventional standards, would surely amount to hours. My swans stay close, batting me with wings made clumsy by their bindings, and in their warmth and gentleness I start to nod.

“Don't your parents worry about you?” a voice says behind me. “Working here?”

Tomin, of course. I kind of figured he'd be back. “Parents?” I say, snapping awake. “I think I might have had one or two of those once. I can barely remember.”

He walks in front of me and sits down right on the bloodstained snow. “What happened to them?”

It's an uncomfortably direct question, but that's kind of admirable. The easiest thing, for him and for me, would have been to keep on playing it as a joke. “One dead, one gone,” I say. “Not that I can recall the details or anything, but those are the usual options. How about yours?”

Tomin tips his head and considers that a lot more seriously than I'd anticipated. The motorcycle growls along its arc, and the rider's head never turns. Now Tomin, unlike that pitiable freak, is definitely somewhere on the way to gorgeous, if not exactly arrived there. Probably a senior. He talks, and in
sentences.
All I really have against him is that he's idiotic and reckless enough to walk into a BY's, which is to say, quite precisely as idiotic and reckless as I am myself. Between the two of us that has to imply some dubious brain chemistry in addition to deep-seated emotional problems, but it's not like we'll be getting married. With all of that in mind, I smile at him: a shiny, artificial smile that would make me want to punch myself in the face if there was a mirror handy.