Over and over, wheezing it out in his burned voice, even Nyateneri doesn’t know that one. So many verses, too. If he stops, even once, they will be on him—oh, not with claws and teeth, though you’d think so to see them, but with eyes, voices, sweet slithering laughter, on him with old shames, old betrayals, old rotting secrets. Twist your memories, they can, wrench good dreams into shapes too wrong to bear, too real to bear. Have your soul hanging in ribbons that fast, I know.
Magicians never lock their doors. I push it open, walk in, leaving just a crack in case of accidents. Hot everywhere else, cool as knives here. Jolly Grandfather man-shape gazes around, thumps magician’s shoulder, booms out, “Ah there, scoundrel, why didn’t you tell anyone you were having a party?” Eyes as big as coach wheels, eyes in dark wet bunches, eyes on the tips of tails and tentacles—all turn toward man-shape. Shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be able to see them, bright-eyed Grandfather. Only magician never looks up, but trudges on, up and down the room, croaking away:
Tired, tired, tired he is, man-shape’s slap almost knocked him over. Lukassa would weep. Not me. I say to old nothing, This is what it is, what is moving, no more than that. Goodbye, thank you, fox can go now. But you never know with old nothing. “Stay. Watch. Too much power here, wild, wrong. Stay and see.”
And there’s fair for you, there’s justice—nothing better for a fox to do than wait among nasty figments until morning comes or magician dies, either. Push in with them on the bed, on windowsill, must I, listen all night long to captain and corporal, all because old nothing thinks one magician is different from another? Nonono, not this time, not this fox, no fear. Too many chickens expecting me elsewhere.
But what, then? Man-shape cannot simply walk out, old nothing would never permit. Very well, sendings must leave, just as Lukassa begs, because it suits me—me, no one else. Think, fox. Man-shape slaps magician on shoulder again, keeps him company in the chorus:
A good song. Magician keeps stamping and singing, eyes down always—won’t even look at nice old Grandfather man-shape, no more than at sendings. But Grandfather looks at everything, eyes bright as my teeth. Grandfather shouts out to sendings, greeting them by their names, names like night in the mouth, like broken glass, names like burning oil, dead water, like wind. Wind in bad places.
They don’t like it, being called by their names. Don’t scream and scatter, don’t turn to stone, but they don’t like it. Interesting. Couldn’t harm them if I cared to—or they me—but interesting still. Grandfather man-shape shouts louder, makes stupid jokes of names, even puts them into marching magician’s song. Hissing and mumbling now, angrier at me than ever at him. Brighter and brighter they grow, all seething with the same black fire, mark of the power that set them on old magician. Room surges with their hurtful little voices, they drown left-right, even drown man-shape’s bellowing. Magician buckles, stumbles to knees, hands over ears, over face, no more song.
On him in a moment now, the lot of them, laughing, mocking, gnawing, he’ll not rise again as what he was. Too bad, Lukassa—enough for you, old nothing? One less magician—one more griga’ath, and who cares? Not this fox.
But then this magician turns, still on his knees, eyes wide, blazing green as the sky just after sunset. He throws out one hand, says three words, dry grass rattling—and gone, all of them, all at once, gone, blown-out candles, slamming doors, dew-bugs in a starik’s mouth. Nothing remains—not an echo, not a twist of smoke, only a cold narrow room left huge by its emptiness. This magician stands up, slowly, smiles very slowly.
“Thank you,” he says, as Grandfather man-shape blinks and shrivels into a red fox sitting on the bed. “That was becoming quite exhausting.”
“No thanks wanted,” I tell him. I am puzzled, hate that, hate puzzled. I say, “It was not to help you.”
Smile widens and widens, teeth or no teeth. “I know that, but I am still just as grateful. It was most clever of you to realize that their own names hurt their ears as much as they do ours. There will be others here, very soon, but at least I will rest a little and perhaps think of a new song to keep them at bay. The captain and the corporal are beginning to lose their charm.”
Brushes me off the bed like dust, lies down sighing. My nice teeth grind together, but too many stories about foxes who bite magicians. “Snap your fingers, mumble words, send them off,” I say. “Why bother with songs?”
Half-asleep already, he looks smaller with every breath. “Too tired,” he whispers. “Have to face them, hear them, too tired, they’d have me. Too tired for anything but singing. Thank you, old friend.”
Last word is a snore. I stand looking at him for a long time, not wanting to. Friend of his, this fox, friend of any magician? He knows better, wicked old tired man. Yet I have gone to him, not wanting to—helped him, not meaning to, meaning only to help this fox. Just as Lukassa begs, kissing nose. I hate this. Magician snores on, ends of mustache fluttering in the wind. Some other is here, watching with me—not old nothing, but a deadness, a dead place, window-high, just beyond bed, no bigger than my front paws together. Where it is, no air. Not for foxes, this room. Good Grandfather man-shape, to leave the door a little open.
So back down the hall, clickclick, clickclick, past more snoring, past sighs, whimpers, a fox indoors, swimming through currents of human noises, human smells. I hear magician muttering in his sleep, same as always:
My feet pick up the rhythm, not wanting to.
TIKAT
Of course I knew that he was ill. I was usually the first to see him in the mornings—before the women, even—and I know the air of a sickroom as well as any. But sickness to me is the plague-wind, is childbed fever, is colic, black blood, bone-rot, and all the village complaints that we treat exactly as we do the ailments of farm animals. My tafiya slept poorly, plain enough; he lost weight by the day, his color grew steadily worse, and his voice was most often a rasping whisper, as painful to me, listening, as it must have been to him. Yet when I would have slept in his room, he forbade it at the top of that tattered voice, as he forbade me ever to visit him again after dark. How should I have realized that he was being galloped to madness and halfway back between every sundown and every cockcrow? That is no air I know.
Tending him drew Lukassa and me together in a strange way, as though I were again slipping up on the Rabbit, my Mildasi horse, step by step, praying not to alarm him by any smallest thought of capture. We spoke rarely; what mattered was that she did not seem to fear being in the same room with me, although how it would have been without him there I cannot say. Our duties were silently self-appointed: she bathed and shaved him, whether he would or no, and changed his sweated linen daily. I never learned where she got the clean sheets, those being one of Karsh’s chief economies. Once or twice she asked me for help in turning his mattress, and several times I took the chamberpot from her hands and emptied it myself. She thanked me politely each time, but she never spoke my name.
For my part, I brought his meals, swept the floor, took away yesterday’s platters, and listened when the mood to talk was on him. It never happened when Lukassa was in the room—or the other two either, when I think about it. They loved him, you see, and I did not. You don’t have to love a tafiya; you can even hate him, as you might anyone else. I thought he was the wisest person I had ever met, except for my teacher at home, but it was a wisdom too playful for my comfort, and the play was too quickly apt to turn edged and pointed. Yet he had a liking for me, I knew that—perhaps because I owed him nothing and did not care so much for his good opinion. It may have been just so, contrary as he was.