‘Remember who you’re talking to, Rasputin. I’m the man who knows the Truth about people, and when they ask me, I’ve got to tell them. I have my own balancing points for my magic. One of them is that I don’t touch women. I don’t touch anyone.’
‘That so?’ the black wizard asked sceptically. Wizard looked at him stony-eyed. ‘You poor, stupid bastard,’ Rasputin said softly, more to himself than to his friend. ‘Drawing the circle that shuts it out.’ He flopped back into his earlier, careless pose, but his dancing fingers jigged on the bench back, and Wizard felt his awareness digging at him.
The pigeons roared up suddenly around them, their frantically beating wings swishing harshly against Wizard’s very face. Cassie stood before them, slender and smiling. She was very plain today, dressed all in dove grey from her shoes to the softly draped cloth of her dress. Her hair was an unremarkable brown, her features small and regular. But when she flashed Wizard her smile, the blue voltage of her eyes stunned him. She proffered him a couple of grey tail feathers. ‘Nearly had myself a pigeon pie for tonight,’ she teased, tossing the feathers in his face. Wizard winced, fearing there was more truth in her jest than he approved. ‘Come on,’ she cajoled, sitting down between the men. ‘If lions are majestic and wolves are noble and tigers are princely, what’s so cruddy about a person who snags a few pigeons for a meal now and then?’
She bent suddenly to wipe a smudge from her shoe, and Rasputin grabbed Wizard’s eyes over her bent back. ‘Stupid shit!’ he mouthed silently at Wizard, but composed his face quickly as Cassie sat up between them. She gave her brown bobbed hair a shake, and the scent of wistaria engulfed Wizard and threatened to sweep him away. But she had fixed those eyes on Rasputin and pinned him to the bench. ‘Give it to me!’ she demanded instantly.
‘Right here?’ His reluctance wasn’t feigned. ‘It’s a heavy one, Cassie. Bad. I didn’t like hearing it, and I don’t like repeating it.’
‘All the more reason I should have it. Out with it.’
‘It was these two cute little girls, one in pigtails, down in Gas Works Park, and they were jumping rope, and I was hardly listening, cause they was doing all old ones, you know, like “I like coffee, I like tea, I like boys, why don’t they like me?” and “Queen Bee, come chase me, all around my apple tree…”’
‘Oldies!’ Cassie snorted. ‘Get to the good stuff.’
‘It didn’t sound so good to me. All of a sudden, one starts a new one. Scared the shit out of me. “Billy was a sniper, Billy got a gun, Billy thought killing was fun, fun fun. How many slopes did Billy get? One, two, three, four…”’ Rasputin’s voice trailed off in a horrified whisper. Wizard’s nails dug into his palms. The day turned a shade greyer, and Cassie rubbed her hands as if they pained her.
‘It has to come out somewhere,’ Cassie sighed, ripping the stiff silence. ‘All the horrors come out somewhere, even the ones no one can talk about. Look at child abuse. You know this one, so it doesn’t bother you anymore. But think about it. “Down by the ocean, down by the sea, Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me. I told Ma, Ma told Pa, and Johnny got a licking with a ha, ha, ha! How many lickings did Johnny get? One, two, three,” and on and on, for as long as little sister or brother can keep up with the rope. Or “Ring around a Rosie” that talks about burning bodies after a plague. Believe in race memory. It comes out somewhere.’
‘“When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,”’ whispered Wizard.
‘“Take the key and lock her up,”’ Rasputin added.
The day grew chillier around them, until a pigeon came to settle on Wizard’s knee. He stroked its feathers absently and then sighed for all of them. ‘Kids’ games,’ he mused. ‘Kids’ songs.’
‘Jump rope songs they’ll still be singing a hundred years from now,’ Cassie said. ‘But it’s better it comes out there than to have it sealed up and forgotten. Because when folks try to do that, the thing they seal up just finds a new shape, and bulges out uglier than ever.’
‘What do you do with those jump rope songs, anyway?’ Rasputin demanded, his voice signalling that he’d like the talk to take a new direction.
Cassie just smiled enigmatically for a moment, but then relented. ‘There’s power in them. I can tap that magic, I can guide it. Think of this. All across the country, little girls play jump rope. Sometimes little boys, too. Everywhere the chanting of children, and sometimes the rhymes are nationally known. A whole country of children, jumping and chanting the same words. There’s a power to be tapped there, a magic not to be ignored. The best ones, of course, are the simple, safe-making ones.’
‘Like?’
‘Didn’t you ever play jump rope? Like “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, go upstairs. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say your prayers. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say good-night. Good night!”’
The last words she shouted as gleefully as any child ever did. Both men jumped, then smiled abashedly at one another. The simple words were full, not of awe-inspiring power, but of glowing energy. When Cassie chanted them, her voice made them a song to childhood and innocence, suggesting the woman’s magic she wielded so well. Wizard and Rasputin exchanged glances, nodding at the sudden freeness in the sky and the fresh calm that settled over them. They settled back onto the bench.
‘Something bad’s come to Seattle,’ Cassie announced suddenly.
Rasputin and Wizard stiffened again. Rasputin’s feet began to keep time with his hand, to dance away the threat that hovered. Wizard sat very still, looking apprehensive and feeling strangely guilty.
‘What you want to be saying things like that for?’ the black wizard abruptly complained. ‘Nice enough day, we all come together for some talk, like we hardly ever do, I bring you a new jump rope song, and then you go “Boogie-boo!” at us. Why get us all spooked up when we just got comfortable?’
‘Oh, bullshit!’ Cassie disarmed him effortlessly. ‘You knew it when you came. That jump rope song scared the shit out of you. You knew it didn’t mean anything good when kids in the city start singing stuff like that. So you brought it to me to hear me say how bad it was. Well, it’s bad.’
‘Just one little jump rope song!’
‘Omens and portents, my dear Rasputin. I have seen the warnings written in the graffiti on the overpasses and carved on the bodies of the young punkers. There are signs in the entrails of the gutted fish on the docks, and ill favours waft over the city.’
‘Just a strong wind from Tacoma,’ Rasputin tried to joke, but it fell flat. The small crowd of pigeons that had come to cluster at Wizard’s feet rose suddenly, to wheel away in alarm. Startled at nothing.
‘What kind of trouble, Cassie?’ Wizard asked.
‘You tell me,’ she challenged quietly.
‘Ho, boy!’ Rasputin breathed out. ‘Think I’m gonna dance me off to somewhere else. Give a holler when the shit settles, Cassie. I’ll tell the Space Needle you said hi!’
She nodded her good-byes as Wizard sat silent and stricken. Rasputin stroked off across the cobbled square, his gently swaying hips and shoulders turning his walk into a motion as graceful as the flight of a sea bird. He vanished slowly among the parked cars and moving pedestrians. Wizard was left sitting beside Cassie. Her body made him uneasy. It had taken him a long time to accept that every time he saw Cassie she would be a different person. Today she seemed too young and vibrantly feminine, radiating a femaleness that had nothing to do with weakness or docility. He wished she had come as the bag lady, or the retired nurse, or the straggly-haired escapee from the rest home. Those persons were easier for him to deal with. Looking at her today was like staring into the sun. Yet anyone else passing by their bench might have