Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls Part 4

"Ah, I see you know Betwixt and Between," Professor Isabella chuckles.

"Is that its name?" Abalone giggles. "Neat. She always feeds it, so I've given in."

"You and me and everyone else," Professor Isabella sighs. "Sarah is amiable but she turns mean if anyone tries to take Betwixt and Between away. She will leave them for short periods of time-if she must-but heaven forbid if they are not where she left them when she returns."

Between comments, in a dreamy voice, "Remember the goons who hid us in the linen cupboard?"

"How can I forget?" Betwixt retorts. "You wouldn't stop whimpering and I knew we would need both of our heads to yell loud enough for Sarah to hear us."

"Me whimpering?" Between is indignant. "You whimpered! I planned how to get Sarah to us!"

"Did not!"

"Did so!"

"Not!"

"So!"

Abalone and Professor Isabella keep talking as if they cannot hear the dragons.

"You seem to be Sarah's protector," Professor Isabella continues and Abalone swells a little. "Have you kept your Head Wolf from prost.i.tuting her yet? I know that you personally don't streetwalk."

Abalone seems at a loss before her bluntness. "Head Wolf isn't any common pimp."

"Certainly not." Professor smiles wickedly.

Aware that the words have somehow offended Abalone, I interrupt.

"If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men," I say in agitation.

"Blessed are the peace makers," Professor Isabella replies, patting my hand. "Abalone, Sarah seems to want us to be friends. Forgive me for my a.s.sumption, but Sarah's beauty is extraordinary. I could not help but believe that she would be encouraged to sell that beauty or at least trade on it to gain Head Wolf's protection by becoming his mistress."

"Half-right," Betwixt chortles.

Blushing, I swat him.

Abalone keeps some poise. "I'd be lying if I didn't agree that Head Wolf is hot for Sarah-but so are half the guys and girls in the Pack."

Professor quirks an eyebrow at her and Abalone colors.

"Not me, I don't go for girls and, anyhow, Sarah is like my kid. I'm her Baloo. I don't have any place messing with her that way."

"I do do like you, girl," Professor Isabella says. "You are almost as weird as Sarah. Can you tell me what you do have in mind for Sarah?" like you, girl," Professor Isabella says. "You are almost as weird as Sarah. Can you tell me what you do have in mind for Sarah?"

Abalone bites her lip. "Better if I didn't, but I'm not going to pimp her unless she really wants to be a Tail Wolf. And the same goes for begging."

"I'll rest with that for now." Professor Isabella suddenly looks tiny, frail. "But I hope you'll let me see her."

"We are the Free People and she is a Wolf of our Pack. No one will stop her." Abalone laughs at her tone. "Sure she can see you-every night if she wants. I'll bring her to you even."

"Blessed are you among women!" I glow, squeezing her hand.

Professor Isabella finishes her coffee and scoops all the sugar packets on the table into her pockets. Almost as an afterthought, she takes the remaining jelly packets and the crackers left from Abalone's soup.

She stands. "And thank you both for the best meal I have had in a long while. I had best get some sleep if I'm to be up for the commuter rush in the morning."

My earlier suspicions return and I struggle to find a way to ask. We are just outside the diner when I find something I hope will do.

"Oh woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"

Both she and Abalone stop and study me. Fearing I will fail, I pluck Professor Isabella's sleeve, tug at her layers of tattered and mismatched clothes, pat her pockets with their h.o.a.rded treats.

Professor Isabella presses her lips into a thin line. When she opens her mouth, the blood rises into them, making them seem painted.

"They threw me out, too, Sarah. Earlier than you, but just the same. Did they tell you that I had returned to Columbia?"

I nod, tears running down my face unchecked.

"No, dear, they lied. I have been living on the streets."

"Oh, it was pitiful!" I manage between my sobs. "Near a whole city and she had none."

Abalone is clearly troubled. "I would ask you into the Jungle, but..."

"I know, Abalone, 'Feet that make no noise; eyes that see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, and sharp white teeth, all these are the marks of our brothers, except Tabaqui and the Hyaena whom we hate.' I know the scorn Head Wolf has for beggars. He would rather see an eight-year-old boy reamed by perverse business executives than have the lad stay a beggar. I'll go my way, but please bring Sarah to me."

Abalone grows solemn. "By the opened Lock that freed me, Professor Isabella, I promise."

I hug Professor Isabella once more and trot beside Abalone to the Jungle. Once I look over my shoulder and see my teacher trudging away, her shoulders bent against a wind that I don't feel.

Five.

I CONTINUE LEARNING TO DRIVE AND CONTINUE LEARNING TO DRIVE AND A ABALONE TAKES ME regularly to visit with Professor Isabella. In various diners and occasional by-the-hour hotels, once again the professor reads to me, her pa.s.sion for various lines and phrases branding them into my memory. regularly to visit with Professor Isabella. In various diners and occasional by-the-hour hotels, once again the professor reads to me, her pa.s.sion for various lines and phrases branding them into my memory.

Abalone often sits in a corner with her "tappety-tap," working out some complex forgery problem. When we grow weary, we rest and my two friends talk.

"You say that Head Wolf told the Pack to look for people from the Home?" Professor Isabella asks one near-dawn.

"Yeah, he did."

Abalone tenses some. Head Wolf is still a sensitive topic between them, especially since Professor Isabella has somehow learned of my occasional visits to Head Wolf's lair. She blames Abalone, which is unfair. She may be immune to the hypnotic power in those dark eyes, but he draws me like a hummingbird to a new-blossomed hibiscus.

"I wonder why he wanted them?" Professor Isabella muses, "Were any others found?"

"A couple, I think." Abalone's restless fingers trace the outlines of her notebook computer. "I think he spoke with them and sent them on. Did Head Wolf ask you anything, Sarah? What do you talk about when you've been alone?"

She blushes suddenly and bites her lip so hard that she leaves a thin blue line on her top teeth. Professor Isabella chuckles and Abalone sputters helplessly. My dragons giggle in duet. Over the prevailing flood of mirth and embarra.s.sment, I find an adequate reply.

"Of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax-of cabbages-and kings-and why the sea is boiling hot-and whether pigs have wings."

"Lots of nonsense," Professor Isabella translates.

Yet, even as I accept her interpretation, I wonder. There have been many questions that I have struggled to answer, yet these are diminished beneath a vivid flood of nonverbal memories.

Head Wolf has his favorites. I am one. Edelweiss is another. A black/Asian mix Tail Wolf called b.u.mblebee is another. He is so generous with his attentions that he often mock-complains that he is worn out.

Yet, I have learned that many who share his tent do so for more than s.e.x. For Head Wolf has a gift he gives beyond s.e.xual pleasure-he cuddles, strokes, and comforts. His greatest talent is tenderness. He is never too busy to pet or soothe any of his Pack and for this a Tail Wolf may come to him although a night of turning tricks has left her numb.

I enjoy his tenderness, but I have often known kindness. For some of the others in the Jungle, Head Wolf is the only one who has ever listened to them, cared for them. He admires their finery, settles their quarrels, and suggests what they should do when in trouble. Sometimes, he scolds; often he punishes. Always he cares.

Once, I believed fear and the Law bound the Jungle. Now I believe that what binds it is safety and compa.s.sion.

Although we enjoy our nights in diners and hotels, we cannot always loiter in these havens. Abalone explains that this would cause resentment among those of the Free People who lack her extraordinary skills. And Abalone's supply of money is not endless, especially now that she is stretching to supply three.

So, often we go to charity soup kitchens and stand on line with the other homeless awaiting something hot, cheap, and nourishing. Abalone looks at the miserable addicts and drunks who swarm around us, cursing under her breath.

Occasionally, I recognize other outcasts from the Home, but they do not seem to know me. Most are buried in the mora.s.s of their own minds.

Our favorite of these kitchens is called "When I Was Hungry." It is run by Witnesses.

"They're good people, on the whole," Abalone says as we wait at the end of a line. "They'll preach and pray, but their hearts are without that..."

She struggles to describe the emotion we so often encounter in the public dole lines.

"Scorn?" Professor Isabella suggests. "I agree with you. The Witnesses pity me for my religious ignorance and unredeemed status but they are without scorn. And even if Sarah here has a better comprehension of the Bible in its glorious contradictions, I can take their preaching."

"You sound as if you think Sarah's flipped short on the brains side," Abalone says, and there is a growl in her voice. "You ever notice how much sense she makes? And I couldn't remember like she does."

"Nor I," Professor Isabella agrees, "but there is something 'short' in her brains, something is missing that would let her reach in and make her own sentences."

I am uncomfortable, as always, when they discuss me this way. Even my best friends seem to forget that I am able to hear them. Recently, I have noticed that Professor Isabella addresses Abalone as another adult, but speaks to me as a child.

Frustration bubbles in my throat as it has so often before. I want to claw away the bars of this cage built by my mind. My hands, as always, reach and find nothing to grab onto.

I move along the line, sliding my battered tray and accepting a plastic spoon, a napkin, a cup of weak coffee. As I look up to accept the wide plastic bowl heaped with some noodle-filled ca.s.serole, delight thrills through me and I stare. Words come quickly.

"A day without orange juice is a day without sunshine?" I ask, afraid that I am wrong or that he has forgotten me.

Jerome's head jerks up from his mechanical task. "Sarah? Sarah! What are you doing here, girl?"

The line has backed up behind us; only a few of the people that I am obstructing are alert enough to care about anything more than the simple fact that their one meal of the day is being delayed.

Jerome shoves my bowl to me. "Go along now. We're almost done. You wait and I'll come and speak with you. Hear?"

I nod, beam, and hurry on.

Abalone and Professor Isabella are curious, but I cannot find words to explain. I eat, feeding Betwixt and Between who, like me, are nearly too excited to eat the starchy stuff. Yet, I do, for I have learned that wasting food is a crime on the streets.

Jerome comes soon after the food line has closed down. He carries a pot of weak coffee in one hand and a few nearly fresh sweet rolls on a plate in the other.

"Sarah," he pecks me on the cheek, the odors of tuna fish and mushroom soup not completely covering his own scent of scrubbed skin and after-shave.

I motion for him to sit and squeeze his hand. I rock a little on the bench, hunting for words to introduce him to the others.

"Jerome-A friend of publicans and sinners," I manage at last.

Jerome jumps, surprised. "Sarah, you praise me."

He turns to the ladies. "My name is Jerome-I guess you are friends of Sarah's."

He speaks softly and slowly, as if he is uncertain that they will understand him. Yet, courtesy is there, too, as true as if he were addressing his peers.

Abalone smiles. "Yeah-I'm Abalone and this is Professor Isabella. We kinda watch out for Sarah. You know her from the Home?"

"Yes," he nods, then chuckles. "I work there-in the cafeteria. Always tell my Balika, my wife, that surely I can do the Lord's Work elsewhere. After shoveling food all day there, I'd rather not come here, but today she was ill and I came to take her place. The Lord does work in mysterious ways. I've been worrying about Sarah since the big Exodus and now I have an answer to my prayers."

He bows his head for a moment. "I'm forgetting my manners. Coffee? Sweets?"

We all accept and with an almost sheepish smile Jerome drips the last of the pot into a little plastic sc.r.a.p about the size of a thimble and puts a shred of pastry next to it.

"For the dragons," he explains. "I think that's what caught me about Sarah, back at the Home. Her always carrying around that toy and always so careful to feed it."

"Don't leave home without it," I add, blowing on my coffee. "I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls."

"And to these folks here," Jerome says. "May I request that you two ladies fill me in on what Sarah's been doing? Poor child would be here 'til Armageddon looking for the words and I need to hustle on home to Balika."

Abalone and Professor Isabella supply him with a very-edited version of the past month and a half. Jerome seems relieved when he learns that I am neither turning tricks nor doing drugs. He is wise enough not to question where we live and seems to a.s.sume that our food and clothing come from charity.

When we are leaving, he stands for a moment with the empty coffeepot dangling from one hand, his dark face suddenly creased with puzzlement.

"Funny," he says. "I've only seen that golden-haired doctor who made such noise during the Exodus but once since. I made so bold as to ask her if she knew what had become of Sarah. She knew who I meant right off, said that she'd arranged to have her become a model, even promised me some pictures. Wonder why she'd go to the trouble to comfort me like that?"

"Guilt?" Professor Isabella answers.

"Who knows." Jerome smiles. "Come back soon, now. Let me know how you are."

He speaks in a general way, but I am warmed. The night seems more pleasant, the stars brighter, as we walk through the dark streets.

After leaving the soup kitchen, we head for one of Abalone's many safe holes. Tonight's is an abandoned building; it still has power, water, and, most importantly, phone service.

Abalone is intent over her tappety-tap. Professor Isabella drowses openmouthed on a pallet made from a few blankets Abalone has stashed there. I patiently play with my practice panel.