The Bronze King (15 page)

Because I realized that when we beat the kraken, it was all going to end. Our adventure, our partnership, our kidding around, everything. Paavo had come here to do this particular thing. When it was over, he wouldn't stay around.

Why should he be an old street musician in our world when he belonged in Sorcery Hall as a great wizard? Would I even ever suggest anything like that? I could want it, I could want it really badly, but I couldn't say so. At least I didn't have to try and work out the mechanics—explaining him and the kraken to my mom, for instance. Because no way in the world could I ask Paavo to settle for what he could do and be here, just so he would stay around and be my friend.

Maybe later on he'd drop in once in a while to say hello or something, if I was lucky, if he had a little time; if I even remembered and believed my own memories when I got older. Maybe now and then I'd hear violin music on some street corner someplace and I'd hurry to see and find him there, just stopping by to make sure things are all right. But in general my life in our world-without-wizards was not seriously going to include him, that was all.

“I think it's just a story,” he said.

“What is?” I said. I kept staring at him because a time was coming when he wouldn't be there, and boy, did that hurt.

“Richard the Lion-Hearted and Blondel,” he said patiently. He tapped my forehead with his knuckle. “Hey, how you doing in there? Anyway, from your dream it sounds like Joel is ready. So, what about you? How do you feel?”

That brought me down hard from whatever cloudy place I'd been: I had to get started, if I still meant to.

It was just like Paavo to ask me again, to give me another chance to say no.

I stalled a little: “You mean, have I changed my mind about going into the subway?”

“That's right.”

I thought about it, feeling the beginning of fear all mixed up with hunger for breakfast, and then suddenly I started to laugh.

“Hey, Paavo.” I said, “I don't have to walk in the tunnels! I don't have to go into the subway at all! I'm just supposed to bring the key out, right?”

“That's the important part, yah,” he said.

“Well, if Joel is playing music, I can find him from the street, through the subway ventilation gratings. I can get the key, too, from up above. That's what Joel was telling me, in my dream!”

I explained to Paavo how city kids go fishing: you get a long string and some gum you've chewed that's good and sticky, and you tie something small and heavy to the end of the string to weight it and you stick the gum to the weight. Then you lower the whole thing through a street grating and try to get the gum to stick to and pick up coins that you imagine have fallen out of the pockets of people walking over the grating. You never catch anything much, but it's a good game if you pretend there's all kinds of treasure coming up from down there.

“The key's the treasure,” I said. “All I have to do is locate the grating over the phantom station. The kraken wouldn't make a station without all the street grilles over it, would it?”

Paavo scratched the mark on his neck. “They don't invent, they only imitate, and they do that pretty good. There's probably a grating, but listen, it won't open like the one over the real closed-down station. Otherwise Joel might be able to escape, blind or not. The grille will just be window-dressing, you know what I mean? You can't get Joel out through there, only the key, if this works.”

“It'll work, it'll work!” I said, really excited. “The gratings over the Broadway line are right above the stations. You can look in and see the trains go by underneath. All I need is some string.”

“But,” he said, “it might not be so easy, Val. And you might still have to go underground at some point. Don't discount that.”

“I'll chance it,” I said. I was feeling great.

“Okay,” he said. “How about something to eat? But we better go wash up a little first.”

I went to the ladies room and cleaned up the best I could.

Looking in the mirror, I started to get all trembly. This was me, the me that Paavo saw when he looked at me: not some wimpy brat or a grade-school kid, but this person who was helping him fight the kraken.

I'd give him the key and he'd fix the kraken and then he'd go, and maybe that me would be gone too. Anyway, the one person I knew I could trust completely was going to leave me, and whose one-person-they-knew-they-could-trust-completely would
I
be then?

I guess I got pretty rattled, because when I came out I sat down next to him and I said, “Paavo, can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“I think I love you.” Oh God, did I really say that?

“Good,” he said. Then he added, “I mean, good that you said it.”

“You knew!” I squeaked, more horrified than before.

“Sure I knew. When you feel that pull toward another person—just here, right?” He tapped himself below the middle of the chest, under the breastbone: “Yah. That's what it is.”

“You feel it too?” What if he did, what then? All of a sudden we were going way too fast for me.

“Sure I do,” he said. “The other person always feels it, even if they pretend they don't.”

“Oh,” I croaked.

“Okay if I smoke?” he said. I nodded and he took the last bent cigarette from a rumpled package and lit up and blew smoke through his nose. “Val,” he said, “your mother has ideas about love, yah?”

“Ideas?” I said. “She has whole lectures!”

“Okay, I have a lecture too. You want to hear it?”

“Yes,” I said, not daring to look at him. Love? We were going to talk about love, me and this old wizard from another plane? What had I gotten myself into? I should have just gone charging off into the kraken's lair, it would have been easier.

“Here's what I think,” he said. “Love is never bad, you understand? Complicated, maybe. Sometimes it's so tied up it can only
be,
it can't
do
anything. And sometimes that's plenty, and sometimes it's a damn good thing. I'm talking about love now, this kind.” He touched the same spot on his chest again. “Not just appetite, or flirting, or mischief. This is the kind where what you want for the other person is what they want for themselves, whether you like it or not. You don't ever want to pretend that feeling isn't there when it is; or vice versa, either. That kind of faking can twist you up something terrible. So you always want to say to yourself, no, this isn't it; or yes, it is. And if it is, where you go from there, you got to make some careful choices.”

“Choices?” I said. I was petrified of what he was going to say.

“For me, it's not to do anything to make us uncomfortable with each other, you and me. For you—whatever you decide, inside what my choice leaves.”

I felt this dizzy rush of relief—he meant I was safe. But who did he think he was, anyhow, telling me what was left for me to decide after he decided?

Words rushed out of me: “You mean—I wasn't thinking—I couldn't, I wouldn't, you're so
old!
” And I wanted to die. Of course I'd had this fleeting thought of, well, us kissing and a sort of whirling, suffocating blank beyond that, and of course he knew, and now I'd said this awful thing.

He smiled and blew more smoke. “That's right,” he said. “I am.”

“It doesn't matter though,” I gabbled, clutching the arm of the bench for dear life. “I mean, you're a magician, you can be any age you want and you could even change my age to match yours, couldn't you?” God, change my age? To what? To be old like my mother, like Granny Gran even? What was I
saying
?

“
Sure I could change you,” he answered. “Outside. Inside, no. I couldn't do that and still keep you yourself. And since it's yourself I love, I don't want to do that, do I?”

“But you could make yourself younger,” I said. I couldn't help myself. I had this wild image of him changing himself into a kid right there in Penn Station and nobody even noticing. Except me. It's yourself I love, he'd said.

He shook his head. “I got nothing left to learn as a youngster. This is what I'm learning now.” He slapped his own leg, an old man's leg, thin under the wrinkled, rust-colored corduroys. “I got lessons to do like this, and that's what I'm ready to do, so that's what I'm doing. I won't use magic to cut school, Val.”

I giggled at the idea of Paavo in school, and the next thing I knew I was bawling like a little kid. I'd sort of asked him to stay with me after all, and he'd answered, and I couldn't help it, I cried.

If he'd patted me on the head, I would have expired right there. But he sat smoking, squinting one eye behind the smoke, and saying, “Shaa, Val, it's okay, take it easy,” until I dried up.

Then he said, “Are you ready for breakfast? I want you to get something to eat, take your time, loaf around a while. About noon, you start looking for Joel; not before.”

“Why?” I said. “We only have today, Granny Gran said. And what about you? What are you going to be doing?”

“Resting, getting set. I've got it worked out. Playing on the street, you meet people. Remember that guy who stopped to talk to me in the park that day, before we did some magic? He gave me ten dollars. He's a musician, and he invited me to stop by his place for coffee any Sunday. Him and some friends, they play chamber music just for their own pleasure, Sunday mornings until noon. You get breakfast. I'll go to his place and listen.”

“Just listen to music?” I said. My heart was thumping at my ribs because we were so close to going our separate ways, which I wanted to put off as long as I could.

“Listen,” he said, “maybe play a little on somebody's spare fiddle, eat some herring. He serves bagels and pickled herring, he told me. And good strong coffee. I'll eat better than you will, and music is good for me.

“Afterward, I'll go to that little park with the waterfall on Fifty-third Street, you know the one? I got things to do that need plenty of moving water. It's going to take both of us, your Granny and me, to keep the kraken and the Princes occupied while you find Joel.

“I'll know when you've got the key, and I'll head for the Eighty-first Street station to meet you. It better be before sundown, Val. The dark helps the kraken. Be quick.”

We went up on the sidewalk. It was cold out. A raw, dirty wind was sweeping paper scraps down the gutters, and the sky was a dull color.

He said, “Can you spare some money for cigarettes? I'm all out.”

I divided the last of Gran's little roll of bills between us.

“Oh,” he said, “wait a minute.” He pulled a coil of thin cord out of his pocket and handed it to me. “For your fishing.” God knows where he got it, and I didn't ask.

I said, “You'll be waiting for me at Jagiello's station?”

“Once you got the key, you head right there,” he said. “But look, Val, if I don't come, and the sun sets, take the key downstairs yourself and open the door for Jagiello. No hesitation, no waiting around. Just do it, okay?”

“Why wouldn't you be there?” I said, feeling this sudden drench of fear.

“I got to figure out how to get Jagiello moving once he's free so he can go back where he belongs. He's only a statue, you know, a guardian. He was never meant for more than just standing there. It's different when all of a sudden you got to be a warrior, you got to pick up your big bronze feet and move. It might take longer than I think, making that work. I might be late.

“Listen, don't worry, okay? Either we do it, or we don't, that's all. What's to worry about in that? If we fail, no more worries for anybody.”

“But you'll be there,” I insisted, “when I show up at the station. You'll meet me.”

“I plan to,” he said. “Just if I don't, and the sun goes down, use the key. You're not Joel, you can do it. Don't wait.”

He shoved back that stray swatch of hair that the wind kept tugging down over his eye.

“You want to borrow my comb?” I said, wishing like crazy that he would say yes. I wanted to give him something, anything of mine, before we headed in different directions.

“No, thanks,” he said. “Don't they tell you in school never to lend your comb to people?” He smoothed his thick gray curls back with his palms. “Looks better?”

“Looks great,” I said.

I had a powerful urge to give him the biggest hug in the world, but while I hesitated he put his hand out for me to shake. It was as if we both suddenly got a little shy, having spent the night together, so to speak. He turned my hand in his big, warm paw and kissed the back of it, and then he walked away with that neat, brisk step of his, his head up as if he was staring down anybody taller than he was.

So much for the war horns and prophecies and unicorns and kings from my reading that I'd been missing in real life. It took me a while to work it out—I guess I'm kind of slow about some things—but I knew that morning that however things came out in the end, my honest-to-goodness rumpled old wizard who needed a shave and had to borrow money for cigarettes was worth more than that whole bunch of clichéd fantasy claptrap rolled up together.

 

14
Blondel

 

 

S
CARED AS I WAS,
I didn't have much appetite, but I managed to get through some waffles and sausages and a little orange juice, which left me with bus fare, that was all. I walked around the theater district looking at show posters for a while, read part of a Sunday
Times
somebody had dumped in a trash can—funny how that made me feel. All those dopes and fanatics busy gunning each other down all over the world were going to have to give it up for good if the kraken wasn't stopped.