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  Matyas asked, “How many of you are there?”

  There was a pause as the Prince closed his eyes again and appeared to listen attentively for some sound that wasn’t there. When he spoke it was with such sadness that Matyas yearned to comfort him, though he had no idea how. He just listened. “I do not know,” the Prince said. “I have been asleep for a very long time, hidden by the trees. As I listen now, I hear no songs, no whispers, no cries or laments. It is possible I am the last of the Kallistochoi.”

  “Will you teach me to fly?”

  Once again there was that startled look. But the Prince said only, “Do I look as if I am seeking students?”

  “Please. I need this.”

  “Well, if you need it, why don’t you go and join the Academy?”

  “Academy?”

  “My, you really are ignorant, aren’t you? The Grand College of Prophets, Sorcerers, Mountebanks and Fools.” When Matyas said nothing, he sighed. “The school for wizards, in the collection of shacks and hovels you people call your capital.”

  “Why do I have to go to school? Can’t you teach me right now? You’re a High Prince!” Matyas was shouting, but it was no use, for the Kallistocha had closed those magnificent eyes and would speak no more.

  He thought of knocking it off its perch, forcing it to answer him, but a sudden wind pushed him back, and the branches began to scratch at him, and he realized the trees were closing in, and if he didn’t leave he might be trapped inside forever. As he was running along the narrow corridor, he heard the Prince call to him. “Matyas! We will meet three times, and the last shall also be the first.” Matyas almost went back to ask what that meant but he had no choice except to keep going. He emerged onto the dull ground just as the trees locked back into place.

  “Come around me!” he yelled, but the lights were gone and there was nothing but dark evening and the darker trees. “Open!” he commanded. “I’m Master Matyas.” Nothing. Finally, crying, and angry he couldn’t stop crying, he turned to go.

  He was a good hundred yards from the trees when he heard the voice again. He didn’t think it was the Prince—the sound was too harsh and thin. And he didn’t see the lights, the Splendor, anywhere around him. It didn’t matter, for only the words counted.

  Matyas, Matyas,

  Master Matyas,

  Will you fly as

  Straight and high as

  A dark and lonely hawk?

  Or will you try as

  Ancients cry, as

  Children die, as

  No one dares to talk?

  “I don’t care about any of that,” Matyas said to the air. “All that crying and talking. And I won’t just try. I’m going to do it.”

  Chapter Four

  JACK

  Jack Wisdom did his best to live up to his father’s hopes for him. No more crazy stuff, he told himself. Normal. He stopped playing the squirrel game, stopped even thinking about the woods and the animals, and as much as he could, he stopped dreaming. If he did dream, whether it was children in pain, or rough hands moving over his head, he told himself it was only that, a dream, meaningless. Normal people just forgot it had ever happened. So that’s what he did. It was, he thought, like casting a spell on yourself. A spell of forgetting. Forgetting the dreams and everything else.

  He never hit another home run.

  In high school, and then later in college, Jack dated girls now and then but not too often. Once, a girl named Rennie said to him, “What’s it like under the mask, Jack? Where’s the real Jack Wisdom?”

  Jack shrugged. They were sitting in a coffee shop, and Jack took a swallow of his mochaccino before he said, “There is no mask. This is just who I am.”

  Rennie smiled and shook her head. “We’ve been going out for two months now, and I don’t believe anyone could be so damned normal.” She said it as a joke but Jack knew what was coming. A week later she broke up with him.

  Jack studied software and for a while he thought of becoming a game designer. But it felt a little dangerous, or at least unwise, and so he took a job as a tech specialist for a small automotive accessory design company headquartered in the fourteenth most livable city. There he bought a white house with a porch, on a quiet dead-end street (a “cul-de-sac” the realtor called it) in the better part of town.

  The spell stayed strong. He forgot all about the strange things that happened to him as a child, forgot the dreams, though at times it felt to him as if everything that had happened since he was a boy was really just a dream, as if any moment he would wake up. Screaming. But then the spell would come back, and he would banish such thoughts as, well, not normal enough for someone in the Wisdom family.

  One winter day, he found himself driving in a part of town he’d never seen, with old houses of wood and even stone, most of them badly in need of paint and a new roof. Jack had no idea, really, how he got there, he was just on his way home from the store after work. Must have been daydreaming and took a wrong turn. He was about to swing the car around when he saw what looked like flames between two dilapidated brick apartment buildings. He pulled over and got out to investigate.

  Then stopped when he saw it was just a group of homeless kids huddled around a small fire they’d made from bits of wood and other garbage. They all sat hunched over, hugging themselves in their dirty thin jackets and jeans. There was something wrong with their faces, Jack saw, marks of some kind.

  Cuts, he realized. They all had a series of small cuts all over their faces. Some had red lines around their necks, as if someone had cut their heads off and placed them back on the shoulders for safe keeping.

  Jack moved slowly away, his heart thumping with terror that they would see him. And in fact, before he could get to his car, all the children turned, or just swiveled their heads, and together they said, “Jack, Jack, don’t go back—”

  “No!” he shouted. “Leave me alone!” He ran to his car as fast as he could, locked all the doors and raced home. That night he dug out his old game player from a box of childhood things his mother had given him. Handling it with a paper towel, as if it might be infected, he took it out into the backyard and buried it. Only when he was inside again, with the door locked, did he feel his breathing begin to slow down. It was all right, he told himself. They were just some runaway kids. Probably they didn’t even say that . . . that thing. Probably they were only begging and the wind distorted their voices. He poured himself some whiskey. Jack almost never drank, he kept the bottle around because he knew his boss liked it, and Jack thought he should be ready in case his boss came for dinner or a meeting. Now he drank it down, slowly, and on the last swallow he said, “More normal than normal.”

  That night he slept without dreams, and the next morning he felt as if nothing had happened. He drove a little more carefully on his way to work, but soon the whole thing was forgotten. His life was back the way it should be.

  Only, he was lonely. Jack tried going out with women at work, or sisters of the guys at work, even once or twice the daughters of his mother’s friends. Nothing ever happened. He’d considered dating services a couple of times. The people in the TV ads always looked so happy. Yet somehow the idea of it always felt unsafe, if not downright unwise. Who ran these things anyway? What did they really want? And so he’d never submitted his name.

  Then, when Jack Wisdom was twenty-four years old, he met a woman who talked to squirrels in the park.

  Jack had gone to a city halfway across the country on assignment from his company. He was there for weeks, and because his clients often needed time to try out his suggestions, sometimes he found himself free for an afternoon or even a day. At first he tried going to movies, or a sports bar to watch games on television, but both made him feel even more lonely. He didn’t want to think what people might think of him, so he stayed away from such places. He tried watching television by himself in his hotel room but became too restless. So he began to take walks in a large park a few blocks from his hotel.

  One after
noon he saw, some distance away, a woman on a park bench leaning forward with her hands on her knees as she apparently talked to a pair of squirrels, one gray, one red, who stood upright on their hind legs to twitch their noses at her. Occasionally she would laugh, as if the squirrels had made a joke, while at other times she nodded solemnly.

  Sudden rage flashed through his body—how could someone act that way, didn’t she care what people would think of her? And then the thought, Get out of here. You don’t need this. But those very messages in his head, and that anger behind them, felt unnormal somehow—wasn’t it normal to see someone else act weird? Why get so angry? So he stood and watched. Sparkling lights like fireflies darted all around her, illuminating her face in momentary flickers. After a few minutes, the woman gave each squirrel a small piece of bread, and then with a wave of her hand sent them away. As the squirrels dashed off to eat their prize, the lights also left, spiraling above the woman to disappear into the sunlight.

  The woman was tall, with long red hair, curly and well cut but in no special style. She wore what looked like a heavy silk dress, deep purple streaked with yellow, and a blue shawl loosely draped over her shoulders. Around her neck a gold chain held a pendant that reminded Jack of the medical symbol of two snakes wound around a stick, except these snakes looked more real, and the stick had a kind of flaming crown on top.

  Once the squirrels had left, Jack wanted to go and speak to her but he was afraid she would notice him staring, so he turned around and pretended to examine some flowers. When he finally looked again she was gone. That evening, Jack lay on his bed with the TV on, gazing at the ceiling, and he thought about the woman. You’ve got to be pretty squirrelly to talk to squirrels, he thought. It was one thing to play a game—and what would it have made him if he’d talked to her? Really, it was all for the best that he hadn’t tried to talk to her.

  The next day he went back to the park and she was there, dressed in blue this time, with a light gray jacket over her long dress. She was talking to the squirrels like the day before, and nodded, or gestured with her hand as if it was a real conversation. And once again, Jack turned and pretended not to see her as she got up and walked away. On the third day she wasn’t there, and as Jack left the park he kicked a garbage can in his anger at himself for not speaking to her. That night he dreamed of her, his first dream in months, strange scenes that lasted only seconds. She was fighting with him, or she was standing in a cold room, surrounded by people so pale and miserable they might have been dead. Or she was holding something over a fire, and he was screaming at her. He woke up angry, and then sad. For a moment he thought he saw those odd fireflies in the room with him, but it must have been an after-effect of the dream.

  Over the next two days, Jack’s clients insisted on showing him the sights. Just as well, he thought. If seeing Squirrel Lady was going to make him dream again, better to keep busy. But when he finally got a free afternoon, he nearly ran to the park. At first he didn’t recognize her, for instead of a long dress she wore jeans and a light ruby-red sweater, with her hair pulled back. In fact, it was only the squirrels that made him realize it was her. She leaned closer, as if they whispered secrets, and at one point he thought she was crying. When the squirrels finally scampered off, he made himself walk toward her with what he hoped was a casual stroll. “Hi,” he said. “Those have got to be the friendliest squirrels in the park.”

  She smiled up at him. “All squirrels are friendly,” she said. “But they’re still wild. It’s not good to think of them as actual friends.”

  He smiled back, hoping he would not appear either scary or pathetic. “You certainly seem to get along with them pretty well. It looked like you were having a great conversation.” He laughed a little, to show he was joking, though not too much.

  “Oh, they’re good for news and gossip, but you know, they have their own point of view. They are squirrels after all, so you really have to sift through what they say for something useful.”

  She sounded so serious, despite a smile at the corners of her mouth, that he didn’t know how to answer. He was never very good at small talk, anyway. So instead he just said, “Hey, look, do you think maybe you’d like to have a cup of coffee? I don’t actually live around here, but I noticed a nice place a couple of blocks over.”

  The strangest look passed over her face, a sadness mixed with some kind of struggle. Jack was wishing he could just run away, maybe go and bang his head against the wall for pushing too soon, when she sighed, then smiled sweetly at him and said, “That would be nice. Thank you.”

  “I’m Jack Wisdom,” he said as she stood up.

  “What a wonderful name. Mr. Wisdom. Is there a Mrs. Wisdom?”

  “No, no, not at all. I mean, my mother, but . . .” He let his voice trail off before he sounded even dumber.

  She laughed. “That’s all right. I knew you weren’t married.”

  “You knew?”

  “The squirrels told me, of course. They’re really very observant.”

  “What?” He looked around, as if he’d catch them spying on him.

  She laughed again. “I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t tease you. My name is Rebecca. Rebecca Vale.”

  “There’s no Mr. Vale, is there?”

  “Only my father.”

  “Good,” he said, then quickly added, “I mean, because I don’t have any squirrels to give me that information.”

  As they walked out of the park, Jack said, “So you’re a nurse?”

  “No, I’m afraid that’s a job that has never appealed to me very much.”

  “I’m sorry. A doctor, then?” Sexist jerk, he scolded himself.

  She looked at him with a smile that might have made him feel foolish but instead lifted his body as he walked. She said, “Not a healer of any kind. Not even a pharmacist.”

  “Oh, sorry. It’s just that necklace. Isn’t it a symbol of the medical profession?”

  “Yes, though in fact that’s actually a mistake.” She touched the pendant. “This is called a caduceus. In ancient times it was a symbol of prophecy. Of seers.”

  “Seers? You mean, like fortune tellers?”

  “Afraid so.”

  He laughed, thinking she was teasing him again. “Great profession.”

  “Not really,” she said.

  From then on Jack spent every free moment with Rebecca. They went to movies, they walked around town, they even went to a museum where she surprised Jack with how much she knew about Renaissance painting. Sometimes that sadness would come over Rebecca, but then she would smile at him, or kiss him, and it would all be okay.

  One evening they walked from Jack’s hotel to a small park alongside the river, and as they sat on a bench watching a sailing boat, Rebecca said, “Jack, suppose you could do something really wonderful, something that would make you very happy. But suppose you also knew that it wouldn’t last, that it would end horribly, that it would even destroy you. Would you do it?”

  Jack said, “I don’t know. I guess it would depend on how good it would be.”

  “The best,” she said. “The absolute best.”

  “If it was as good as you, I’d do it in a second.”

  She began to cry and laugh at the same time. “Oh, Jack,” she said, “I love you.”

  “I love you too, Rebecca. I never thought I’d love anyone the way I love you.” He kissed her, and hugged her, and kissed her again. Because he felt so good, and because he wanted to dispel any sadness in her, he said, “And I don’t even care what the squirrels say.”

  She laughed and clapped her hands. “Right. What do a couple of squirrels know anyway?”

  The first time he went to her apartment he didn’t know what to expect. He’d never been to a fortune teller’s house before. To his relief there was no crystal ball, no weird symbols painted on the walls, no magic wands or lurid idols. There was, however, a small, round table, oak, with two polished candlesticks, one gold, one silver, and in between them a deck of Tarot cards on a bl
ue silk scarf painted with images of stars. Jack had seen Tarot cards before. Back home, at the annual Christmas party, one of the company’s patent lawyers liked to bring a deck and tell fortunes for whoever wanted it. Jack could never decide what surprised him more, that a lawyer would do that, or how many people, sensible people, his boss included, lined up for readings.

  “Wow,” he said to Rebecca, “you really are a fortune teller.”

  “Please,” she said, “we prefer the term prophetic-Americans.”

  “So you really believe in all this stuff?”

  She laughed. “I do it, of course I believe in it.”

  “So will you tell my fortune?”

  “No.” She took his hands. “Sweet Jack,” she said, “you are a man who found love when he didn’t expect it. Isn’t that enough to know?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Good. Then kiss the fortune teller.”

  Chapter Five

  MATYAS

  Over the next days, Matyas thought of nothing but the flying man, and the Prince, and above all, the prophetic voices. He had no idea how a swarm of lights could speak but he didn’t care. Master Matyas, they’d called him, and promised he would fly, as straight and high as a hawk. Over and over he would stop in the middle of sweeping, or piling up wood, or emptying a guest’s chamber pot, and look up, as if he could see the sky through the stained timbers of the inn, and he would close his eyes, and smile.

  If his parents caught him they yelled, or hit him, called him a useless, lazy fool. In such moments, his body shook with anger, and his fingers twitched with the desire to cast some spell on them, burn them into lumps of ash and bone, turn them into miserable scurrying rats. How dare they hit him? He was a Master.

  He wasn’t sure what to tell Royja. If he told her about the Prince, or the flying man, or the voices and their prophecy, she might just laugh at him. Or worse, think he was making it up and respond with some story. Finally, he simply said he was going to leave, run away to the capital as soon as he possibly could.