A Knight Of The Word

John Ross stepped out of the bus tunnel onto Third Avenue, walked right to University Street, and started down the steep hill. The evening air was brittle and sharp, tinged with a hint of early frost, and he pulled the collar of his coat closer about his neck. He moved slowly along the sidewalk, his gaze lowered to its surface, conscious of a slippery glaze encrusting the cement, relying on his staff for support.

Still bound to my past, he thought darkly. Crippled by it. Unable to escape what I was.

He tried to organise his thoughts as he passed close by the imposing glass lobby of the symphony hall, brilliant light spilling out across the promenade and planting areas to where he walked. But his mind would not settle. The possibilities of what he might discover when he confronted Simon Lawrence did not lend themselves readily to resolution. He wanted to be wrong about Simon. But a dark whisper at the back of his mind told him he was not and warned him he must be careful.

At the next intersection, he paused, waiting for the light to change, and allowed himself his first close look at his destination. The high, curved walls of the Seattle Art Museum loomed ahead, filling the entire south end of the block between Second and First. The Robert Venturi-designed building had a fortresslike look to it from this angle, all the windows that faced on First hidden, the massive sections of exposed limestone confronting him jagged, rough, and forbidding. In the shadowy street light, the softening contours and sculpting were invisible, and there was only a sense of weight and mass.

He crossed with the light and began his descent of a connecting set of terraces and steps that followed the slope of the hill down to the museum’s primary entrance. He limped uneasily, warily, seeing movement and shadows everywhere, seeing ghosts. He peered into the brightly lit interior, where service people were bustling about in preparation for the night’s festivities. He could see a scattering of tables on the broad platform of the mezzanine outside the little cafe, and more on the main floor of the entry. Stacks of trays and plates were being set out along with bottles of wine and champagne, chests of ice, napkins, silver, and crystal. The waiters and waitresses were dressed in skeleton suits, their painted bones shimmering with silver incandescence. One or two had already donned their skull masks. It gave the proceedings an eerie look, no guests had arrived yet, but the dead were making ready.

Ahead, the Hammering Man rose fifty feet into the night, stark and angular against the skyline of Elliott Bay and the mountains. A massive, flat steel cutout painted black, it was the creation of Jonathan Borofsky, who had intended it to reflect the working nature of the city. A hammer held in the left hand rose and fell in rhythmic motion, giving the illusion of pounding and shaping a bar that was held firmly in the right. The head was lowered in concentration to monitor the work being done, the body muscular and powerful as it bent to its endless task.

Ross stopped at the sculpture’s base and looked up at it. An image of the dream that had haunted him these past six months clouded his vision, the old man accusing him anew of slaying the Wizard of Oz, in the glass palace of the Emerald City, where the Tin Woodman kept watch. He had recognized the references instantly, known them to be the museum and the Hammering Man, He had sworn to stay away, to do anything required to keep the dream from becoming reality. Yet here he was, as if in perverse disregard of all he had promised himself, because now there was reason to believe the dream was meant to happen.

He stood rooted in place then, thinking desperately. If he entered the museum, he was accepting he might not be meant to foil the dream, but to facilitate it. Such logic flew in the teeth of everything he had learned while he was a Knight of the Word, and yet he knew the past was not always an accurate measurement for the present and what had once been reliable might no longer be so. If he turned around now and walked away, he would not have to find out. But he would be left with unanswered questions about the demon who sought to destroy him and about Simon Lawrence, and he would have no peace.