I looked at her, unable to turn away. This was the woman from the other night. The one who had tried to warn me. The crazy one.
She appeared to be homeless. Covered in clothes that looked like they hadn’t been washed in months, there was a distinct smell coming from her. Yet, she had a smile on her face like there was nothing wrong in the world.
Sitting up straight, with her hair flowing wild and unkempt from a dirty headwrap, somehow, she looked like she didn’t belong with the rest of the homeless that I’d met.
And then I saw her eyes. Just a little bit bigger than normal. Just a little bit further apart. And burning with that fire like the man in my dream. Like my parents. Like me.
In her hand was a small bag, and she dug a handful of birdseed out of it, tossing it to the pavement in front of us.
Birds of all variety flocked to the seeds, and she turned to me, giving me a wide smile. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she said in a full-bodied voice. No hint of the cracking voice of an addict or smoker. And no hint of the crazy from the other night.
If this woman was homeless, she certainly wasn’t the typical homeless woman, and she might have answers to all of the questions that were racing through my mind. I turned to face her and tried to figure out which of the million questions running through my mind to ask first.
“What did you mean two nights ago? The stuff about shadows having claws.”
She reached down, seeming to ignore the question, and put her hand out, and I watched in complete surprise as a dove that had been eating the seeds walked over to her. Reaching down as if it were the most normal thing in the world, she picked the dove up and put it in her lap.
I rubbed my eyes and blinked several times as she petted the dove. It began to coo as though it were completely happy with the situation.
“Why is that bird letting you hold it?” I said it softly, as though my voice would scare the comfortable bird.
“We are all connected, my dear. Even the birds. You just need to know how to pluck the cords that run between us, and you’d be surprised at what will happen.”
With an almost childish grin, she tossed the dove into the air. It flew upward, and I watched it, my eyes following its flight as I wondered what it would do. I felt like an idiot, expecting it to do something special, but after watching the woman pick up a wild bird and pet it, I wasn’t sure what was possible.
Especially after the last few days.
“Morning,” the woman said, drawing my attention away from the bird. Two frat boys wearing typical douchey sweaters and jeans walked by and glanced at the woman before laughing.
The boys tried to kick the birds eating the seeds as they walked by, but the birds moved out of the way just as they normally would have. “How do you sit next to that creature?” one of them said to me, but then he got a look at my face and noticed how different I was.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were a person and not that witch’s pet frog.” I felt my cheeks warm as a blush came over me, and I looked down. I’d been mocked my entire life for how I’d looked, but it never stopped hurting. I felt tears beginning to well up, but a strange compulsion made me look back up at them.
The one who had called me a frog began to laugh, throwing his head back. Something flashed in the air above him. He immediately began choking and fell to his knees. I didn’t understand what I was watching, but I couldn’t turn away as the asshole began vomiting on the grass beside the sidewalk.
I glanced at the homeless woman who was smiling even wider than earlier and beginning to giggle. The guy still standing was laughing at his friend as he vomited, and I heard his words more clearly than I thought possible.
“How did a bird shit in your mouth?” I blinked, knowing somehow that this dirty woman that sat next to me had done this. It was crazy. Completely insane. There was no way that anyone could have made that happen, but the coincidence was just too much.
“Dear,” she said, reaching out and taking my hand as she looked me in the eye. “The world is about to become a very strange place for you. Very strange, indeed. Remember this moment.”
At that moment, the bus pulled up, brakes squealing slightly, but I couldn’t think of anything except the woman’s words as they filled my mind. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t turn away from the woman with eyes that held a flicker of the fire that the man in my dream had.
Then she began to speak. “The Prince is a friend in search of a secret that only you possess. He is death, but he will be your life when he finds your secret. Trust the Prince. Only he will be true.”
The bus waited a few moments with the door open, and then it pulled away in a cloud of exhaust. The old woman released my hand as soon as the doors shut, and I felt like I could move again.
I yanked my hand away from her, confusion winding its way through me. What had just happened? How had this woman kept me still like that? I almost felt like I’d been stuck in place.
The words rang through my mind over and over again. Trust the Prince. Trust the Prince. Trust the Prince.
And then a crash filled the air. It was louder than anything I’d ever heard. Not an explosion. Like a massive can being crushed and shredded.
