Free Near + Far by Cat Rambo

was slowing, moving back to a normal speed. Water from a street vendor chased the taste of almost vomit from her mouth.
    She was determined, though. This would be her day. Tomorrow, when she took Lewis to the hospital, she'd stop in and find out what the dizzy spell might mean. Maybe nothing more than too much food.
    She went shopping, found two tailored blouses, a pair of shoes that were comfortable, strolled through a Picasso exhibit, then a set of smaller galleries.
    She could feel the new character, so close she could almost glimpse it in the crowd, following at her heels. She practiced the things she might have said to it if it showed up at her elbow, the pictures she might have pointed out to it: a serigraph of Tinkertoys in bright primaries; a skull and feather fan; a distorted face floating in an abandoned hubcap, broad-stroked in acrylic paint.
    She looked up. Reflected in the glass of the frame. Hawk or woman? The menacing curve of its beak. A flower-pupiled eye, cherry and amber.
    She spun.
    Gone.
    Breathlessness seized her. She stood in the middle of the crowd, half-expecting the dizziness to attack her again. It passed. The noise of the crowd eddying around her pressed in on her ears. She need solitude, craved it.
    She could not coax the vision back, but still—close. At the botanical garden, she sketched birds: starlings managing to be glossy and shabby all at once; rusty finches; a fat seagull; a smugly stupid robin; pigeon after pigeon after pigeon. None seemed right, but she lost herself in the detailing of lines forming each feather's vane: rachis and barb, plumy tufts of afterfeathers.
    When she returned, she was still giddy with the pleasure of the drawing. The nurse-aide's scowl ripped the mood away.
    "Don't call our agency again," he said.
    "Did he have a fit?"
    "Yes. It was after that. Client was inexcusably rude. I'm blacklisting you."
    Not the first time. But she had thought Lewis' recent good mood might extend to interacting with other people.
    He slouched on the divan, watching a feed of some event in a garden, people planting a tiny tree in a circle of cameras and tulips. Tired and drawn, hunched over himself.
    "What happened?" she asked.
    "The usual," he said. "You living don't understand."
    "We living?" she asked, incredulous.
    He looked up. His lips firmed. "It's what we call you. We who are about to die." He saluted her.
    "Lewis, I didn't cause any of this. Can't you cut me some slack?"
    "It is the nature of the wild bird to hate its cage," he said.
    "What does that mean? How are you analogous to a singing bird?"
    "I didn't say singing," he said. "I am a representative of the wild world, though. A dimension that you can't touch or comprehend."
    "You never even went to summer camp," she said. "The closest you've ever come to the wild world is grilling in the park."
    He snarled at her, his face so distorted with fury that it drove her a step back. "I can be anything I want to be!"
    "Of course you can," she said.
    "Don't fucking humor me!" He plunged his face into the side of the couch. Rope-skinny arms covered his head. "Just go the fuck away!"
    She did.
    Was he going crazy? She couldn't imagine the pressure of having Death a constant presence at your elbow. Had he become more himself, as he had said? Had he always been this mean at the core, just hid it better before?

    He'd been in her study.
    Nothing she could point to at first. Then she noticed the shelf where she kept her knick-knacks, inspirational objects, remembrances. The crèche Lewis had made her in childhood was off to one side.
    The figures had been smashed, reduced to terra cotta shards.
    She touched one little heap. The sheep, with its spiral curls signifying wool and funny, lopsided expression. A version of it was a frequent visitor in her novels. Mr. Wiggly.
    The fragments were beyond reassembly, almost pulverized. She swept them into a shoe box, closed the lid on it. Shoved it in the bottom of a cupboard.
    She rearranged her