Avelot was no fool, until she was. She gambled on one throw and lost everything she had, everything she was. She went down into Bogomil’s realm, and most of her is still there now. Now Avelot is Bowie, and Bowie will not make the same mistakes that Avelot once made. Bowie will be cautious where Avelot was bold. There are wolves in the marsh. A saying when Avelot was alive. Now Avelot is dead but there are still wolves in the marsh. Bowie will be one of them. Thomas hunts Bowie at his peril.
Bowie wears the face of Thomas’s brother. He watches Thomas with his brother’s two blue eyes. He knows this will make it harder for Thomas to kill him, should Thomas discover him. Bowie lies on his stomach on the roof of the Cliff Hangar, snow falling all around him, and listens to everything that goes on inside. There is pleasure in this, in being alive and secret and wearing a shape that pleases. When Thomas and Mo come out through the door, Bowie watches them go hand in hand down the plowed and salted road. There’s a turnoff a few hundred yards on. It leads to a steep trail that goes down to a rocky beach. Snow has made it unusable. Bowie, before he chose his perch above the Cliff Hangar, spied out the terrain.
Thomas and Mo pause before the turnoff. Does Thomas sense Bowie is near? But Thomas has only stopped to embrace his companion, and Bowie watches with great interest, only the smallest part of it prurient. How greedy Thomas is to want more than his own survival.
The embrace is lingering. But all things come to an end, and so one shape becomes two, two alter into black specks and go laddering up the air. Bowie’s preference is a gull. Never a songbird. If the crows take flight toward the Cliff Hangar, he will become a gull and flee them. But the crows dive down, plummeting over the guardrail. No need for stairs when one has wings.
Bowie who was once Avelot knows fucking can take as much or as little time as one wants. Will they fuck as birds or boys? Let them, please whatever god never cared for Avelot, dally long. He stays some time upon the roof, but there are good smells below and he grows hungrier. He will go in. And if Thomas returns and catches Bowie inside, well, Bowie must depend upon Malo Mogge, who has said in this space of time she will not permit his death. Perhaps Bowie may make his own bargain with her.
As he passes through the door, Bowie becomes aware something is happening. Some great work is happening. Malo Mogge is summoning her power.