by Rice, Anne
Mona burst out laughing and so Dolly Jean laughed so hard she had to pound the table with her left fist. She almost choked. Mona finally dissolved into giggles. Michael gestured to them to be quiet. Rowan was obviously waiting.
Rowan went on, her eyes fixing on me, then moving away.
“We went down there. It was the most godforsaken slum I’d ever seen. The very slabs of the sidewalks had floated away in the mud, buildings had collapsed into heaps of lumber, and the weeds were like fields of wheat. And there stood this classic raised cottage with its fresh white paint and planted garden. It had a high picket fence and gate, and a bell at the gate and we rang, and up on the porch, a tall woman opened the door and stood there in her bare feet with the light of the hall behind her. It was Merrick Mayfair.
“She knew who we were. It was astonishing. She complimented me on the Medical Center, and she thanked Lauren for coming to Great Nananne’s wake years and years ago. She was very pleasant to us, but she didn’t ask us in. She was quite fine, she said. She hadn’t really disappeared at all, just become a hermit. I remember using every grain of second sight that I might possess when I looked at her, and a deep spell overtook me. It was the timbre of her voice, and the way that she walked, which set her apart. The center of gravity was not in her hips as it should have been in a human female. And her voice, it had a rich musical dimension to it. As for the rest of her, she was a shadow up there.
“Of course, Lauren had satisfied her abysmal legal mind that all was well. The superficial idiot. And her next attack was upon the Talamasca, which she proposed ‘to run out of Louisiana,’ but when she came up against their endless list of London and New York law firms, and the fact that an entire contingent of the family went up in arms against her, myself and Michael included, she settled very quickly for a schism in the firm, and for telling me how ‘insane’ I was, and that she was going to ‘put Tante Oscar in a home.’ I grabbed her and shook her. I didn’t mean to do it. I’ve never done that to any person before. It was a terrible thing to do. But when she said that about Tante Oscar, I lost my temper. I just did it. I told her if she dared to attempt such a thing with any Mayfair, colored or white, anywhere, at any time, I would kill her. I went sort of out of my mind. How could she think she had the power to do such a thing? I backed away from her. I was afraid that—. I was afraid I would do something even more dreadful to her. And the whole matter was dropped. And she doesn’t come near me anymore.
“And I had so much to do with the Medical Center that I really didn’t want to talk the night away with Dolly Jean about Blood Children and what they did or didn’t do. Though I couldn’t resist going up to Tante Oscar’s apartment one more time with Dolly Jean, but when they started talking about the ‘Walking Babies’ born out in the swamps, and I knew they meant actual Taltos babies, and the way the terrified swamp Mayfairs hacked them to death, I thought I was going into trance mode, and I left.
“And now we come forward almost to the present, and suddenly Miss McQueen is dead, Quinn’s beloved aunt, whom everyone adored, and it’s her funeral we’re gathered for, and Mona’s much too sick to even be told, and the funeral’s in grand New Orleans style, and there in the pew in St. Mary’s Church before me I see you—Quinn, Lestat—and this tall woman, with the scarf around her head, and I see Stirling come up to her and he calls her Merrick, and I knew, I knew she was the same woman I’d seen before, and this time I was certain she wasn’t human. Only I couldn’t concentrate on it.
“At one point she turned and lifted her sunglasses and looked directly into my eyes, and I thought, What does it have to do with me? She smiled. And after that I felt sleepy and unable to concentrate on any thought in particular, except that Aunt Queen was dead and everyone was the lesser for it.
“I wouldn’t look at Quinn. I wouldn’t think about the change in Quinn’s voice on the phone—how over a year ago, his voice and his entire audial demeanor had changed. That might be a mistaken notion after all. What did it matter to know such things? And what if the blond-haired tan-skinned guy next to Quinn in the pew looked like an angel? How was I to guess that when I met him in the double parlor at Blackwood Manor only a day or two later he would have ‘captured’ Mona and he’d talk like a gangster?” She laughed softly, just a little sweet private laugh.
“I had Mayfair Medical as my life, my mission in the real world. And this was a funeral Mass, I closed my eyes and prayed, and then Quinn stood at the podium and said warm and lovely things about Aunt Queen, and he had young Tommy Blackwood with him. Now would somebody who is not alive do that?
“And I had to get back to the Medical Center and find Mona in her bed of needles and bandages and the tape tearing her skin, and somehow convince her that Quinn was hale and hearty and fine, and had grown four inches since he’d gone to Europe so long ago, her beloved.…”
She stopped again, as though all the words had run out. She was staring at nothing in front of her.
“These matters are of no use to us,” said Mona in a hard voice.
I was shocked.
Mona went on: “Why do you tell us all this? You’re not the prima donna of what’s happened here! All right, so, you tried to help me not die for years! If it hadn’t been you, it would have been some other doctor. And you dug up the corpses of the Taltos out here, so what—.”
“Stop, no!” Rowan whispered. “You’re talking of my sins, you’re talking of my daughter!”
“That’s the whole point! I can’t!” Mona cried. “That’s why you have to do it. But you ramble on—.”
“So you gave birth to one of them too,” I said gently to Rowan. I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. Her hand was cold, but at once she clasped my fingers.
“Traitor!” Mona said to me.
“Poor darling girl,” said Dolly Jean, who was now drunk and falling asleep, “having those Walking Babies, and getting her womb torn out.”
Rowan gasped at those words. She drew back her hand and her shoulders slumped as though she was drawing into herself.
Michael was deeply alarmed and so was Stirling.
“Dolly Jean, put a lid on it,” Michael said.
“Rowan, can you go on?” I pleaded. “I understand everything you’ve said. You’ve been telling us exactly how and why you can keep our secrets.”
“That’s right,” Quinn said. “Rowan’s telling us how she can abide what we are.”
The deep hurt flashed in Michael’s eyes, private and almost lonely. “That’s very true,” he said under his breath.
“I gave birth to two,” Rowan said. “I let the evil in after twelve generations. That’s what Mona wants to hear. That’s the secret we have to divulge in exchange for yours—.”
“Oh yes!” cried Mona sarcastically, “more of the saga of Rowan! I want to know about my own child! About the man who took her away.”
“How many times must I tell you, I can’t find them!” said Rowan. “I’ve searched and searched.”
I became furious at Mona. I had to take a deep breath. I reached over and snatched her out of Quinn’s protective hold and turned her to face me.
“Now you listen to me,” I said in a small voice. “Stop abusing your power. Stop forgetting that you have it. Stop forgetting the inevitable limitations of your kindred here! If you want to search for your daughter now, you have resources that Rowan and Michael can’t even dream of! Quinn and I are here to find out what the Taltos is because you won’t tell us! (She stared at me wide-eyed and slightly in terror.) Every time we ask you about it you dissolve into tears. In fact, you’ve wept more in the last thirty-six hours than any fledgling I’ve ever encountered in all my years, and it’s becoming an ontological, existential, epistemological, and hermeneutical nuisance!”
“How dare you ridicule me!” she hissed. She took a deep cool breath. “You let me go this instant. You think I’m going to obey you in thought, word and deed! You’re dreaming. I’m not the Wander Slut you make me out to be. I was the D
esignée of the Legacy of the entire Mayfair family. I know what it means to have self-possession and power. You don’t look like an angel to me, and you sure as Hell don’t have the charm of a bona fide gangster!”
I was stunned. I let her go. “I give up!” I said disgustedly. “You’re a brash little infidel! Go your own way.”
Quinn whipped her around and looked down into her eyes.
“Be still, please,” he said. “Let Rowan talk the way she wants to talk. If you’re ever to be Mona Mayfair again, that must be allowed to happen.”
“Mona, this is very true,” said Stirling. “Remember, this is an exposition of souls, a bartering of extraordinary revelations.”
“Oh, let me get it straight,” said Mona. “I triumph over death, and we gather here to listen to the personal memories of Rowan Mayfair?”
Dolly Jean, who had been dozing with the bottle, suddenly jumped into life, bouncing up and down and leaning forward, crinkled little eyes staring hard at Mona.
“Mona Mayfair, you button your lip,” she said. “You know perfectly well, no matter how sick you’ve been, that Rowan almost never talks at all, and when she does talk she’s got something to say, you and your fancy friends are learning about the Mayfair family, now how’s that supposed to hurt you, I’d like to know, don’t you want your handsome escorts to understand you? Shut up.”
“Oh, you’re just joining in with the chorus!” Mona said sharply to Dolly Jean. “Drink your Amaretto and leave me alone!”
“Mona,” said Quinn as amiably as he could. “There are things we do need to know for your sake. Does it hurt so much to listen to Rowan?”
“Very well,” Mona replied miserably, and she sat back in the chair. She wiped at her face with one of her thousands of handkerchiefs. She glared at me.
I glanced at her, then back to Rowan.
Rowan was watching all this with a remote expression, her face more relaxed than it had been all evening. Dolly Jean took another drink of Amaretto and sat back and closed her eyes. Michael was studying the three of us. Stirling waited, but our cross words had fascinated him.
“Rowan,” I said. “Can you tell us what the Taltos is? We lack that basic knowledge. Can you give it to us?”
“Yes,” she answered in a resigned voice. “I can tell you as much as anyone can.”
18
Her expression remained placid, though she looked away, her inner focus gathering.
“A mammal,” she said, “evolved totally apart from Homo sapiens, on a volcanic island in the North Sea thousands of years before us. We share perhaps forty-five percent of our genes in common. The creatures look like us except that they tend to be taller and more long of limb. Their bone structure is almost entirely what we would call cartilage. When the pure creatures mate, the female ovulates on demand and the fetus develops within a matter of minutes or hours, it isn’t clear to me—but whatever the case, it puts tremendous stress upon the mother. Birth is accompanied by severe pain, and the infant unfolds as a small adult and begins to grow to maturity immediately.”
Mona’s entire demeanor changed at these words. She moved closer to Quinn, and he put his arm around her once more, kissing her quietly.
“The Taltos craves its mother’s milk in order to grow,” said Rowan. “And without that milk it cannot develop properly. In the hour right after birth it runs the risk of being stunted forever. With that milk, and with its mother’s full telepathic nurture, the baby reaches its full height within that hour. Six and a half feet is the usual. The males can be seven feet. It will go on drinking its mother’s milk as long as it can. Weeks, months, years. But the toll on the mother is heavy.”
Rowan stopped. She put her hand up to support her forehead. A deep sigh came out of her. “The milk …” she said. “The milk has curative properties. The milk can work a cure in humans.” Her voice broke apart. “Nobody really knows what that milk could do.…”
Deliberate flash of images. A bedroom with an elaborate half-tester bed and Rowan in the bed, sitting up, taking milk from the breast of a young female. Shut out. Gunfire. Several shots. Flash of Rowan digging in this very yard. Michael with her. Rowan wouldn’t let go of the shovel. Body of the young female lying limp in the moist earth. Heartbreak.
Rowan began again, voice strong, automatic:
“Nobody knows the lifespan of a pure Taltos. It could be thousands of years. Females clearly can become infertile in time. I’ve seen one who was past her prime. She was a simpleton. She was found in rural India. Males? I know of only one in existence—the one who took Morrigan. They may remain potent till they die. Taltos tend in their natural state to be extremely naive and childlike. In ancient times, many died through clumsiness and accidents.” She paused for a moment and then went on:
“The Taltos is telepathic, curious by nature and hardwired with a tremendous amount of basic historical and intellectual knowledge. It is born ‘knowing,’ as they say, all about the species itself, the island continent from which they came, and the places in the British Isles to which they migrated after the island was destroyed by the same volcano that created it. The glen of Donnelaith in Scotland was one of those strongholds. Maybe one of the last.
“That’s what the Taltos was … when it was pure, before it knew about humankind or had any mixture with it. The population was culled by accidents, occasional pestilence, the females by overbreeding.”
“What does this mean, hardwired?” I said. “I want to be sure I understand you.”
“We’re not hardwired,” she said. “We don’t come into this world knowing how to build a house or speak a language. But a bird is hardwired to build its nest, to do a mating call, or a mating dance. A cat is hardwired to hunt for food, care for its kittens—even to eat them if they are weak or deformed.”
“Yes, I see,” I said.
“The Taltos is a highly intelligent primate that is hardwired with a tremendous fund of knowledge,” she said. “That and its extraordinary reproductive advantage are what make it so dangerous. Its naivete, its simplicity and lack of aggression are its vulnerabilities. It’s also extremely sensitive to rhythm and music. You can almost paralyze a Taltos when you utter a long rhyme or sing a rhythmic song.”
“I understand,” I replied. “How did they become mixed with humans?” I asked.
She seemed at a loss. “Medically,” she said, “I don’t know the answer. I only know that it happened.”
“Humans inevitably came to the British Isles,” said Michael. “And there is a long history of “the tall people” and their fight with their more aggressive invaders. Interbreeding occurred. For human females it’s almost always fatal. The woman conceives and then miscarries and bleeds to death. You can imagine the hatred and fear this inspired. As for the other way around, a human male would bring about an insignificant hemorrhage in a female Taltos. Nothing important there, except that if it happens repeatedly over years and years, it will use up the female’s eggs.” He paused, caught his breath and went on:
“Some successful breeding occurred and the offspring gave rise both to malformed ‘little people’ and Taltos with human genes, and humans with the genes of the Taltos. And as the centuries passed, all this became a matter of superstition and legend.”
“Not so very neatly,” said Rowan. Her voice was firmer than before, though her eyes still moved feverishly. “There were terrible wars and massacres and unspeakable bloodshed. The Taltos, being far less aggressive than humans by nature, lost out to the new species. The Taltos were scattered. And they went into hiding. They pretended to be humans. They concealed their birthing rites. But as Michael said, couplings with humans did happen. And unbeknownst to the early inhabitants of the British Isles, there developed a kind of human who carried a giant helix of genes, twice the number of a normal human, and capable at any time of giving birth to the Taltos or a malformed elfin child struggling to be one. When two such humans happened to mate, a Taltos birth was even more likely.”
Rowan pau
sed. Michael hesitated, and then, as she put her face into her hands, he continued the story.
“The secret genes were passed on by the Earls of Donnelaith, Scotland, and their kith and kin, this we know for certain, and superstitious legends grew up about any occasional Taltos child born to their household.
“Meantime, a May Day orgy gave way to a misalliance between an Earl and a common woman of the glen, which led in three generations to the foundation of the Mayfair family. The Taltos genes were passed on in this way to what would later become a great colonial clan, first on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue, and then here in Louisiana.
“But even before the Mayfair family had a name, the Talamasca had become intimately involved with its origins—recording the story of a witch by the name of Suzanne, who had called up a spirit quite by accident, a spirit who appeared to be a brown-eyed man who answered to the name Lasher—a spirit who was to haunt the family right down to Rowan’s generation. The ghost originated in the glen of Donnelaith, as did the Mayfairs.”
Rowan broke in:
“You see, we thought it was the ghost of a human being,” she said, “or some astral being without a human story. I believed this even as it courted me, and I tried to control it.”
“And it was a Taltos ghost,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “and it was biding its time, generation by generation, until a witch would come who would bear a Taltos child, a witch with psychic powers enough to aid it to possess that unborn Taltos fetus and be reborn within it.”