Taltos

by Anne Rice

  Not you, Morrigan, don't you worry, baby girl!

  "Long story, no time for it," she said to Mary Jane.

  "I know who Lasher is," said Mary Jane. "I know what happened. Granny told me. The others didn't come right out and say he was killing the women. They just said Granny and I had to come to New Orleans and stay with everybody else. Well, you know? We didn't do it and nothing happened to us!"

  She shrugged and shook her head.

  "That could have been a terrible mistake," said Mona. The cream gravy tasted wonderful with the rice. Why all this white food, Morrigan?

  The trees were filled with apples, and their meat was white, and the tubers and roots we pulled from the earth were white and it was paradise. Oh, but look at the stars. Was the unspoiled world really unspoiled, or were the everyday menaces of nature so terrible that everything was just as ruined then as it was now? If you live in fear, what does it matter....

  "What's the matter, Mona?" said Mary Jane. "Hey, snap out of it."

  "Oh, nothing, actually," said Mona. "I just had a flash of the dream I had out there in the garden. I was having a hell of a conversation with somebody. You know, Mary Jane, people have to be educated to understand one another. Like right now, you and I, we are educating each other to understand each other, you get what I mean?"

  "Oh yeah, exactly, and then you can pick up your phone and call me down at Fontevrault and say, 'Mary Jane, I need you!' and I'd just leap up and get in the pickup and take off and be at your side."

  "Yes, that's it, exactly, you know I really, really meant it, you'd know all kinds of things about me, and I'd know all kinds of things about you. It was the happiest dream I ever had. It was such a ... such a happy dream. We were all dancing. A bonfire that big would normally scare me. But in the dream I was free, just perfectly free. I didn't care about anything. We need another apple. The invaders didn't invent death. That's a preposterous notion, but one can see why everybody thought that they had ... well, sort of, everything depends on perspective, and if you have no sure concept of time, if you don't see the basic relevance of time, and of course hunter-gatherer people did and so did agricultural people, but perhaps those in tropical paradises don't ever develop that kind of relationship because for them there are no cycles. The needle's stuck on heaven. You know what I mean?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Well, pay attention, Mary Jane! And you'll know! It was that way in the dream, the invaders had invented death. No, I see now, what they had invented was killing. That's a different thing."

  "There's a bowl full of apples over there, you want me to get you an apple?"

  "Right, later. I want to go upstairs to Rowan's room."

  "Well, lemme finish my meal," pleaded Mary Jane. "Don't go without me. Matter of fact, I don't know if we have any right to go up there at all."

  "Rowan won't mind, Michael might mind. But you know???" said Mona, imitating Mary Jane. "It doesn't matter???"

  Mary Jane nearly fell out of the chair laughing. "You are the worst child," she said. "Come on. Chicken's always better cold, anyway."

  And the meat from the sea was white, the meat of the shrimps and the fishes, and of the oysters and the mussels. Pure white. The eggs of gulls were beautiful, because they were all white outside, and when you broke them open one great golden eye stared at you, floating in the clearest fluid.

  "Mona?"

  She stood still in the door to the butler's pantry. She closed her eyes. She felt Mary Jane grip her hand.

  "No," she said with a sigh, "it's gone again." Her hand moved to her belly. She spread her fingers out over the rounded swelling, feeling the tiny movements within. Beautiful Morrigan. Hair as red as my hair. Is your hair so very red, Mama?

  "Can't you see me?"

  In Mary Jane's eyes I see you.

  "Hey, Mona, I'm going to get you a chair!"

  "No, no, I'm okay." She opened her eyes. A lovely surge of energy shot through her. She stretched out her arms and ran, through the pantry and the dining room and down the long hall, and then up the stairway.

  "Come on, let's go!" she was shouting.

  It felt so good to run. That's one of the things she missed from childhood, and she hadn't even known it, just running, running all the way down St. Charles Avenue as fast as she could with her arms out. Running upstairs two at a time. Running around the block just to see if you could do it without stopping, without fainting, without having to throw up.

  Mary Jane came pounding after her.

  The door to the bedroom was closed. Good old Ryan. Probably locked it.

  But no. When she opened it, the room was dark. She found the light switch, and the overhead chandelier went on, pouring a bright light over the smooth bed, the dressing table, the boxes.

  "What's that smell?" asked Mary Jane.

  "You smell it, don't you?"

  "Sure do."

  "It's Lasher's smell," she whispered. "You mean it?"

  "Yes," said Mona. There was the pile of brown cardboard boxes. "What's it like to you, the smell?"

  "Hmmmm, it's good. Kind of makes you want butterscotch or chocolate or cinnamon, or something like that. Wooof. Where's it coming from? But you know what?"

  "What?" asked Mona, circling the pile of boxes.

  "People have died in this room."

  "No kidding. Mary Jane, anybody could have told you that."

  "What do you mean? About Mary Beth Mayfair, and Deirdre and all that. I heard all that when Rowan was sick in here, and Beatrice called down to get Granny and me to come to New Orleans. Granny told me. But somebody else died in here, somebody that smelled sort of like him. You smell it? You smell the three smells? The one smell is the smell of him. The other smell is the smell of the other one. And the third smell is the smell of death itself."

  Mona stood very still, trying to catch it, but for her the fragrances must have been mingled. With a sharp, nearly exquisite pain, she thought of what Michael had described to her, the thin girl that was not a girl, not human. Emaleth. The bullet exploded in her ears. She covered them.

  "What's the matter, Mona Mayfair?"

  "Dear God, where did it happen?" Mona asked, still holding tight to her ears and squinching her eyes shut, and then opening them only to look at Mary Jane, standing against the lamp, a shadowy figure, her eyes big and brilliantly blue.

  Mary Jane looked around, mostly with her eyes, though she did turn her head a little, and then she began to walk along the bed. Her head looked very round and small beneath her soft, flattened hair. She moved to the far side of the bed, and stopped. Her voice was very deep when she spoke.

  "Right here. Somebody died right here. Somebody who smelled like him, but wasn't him."

  There was a scream in Mona's ears, so loud, so violent it was ten times as terrible as the imagined gunshot. She clutched her belly. Stop it, Morrigan, stop it. I promise you ...

  "Goodness, Mona, you going to be sick?"

  "No, absolutely not!" Mona shuddered all over. She began to hum a little song, not even asking herself what it was, just something pretty, something perhaps that she made up.

  She turned and looked at the heap of irresistible boxes.

  "It's on the boxes, too," said Mona. "You smell it real strong here? From him. You know, I have never gotten another single member of this family to admit that they could smell that smell."

  "Well, it's just all over the place," said Mary Jane. She stood at Mona's side, annoyingly taller, and with more pointed breasts. "It's more all over these boxes, too, you're right. But look, all these boxes are taped up."

  "Yes, and marked in neat black felt-tip pen, by Ryan, and this one, conveniently enough, says, 'Writings, Anonymous.' " She gave a soft laugh, nothing as giddy as before. "Poor Ryan. 'Writings, Anonymous.' Sounds like a psychology support group for books who don't know their authors."

  Mary Jane laughed.

  Mona was delighted, and broke into giggles. She went round the boxes, and eased down on her kn
ees, careful not to shake the baby. The baby was still crying. The baby was flip-flopping like crazy. It was the smell, wasn't it? As much as all the foolish talk and imagining and picturing. She hummed to the baby ... then sang softly:

  " 'Bring flowers of the fairest, bring flowers of the rarest, from garden and woodland and hillside and dale!' " It was the gayest, sweetest hymn she knew, one that Gifford had taught her to sing, the hymn from the Maytime. " 'Our full hearts are swelling, our glad voices telling the tale of the loveliest rose of the dale!' "

  "Why, Mona Mayfair, you've got a voice."

  "Every Mayfair has a voice, Mary Jane. But really I haven't. Not like my mother did, or Gifford. You should have heard them. They were real sopranos. My voice is low."

  She hummed the tune now without the words, picturing the forests, and the green land, and flowers. " 'Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, queen of the angels, queen of the May. Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today....' "

  She rocked on her knees, her hand on her belly, the baby rocking gently with the music, her red hair all around her now, looking magnificent in the water of the womb, as if it were orange ink dropped into water, billowing out, that weightless, that translucent, that beautiful. Such tiny feet and tiny fingers. What color are your eyes, Morrigan?

  I can't see my eyes, Mama, I can see only what you see, Mama.

  "Hey, wake up, I'm scared you're gonna fall."

  "Oh yes. I'm glad you called me back, Mary Jane, you did right to call me back, but I pray to heaven and the Blessed Mary Ever Virgin that this baby has green eyes like mine. What do you think?"

  "Couldn't be a better color!" Mary Jane declared.

  Mona laid her hands on the cardboard box in front of her. This was the right one. It reeked of him. Had he written these sheets in his own blood? And to think his body was down there. I ought to dig up that body. I mean, everything is changed now, Rowan and Michael are going to have to accept that, either that or I'm simply not going to tell them, I mean, this is an entirely new development and this one concerns me.

  "What bodies are we going to dig up?" asked Mary Jane with a puckered frown.

  "Oh, stop reading my mind! Don't be a Mayfair bitch, be a Mayfair witch. Help me with this box."

  Mona ripped at the tape with her fingernails and pried back the cardboard.

  "Mona, I don't know, this is somebody else's stuff."

  "Yesssss," said Mona. "But this somebody else is part of my heritage, this somebody else has her own branch on this tree, and up through the tree from its roots runs this potent fluid, our lifeblood, and he was part of it, he lived in it, you might say, yes, ancient, and long-lived and forever, sort of like trees. Mary Jane, you know trees are the longest-lived things on earth?"

  "Yeah, I know that," she said. "There's trees down near Fontevrault that are so big???? I mean there's cypress trees down there with knees sticking up out of the water?"

  "Shhhh," said Mona. She had pushed back all the brown wrapping--this thing was packed like it had to carry the Marie Antoinette china all the way to Iceland--and she saw the first page of a loose stack covered in a thin plastic, and bound with a thick rubber band. Scrawl, all right, spidery scrawl, with great long l's and t's and y's, and little vowels that were in some cases no more than dots. But she could read it.

  She made her hand a claw and tore the plastic. "Mona Mayfair!"

  "Guts, girl!" said Mona. "There's a purpose to what I do. Will you be my ally and confidante, or do you wish, right now, to abandon me? The cable TV in this house gets every channel, you can go to your room, and watch TV, if you don't want to be with me, or take a swim outside, or pick flowers, or dig for bodies under the tree--"

  "I want to be your ally and confidante."

  "Put your hand on this, then, country cousin. You feel anything?"

  "Oooooh!"

  "He wrote it. You are looking at the writing of a certified nonhuman! Behold."

  Mary Jane was kneeling beside her. She had her fingertips on the page. Her shoulders were hunched, her flaxen hair hanging down on both sides of her face, spectacular as a wig. Her white eyebrows caught the light against her bronzed forehead, and you could practically see every hair. What was she thinking, feeling, seeing? What was the meaning of the look in her eyes? This kid is not stupid, I'll say that for her, she's not stupid. Trouble is ...

  "I'm so sleepy," Mona said suddenly, realizing it as soon as she said it. She put her hand to her forehead. "I wonder if Ophelia went to sleep before she drowned."

  "Ophelia? You mean Hamlet's Ophelia?"

  "Oh, you know what I mean," she said. "That's just great. You know, Mary Jane, I just love you."

  She looked at Mary Jane. Yes, this was the Ultimate Cousin, the Cousin who could be a Great Friend, the Cousin who could know everything that Mona knew. And nobody, really, nobody knew everything that Mona knew.

  "But I'm so drowsy." She let herself fall gently to the floor, stretching out her legs and then her arms until she lay flat, looking up at the bright, pretty chandelier. "Mary Jane, would you go through that box? If I know Cousin Ryan, and I do, the genealogy is marked."

  "Yeah," said Mary Jane.

  How refreshing that she had stopped arguing.

  "No, I'm not arguing, I figure we've gone this far, and beings this is the writing of a certified nonhuman being, beings we've gone this far ... well, the point is, I can put it all back when we're through."

  "Precisely," said Mona, laying her cheek against the cool floor. The smell was very strong in the floorboards! "And beings," she said, imitating Mary Jane, but without malice, no, no malice whatsoever, "and beings that knowledge is precious, one has to get it where one can."

  Wow, the most incredible thing had happened. She'd closed her eyes and the hymn was singing itself. All she had to do was listen. She wasn't pushing these words out, these notes, it was just unfolding, like she was in one of those brain experiments where they zap part of your brain with an electrode and wham, you see visions, or you smell the creek on the hill behind your house when you were a little kid!

  "That's what both of us have to realize, that witchcraft is an immense science," she said drowsily, talking easily over the pretty hymn, since it sang itself now. "That it is alchemy and chemistry and brain science, and that those things collected make up magic, pure lovely magic. We haven't lost our magic in the age of science. We have discovered a whole new bunch of secrets. We're going to win."

  "Win?"

  Oh Mary we crown thee with blossoms today, queen of the angels, queen of the May, oh Mary we crown thee ... "Are you reading the pages, Mary Jane?"

  "Well, hey, lookie, he has a whole folder here of Xerox copies. 'Inventory in Progress: Relevant Pages, incomplete genealogy.' "

  Mona rolled over on her back again. For a moment she didn't know where they were. Rowan's room. There were tiny prisms in the crystal baubles above. The chandelier that Mary Beth had hung there, the one from France, or had it been Julien? Julien, where are you? Julien, how did you let this happen to me?

  But the ghosts don't answer unless they want to, unless they have a reason of their own.

  "Well, I'm reading this here incomplete genealogy."

  "You got it?"

  "Yeah, the original and a Xerox. Everything here is in duplicate. Original and Xerox. Little packets like. What he's got circled here is Michael Curry, all right, and then all this stuff about Julien sleeping with some Irish girl, and that girl giving up her baby to Margaret's Orphanage, and then becoming a Sister of Mercy, Sister Bridget Marie, and the baby girl, the one in the orphanage, marrying a fireman named Curry, and him having a son, and then him, something, Michael! Right here."

  Mona laughed and laughed. "Oncle Julien was a lion," she said. "You know what male lions do, when they come to a new pride? They kill all the young, so that the females go into heat at once, and then they sire as many young as they can. It's the survival of the genes. Oncle Julien knew. He was just improving the population."


  "Yeah, well, from what I heard, he was pretty picky about who got to survive. Granny told me he shot our great-great-great-grandfather."

  "I'm not sure that's the right number of 'greats.' What else do all those papers say?"

  "Well, sugar plum, to tell you the truth, I couldn't have made this out if somebody hadn't marked it. There's just all kinds of things here. You know what this is like? It's like the writing that people do when they're high on drugs and they think they're being brilliant and the next day, lo and behold, they look at the tablets and see they've written little bitty jagged lines, like the lines, you know??? That make up an electrocardiogram?"

  "Don't tell me you've been a nurse?"

  "Yeah, for a while, but that was at this crazy commune where they made us all take an enema every day to get rid of the impurities in our system."

  Mona started to laugh again, a lovely sleepy laugh. "I don't think a commune of the Twelve Apostles could have made me do that," she said.

  This chandelier was damned near spectacular. That she had lived this long without lying on the floor and looking up at one of these things was just inexcusable. The hymn was still going, only this time, miracle of miracles, it was being played on some instrument, like a harp perhaps, and each note merged with the next note. She could almost not feel the floor under her, when she concentrated on the music and on the lights above.

  "You didn't stay in that commune, did you?" she asked drowsily. "That sounds horrible."

  "Sure didn't. I made my mother leave. I said, lookie, you leave with me or I cut out of here on my own. And as I was about twelve years old at the time, she wasn't about to let that happen. Lookie, here's Michael Curry's name again. He drew a circle around it."

  "Lasher did? Or Ryan?"

  "You got me. This is the Xerox, I can't tell. No, I see, the circle's drawn on the Xerox. Must have been Ryan, and this says something about 'waerloga.' Well, you know??? That probably means 'warlock.' "