Taltos

by Anne Rice

  "Well, just slow down for one thing!" shouted Mary Jane. "And I get a creepy feeling in my bones from the way you say those words, 'take over.' "

  "And let's think this out a little further," said Mona.

  "You have reminded each other enough in my presence that the name of the game is survival," Morrigan replied. "I need this knowledge--diaries, files, records--for survival. And First Street is empty now, we know that, and we can make our preparations in peace for Michael and Rowan's homecoming. So I will make the decision here and now that that is where we go, at least until Michael and Rowan have returned and we have apprised them of the situation. If my father then wishes to banish me from the house, we seek an appropriate dwelling, or put into operation Mother's plan to obtain funds for the complete restoration of Fontevrault. Now, do you have all this in your memories?"

  "There are guns in that house," said Mary Jane, "she has told you that. Guns upstairs, downstairs. These people are going to be scared of you. This is their house. They're going to start screaming! Don't you understand? They think that Taltos are evil beings, evil! Trying to take over the world!"

  "I am a Mayfair!" declared Morrigan. "I am the daughter of my father and my mother. And the hell with guns. They are not going to aim a gun at me. That's perfectly absurd, and you are forgetting that they are not expecting me to be there at all, and will be utterly unprepared when you search them for guns, as if they would be carrying guns at all, and furthermore you will be there, both of you, to protect me, and speak for me, and to issue dire warnings that they are not to harm me, and please remember for more than five consecutive minutes at a stretch that I have a tongue in my mouth with which to protect myself, that nothing in this situation is analogous to any that existed before, and that it is best to settle in there, where I can examine everything I should examine, including this famous Victrola, and the backyard--there you go, stop screaming, both of you!"

  "Just don't dig up the bodies!" Mona cried.

  "Right, leave those bodies under the tree!" declared Mary Jane.

  "Absolutely, I will. I shall. I told you. No digging up bodies. Bad, bad idea. Morrigan is sorry. Morrigan won't do it. Morrigan has promised Mona and Mary Jane. No time for bodies! Besides, what are these bodies to me?" Morrigan shook her head, making her red hair tumble and tangle and then giving it a vigorous and determined toss. "I am the child of Michael Curry and Mona Mayfair. And that is what matters, isn't it?"

  "We're scared, that's all!" Mary Jane declared. "Now, if we turn around right now, and we go back to Fontevrault--"

  "No. Not without the appropriate pumps, scaffolding, jacks, and lumber to straighten out that house. I shall have a sentimental attachment to it all of my life, of course, but at this time I simply cannot remain there! I am dying to see the world, don't both of you understand, the world is not Wal-Mart and Napoleonville and the latest issues of Time, Newsweek, and The New Yorker. I cannot remain waiting any longer. Besides, for all you know, they are home now, Rowan and Michael, and I am for an immediate confrontation. No doubt they will make the records available to me, even if in their secret hearts they have opted for extermination."

  "They're not home," said Mona. "Ryan said two more days."

  "Well, then, what are you all so afraid about?"

  "I don't know," cried Mona.

  "Then First Street it is, and I don't want to hear another word about it. There is a guest room, is there not? I'll stay in there. And I want all this squabbling to stop. We can then obtain a secure home base of our own at our leisure. Besides, I want to see this house, I want to see the house the witches built. Do not either of you understand the degree to which my being and my fate are connected to this house, this house designed to perpetuate the line with the giant helix? Why, if we strip away most of the clouding sentiment, it is perfectly obvious that Stella, Antha, and Deirdre died so that I might have life, and the bumbling literalist dreams of this evil spirit, Lasher, have resulted in an incarnation he could never foresee, but which is now my destiny. I am tenacious of life, I am tenacious of position!"

  "Okay," Mona said, "but you have to be quiet, and you have to not speak to the guards, and you cannot answer the phone again!"

  "Yeah, the way you grab for a phone when it rings," said Mary Jane, "any phone at all, is just downright loco."

  Morrigan gave a shrug. "What you fail to realize is that each day achieves for me an enormous series of developments. I am not the girl I was two days ago!" She flinched suddenly, and gave a little groan.

  "What's the matter, what's wrong?" asked Mona.

  "The memories, the way they come. Mother, turn on the tape recorder, will you? You know, it's the strangest thing, the way some of them fade, and some of them don't and it's as if they are memories from lots and lots of people, people like me, I mean. I see Ashlar through everybody's eyes.... The glen is the same glen in the Talamasca file, I know it. Donnelaith. I can hear Ashlar say it."

  "Speak loud," said Mary Jane, "so I can hear you."

  "This is about the stones again, we're not in the glen yet, we're near the river, and the men are dragging the stones out onto the rolling logs. I tell you that there are no accidents in this world, nature is sufficiently random and lush for things to happen almost inevitably. This may not make sense at first, but what I am saying is this--that out of all the chaos and pain of resistant and defiant witches has come the moment when this family must become a family of humans and Taltos. The strangest feelings come over me. I have to go there, to see that place. And the glen. The circle is smaller, but it's ours too, Ashlar has consecrated both circles, and the stars overhead are in the winter configuration. Ashlar wants the dark woods to shelter us, to lie between us and the hostile world. I am tired. Sleepy."

  "Don't let go of the wheel," said Mary Jane. "Describe this man, Ashlar, again. Is he always the same, I mean, in both circles and both times?"

  "I think I'm going to cry. I keep hearing the music. We have to dance when we get there."

  "Where?"

  "First Street, anywhere. The glen. The plain. We have to dance in a circle. I'll show you, I'll sing the songs. You know? Something terrible has happened more than once, to my people! Death and suffering, they have become the norm. Only the very skilled avoid them; the very skilled see human beings for what they are. The rest of us are blinded."

  "Is he the only one with a name?"

  "No, just the one whose name everyone knows, everyone. Like a magnet drawing everyone's emotions. I don't want to ..."

  "Take it easy," said Mona. "When we get there you can write it all out again, you can have peace and quiet, two whole days before they come."

  "And who will I be by that time?"

  "I know who you are," said Mona. "I knew who you were when you were in me. You're me and Michael, and something else, something powerful and wondrous, and part of all the other witches, too."

  "Talk, honey," said Mary Jane. "Tell us, tell us about him and everybody making the little chalk dolls. I want to hear about that, burying the dolls at the foot of the stones. You remember what you said?"

  "I think I do. They were dolls with breasts and penises."

  "Well, you never mentioned that before."

  "They were sacred dolls. But there must be a purpose to this, a redemption for this pain, I ... I want the memories to let go, but not before I take everything of value from them. Mary Jane, would you please, honeybunch, grab a Kleenex there and wipe my eyes? I am saying this for the record, pay attention. This is stream of consciousness. We are taking the long stone to the plain. Everybody is going to dance and sing around it for a long time, before they begin to make the scaffolding out of logs by which we'll make it stand upright. Everyone has been carving their dolls. You can't tell the difference, each doll looks somehow like every one of them. I am sleepy. I'm hungry too. I want to dance. Ashlar is calling everyone to attention."

  "Fifteen more minutes and we pull in the back gate," said Mary Jane. "So just keep your teary little peep
ers open."

  "Don't say a word to the guards," said Mona. "I'll handle them. What else do you remember? They're bringing the stone to the plain. What's the name of the plain? Say it in their language."

  "Ashlar calls it simply 'the flat land' and 'the safe land' or 'the grass land.' To say it right I have to speak it very, very fast, to you it will sound like whistling. But everyone knows those stones. I know everyone does. My father knows them, has seen them. God, do you suppose there is another of me anywhere in this whole world? Don't you think there has to be? Another me besides those buried under the tree? I can't be the only one alive!"

  "Settle down, honey," said Mary Jane. "There's a lot of time to find out."

  "We are your family," said Mona. "Remember that. Whatever else you are, you are Morrigan Mayfair, designated by me to be heir to the legacy, and we have a birth certificate, a baptismal certificate, and fifteen Polaroid photographs with my solemn word on a sticker label pasted to the back of each of them."

  "Somehow or other that sounds insufficient," said Morrigan, crying now, making a pout like a baby, the tears making her blink. "Hopelessly contrived, possibly legally irrelevant." The car moved on, in its own lane, but they had come into Metairie, the traffic was getting heavy. "Perhaps a videotape is required, what do you think, Mother? But nothing in the end will suffice, will it, but love? Why do we speak of legal things at all?"

  "Because they're important."

  "But, Mother, if they don't love--"

  "Morrigan, we'll do a videotape at First Street, soon as we get there. And you will have your love, mark my words. I'll get it for you. I won't let anything go wrong this time."

  "What makes you think that, given all your reservations and fears, and desires to hide from prying eyes?"

  "I love you. That's why I think it."

  The tears were springing from Morrigan's eyes as if from a rainspout. Mona could hardly bear it.

  "They will not have to use a gun, if they don't love me," Morrigan said.

  Unspeakable pain, my child, this.

  "Like hell," said Mona, trying to sound very calm, very controlled, very much the woman. "Our love is enough, and you know it! If you have to forget them, you do it. We are enough, don't you dare say we're not, not enough for now, you hear me?" She stared at this graceful gazelle, who was driving and crying at the same time, passing every laggard in her path. This is my daughter. Mine has always been monstrous ambition, monstrous intelligence, monstrous courage, and now a monstrous daughter. But what is her nature, besides brilliant, impulsive, loving, enthusiastic, super-sensitive to hurts and slights, and given to torrents of fancy and ecstasy? What will she do? What does it mean to remember ancient things? Does it mean you possess them and know from them? What can come of this? You know, I don't really care, she thought. I mean not now, not when it's beginning, not when it's so exciting.

  She saw her tall girl struck, the body crumple, her own hands out to shield her, taking the head to her breast. Don't you dare hurt her.

  It was all so different now.

  "All right, all right," Mary Jane interjected. "Lemme drive, this is really getting crowded."

  "You are out of your mind, Mary Jane," cried Morrigan, shifting forward in the seat and pressing on the accelerator to pass the car threatening on the left. She lifted her chin, and took a swat at her tears with the back of her hand. "I am steering this car home. I wouldn't miss this for anything!"

  Thirty

  WHAT WAS IT like in the cave, I wondered. The voices of hell I had no desire to hear, but what about the singing of heaven?

  I thought it over, and then decided to pass by. I had a long journey ahead of me. It was too early for rest. I wanted to be away from here.

  I was about to set off and go around this part of the slope, when a voice called to me.

  It was a woman's voice, very soft and seemingly without a source, and I heard it say:

  "Ashlar, I've been waiting for you." I turned, looking this way and that. The darkness was unnerving. The Little People, I thought, one of their women, determined to seduce me. Again I determined to be on my way, but the call came again, soft as a kiss:

  "Ashlar, King of Donnelaith, I am waiting for you."

  I looked at the little hovel, with its lights flickering in the dimness, and there I saw a woman standing. Her hair was red, and her skin very pale. She was human, and a witch, and she carried the very faint scent of a witch, which could mean, but might not, that she had the blood of the Taltos in her.

  I should have gone on. I knew it. Witches were always trouble. But this woman was very beautiful and in the shadows my eyes played tricks on me, so that she looked somewhat like our lost Janet.

  As she came towards me, I saw that she had Janet's severe green eyes and straight nose, and a mouth that might have been carved from marble. She had the same small and very round breasts, and a long graceful neck. Add to this her beautiful red hair, which has ever been a lure and a delight to the Taltos.

  "What do you want of me?" I said.

  "Come lie with me," she said. "Come into my house. I invite you."

  "You're a fool," I said. "You know what I am. I lie with you and you'll die."

  "No," she said. "Not I." And she laughed, as so many witches had before her. "I shall bear the giant by you."

  I shook my head. "Go your way, and be thankful I'm not easily tempted. You're beautiful. Another Taltos might help himself. Who is there to protect you?"

  "Come," she said. "Come into my house." She drew closer, and in the few feeble rays of light that broke through the branches, the long, very golden light of the last of the day, I saw her beautiful white teeth, and how her breasts looked beneath her fine lace blouse, and above her painfully tight leather girdle.

  Well, it wouldn't hurt just to lie with her, just to put my lips on her breasts, I thought. But then. She is a witch. Why do I allow myself to even think of this?

  "Ashlar," she said, "we all know your tale. We know you are the king who betrayed your kind. Don't you want to ask the spirits of the cave how you might be forgiven?"

  "Forgiven? Only Christ can forgive me my sins, child," I said. "I'm going."

  "What power has Christ to change the curse that Janet has laid upon you?"

  "Don't taunt me anymore," I said. I wanted her. And the angrier I became, the Jess I cared about her.

  "Come with me," she said. "Drink the brew that I have by the fire, and then go into the cave, and you will see the spirits who know all things, King Ashlar."

  She came up to the horse, and laid her hand on mine, and I felt the desire rising in me. She had a witch's penetrating eyes; and the soul of Janet seemed to look out of them.

  I had not even made up my mind when she'd helped me from my horse, and we were walking together through the thick bracken and elderberry.

  The little hut was a rank and frightening place! It had no windows. Above the fire, a kettle hung on a long skewer. But the bed was clean, and laid with skillfully embroidered linen.

  "Fit for a king," she said.

  I looked about, and I saw a dark open doorway opposite that by which we'd come in.

  "That is the secret way to the cave," she said. She kissed my hand suddenly, and pulling me down onto the bed, she went to the kettle and filled a crude earthen cup with the broth inside it.

  "Drink it, Your Majesty," she said. "And the spirits of the cave will see you and hear you."

  Or I will see them and hear them, I thought, for God only knows what she had put in it--the herbs and oils which made witches mad, and likely to dance like Taltos under the moon. I knew their tricks.

  "Drink, it's sweet," she said.

  "Yes," I replied. "I can smell the honey."

  And while I was looking into the cup and resolving not to take a drop, I saw her smile, and as I smiled back, I realized I was lifting the cup, and suddenly I drank a deep swallow of it. I closed my eyes.

  "What if?" I whispered. "What if there is magic in it?" I was faintly
amused and already dreaming.

  "Now lie with me," she said.

  "For your sake, no," I replied, but she was taking off my sword and I let her do it. Getting up long enough only to bolt her door, I fell back on the bed and pushed her down beneath me. I dragged her blouse loose from her breasts, and thought I would weep at the mere sight of them. Ah, the Taltos milk, how I wanted it. She was not a mother, this witch, she would have no milk, Taltos or human. But the breasts, the sweet breasts, how I wanted to suckle them, to bite the nipples and pull at them, and lick at them with my tongue.

  Well, that won't do her any harm, I thought, and when she is moist and hot with desire, I'll place my fingers between her hidden hairy lips and make her shiver.

  At once I began to suckle her. I began to kiss her and nuzzle against her. Her skin was firm and young and smelled young. And I loved the sound of her soft sighs, and the way her white belly felt to my cheek, and the way her nether hair looked, when I pulled down her skirt, and found it red, like the hair of her head, flaming and softly curly.

  "Beautiful, beautiful witch," I whispered.

  "Take me, King Ashlar," she said.

  I sucked hard on her breast, letting my cock suffer, thinking, no, I will not kill her. She is a fool, but she does not deserve to die for it. But she pulled my cock between her legs, she pressed its tip against her hair, and quite suddenly, as many a male has done, I decided that if she really wanted it so, I would do as she asked of me.

  I came in her hard, with as little care as I would have had for a Taltos, riding her, and loving it. She flushed and wept and cried out to spirits whose names I didn't know.

  Immediately it was over. Sleepily she looked at me from the pillow, a triumphant smile on her lips. "Drink," she said, "and go into the cave." And she closed her eyes to sleep.

  I downed the rest of the cup. Why not? I had gone this far. What if there was something in that remote darkness, one last secret my own land of Donnelaith had to give me? God knew the future held trials, pain, and probably disillusionment.