Taltos

Thirty-three

PIERCE HAD COLLECTED them from the airport, far too polite to inquire about the owner of the plane, or where they had been, and only too eager to take them to the site of the new medical center.

It was so warm as to be stifling, Michael thought. My kind of town. So glad to be back, and yet so utterly uncertain of anything-whether grass will continue to grow, whether Rowan will become warm and trusting again in his arms, whether he could stay away from the tall man in New York with whom he had known the most extraordinary friendship.

And the past; the past was not fun anymore and never would be, but something inherited with its burdens, its curses, its secrets.

Take your eyes off the bodies of the dead; forget the old man crumpling to the floor; and Aaron, Where has Aaron gone? Did his spirit rise into the light, were all things clear finally, and forgiven? To forgive is such a gift to us.

They got out at the edge of the huge rectangle of churned earth. Signs read MAYFAIR MEDICAL with a dozen names and dates. And something too small for his aging eyes to read. He wondered if they’d stop being so blue when they couldn’t really see anymore. Did that happen? Or would he have that last claim to fame even when he couldn’t see the girls giving him a second look, or Rowan melting slightly, lips curled at the edges.

He tried to focus on the construction site, to realize what his mind told him, that the progress had been amazing, that some hundred men were working out here in these four blocks, that Mayfair Medical had truly begun.

Were those tears in Rowan’s eyes? Yes, the smooth lady with the bobbed hair and the slim tailored suit of supple cloth was crying silently. He moved closer, what the hell was all this distance about, all this respecting of one another’s privacy, feelings? He hugged her tight and, finding the softest part of her neck, placed his kisses there, until he felt her rustling against him, bending slightly, and a nice quiver running through her hands as she clasped his head, and said:

“You went on with it, all of you. I could never have expected such a thing.” Her eyes moved to Pierce, shy Pierce, who was blushing now under these compliments.

“It’s a dream you gave to us, Rowan. And now it’s our dream too, and since all our dreams are coming true-since you’re here and with us again-well, this one also will be realized.”

“Now that’s a lawyerly speech, with pacing and just enough force,” Michael said. Was he jealous of this young kid? Women did tend to dote when their eyes fell upon Pierce Mayfair. If only Mona could see it, see perhaps that he was the one for her, especially now that in the wake of Gifford’s death, her son had drifted away from his fiancée, Clancy. More and more Pierce came to sit some distance from Mona and stare. Yeah, maybe a little interest in Mona was brewing….

Michael reached for Rowan’s cheek. “Kiss me.”

“This is a vulgar display,” she purred, “and you know it. All those workmen are staring at us.”

“I hope so,” he said.

“Let’s go home,” she whispered.

“Pierce, how’s Mona, you’ve got an update?” Michael asked. They climbed into the car. He had forgotten what it meant to ride in normal automobiles, live in normal houses, have normal dreams. Ash’s voice sang to him in his sleep. He heard the musical whisper in his ear even now. And would they ever truly see Ash again? Or would Ash vanish behind all those bronze doors, shutting them out, insulated by his company, his billions, remembering them only perhaps with occasional notes, though they might call, come to New York, press his bell in the very dead of night. “I need you!”

“Ah, Mona, yes,” said Pierce. “Well, she’s acting strange. When Dad talks to her, she sounds like she’s high as a kite. But she’s okay. She’s hanging around with Mary Jane. And yesterday a team started work on Fontevrault.”

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that,” Michael said. “So they’re going to save that place.”

“Well, it had to be done, obviously, since neither Mary Jane nor Dolly Jean will stand to see it demolished. Oh, I think Dolly Jean is with them too. Now Dolly Jean looks like a withered apple, but they say she is very quick.”

“I’m glad she’s there,” he said. “I like old people.” Rowan laughed softly, resting her head on his shoulder. “Maybe we’ll ask Aunt Viv to come over,” he said. “And how is Bea? What is happening with Bea?”

“Well, now,” said Pierce with a little tilt of his head. “Ancient Evelyn has worked the miracle there, simply by coming home from the hospital and needing care, and guess who has dashed up to Amelia to feed her soft-boiled eggs and make her talk, and make her grip tight with both hands? Dad says it’s the perfect antidote for grief. I wonder if Mother’s spirit isn’t there.”

“All the news is good news now,” Rowan said with a wan smile, her voice deep as always. “And the girls will be in the house, and the silence will have to wait, and the spirits recede into the walls.”

“You think they’re still there?” Pierce asked with touching innocence.

God bless the Mayfairs who have never seen, and don’t really believe.

“No, son,” Michael said. “It’s just a big beautiful house, and it’s waiting for us, and for … new generations to come.”

“For Mayfairs yet unborn,” whispered Rowan.

They had just turned onto St. Charles Avenue, the heavenly corridor of green, oaks in blinding spring leaf, sun mellow, traffic slow, flash of one lovely house after another. My town, home, everything all right, Rowan’s hand in mine.

“Ah, and Amelia Street, look,” he said.

How dapper the Mayfair house looked in the San Francisco style, with its fresh coat of peach with white trim and green shutters. And all the weeds gone. He almost wanted to stop, to see Evelyn and Bea, but he knew he had to see Mona first, he had to see the mother and child rolled into one. And he had to be with his wife, talking quietly in the big bedroom upstairs, about all that had happened, the tales they’d heard, the strange things they’d seen and might never tell anyone … except Mona.

And tomorrow he would go out to the mausoleum where Aaron was buried, and he’d do the Irish trick of just talking to Aaron, out loud, as if Aaron were answering, and if anybody didn’t like it, well, they could just get out of there, couldn’t they? All his family had always done that, his father going out to St. Joseph’s Cemetery and talking to his grandmother and grandfather any time he felt like it. And Uncle Shamus when he was so sick, saying to his wife, “You can still talk to me after I’m gone. The only difference is I won’t be answering you.”

Once again the light changed, darkening, and the trees expanded, crowding out the sky and breaking it into tiny glowing fragments. The Garden District. First Street. And wonder of wonders, the house on the comer of Chestnut, amid its spring banana trees and ferns, and azaleas in bloom, waiting for them.

“Pierce, you must come in.”

“No, they’re waiting for me downtown. You rest. Call us when you need us.” He had already slipped out to lend a manly hand as Rowan climbed from the car. And then his key was in the gate, and he was waving goodbye to them.

A uniformed guard walked along the side fence, disappearing discreetly around the end of the house.

The silence was healed, the car slipping off in light and shadow, noiseless, removed, the dying afternoon burnished and warm and without the slightest resistance. The scent of the sweet olive hung over the whole yard. And tonight he’d smell the jasmine again.

Ash had said that fragrance was the sharpest trigger of memory, a transport into forgotten worlds. And he had been so right, and what did it do to you, to be taken away from all the fragrances you needed to breathe?

He opened the front door for his wife, and felt a sudden impulse to carry her over the threshold. Hell, why not!

She gave a little unrestrained cry of delight, clutching his neck as he scooped her up.

The thing about gestures like this was not to drop the lady in question.

“And now, my dear, we are home,” he growled against her soft neck again, forcing her head back as he kissed her beneath her chin, “and the smell of the sweet olive gives way to Eugenia’s ever-present wax, and the scent of the old wood, and something musty and expensive and delicious to breathe.”

“Amen,” she said.

As he went to put her down, she clung to him for a moment. Ah, that was nice! And his aging, battered heart had not begun to pound. She would hear it, wouldn’t she, with a doctor’s ear? No, he stood hale and quiet, holding her against him, smelling her clean soft hair, and gazing down the polished hall, past the great soaring white doorway, at the distant murals of the dining room, touched still by the afternoon sun. Home. Here. Now, as it has never, never been for either of us.

At last she slipped from him, landing on her feet. The tiniest frown came to her forehead. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “Only certain memories will die hard, you know. But then I think of Ash, and that is something to contemplate rather than all the sad things.”

He wanted to answer, he wanted to say something about his own love for Ash, and something else, something else that was almost torturing him. It would be better to leave it alone, that’s what others would advise, if ever he asked them. But he couldn’t. He looked into her eyes, opening his own very wide, perhaps wide enough to look angry when he didn’t mean to at all.

“Rowan, my love,” he said. “I know you could have stayed with him. I know you made a choice.”

“You’re my man,” she said with a soft explosion of breath, “my man, Michael.”

Nice to carry her up the stairs, but he’d never make it, not all twenty-nine steps, and where were the young ladies, and Granny, the resurrected one? No, they could not shut themselves away now, unless by some luck the entire tribe had gone out for an early dinner.

Closing his eyes, he kissed her again. Nobody could stop him from doing that at least a dozen times. Kiss. And when he looked up again, he saw the red-haired beauty at the end of the hall, two in fact, one very, very tall, and that mischievous Mary Jane, blond braids on top of her head again, three of the most gorgeous necks in the universe, young girls like that are swans. But who was this new beauty who stood incredibly tall, and looked, why, she looked exactly like Mona!

Rowan turned, staring back down the hall.

The Three Graces, they were, against the dining room door, and Mona’s face seemed to occupy two different places. This wasn’t resemblance, it was duplication, and why did they stand so still, all of them in their cotton dresses, merely staring as if from a painting?

He heard Rowan gasp. He saw Mona break into a run, and then rush towards him across the polished floor.

“No, you can’t do anything. You can’t. You have to listen.”

“Dear God,” Rowan said, her weight falling heavily against him, her body shaking.

“She’s my child,” Mona said. “My child and Michael’s, and you won’t hurt her.”

Suddenly it struck him, as things often do, in a rush of different stages, all clattering together to take his breath away. The baby is this young woman. The giant helix produced this. This is a Taltos as surely as Ash is a Taltos, as surely as those two under the tree are Taltos. Rowan is going to faint, she is going to go down, and the pain in my chest is killing me.

He clutched for the newel post.

“Tell me now, neither of you will hurt her.”

“Hurt her? How could I do that?” Michael said.

And then Rowan began to cry, blubbering hopelessly against her clasped hands. “Oh God.”

The tall girl had taken a shaky step and then another. And now would that helpless voice come out, the child voice he’d heard from the other before the shot was fired? He felt dizzy. The sun was dying as if on cue, the house returning to its natural darkness.

“Michael, sit down, sit down there on the step,” said Mona.

“Dear God, he’s sick,” said Mary Jane. And Rowan, snapping to, wrapped her long wet fingers around his neck.

And the tall one said:

“Well, I know this is a dreadful shock for you both, and Mother and Mary Jane have worried for days, but I myself am relieved to see you at last, and force a decision as to whether I can remain beneath this roof, as they say, your child as well as Mona’s child. As you can see here, she has placed the emerald around my neck, but I bow to your decision.”

Rowan was speechless. So was he. It would have been Mona’s voice except it sounded older, and a little less strong, as though chastened already by the world.

He looked up to see her standing there, big spill of vivid red locks, woman’s breasts and long curved legs, and her eyes, her eyes like green fire.

“Father,” she whispered, dropping to her knees. Her long fingers shot out and clasped his face.

He closed his eyes.

“Rowan,” she said. “Love me, please, and then maybe he will.”

Rowan cried, her fingers tightening on his neck. His heart was thudding in his ears, thudding as if it were growing bigger and bigger.

“Morrigan is my name,” she said.

“She’s mine, my child,” Mona said, “and yours, Michael.”

“And I think it’s time that you let me speak,” said Morrigan, “that I take the burden of decision from both of you.”

“Honey, slow down,” he said. He blinked his eyes slowly, trying to clear his vision.

But something had disturbed this long nymph. Something had made her draw back her hands and then sniff at her fingers. Her eyes flashed to Rowan and then to him. She rose, rushing close to Rowan, before Rowan could possibly move away, sniffing at Rowan’s cheeks, and then standing back.

“What is that scent?” she said. “What is it! I know that scent!”

“Listen to me,” Rowan said. “We’ll talk. That’s what you said. Now come.” She moved forward, releasing him to die of a heart attack entirely by himself, and she put her arms around the girl’s waist, the girl staring down at her with comically frightened eyes.

“The scent’s all over you.”

“What do you think it is?” Mona asked. “What could it be?”

“A male,” the girl whispered. “They’ve been with him, these two.”

“No, he’s dead,” said Mona, “you’re picking it up again from the floorboards, from the walls.”

“Oh no,” she whispered. “This is a living male.” Suddenly she grabbed Rowan by the shoulders. Mona and Mary Jane sped to her side, gently tugging her arms away. Michael was on his feet. God, the creature was the same height as he was. Mona’s face, but not Mona, no, not Mona at all.

“The smell is driving me mad,” she whispered. “You keep this secret from me? Why?”

“Give them time to explain,” Mona pleaded. “Morrigan, stop it, listen to me.” And then she had the girl’s hands in hers, holding them tight. And Mary Jane was standing on tiptoe.

“Now just you simmer down, long tall Sally, and let them tell us the scoop.”

“You don’t understand,” Morrigan said, voice suddenly thick and tears gathering in her huge green eyes, as she looked again to Michael, to Rowan. “There’s a male, don’t you see? There’s a male of me! Mother, you can smell the scent. Mother, tell the truth!” It was a scream. “Mother, please, I can’t stand it!” And her sobs came like something tumbling downstairs, her face clenched in pain, her tall angular body wobbling, and bending gently as she let the other two embrace her and keep her from falling.

“Let us take her now,” said Mary Jane.

“Just don’t do anything, you have to swear,” Mona pleaded.

“And we’ll meet and we’ll talk, and we’ll …”

“Tell me,” the stricken girl whispered. “Tell me, where is he?”

Rowan pushed Michael towards the elevator, pulling open the old wooden door. “Get in.”

And the last thing he saw, as he leaned against the back wall of the elevator, was those pretty cotton dresses, as the three of them fled up the stairs together.

He lay on the bed.

“Now, don’t think of it now. Don’t think,” Rowan said.

The wet rag felt exactly like a wet rag. He didn’t like it.

“I’m not going to die,” he said quietly. And what an effort, the words. Was it defeat again, was it a great ghastly defeat, and the scaffolding of the normal world buckling beneath its weight, and the future forecast once more in the colors of death and Lent, or was it something that they could embrace and contain, something that they could somehow accept without the mind shattering?

“What do we do?” she whispered.

“You are asking me this, you? What do we do?” He rolled over on his side. The pain was a little less. He was sweating all over and despised it, the feel of it, the inevitable smell. And where were they, the three beauties? “I don’t know what we do,” he answered.

She sat still on the side of the bed, her shoulders slightly hunched, her hair falling down against her cheek, her eyes gazing off.

“Will he know what to do?” Michael asked. Her head turned as if pulled sharply by a string. “Him? You can’t tell him. You can’t expect him to learn some hing like that and not … not go as crazy as she’s gone. Do you want that to happen? Do you want him to come? Nobody and nothing will stand between them.”

“And what happens then?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound strong, firm, when the firmest thing he knew to do was to ask questions.

“What happens! I don’t know. I don’t know any more than you do! Dear God, there are two of them and they are alive and they’re not … they’re not …”

“What?”

“Not some evil that stole its way in, some lying, deceiving thing that nourished alienation, madness. They’re not that.”

“Keep talking,” he said. “Keep saying those things. Not evil.”

“No, not evil, only another form of natural.” She stared off, her voice dropping low, her hand resting warmly on his arm.

If only he wasn’t so tired. And Mona, Mona for how long had she been alone with this creature, this firstborn thing, this long-necked heron of a girl with Mona’s features stamped on her face. And Mary Jane, the two witches together.

And all the time they had been so dedicated to their tasks, to save Yuri, to weed out the traitors, to comfort Ash, the tall being who was no one’s enemy and never had been and never would be.

“What can we do?” she whispered. “What right have we to do anything?”

He turned his head, trying to see her clearly. He sat up, slowly, feeling the bite beneath his ribs, small now, unimportant. He wondered vaguely how long one could hang on with a heart that winced so quickly, so easily. Hell, not easily. It had taken Morrigan, hadn’t it? His daughter, Morrigan. His daughter crying somewhere in the house with her childmother, Mona.

“Rowan,” he said. “Rowan, what if this is Lasher’s triumph? What if this was the plan all along?”

“How can we know that?” she whispered. Her fingers had gone to her lips, the sure sign that she was in mental pain and trying to think her way through it. “I can’t kill again!” she said, so soft it was like a sigh.

“No, no … not that, no, I don’t mean that. I can’t do that! I …”

“I know. You didn’t kill Emaleth. I did.”

“That’s not what we have to think about now. What we have to think about is-do we handle this alone? Do we try? Do we bring together others?”

“As if she were an invading organism,” Rowan murmured, eyes wide, “and the other cells came to surround her, contain her.”

“They can do that without hurting her.” He was so tired, and almost sick. In a minute he was going to throw up. But he couldn’t leave her now, he refused to be ignominiously sick. “Rowan, the family, the family first, all the family.”

“Frightened people. No. Not Pierce and Ryan and Bea and Lauren …”

“Not alone, Rowan. We can’t make the right choices alone, and the girls, the girls are swept off their feet, the girls are walking the dark paths of magic and transformation, she belongs to the girls.”

“I know,” Rowan sighed. “The way that he once belonged to me, the spirit who came to me, full of lies. Oh, I wish in some horrible, cowardly way …”

“What?”

She shook her head.

There was a sound at the door. It popped a few inches, then rode back. Mona stood there, her face faintly streaked from crying too, her eyes full of weariness.

“You won’t hurt her.”

“No,” he said. “When did it happen?”

“Just a few days ago. Listen, you’ve got to come. We’ve got to talk. She can’t run away. She can’t survive out there on her own. She thinks she can, but she can’t. I’m not asking you to tell her if there’s really a male somewhere, just come, accept my child, listen.”

“We will,” said Rowan.

Mona nodded.

“You’re not well, you need to rest,” said Rowan.

“It was the birth, but I’m all right. She needs the milk all the time.”

“Then she won’t run away,” said Rowan.

“Perhaps not,” said Mona. “Do you see, both of you?”

“That you love her? Yes,” said Rowan. “I see.”

Mona slowly nodded her head. “Come down. In an hour. I think by then she’ll be all right. We bought her lots of pretty dresses. She likes those. She insists we dress up too. Maybe I’ll brush her hair back and put a ribbon in it the way I used to do in mine. She’s smart. She’s very smart and she sees …”

“Sees what?”

Mona hesitated. And then her answer came, small and without conviction. “She sees the future.” The door closed.

He realized he was looking at the pale rectangular panes of the window. The light was waning fast, the twilight of spring so quick. The cicadas had begun outside. Did she hear all that? Did it comfort her? Where was she now, this, his daughter?

He groped for the lamp.

“No, don’t,” Rowan said. She was a silhouette now, a line of gleaming light defining her profile. The room closed and then grew vast in the darkness. “I want to think. I want to think out loud in the darkness.”

“Yes, I understand,” he said.

She turned, and very slowly, with highly effective movements, she slipped the pillows behind him so that he could lean back, and hating himself, he let her do it. He rested, he pulled a deep breath of air into his lungs. The window was glazed and white. And when the trees moved, it was like the darkness outside trying to peer in. It was like the trees listening.

Rowan talked:

“I tell myself we all run the risk of horror; any child can be a monster, a bringer of death. What would you do if it were a baby, a tiny pink thing like they ought to be, and a witch came and laid her hands on it and said, ‘It will grow up to wage war, it will grow up to make bombs, it will grow up to sacrifice the lives of thousands, millions.’ Would you choke it? I mean if you really believed? Or would you say ‘No’?”

“I’m thinking,” he said. “I’m thinking of things that make a kind of sense, that she’s newborn, that she must listen, that those who surround her have to be teachers, and as the years pass, as she grows older, then …”

“And what if Ash were to die without ever knowing?” Rowan asked. “Do you remember his words? What was it, Michael? ‘The dance, the circle, and the song …’ Or do you believe the prediction in the cave? If you do believe it, and I don’t know that I do, but if you do, what then? We spend our lives keeping them apart?”

The room was completely dark. Pale white streaks of light fell tentatively across the ceiling. The furnishings, the fireplace, the walls themselves had disappeared. And the trees outside still held their color, their detail, because the streetlights were shining up at them.

The sky was the leftover sky-and the color of rosy flesh, as sometimes happens.

“We’ll go down,” he said. “And then we’ll listen. And then perhaps, perhaps, we’ll call the entire family! Tell them all to come, come as they did when you were lying in this bed, when we thought you were going to die-all of them. We need them. Lauren and Paige and Ryan, yes, Ryan, and Pierce and Ancient Evelyn.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Know what will happen? They will look at her, in her undeniable innocence and youth, and then they’ll look to us, wondering, ‘Is it true, is it so?’ and begging for us to choose some path.”

He slid gently off the bed, fearing nausea, making his way through the dark easily from bedpost to bedpost and then into the narrow white marble bathroom. A memory came back-the first time they had come into this part of the house, he and the Rowan he meant to marry. And there had been small bits of a broken statue lying here, on the white tiles that now appeared in the soft, colorless drench of the light. The Virgin’s veiled head, snapped unevenly at the neck; one small plaster hand. What had it been, an omen?

Dear God, if Ash found her, and she found him! Dear God, but that is their decision, is it not?

“It’s out of our hands,” Rowan whispered from the dark.

He leaned over the basin, turned on the tap, washed his face with the cold water. For a while it ran almost warm through the pipes, and then it came from the deep earth and it was really cold. At last he dried off, patting his skin with a little mercy for once, and then he laid aside the towel. He slipped out of his jacket, stiff crumpled shirt with the stench of sweat all over it now. He wiped himself dry, and took the recommended spray can from the shelf to kill his scent. He wondered if Ash could have done that, killed the scent cold so that they wouldn’t have picked it up from farewell kisses he’d given them both.

And in ancient times, could the human female pick up the scent of the human male coming through the forest? Why have we lost that gift? Because the scent is no longer the predictor of danger. The scent is no longer a reliable indicator of any threat. For Aaron, the hired killer and the stranger were one and the same. What had scent to do with two tons of metal crushing Aaron against the wall?

He pulled on a fresh shirt, and a light sweatshirt over that. Cover it all up.

“Shall we go down now?” He snapped off the light, and searched the darkness. He thought he saw the outline of her bowed head. He thought he saw a glimmer of the deep burgundy of her coat, and then he did see the white blaze of her blouse as she turned, so Southern the way she was dressed, so finished.

“Let’s go,” she said, in the deep, commanding voice that made him think of butterscotch and sleeping with her. “I want to talk to her.”

The library. They were gathered already.

As he came in the door, he saw that Morrigan herself sat at the desk, regal in white Victorian lace with high neck and fancy cuffs and a cameo at her throat, a flood of taffeta skirt showing behind the mahogany. Mona’s twin. And Mona, in softer, more careless lace, curled in the big chair, the way she’d been that day when he had appealed to Ryan and Pierce to help him find Rowan. Mona, needing a mother herself and certainly a father.

Mary Jane held down the other corner, picture perfect in pink. Our witches come in pastels, he thought. And Granny. He had not realized she was there, at the corner of the sofa, until he saw her tiny wrinkled face, her playful little black eyes, and a crinkled smile on her lips.

“There they are!” she said with great flair, stretching out her arms to him. “And you a Mayfair too, out of Julien, think of it. I would have known.” He bent to be kissed, to smell the sweet powder rising from her quilted robe, the prerogative of the very old, to go about clothed for bed perpetually. “Come here to me, Rowan Mayfair,” she said. “Let me tell you about your mother. Your mother cried when she gave you up. Everyone knew. She cried and turned her head away when they took you from her arms, and never was the same again, ever.”

Rowan clasped the small dry hands, and she too bent to receive the kiss. “Dolly Jean,” she said. “You were there when Morrigan was born?” She cast her eye on Morrigan. She had not had the nerve yet to take a good look at her.

“Sure, I was,” said Dolly Jean. “I knew she was a walking baby before she ever stuck her foot out of the womb. I knew! And remember, whatever you say, whatever you think, this is a Mayfair, this girl. If we’ve the stomach for Julien and his murdering ways, we’ve the stomach for a wild thing with a long neck and an Alice-in-Wonderland face! You listen now. Maybe this is a voice you’ve never heard before.”

He smiled. Well, it was damned good that she was there, that she had taken it so in her stride, and it made him want to reach for the phone now, and begin the calls that would bring all Mayfairs together. Instead he merely sat facing the desk. And Rowan took the chair beside him.

All looked at the ravishing red-haired thing that suddenly laid her head against the high back of her chair, and curled her long white hands around its arms, breasts pushing through her stiff starched lace, waist so frail he wanted to put his hands around it.

“I’m your daughter, Michael.”

“Tell me more, Morrigan. Tell me what the future holds. Tell me what you want from us, and what we should expect from you.”

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say those words. Do you hear that?” She looked back and forth at the others and then at Rowan. “Because I’ve been telling them that is what was bound to happen. I have to forecast. I have to speak. I have to declare.”

“Then go ahead, my dear,” he said. And quite suddenly he couldn’t see her as monstrous at all; he could only see her as alive, as human, as tender and fragile as all of those in this room, even himself, the one who could kill the others with his bare hands if he wanted to. And Rowan, who could kill any human with her mind. But not this creature.

“I want teachers,” she said, “not the confines of a school, but tutors, with Mother and with Mary Jane, I want to be educated, to learn everything in the world, I want the solitude and protection in which to do this, with assurances that I will not be cast out, that I am one of you, that someday …” Here she stopped as if a switch had been thrown. “Someday I shall be the heiress as my mother has planned for me, and after me, another from her line who is human perhaps … if you … if the male … if the scent …”

“Play it off, Morrigan,” said Mary Jane.

“Just keep talking,” said the little mother.

“I want those things which a special child would ask, of searing intelligence and insatiable hungers, but one which is reasonable and lovable, yes, surely, one whom it is possible to love and educate and thereby control.”

“This is what you want?” Michael asked. “You want parents.”

“Yes, the old ones to tell their tales to me, the way it was once for us.”

“Yes,” said Rowan firmly. “And then you will accept our protection, which means our authority and our guidance, that you’re our newborn girl.”

“Yes.”

“And that we will care for you.”

“Yes!” She rose slightly in the chair, and then stopped, clutching both sides of the big desk, her arms like long, slender bones that should have supported wings. “Yes. I am a Mayfair. Say this with me. I am one of you. And one day, one day perhaps, by a human man, I’ll conceive, and others like me will be born, from witches’ blood as I was born, that I have this right to exist, to be happy, to know, to flourish…. God, you still have that scent. I can’t bear the scent. You have to tell me the truth.”

“And what if we do?” asked Rowan. “And what if we say that you must stay here, that you are far too young and innocent to meet this male, that we will set the time for a meeting …”

“What if we promise,” said Michael, “that we will tell him? And that you can know where he is, but only if you promise …”

“I swear,” she cried. “I’ll swear anything.”

“Is it that strong?” Mona whispered.

“Mother, they’re frightening me.”

“You have them in the palm of your hand,” said the diminutive Mona nestled in the leather chair, cheeks wasted, skin pale. “They cannot harm anything that explains itself so well. You’re as human as they are, don’t you see? They see. Play it off. Continue.”

“Give me my place,” she said, her eyes growing wide and seeming to catch fire as they had when she’d cried. “Let me be what I am. Let me couple if I will. Let me be one of you.”

“You can’t go to him. You can’t couple,” said Rowan. “Not yet, not until your mind is capable of making that decision.”

“You make me mad!” she cried, drawing back.

“Morrigan, knock it off,” said Mona.

“You just simmer down,” said Mary Jane, climbing to her feet and moving cautiously behind the desk until she could put her hands on Morrigan’s shoulders.

“Tell them about the memories,” said Mona. “How we taped them all. And the things you want to see.”

She was trying to pick up the thread again, to prevent a flood of tears or screams, he didn’t know which.

“To go to Donnelaith,” Morrigan said in a shaky voice, “to find the plain.”

“You remember those things?”

“Yes, and all of us together in the circle. I remember. I remember. I reach out for their hands. Help me!” Her voice rose again. But she had clapped her hand over her mouth, and when she cried now it was muffled.

Michael stood up and came round, gently nudging Mary Jane out of the way.

“You have my love,” he said in her ear. “You hear me? You have it. You have my love and the authority that goes along with it.”

“Oh, thank God.” She leant her head against him, just the way Rowan did it now and then, and she cried.

He stroked her soft hair, softer, silkier than Mona’s. He thought of the brief union on the sofa, on the library floor, and this, this frail and unpredictable thing.

“I know you,” she whispered, rubbing her forehead against his chest. “I know your scent too, and the things you’ve seen, I know the smell of the wind on Liberty Street, and the way the house looked when you first walked in, and how you changed it. I know different kinds of wood, and different tools, and what it’s like to rub tung oil into the grain for a long, long time, the sound of the cloth on the wood. And I know when you drowned, when you were so cold, you got warm, you saw witches’ ghosts. Those are the worst kind, the strongest kind, except maybe for the ghost of a Taltos. Witches and Taltos, you must have some of us inside you, waiting to come out, to be reborn, to make a race again. Oh, the dead know everything. I don’t know why they don’t talk. Why doesn’t he come to me, or any of them? They just dance in my memories and say those things that mattered to them then. Father, Father, I love you.”

“I love you too,” he whispered, his hand closing tightly on her head. He felt himself tremble.

“And you know,” she said, looking up at him, tears draining from her eyes in stains down her white cheeks. “You know, Father, that one day I shall take over completely.”

“And why is that?” he asked calmly, with a tight grip on his voice, on his face.

“Because it has to be,” she said in the same sincere, heated whisper. “I learn so quickly, I’m so strong, I know so much already. And when they come from my womb, and they will come, like I came from Mother and from you, they will have this strength, this knowledge, memories of both ways, the human, the Taltos. We have learned the ambition from you. And the humans will flee from us when they know. They will flee, and the world will … the world will crumble. Don’t you think, Father?”

He was shivering inside. He heard Ash’s voice. He looked at Rowan, whose face remained still, impassive.

“To live together, that was our vow,” he said. He bent, his lips just touching Morrigan’s forehead. Smell of baby skin, fresh and sweet. “Those are the dreams of the young, to rule, to dominate all. And the tyrants of history were those who never grew up,” he said. “But you will grow. You will have all the knowledge that all of us can give you.”

“Boy, this sure is going to be something,” Mary Jane said, folding her arms.

He stared at her, shocked rudely by her words, and the little laugh that came out of her as she shook her head. He looked at Rowan, whose eyes were once again reddened and sad as she turned her head slightly to the side, gazing at the strange daughter, and then at Mona. And only in Mona’s face did he see not wonder and shock, but fear, a calculated, controlled fear.

“The Mayfairs are my kind now, too,” Morrigan whispered. “A family of walking babies, don’t you see? And the powerful ones should be brought together. Computer files must be scanned; all those with the double helix made to couple at once; until the numerical score has been evened, at least, at least, and then we will be side by side…. Mother, I must work now. I must get into the Mayfair computer again.”

“Simmer down,” said Mary Jane.

“What do you think and feel?” Morrigan demanded, staring directly at Rowan.

“You have to learn our ways, and maybe you’ll discover someday that they are your ways too. No one is made to couple in our world. Numerical scores are not our forte. But you’ll see. We’ll teach you, and you will teach us.”

“And you won’t hurt me.”

“We can’t. We wouldn’t,” Rowan said. “We don’t want to.”

“And the male. This male who left his scent all over you. Is he alone too?” Rowan hesitated, then nodded. Morrigan looked up into Michael’s eyes. “All alone like me?”

“More alone,” Michael said. “You have us, your family.”

She rose to her feet, hair flying out, making several quick pirouettes as she crossed the room, the taffeta skirts rustling, reflecting the light in fluid racing flashes.

“I can wait. I can wait for him. I can wait. Only tell him, please. I leave it to you, I leave it to the tribe. Come, Dolly Jean, come, Mona, it’s time to dance. Mary Jane, do you want to? Rowan and Michael, I want to dance.”

She lifted her arms, turning round and round, head falling back, hair hanging long and low. She hummed a song, something soft, something Michael knew he had heard before, something perhaps that Tessa had sung, Tessa, closeted away to die without ever seeing this child? Or Ash, had he hummed this song, Ash, who would never never forgive them if they kept this secret from him, the world-weary wanderer.

She dropped to her knees beside Rowan. The two young women stiffened, but Mona motioned that Mary Jane was to wait.

Rowan did nothing. She was hugging her knees with her clasped hands. She did not move as the lithe, silent figure drew very close, as Morrigan sniffed at her cheeks, her neck, her hair. Then slowly Rowan turned, staring into her face.

Not human, no, dear God, not at all. What is she?

Calm and collected, Rowan gave no sign that she might be thinking the very same thing. But surely she sensed something like danger.

“I can wait,” Morrigan said softly. “Write it in stone, his name, where he is. Carve it in the trunk of the funeral oak. Write it somewhere. Keep it from me, but keep it, keep it until a time comes. I can wait.”

Then she drew back and, making those same pirouettes, left the room, humming to herself, the humming higher and higher until it became like a whistle.

They sat in silence. Suddenly Dolly Jean said, “Oh!” She had fallen asleep, and now she was awake. “Well, what happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Rowan said.

She looked at Mona, and Mona looked at her, and something silent passed between them.

“Well, I better go watch her,” said Mary Jane, hurrying out of the room. “Before she goes and jumps in the swimming pool again with all her clothes, or lies down on the grass back there, trying to smell those two dead bodies.”

Mona sighed.

“So what does the mother have to say to the father?” Michael asked.

Mona thought for a long moment. “Watch. Watch and wait.” She looked at Rowan. “I know now why you did what you did.”

“You do?” Rowan whispered.

“Yeah,” Mona said. “Yeah, I know.” Slowly she climbed to her feet. She was leaving the room, when suddenly she turned. “I didn’t mean … I didn’t mean it was all right to hurt her.”

“We know that it’s not all right,” said Michael. “And she’s my child too, remember.”

Mona looked up at him, torn, helpless, as if there were a thousand things she wanted to say, to ask, to explain. And then she only shook her head and, turning her back on them, moved towards the door quietly. At the very last, she looked back, her face a radiant burst of light, of feeling. The little girl with the woman’s body beneath her fussy dress. And my sin has done this, my sin has unleashed this thing, as if from the heart and mind of Mona herself, he thought.

“I smell it too, the scent,” said Mona. “A living male. Can’t you wash it off? Scrub it off with soap. Then maybe, maybe she’ll calm down, she’ll stop thinking about it and talking about it, she’ll be all right. In the night, she may come into your room, you may wake up with her bending over you. She won’t hurt you. In a way you’ve got the upper hand.”

“How so?” Michael asked.

“If she doesn’t do everything we say, you’ll never tell her about the male. It’s simple.”

“Yes, it’s a means of control,” said Rowan.

“There are other means. She suffers so.”

“You’re tired, honey,” said Michael. “You should rest.”

“Oh, we will, in each other’s arms. It’s only when you wake and you see her sniffing at the clothes, don’t be frightened. It can look kind of terrible.”

“Yes,” said Rowan. “We will all be prepared.”

“But who is he?” Mona asked.

Rowan turned, as if to make sure she had heard this question right.

Dolly Jean, her head bowed, gave a sudden startling snore.

“Who is the male?” asked Mona, insistent, her eyes suddenly half-mast with exhaustion and slightly haunted.

“And if I tell you,” said Rowan, “then you must keep it from her. Let us be the strong ones on that score. Trust us.”

“Mother!” Morrigan called. A waltz had begun, Richard Strauss, strings, one of those lovely bland records that you can listen to for the rest of your life. He wanted to see them dancing, but in a way he didn’t.

“Do the guards know she’s not to go out?” Michael asked.

“Well, not really,” Mona said. “You know, it would be easier if you told them to go away. She … she upsets them. I can control her more easily if they’re gone. She won’t run away, not from her mother.”

“Yes,” Rowan said. “We’ll dismiss them.”

Michael was unsure.

But then he nodded. “We are in this … together.” The voice of Morrigan called out again. The music surged. Mona slowly turned and left them.

*

Late in the night, he could hear them laughing still, and the music now and then, or was it a dream of Stuart Gordon’s tower? Then the keys of the computer tapping away, and that laughter, and the soft rumble of their running feet on the stairs. And the sound of mingled voices, young and high and very sweet, singing that song.

Why try to sleep, but then he was gone, too tired, too needy of rest and of escape, too hungry for the simplicity of cotton sheets, and Rowan’s warm body against his. Pray, pray for her. Pray for Mona. Pray for them….

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come-”

His eyes opened wide. “Thy kingdom come. No.” The feeling of sudden distress was too vast, yet elusive. He was too tired. “Thy kingdom come.” He couldn’t think it out. He turned over and buried his face in the crook of Rowan’s warm neck and shoulder.

“Love you,” she whispered, a murmured prayer out of the depths of sleep, perhaps, more comforting than his prayer had been.