Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(141)
Author: Anne Rice

“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 br**sts 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 peepers 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!”