Lasher

  A young woman with jet-black hair and beautiful gold earrings approached them. She wore a red wool dress, and a fancy belt. She stood near to the fire for a moment, warming her hands; then she drew closer, gathering the attention of Aaron and Beatrice, and even Darling Viv. There was a cool authority to her.

  "Everyone's together," she said to Aaron meaningfully. "Everyone is all right. They are patrolling this block and the one across the street, and two blocks uptown and two blocks down."

  "It will be peaceful for a while, I think," said Aaron. "He blundered, like a child. He could have caused more death, more suffering..."

  "Oh, darlings, please," said Beatrice. "Must we speak of this? Polly Mayfair, sweetheart, go back downtown to the office. They need you there."

  Polly Mayfair, Sweetheart, ignored Beatrice completely.

  "We're ready for him," said Aaron. "We are many and he is one. He'll come."

  "Come?" Polly Mayfair, Sweetheart, was puzzled. "Why do you say he'll come? Why would he come? Shouldn't he be running away as fast as he can?"

  "What if he's dead?" said Beatrice, "assuming there is such a personage! What if he wandered from that building in Houston and simply...you know...expired on the street?" She shuddered.

  "That would be too much to hope for," said Aaron. "But if it's happened, they'll find him and then we'll know."

  "Oh, God, I hope so," said Polly Mayfair, Sweetheart. "I hope she killed him when she hit him. I hope he staggered out and died."

  "I don't," said Aaron. "I don't want him to hurt anyone else. That must not happen. He must not harm anyone. That he brought harm is unspeakable. But I want to see him; I want to talk to him; I want to hear what he has to say. I should have confronted him a long time ago. I was a fool, a fool for others, as they say. But I cannot miss this opportunity now. I want to talk to him. Ask him what he thinks, where the hell he comes from, what he truly wants?"

  "Aaron, let's not go into the ghost stories," pleaded Beatrice. "Come, all of you--"

  "You think it will be like that? He'll speak?" asked Polly Mayfair, Sweetheart. "I never thought of it. I thought we'd find him and we'd, you know...take care of this...destroy him. We would put an end to something that should never have been allowed to begin. No one would ever know. I never thought of speaking to him."

  Aaron gave a little shrug. He looked at Yuri as he spoke.

  "I'm only undecided on one point," Aaron said. "Will he go to First Street? Will he go to Mayfair and Mayfair? Will he go out to Metairie to those gathered at Ryan's house? Or will he come here? Whom will he seek out--to speak with, to trust, to lure to his side of it? I haven't figured it all out."

  "But you believe he will do that!"

  "Darling, he has to," said Aaron. "This is his family. They are all under lock and key. What else can he do? Where else can he go?"

  Twenty-eight

  THE MUSIC CAME from electric mouths high up on the white walls. The people danced in the center of the room, awkwardly, rocking back and forth, but right with the music, as though they too loved it. The musicians were many, and they had crude instruments, nothing as beautiful as the bagpipes or the clarsach. It was as if she could hear that old music in this music, but the two were twined, and she could not think again. Just music. She saw the glen. She saw all the brothers and sisters dancing, and singing. And then someone pointed. The soldiers had come!

  The band stopped. The silence clattered in on her. When the door opened, she jumped. People laughing inside, someone staring at her, a woman in a baggy sad dress.

  She ought to go on to New Orleans. She had miles and miles to walk. She was hungry. She wanted some milk. They had food there but they didn't have milk. She would have smelled it if they had it. But there were cows in the fields. She'd seen them, and she knew how to take the milk. She should have done it before now. How long had she been here listening to this music? It had all started so long ago, and she couldn't remember, but this was just the first real day of her life.

  When the sun had risen, she had opened the door of a small kitchen, and taken the milk from the refrigerator and drunk the whole container. That had been morning, the delicious taste of cold milk, and the warm yellow sun coming down in long slender dusty rays through the thin, dead-looking trees, and over the grass. Someone from the house had found her. She had said thank you for the milk. She was sorry it was all gone, but she had to have it.

  In the long run, these things weren't important. These people wouldn't hurt her. They didn't know what she was. In the old days, if you had stolen milk like that they would have run after you, chasing you deep deep into the mountains, maybe even...

  "But all that is no longer important," said Father. "This is our time to rule."

  Go now, to New Orleans. Find Michael for Mother. Yes, that is what Mother wanted with all her heart. Stop in the field where the cows stand in sleep, waiting for you. Drink the warm milk from the udder. Drink and drink and drink.

  She turned, but the band started. Once more, the music. Warming it up with three or four notes and then pounding up through her shoes, and through her throat, as if she were breathing it in through the mouth. She closed her eyes, just loving it. Oh, the world is wondrous. She began to rock.

  Someone touched her, and she turned and looked at a man who was almost as tall as she. Wrinkled and tan and smelling of smoke all over, an old being, in a dark blue shirt and pants stained with grease. He spoke to her but she could only hear the music, beating and beating. She rocked her head back and forth. This was lovely.

  He leant over and said right in her ear:

  "You been watching a long time, honey. Why don't you come in and dance?"

  She stepped back. It was so hard for her to keep her balance with this music. She saw him take her hand, felt his harsh dry fingers. All the tiny lines in his hands were full of grease. He smelled like the highway and the cars that shot by. He smelled like cigarettes.

  She let him tug her gently through the door, into the warm enfolding light, where the people were dancing. Now the vibration passed all through her. She might have gone slack all over, and fallen down in a heap on the floor. There she could have lain forever listening and singing with it, seeing the glen. The glen was as beautiful as the island ever had been.

  It was either that or pull herself together with it, dance and dance and dance.

  That's what they were doing; the man had begun to dance with her, had placed his arm around her waist and had come close to her. He said something. She couldn't hear it. She thought it was "You smell good!"

  She shut her eyes, and turned round and round, leaning on his arm, holding tight to him, tilting from side to side. The man was laughing. In a flash she saw his face, saw his mouth moving with words again. The music was thunderous. When she closed her eyes, she was back with the others, dancing in the circles, round and round, out from the stone circle, so many circles that those in the first could not see all the way to those in the last. Hundreds and hundreds dancing to the pipes and the harp.

  Oh, but those were the first days, before the soldiers came.

  In the glen, later, everyone danced together, tall and little and poor and rich, human and nonhuman. They had come together to make the Taltos. Many would die, but if the Taltos were made...If somehow there were two...She stopped, her hands to her ears. She had to go. Father. I'm coming. I'll find Michael for Mother. Mother, I did not forget. I am not childish. All of you are simpletons, children! Help me.

  The man pulled her off balance, but then she realized he was just trying to make her dance some more. Turning her, twisting her. She began again, sliding into it, loving it, rocking back and forth ever more violently, letting her hair swing.

  Yes, love it. In a blur, she saw the real music makers. Scrawny and fat and wearing glasses over their eyes, they scratched at their fiddles, and sang in high voices, through their noses, rapidly, unintelligibly, and they played a little bellows organ of which she did not know the name. That was something not inside
her, that word. Or the word for the mouth instrument, like the Jew's harp, which wasn't quite the same. But she loved this music, she loved the insistent pulse of it, the divine monotony, the buzz all through her limbs. It seemed to tap on her eardrums, to tap on her heart, to freeze her and consume her.

  As in the glen, these humans here danced--old women, young women, boys and men. Even little children. Look at them. But these people couldn't make the Taltos. Get to Father. Get to...

  "Come on, honeybabe!"

  Something...a purpose. Leave here. But she couldn't think while the music went on, and it didn't matter.

  Yes, let him make her twirl. Dance. She laughed delightedly. How good it felt. Now was the time for dancing. Whoa! Dance. Father would understand.

  Twenty-nine

  IT WAS FOUR a.m. They were gathered in the double parlors--Mona, Lauren, Lily and Fielding. Randall was also there. Soon Paige Mayfair from New York would come. Her plane had arrived on schedule. Ryan had gone to get her from the airport.

  They sat quietly and waited. Nobody believes in it, thought Mona. But we have to try it. What are we if we don't give it a try?

  Earlier, Aunt Bea had come from Amelia Street, to lay a midnight buffet out on the table. And she had put thick votive candles in the two fireplaces. They were only half melted away and the hearths still gave a warm and dancing light.

  Upstairs, the nurses on standby talked in low voices--having made a station, so to speak, with their coffee and their charts in Aunt Vivian's room. Aunt Vivian had graciously gone up to stay at Amelia Street, yielding to the firm attachment of Ancient Evelyn, who had gestured and murmured all evening to Vivian, though no one was sure that Evelyn really knew who Vivian was.

  "Two old ladies meant for each other," said Aunt Bea. "Let's call them Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Ancient Evelyn isn't speaking again. It's a cinch, she's Tweedledum."

  Throughout the house, in other rooms, even up on the third floor, in makeshift beds, cousins slept. Pierce and Ryan and Mandrake and Shelby were all here, somewhere. Jenn and Clancy were in the front bedroom upstairs. Other Mayfairs were out in the guest house beyond Deirdre's oak.

  They heard the car stop in front of the gate.

  They did not move. Henri opened the door, admitting the woman whom none of them had ever seen in their lives. Paige Mayfair, great-granddaughter of Cortland and his wife, Amanda Grady Mayfair, who had left Cortland years before and gone north.

  Paige was a lithe little woman, not unlike Gifford and Alicia in face and form, and only a little more birdlike, with long thin legs and wrists. That type of Mayfair, thought Mona. The woman's hair was sharply bobbed, and she wore those huge dazzling clip-on earrings which a woman must remove before answering a phone.

  She was matter-of-fact in her entrance. All but Fielding rose to greet her, to bestow the kisses that were customary even with a cousin whom no one had ever seen before.

  "Cousin Paige. Cousin Randall. Cousin Mona. Cousin Fielding.

  Paige sat down finally in the gold French chair with her back to the piano. Her little black skirt rode up on her thighs, revealing that they were almost as slender as her calves. Her legs looked painfully naked compared to the rest of her, swaddled in wool, even to a cashmere scarf which she unwound now from around her neck. It was very cold in New York.

  She stared at the long mirror at the far end of the room. Of course it reflected the mirror behind her, and the illusion of endless chambers, each fitted with its own crystal chandeliers.

  "You didn't come from the airport alone, did you?" demanded Fielding, startling the woman as usual with his youthful and vigorous voice. Mona realized she didn't know who was older--Fielding or Lily--but Fielding looked so old with his translucent yellow skin and the spots on the backs of his thin hands that you had to wonder what was keeping him alive.

  Lily had vigor to her, though her body seemed all ropes and tendons beneath her severe silk suit.

  "I told you, Great-granddaddy," said Mona, "we had two policemen with her. They're outside. Everybody in New York is together. They've been told. There isn't a single member of this family anywhere who is alone now. Everyone has been told."

  "And nothing further has happened," said Paige politely, "isn't that so?"

  "Correct," said Lauren. She had managed to remain her well-groomed corporate-style self even through the long day and night. Not a single silver hair out of place. "We haven't found him," she said as if trying to soothe a hysterical client. "But there has been no further trouble of any sort. There are people working on this investigation as we speak."

  Paige nodded. Her eyes veered to Mona. "And you're the legend, Mona," she said. She gave the indulgent smile one gives to pretty children. "I've heard so much about you. Beatrice is always talking about you in her letters. And you are the designee if we cannot get Rowan to come back."

  Shock.

  No one had said such a thing to Mona. She had not picked up the slightest vibe of it from any of them, either here, or downtown, or anywhere. She couldn't stop herself from glancing at Lauren.

  Lauren didn't meet her gaze.

  You mean this has already been decided?

  No one would look at her. Closed minds. She realized suddenly that only Fielding was staring at her. And she also realized none of them had been shocked by Paige's words, except for her. It had been decided, but not in her presence, and no one wanted to explain or amplify or clarify now. It was too much to discuss just now. Yet it was enormous, the designee of the legacy. And some very sarcastic little phrase went through Mona's mind suddenly, "You mean crazy little Mona in her sash and bow, drunken Alicia's vagabond kid?"

  She didn't say it. Inside, she felt the tightest most strangling pain. Rowan, don't die. Rowan, I'm sorry. Some vicious and perfectly luscious memory came back to her of Michael Curry's chest looming over her, and his cock slipping out of her so that she saw it for an instant, the shaft descending out of the nest of hair. She shut her eyes tight.

  "Let's believe we can help Rowan," said Lauren, though the voice sounded so low and so hopeless that it contradicted its own words. "The legacy is a vast question. There are three lawyers going over the papers now. But Rowan is still alive. Rowan is upstairs. She has survived the surgery. It was the least of her worries. The doctors have done their magic. Now it's time for us to try."

  "You know what we want to do?" asked Lily, whose eyes were glazed still from crying. Lily had assumed a defensive posture, arms over her breasts, one hand resting right below her throat. For the first time ever, thought Mona, Lily's voice sounded shaky, old.

  "Yes, I know," said Paige. "My uncle told me everything. I understand. All these years. I've heard so much about you, all of you, and now I am here. I'm in this house. But let me say this: I don't know that I'll be of any help to you. It's a power others feel. I myself do not feel it. I don't really know how to use it. But I am always willing to try."

  "You're one of the strongest," said Mona. "That is what matters. We are the strongest here. None of us know how to use these gifts."

  "Then let's go. Let's see what we can do," said Paige.

  "I don't want there to be any mumbo jumbo," said Randall. "If anybody starts saying crazy words--"

  "Certainly not," said Fielding, eyes sunken, hands folded on his cane. "I have to go up in the elevator. Mona, you take me. Randall, you should ride in the elevator too."

  "If you don't want to come with us," remarked Lauren in a steel-cold voice, "you do not have to, either of you. We will do this ourselves."

  "I'm coming," said Randall grumpily. "I want it noted for the record that this family is now following the advice of a thirteen-year-old girl!"

  "That's not true," said Lily. "We all want to do it. Randall, please help us. Please don't be trouble at this time."

  They went out en masse, moving through the shadowy hall. Mona had never liked this elevator. It was too small, too dusty, too old and too powerful and it went too fast. She followed the two old men inside, helpin
g Fielding to the one chair in the corner, a small wooden antique chair with a cane seat. Then she pulled shut the door, clanged the gate and pressed the button. She put her hand on Fielding's shoulder. "Remember, it stops with a jolt."

  There came the slamming halt as predicted.

  "Damn thing," muttered Fielding. "Typical of Stella, to get an elevator strong enough to take people to the top of the American Bank."

  "There is no more American Bank," said Randall.

  "Well, you know what I mean," said Fielding. "Don't be short-tempered with me. This isn't my idea. I think it's ridiculous. Why don't we go out to Metairie and try to raise Gifford from the dead?"

  Mona helped Fielding to stand and position his cane. "The American Bank used to be the tallest building in New Orleans," he said to Mona.

  "I know," she answered. She hadn't known, but that was the best way to stop that line of conversation cold.

  When they came into the master bedroom, the others were already assembled. Michael was with them, standing with arms folded in the far corner looking down at Rowan's unchanged face.

  The blessed candles were burning on the bedside table nearest the door. The Virgin was there. Probably Aunt Bea did this, thought Mona--these candles, this Virgin with her bowed head, white veil, tiny plaster hands outstretched. Gifford certainly would have done it, if she had been around.

  No one said a word. Finally Mona spoke.

  "I think the nurses need to go out."

  "Well, just what are you going to do in here," said the younger nurse crossly, a sallow woman with blond hair parted in the middle beneath her stiff starched cap. She was nunlike in her sterility and cleanliness. She glanced at the older nurse, a dark-faced black woman who spoke not a word.

  "We're going to lay hands on her and try to heal her," said Paige Mayfair. "It probably won't do any good, but we all have this gift. We are going to try."

  "I don't know if you should do this!" said the young nurse distrustfully.

  But then the older black woman shook her head negatively, and gestured to let it all go by.

  "Go on out, both of you," said Michael in a quiet commanding voice.

  The nurses left.

  Mona closed the door.