“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 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!”
“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.