Anne Rice - Taltos

“Well, I’m talking about something inevitable,” said Morrigan, “but let me break it to you in stages.” Mona laughed.

“Ah, you see, Mother is smart enough to know, of course, to see the future as a witch might, I suppose, but you, Mary Jane, persist in being a cross between a disapproving aunt and the devil’s advocate.”

“You sure you know the meaning of all those words?”

“My dear, I have imbibed the entire contents of two dictionaries. I know all the words my mother knew before I was born, and a great many my father knew. How else would I know what a socket wrench is, and why the trunk of this car contains an entire set of them?

“Now back to the crisis of the moment: Where do we go, which house? And all of that nonsense?”

Immediately she answered her own questions.

“Well, my thinking is that whose house we go to is not all that fired important. Amelia Street would be a bad idea, simply because it is loaded with other people, as you have thrice described, and though it may be Mother’s house in a sense, it truly belongs to Ancient Evelyn. Fontevrault is too far away. We are not going back, I don’t care what happens! An apartment is a hideout which I cannot, in my anticipatory anxiety, abide! I will not choose some small impersonal lodgings obtained under false pretenses. I cannot live in boxes. First Street does belong to Michael and Rowan, that’s true, but Michael is my father! What we need is at First Street. I need Mona’s computer, her records, the papers Lasher scribbled out, any notes my father has made in his copy of his famous Talamasca file, everything which is presently in that house, and to which Mona has acknowledged access. Well, not Lasher’s scribblings, but again, that is a technicality. I claim the rights of breed to take those notes. And I do not have a single scruple about reading Michael’s diary if I do find it. Now don’t start screaming, both of you!”

“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.”