Taltos (49 page)

“I do see the charm of this place,” she said. “If only that house wasn’t about to topple.”

Mama
.

I’m here, Morrigan
.

There was a sound on the road behind her. Christ, Mary Jane was running towards her, all alone in the dark. The least she could do was turn around and hold up the lantern. Her back ached now almost unbearably, and she wasn’t even lifting anything or trying to reach anything, just holding up this awfully heavy lantern.

And is this theory of evolution supposed to account for absolutely every species on the planet at this time? I mean, there is no secondary theory, perhaps, of spontaneous development?

She shook herself awake all over. Besides, she didn’t know the answer to that question. Truth was, evolution had never seemed logical to her.
Science has reached a point where once again various kinds of beliefs, once condemned as metaphysical, are now entirely possible
.

Mary Jane came right out of the blackness, running like a little girl, clasping her high-heeled shoes together in the fingers of her right hand. When she got to Mona, she stopped, bent over double, and caught her breath and then looked at Mona.

“Jesus Christ, Mona Mayfair,” she said with anxious gasps, her pretty face gleaming with a thin polish of sweat, “I’ve got to get you to that house pronto.”

“Your panty hose are split to pieces.”

“Well, I should hope so,” said Mary Jane. “I hate them.” She picked up the ice chest and started running down the pier. “Come on, Mona, hurry it up. You’re going to die on me right here.”

“Will you stop that? The baby can hear you!”

There was a loud noise, a splash. Mary Jane had heaved the ice chest into the boat. So that meant there
was
a boat. Mona tried to hurry across the creaky, splintery boards, but each step was excruciating for her. Then, quite suddenly, she felt the real thing, had to be. A pain like a whip wrapping around her back and her waist, or what was left of her waist. She stopped, biting down hard not to shout.

Mary Jane was running back to the boat already with her second load.

“I want to help,” said Mona, but she could barely get out the last word. She walked slowly to the edge of the pier, thinking she was glad she had on her flat slippers, though she couldn’t really remember thinking to put them on, and then she saw the wide shallow pirogue as Mary Jane put in the last of the sacks, and all the tumbling pillows and blankets.

“Now gimme that lantern and you stay right there till I back her up.”

“Mary Jane, I’m kind of, well, sort of, scared of the water? I mean I feel real clumsy, Mary Jane, I don’t know if I should climb into the boat.”

The pain flashed again.
Mama, I love you, I’m afraid
.

“Well, don’t be afraid, shut up!” said Mona.

“What did you say?” asked Mary Jane.

Mary Jane jumped in the big metal pirogue, grabbed the long stick that was somehow anchored to the side, and then
backed up the boat with some quick dipping pushes. The lantern stood at the very front, like there was a little bench or something especially for it. All the stuff was behind her.

“Come on now, honey, just step into it, quick-like, yeah, that’s right, both feet.”

“Oh God, we’re going to drown.”

“Now, darlin’, that’s plain silly, this water isn’t six feet deep here! We’ll get filthy, but we won’t drown.”

“I could easily drown in six feet of water,” said Mona. “And the house, Mary Jane, look at the house.”

“What about it?”

The world mercifully ceased to rock and roll. Mona was hurting Mary Jane’s hand, probably. And now Mary Jane had to let go. Okay, easy! Mary Jane had both hands on the pole, and they were moving away from the pier.

“But, Mary Jane, look, Mary Jane,” said Mona.

“Yeah, that’s it, honey, we don’t go but fifty feet, you just stand still, real still. This is a big, steady pirogue. Nothing’s going to make it tip. You can kneel down if you want, or even sit down, but at this point I would not recommend the bother.”

“The house, Mary Jane, the house, it’s tilted to one side.”

“Darlin’, it’s been like that for fifty years.”

“I knew you’d say that. But what if it sinks, Mary Jane! God, I can’t stand the sight of it! It’s horrible, something that big tilting like that, it’s like …”

Another flash of pain, small and mean and deep, for all its quickness.

“Well, stop looking at it!” Mary Jane said. “You will not believe this, but I myself, with a compass and a piece of glass, have actually measured the angle of the tilt, and it is less than five degrees. It’s just all the columns make those vertical lines and look like they’re about to fall over.”

She lifted the pole, and the flat-bottomed boat slipped forward fast on its own momentum. The dreamy night closed all around them, leafy and soft, vines trailing down from the boughs of a listing tree that looked as if it might fall too.

Mary Jane dug the pole in again and shoved hard, sending
the boat flying towards the immense shadow looming over them.

“Oh my God, is that the front door?”

“Well, it’s off the hinges now, if that’s what you mean, but that’s where we’re headed. Honey, I’m going to take you right up to the staircase inside. We’re going to tie this boat right there like always.”

They had reached the porch. Mona put her hands over her mouth, wanting to cover her eyes, but knowing she’d fall if she did. She stared straight up at the wild vines tangled above them. Everywhere she looked she saw thorns. Must have been roses once, and maybe would be again. And there, look, blossoms glowing in the dark, that was wisteria. She loved wisteria.

Why don’t the big columns just fall, and had she ever seen columns so wide? God, she’d never, when looking at all those sketches, ever dreamed the house was on this scale, yes, it was, absolutely Greek Revival grandeur. But then she’d never actually known anyone who really lived here, at least not a person who could remember.

The beading of the porch ceiling was rotted out, and a hideous dark hole gaped above that could just harbor a giant python, or what about a whole nest of roaches? Maybe the frogs ate the roaches. The frogs were singing and singing, a lovely sound, very strong and loud compared to the more gentle sound of garden cicadas.

“Mary Jane, there are no roaches here, are there?”

“Roaches! Darlin’, there are moccasins out here, and cottonmouth snakes, and alligators now, lots of them. My cats eat the roaches.”

They slid through the front door, and suddenly the hallway opened up, enormous, filled with the fragrance of the wet soaked plaster and the glue from the peeling wallpaper, and the wood itself, perhaps, oh, there were too many smells of rot and the swamp, and living things, and the rippling water which cast its eerie light all over the walls and the ceiling, ripples upon ripples of light, you could get drugged by it.

Suddenly she pictured Ophelia floating away on her stream, with the flowers in her hair.

But look. You could see through the big doors into a ruined parlor and, where the light danced on the wall there, the sodden remnant of a drapery, so dark now from the water it had drunk up that the color was no longer visible. Paper hung down in loose garlands from the ceiling.

The little boat struck the stairs with a bump. Mona reached out and grabbed the railing, sure it would wobble and fall, but it didn’t. And a good thing, too, because another pain came round her middle and bit deep into her back. She had to hold her breath.

“Mary Jane, we’ve got to hurry.”

“You’re telling me. Mona Mayfair, I’m so scared right now.”

“Don’t be. Be brave. Morrigan needs you.”

“Morrigan!”

The light of the lantern shivered and moved up to the high second-floor ceiling. The wallpaper was covered with little bouquets, faded now so that only the white sketch of the bouquet remained, glowing in the dark. Great holes gaped in the plaster, but she could not see anything through them.

“The walls are brick, don’t you worry about a thing, every single wall, inside, out, brick, just like First Street.” Mary Jane was tying up the boat. Apparently they were beached on an actual step. They were steady now. Mona clung to the railing, as fearful of getting out as of staying in the little boat.

“Go on upstairs, I’ll bring the junk. Go up and straight back and say hello to Granny. Don’t worry about your shoes, I got plenty of dry shoes. I’ll bring everything.”

Cautiously, moaning a little, she reached over, took hold of the rail with both hands, and stepped up out of the boat, hoisting herself awkwardly until she found herself standing securely on the tread, with dry stairway ahead of her.

If it hadn’t been tilting, it would have felt perfectly secure, she thought. And quite suddenly she stood there, one hand on the railing, one on the soft, spongy plaster to her left, and looking up, she felt the house around her, felt its rot, its strength, its obdurate refusal to fall down into the devouring water.

It was a massive and sturdy thing, giving in only slowly, perhaps stopped at this pitch forever. But when she thought of the muck, she didn’t know why they weren’t both sucked right down now, like bad guys on the run in motion-picture quicksand.

“Go on up,” said Mary Jane, who had already hurled one sack up on the step above Mona. Crash, bang, slam. The girl was really moving.

Mona began to walk. Yes, firm, and amazingly dry by the time she reached the very top, dry as if the sun of the spring day had been fiercely hot, trapped in here, and bleaching the boards, look, yes, bleaching it as surely as if it were driftwood.

At last she stood on the second floor, estimating the angle to be less than five degrees, but that was plenty enough to drive you mad, and then she narrowed her eyes the better to see to the very end of the hallway. Another grand and lovely door with sidelights and fanlight, and electric bulbs strung on crisscrossing wire, hanging from the ceiling. Mosquito netting. Was that it? Lots and lots of it, and the soft electric light, nice and steady, shining through it.

She took several steps, clinging to the wall still, which did indeed feel hard and dry now, and then she heard a soft little laugh coming from the end of the hall, and as Mary Jane came up with the lantern in hand and set it down beside her sack at the top of the stairs, Mona saw a child standing in the far doorway.

It was a boy, very dark-skinned, with big inky eyes and soft black hair and a face like a small Hindu saint, peering out at her.

“Hey, you, Benjy, come help me here with all this. You gotta help me!” shouted Mary Jane.

The boy sauntered forward, and he wasn’t so little as he came closer. He was maybe almost as tall as Mona, which wasn’t saying much, of course, since Mona hadn’t broken five feet two yet, and might never.

He was one of those beautiful children with a great mysterious mingling of blood—African, Indian, Spanish, French, probably Mayfair. Mona wanted to touch him, touch his cheek and see if his skin really felt the way it
looked, like very, very fine tanned leather. Something Mary Jane had said came back to her, about him selling himself downtown, and in a little burst of mysterious light, she saw purple-papered rooms, fringed lampshades, decadent gentlemen like Oncle Julien in white suits, and of all things, herself in the brass bed with this adorable boy!

Craziness. The pain stopped her again. She could have dropped in her tracks. But quite deliberately she picked up one foot and then the other. There were the cats, all right, good Lord, witches’ cats, big, long-tailed, furry, demon-eyed cats. There must have been five of them, darting along the walls.

The beautiful boy with the gleaming black hair carried two sacks of groceries down the hall ahead of her. It was even sort of clean here, as if he’d swept and mopped.

Her shoes were sopping wet. She was going to go down.

“That you, Mary Jane? Benjy, is that my girl? Mary Jane!”

“Coming, Granny, I’m coming, what are you doing, Granny?”

Mary Jane ran past her, holding the ice chest awkwardly, with her elbows flying out and her long flaxen hair swaying.

“Hey, there, Granny!” She disappeared around the bend. “What you doing now?”

“Eating graham crackers and cheese, you want some?”

“No, not now, gimme a kiss, TV broken?”

“No, honey, just got sick of it. Benjy’s been writing down my songs as I sing them. Benjy.”

“Listen, Granny, I got to go, I got Mona Mayfair with me. I’ve got to take her up to the attic where it’s really warm and dry.”

“Yes, oh yes, please,” Mona whispered. She leant against the walls which tilted away from her. Why, you could lie right on a tilted wall like this, almost. Her feet throbbed, and the pain came again.

Mama, I am coming
.

Hold on, sweetheart, one more flight of steps to climb
. “You bring Mona Mayfair in here, you bring her.”

“No, Granny, not now!” Mary Jane came flying out of
the room, big white skirts hitting the doorjamb, arms out to reach for Mona.

“Right on up, honey, right straight, come on around now.”

There was a rustling and a clatter, and just as Mary Jane turned Mona around and pointed her to the foot of the next stairs, Mona saw a tiny little woman come scuttling out of the back room, gray hair in long loose braids with ribbons on the end of them. She had a face like wrinkled cloth, with amazing jet black eyes, crinkled with seeming good humor.

“Got to hurry,” Mona said, moving as quickly as she could along the railing. “I’m getting sick from the tilt.”

“You’re sick from the baby!”

“You go on ahead, and turn on those lights,” shouted the old woman, clamping one amazingly strong and dry little hand to Mona’s arm. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this child was pregnant. God, this is Alicia’s girl, like to died when they cut off that sixth finger.”

“What? From me, you mean?” Mona turned to look into the little wrinkled face with the small lips pressed tight together as the woman nodded.

“You mean I had a sixth finger?” asked Mona.

“Sure did, honey, and you almost went to heaven when they put you under. Nobody ever told you that tale, about the nurse giving you the shot twice? About your heart nearly stopping dead, and how Evelyn came and saved you!”