Song of Susannah

“Turn it around,” Susannah said. “Turn it around, I beg. If I were in your place and you in mine, what would you think if I spoke of such a promise?”

“I’d tell you to stop your blabbering tongue!”

“Who are you, really? Where in the hell did they get you? Was it like a newspaper ad you answered, ’surrogate Mother Wanted, Good Benefits, Short Term of Employment’? Who are you, really?”

“Shut up!”

Susannah leaned forward on her haunches. This position was ordinarily exquisitely uncomfortable for her, but she’d forgotten both her discomfort and the half-eaten pokeberry in her hand.

“Come on!” she said, her voice taking on the rasping tones of Detta Walker. “Come on and take off yo’ blindfold, honeybunch, jus’ like you made me take off mine! Tell the truth and spit in the devil’s eye! Who the fuck are you?”

“I don’t know “Mia screamed, and below them the jackals hidden in the rocks screamed back, only their screams were laughter. “Idon’t know, I don’t know who I am, does that satisfy?”

It did not, and Susannah was about to press on and press harder when Detta Walker spoke up.

FIVE

This is what Susannah’s other demon told her.

Baby-doll, you need to think bout this a little, seem to me. She cain’t, she stone dumb, cain’t read, cain’t cipher more than just a little, ain’t been to Morehouse, ain’t been to no house, but you have, Miss Oh-Detta Holmes been to Co-lum-bee- ya, lah-de-dah, de Gem ob de Ocean, ain’t we jus’ so fine.

You need to think bout how she pregnant, for one thing. She say she done fucked Roland out of his jizz, then turn male, into the Demon of the Ring, and shot it into you, and den you carryin it, you tossin all those nasty things she made you eat down yo’ throat, so where she in all this now, dat what Detta like to know. How come she settin there pregnant under dat greaser blanket she wearin? Is it more of dat… what you call it… visualization technique?

Susannah didn’t know. She only knew that Mia was looking at her with suddenly narrowed eyes. She was doubtless picking up some of this monologue. How much? Not much at all, that was Susannah’s bet; maybe a word here and there, but mostly it was just quack. And in any case, Mia certainly acted like the baby’s mother. Baby Mordred! It was like a Charles Addams cartoon.

Dat she do, Detta mused. She ack like a Mommy, she wrapped around it root and branch, you right bout dat much.

But maybe, Susannah thought, that was just her nature. Maybe once you got beyond the mothering instinct, there was no Mia.

A cold hand reached out and seized Susannah’s wrist.

“Who is it? Is it that nasty-talking one? If it is, banish her. She scares me.”

She still scared Susannah a little, in all truth, but not as much as when she’d first come to accept that Detta was real. They hadn’t become friends and probably never would, but it was clear that Detta Walker could be a powerful ally. She was more than mean. Once you got past the idiotic Butterfly McQueen accent, she was shrewd.

Dis Mia make a mighty pow’ful ally her ownself, if you c’d get her on yo’ side. Ain’t hardly nothin in the world as pow’ful as a pissed-off Mommy.

“We’re going back,” Mia said. “I’ve answered your questions, the cold’s bad for the baby, and the mean one’s here. Palaver’s done.”

But Susannah shook off her grip and moved back a little, out of Mia’s immediate reach. In the gap between the merlons the cold wind knifed through her light shirt, but it also seemed to clear her mind and refresh her thinking.

Part of her is me, because she has access to my memories. Eddie’s ring, the people of River Crossing, Blaine the Mono. But she’s got to be more than me as well, because… because…

Go on, girl, you ain’t doin bad, but you slow.

Because she knows all this other stuff, as well. She knows about the demons, both the little ones and the elementals. She knows how the Beams came into being-sort of--and about this magical soup of creation, the Prim. As far as I ever knew, prim’s a word you use for girls who are always yanking their skirts down over their knees. She didn’t get that other meaning from me.

It occurred to her what this conversation was like: parents studying their new baby. Their new chap. He’s got your nose, Yes but he’s got your eyes, and But my goodness, where did he get that hair?

Detta said: And she also got friens back in New York, don’t forget dat. Least she want to think they her friens.

So she’s someone or something else, as well. Someone from the invisible world of house demons and ill-sicks. But who? Is she really one of the elementals?

Detta laughed. She say so, but she lyin bout dat, sugar! I know she is!

Then what is she? What was she, before she was Mia?

All at once a phone, amplified to almost ear-splitting shrillness, began to ring. It was so out of place on this abandoned castle tower that at first Susannah didn’t know what it was. The things out there in the Discordia-jackals, hyenas, whatever they were-had been subsiding, but with the advent of this sound they began to cackle and shriek again.

Mia, daughter of none, mother of Mordred, knew that ringing for what it was immediately, however. She came forward. Susannah at once felt this world waver and lose its reality. It seemed almost to freeze and become something like a painting. Not a very good one, either.

“No!” she shouted, and threw herself at Mia.

But Mia-pregnant or not, scratched up or not, swollen ankles or no swollen ankles-overpowered her easily. Roland had shown them several hand-to-hand tricks (the Detta part of her had crowed with delight at the nastiness of them), but they were useless against Mia; she parried each before Susannah had done more than get started.

Sure, yes, of course, she knows your tricks just like she knows about Aunt Talitha in River Crossing and Topsy the Sailor in Lud, because she has access to your memories, because she is, at least to some extent, you-

And here her thoughts ended, because Mia had twisted her arms up behind her and oh dear God the pain was enormous.

Ain’t you just the most babyish cunt, Detta said with a kind of genial, panting contempt, and before Susannah could reply, an amazing thing happened: the world ripped open like a brittle piece of paper. This rip extended from the dirty cobbles of the allure’s floor to the nearest merlon and then on up into the sky. It raced into that star-shot firmament and tore the crescent moon in two.

There was a moment for Susannah to think that this was it, one or both of the final two Beams had snapped and the Tower had fallen. Then, through the rip, she saw two women lying on one of the twin beds in room 1919 of the Plaza-Park Hotel. Their arms were around each other and their eyes were shut. They were dressed in identical bloodstained shirts and bluejeans. Their features were the same, but one had legs below the knee and straight silky hair and white skin.

“Don’t you mess with me!” Mia panted in her ear. Susannah could feel a fine, tickling spray of saliva. “Don’t you mess with me or with my chap. Because I’m stronger, do you hear? I’m stronger!”

There was no doubt about that, Susannah thought as she was propelled toward the widening hole. At least for now.

She was pushed through the rip in reality. For a moment her skin seemed simultaneously on fire and coated with ice. Somewhere the todash chimes were ringing, and then-

SIX

–she sat up on the bed. One woman, not two, but at least one with legs. Susannah was shoved, reeling, to the back. Mia in charge now. Mia reaching for the phone, at first getting it wrong-way- up and then reversing it.

“Hello? Hello!”

“Hello, Mia. My name is-”

She overrode him. “Are you going to let me keep my baby? This bitch inside me says you’re not!”

There was a pause, first long and then too long. Susannah felt Mia’s fear, first a rivulet and then a flood. You don’t have to feel that way, she tried to tell her. You’re the one with what they want, with what they need, don’t you see that’?

“Hello, are you there? Gods, are you there? PLEASE TELL ME YOU’re STILL THERE!”

“I’m here,” the man’s voice said calmly. “Shall we start again, Mia, daughter of none? Or shall I ring off until you’re feeling… a little more yourself?”

“No! No, don’t do that, don’t do that I beg!”

“You won’t interrupt me again? Because there’s no reason for unseemliness.”

“I promise!”

“My name is Richard P. Sayre.” A name Susannah knew, but from where? “You know where you need to go, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Eager now. Eager to please. “The Dixie Pig, Sixty-first and Lexingworth.”

“Lexington,” Sayre said. “Odetta Holmes can help you find it, I’m sure.”

Susannah wanted to scream That’s not my name! She kept silent instead. This Sayre would like her to scream, wouldn’t he? Would like her to lose control.

“Are you there, Odetta?” Pleasantly teasing. “Are you there, you interfering bitch?”

She kept silent.

“She’s in there,” Mia said. “I don’t know why she’s not answering, I’m not holding her just now.”

“Oh, I think I know why,” Sayre said indulgently. “She doesn’t like that name, for one thing.” Then, in a reference Susannah didn’t get: “’don’t call me Clay no more, Clay my slave name, call me Muhammad Ali!’ Right, Susannah? Or was that after your time? A little after, I think. Sorry. Time can be so confusing, can’t it? Never mind. I have something to tell you in a minute, my dear. You won’t like it very much, I fear, but I think you should know.”

Susannah kept silent. It was getting harder.

“As for the immediate future of your chap, Mia, I’m surprised you’d even feel it necessary to ask,” Sayre told her. He was a smoothie, whoever he was, his voice containing exactly the right