Lasher

And finally with her last and most wrenching scream, Katherine pushed Mary Beth forth into the world, and here it came, this beautiful and perfect child, resembling more a small female than an infant. By that I mean that though its head was a baby’s head, it had rich black curls already, and one shining tooth flashed beneath the baby’s upper lip, and its arms and legs were exquisite. It writhed with life and gave forth the most soft and beautiful and lustful cries.

They put it into my arms.

“Eh bien, Monsieur, this is your niece,” said the old doctor with great ceremony.

And I looked down at this daughter of mine, and then in the corner of my eye saw the devil come in vapor form, my Lasher, not in the solid way so that others in this room might see, but merely an apparition, soft as silk brushing my shoulder. And the child’s eyes had seen it too! The child was making its tiny precocious mouth into a smile for it.

Her cries grew quiet; her tiny hands opened and closed. I planted my kiss on her forehead. A witch, a witch through and through; the scent of power rose from her like perfume.

And then came the most ominous words I had ever heard, confidential from the fiend to me:

“Well done, Julien. You have served your purpose!”

I was thunderstruck. Every silent and deafening syllable sank in slowly.

I let my right hand slip up and around the baby’s throat, beneath its covers of white linen and lace, and closed my thumb and my forefinger tightly against the pale flesh, though no one in the room took notice.

“Julien, no!” came his whisper in my head.

“Oh, come now,” I asked in my secret voice, “you need me to protect it for a little while longer, don’t you? Look around you, spirit. Look with a human’s cunning, for once, and not the addled brains of an angel. What do you see? An old hag and a mumbling madwoman, and a baby girl. Who will teach it what it needs to know? Who will be there to protect it when it begins to show its gifts?”

“Julien, I never meant that I would harm you.”

I laughed and everyone thought I was laughing at the wriggling child, which did certainly seem to have its little eyes focused tight upon something which no one else could now see, just over my shoulder, and now I gave it over to the nurses, and they bathed it again to make it ready for its mother.

I withdrew from the room. I was steaming with rage. You have served your purpose! Indeed, had that been it from the very first? More than likely. And all the rest was games and I knew it.

But I knew this too. Around me in all directions, there thrived an immense and prosperous family, a family of people I loved, who had once loved me before this abominable act, and stood to love me still if I could earn their forgiveness. And in that room behind me was a darling child who touched my heart as all children always have-and this child was mine, my firstborn!

All the good things, I thought, the good things which are life itself! And damn this daemon to hell that I cannot get rid of it!

But what right had I to complain? What right had I to regret? What right had I to be ashamed? I’d let the thing enslave me from my earliest years, when I knew it was treacherous and fanciful and pompous and selfish. I’d known. I’d played into its hands as all the witches had, as the whole family had.

And now, if it was to let me live, I had to be of some clear use to it. I had to think of something. Teaching Mary Beth wouldn’t be enough. No, not nearly enough. After all the thing itself was a damned good teacher. No, I had to think of something quick, and it was going to take all my witches’ gifts to do it.

Even as I brooded, the family gathered. Cousins came running, shouting and waving and clapping their hands.

“It’s a girl, it’s a girl! At last, Katherine has given birth to a girl!”

And suddenly I was surrounded by loving hands, and loving kisses. It was perfectly fine that I’d raped my sister; or I’d done penance enough; whatever, I didn’t know. But Riverbend was filled with cheering voices. Champagne corks popped; musicians played. The baby was held aloft from the gallery. Ships on the river began to blow their whistles to honor our visible and obvious festivity.

Oh God in heaven! What will you do now, I thought, you evil evil man? What will you do merely to keep yourself alive and to save that tiny baby from utter destruction?

Fifteen

THE WORLD SHOOK with Father’s song and Father’s laughter. Father said, in his fast high-pitched voice, “Emaleth, be strong; take what you must; Mother may try to harm you. Fight, Emaleth, fight to be with me. Think of the glen and the sunshine and of all our children.”

Emaleth saw children-thousands and thousands of people like Father, and like Emaleth herself, for she did see herself now, her own long fingers, and long limbs, and hair swimming in the water of the world that was Mother. The world that was already too small for her.

How Father laughed. She saw him dance; she saw him dance as Mother saw him. His song to her was long and beautiful.

Flowers were in the room. Lots and lots of flowers. The scent was everywhere mingled with the scent of Father. Mother cried and cried and Father tied her hands to the bed. Mother kicked him and Father cursed; and there was thunder in heaven.

Father, please, please, be kind to Mother.

“I will. I’m going now, child.” He gave her the secret message. “And I’ll come back with food for your mother, food that will make you grow strong; and when the time comes, Emaleth, fight to be born, fight anything which tries to oppose you.”

It made her sad to think of fighting. Whom was she to fight? Surely not Mother! Emaleth was Mother. Emaleth’s heart was tied to Mother’s heart. When Mother felt pain, Emaleth felt it, as if someone had pushed her through the wall of the world that was Mother.

Only a moment ago Emaleth could have sworn that Mother knew she was there! That for one instant Mother understood that she had Emaleth inside her, but then the quarreling had come again, between Father and Mother.

And now as the door shut, and Father’s scent was gone away, and the flowers shifted and nodded and pulsed in the twilight room, Emaleth heard Mother crying.

Don’t cry, Mother, please. You make me sad when you cry. All the world is nothing but sadness.

Can you really hear me, my darling?

Mother did know she was there! Emaleth turned and twisted in her tiny constricted world, and pushed at the roof, and heard Mother sigh: Yes, Mother, say my name as Father says it. Emaleth. Call my name!

Emaleth.

Then Mother began to talk to her in earnest. Listen to me, baby girl, I’m in trouble. I am weak and sick. I’m starved. You are inside of me, and thank God, you take what you must have from my teeth, from my bones, from my blood. But I’m weak. He’s tied me up again. You must begin to help me. What am I to do to save both of us?

Mother, he loves us. He loves you and he loves me. He wants to fill the world with our children.

Mother moaned in the silence. “Emaleth, be still,” she said. “I am sick.”

And Mother twisted in pain on the bed, her ankles bound apart, her wrists bound apart, the scent of the flowers sickening her.

Emaleth wept. The sadness of Mother was too terrible for her to bear. She saw Mother as Father had seen her, so wan and worn with the dark circles around her eyes, like an owl in the bed, an owl; and Emaleth saw in the deep dark woods an owl.