Taltos

And the meat from the sea was white, the meat of the shrimps and the fishes, and of the oysters and the mussels. Pure white. The eggs of gulls were beautiful, because they were all white outside, and when you broke them open one great golden eye stared at you, floating in the clearest fluid.

“Mona?”

She stood still in the door to the butler’s pantry. She closed her eyes. She felt Mary Jane grip her hand.

“No,” she said with a sigh, “it’s gone again.” Her hand moved to her belly. She spread her fingers out over the rounded swelling, feeling the tiny movements within. Beautiful Morrigan. Hair as red as my hair. Is your hair so very red, Mama?

“Can’t you see me?”

In Mary Jane’s eyes I see you.

“Hey, Mona, I’m going to get you a chair!”

“No, no, I’m okay.” She opened her eyes. A lovely surge of energy shot through her. She stretched out her arms and ran, through the pantry and the dining room and down the long hall, and then up the stairway.

“Come on, let’s go!” she was shouting.

It felt so good to run. That’s one of the things she missed from childhood, and she hadn’t even known it, just running, running all the way down St. Charles Avenue as fast as she could with her arms out. Running upstairs two at a time. Running around the block just to see if you could do it without stopping, without fainting, without having to throw up.

Mary Jane came pounding after her.

The door to the bedroom was closed. Good old Ryan. Probably locked it.

But no. When she opened it, the room was dark. She found the light switch, and the overhead chandelier went on, pouring a bright light over the smooth bed, the dressing table, the boxes.

“What’s that smell?” asked Mary Jane.

“You smell it, don’t you?”

“Sure do.”

“It’s Lasher’s smell,” she whispered. “You mean it?”

“Yes,” said Mona. There was the pile of brown cardboard boxes. “What’s it like to you, the smell?”

“Hmmmm, it’s good. Kind of makes you want butterscotch or chocolate or cinnamon, or something like that. Wooof. Where’s it coming from? But you know what?”

“What?” asked Mona, circling the pile of boxes.

“People have died in this room.”

“No kidding. Mary Jane, anybody could have told you that.”

“What do you mean? About Mary Beth Mayfair, and Deirdre and all that. I heard all that when Rowan was sick in here, and Beatrice called down to get Granny and me to come to New Orleans. Granny told me. But somebody else died in here, somebody that smelled sort of like him. You smell it? You smell the three smells? The one smell is the smell of him. The other smell is the smell of the other one. And the third smell is the smell of death itself.”

Mona stood very still, trying to catch it, but for her the fragrances must have been mingled. With a sharp, nearly exquisite pain, she thought of what Michael had described to her, the thin girl that was not a girl, not human. Emaleth. The bullet exploded in her ears. She covered them.

“What’s the matter, Mona Mayfair?”

“Dear God, where did it happen?” Mona asked, still holding tight to her ears and squinching her eyes shut, and then opening them only to look at Mary Jane, standing against the lamp, a shadowy figure, her eyes big and brilliantly blue.

Mary Jane looked around, mostly with her eyes, though she did turn her head a little, and then she began to walk along the bed. Her head looked very round and small beneath her soft, flattened hair. She moved to the far side of the bed, and stopped. Her voice was very deep when she spoke.

“Right here. Somebody died right here. Somebody who smelled like him, but wasn’t him.”

There was a scream in Mona’s ears, so loud, so violent it was ten times as terrible as the imagined gunshot. She clutched her belly. Stop it, Morrigan, stop it. I promise you …

“Goodness, Mona, you going to be sick?”

“No, absolutely not!” Mona shuddered all over. She began to hum a little song, not even asking herself what it was, just something pretty, something perhaps that she made up.

She turned and looked at the heap of irresistible boxes.

“It’s on the boxes, too,” said Mona. “You smell it real strong here? From him. You know, I have never gotten another single member of this family to admit that they could smell that smell.”

“Well, it’s just all over the place,” said Mary Jane. She stood at Mona’s side, annoyingly taller, and with more pointed breasts. “It’s more all over these boxes, too, you’re right. But look, all these boxes are taped up.”

“Yes, and marked in neat black felt-tip pen, by Ryan, and this one, conveniently enough, says, ‘Writings, Anonymous.’ ” She gave a soft laugh, nothing as giddy as before. “Poor Ryan. ‘Writings, Anonymous.’ Sounds like a psychology support group for books who don’t know their authors.”

Mary Jane laughed.

Mona was delighted, and broke into giggles. She went round the boxes, and eased down on her knees, careful not to shake the baby. The baby was still crying. The baby was flip-flopping like crazy. It was the smell, wasn’t it? As much as all the foolish talk and imagining and picturing. She hummed to the baby … then sang softly:

“ ‘Bring flowers of the fairest, bring flowers of the rarest, from garden and woodland and hillside and dale!’ ” It was the gayest, sweetest hymn she knew, one that Gifford had taught her to sing, the hymn from the Maytime. “ ‘Our full hearts are swelling, our glad voices telling the tale of the loveliest rose of the dale!’ ”

“Why, Mona Mayfair, you’ve got a voice.”

“Every Mayfair has a voice, Mary Jane. But really I haven’t. Not like my mother did, or Gifford. You should have heard them. They were real sopranos. My voice is low.”

She hummed the tune now without the words, picturing the forests, and the green land, and flowers. “ ‘Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, queen of the angels, queen of the May. Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today….’ ”

She rocked on her knees, her hand on her belly, the baby rocking gently with the music, her red hair all around her now, looking magnificent in the water of the womb, as if it were orange ink dropped into water, billowing out, that weightless, that translucent, that beautiful. Such tiny feet and tiny fingers. What color are your eyes, Morrigan?

I can’t see my eyes, Mama, I can see only what you see, Mama.

“Hey, wake up, I’m scared you’re gonna fall.”

“Oh yes. I’m glad you called me back, Mary Jane, you did right to call me back, but I pray to heaven and the Blessed Mary Ever Virgin that this baby has green eyes like mine. What do you think?”

“Couldn’t be a better color!” Mary Jane declared.

Mona laid her hands on the cardboard box in front of her. This was the right one. It reeked of him. Had he written these sheets in his own blood? And to think his body was down there. I ought to dig up that body. I mean, everything is changed now, Rowan and Michael are going to have to accept that, either that or I’m simply not going to tell them, I mean, this is an entirely new development and this one concerns me.

“What bodies are we going to dig up?” asked Mary Jane with a puckered frown.

“Oh, stop reading my mind! Don’t be a Mayfair bitch, be a Mayfair witch. Help me with this box.”

Mona ripped at the tape with her fingernails and pried back the cardboard.

“Mona, I don’t know, this is somebody else’s stuff.”

“Yesssss,” said Mona. “But this somebody else is part of my heritage, this somebody else has her own branch on this tree, and up through the tree from its roots runs this potent fluid, our lifeblood, and he was part of it, he lived in it, you might say, yes, ancient, and long-lived and forever, sort of like trees. Mary Jane, you know trees are the longest-lived things on earth?”

“Yeah, I know that,” she said. “There’s trees down near Fontevrault that are so big???? I mean there’s cypress trees down there with knees sticking up out of the water?”

“Shhhh,” said Mona. She had pushed back all the brown wrapping-this thing was packed like it had to carry