Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [72]
Rowan turned suddenly and stared at Dolly Jean with apparent wonder. Then she turned back into her solitude and crowded reminiscence.
The old woman went quiet and still. Then muttered: “Oh me, poor Rowan, she’s off again.” Then, staring at me again, she let out a huge gasp and cried: “I know who you are!”
I smiled at her. I couldn’t help it.
“Please, Dolly Jean,” said Michael, “there are issues we have to settle here.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” cried Dolly Jean, staring this time at Mona, who was hastily wiping away her latest tears. “My baby, Mona Mayfair, is a Blood Child!” Then her eyes discovered Quinn, and there came another huge gasp, and she cried out, “It’s the black-haired one!”
“No, it’s not!” Rowan declared in a furious rasping whisper, turning to the old woman again. “It’s Quinn Blackwood. You know he’s always loved Mona.” She said it as if it was the answer to every question in the universe.
Dolly Jean made a jerky little turn in her chair, and with two dips or bobs of her head made a thorough examination of Rowan, who was looking at her with gleaming eyes as if she hadn’t even seen her before.
“Oh, my girl, my poor girl,” Dolly Jean said to Rowan. She put her tiny hands on Rowan and smoothed her hair. “My darling girl, don’t you be so sad, always so sad on account of everybody. That’s my girl.”
Rowan stared at her for a long moment as though she didn’t understand a word Dolly Jean spoke, and then she looked away again at nobody, half dreaming, half thinking.
“At four o’clock this very afternoon,” Dolly Jean said, still stroking Rowan’s hair, “this poor little soul was digging her own grave in this very yard. I noticed how well you covered it up, Michael Curry, you think you can cover everything up, and when I came down here to ask her what she was doing standing in a hole of wet mud she asked me to pick up the shovel and bury her while she was still breathing.”
“Be quiet, be still,” whispered Rowan, looking far off as if at the night sounds. “It’s time now for a larger vision. The Initiates have multiplied, and this is the inner circle. Be worthy of it, Dolly Jean. Be quiet.”
“All right, my girl,” said Dolly Jean, “then you just talk on as you were, and you, my sparkling Mona, I’ll say my rosary all day long for you, and you too Quinn Blackwood. And you, the blond one, you gorgeous creature! You think I don’t know you, but I do!”
“Thank you, Madam,” I said quietly.
Quinn spoke up: “So all of you will keep our secret? This grows more dangerous for us by the moment. What can come of this?”
“The secret can be kept,” said Stirling. “Let us talk this out. There’s no going back now, anyway.”
“Why, you think we’re going to try to make the whole Mayfair clan believe in Blood Children!” Dolly Jean laughed and slapped the table with both her hands. “That’s just hilarious! We can’t even get them to believe in the Taltos! This brilliant doctor, here, she can’t make them believe in the giant helix, she can’t get them to behave themselves on account of the risk of having another Walking Baby! And you think they’d listen to us if we told them all about the Blood Children? Honey, they just take the phone off the hook when we call.”
For a moment, I thought that Rowan was going to start raving. She glared at Dolly Jean. She was trembling violently. Her face had gone white, and her lips were moving but she was not forming words.
Then the strangest laugh came out of Rowan. A soft free laugh. Her face became girlish and full of delight.
Dolly Jean went into ecstasy.
“Don’t you know it,” she cried to Rowan. “You can’t get them to believe in pneumonia! You can’t get them to believe in the flu!”
Rowan nodded and the laugh slowly but sweetly died in a smile. I had never seen such expressions in Rowan, obviously, and they were glorious to behold.
Mona was crying and trying to talk at the same time.
“Dolly Jean, please simmer down,” said Mona. “We’ve got to get some things settled here.”
“Then get me a drink of rum,” said Dolly Jean, “for Heaven’s sakes, go on your young legs, you know where it is,