Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [78]
Quinn whipped her around and looked down into her eyes.
“Be still, please,” he said. “Let Rowan talk the way she wants to talk. If you’re ever to be Mona Mayfair again, that must be allowed to happen.”
“Mona, this is very true,” said Stirling. “Remember, this is an exposition of souls, a bartering of extraordinary revelations.”
“Oh, let me get it straight,” said Mona. “I triumph over death, and we gather here to listen to the personal memories of Rowan Mayfair?”
Dolly Jean, who had been dozing with the bottle, suddenly jumped into life, bouncing up and down and leaning forward, crinkled little eyes staring hard at Mona.
“Mona Mayfair, you button your lip,” she said. “You know perfectly well, no matter how sick you’ve been, that Rowan almost never talks at all, and when she does talk she’s got something to say, you and your fancy friends are learning about the Mayfair family, now how’s that supposed to hurt you, I’d like to know, don’t you want your handsome escorts to understand you? Shut up.”
“Oh, you’re just joining in with the chorus!” Mona said sharply to Dolly Jean. “Drink your Amaretto and leave me alone!”
“Mona,” said Quinn as amiably as he could. “There are things we do need to know for your sake. Does it hurt so much to listen to Rowan?”
“Very well,” Mona replied miserably, and she sat back in the chair. She wiped at her face with one of her thousands of handkerchiefs. She glared at me.
I glanced at her, then back to Rowan.
Rowan was watching all this with a remote expression, her face more relaxed than it had been all evening. Dolly Jean took another drink of Amaretto and sat back and closed her eyes. Michael was studying the three of us. Stirling waited, but our cross words had fascinated him.
“Rowan,” I said. “Can you tell us what the Taltos is? We lack that basic knowledge. Can you give it to us?”
“Yes,” she answered in a resigned voice. “I can tell you as much as anyone can.”
18
HER EXPRESSION REMAINED PLACID, though she looked away, her inner focus gathering.
“A mammal,” she said, “evolved totally apart from Homo sapiens, on a volcanic island in the North Sea thousands of years before us. We share perhaps forty-five percent of our genes in common. The creatures look like us except that they tend to be taller and more long of limb. Their bone structure is almost entirely what we would call cartilage. When the pure creatures mate, the female ovulates on demand and the fetus develops within a matter of minutes or hours, it isn’t clear to me—but whatever the case, it puts tremendous stress upon the mother. Birth is accompanied by severe pain, and the infant unfolds as a small adult and begins to grow to maturity immediately.”
Mona’s entire demeanor changed at these words. She moved closer to Quinn, and he put his arm around her once more, kissing her quietly.
“The Taltos craves its mother’s milk in order to grow,” said Rowan. “And without that milk it cannot develop properly. In the hour right after birth it runs the risk of being stunted forever. With that milk, and with its mother’s full telepathic nurture, the baby reaches its full height within that hour. Six and a half feet is the usual. The males can be seven feet. It will go on drinking its mother’s milk as long as it can. Weeks, months, years. But the toll on the mother is heavy.”
Rowan stopped. She put her hand up to support her forehead. A deep sigh came out of her. “The milk . . .” she said. “The milk has curative properties. The milk can work a cure in humans.” Her voice broke apart. “Nobody really knows what that milk could do. . . .”
Deliberate flash of images. A bedroom with an elaborate half-tester bed and Rowan in the bed, sitting up, taking milk from the breast of a young female. Shut out. Gunfire. Several shots. Flash of Rowan digging in this very yard. Michael with her. Rowan wouldn’t let go of the shovel. Body of the young female lying limp in the moist earth. Heartbreak.
Rowan began again, voice strong, automatic:
“Nobody knows the lifespan of a pure Taltos. It could be thousands of