The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [162]
“Forever, ongoing, always in every cell and every atom,” I prayed. “The Incarnation,” I said. “And the Lord has dwelt among us.” My words rang out again as if a roof covered us, a roof that could echo my song, though our roof was now the roofless sky alone.
The crowd pressed in. They surrounded the altar. My brothers had slipped away, thousands of hands tugging gently at their vestments, pulling them back from the table of God. All around me there pressed these hungry ones who took the bread as I gave it, who took the grain, who took the acorns by the handful, who took even the tender green leaves.
There stood my Mother beside me, my beautiful and sad-faced Mother, a fine embroidered headdress gracing her thick gray hair, with her wrinkled little eyes fastened on me, and in her trembling hands, her dried and fearful fingers, she held the most splendid of offerings, the painted eggs! Red and blue, and yellow and golden, and decorated with bands of diamonds and chains of the flowers of the field, the eggs shimmered in their lacquered splendor as if they were giant polished jewels.
And there in the very center of her offering, this offering which she held up with shivering wrinkled arms, there lay the very egg which she had once so long ago entrusted to me, the light, raw egg so gorgeously decorated in brilliant ruby red with the star of gold in the very center of the framed oval, this precious egg which had surely been her finest creation, the finest achievement of her hours with the burning wax and boiling dye.
It wasn’t lost. It had never been lost. It was there. But something was happening. I could hear it. Even under the great swelling song of the multitudes I could hear it, the tiny sound inside the egg, the tiny fluttering sound, the tiny cry.
“Mother,” I said. I took it. I held it in both hands and brought my thumbs down against the brittle shell.
“No, my son!” she cried. She wailed. “No, no, my son, no!”
But it was too late. The lacquered shell was smashed beneath my thumbs and out of its fragments had risen a bird, a beautiful and fullgrown bird, a bird of snow-white wings and tiny yellow beak and brilliant black eyes like bits of jet.
A long full sigh came out of me.
Out of the egg, it rose, unfolding its perfectly feathered white wings, its tiny beak open in a sudden shrill cry. Up it flew, this bird, freed of the broken red shell, up and up, over the heads of the congregation, and up through the soft swirling rain of the green leaves and fluttering sparrows, up through the glorious clamour of the pealing bells, it flew.
The bells of the towers rang out so loud that they shook the swirling leaves in the atmosphere, so loud that the soaring columns quivered, that the crowd rocked and sang all the more heartily as if to be in perfect unison with the great resounding golden-throated peals.
The bird was gone. The bird was free.
“Christ is born,” I whispered. “Christ is risen. Christ is in Heaven and on Earth. Christ is with us.”
But no one could hear my voice, my private voice, and what did it matter, for all the world sung the same song?
A hand clutched me. Rudely, meanly, it tore at my white sleeve. I turned. I drew in my breath to scream and froze in terror.
A man, come out of nowhere, stood beside me, so close that our faces almost touched. He glared down at me. I knew his red hair and beard, his fierce and impious blue eyes. I knew he was my Father, but he was not my Father but some horrific and powerful presence infused into my Father’s visage, and there, planted beside me, a colossus beside me, glaring down at me, mocking me by his power and his height.
He reached out and slammed the back of his hand against the golden chalice. It wobbled and fell, the consecrated wine staining the morsels of bread, staining the altar cloth of woven gold.
“But you can’t!” I cried. “Look what you’ve done!” Could nobody hear me over the singing? Could no one hear me above the peal of the bells?
I was alone.
I stood in a modern room. I stood beneath a white plaster ceiling.