“If it had wanted to get away,” Mia said quietly, “it would have.”
“Why would it bother fooling me?” Susannah asked, but she didn’t need Mia to answer that question, not now. Because it had needed her, of course. It had needed her to carry the baby . . .
Roland’s baby.
Roland’s doom.
“You know everything you need to know about the chap,” Mia said. “Don’t you?”
Susannah supposed she did. A demon had taken in Roland’s seed while female; had stored it,
somehow; and then shot it into Susannah Dean as male. Mia was right. She knew what she
needed to know.
“I’ve kept my promise,” Mia said. “Let’s go back. The cold’s not good for the chap.”
“Just a minute longer,” Susannah said. She held up the pokeberry. Golden fruit now bulged through ruptures in the orange skin. “My berry just popped. Let me eat it. I have another
question.”
“Eat and ask and be quick about both.”
“Who are you? Who are you really? Are you this demon? Does she have a name, by the way?
She and he, do they have a name?”
“No,” Mia said. “Elementals have no need of names; they are what they are. Am I a demon? Is that what you’d know? Yar, I suppose I am. Or I was. All that is vague now, like a dream.”
“And you’re not me . . . or are you?”
Mia didn’t answer. And Susannah realized that she probably didn’t know.
“Mia?” Low Musing.’
Mia was hunkering against the merlon with her serape tucked between her knees. Susannah
could see that her ankles were swollen and felt a moment’s pity for the woman. Then she
squashed it. This was no time for pity, for there was no truth in it.
“You ain’t nothing but the baby-sitter, girl.” f The reaction was all she’d hoped for, and more. Mia’s face registered shock, then anger. Hell,
fury. ‘You lie! I’m this chap’s mother! And when he comes, Susannah, there will be no more combing the world for Breakers, for my chap will be the greatest of them all, able to break both of the remaining Beams all by himself!” Her voice had filled with pride that sounded alarmingly close to insanity. “My Mordred! Do you hear me?”
“Oh, yes,” Susannah said. “I hear. And you’re actually going to go trotting right to those who’ve made it their business to pull down the Tower, aren’t you? They call, you come.” She paused, then finished with deliberate softness. “And when you get to them, they’ll take your chap, and thank you very much, and then send you back into the soup you came from.”
“Nay! I shall have the raising of him, for so they have promised!” Mia crossed her arms protectively over her belly. “He’s mine, I’m his mother and I shall have the raising of him!”
“Girl, why don’t you get real? Do you think they’ll keep their word? Them? How can you see so much and not see that?”
Susannah knew the answer, of course. Motherhood itself had deluded her.
“Why would they not let me raise him?” Mia asked shrilly. “Who better? Who better than Mia, who was made for only two things, to bear a son and raise him?”
“But you’re not just you,” Susannah said. “You’re like the children of the Calla, and just about everything else my friends and I have run into along the way. You’re a twin, Mia! I’m your other half, your lifeline. You see the world through my eyes and breathe through my lungs. I had to
carry the chap, because you couldn’t, could you? You’re as sterile as the big boys. And once
they’ve got your kid, their A-bomb of a Breaker, they’ll get rid of you if only so they can get rid of me.”
“I have their promise,” she said. Her face was downcast, set in its stubbornness.
“Turn it around,” Susannah said. “Turn it around, I beg. If I were in your place and you in mine, what would you think if I spoke of such a promise?”
“I’d tell you to stop your blabbering tongue!”
“Who are you, really? Where in the hell did they get you? Was it like a newspaper ad you
answered, ‘Surrogate Mother Wanted, Good Benefits, Short Term of Employment’? Who are
you, really?”
“Shut up!”
Susannah leaned forward on her haunches. This position was ordinarily exquisitely
uncomfortable for her, but she’d forgotten both her discomfort and the half-eaten
pokeberry in her hand.
“Come on!” she said, her voice taking on the rasping tones of Detta Walker. “Come on and take off yo’ blindfold, honeybunch, jus’ like you made me take off mine! Tell the truth and spit in the devil’s eye! Who the fuck are you? ”
” I don’t know ” Mia screamed, and below them the jackals hidden in the rocks screamed back, only their screams were laughter. ” I don’t know, I don’t know who I am, does that satisfy? ”
It did not, and Susannah was about to press on and press harder when Detta Walker spoke up.
FIVE
This is what Susannah’s other demon told her.
Baby-doll, you need to think bout this a little, seem to me. She cain’t, she stone dumb, cain’t read, cain’t cipher more than just a little, ain’t been to Morehouse, ain’t been to no house, but you have, Miss Oh-Detta Holmes been to Co- lum -bee-ya, lah-de-dah, de Gem ob de Ocean, ain’t we jus’ so fine.
You need to think bout how she pregnant, for one thing. She say she done fucked Roland out of his jizz, then turn male, into the Demon of the Ring, and shot it into you, and den you carryin it, you tossin all those nasty things she made you eat down yo’ throat, so where she in all this now, dat what Detta like to know. How come she settin there pregnant under dat greaser blanket she wearin? Is it more of dat . . . what you call it . . . visualization technique?
Susannah didn’t know. She only knew that Mia was looking at her with suddenly narrowed
eyes. She was doubtless picking up some of this monologue. How much? Not much at all, that
was Susannah’s bet; maybe a word here and there, but mostly it was just quack. And in any case, Mia certainly acted like the baby’s mother. Baby Mordred! It was like a Charles Addams cartoon.
Dat she do, Detta mused. She ack like a Mommy, she wrapped around it root and branch, you right bout dat much.
But maybe, Susannah thought, that was just her nature. Maybe once you got beyond the
mothering instinct, there was no Mia.
A cold hand reached out and seized Susannah’s wrist.
“Who is it? Is it that nasty-talking one? If it is, banish her. She scares me.”
She still scared Susannah a little, in all truth, but not as much as when she’d first come to
accept that Detta was real. They hadn’t become friends and probably never would, but it was
clear that Detta Walker could be a powerful ally. She was more than mean. Once you got past the idiotic Butterfly McQueen accent, she was shrewd.
Dis Mia make a mighty pow’ful ally her ownself, if you c’d get her on yo’ side. Ain’t hardly nothin in the world as pow’ful as a pissed-off Mommy.
“We’re going back,” Mia said. “I’ve answered your questions, the cold’s bad for the baby, and the mean one’s here. Palaver’s done.”
But Susannah shook off her grip and moved back a little, out of Mia’s immediate reach. In the
gap between the merlons the cold wind knifed through her light shirt, but it also seemed to clear her mind and refresh her thinking.
Part of her is me, because she has access to my memories. Eddie’s ring, the people of River Crossing, Blaine the Mono. But she’s got to be more than me as well, because . . . because . . .
Go on, girl, you ain’t doin bad, but you slow.
Because she knows all this other stuff, as well. She knows about the demons, both the little ones and the elementals. She knows how the Beams came into being — sort of- — and about this magical soup of creation, the Prim. As far as I ever knew, prim’s a word you use for girls who are always yanking their skirts down over their knees. She didn’t get that other meaning from me.
It occurred to her what this conversation was like: parents studying their new baby. Their new
chap. He’s got your nose, Yes but he’s got your eyes, and But my goodness, where did he get that hair?
Detta said: And she also got friens back in New York, don’t forget dat. Least she want to think they her friens.
So she’s someone or something else, as well. Someone from the invisible world of house