From the Dust Returned

“How shall we write you down?” asked Timothy.

“As a tribesman of the Talkers with no wind, no need of air. The self-sufficient speakers of the night at noon.”

“Say that again.”

“The small voice that asks of the dead who arrive for admission at the gate of paradise: ‘In your life, did you know enthusiasm?’ If the answer is yes you enter the sky. If no, you fall to burn in the pit.”

“The more questions I ask, the longer your answers get.”

“‘The Theban Voice.’ Write that.”

Timothy wrote.

“How do you spell ‘Theban’?” he said.

CHAPTER 18

Make Haste to Live

Mademoiselle Angelina Marguerite was perhaps strange, to some grotesque, to many a nightmare, but most certainly a puzzle of inverted life.

Timothy did not know that she even existed until many months after that grand, happily remembered Homecoming.

For she lived, or existed, or in the final analysis hid in the shadowed acreage behind the great tree where stood markers with names and dates peculiar to the Family. Dates from when the Spanish Armada broke on the Irish coast and its women, to birth boys with dark, and girls with darker, hair. The names recalled the glad times of the Inquisition or the Crusades—children who rode happily into Muslim graves. Some stones, larger than others, celebrated the suffering of witches in a Massachusetts town. All of the markers had sunk in place as the House took boarders from other centuries. What lay beneath the stones was known only to a small rodent and a smaller arachnid.

But it was the name Angelina Marguerite that took Timothy’s breath. It spelled softly on the tongue. It was a relish of beauty.

“How long ago did she die?” Timothy asked.

“Ask rather,” said Father, “how soon will she be born.”

“But she was born a long time ago,” said Timothy. “I can’t make out the date. Surely—”

“Surely,” said the tall, gaunt, pale man at the head of the dinner table, who got taller and gaunter and paler by the hour, “surely if I can trust my ears and ganglion, she will be truly born in a fortnight.”

“How much is a fortnight?” asked Timothy.

Father sighed. “Look it up. She will not stay beneath her stone.”

“You mean—?”

“Stand watch. When the grave marker trembles and the ground stirs, you will at last see Angelina Marguerite.”

“Will she be as beautiful as her name?”

“Gods, yes. I would hate to wait while an old crone got younger and younger, taking years to melt her back to beauty. If we are fortunate, she’ll be a Castilian rose. Angelina Marguerite waits. Go see if she’s awake. Now!”

Timothy ran, one tiny friend on his cheek, another in his blouse, a third following.

“Oh, Arach, Mouse, Anuba,” he said, hurrying through the old dark House, “what does Father mean?”

“Quiet.” The eight legs rustled in his ear.

“Listen,” said an echo from his blouse.

“Stand aside,” said the cat. “Let me lead!”

And arriving at the grave with the pale stone, as smooth as a maiden’s cheek, Timothy knelt and put that ear with its invisible weaver against the cool marble, so both might hear.