The Blood: A Denouement

“They clearly don’t belong to us,” is what Piers said after a time. When he said it he was looking at Tanitha.

“Nor to us,” she said, looking, I think amazed that Piers would even suspect they belonged to her people. “We know about them, oversee them in a manner of speaking, but they have to do with you. How I am not sure. They were not made by you, but they were given to you. In trust, I think. They are…zauber, I think you would say.”

“Magic?” Piers said. “Witch made?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Tanitha said, “But not a common witch of the woods as you would see now. That is a poor cousin of the original. Remember, before these priests rode about saying witches gave themselves to the devils and painting all the old gods to be devils, remember the ancient tales.”

Piers said nothing, but Tanitha said, “You have an education, Genevieve. Circe, Medea. They were called witches.”

“But they were goddesses too, and daughters of the gods.”

“And Morgana le Fay, who is sometimes the sister of King Arthur.”

“She is also a fairy.”

“Or a goddess. One may say they are one in the same.”

“And  even here, Freya the Goddess of Love was a Witch as Odin was the first wizard.”

“I have read in the English books of Math and Gwydion, mages, but also deities, or maybe fairies. It is hard to say,” Piers said.

“The drinkers of blood are the link between the living and the dead. The shapechangers, the link between man and beast. We are called The Old, but the Elder are the link between the High Ones and Men. Where they’re humanity ends and their divinity begins cannot be said. They tie earth and heaven and under earth together. These treasures you hold were made by the Elder, the Wise, those enchanters and mages who are sometimes called Wizards or Witches, given to you in trust for reasons I do not know, but one day, surely meant to be returned to them.”

We remained in the castle for several days and on the last night, I slipped out of bed, away from Piers arms and went through the halls and out into the town and past the walls and into the night. I was joined by another wolf and it was only when he took form as Hagano that I wondered how I had come through the walls or left the bed without the notice of my husband.

“Am I even awake?” I asked Hagano, and he who lived between life and death said, “Does it even matter?”

I remembered now what Tanitha had said, that the witches…. Or better to say the enchanters, were what linked the upper, lower and higher worlds while the drinkers linked life and death and we linked animal and human, but Hagano, who was one of us, must have surely linked life and death as well, and if it could not be told if we were awake or not, did he not also link the worlds? Did he not stand at the juncture of all three things? And as I asked this, he said, “I do not know.”

“But the dish, the Orb, those mages? This you can tell.”

“I know it,” he said, “but I cannot tell it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means what it means.”

“There is another thing,” Tanitha said.

“Another… thing?” It was Piers who had spoken.

“One thing or several. I am taking a journey and I would like it if you were to come with me. We will not remain. We will return here. That is, I will return you here.”

“My lady,” Piers said, “my grandfather is waiting for me. He was the one who sent me to come back with a bride.”

Piers was gesturing to me and Tanitha looked, for once, uncertain. She was keeping something to herself. At last she spoke.

“There is a pact between our family and yours,” she said. “But not between all living and myself. Your grandfather is Adulwulf.”

“Yes.” Then Piers said, “He is a harsh man.”

“He is more than a harsh man. The reason you nearly died in that town is because of him, because of their memory of Adulwulf. If you return Genevieve to that place, he will kill you and take her to wife.”

Here I must have made a noise, but Tanitha said, “Is it not true that your line almost died out?”

“Some generations ago,” Piers said.

“My grandfather had several sons, but they died. After that he only had my mother, his granddaughter. It was a wonder I was ever born, for my father was an a weak man who died young and did not possess the Gift.”

“If I tell a secret only to you, will you leave with me? Re establish yourself far from Adulwulf?”

“Yes.” And I wondered that Piers said it so quickly.

“When your mother was sick with child, was she not brought home to be cared for in the castle of Adulwulf, and there gave you birth?”

“Yes. That is the story.”

“What if I were to tell you she had already miscarried when she was brought to her grandfather’s castle, that Adulwulf did not cure her, but raped her, wishing to put his seed into a younger vessel and one of his own making?”

Piers could only barely begin to comprehend it while Tanitha said, “He was young when he began to sire, and full of wicked strength. Genevieve was not meant for you. Genevieve was meant for him, a wolfmaid strong from the old line so that he could be the father of a new one.”

While Piers listened, Tanitha continued, “If he could count on himself living so long, he would have waited till you made a child, a daughter, and abducted her. Incest is more common than you know in your clan. But he cannot wait, and so he will kill you. After all, he informed a whole town so it could do the job for him.”

While this news settled on me, Piers spoke.

“I will go with you. But we must rescue my mother first if what you say is true. She has been so quiet, so long, living in our home. I never knew.”

Tanitha nodded. “That is easily done. I am loathe to touch Adulwulf. There is a pact between our two kindreds, but maybe one day you can.”

Piers nodded, looking strange, as if he were wakened from not having enough sleep, and was not quite sure where he was.

“Where are we going?” I asked it, because he would not.

Tanitha said, “America.”

Now, Uriah realized that the snow had ceased. The cat was sitting up, full awake on Owen’s lap, and Owen seemed more awake than he had before, but not committed to the enterprise of consciousness.

“I will bank the fire and prepare coffee for the morning. It’s time to be going to bed.”

“Time and past it,” Uriah thought, and feeling his bones ache a little, his responses slow, was embarrassed and a little annoyed that Owen rose quicker than him.

“We never want it completely dark,” Owen said, “though I do confess it’s good to have you here. And you too,” he told the cat as if not to hurt its feelings. “Big houses were never meant to be kept alone.”

On the way up the steps, Uriah had passed the old faded sepia picture of the woman again, and back up here she saw her too, grim faced, and surrounded by four almost equally grim children. Owen saw Uriah considering the picture and smiled, grunting.

“I doubt Mary Agnes ever had any problems living alone here. She was a different kind of creature.”

Along with Mary Agnes were several other different kinds of creatures. There were some newer pictures, his own parents from the 1970s and a long haired Middle Eastern or Latin looking man and his white wife, Kyle and Deborah, Seth’s parents, and there were several pictures of Seth and Lewis, as babies, as children, at graduations, but most of the pictures were old and of old and formal people, generations of Dunharrows through the last century and the century before that.

Owen had not shut his bedroom door but undressed behind a screen and came out in his night robe. He looked, for all the world, like a wizard and Uriah thought, Well, I suppose that’s exactly what he is.

“This has been a strange day,” Uriah was saying.

“That it has been.”

Suddenly, Uriah was surprised to hear the television on, and glad.

“I think,” Owen said, “this is a night for lights on, almost. And tv on.”

The light in Owen’s room shut off, but the blue light of the television was on and in the hardwood floor hall, the light from the bathroom shone as well.

Uriah thought, “Why do I feel so… not afraid. But ill at ease. Why am I such a child?”

He never felt like this living alone, at his home in Willmington, but Chicago did this to him, and this whole strange day did it to him as well. He sat on the bed and turned on the radio. He found WBEZ, the public radio station and began listening to the world news broadcast, but just then he heard a dog barking on Morse Street.

It was barking again, and he would have ignored it except he felt so sorry for anything out in the cold. In some ways this was the perfect neighborhood, for they were close to the beach and there were true neighbors, houses on either side, and across from them, and these ringed about by old apartment buildings, and yet he felt strangely cold and alone in the winter.

The dog continued barking and when Uriah came out of his room he saw that Owen was already in the hallway, great housecoat gathered around him and over his robe.

“Well,” he said, “come on.”

They went down the stairs to the front door, and Uriah was about to tell his uncle to be careful before he realized how silly that was, before he remembered that Owen really never needed to be afraid of anything, and his uncle opened the door.

The huge black dog stopped barking. It was a Labrador or something, but Uriah had the powerful need—and refused that need—to ask it if it could turn into a man.

“Are you here for us?” Owen asked.

The dog did not answer, but entered the house, tracking snow on the old Persian carpet, and after Owen had closed and bolted the door behind him, and stood a pace back, it shook itself of snow and Owen led it to the kitchen where he poured it warm water and—

“Whiskey?” Uriah wondered.

“It’s cold out there,” Owen said while the dog gratefully lapped it up, “and our friend saw that, while a kitten is good company, something in us likes a dog for protection.”

Uriah felt on one hand that the protection he sought was for things more ghostly than dogs usually offered protection, but suddenly he felt as if this dog were capable of all manner of protection, and as he sipped the whiskey and water, the kitten joined him.

“We had pizza,” Owen said. “I hope you like that because on such short notice that’s all I have for a guest.”

He opened the refrigerator and pulled out one deep dish slice which he ripped into three pieces and then placed it in a heavy bowl and sat it down. The dog with the long snout—longer than Lab’s, looked up at him, and then licked his hand quickly and snorted, before beginning to eat sidling over for the kitten.

“If they stay they’ll need names,” Owen said. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to stay. I was saying this house was too empty. But I have a feeling that’s all about to change.”

The uneasiness he felt in the night left Uriah Dunne almost as soon as the dog arrived. Watching the small animal and the great one eat side by side, a great sleepiness had overcome him, and he went up to bed, becoming more and more tired. By the time the dog had followed him and he vaguely heard its footsteps, and then the weight of the beast as it welcomed itself onto the bed, Uriah was already asleep. He could not remember if he had turned the light off or not.

The new day was bright in his eyes, and the leaping of that dog, and his barking and running down the stairs woke Uri up. As he climbed out of bed, snapped into life by the barking, with the yellow light and glimpse of clean sky and white snow, it felt like Christmas morning. He threw his housecoat on and was following the dog. Qwen, in his night robe, was coming out of his room, looking like some old magician from a story, He came down the steps and past the portraits, but when he arrived, he saw what Uriah was surprised to see, and though he smiled, he did not look surprised.

The dog was barking at and licking the long hands of a woman who seemed fiftyish or maybe sixty, and her great dreadlocks were swept up and tied by fabric, crowning her head, then falling behind her back. A coat was hung by the door and she wore a great shawl and Owen only said, “You’re boots are still on.”

Uriah looked from the woman to Owen, but only opened his mouth.

“Is that the way you greet your sister after all this time?”

“Of course not,” Owen came down the rest of the stair and kissed the woman on her cheek.

“Welcome home, Drusilla.”

He turned to Uriah, “I told you I wasn’t going to be alone for long.”

Owen was in the kitchen making breakfast, and Drusilla had taken out a long and spindly pipe which she lit, and was now puffing cherry tobacco on.

“But you said you were all alone,” Uriah finally said to Owen, who was cutting Danish pastry and sprinkling cinnamon and sugar onto it.

“And I was.”

“You said…” Uriah looked to Drusilla, “You said Aunt Drusilla was gone.”

“She was gone,” Owen said, taking his knife and deftly cutting strips. “I never said she was dead.”

“I just assumed…”

“That’s the trouble with you. The trouble with your father too,” Drusilla said.

After she had taken her boots off, she looked at the faded old picture of the sober woman and said, “Hello, Mother,” and going upstairs they had passed the picture of that same women with those same children.  That picture could have been taken in the 1930’s or, in actuality, far earlier, but two of the people in it could not possibly be old enough for that. Drusilla had looked at the tallest, darkest boy and she and Owen had pronounced, “Tiberius,” and they had looked at the youngest, palest boy, clearly the product of a liason with a white man and said, “Nero.”

The remaining boy and the only girl in the middle, in impossibly old clothes were unmistakably the man and the woman looking at the picture.

“Aunt Drusilla,” Uriah pointed to the girl. “And then… Owen. Owen. What happened?”

“Whaddo you mean?”

“Well, there’s Augustus and Octavian. And then with you all, Drusilla, Tiberius, Nero… and then… Owen.”

“Oh,” Owen shrugged. “I guess mother had stopped reading Tacitus when I came along.”

“That,” Drusilla said, “is not the tale I heard. I heard that when you were born, Minervina…. That is Onnalee’s great grandmother, who was Maid at the time, came to Mother, and Mother would have listened to no one else but her—or Augustus—for you know how she was—that Minervina named you.”

“Yes,” Owen said. “As I believed you named Lewis when he was born.”

“I had a seeing,” Drusilla explained, nodding her head and looking serious for the first time.

And then she had said, “And speaking of Lewis…. Where is my grandson?”