Ashlar, we know where there is a female! Do you understand?”
I could see this startled my sister. She had not known it, and now she looked at the Dutchman with suspicion, but he went on, urgently, as before.
“Have you a soul, Father?” he whispered to me, changing his manner now to a more wily one, “and a wit to know what it means? A pure female Taltos? And a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and to talk on the first day! Children who can so quickly beget other children?”
“Oh, what a fool you are,” I said. “You come like the fiend to tempt Christ in the desert. You say to me, ‘I would make you the ruler of the world.’ ”
“Yes, I say that! And I am prepared to assist you, to bring back your breed in full force and power again.”
“And if you do think me this witless monster! Why would you so generously do this for me?”
“Brother, go with him,” said my sister. “I don’t know if this female exists. I have never beheld a female Taltos. But they are born, that’s true. If you don’t go, you will die tonight. You have heard tell of the little people. Do you know what they are?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to say, I do not care.
“They are the spawn of the witch that fails to grow into the Taltos. They carry the souls of the damned.”
“The damned are in hell,” I replied.
“You know this isn’t so. The damned return in many forms. The dead can be restless, greedy, filled with vengeance. The little people dance and couple, drawing out the Christian men and women who would be witches, who would dance and fornicate, hoping for the blood to come together, for like to find like, and that the Taltos will be born.
“That is witchcraft, Brother. That is what it has always been—bring together the drunken women, so that they will risk death to make the Taltos. That is the old story of the revels in these dark glens. It is to make a race of giants who will, by sheer numbers, drive other mortals from the earth.”
“God would not let such a thing happen,” I said calmly.
“Neither will the people of the valley!” said the Dutchman. “Don’t you understand? Throughout the centuries they have waited and watched and used the Taltos. It is good luck to them to bring together male and female, but only for their own cruel rituals!”
“I don’t know what you are saying. I am not this thing.”
“In my house in Amsterdam there are a thousand books which will tell you of your kind and other miraculous beings; there is all the knowledge we have gathered as we have waited. If you are not the simpleton, then come.”
“And what are you?” I demanded. “The alchemist who would make a great homunculus?”
My sister put down her head on the table and wept.
“In my childhood I heard the legends,” she said bitterly, wiping at her tears with her long fingers. “I prayed the Taltos would never come. No man shall ever touch me lest such a creature would be born to me! And if such were to happen, God forbid, I should strangle it before it ever drank the witch’s milk from my breasts. But you, Brother, you were allowed to live, you drank your fill of the witch’s milk and grew tall. Yet you were sent away to be saved. And now you have come home to fulfill the worst prophecies. Don’t you see? The witches may be spreading the word now. The vengeful little people will learn that you are here. The Protestants surround this valley. They are waiting for the chance to come down upon us, waiting for the spark to light their fire.”
“These are lies. Lies to put out the Light of Christ which would come into the world on this night. You hear the bells. I go now to say the Mass. Sister, don’t come to the altar with your pagan superstition. I will not put the Body of Christ on your tongue.”
As I rose to go, the Dutchman laid hold of me, and with all my strength I forced him back.
“I am a priest of God,” I said, “a follower of St. Francis of Assisi, I have come to say the Christmas Mass in this valley. I am Ashlar, and I stand on the right hand of God.”
Without stopping I went to the Cathedral doors. Great cheers sounded from the