not in the last two hundred years much bothered with them.
I myself had only been up this way a couple of times in all my life, but I had no fear of the cave at all. And when I saw that the Little People were afraid, I was relieved to be rid of them.
However, as my horse followed the old trail closer and closer to the cave, I saw flickering lights playing in the thick darkness. I came to see there was a crude dwelling in the mountainside, made out of a cave itself perhaps, and covered over with stones, leaving only a small door and a window, and a hole higher up through which the smoke passed.
The light flickered through the cracks and crevices of the crude wall.
And there, many feet above, was the path to the great cave, a yawning mouth altogether hidden now by pine and oak and yew trees.
I wanted to keep clear of the little house as soon as I saw it. Anyone who would live in the vicinity of this cave had to be trouble.
The cave itself vaguely intrigued me. Believing in Christ, though I had disobeyed my abbot, I did not fear pagan gods. I did not believe in them. But I was leaving my home. I might not ever come back. And I wondered if I should not visit the cave, perhaps even rest there a while, hidden, and safe from the Little People.
Twenty-nine
“NOW LISTEN TO me, both of you,” she said without taking her eyes off the road. “This is the point where I am going to take over. I’ve thought this over since I was born, and I know exactly what we need to do. Is Granny asleep back there?”
“Sound asleep,” said Mary Jane from the jump seat, where she was stretched out sideways, so she could see Morrigan behind the wheel.
“What do you mean,” asked Mona, “that you are going to take over?”
“Just exactly this,” said Morrigan, both her hands together at the top of the wheel, gripping it easily on account of the fact that they had been going ninety miles an hour for quite some time now, and no cop, obviously, was going to stop them. “I’ve been listening to you argue and argue, and you’re stuck on things that are utterly beside the point, sort of moral technicalities.”
Morrigan’s hair was tangled and falling all over her shoulders and her arms, a brighter red, as far as Mona could tell, but in the same family as her own hair. And the uncanny resemblance between their faces was enough to completely unnerve Mona if she let herself stare too long at Morrigan. As for the voice, well, the big danger was obvious. Morrigan could pretend to be Mona on the phone. She had done it with ease when Uncle Ryan had finally called Fontevrault. What a hilarious conversation that had been! Ryan had asked “Mona” very tactfully if she was taking amphetamines, and reminded her gently that anything ingested might hurt the baby. But the point was, Uncle Ryan had never guessed that the fast-talking and inquisitive female on the other end of the line was not Mona.
They were all dressed in their Easter Sunday best, as Mary Jane had called it earlier, including Morrigan, whom they had outfitted in the fashionable shops of Napoleonville. The white cotton shirtwaist dress would have been ankle length on Mona or even Mary Jane. On Morrigan it came to the knee; the waste was cinched really tight, and the plain V neck, the symbol of matronly good sense, became against her fairly well-developed breasts a plunging neckline. It was the old story; put a plain, simple dress on a flamboyantly beautiful girl, and it becomes more eye-catching than gold foil or sable. Shoes had been no problem, once they had faced that she was a size ten. One size larger and they would have had to put her in men’s lace-ups. As it was, she had stiletto heels and had danced around the car in them for fifteen minutes, before Mona and Mary Jane had laid firm hands on her, told her to shut up, don’t move, and get in. Then she had demanded to drive. Well, it wasn’t the first time …
Granny, in Wal-Mart’s best cotton knit pantsuit, slept beneath her baby-blue thermal blanket. The sky was blue, the clouds magnificently white. Mona wasn’t sick anymore at all, thank God, just weak. Dismally weak. They were now one half hour