Treasure Box Page 0,86

get him back. When the beast takes your body, it's his. There's no remnant of you left."

Now Quentin understood. "So Rowena did see you kill the boy."

"She saw my memory of cutting the living heart out of the beast. But she was a child. Of course she thought it was my little Paul. To try to stop me, the beast made his body cry and beg in Paul's little baby language. 'No, Mommy, don't hurt me, Mommy.' Rowena saw that. But I had seen the truth. He did things that none of us can do. He moved things with his mind. He destroyed things. We found them: a fly embedded in the midst of a pane of glass; locks opening without keys - ah, you've seen evidence of that? It was the beast."

"What's this beast? You mean the book of Revelation?"

"I mean the dragon. There might be many of them, but I've never heard of more than one upon the earth at the same time. It comes to a body that began human, but once the beast has it, the shape changes to whatever the beast desires. It came to Adolf Hitler when he was trying to paint in England, and it owned him from then on until it had no power left except to poison the body it dwelt in. It was in the ancient conquerors who built up piles of skulls and spread fear through the world. It loves death. It also hungers for strength. The stronger the human whose body it steals, the stronger the beast is until the human body dies."

"So it can be killed."

"How many suffer and die before it falls? Yes, it can be killed - eventually. And in this age, who is pure enough to kill it?"

"Pure? Like St. George?" Quentin couldn't help laughing. It was the cliche of romantic stories - slaying the dragon to save the maiden.

"Why do you laugh? Why do you think Rowena chose you?"

"Not because of my purity," said Quentin.

"What do you know about it?" said Mrs. Tyler. "You have to be pure to hold on to any of yourself in its presence. Her plan doesn't work if you're not pure."

Quentin laughed again, only bitterly this time. "She's going to be disappointed."

Mrs. Tyler ignored him. "If she had let me teach her, she would know that you can't control the beast. She must have seen my memory of the powers that Paulie seemed to have. How could she not have understood, if she saw so much?"

"Maybe she didn't believe about the beast," said Quentin.

"She knew the powers she herself had. She knew my memories were true. What other evidence did she need?"

"Maybe she thought you had gone insane, and this was a paranoid fantasy about your own son being possessed by the spirit of a dragon. If all she saw in your memory was a few special powers that he had, and then you overreact and kill him - "

"It wasn't Paul, it was the - "

"How did you know it was the beast? Were you really sure?"

"Of course I was sure! What kind of monster do you think I am?"

"I don't know. What kind of monster do you think you are?"

"What are you saying?"

"Why did you wait until he was nearly two before you did it? If you were sure?"

"Because it was my son's face. Because it was my son's voice. Because it was trying to hide itself from me until my son had grown stronger and I no longer would have the power to resist. And it almost worked, I almost waited too long. It almost had the power to stop me. But I got my vengeance. I didn't set it free. I locked it up."

"Inside the treasure box."

"One time it was hidden in a bottle and cast into the sea, but bottles float to shore and are found."

"A genie?"

"It doesn't grant wishes except its own," she said. "Another time it was hidden with a corpse inside a mummy case in Egypt, but thieves found their way into the secret chamber and it was free again. Killing it solves the problem for today, but then it's free to find another host. I was not going to let it do to another mother what it had done to me."

"Had you ever seen this beast before?" asked Quentin.

"Of course not. But I knew the lore. Unlike Rowena I learned everything from my mother. And from my grandmother. I knew what to look for."

"Had any of them seen this