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The People of the Moon and Stars

THE VOICE OF PANDORA called to her from far away: "Rose, drink!"

And she could hear Marius calling to her and Viktor, Viktor's desperate plea.

"Rose, drink."

The burning droplets hit her lips, trickled into her mouth. Poison. She couldn't move.

Gardner had ahold of her and was whispering in her ear, "Would you disappoint me yet again, Rose! Rose, how dare you do this to me!" To me, to me, to me. The echo faded into the roaring voice of the minister's wife, Mrs. Hayes, "And if you cannot convict yourself of sin, deeply convict yourself and admit your sin, and all the dreadful things you've done, and you know what you have done, you can never be saved!" Her grandmother was talking to them. She was in the little lawyer's office in Athens, Texas, but she was right there with Gardner. Don't want the child, really, don't know who the father was.

Gardner clung to her, his breath hot in her face, his fingers closing on her throat. How could that be true when her body was gone? She floated in this darkness, sinking ever deeper and deeper. The dark clouds rolled upwards, thick and swelling and blinding.

Viktor cried out, and Pandora and Marius called to her, but they were fading.

Oh, she'd seen such wondrous things when Pandora held her. She'd seen the Heavens, and she'd heard the music of the spheres. Never had anything been more grand.

Gardner's fingers bit into her neck. Her heart jumped and then slowed. It was so slow, the beat of her heart, and she was so weak, so dreadfully impossibly weak. Dying. Surely she was dying.

"Do you realize what this means, Rose, if you do this to me?" Gardner demanded. "You made a fool of me, Rose. You destroyed my life, my career, all my dreams, all my plans, ruined by you, Rose."

"If we knew who the child's father was," said the old woman in her slow Texas voice, "but you see, we had no contact with our daughter and, really, we just ..."

Don't want me and why should you? And whoever did, that wasn't paid to want me, paid to educate me, paid to take care of me, paid to love me. Why isn't it over? Why am I sinking farther and farther down?

Uncle Lestan came towards her. Uncle Lestan, shining, and striding towards her, in his red-velvet jacket and his black boots, coming on, unstoppable, fearless with his hands out.

"Rose!" he cried.

She screamed his name!

"Uncle Lestan, take me, please, don't let them ...! Help me."

Gardner choked the voice out of her.

But Uncle Lestan loomed over her, his face shimmering in the light of the candles, all those candles, candles and candles. "Help me!" she cried, and he bent to kiss her, and she felt those needles, those dreadful sharp needles in her neck.

"Not enough blood!" cried Marius.

"Just enough," said Uncle Lestan, "to let me in."

The blackness had weight and mass and thickened around them. They were all talking at once, Gardner, Mrs. Hayes, and her grandmother. "She's dying," said someone, and it was one of those girls at the school, the horrible school, but the other girls laughed and jeered. "She's faking, she's a liar, she's a slut!" Laughter, laughter rolling up into the blackness with Gardner chanting, "You're mine, Rose, I forgive you for what you did to me, you're mine."

Uncle Lestan grabbed Gardner by the throat and dragged him away from her. Gardner snarled and screamed and fought. He bit into Uncle Lestan's hand but Uncle Lestan tore Gardner's head from him, stretching his neck like a long wrinkled elastic stocking--she gasped, she screamed--and Gardner's head melted, mouth turning downwards, eyes bleeding downwards, black and fluid and ghastly, and his head flopped down at the end of the broken wrinkled neck, and the body dropped into a sea of blood. Beautiful blood.

"Rose, drink from me!" said Uncle Lestan. "I am the Blood. I am the life."

"Don't you do that, child!" screamed Mrs. Hayes.

She reached for Uncle Lestan's golden hair, reached for him, for his shining face.

Your blood.

It filled her mouth! A great moan broke from her. She became the moan. She swallowed over and over again. The blood of Heaven.

Gardner's body floated in a stream of blood, dark ruby-red and blackish blood, and the face of Mrs. Hayes expanded, grew immense, a gleaming white mask of wrath. Uncle Lestan snatched at it, tore it loose like a fragile veil, and her voice died as her face died, like a flag burning, and he sent it down into the dark blackish blood current. Her grandmother, the old Texas woman, was sliding downwards with her hands out, paling, disappearing into the river of blood too.

Like Dante's river of blood, flowing on, bubbling, crimson, black, beautiful.