"What prophecy?" Susannah asked.
" 'He who ends the line of Eld shall conceive a child of incest with his sister or his daughter, and the child will be marked, by his red heel shall you know him. It is he who shall stop the breath of the last warrior.' "
"Woman,I'm not Roland's sister, or his daughter, either! You maybe didn't notice a small but basic difference in the color of our hides, namely his beingwhite and mine beingblack. " But she thought she had a pretty good idea of what the prophecy meant, just the same. Families were made in many ways. Blood was only one of them.
"Did he not tell you what dinh means?" Mia asked.
"Of course. It means leader. If he was in charge of a whole country instead of just three scruffy-ass gunpuppies, it'd mean king."
"Leader and king, you say true. Now, Susannah, will you tell me that such words aren't just poor substitutes for another?"
Susannah made no reply.
Mia nodded as though she had, then winced when a fresh contraction struck. It passed, and she went on. "The sperm was Roland's. I believe it may have been preserved somehow by the old people's science while the demon elemental turned itself inside out and made man from woman, but that isn't the important part. The important part is that it lived and found the rest of itself, as ordained by ka."
"My egg."
"Your egg."
"When I was raped in the ring of stones."
"Say true."
Susannah sat, musing. Finally she looked up. "Seem to me that it's what I said before. You didn't like it then, not apt to like it now, but - girl, you just the baby-sitter."
There was no rage this time. Mia only smiled. "Who went on having her periods, even when she was being sick in the mornings? You did. And who's got the full belly today?I do. If there was a baby-sitter, Susannah of New York, it was you."
"How can that be? Do you know?"
Mia did.
Fourteen
The baby, Walter had told her, would betransmitted to Mia; sent to her cell by cell just as a fax is sent line by line.
Susannah opened her mouth to say she didn't know what a fax was, then closed it again. She understood thegist of what Mia was saying, and that was enough to fill her with a terrible combination of awe and rage. Shehad been pregnant. She was, in a real sense, pregnant right this minute. But the baby was being
(faxed)
sent to Mia. Was this a process that had started fast and slowed down, or started slow and speeded up? The latter, she thought, because as time passed she'd felt less pregnant instead of more. The little swelling in her belly had mostly flattened out again. And now she understood how both she and Mia could feel an equal attachment to the chap: it did, in fact, belong to both of them. Had been passed on like a...a blood transfusion.
Only when they want to take your blood and put it into someone else, they ask your permission. If they're doctors, that is, and not one of Pere Callahan's vampires. You're a lot closer to one of those, Mia, aren't you?
"Science or magic?" Susannah asked. "Which one was it that allowed you to steal my baby?"
Mia flushed a little at that, but when she turned to Susannah, she was able to meet Susannah's eyes squarely. "I don't know," she said. "Likely a mixture of both. And don't be so self-righteous! It's inme, not you. It's feeding off my bones and my blood, not yours."
"So what? Do you think that changes anything? You stole it, with the help of some filthy magician."
Mia shook her head vehemently, her hair a storm around her face.
"No?" Susannah asked. "Then how comeyou weren't the one eating frogs out of the swamp and shoats out of the pen and God knows what other nasty things? How come you needed all that make-believe nonsense about the banquets in the castle, where you could pretend to be the one eating? In short, sugarpie, how come your chap's nourishment had to go downmy throat?"
"Because...because..." Mia's eyes, Susannah saw, were filling with tears. "Because this is spoiled land! Blasted land! The place of the Red Death and the edge of the Discordia! I'd not feed my chap from here!"
It was a good answer, Susannah reckoned, but not thecomplete answer. And Mia knew it, too. Because Baby Michael, perfect Baby Michael, had been conceived here, had thrived here, had been thriving when Mia last saw him. And if she was so sure, why were those tears standing in her eyes?
"Mia, they're lying to you about your chap."
"You don't know that, so don't be hateful!"
"Ido know it." And she did. But there wasn't proof, gods damn it! How did you prove a feeling, even one as strong as this?
"Flagg - Walter, if you like that better - he promised you seven years. Sayre says you can have five. What if they hand you a card, GOOD FOR THREE YEARS OF CHILD-REARING WITH STAMP, when you get to this Dixie Pig? Gonna go with that, too?"
"That won't happen! You're as nasty as the other one! Shut up!"
"You got a nerve callingme nasty! Can't wait to give birth to a child supposed to murder his Daddy."