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“I used to live here.”
Claudia spoke as if they’d come upon this end of Liberty Street by accident. Lestat was sure they hadn’t. Claudia had pursued her prey here, to this alley: the one that spit them out onto a view of burned out homes and businesses.
“It still looks so…” she hesitated. That fateful night had not been so very long ago, but Claudia had undergone such a drastic change in that time. To her, it would look as if the rest of the world was standing still.
How well Lestat remembered the feeling.
“Over there, you see?” Lestat pointed to the corner of the street, to a frame of bright and solid new wood. It was a little thing amongst the charred and broken boards. “Something is going back up.”
Claudia nodded slowly. She moved away from the alley, walking almost to the center of the silent road before looking back and saying:
“I guess I shouldn’t stay. Someone might see me.”
Lestat had a feeling that was what she most wanted, and his stomach dropped as her eyes scanned the vacant street. To be caught, found out, clasped by human hands again…
She looked back at him, waiting for him to affirm that they had better leave. Instead, Lestat shrugged.
“And what if they did?” As far as any of her former neighbors knew, she’d disappeared. What else could she do but return?
Her shoulders lifted. “That’s true.”
They meandered down the pavement, Claudia dictating their pace. She occasionally spoke, though the words meant little to Lestat.
“The Robinsons lived there,” she might say, and then nothing.
“And who are the Robinsons?” Lestat asked after a pause, guessing that was what she must want him to do.
But Claudia’s answers were brief and uninformative.
“Just some neighbors I had once.”
Maybe she was only talking to herself, Lestat decided. He stopped making inquiries, only nodding in those few moments she looked back at him. The desolation of the street made silence easy, almost imperative. This place existed in total contrast to the rest of the city, which was harried and lit up for the Christmas season.
Why she had taken them here, Lestat didn’t know. Maybe she only needed to take someone, and she couldn’t take Louis. He’d seen it; he believed he’d caused it (though he hadn’t really—this evil was the work of many minds and many years).
Louis had even told Claudia as much, hoping Claudia might profit from the moral: their powers came with sharp limits.
This lesson sat uncomfortably close to the rest of the fairytale he told her: that she was made without fault in their image and would live forever and ever in perfect union with them.
It was not in Lestat’s power to contradict this story. Very quickly he had found he cared for Claudia too much to do so. He would just have to make her strong; he would make it true.
When they’d turned the corner, Claudia spoke again.
“The Robinsons had three girls,” she said, as if only a moment had passed. “For a little while we were the only girls our age, so we had to play together. I guess they didn’t have to play with me, since they had each other. But I made them play with me.”
“How did you do that?”
Claudia laughed. “Three sisters, about the same age? They were always fightin’ like cats. I just had to pick which one I wanted to play with.”
He could imagine her, a head shorter than she was now, whispering so that a girl twice her size leaned down to listen, never noticing how Claudia grinned behind her cupped hands. Why yes, she would rather skip rope with Claudia than with her nasty little sisters…
That refusal to be lonely would serve her well. You had to take things, sometimes. It wasn’t malice, it was fact. You had to eat, you had to dress, you had to look people in the eye and somehow compel them to return the gesture.
Claudia took without compunction. She ate when she was hungry (and more than that), she accepted her ever-growing closet with enthusiasm…she was not afraid of anyone. And how happy she was. How easy to ignite the spark in her.
“Louis will be waiting with the tree,” he reminded her, drinking up the light in her eyes at the words.
“We can get there this way.” She said it like she was the only person in the world who knew this. Like no one else had walked these streets but her. Lestat found himself walking a few paces behind her.
They passed by a Baptist church, a building with a white spire and a large number of dying flower beds. Claudia left the pavement to trod on the grass in front, coming up almost to the rail of the front steps. They could hear the choir still practicing inside. Was it so early? Lestat glanced at his watch. Winter nights were too long to bear.
“I always liked this song,” Claudia said.
Lestat didn’t know it, though he could tell from the lyrics that it was one of the carols the choir was eager to sing perfectly come Christmas morning. Shepherds and mangers and peace on earth. A pretty story, no one could argue on that point: best not to look up at the cross on the back wall.
“We went to church here, sometimes.” Claudia approached the railing, ran her fingers along the cold grooves in the metal. “My auntie…I don’t know. She’d talk like we had to go, so we would. For a while. Then we’d stop going, until around Christmas or Easter. Start again.”
Lestat felt unaccountably afraid, standing there on the wet grass. He didn’t know what they were doing there, what Claudia wanted.
“You wouldn’t be the first,” he said, knowing at once that the words would be swallowed up by the night and mean absolutely nothing to anyone.
He saw her hand shake as it brushed the railing. Not one year ago, she’d been only another child in the city. A child when Louis had carried her through the streets—these streets, past this very church, perhaps—and dropped her in front of him like an offering. Our daughter.
He tried desperately not to remember how it had felt to look at her, to understand the repugnance of what he was going to do, and knowing he’d do it anyway if Louis insisted. Our daughter. I’ll stay, I’ll stay.
Half her face burned away, and so small. He’d done it anyway. So young, he’d thought she would surely die or go mad within weeks.
She hadn’t—she wouldn’t…but she remained small.
“She’d come home so angry,” the child in front of him said. “When I was little, I thought it was because she had to pretend to be good when we were at church, and then all the nastiness came out once we got home. But I don’t think that any more. I think it made her lonely, all the families, the women with their children, their husbands…all she ever had was me.”
Her bright eyes turned to him in expectation. She had come here to feel the keen loneliness of the past, so she could hold it in her hands and know that it had lost its sting.
She wanted him to help her do that. He didn’t know how. It didn’t work that way, he wanted to say. You’ll just have to carry it, ma chérie. Forever, now.
But she was too young to be told that. He saw now why Louis relied on fairytales.
“Just you?” He turned his head to one side teasingly, pinned a smile on his face.
Insufficient. Small. He had very nearly said nothing.
But Claudia bent her head to hide a smile, and a sick feeling threatened to overwhelm Lestat. Something in his distant past…being charmed by so little…no, that wasn’t just the past. It was now; it would always be.
Another thing he couldn’t tell her.
“Shall we go home?” He felt the strain in his voice, but Claudia smiled all the wider. She remained at his side the rest of the way, until at last they crossed the threshold of the townhouse.
“There they are…” Louis’s voice came soft from the sitting room, mingling with the crackling fire and spilled light. All of it waved them in, fussed a little at their chilled hands, complained about their dawdling steps.
And there was the tree, as perfect as any Louis had chosen over the years. Claudia was soon elbow deep in the boxes of baubles and garland. Louis guided her efforts, initiating her into the particular ritual of their household’s Christmas tree.
It was a snug fit for three, and Lestat drifted until he was at the piano, humming the tune he’d just heard from the choir. He plucked it out on the keys, haltingly at first, trying to remember the melody that had called to mind angels and sheep and immaculately clear nights.
“You don’t have to play that, Uncle Les…” Claudia said.
“Why not?” He didn’t stop playing. “I like it.”
He did, in a way. The trimmings of a church had never been objectionable to him. Music, art…what else could a place which claimed to be holy do but create?
“You can’t like it much when you don’t even know how it goes.”
Lestat ran through the melody again at double speed.
“Isn’t that right?” He cocked his head. Claudia was laughing at him, and the room was wonderfully warm. “Well, then stop your teasing and tell me: how does it go?”
Claudia hummed it at first, half hidden by spruce branches.
“I can’t hear you, chérie. Just sing it.”
She did not need to be asked twice; she already knew, surely, what was going to happen. A lovely voice..yes, just lovely, beautiful…perfect…what about lessons, Claudia…but would a teacher spoil it —you have to be careful, mon cher…
“We’ll be careful.” Louis lifted an eyebrow in amusement at Claudia, who was buzzing from her place at the tree. “Lestat, why don’t you put a record on, come and help us.”
So they managed it with three.