"Ah, those white cousins, the Garden District Mayfairs, as you called them, and most 
correctly, yes, we know of them," he had admitted, surprising me, "but we keep our 
secrets unless prompted by duty to reveal them. What is their long history to you just 
now? Their lives are interconnected like thorny vines forever circling and recircling the 
same tree. Your life might have nothing to do with that bitter struggle. What concerns us 
here now is what we can do for you. I don't speak idle words when I tell you that you may 
rely upon us forever. You are, as David has said, our own."
  She had reflected. It had not been simple for her to accept all of this, she was too 
used to being alone with Great Nananne-yet something strong had impelled her to trust us 
before she'd ever come.
  "Great Nananne trusts you," she had said, as if I'd asked her. "Great Nananne said that 
I was to come to you. Great Nananne had one of her many dreams and woke up before 
daylight and rang her bell for me to come. I was sleeping on the screen porch and I came 
in and found her standing up in her white flannel gown. She's cold all the time, you 
know; she always wears flannel, even on the hottest night. She said for me to come sit 
down and listen to what she had dreamed."
  "Tell me about it, child," Aaron had asked. Had they not spoken of this completely 
before I'd come?
  "She dreamed of Mr. Lightner, of you," she'd said, looking to Aaron, "and in the dream 
you came to her with Oncle Julien, white Oncle Julien from the clan uptown. And the two 
of you sat by her bed.
  "Oncle Julien told her jokes and stories and said he was happy to be in her dream. She 
said that. Oncle Julien said that I was to go to you, you here, Mr. Lightner, and that 
Mr. Talbot would come. Oncle Julien spoke French and you yourself were sitting in the 
cane-backed chair and smiling and nodding to her, and you brought her in a cup of coffee 
and cream the way she likes it, with half a cup of sugar and one of her favorite silver 
spoons. In and out of her dreams, Great Nananne has a thousand silver spoons." The dream 
continued:
  "You sat on her bed, finally, on her best quilt beside her, and you took her hand, and 
she had all her best rings on her hand, which she doesn't wear anymore, you know, and you 
said in the dream, 'You send me little Merrick,' and you said you'd take care of me, and 
you told her that she was going to die."
  Aaron had not heard this strange recounting, and he'd seemed quite taken, amazed. 
Lovingly, he'd answered:
  "It must have been Oncle Julien who said such a thing in the dream. How could I have 
known such a secret?"
  I'd never forgotten his protest, because it had been very unlike him to commit himself 
even to ignorance, and to press so hard upon such a point.
  "No, no, you told her," the fairy child had said. "You told her the day of the week and 
the hour of the clock, and it's yet to come." She had looked thoughtfully once more at 
her pictures. "Don't worry about it. I know when it's going to happen." Her face had been 
suddenly full of sadness. "I can't keep her forever. Les mysteres will not wait."
  Les mysteres. Did she mean the ancestors, the Voodoo gods, or merely the secrets of 
fate? I'd been unable to penetrate her thoughts to any degree whatsoever.
  "St. Peter will be waiting," she'd murmured as the visible sadness had slowly receded 
behind her veil of calm.
  Quite suddenly, she'd flashed her glance on me and murmured something in French. Papa 
Legba, god of the crossroads in Voodoo, for whom a statue of St. Peter with his keys to 
Heaven might do quite well.
  I had noted that Aaron could not bring himself to question her further on the matter of 
his role in the dream, the date of Great Nananne's imminent death. He had nodded, 
however, and once again, with both hands he'd lifted her hair back from her damp neck 
where a few errant tendrils had clung to her soft creamy skin.
  Aaron had regarded her with honest wonder as she had gone on with her tale.
  "First thing I knew after that dream, there was an old colored man and a truck ready to 
take me, and he said, 'You don't need your bag, you just come as you are,' and I climbed 
up into the truck with him, and he drove me all the way out here, not even talking to me, 
just listening to some old Blues radio station and smoking cigarettes the whole way. 
Great Nananne knew it was Oak Haven because Mr. Lightner told her in the dream....
  "Great Nananne knew of Oak Haven of the old days, when it was a different kind of house 
with a different name. Oncle Julien told her lots of other things, but she didn't tell me 
what they were. She said, 'Go to them, The Talamasca; they'll take care of you, and it 
will be the way for you and all the things that you can do.' "
  It had chilled: all the things that you can do. I remember Aaron's sad expression. He 
had only given a little shake of his head. Don't worry her now, I'd thought a bit 
crossly, but the child had not been perturbed.
  Oncle Julien of Mayfair fame was no stranger to my memory; I had read many chapters on 
the career of this powerful witch and seer, the one male in his bizarre family to go 
against the goad of a male spirit and his female witches over many hundreds of years. 
Oncle Julien-mentor, madman, cocksman, legend, father of witches-and the child had said 
that she had come down from him.
  It had to be powerful magic, but Oncle Julien had been Aaron's field, not mine.
  She had watched me carefully as she spoke.
  "I'm not used to people believing me," she'd said, "but I am used to making people 
afraid."
  "How so, child?" I had asked. But she had frightened me quite enough with her 
remarkable poise and the penetration of her gaze. What could she do? Would I ever know? 
It had been worth pondering on that first evening, for it was not our way to encourage 
our orphans to give full vent to their dangerous powers; we had been devoutly passive in 
all such respects.
  I had banished my unseemly curiosity and set to memorizing her appearance, as was my 
custom in those days, by looking very carefully at every aspect of her visage and form.
  Her limbs had been beautifully molded; her breasts were already too fetching, and the 
features of her face were large, all of them-with no unique hint of the African-large her 
well-shaped mouth, and large her almond eyes and long nose; her neck had been long and 
uncommonly graceful, and there had been a harmony to her face, even when she had fallen 
into the deepest thought.
  "Keep your secrets of those white Mayfairs," she had said. "Maybe someday we can swap 
secrets, you and me. They don't even know in these times that we are here. Great Nananne 
said that Oncle Julien died before she was born. In the dream, he didn't say a word about 
those white Mayfairs. He said for me to come here." She had gestured to the old glass 
photographs. "These are my people. If I'd been meant to go to those white Mayfairs, Great 
Nananne would have seen it long before now." She'd paused, thoughtfully. "Let's us just 
talk of those old times."
  She'd spaced the daguerreotypes lovingly on the mahogany table. She made a neat row, 
wiping away the crumbly fragments with her hand. And at some moment, I'd noted that all 
the little figures were upside down from her point of view, and right side up for Aaron 
and for me.
  "There've been white people kin to me that have come down here and tried to destroy 
records," she said, "You know, tear the page right out of the church register that says