Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis by Anne Rice

Author:Anne Rice [Rice, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780701189440
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Part II

BORN

FOR

ATLANTIS

19

Kapetria’s Tale

I

I CAME TO consciousness about twelve thousand years ago. I could not see or move. I was listening to music, music that involved singing and the myriad sounds of complex musical instruments. Not till this modern age have I ever heard anything like this music, this blending of plaintive voices and rich chords and harmony. This music aroused in me a deep pleasure and also a deep longing. I felt something like sadness when I listened to it, a kind of emptiness, and I found myself searching for something, maybe some resolution of my longing as I followed the melodic threads. I think I cried. But it is hard to know whether I did.

All of us were nourished on this music. And to this day, we’re hypersensitive to music.

The first thing I really knew was that I was finished, full grown, done, and a great success and the Parents were pleased. They opened the translucent cover of my bed, and helped me to my feet as other Parents did the very same thing for Welf, Garekyn, and Derek.

We found ourselves in a vast space that appeared to be in the treetops of an immense forest. But even as we looked, we saw the dark branches and green leaves dissolve to reveal walls alive with motion pictures, or portals to even greater forests outside with innumerable lighted dwellings or nests everywhere, high and low.

This was beautiful to us. Simply beautiful. And so were the Parents. And all of them were the Parents.

They appeared entirely normal, lovable, even charming, though they were quite different from us: very tall and thin, with large white faces and round glossy black eyes, and lipless mouths that smiled when they spoke. Their hands were lean and white and dry and perhaps twice the size of our hands. Whereas my hand here is six inches from the tip of the longest finger to the wrist, their hands were twelve inches there and their nails were pearlescent and sharp. They had five fingers on each hand.

Their legs were very long and lean and always slightly bent at the knee, and their feet were remarkably similar to their hands. They appeared to be wearing hooded mantles which were richly colored in layers, and similar bands of bright color covered their rounded torsos. Their backs were humped. And they moved gracefully and spoke softly in an Earth language, the language of the city of Atalantaya.

None of us realized at the outset that the Parents were covered with very tiny feathers, and wore no other clothing. We didn’t realize that the humps on their backs were indeed folded wings. Or that their noses and mouths were in fact beaks, or that they were another species from us. This just didn’t occur to us. They were the Parents. And the language of Atalantaya was the language we needed to know for our purpose.

The Parents had made us. We belonged to them and we made them happy. We were the People of the Purpose, they told us.

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