She pads barefoot in her borrowed blue nightgown over to sit before the still dark window. She wakes by degrees with the sunrise, listening to the unusual castle noises in the quiet of dawn. She thinks.
As the light hits her skin she rubs her hands over her face, forcing some of the worry back inside. With a sigh she pushes herself up, and gets on with her morning ablutions.
With her long black hair still wet and loose, darkening the back of an only slightly wrinkled deep purple dress, Hannah goes wandering around looking for the King. Determined to talk to the man before he has to deal with 'court' she looks high and low, low and high, and asks around. She starts at the studio, since that's where the drums are.
[If he's not in the studio, she does go asking after his study/his room/his sleeping habits - if she can find people of any type. (Hannah is half convinced he'll be sleeping. In which case, she'll camp outside his door.)]
Hannah finds him curled up in a beanbag chair in the studio, asleep. There's another one beside it, empty but with a person-shaped dent in it. There's an ashtray and a few empty bottles by each one.
As she enters, he cracks open an eye. "You're up early," he says, smiling.
Hannah shakes her head at him and chuckles. "I'm always up early. For a long time it's been the only way to get any time alone, and now I can't seem to stop."
Hannah gives the other strange cushion thing a look, trying to figure out how to gracefully sit on the thing in a skirt. She manages pretty well, curling her legs under her and tucking her skirt up around them. She wiggles to get a feel for this... chair, and then leans back and closes her eyes for a minute.
"I guess I can see how you could sleep on this, but I think I'll stick to beds, myself," Hannah smiles. She turns her head to look over at him. "Are you awake enough for me to ask you questions? I have a bunch of them."
"I am, but I can pretend not to be if that'd help. One of the differences between us'uns and they'uns is that we don't need to sleep if we don't have to. It's not always, but I often had people think I spent the weekend on amphetamines when really, I just didn't want to stop doing what I was doing.
"Anyway, my alleged drug history aside, what can I do for you?"
"Take me to walk the Pattern?" Hannah asks.
"Okay," he says, sitting up and stretching, "if you're sure you're ready. So sure that you're ready to gamble your life on it. Because if you aren't you will."
He stands and looks at her, waiting. Hannah notices that he's barefoot.
"I'm rested. I've thought about it," she says, pushing herself up. "I'm ready. And frankly, I think I'd like to avoid the kind of audience Lilly had yesterday, if that's possible." Hannah smiles just a little shyly and twists a few more drops of water out of her hair, over her shoulder.
Random nods once, abruptly. "Let's go." He grabs a pair of (Promark!) drumsticks from a flower vase near the door and tucks one in his back pocket. "The Pattern is a source of knowledge of how to use the power you already have due to your blood. Walking it is an ordeal, after which you know more and understand less. The walk is different for each of us, so there's little I can tell you."
He taps the walls with the stick as he walks. "First, don't leave the lines of it as you walk. Just don't. That's the death thing. Second, the death thing. Don't stop, no matter how difficult, distracting, or tempting it gets."
The stairs go down, deep into the heart of the mountain in the back of the castle. "Any questions?"
"It's you, right? The Pattern, it's you? Dworkin said it was him. So this one is yours? It's you, you're it?" Hannah asks.
"I'm an untidy layabout skulking in dark basements who needs to get out more?" He runs his hand through his hair. "That's an interesting theory. Writing a pattern changes the pattern and the writer and intertwines them."
Hannah smiles at this.
"OK, it's through here." He turns a key and opens a door, and a subtle tracery in reds lights the way across a huge room, so large that Hannah cannot see across it. The Pattern, for that is what she is seeing, is amazing.
"You can start when you're ready--wait! Veils! I knew I forgot something. The places where it gets really hard are called veils. Don't stop there, either. Once you're past them, you're past them. OK, now you can start when you're ready."
Hannah nods, and looks at it the pattern a moment. "Can I do this barefoot?"
"Yes, if you're not ticklish. It might even be better."
Hannah nods. "So you changed the Pattern. Hm. What does it do to you when someone walks it? Does it change again? Do you?"
"There's only one way for you to find out," he says, sweeping his arm towards the spot where, somehow, Hannah knows the pattern starts. He's smiling mockingly, but it's unclear if he's mocking himself or something else about the situation.
Hannah smiles at him. "Alright, alright," she laughs at herself. She slips off her moccasins. "You'll take care of these for me? They are a gift."
He nods. "They'll be in your room when you get done and/or back. Never look a gift shoe in the mouth, as they say."
Hannah unconsciously presses the pouch hanging under her shirt against her chest. She closes her eyes and whispers a brief prayer in her native tongue.
Hannah walks silently to the beginning, and steps onto the Pattern, right foot first. She walks, quietly, and feels the presence already there. "...dying," it says. Hannah turns and looks at her mother, Mary, and almost weeps at the sight of her.
Being who I am and who I was is strange, she thinks, but responds as she did half a short lifetime ago. "Where is the doctor?"
"He said he didn't treat 'those people.' Ver de terre inutile. He's drinking, anyway," the older of the pair explains. Hannah watches the evening light, the beautiful pink sunset, shimmer across the intricate beadwork of her mother's gown.
"Why are you dressed up?" Hannah asks.
"Dinner. We were having a 'dinner'," Mary sighs. Hannah rolls her eyes and gets a slap on the arm for her irreverence. "Your papa deserves a nice dinner once every bit, if only he could have it."
"I'm sorry you were interrupted then," Hannah says, with sincerity beyond her years.
"Do you think..." Hannah begins to ask, as Mary begins at the same time asking, "What's gotten into you?" but a young man running up interrupts them both.
"They are moving her to the knob. Do you need anything?" he asks.
"Kajika," Hannah smiles, and takes his hand without breaking her pace. "No, I don't. It is good to see you."
He looks at her strangely, but squeezes her hand. He shoots Mary a quizzical look. Mary just shrugs. "You don't have to be afraid. You have done this alone, before, Ohanzee," he says reassuringly.
Hannah smiles up at his beautiful hair and perfect cheekbones and time finally slips away from her. "Only a fool walks in the spirit realm unafraid," she quotes. And then they arrive, and Hannah takes the old woman's hand, and keeps walking, as the others continue to carry her litter up to the knob.
Hannah walks her elder into the spirit world, away from the pain, away from earthly life. They walk through brilliant fields under the golden pink sun until her charge finds a comfortable place to stay, and sends her walking back with the sage statement, "Your path is clear enough."
"The forest has four layers, in our realm," says the wicasa wakan. "Nearest the earth the mosses and lichens live with thousands of insects and spiders that feed on the leaves as they decay. Above this wealth are the grasses and bowers where foxes, hares, small and flying animals and bigger insects live. Higher up the bushes feed the birds and deer. And above us the trees protect all else from the sun's drying."
"Do the spiders have their own spirit guides?" Hannah asks, plucking one off a tree as they wander by. "And why is he so high?"
"Have you asked him?"
"I asked one yesterday, but he didn't answer," Hannah pouts. The light sparkles through the trees.
"Did you try French?" the medicine man asks.
"No!" Hannah declares, outraged. "Spiders don't know French!"
"How do you know?"
Hannah scowls, deep in thought.
Her mother is clinging to her arm, and whispering fiercely in her ear in their native tongue. "You should have been more cautious. You let them think you've been misled by the old man, and he's dead. They can't hurt him, Ohanzee. You let them think he's bad and you're a confused girl. Just a confused dumb girl."
Hannah looks ahead, at the Chief in his suit talking to the pastor, the sheriff, the doctor and the agent. The vast conspiracy. She shakes her head and tugs down on the skirt of her best dress.
"Your papa will protect you," Tainne offers reassuringly from her left.
"No, mama. I will invoke the Son of God and Father William will protect me from the rest of them. If papa could do something we would not have been called," Hannah insists, and from the unhappy scowl on her father's face as he sees them coming, she knows she's right. Hannah puts on her contrite face, disengages from her mothers, and starts up the hill.
"Remember who you are," hisses Mary from behind her. The brush fire in the distance casts a strange glow. She presses her hand against her chest, but she's had to hide her pouch away. She feels naked without it. The voices of the men travel down to her; they are arguing about chaperones and accommodations and the law and lessons that need learning. But her father's voice is silenced by the wind and his low tones as he whispers to the sheriff, who goes pale. Hannah bites her lip at the absurdity of it all.
"She's just a girl... It's the law... He's right, you know..."
"I'm not tying up some girl," the sheriff insists, getting some of his color back. "You won't try to run away, will ya, darlin?"
"No sir," Hannah says gravely, cresting the hill. She doesn't look at her father, who she knows must be disappointed in her. He warned her to be careful. She turns her eyes on the pastor instead, pleadingly. She can't help it.
"Come walk with me, Miss Le Corbeau, while the men finish their business," he offers, and she takes his arm and lets him lead her away toward the road while the doctor protests her apparent freedom.
"How long do I have to go to the jail for?" she asks.
"At least 10 days. It will be up to the judge. He'll decide in the morning," Father William explains. Finally, the tears threaten, but pride forces them back.
"Will you stay with me?" Hannah asks.
"I can't stay all the time. I've got to be at the school and the church. And it wouldn't be proper."
"No, well, could you send your wife? Or Jenny?" she whispers.
"Hannah?"
"Please, Father, please. I know I did a bad thing and I'm sorry and I will do what I am told but please don't leave me alone with them. You know," she chokes, and can't finish the thought.
He purses his lips and glances back at the group, and sighs. "We'll rotate someone from the church down but you're going to have to give up these heathen ways. It's the devil, Hannah."
"...the white devils. You can pass better than the rest of us," Frank complains. Hannah kicks at a stone, and keeps walking down the riverbank. The rosy sunrise reflects off the water. "I had word of Kajika while I was down there."
Hannah's eyes fly up to her little brother. She doesn't ask, she just waits. Frank looks uncomfortable. "He married some girl. In a Church."
Hannah nods and looks back down at the rocks. "Well, good. I hope... I hope he found what he was looking for."
"You didn't think he was coming back," Frank states.
"No. I knew he wasn't coming back," Hannah scowls, and scoops up a rock without breaking her motion. She balances it on the tip of her index finger.
The wind picks up. "To hear, we must be silent and open. Leave your questions, and just listen." The rock reflects the pink sunrise, and Hannah's stomach rumbles. She looks from her childish hand up at the wicasa wakan, skeptically. "Look at the stone."
She does it, trying to let the hunger fade away, like she's done before. "Look, and listen. It will tell you its secrets, and then, in the other realms, you can change it. You have to learn the secrets of nature before nature can be your shield. You can not walk in the realms until you have a shield."
The wind gusts and the rock rolls into her palm. The rock disintegrates into dust and blows away before she can close her hand around it, but there remains a fossilized spiral shell. "There are times when you must walk alone on your journey. You will be strong ... you will exercise strength. When you walk through the fire, you must not fight it but allow yourself to know it, and it to know you."
The shell burns away in a flash as Hannah pushes herself through the veil. The past comes much faster, not to be experienced again so much as remembered; a recalling of events that show the pattern of decisions and consequences. Fights and loves, the agony of illnesses and the cries of the newly born all flow together to form the struggles, failures, and triumphs of a young life. Having practice with focus serves Hannah well as she applies herself to the physical exertion of the first veil.
Hannah steps through the veil and the pressure vanishes at once, or at least it seems to. Perhaps it's only nothing by comparison. She almost stumbles, and when she looks up again, it's into the eyes of her father.
Not the father she remembers, but she knows it is her father. Her home, this dank stone building, where her father reigns supreme. Her father, who forbade her to follow her path. Whom she defied. Whom she now faces for punishment.
Her father, that grim-faced old man, stares down at Hannah, and speaks in his deep, booming voice. "I told you not to follow your brother. Why did you disobey me?"
Her way lies through the door, beyond him. Hannah knows she must take it or die.
"I didn't follow him. I had to go that way. It's the way... it's my way," she says through clenched teeth and tries to push past him to get to the door.
Her father's strong arm reaches out and blocks her way. Pushing against it is like wading through molasses. Behind him she can see a red glow in the hall, perhaps from a torch on the wall.
His voice booms out again. "Why do you say it is your way to disobey me? I make these rules for your good and and for the good of our house. They are disregarded at your peril, and all of ours. What makes your wants so important that you will defy that good?"
"You don't understand. I'll die. I don't have time to make you understand. You are in my way. Let me go," Hannah growls, and shoves against him with all her strength.
The resistance is nearly unbearable. "You must answer me," her father says, "or you will never leave this place."
Hannah is halfway to panic. She reaches for a knife she didn't bring. "You're wrong. Your rules, they're not... logical. It's the seventh generation. If I can do this, the seventh generation will have a place. If you don't let me go, there won't be a seventh - we won't make it! They're maiming us and choking us until we die, stripping away everything that matters. The Unicorn lead me to the answer - she brought me so I can bring them! That is why I can defy the good of now for what must be done for later. Survival justifies my actions," Hannah shouts, years of hidden angers rising to the surface. "Now. Get. Out. Of. My. Path."
Hannah can feel herself moving forward, millimeter by millimeter, toward the door. She is almost there, she can feel it.
Her father asks one more question. "Survival? Who will die that the seventh generation might live?"
"Perhaps you, perhaps me. Perhaps both of us. But isn't that what we should do, if that's what has to be done. Then they live through us," Hannah explains, so sure that's true. Absolutely positive that belief is right, she smiles at him, trying a little charm and feeling her confidence. "Let me by now, please."
"Remember this if you are called to make that sacrifice," her father says, and Hannah steps through the door. It's as if she'd run a hard race and suddenly stopped, and the sparks dazzle her eyes for a moment. When they clear, she is in a room by the waters, and she can see the sea from her chambers.
She is walking, walking, following a rhythm and a path only she can know. The child she carries will come soon.
Hannah runs her hand over her stomach. "Soon," she whispers to the baby as much as herself, horribly impatient to have what she's put off for so long. "You will be a dream finally born. Finally," she almost sings, and looks from the sea to the room, again, to make sure everything is ready.
Everything has to be ready.
She sees the stone walls and the shutters and the town and the harbor below and Hannah knows her baby needs to be born somewhere else. This is not a child for these rooms. If she stops here, if she lets her body tell her what to do instead of her telling it, they'll both die.
She should have the child at the Spring, in the grove in the forest that he showed her.
Her daughter should be born there.
She picks up her clean knife and tosses it in her bag, and heads down the steps, out the door, and down the path away from the sea. Toward the woods, the earthy woods that smell of the cycle of life. She hums a little tune as she goes. "Hush-a-bye, baby..."
Her daughter kicks. Daughter. No matter what he thinks. As if he needs more sons. The path down the side of the mountain to the glen is oddly deserted, and she sees no one.
As Hannah reaches the woods, a rider comes out from them, blocking her path. "You turn your back to the sea and your home, Lady. How have we failed you that you abandon us? We were always true to the obervances."
She has a blade at her side, but it is sheathed.
Hannah smiles. "Who says I am abandoning you? I merely seek the proper place to bring this child into the world. I know these things," she adds sagely, hoping that line will work.
"Come down and walk with me for awhile." Hannah offers her hand, as if in the final stages of pregnancy she can actually help this woman down off her horse.
The woman slides off smoothly, landing beside Hannah. She lets Hannah lead, walking a respectful step-and-a-half behind her.
"Your place, Lady, is with your people, not this mountaintop. I mislike this forest, it is wild and you lose the sea not too many paces in. What place can be proper that has no seabirds or surf? It bodes ill for your daughter.
"I fear she will not know her duty."
Hannah sighs. "How can you say that? Do you think her duty lies in just one direction? Wouldn't you like the forest better if we had someone who understood it? All these things are tied together, you know - the forest and the sea and this mountain. They're a family, and perhaps this forest is the wild young one, but it's still part of us. Nonetheless you will be relieved to hear I head for water, so she can find her way to the sea."
"Hmm," she says. "That is not what we have been telling the people, but you are doubtless right, Lady. I shall take your counsel to heart. A daughter of yours who was not antagonistic to our sisters in the woods might help seal the old breach. I had not known you desired it."
The child kicks hard and Hannah winces at the pain, which goes away and she find herself alone, the lines of the pattern under her bare feet, as she presses onwards. The resistance is tremendous, but the ruby sparks do not prevent her from moving, step by step, through the ordeal. After a turn, the pressure increases. Hannah looks up.
Gerard stands before her. Less careworn. He looks surprised. "Ye want me tae foster your bairn? I did nae ken that ye were wi' child! Why will ye' not keep her?"
Hannah blinks at the standing Gerard, but then his words sink in. Her hand goes to her stomach. She's tight, everything is so tight. She tries not to shake.
"Do you think I want to do this?" Hannah asks, fighting back tears suddenly, and an overwhelming sense of grief. "You know why. You know all the good people. I don't know them. Please, Gerard."
He turns and picks up a basket with a sleeping infant in it and walks with Hannah.
"I'd tell ye that ye should nae have returned haime, but it's too late for spilt milk. I can hardly recognize ye, ye look sae tired." He shakes his head.
"It breaks me heart to see one o' us infirm. We're no' the eternal playing cards we always wanted tae think we were."
Hannah sighs and looks away from him.
"If I do this, an' I said 'if', for I've not decided yet, what do I tell Da? And Julian? Neither one o' them will like this."
"Here is just the thing I never understood. Why do you have to tell them anything? I didn't come to you because you are a male relative, Gerard. I came because I trust you." She tilts her head back to look at him cautiously. "There are infinite options, right? But this seemed like the best one."
"I cannae gainsay you, lass, She's a wee sunny bairn, too. Aye, I'll kip her away from Da' and watch over her. Ye should stay awa' for awhi'. Both from here and from hame, I recon. You wi' do that will ye no? For me?"
Hannah does not look at the baby. She nods, and glances at Gerard's face to see if he'll take that for agreement.
Gerard says, "ah, well. 'Twas ever thus wi' my advice. Try not tae do anything too dangerous. And if ye'd lay some flowers at Mother's tomb, I'd appreciate it."
Before Hannah can respond, Gerard steps to the left, while she steps to the right and she loses sight of him in the now-chest-high sparks of red light that rise all around her. Hannah presses forward against the stiff resistance. She has no idea how far she has come or how far she can go, but she presses forward, concentrating on nothing but the step, step, step of the path, the intricate series of arcs and switchbacks.
After a disorienting series of short arcs and sweeps, she senses a presence behind her.
"You've been gone an awfully long time. Where are you going?" Her father's voice.
"Father, I must go forward - please come up and walk with me. I think... I think I'm going to the center of the universe. Not the Blue Earth, but of all the Earths, in the whole Universe. Do you think it is possible?"
"And why is the center important?," he asks. "What do you look to find there or know there that you do not know now?"
"I don't know if it's important, except... it is part of the pattern of my life. Things just happen that led me to places I didn't expect to be going. Or... I've been led to choices, but I like to think I made them. This is so frustrating. I thought I knew who I was, and where I belonged, and what I should be doing. I know who I am," Hannah breathes. "I do. Everything else changed, but I am still who I am. Who I was. But everything else I thought I knew was always just part of a series of possibilities - except you, father. She chose you, didn't she? What is my mother's name?"
"She didn't have a name, not that I was ever sure was really hers. " Hannah can feel him, just behind her, inches away, yet in perfect step. "I never expected to learn it, especially not after she left. "Do you know it?"
"Not yet, but I will." Hannah sighs. There are too many questions and not enough time. "I will come back as soon as I can, father. There are things I have to do first."
Hannah tries to rush on before he can say something she doesn't want to hear. "What did she call herself? I'm sure it meant something to her."
"Don't think I don't know what you're doing. We called each other 'beloved' in the words of her people." Your father's Thari is excellent, you realize. "She took me far from our people, and we lived in spirit realms for what seemed like years. When you were born, she gave you to me, and returned me to my people. Days had passed. Does it matter to you that you are a child of a spirit?"
"Oh, Papa. If only it were so simple," Hannah whispers in French. "It explains so much, does it not?"
Hannah sighs, and reverts back to the Omaha tongue. "Our ancestors are part of us; they give us their power and live through us. You saw I was taught these things, and I have lived these things. That she is of a different realm than you makes her and her line no less my ancestors. My cousins here are no less my cousins. If my Omaha uncle had an injury I might help him heal from, I would do that, and I can do no less for my other uncle. Ancestors are important to her people too. That I can not tell them my full linage makes it hard for them to open a place for me in the family here. The great-grandfather here, he said it may be that you are descended from his line. Does that not matter to you?"
His voice takes on an edge that Hannah never thought to hear from him. "All your uncles are dying here, slowly, of the white-man's incursion. Do you not think we need you here?"
Hannah turns her head to try to get a look at him, but has turned back just as quickly, not willing to misstep. She starts blinking tears out of her eyes, trying to stay focused on the glowing line beneath her.
"I have never doubted I was needed. I will come home as soon as I can. Tell the council I'm coming back, in case it takes longer than I intend..."
She takes a deep breath and fights past the way her throat wants to close up at the idea she'll be too late to see her father again. "Tell them I followed a Unicorn to the true earth, and that if I come back past my time they shouldn't fear me for an evil spirit. I'll have a purple feather. And I'll bring possibilities back with me, but the elders will have to choose. I can't do that for them, and I won't split the tribe.
"But if I can father, I will be back to see you again. I've not been gone a month, here. Time... you know," she breathes. "How long have I been gone?"
"Turn from this path, and I will show you."
In fact, staying on the path is the hardest thing Hannah has ever done. It would be easy to slip from it.
Hannah grits her teeth against the urge. She calls on the reserves that got her through medical school at the top of her class in half the time, and the strength that has let her walk more than one child out of the earth realm forever. "I can't, father. Tell me," she demands, through her teeth. "How long have I been gone?"
"Decide first, " he replies. "What's more important to you, what you're doing or what you already know that you want me to tell you." It sounds to Hannah like her father, but somehow, it also doesn't.
"I can't go backward in time; I can't change things that have already happened, and their effect on me," Hannah pleads for understanding, and falls silent a moment, thinking. Thinking too hard, too long, trying to think her way around all these barriers.
She sighs, half devastated. "It's more important to me to do as much as I can do for the Universe, and that means I have to focus here, for now. I'm trying to find a way to be two places at once, and I can't do that. I'm trying to come to terms with abandoning one responsibility to take another, and even if I make it back... it might be too late. But father, what I need to be true is that it's not my fault if..."
Hannah pushes forward, through the pain and the exertion and the words, ignoring the tears and trusting her instinct to keep her on the path. Trusting herself; that even if all the possibilities leave her heartbroken, that she can survive that, this, and them.
"I am the tribe, and the tribe will live."
The steps are excruciatingly difficult, but by sheer force of will Hannah pushes her way through. The barrier parts and she almost stumbles but does not, taking the last three steps to the center.
She stands amid the fading red glow at the center of Xanadu's pattern, newfound skills now written in her blood. The pattern will take her wherever she orders it.
Hannah puts her face in her hands and breathes for some time before she lifts her head to speak.
"May the house wherein I dwell be blessed;
My good thoughts here possess me;
May my path of life be straight and true;
My dreams as here I live be joyous;
All above, below, about me
May the house I love be hallowed," she prays, and wipes away her
still-falling tears.
Hannah wants her bed, and she'll take the nearest one she knows, here in Xanadu's stone.
The room is as Hannah remembers it, with the addition of a bowl of fruit on the bedside table. Outside of the room, Hannah hears voices in a nearby room. She doesn't recognize them, nor can she tell what they're saying. Hannah is physically exhausted, but not sleepy.
Hannah lays down on the bed with a sigh, pulling the bowl of fruit over to rest on her stomach. She starts with an apple since it doesn't require peeling.
She stares at the ceiling, thinking. She has a sudden urge to carve up there, but it's not all that hard to ignore it and just lay there.
After a few bites she sets the apple down next to her and closes her eyes, seeing if she can fall into the spirit realm, here. She takes a few deep breaths, and lets the fatigue of her body exist, but not affect her. She ignores hunger and the taste of apple in her mouth. She lets go, however briefly, of trying to understand all the things she now knows, and stops even attempting to put them into an order. Instead she opens herself to reach for that feeling of yesterday.
After a suitable time, Hannah feels herself drifting and detaching. The spirit realm here is quite different from that outside on the balcony. She feels both newness and age from the building and also it seems to be real in a way that buildings are usually not real. If the wind blows outside as it did before, the building shelters her.
Everything Hannah sees, including herself, seems to be built of small fragments of the Pattern. Everything is in shades of red.
"And we all are connected," she whispers. She raises her hand to the stone but pulls it back before she touches it. "Is that triumph, or life blood?"
She smiles a very tired smile, and starts trying to reconnect with her body.
It's difficult at first, but after a moment it's as if someone were guiding her and helping her, as if she had a steadying hand on her back. Soon she is inside herself again, and the ceiling is unmarred above her head.
A body-borne Hannah smiles and whispers, "Thank you." She picks the apple back up to finish it, and thinks, among other things, about how offended her little sister would be that she didn't show up in Hannah's latest ritual when both Frank and father did.
Last modified: 30 May 2005