The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"Maybe I could give him the letter," said Reuben. "I,m from the Nideck house."

"Yes, I know that you are," said the man.

Reuben introduced himself and apologized for not having done so before.

"That,s all right," said the man. "Everybody knows who you are. We,re glad there,s a new family in the old house. Glad to see you."

The man went out into the Inn,s dining room and came back with the letter. "My wife opened it before she saw what it was. Then she saw it was for Tom Marrok. So I,m sorry about that. You can tell him we,re to blame for that."

"Thank you," said Reuben. He had never stolen a piece of federally protected mail before, and he felt his cheeks color.

"If he comes in, I,ll tell him you,re up at the house and you,ve got the letter."

"That would be fine," said Reuben.

Galton waved from the bar and lifted his beer stein as Reuben and Laura went out the door.

They drove back to the house.

"You can,t believe anything Marrok told you," said Laura, "not about ,the other, or his intentions. It was lies."

Reuben stared straight ahead. He had but one thought in his head and that was that Marrok had been in the house yesterday before they even arrived.

As soon as they were safe inside the great room again, he opened the letter. He was certain this had been the property of the dead creature, so what was the point of scrupling about it now?

The letter was in that strange spidery script that he,d seen only once before - in Felix,s diary upstairs.

There were three pages to the letter, and not a single word was discernible to him, of course. But there was what might be a signature.

"Come with me," he said and led Laura up the stairs to Felix,s small studio. He snapped on the overhead light.

"It,s gone," he said. "Felix,s diary. It was right there on that desk."

He began to search the desk. But he knew it was useless. Whoever had taken the tablets from all over the house had taken the diaries of Felix Nideck too.

He looked at Laura. "He,s alive," he said. "I know he is. He,s alive, and he wrote to this man, Marrok, telling him to come back here, to - ."

"You don,t know what he told him," Laura said reasonably. "You don,t really know that this letter is from Felix. You only know these people share a language, a script."

"No. I know. He,s alive. He,s always been alive. Something stopped him from coming back here and claiming his identity and his property. Maybe he wanted to disappear. Maybe he couldn,t pretend to be his age any longer, because he simply wasn,t aging. And he had to disappear. Though I can,t believe he would have done such a painful thing to Marchent or her parents - as to simply disappear."

He was still for a moment, surveying the familiar clutter of the little room. The blackboards, the bulletin boards - all appeared unchanged. There was the same faded chalk writing, the same yellowed newspaper clippings with their map tacks. The same photographs everywhere of the smiling Felix and the smiling Sergei and the other mysterious men.

"I have to reach him some way, I have to talk with him, beg him to understand what happened to me, that I didn,t know what this was, that I - ."

"What is it?"

He let out a long exasperated sigh. "It,s the restlessness," he said. "It,s the restlessness that comes when I can,t change, when I don,t hear the voices calling me. I,ve got to get out of here. I,ve got to walk. But we can,t remain here; we can,t remain like sitting ducks, just waiting for him to strike."

He paced the floor, surveying the shelves again. There had probably been other diaries, tucked in the shelves here, but the shelves had never been full, and he couldn,t know. Was it Marrok who had entered the house and taken these things? Or was it Felix himself?

The door stood open to the adjacent bedroom - the northwest-corner bedroom where he and Marchent had made love. That sense of the man came over him again, the keeper of these rooms, the man who,d chosen that great ornate black four-poster bed, all carved with tiny intricate figures, who had placed the black diorite figure of a cat near the lamp, who had left, what, a book of poems by Keats there on that little inlaid table by the chair.

He picked up the book. A faded burgundy ribbon marked a page. "Ode on Melancholy." And on the page there was written a black check mark in ink by the first stanza, and a long line beside it, and scribbles in that fleecy writing - the Felix writing - that looked like a drawing of the sea.

"Here, here is what he marked a long time ago." He gave it to Laura.

She took it to the lamp and gently read it aloud:

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist

Wolf,s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss,d

By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

Make not your rosary of yew-berries

,

Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow,s mysteries;

For shade to shade will come too drowsily

,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul

.

The agony of this, wanting so much to talk to him, to appeal to him. I did what was natural to me, I did it because I didn,t know what else to do. But was this true?

An overwhelming desire for the power came over him. The restlessness was driving him mad.

The wind tossed the rain against the black windows. Beyond, he heard the waves pounding the shore.

Laura looked so patient, so quietly respecting, so silent. She stood by the lamp with the Keats in her hands. She looked at the cover, and then back to him.

"Come," she said. "I have to check something. Perhaps I made a mistake."

She led the way down the hall into the master bedroom.

The little paperback book How I Believe was still lying on the table where she,d left it early that morning.

She opened it now and turned the brittle pages carefully.

"Yes, this is it. I wasn,t mistaken. Look at the inscription."

Beloved Felix

,

For You!

We have survived this;

we can survive anything

.

In Celebration

,

Margon

Rome ,04

"Yes, well, Margon gave it to Felix at some point, yes," said Reuben. He didn,t quite understand.

"Look at the date."

He read it aloud, " ,Rome ,04., Oh, my God. He disappeared in 1992. And this, this ... this means he is alive and ... he,s been in this house. He,s been here since he disappeared."

"Apparently so, at least at some point in the last eight years, yes."