The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Now the night was translucent, the shadows were thinning, and the rain felt like nothing, swirling before his eyes. The forest sang, tiny creatures surrounding him, as if welcoming him.

In the kitchen window he saw Laura watching him, the light very yellow behind her, her face in shadow. But he could clearly see the glistening orbs of her eyes.

He ran towards the house, directly below where two of the gables met, and springing on the wall effortlessly, he climbed up the protruding blocks of stone, higher and higher until he reached the roof. Through the narrow little valley of slates between the gables, he made his way to the great square glass roof.

He saw now that it was set below the gable rooms, and roofed only the secret space of the second floor.

The gables showed it only blank walls as they surrounded it, as if guarding it from the world.

Dead leaves filled the deep gutters that ran along each side of it, and it gleamed like a great black pool of water beneath the light of the mist-shrouded moon.

He went on his knees to move across it. It was slippery with rainwater, and he could feel how thick the glass was, and see the iron ribs that supported it, crisscrossing beneath him, but he could not see into the room or rooms below. The glass was darkly tinted, laminated perhaps, surely tempered. In the southwest corner, he found the square hatch or trapdoor that he had only glimpsed from the satellite map. It was surprisingly large, framed in iron, fitted flush into the iron, like a large pane of the roof. And he could find no handle, or way to open it, no visible hinges, no edge to grasp. It was sealed tight.

Surely there was a way to open it, unless he,d been wrong all the time. But no. He was sure that it opened. He explored the deep gutter, digging like a dog through the leaves, but he found no handle, or lever or button to push.

What if it opened inward? What if it required weight and strength? He tested it with his paws. He figured it was about three feet square.

He climbed to his feet and stood on it, approaching the south side first and then, flexing his legs with all his strength, he jumped.

The thing flapped open, the hinges behind him, and down he went into the darkness, catching hold of the edge above him with both paws. The scents of wood and dust, of books, of mold, flooded his nostrils.

Still gripping the rim, his feet dangling, he looked around and saw the dim outlines of a giant room. He feared to be trapped in it however, but his curiosity was a lot stronger than his fear. If he could get in, he could get out. He dropped to the floor, on carpet, and the trapdoor creaked as it closed again, slowly, sealing out the sky.

This was the deepest darkness he,d ever known. The tint of the glass made the faint shine of the moon a mere blur.

He could feel a plaster wall before him, and a door, a paneled door. He felt the knob of the door, and turned it, hearing it and feeling it turn though he could scarcely see it, and he pulled it open to his right.

Creeping slowly through the door, he almost toppled and fell down a narrow steep stairs. Oh, so they had been wrong all the time that this sanctuary was accessed through the second floor. He climbed down now quickly, easily, to the first floor of the house, feeling the wall on both sides with his paws.

The door at the bottom opened inwards and he found himself in a small room he immediately recognized by its scent: linen, silver polish, candles. It was one of the pantries between the dining room and the great room. He opened the door and stepped into the wide-arched alcove that divided the two enormous rooms.

Laura came towards him out of the kitchen, through the long butler,s pantry and across the darkened dining room.

"So this is the way," she said in astonishment.

"We,ll need a flashlight," he said. "Even I will need a flashlight. It,s quite dark."

She went into the pantry from which he,d come.

"But look, there,s a light switch," she said, reaching into the stairwell. She snapped it on. At once a small bulb was illuminated at the very top of the narrow stairs.

"I see," he said. He was marveling. Could this interior sanctum be heated and wired? And how long ago had someone been here - to see to the lightbulb?

He led the way up, back to the small landing beneath the skylight.

By the weak light of the landing, they peered through an open doorway into a vast room. Books there were aplenty on shelves everywhere, covered in dust and cobwebs, but this was no simple library, not by any means.

Tables crowded the center of the room, most of them filled with scientific equipment - beakers, Bunsen burners, banks of test tubes, small boxes, stacks of glass slides, bottles, jars. One long table was entirely draped with a grayish threadbare cloth. All was encrusted with dust.

Another light switch immediately turned on the overhead bulbs, strung on iron rafters beneath the wired glass of the roof along the western side of the room.

There had once been lights everywhere but most of the sockets hung empty now.

Laura began to cough from the dust. It was a gray film on the beakers and burners, on every object they could see, even on the loose papers that lay here and there among the equipment, on pencils and pens.

"Microscopes," said Reuben. "Primitive, all of them, antiques." He walked through the wilderness of tables. "It,s old, all of it very old. Things like this haven,t been used in a laboratory in decades."

Laura pointed. At the farthest end of the room from them, and from the light, stood several giant rectangular cages, rusted, seemingly ancient, like the cages for primates at a zoo. In fact, cages large and small lined the eastern wall.

Reuben felt a reflexive horror take hold of him looking at these cages. Cages for Morphenkinder? Cages for beasts? He moved slowly towards them. He opened one immense door that groaned and creaked on its hinges. Old locks, dangling from chains, were rusted too. Well, this cage might hold another Morphenkind, but it could not have held him. Or could it?

"All this," he said, "all this must be a hundred years old."

"That,s perhaps the only good thing about it," Laura said. "Whatever happened here, it took place a long time ago."

"But why was it abandoned?" Reuben asked. "What caused them to give up all of this?"

His eyes moved over the bookshelves lining the northern wall.

He moved closer. "Medical journals," he said, "but they,re all from the nineteenth century. Well, here,s some from the early 1900s - 1910, 1915, then they stop."

"Yet someone has been here," said Laura. "There,s more than one set of tracks from the door. The tracks go everywhere."

"All the same person, I think. Small tracks. A small soft shoe without a heel, a moccasin. It was Marrok. He,s come and gone here, but no one else."