The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“No, they don’t,” said Margon crossly. “They pretend to do these things!”

“The fact is, they believe they can do them,” said Felix. “And they can be entirely visible to anyone!” He stopped, and took a drink of his coffee, and wiped his lips with his napkin. Then he resumed, his voice rolling easily and calmly once more. “They are distinct personalities, they have lineages and histories. But most important of all, they have the capacity to love.” He emphasized the last word. “To love. And they are loving.” Tears were rising in his eyes as he looked at Reuben. “And that is why I invited them.”

“They are coming anyway, are they not?” said Sergei in a loud voice, gesturing impatiently with both his hands. He looked pointedly at Margon. “Won’t they be here on Midwinter night? They are always here. If we build the fire, if our musicians play, if they play the drums and the flutes and we dance, they come! They play for us and they dance with us.”

“Yes, they come and they may go as swiftly as they come,” said Felix. “But I’ve begged them to come soon and remain so that I can implore them to help us.”

“Very well,” said Sergei, “so what is the harm? You think the workmen know they are here? They don’t. Nobody knows except us, and we know only when they want us to know.”

“Precisely, when they want us to know,” said Margon. “They’ve been in and out of this house for days. They’re likely in this room now.” He was becoming more and more heated. “They’re listening to what we’re saying. You think when you snap your fingers they’ll go? Well, they won’t. They’ll go when they have a mind to go. And if they have a mind to play pranks, they’ll drive us crazy. Reuben, you think a restless spirit is a cross to bear? Wait till they start their tricks.”

“I think they are here,” said Stuart softly. “Really, Felix, I think they are. They can move things when they’re invisible, can’t they? I mean light things like curtains. And they blow out candles, or make the fire in the grate flare up.”

“Yes, they can do all that,” said Felix caustically, “but usually only when they’re offended, or insulted, or overlooked, or denied. I don’t mean to give them any offense. I mean to welcome them now, welcome them this very night into this house. Their capacity for mischief is a small price to pay if they can gather to themselves the suffering spirit of my niece.” Now he was weeping and he didn’t bother to conceal it.

This was bringing tears to Reuben’s eyes too. He took out his handkerchief, and set it on the table. He gestured to Felix with it, but Felix shook his head, and took out his own.

Felix wiped at his nose and went on.

“I want to invite them in formally. You know what that means to them. They want food set out—the proper offerings.”

“These are prepared,” said Lisa softly from the fireplace. “I’ve put out their cream for them in the kitchen, and their butter cakes, the things they love. It’s all set out there.”

“They’re a bunch of lying ghosts,” said Margon under his breath. He took in Stuart and Felix with his eyes. “That’s all they are and all they’ve ever been. They’re spirits of the dead and they don’t know it. They’ve built a mythology for themselves since olden times, lie upon lie, as they’ve grown stronger. They’re nothing but lying ghosts, strong ghosts who’ve been evolving in power since the dawn of intellect and recorded memory.”

“I don’t get it,” said Stuart.

“Stuart, everything is evolving on this planet,” said Margon. “And ghosts are no exception. True, human beings die every minute and their souls ascend, or stumble into the earthbound sphere and roam in a self-made wilderness for years of earth time. But collectively, the inhabitants of the earthbound sphere have been evolving. The earthbound have their Ageless Ones; the earthbound have their aristocracy; they have their myths now and their ‘beliefs’ and their superstitions. And above all, they have their powerful and brilliant personalities who have grown ever stronger over the centuries at holding their ethereal bodies together, and concentrating their focus so as to manipulate matter in ways that early ghosts on the planet never even dreamed of.”

“You mean they’ve learned how to be ghosts?” asked Reuben.

“They’ve learned how to stop being mere ghosts and develop into sophisticated discarnate personalities,” said Margon. “And finally, and this is most important, they have learned how to become visible.”

“But how do they do it?” asked Stuart.

“Force of mind, energy,” said Margon. “Concentration, focus. They draw to their subtle bodies, these ethereal bodies they possess, material particles. And the very strongest of these ghosts, the great nobility, if you will, can render themselves so visible and solid that no human looking at them, touching them, making love to them, could possibly know they were spirits.”

“Good God, they could be walking around amongst us,” said Stuart.

“They are walking around with us,” said Margon. “I see them all the time. But what I’m trying to tell you is that these Forest Gentry are merely one tribe of these old and evolving ghosts, and of course they are among the most cunning, the most practiced and the most formidable.”

“So why do they bother with fables about themselves?” asked Stuart.

Felix interjected. “They don’t consider their origin stories mere fables,” he said. “Not by any means, and it is offensive to suggest to them that their beliefs are mere fables.”

Margon gave a faint sneer. His face was too agreeable for it to be a mean sneer and it vanished immediately.

“There is nothing under the sun,” said Margon, “nor under the moon, no entity of intellect, that does not have to believe something about itself, something about its purpose, the reason for its suffering, its destiny.”

“So what you’re saying,” said Reuben, “is that Marchent is a new ghost, a baby ghost, a ghost who doesn’t know how to appear or disappear—.”

“Exactly,” said Margon. “She is confused, struggling, and what she’s managed to achieve has depended on the intensity of her feelings—her desperate desire to communicate with you, Reuben. And to some extent her success so far has depended on your sensitivity to seeing her ethereal presence.”