The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

When Laura arrived, she fell into Reuben’s arms. Her cheeks were beautifully rosy and she wore a pink cashmere scarf with her long finely cut navy blue coat. She was thrilled by the festival and embraced Felix warmly. She wanted to see the rag-doll dealers, and of course the quilt dealers, and she’d heard there was someone selling French and German antique dolls too. “And how did you achieve this in only a few weeks?” she asked Felix.

“Well, no entry fee, no license requirements, no rules, no restrictions, and some cash incentives,” said Felix exuberantly. “And a lot of repeated personal invitations by phone and e-mail, and networks of phone helpers, and voilà, they have come. But think about next year, darling, what we can do.”

They broke for a quick lunch at the Inn, where a table was ready for them. Margon was in fast conversation with a table of real estate agents and potential investors, and eagerly stood to greet Felix and introduce people all around. Stuart, with two of his old high school buddies, was holding forth from another table.

A state senator had been looking for Reuben, and two state representatives, and several people wanted to know what Felix thought about widening and improving the road to the coast, or whether it was true he was going to build a planned community back of the cemetery, and could he talk a little about the architectural theme he had in mind?

Reporters came and went. They did ask right off about the Man Wolf attack at the house, with the same old questions and Reuben gave them the same old answers. There were a few local news cameras from the surrounding towns passing through. But the Christmas festival was the real news, and the banquet later at “the castle.” Would this be a yearly tradition? Yes, indeed.

“And to think,” Laura said to Margon, “he made this happen, he brought together all this life where essentially there was no life.…”

Margon nodded, drinking his hot chocolate slowly. “This is what he loves to do. This is his home. He was like this years ago. It was his town, and now he’s back and free once again to be mentor and the creative angel for another couple of decades and then—.” He broke off. “Then,” he repeated looking around, “what will we do?”

After lunch, Laura and Reuben hit the antique-doll table and two of the quilt tables, and Reuben carried all the goods for Laura to her Jeep. She’d parked on the very edge of the cemetery, and to Reuben’s amazement he found the cemetery crowded with people who were photographing the mausoleum and the old tombs.

The place appeared picturesque enough, as always, yet he couldn’t prevent a frisson from paralyzing him as he looked at the graves. A huge arrangement of fresh flowers stood before the iron gates of the Nideck mausoleum. He closed his eyes for a moment and whispered a silent prayer of sorts for Marchent, an acknowledgment of what? That she could not be here, could not see or taste or feel, or be part of this vibrant and shifting world?

He and Laura stole a few quiet moments in the Jeep before she took off. This was Reuben’s first chance to tell her about the Forest Gentry, to tell her the strange and moving things that Elthram had said about her, and having known her when she walked the forest with her father. She was speechless. Then after a long pause she confessed that she’d always felt the presence of the spirits of the wood.

“But then everyone does, I think, everyone who spends any time alone in the forest. And we tell ourselves it’s our imagination, just as we do when we feel the presence of ghosts. I wonder if we offend them, the spirits, the dead, when we don’t believe in them.”

“I don’t know, but you will believe this spirit,” he said. “He appeared as real as you do to me now or I to you. He was solid. The floor creaked when he walked. The chair creaked when he sat down. And there was a scent coming from him; it was, I don’t know, like honeysuckle and green things, and dust, but you know dust can be a clean smell, like in the first rain, when the dust rises.”

“I know,” she said. “Reuben, why are these things making you sad?”

“But they’re not,” he protested.

“Yes, they are. They’re making you sad. Your voice changed just now when you talked about these things.”

“Oh, I don’t know, if I am sad it’s a sweet sadness,” he said. “It’s just that my world’s changing, and I’m caught betwixt and between, or I’m part of both, and yet the real world, the world of my parents, of my old friends, it can’t know this new world, and so it can’t know that part of me which is so changed.”

“But I know it,” she said. She kissed him.

He knew if he took her in his arms, he couldn’t stand it, stand not having her, stand being here with her in the Jeep, with people passing as they made their way to their cars. This was so painful.

“You and I, we make a new covenant, don’t we?” he asked. “I mean we make a new covenant in this new world.”

“Yes,” she said. “And when I see you on Christmas Eve, I want you to know that I’m yours, I’m your bride in this world, if you’ll have me.”

“Have you? I can’t exist without you.” He meant it. No matter what fear he felt of her transforming into the she-wolf, he meant it. He would get past that fear. Love for her would carry him past it, and there was no doubt that he loved her. With every passing day of being without her, he knew that he loved her.

“I will be your spouse on Christmas Eve,” he said. “And you will be my bride, and yes, this will be the sealing of our covenant.”

This was the hardest parting from her yet. But finally, kissing her quickly on both cheeks, he slipped out of the Jeep and stood by the side of the road to watch her go.

It was two o’clock as she headed for the highway.

Reuben headed back to the Inn.

He ducked back into the private bedroom set aside for him and his party long enough to use the bathroom and then he completed a quick little story on the festival for the Observer and e-mailed it to his editor, Billie Kale, with the note that he’d have more to add if she wanted it later on.

Billie had already left for the banquet, but he knew she’d hired a chauffeured car for herself and the staff so she could pass judgment on the story from the road.

Indeed the answer came back, “Yes, and yes,” as he was leaving the Inn again with Felix and the others under the first sunshine that had broken through all afternoon. She texted that his Christmas-traditions essay was now the most e-mailed story on the paper’s website. But she’d like to add a short paragraph to today’s story, about the Man Wolf being nowhere in sight during the village fair. “Yes,” Reuben said, and tapped out the paragraph just as she’d requested.