The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

Suddenly he did feel a hand on his arm and he heard a very familiar voice say, “Well, that’s one very interesting-looking man.”

He woke as if from a dream.

It was his dad standing beside him. It was Phil, and Phil was staring into the shop.

“There are a lot of really interesting people here,” said Phil in the same half murmur. Reuben stood dazed as out of the shadows the two figures emerged once more, Elthram still smiling, his arm fastened as tightly as before to Marchent, and Marchent looking so delicate in her brown wool dress and brown boots, such a thin frail figure, in the very long soft dress she’d worn the day she died. This time her pale eyes fastened on Reuben and she offered the faintest acknowledging smile. Such a winsome distant smile.

And then they were gone.

Simply gone. Subtracted from the shifting world around them, subtracted as though they’d never been there at all.

Phil sighed.

Reuben turned to Phil, glaring at him, unable to say what he wanted to say. Phil was still looking at the door of the shop. Phil had to have seen them disappear.

But Phil said nothing to Reuben. Phil just stood there in his heavy gray tweed jacket, gray scarf around his neck, his hair blowing slightly in the breeze—looking at the open shop as before.

The pain in Reuben’s guts was sharpened, and his heart ached. If only he could tell his father everything, absolutely everything, if only he could bring his father into the world in which he, Reuben, was struggling, if only he could access the wisdom that had always been there for him, and which he’d wasted too often in his life.

But how could he even begin? And half measures were as intolerable as this silence.

A dream flared in his heart. Phil would eventually move to the guesthouse at Nideck Point. They’d certainly talked of his visiting often enough.

And after Phil moved to the guesthouse, and surely Phil would, they would sit together and Reuben would, with the blessing of the Distinguished Gentlemen, pour out the whole tale. They’d sit in candlelight with the sea banging on the cliffs below, and talk and talk and talk.

But as the dream flared, an awesome and horrifying vista opened for him on the coming years. The divide could only become greater and greater between him and his father. His loneliness felt like a shell in which he was suffocating. A great sadness filled him. He felt a lump in his throat.

He looked away, more into his thoughts than at anything particular, and as his eyes moved over the street, he now saw them everywhere, the shaggy-haired, leather-clad figures of the Forest Gentry, some in dark green, others in varying shades of brown, some even in bright colors, but all distinct in that soft chamois cloth, with their abundant hair, their windblown tangled hair. Their skin was radiant and their eyes sparkled. They exuded happiness and excitement. It was so easy to see them as they passed, as they walked among the human beings, so easy to know who they were. He recognized here and there women and children he had glimpsed in that eerie moment in the dining room when they had all crowded in on the table before vanishing into the night.

And they were observing him, too, weren’t they? They were nodding to him. One woman with long red hair made him a little curtsey quickly before disappearing behind a crowd of others. And they were looking at Phil.

Phil stood as passive and silent as before, his hands in his coat pockets just watching the great parade go by. “Look at that woman,” he said airily, “in that beautiful old hat. Such a beautiful old hat.”

Reuben glanced in that direction and caught a glimpse of her, a fellow human being, not one of the Forest Gentry, a slender figure with her arms out, guiding a whole troop of youngsters through the crowd. And it was a gorgeous hat, made of green felt with crushed silk flowers. Something about hats. Why, of course. How could he have forgotten? Lorraine, and Jim’s dreadful story of pain and suffering with Lorraine. Lorraine had loved vintage hats. The woman was gone now with her flock of children. Could that have been Lorraine? Probably not.

The rain began to spatter down.

At first people ignored it, but then they began to home to the covered porches and the little arcades. The sky darkened, and more lights flashed on in the shops and windows, and the streetlamps, the quaint old black-iron streetlamps, went on.

Within moments a new air of festivity had swept through the fair, and it seemed the noise of the crowd was louder than ever. The strings of colored lights above the street shone with a new brightness.

Stuart and Margon appeared suddenly, and said it was almost four o’clock, that they ought to head back to the house to change.

“It’s black tie tonight for us all, as we’re hosting,” said Margon.

“Black tie?” Reuben all but stammered.

“Oh, not to worry. Lisa’s laid out everything for us. But we should go home now to be ready when the first people start leaving the fair.”

Felix waved at Reuben from down the street, but then was blocked inevitably by more greetings and more thanks, though he kept moving.

Finally, they were all together. Phil headed off to get his car, as he’d driven up alone ahead of the rest of the family.

Reuben took one last look at the fair before he turned to go. The carolers were singing clearly and beautifully in front of the Inn as if the darkness had excited them and urged them to come together again, and this time there was a fiddler there with them, and a young boy playing a wooden flute. He stared at the distant figure of that boy, long-haired, clad all in brown chamois leather, playing that wooden flute. And far to the right in the shadows, he saw Elthram with Marchent, her head almost touching Elthram’s shoulder, their eyes fixed on the same young musician.

19

THE TERRACE PAVILION WAS ABLAZE with light and sound and streaming with people when they got out of the car. The orchestra was rehearsing with the boys’ choir in a positively magical blend of glorious sound. Phil was already there, standing with his arms folded, listening to the music in obvious awe, while reporters and photographers from the local papers took pictures, and groups of mummers in medieval costume—teenagers mostly—came up to greet them until Felix introduced himself and told them how pleased he was, and instructed them to take up a position in the nearby oaks.

Reuben hurried upstairs to change. He took the fastest shower in human history, and Lisa helped him dress, handling the studs on his boiled shirt for him, and tying his black silk tie. The jacket had been “perfectly measured” for him, she was right about that. And he was pleased that she’d arranged a black vest for him and not a cummerbund, which he hated. The shining patent-leather shoes were also a good fit.