The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

Quickly getting their coats, they went out together into the marvel of the lighted forest.

How still and quiet it was in the soft lovely illumination, rather like the enchanted place it had been when he’d first wandered out here alone.

Reuben looked around in the shadowy tangles of gray limbs, wondering if the Forest Gentry surrounded them, if they were up high in the branches above them.

On and on they walked, past the scattered party tables, and deeper and deeper into the fairy-tale gloaming.

Felix was quiet, deep in his own thoughts. Reuben so hated to disturb him, to ruin his contentment and his obvious happiness.

But he felt he had to do this. He had no choice. He had put it off long enough. It ought to be happy news, he thought, so why was he hesitating? Why was he torn?

“I saw Marchent today,” he confessed. “I saw her more than once, and it was markedly different.”

“Did you?” Felix was obviously startled. “Where? Tell me. Tell me everything.” There came that immediate distress that was completely unnatural to Felix. Even with all the talk of the other Morphenkinder, he hadn’t been this suddenly anguished.

Reuben explained that long glimpse in the village when he’d seen her in company with Elthram, moving about with him as if she were fully material, and then the moment in the dark corner of the conservatory as if she’d answered his summons. “I’m sorry I didn’t immediately tell you. I can’t explain exactly. It was so intense.”

“Oh, I understand,” said Felix. “That doesn’t matter. You saw her. That’s what matters. I couldn’t have seen her, whether you told me about it or not.”

Felix sighed.

He held the backs of his arms with his hands, that gesture Reuben had seen in him when they had first spoken of Marchent’s spirit.

“They have broken through,” he said sadly. “Just as I hoped they would. And they can take her away now when she’s willing to go. They can provide their way, their answers.”

“But where do they go, Felix? Where were they when you called to them?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Some of them are always here. Some of them are always wandering. They are wherever the woods are thickest and darkest and most quiet and undisturbed. I called them together. I called to Elthram, that’s what I did. Whether they ever really go far away, I can’t say. But it’s not their way to gather in one place, or to repeatedly show themselves.”

“And she will become one of them?”

“You saw what you saw,” he said. “I would say it’s already happened.”

“Will there be no moment in which I can actually talk to her?” asked Reuben. He had lowered his voice to a whisper—not because he feared the Forest Gentry would hear, but because he was opening his soul to Felix. “I had thought, perhaps, there would be some moment. And yet when I saw her in the conservatory, I didn’t ask for this. I felt a kind of paralysis, an absence of any rational thought. I didn’t let her know how badly I wanted to talk to her.”

“It was she who came to you, remember,” said Felix. “It was she who tried to speak, she who had the questions. And maybe now they’ve been answered.”

“I pray that’s true,” said Reuben. “She looked content. She looked whole.”

Felix stood silent for a moment, merely reflecting, his eyes moving gently over Reuben’s face. He gave a faint smile.

“Come, I’m getting colder and colder,” he said. “Let’s go back. She has time in which to speak to you. Plenty of time. Keep in mind the Forest Gentry won’t leave before Christmas Day and probably not before New Year’s. It’s too important to them to be here when we make our circle. The Forest Gently will sing with us and play their fiddles and their flutes and their drums.”

Reuben tried to envision it. “That’s going to be indescribable.”

“It varies from time to time, what they bring to the ceremony. But they’re always gentle, always good, always filled with the true meaning of renewal. They’re the essence of the love for this earth and for its cycles, its processes, its ever renewing itself. They have no taste for human sacrifice at Midwinter, I can tell you. Nothing would drive them away sooner than that. And of course they like you, Reuben, very much.”

“So Elthram said,” said Reuben. “But I suspect it was Laura walking in the woods who stole their hearts.”

“Ah, yes, well, they call you the Keeper of the Woods,” said Felix. “And they call her the Lady of the Woods. And Elthram knows what you’ve suffered with Marchent. I don’t think he means to abandon you without some resolution with Marchent. Even if the spirit of Marchent moves on, Elthram will have something to say to you before New Year’s, I’m certain of it.”

“And what do you hope for, Felix, with regard to Marchent?”

“That she’ll soon be at peace,” he said. “The same thing you hope for, and that she’s forgiven me for all the things I did that were wrong, and unwise, and foolish. But do keep in the mind that the Forest Gentry are distractible.”

“How do you mean?”

“All spirits, ghosts, the bodiless—they’re distractible,” said Felix. “They’re not rooted in the physical and so they’re not fastened to time. They lose track of the things that cause such pain in us. This is not infidelity on their part. It’s the ethereal nature of spirits. It’s only in the physical that they are focused.”

“I remember Elthram using that word.”

“Yes, well, it’s an important word. It’s Margon’s theory that they cannot truly grow in moral stature, these spirits, unless they’re in the physical. But we’re too deep in this woods to be uttering Margon’s name.” He laughed. “Don’t want to anger anyone unnecessarily.”

The rain was starting again. Reuben could see it swirling in the lights as if the drops were too light to fall to the ground.

Felix stopped. Reuben stood beside him waiting.

Slowly, he saw the Forest Gentry materializing. They were in the branches again as they’d been earlier. He saw their faces coming clear, saw their dark shapeless clothes, knees crooked, soft booted feet on the branches, saw the impassive eyes regarding them, saw those tiny child faces like flower petals.

In the ancient tongue, Felix said something to them, what sounded like a soft rush of greeting. But he kept walking. Reuben kept walking.