The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

There was a lot of snapping and rustling in the trees, and a shower of tiny green leaves appeared suddenly, leaves that swirled like the rain, only gradually falling to the earth. The Forest Gentry were vanishing.

They continued on in silence.

“They’re still around us, aren’t they?” Reuben asked.

Felix only smiled.

Alone in his room, in his pajamas and robe, Reuben tried to write about the entire day.

He didn’t want to lose the vivid mind pictures crowding his brain, or the questions, or the sharp remembrances of special moments.

But he found himself merely listing all the many things that had happened, in loose order, and listing the people he’d seen and met.

On and on went his list.

He was simply too stimulated and dazed to really absorb why it had all been so much fun, and so unlike anything he’d ever done or known. But again and again, he recorded details, the simplest to the most complex. He wrote in a kind of code about the Forest Gentry, “Our woodland neighbors” and their “wan” children, and just when he thought he could remember nothing else he began describing the carols played and sung, and the various dishes that had covered the table, and the descriptions of those memorable beauties who’d walked like goddesses through the rooms.

He took some time describing the Morphenkinder women—Fiona, Catrin, Berenice, Dorchella, Helena, Clarice. And as he tried to remember each one as to hair coloring, facial features, and lavish dress it struck him that they had not all been conventionally beautiful, not by any means. But what had marked them all was luxuriant hair and what people call demeanor. They had possessed what someone might call a regal demeanor.

They had dressed themselves and carried themselves with exceptional confidence. A fearlessness surrounded them. But there was something else, too. A kind of low seductive heat came off these women, at least as Reuben saw it. It was impossible to revisit any one in his imagination without feeling that heat. Even the very sweet Berenice, Frank’s wife, had exuded this kind of inviting sexuality.

Was it a mystery of beast and human intermingled in the Morphenkind where hormones and pheromones of a new and mysterious potency were working on the species subliminally? Probably. How could it not be?

He described Hockan Crost—the man’s deep-set black eyes, and his large hands and the way the man had looked him over so obviously before acknowledging him. He noted how different the man had seemed when saying his farewells to Felix, how warm, how almost needful. And then there was that low, running voice of his, the exquisite way he pronounced his words, so persuasive.

There had to be some way male Morphenkinder knew one another too, he figured, whether or not the erotic signals were forthcoming. Hadn’t he felt some very similar set of tiny alarm bells the first time he’d met Felix? He wasn’t sure. And then what about the first few moments of the disastrous encounter with the doomed Marrok? It was as if the world was reduced to pen and ink when a Morphenkind was on the scene and the Morphenkind was done in rich oil paint.

He didn’t write the word “Morphenkind.” He would never write it down, not in his most secret computer diary. He wrote, “The usual questions abound.” And then he asked: “Is it possible for us to despise one another?”

He wrote about Marchent. He described the apparitions in detail, searching his memory for the smallest things that he might remember. But the apparitions were like dreams. Too many key details had faded. Again, he was so careful with his words. What he’d written might have been a poem of remembrance. But he was comforted that Marchent’s entire aspect had changed, that he’d seen nothing of misery or pain at all in her. But he had seen something else, and he didn’t know what that was. And it had not been entirely consoling. But was it conceivable that he and this ghost could actually speak to one another? He wanted that with his whole soul, and yet he feared it.

He was half asleep on the pillow when he woke thinking of Laura, Laura on her own in the forest to the south, Laura having changed unimaginably into a full and mysterious Morphenkind, Laura, his precious Laura, and he found himself uttering a prayer for her and wondering if there was a God who listened to the prayers of Morphenkinder. Well, if there was a God, perhaps he listened to everyone, and if he didn’t, well, what hope was there at all? Keep her safe, he prayed, keep her safe from man and beast, and keep her safe from other Morphenkinder. He could not think of her and think of that strange overbearing Fiona. No. She was his Laura, and they would travel this bizarre road into revelation and experience together.

20

IT WAS ONE of the fastest weeks of Reuben’s life. Having his dad in residence was infinitely more fun than he’d ever imagined, especially since the entire household welcomed Phil, and everyone assumed that Phil had come to stay. It took Reuben’s mind off absolutely everything else.

Meanwhile, the house recovered from the banquet and moved towards Christmas Eve.

The pavilion had been completely cleared by evening on Tuesday, the wooden wind barrier, the tents, and the rented furniture all hauled away. The great marble crèche and stable, with all its lighting and fir trees, had been immediately moved down to the village of Nideck, where it had been set up for the public in the old theater across from the Inn.

The beautiful lighting of the house—of all its windows and gables—and the lighting of the oak forest remained as before. Felix said the lights would remain until Twelfth Night—January 6, or the Feast of the Epiphany—as was the tradition, and there would be people coming up now and then to wander through the woods.

“But not on Christmas Eve,” said Felix. “That night the property is dark for us and our Yule.”

Phil’s books arrived on Wednesday, and so did a venerable old trunk that Phil’s grandfather Edward O’Connell had brought from Ireland. At once Phil started telling Reuben all about the old man, and their times together when Phil was a boy. By the time he was twelve, Phil had lost his grandparents, but he remembered them vividly. Reuben had never in all his life heard Phil talk about this. He wanted to ask all about the grandparents. He wanted to ask about the gift of seeing ghosts, but he didn’t dare to broach the subject. Not now, not so soon, not so close to Christmas Eve, when a veil had to come down between him and his father.

All this took Reuben’s mind off the faintly disturbing memory of the Morphenkinder at the party, and his driving anticipation for the Yuletide reunion with Laura.

At breakfast on Thursday, Margon had told them all offhandedly to pay little mind to the “strange uninvited guests” who’d come to the banquet. To Stuart’s immediate barrage of questions, he replied, “Our species is ancient. You know that. You know there are Morphenkinder throughout the world. Why wouldn’t there be? And you can see well enough how we come together in packs as wolves do, and packs have their territory, do they not? But we are not wolves, and we do not fight those who come now and then into our territory. We bear with them until they move on. That has always been our way.”