“You know there are those who come from beyond the portal,” said Margon.
“You believe this and yet you say that we did not come from beyond the portal?” asked Elthram. “Your spirit was born of matter, Margon, and thrives in matter now. Our spirits were never rooted to the physical. And yes, we may have come here from beyond the portal, but we only know of our existence here.”
“You become more clever all the time, don’t you? And you grow ever more powerful.”
“And why shouldn’t we?” asked Elthram.
“No matter how clever you become, you’ll never be able to actually drink that milk. You can’t eat the food offerings you so relish. You know you can’t.”
“You think you know what we are, but—.”
“I know what you are
Silence with the two staring at each other.
“Someday, perhaps,” said Elthram in a low voice, “we will be able to eat and drink, too.”
Margon shook his head.
“People of old knew ghosts or gods—as they called them—savored the fragrance of burnt offerings,” said Margon. “People of old knew ghosts or gods—as they called them—thrived on moisture, thrived on the falling rain, and loved the brooks of the woodland or the fields, or liquids turning into steam. That feeds your electrical energy, doesn’t it? The rain, the waters of a creek or a waterfall. You can dip to lap the moisture of a libation poured on a grave.”
“I am not a ghost,” whispered Elthram.
“But no spirit or ghost or god,” Margon insisted, “can really eat or drink.”
Elthram’s eyes blazed with a painful anger. He didn’t answer.
“Beings like this one, Stuart,” said Margon as he glanced at Stuart, “have fooled humans since before recorded time—pretending to an omniscience they do not possess, a divinity they know nothing about.”
“Please, Margon, I beg you,” said Felix gently. “Don’t go on.”
Margon made an airy gesture of acceptance, but he shook his head. He looked off at the fire.
Reuben found himself glancing up at Lisa, who stood very still by the fireplace, staring at Elthram. She had no real expression except that of vigilance. Her mind might have been wandering for all he knew.
“Margon,” said Elthram. “I will tell Marchent what I know.”
“You’ll teach her to invoke the memory of her physical self,” said Margon. “That is, to move backwards—to strengthen her ethereal body to resemble her lost physical body, to seek for a material existence.”
“It’s not material!” said Elthram, raising his voice only slightly. “We are not material. We’ve taken bodies to resemble you because we see you and know you and would come into your world, the world you’ve made of the material, but we are not material. We are the invisible people and we can come and go.”
“Yes, you are material, it’s simply another kind of material,” said Margon. “That’s all it is!” He was becoming heated. “And you’re burning to be visible in our world; you want it more than anything else.”
“No, that is not true,” said Elthram. “How little you know of our true existence.”
“And look how your face reddens,” said Margon. “Oh, you get better at this all the time.”
“We must all get better at what we do,” said Elthram with an air of resignation, his eyes appealing to Margon. “Why should we be different in that respect from you?”
Felix looked down, neither resigned nor accepting, but only unhappy.
“So, what, it’s better to let Marchent suffer in confusion?” asked Reuben, “and hope that she slips permanently into dreams?” He couldn’t keep silent any longer. “What does it matter what it’s called or what science knows about it? Her intellect survives, doesn’t it? She’s Marchent and she’s here and she’s in pain.”
Felix nodded to this.
“In dreams perhaps she can see the portal to the heavens,” said Margon. “Once she becomes focused on the physical, perhaps she will never again see it.”
“What if it’s the portal to nonexistence?” asked Reuben.
“That’s what it sounds like to me,” said Stuart. “The white light, it flashes when the energy of the spirit disintegrates. That’s what I think of this portal to heaven. That’s all I think it might be.”
Reuben shuddered.
Margon gazed across the long table at Elthram, Elthram’s large eyes narrowed as if trying to fathom something about Margon that he could no longer describe in words.
Sergei, who’d sat there quiet all the while, gave a long eloquent breath.
“You want to know what I think?” said Sergei. “I think we leave here tonight, Margon, and me and these boy wolves and we go hunting. And we leave Felix here to keep preparing for the Christmas festival. And we leave Elthram and the Forest Gentry to their task.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” said Felix. “You and Thibault take the boys away from here. Satisfy their need to hunt. And Elthram, if there is anything I can do to cooperate with you, I will do it, you know that.”
“You know the things I love,” said Elthram, smiling. “Let us sup with you, Felix. Bring us to your table. Welcome us into your house.”
“ ‘Sup,’ ” scoffed Margon.
Felix nodded. “The doors are open, my friend.”
“And I think this taking the boys away is an excellent idea,” said Elthram. “Take Reuben away from here. And that will give me my best chance with Marchent.”
He rose slowly, pushing back the chair and standing without using his arms or hands. Reuben noted this, and again noted his tremendous height. Six foot six, he calculated roughly, given that he himself was six foot three, and Stuart was taller than him, and Sergei was very slightly taller than that.
“I thank you for inviting us,” said Elthram. “You can’t know how we treasure your welcome, your hospitality, your invitation to come in.”
“And how many more of you Forest Gentry are in this room right now?” asked Margon. “How many more of you are wandering this house?” It was meant to be accusatory, provocative. “Can you see better when you’ve assembled this physical body for yourself, when you’ve charged its particles with your subtle electricity, when you narrow your vision to look through those ravishing green eyes?”
Elthram looked stunned. He stood back away from the chair, blinking at Margon as if Margon were a bright light, Elthram’s hands apparently clasped behind his back.
He appeared to say something under his breath, but it wasn’t audible.
There came a soft series of sounds again, the woof of the air threatening the candles, and the fire, and then a great darkening of the gloom all around them, as a great mass of figures gradually came into view. Reuben blinked, trying to clear his vision, trying to make them more visible, but they were of their own becoming visible, as so many very long-haired women and children and men, all clothed in the same soft leather garments as Elthram, and quite literally of all sizes, and filling the entire room around them now, all along behind them and in front of them around the table and out to the corners.
Reuben was dazed, aware of shifting movements, gestures, and seeming whispers teeming almost like the drone of insects in midsummer around flowers, trying to fasten on this detail or that—long red hair, fair hair, gray hair, eyes flitting over him, dancing over the table, the wildly flickering candles, and even hands touching him, touching his shoulders, brushing his cheek, stroking his head. He felt he was going to slip out of consciousness. Everything he saw looked material, vital, yet it seemed moment by moment to be pulsing ever more rapidly, as if building to a pinnacle of some sort, while across from him Stuart looked frantically from right to left, his eyebrows knotted, his mouth open in what sounded like a moan.
Margon jumped to his feet and glared at them as if he were the least prepared for their number. Reuben couldn’t see Lisa as too many crowded in front of her, and Felix merely looked up at them, appeared to be smiling at many of them, and nodding in agreement, and the crowd grew even more dense as if others were pressing the front lines slowly forward so that faces were now in the full glare of the candles, faces of all human shapes and sizes, Nordic, Asian, African, Mediterranean—Reuben didn’t have the labels for them, only the associations—all rustic in dress and manner, yet all benign. Not a single face was disagreeable, or even curious, or in any way intrusive so much as passive and vaguely content-seeming at most. There came faint ripples of laughter like something drawn with a fine pen stroke, and again a sense of those around him soundlessly jostling, and he saw across from him two figures bending to kiss Stuart on either cheek.
