back—all of you—and they’ve come to look the place over again.”
“That’s it, exactly,” said Felix with a bitter smile. “And where were they when we were captive and struggling to survive?” His voice grew heated. “Didn’t see hide nor hair of them. Of course they didn’t know where we were, or so they’ve said. And said. And said. And yes, we’re back in North America, and they are, shall we say, curious? They make me think of moths collecting around a bright light.”
“Are there others, others besides these, who might show up at the Yule?”
“Not likely.”
“But what about Hugo, that strange Morphenkind we met in the jungles?”
“Oh, Hugo never leaves that ghastly place. I don’t think Hugo has found his way out of the jungles now for five hundred years. Hugo moves from one jungle outpost to another. When his present shelter ultimately collapses, he’ll seek another. You can forget about Hugo. But as to whether others might come, well, I honestly don’t know. There’s no universal census of Morphenkinder. And I’ll tell you something else if you promise to put it out of your mind immediately.”
“I’ll try.”
“We aren’t all the same species either.”
“Good God!”
“Why did I know you’d turn the color of ashes when I told you that? Look. Truly, it doesn’t matter. Now, don’t get agitated. This is why I so hate to inundate you with information. Leave the others to me for the time being. Leave the world to me, and all its myriad predatory immortals.”
“ ‘All its myriad predatory immortals’?”
Felix laughed. “I’m playing with you.”
“I wonder if you are.”
“No, truly. You’re easy to tease, Reuben. You always respond.”
“But Felix, are there universally accepted rules about all this?—I mean do all Morphenkinder agree on this or that law, or—?”
“Hardly!” he said with thinly concealed disgust. “But there are customs among our kind. That’s what I was referring to earlier, the Yuletide customs. We receive each other at Yuletide with courtesy, and woe to one who breaks those customs.” He paused for a moment. “Not all Morphenkinder have a place to celebrate the Yule as we do. And so if others join us on Modranicht, well, we welcome them.”
“Modranicht,” said Reuben with a smile. “I’ve never heard that name for the Yule spoken aloud.”
“But you know the word, don’t you?”
“Night of the Mother,” said Reuben. “From the Venerable Bede, in describing the Anglo-Saxons.”
Felix laughed softly. “You never let me down, my beloved scholar.”
“Night of the Mother Earth,” said Reuben, relishing the words, the thought, and Felix’s pleasure.
Felix went silent for a moment, and then went on:
“In the old days—the old days for Margon, that is—Yuletide was the time to come together, to pledge fidelity, to pledge to live in peace, to reaffirm the resolves to love, to learn, and to serve. That’s what the teacher taught me a very long time ago. That’s what he taught Frank, and Sergei, and Thibault as well. And that’s what Yule still means to us, to
Reuben repeated it: “To love, to learn, and to serve.”
“Well, it’s not as dreadful as I’ve made it sound,” said Felix. “We don’t make speeches, we don’t offer prayers. Not really.”
“It doesn’t sound dreadful at all. It sounds like one of those concise formulas I’ve been searching for all my life. And I saw it tonight, I saw it in the party, I saw it infecting the guests like some kind of wonderful intoxicant. I saw so many people behaving and responding in the most unusual way. I don’t think my family has ever much held with ceremonies, holidays, any celebration of renewal. It’s as if the world’s gone past all that.”
“Ah, but the world never does go past all that,” said Felix. “And for those of us who cannot age, we must find a way to mark the passage of the years, to celebrate our own determination to renew our spirits and our ideals. We’re fastened to time, but time doesn’t affect us. And if we don’t watch it, if we live as if there were no time, well, time can kill us. Hell, Yuletide is when we resolve to try to do better than we have in the past, that’s all.”
“New Year’s resolutions of the soul,” said Reuben.
“Amen. Come, let’s forget about the others and go walk in the oaks. The rain has stopped. I never had a chance to walk in the oaks while the party was in full swing.”
“Me either, and I so want to do that,” said Reuben.
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.
