“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.
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 creche and stable, with all its lighting and fir trees, had
