who were your kin, for your sake, and for theirs. Mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, unborn child—forswear them. You have no right to them or their affections. The lie you live can only contaminate and destroy them. See what Felix’s evil has done already to this one’s father.”
Margon made a low disgusted and derisive sound. Felix remained still and quiet.
“Oh, yes,” said Hockan. His voice now had become tremulous. “Fiona and Helena were unwise, and meddlesome and reckless. I don’t deny it. Young Morphenkinder, untried and unchastened and now gone forever. Forever, when they might have lived till the end of time. Into the need fire, the bone fire of Modranicht! What is it now, this fire? What have your Forest Gentry made of it? An unclean funeral pyre. But who provoked those two, our sisters? Who gave them scandal? Where did it all start, that is what you must ask yourselves.”
No one answered him.
“It was Felix who drew this innocent man into his web,” said Hockan. “Nideck Point is his snare. Nideck Point is his public shame. Nideck Point is his abomination.” His voice rose. “And it was Felix who roused the spirits of the forest to an unholy and bloody violence never witnessed before! It is Felix who has strengthened them, emboldened them, enlisted them like dark angels in his unholy designs.”
He was visibly trembling, but he drew himself up, and caught his breath and then went on in the same exquisitely modulated voice as before.
“And so now you have these murderous spirits on your side,” he said. “Ah, such a wonder. Are you proud, Felix? Are you proud, Margon?”
From Elthram there came a low hiss, and suddenly the same rose from all the Forest Gentry everywhere in the clearing, a storm of hissing in derision.
Hockan stood still regarding them all.
“Young ones,” he said. “Burn Nideck Point.” He pointed to Reuben, then to Stuart. “Burn it to the very foundations!” His voice rose again until it was just below a roar. “Burn the village of Nideck. Erase it from the earth. That should be your penance at the very least for this, all of you! What right have you to human love, or human adulation! What right have you to darken innocent lives with your duplicity and evil power!”
“Enough from you!” cried Elthram. He was plainly in a rage. All around him, the Forest Gentry collected in vivid color in the glare of the fire.
“I have no stomach for war with you,” said Hockan, “any of you. But you all know the truth. Of all the misbegotten immortals roaming this earth, we pride ourselves on rectitude and conscience!” He beat his chest silently with his paws. “We, the protectors of the innocent, are known for the singular gift of knowing good from evil. Well, you have made a mockery of this, all of you. You have made a mockery of
He walked right up to Elthram and stood before him, peering into his eyes. It was a frightful image, Elthram surrounded by his kindred, glaring at the powerfully built white Man Wolf, and the Man Wolf poised as if to spring, but doing nothing.
Slowly, Hockan turned and drew closer to Reuben. His posture shifted from one of confrontation to weariness, his body shuddering.
“What will you say to the mournful and broken soul of Marchent Nideck who seeks your comfort, Reuben?” he asked. His words came on, smooth, seductive. “It’s to you that she reveals her sorrow, not to Felix, her guardian and her kin who destroyed her. How will you explain to the murdered Marchent that you share her great-uncle’s cursed and pestilential power, feasting now so happily and greedily in this beautiful realm which she gave to you?”
Reuben didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He wanted to protest, with all his soul he wanted to protest, but Hockan’s words overwhelmed him. Hockan’s passion and conviction had overwhelmed him. Hockan’s voice had woven some crippling spell around him. Yet he knew, positively knew, that Hockan was wrong.
Helplessly, he looked down at Phil, who lay half conscious on the ground, his head turned to the side, his body tightly covered by the green velvet cloaks, yet plainly shuddering beneath them.
“Oh, yes, your father,” said Hockan, his voice lower, words coming more slowly. “Your poor father. The man who gave you life. And he’s ripped out of life now as you were ripped. Are you happy for him?”
No one stirred. No one spoke.
Hockan turned away, and with a series of small eloquent grunts and noises beckoned his remaining female cohorts to go with him, and off they ran except for one, vanishing into the darkness.
That one was Berenice. She remained kneeling close to Phil, and now Frank went to her, and helped her to her feet in the most tender and human manner.
Elthram backed away from the center, out of the direct glare of the bonfire. All around the great arena, against the pale boulders, stood the Forest Gentry watching, waiting.
“Come on, let’s take him back home,” said Sergei. “Let me carry him.”
Gently he scooped up the body of Phil and laid Phil gently against his shoulder. Lisa secured the warm wrappings around Phil, walking beside Sergei as he moved towards the passage out of the clearing.
The other Morphenkinder were all in motion, moving ahead and behind, Laura moving right with them.
The Forest Gentry began to melt away as if they’d never been there. Elthram had vanished.
Reuben wanted to go along with the others, but something held him back. He watched them as they made their way into that narrow passage just beyond where the discarded drums and pipes lay in the dust. The gold- trimmed drinking horns lay about everywhere. And the cauldron still gave off steam on its bed of coals.
Reuben groaned. With his whole soul he groaned. He felt a pain in his belly. It grew bigger and bigger, constricting his heart, throbbing in his temples. The cold air lacerated him, bruised him, and he realized the wolf hair had fallen away from him, leaving him naked.
He saw his naked white fingers trembling before him and felt the wind tear at his eyes.
“No,” he whispered. And he willed it to return. “You come back to me,” he said in a half whisper. “I won’t let you go. Be mine now.” And at once the old tingling surged in his hands and in his face. The hair once more grew thick and smooth over him spreading with the inexorable force of water. His muscles sang with the old lupine strength and the warmth enclosed him.
But the tears had risen in his eyes. The bonfire hissed and spat and rustled in his ears.
From his right, Laura approached, this comely gray she-wolf whose face and form resembled his own, this savage pale-eyed monster who was so unutterably beautiful in his eyes. She had come back for him. He fell into her arms.
“You heard him, you heard all the terrible things that he said,” Reuben whispered.
“Yes,” she said. “I did. But you are bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Come. We will make our truth together.”
23
FOR DAYS, ELTHRAM SAT in the cottage by Phil’s bed. Phil slept. A powerful drink was given to Phil over and over again to make him sleep, this drink concocted by Elthram and Lisa, and Phil dozed sometimes moaning or singing under his breath, his wounds visibly healing, his fever rising and ebbing and finally dying away.
Slowly, the subtle changes began to appear—the thickening of his white hair with its reddish blond streaks, the restlessness in his legs and arms as his muscles grew stronger. And his eyes, of course, his pale hazel eyes were now a deeper shade of green when from time to time he opened them.
All this time Reuben slept either on the floor near Phil’s bed, or in a chair by the fire, or from time to time in the spacious attic above, on a simple mattress bed Lisa made up for him.
Laura brought down Reuben’s laptop computer for him, and spent the nights on the attic mattress by his side or alone as he remained below, in the leather recliner by the fire, listening in a half sleep to the rhythm of Phil’s breathing. But Laura was often gone. She could not yet control the transformation, and she and Thibault slipped off again and again together in the forest.
Felix and the others looked in on Phil often. A terrible gloom gripped Felix, but he showed no desire to talk with anyone about it. It was as if a dark and tortured soul had taken up residence in Felix’s body, claiming Felix’s face and voice for his own, though it could not be Felix.
