together for some time, just as your mother had. It wasn’t only the picture in the library, or the unusual personalities of the men who were living with you. It wasn’t just their curious anachronistic speech, or the odd points of view they hold. Hell, you’ve always had a way of speaking that made us joke about your being a little changeling.” He shook his head. “So it wasn’t all that surprising that you’d cultivate some group of otherworldly friends who sounded as strange as you sometimes sound. No, it’s overwhelming and irresistible, surely, immortality. It is. But I don’t know that I quite believed that part of it all. I don’t know that I believe it now. It’s easier to believe that a human being can turn into a beast than it is to believe he’ll live forever.”
“I understand that perfectly,” said Reuben. “I feel exactly that way, myself.”
“No, it was something more mundane than that yet infinitely more profound and meaningful that brought me here. I was coming to live with you in this anointed place, because I had to do it! I just had to. I had to seek this refuge against the world to which I’d given my long and dreary and inconsequential life.”
“Dad—.”
“No, son. Don’t argue with me. I know who I am. And I knew I had to come. I had to be here. I had to spend my remaining days somewhere that I truly
“I understand, Dad,” said Reuben quietly. “In my own way, my young and naive way, I felt the same thing the first day I came here. I can’t say I was on a dreary path to the grave. I just knew I’d never lived, that I’d been avoiding living—like I’d learned early to decide against life rather than for it.”
“Ah, that’s beautiful,” Phil said. His smile brightened again as he looked at Reuben.
“Dad, do you understand the things that Hockan said? Did you follow the thread?”
“Most of it,” said Phil. “It was a bit like a dream. I was lying right on the earth and the earth was cold, but I was warm under those coverings. And I was listening to him. I knew he was aiming his powerful arrows at Felix and at you and Stuart. I heard him. I put it all together. And in the nights since I’ve been going over and over it, with Lisa’s little whispers here and there, patching it together.”
Reuben screwed up his courage, and then he asked, “Do you think there was truth in what Hockan said? Do you think he was right?”
“What do you think, Reuben?” asked Phil.
“I don’t know,” said Reuben, but the words were lame. “Each time I talk about it with myself, each time I see Felix or Margon or Sergei—I come to realize a little more that I have to make up my mind, my own mind, as to what I feel about the things Hockan said to us.”
“I understand that. I respect that.”
Reuben reached inside his jacket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, and then he handed that to Phil.
“That’s everything he said to us, written down there,” Reuben explained. “That’s every word. Exactly as I recall it.”
“My son, the honor student,” said Phil. He unfolded the page, and read the words slowly, thoughtfully, and then closed up the page again.
He looked expectantly at Reuben.
“It’s had a devastating effect on Felix,” said Reuben. “He’s deeply discouraged.”
“That’s understandable,” said Phil. He had more to say, but Reuben continued.
“Margon does not seem moved, one way or the other,” he said, “and Sergei and Stuart seem absolutely to have forgotten all of it, to have swept it aside like it never happened. They certainly aren’t afraid of Elthram and the Forest Gentry. They seem as comfortable with them as they ever were.”
“And Laura?”
“Laura has asked the obvious question: ‘Who is Hockan? Is Hockan an oracle? Or is Hockan a fallible creature like the rest of us?’ ”
“So the ones who’ve been really hurt by this are you and Felix?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I can’t get his words out of my head! I’ve never been able to get the negative voices of my life out of my head. I’ve struggled all my life to find my own truth and I find myself smothered by other people’s words. It’s as though they’re always shouting at me, bullying me, shaking their fists, and half the time I can’t find what I think.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, son,” said Phil. “I think you do know what you think.”
“Dad, know this,” said Reuben. “I love that house, this place, this part of the world’s great forest. I want to bring my son here. I want to be here with you. I love them all, my new family. I love them more than I can say. Laura, Felix, Margon, Stuart, Thibault, Sergei, all of them. I love Lisa, whoever and whatever she is. I love the Forest Gentry.”
“I hear you, son,” said Phil, smiling. “I’m extremely fond of Lisa, too.” He gave a short secretive laugh. “ ‘Whoever and whatever’ she might be.”
“The thought of leaving Nideck Point behind, of breaking off all contact with my mom, of giving my son over to Mom to bring up, of never seeing Jim again—these are things I can hardly bear to think about. My heart’s breaking.”
Phil only nodded.
“I feel larger and stronger here than I’ve ever felt anywhere,” said Reuben. “That day at the village fair and the banquet here, I sensed a creative energy all around me. I felt a creative spirit that was infectious. I don’t know any other words to describe it. I felt it was good, all that Felix had done, all that Felix had brought into being. It was like magic, Dad. Over and over he made something out of nothing. A bleak winter, a dying town, a great empty house, a day that might have been like a thousand other days. He transformed all this. And it was good. I swear it was. Yet here comes Hockan’s judgment, Hockan’s dark reading of the script to make some other story out of it.”
“Yes, Reuben, that’s just what Hockan did,” said Phil.
“Hockan calls this great house a snare, an abomination.”
“Yes, son, I heard him.”
“What is Felix’s sin, Dad? That he wants to live in fellowship with all living creatures—with spirits, ghosts, Morphenkinder, with Ageless Ones like Lisa, with human beings? Is that really evil? Is that the Original Sin here that killed Marchent?”
“What do you think, Reuben? Is it?”
“Dad, I have no idea what immortality is. I’ve admitted that before. I just don’t know. But I do know I’m struggling here for the finer feeling, for the finer understanding. Whatever I am, I have a soul. I’ve known that always. And I can’t believe that Marchent’s out there lost and suffering because of the dreadful secret of what we are, because of the sins of Felix in loving her and her parents and keeping our secrets from them. Felix would never have left Marchent if those evil men hadn’t taken him prisoner.”
“I know, son. I know the story. Hockan provided all the missing pieces of the puzzle to me as I was lying there in that clearing.”
“And I can’t lay the blame on Felix that the Forest Gentry astonished everyone. They did something that no one knew they could do. That’s obvious. But was that Felix’s doing because he called them and invited them here?”
“No. I don’t think it was,” said Phil. “The Forest Gentry have always had their own reservoir of power.”
“If only I could talk to Marchent!” said Reuben. “If only I could hear her voice. I’ve seen her, seen her tears, seen her misery. Hell. I’ve even made love to her, Dad, held her in my arms. But no voice comes from her. No truth comes from her.”
“And what could she tell you, Reuben?” Phil asked. “She’s a ghost, not a deity or an angel. She’s a lost soul. Beware of what she might say, just as you should beware of Hockan.”
Reuben sighed. “I know that. I know that. I keep wanting to ask Elthram. Surely he knows why she haunts. He must know.”
“Elthram knows what Elthram knows,” said Phil. “Not what Marchent knows, if she knows anything.”
They were quiet. Phil drank another mug of coffee. And outside the rain picked up, shimmering and singing
