Errantry: Strange Stories

The Far Shore

In dreams he fell: from planes, trees, roofs, cliffs, bridges. Whatever awaited him below, the impact was the same. His right leg buckled and a bolt of pain flared from ankle to knee, so that even after decades he woke with his old injury throbbing, bathed in sweat and hands outstretched to restore his balance. The pain subsided as the hours passed. Still, he no longer stood in the studio while his students practiced their moves, épaulement croisé, balloté, rise, ciseaux, but sat in a plain, straight-backed wooden chair, marking time with an elegant silver-topped cane.

When he received notice that he was to be replaced by someone younger, he reacted with the same calm he always displayed, the classical dancer’s legacy of stoicism serving him now as it had for the last three decades.

“I hope you understand.” The ballet master’s face creased. “You know I don’t want to do this. If something opens up, we’ll find a place for you.”

Philip inclined his head. “Of course.”

That night he called Emma, his oldest friend.

“Oh, Philip, that’s terrible!”

He shrugged, gazing out the window of his tiny studio apartment at the glass edifice that had been erected across the street. “Well, I was lucky they kept me as long as they did.”

“What will you do?”

“I have no fucking idea.”

She laughed, and he felt better. They spoke for a good hour, gossip mostly about dancers he knew and Emma had never heard of. Then, “Why don’t you come stay here at the camp while we’re gone?” she suggested. “Not for the winter—a few weeks, or a month, however long you want. We’ll have Joe Moody close up when you leave.”

“Just like The Shining,” said Philip. “What a great idea.”

“It won’t be like that in early November. Well, okay, it might snow. But then you just call Joe and he’ll come plow you out. I think it would be good for you, Philip,” she added. “I mean, being alone here might be better than feeling alone there. I think you just need to get away from the city for a few weeks. See if you can clear your head of all this. You know?”

He knew.

“Sure, what the hell.” He heard Emma’s sigh of relief.

He called a few friends to say good-bye, arranged for someone to watch his place, and several days later left in his rent-a-wreck. It was after midnight when he reached the camp. He missed the turnoff twice, its sign so overgrown with lichen and old-man’s-beard that he’d mistaken it for a dead tree limb in the dark.

An hour earlier, the highway had dwindled to a track guarded by ghostly armies of oak and tamaracks. All the landmarks he’d loved as a boy had disappeared. Where was the ancient ice cream stand shaped like an Abenaki longhouse? And Lambert’s Gun Emporium? Where was the general store where he and Emma had made forbidden trips to buy fresh doughnuts, inevitably betrayed by the smells of lard and burnt sugar that clung to them when they returned to their cabin?

“Christ, Philip, those are long gone,” said Emma when she greeted him in front of the lodge. “The general store burned down in the eighties. Chimney fire. Bob Lambert sold his place, he died a while back. I don’t remember what happened to the teepee.”

They’d met at Tuonela decades ago, bonding over a shared love of The Red Shoes and cheesy Mexican horror movies. They passed most of their childhood summers there, first as campers, then counselors-in-training, before Philip defected to a dance camp in New York State, and finally to the School of American Ballet. Emma eventually parlayed her love for the place into an actual romance, marrying Sam, a fellow counselor, at a lakeside ceremony twenty-odd years before. Philip had been her best man. He stood beside the pastor of the old Finnish Church who performed the ceremony, surprised to learn that the name Tuonela was Finnish, not Abenaki in origin, though no one seemed to know what the word meant. Shortly afterward, Emma and Sam bought the camp, and raised their two daughters there.

But the last few years had been tough.

“Parents want high-tech camps now,” she told Philip as they carried his bags inside. “Wi-fi, all that. We don’t even have a cell tower around here. This year our enrollment dropped to about half what it was last year. We could barely make payroll. So we figured this was a good time to do what all real Mainers do in the winter.”

“Which is… ?”

She laughed. “Go to Florida.”

Their girls were in college now, so Emma and Sam would be housesitting for friends in Key West, a midlife second honeymoon. Philip hadn’t visited Tuonela, or anyplace else, in ages. He’d spent his entire adult life in the New York City Ballet, first as an apprentice, then a member of the corps de ballet, and finally as an instructor. He’d been like the other boys, at once necessary and interchangeable: a rat in The Nutcracker; one of the debauched revelers in The Prodigal Son; a huntsman in Balanchine’s one-act Swan Lake. He’d passed hours watching Edward Villella and Jacques d’Amboise with mingled admiration and wonder, but—almost unheard of for a dancer—with very little envy. He knew how fortunate he was to pace the same darkened hallways as they had, sleepwalking into class before nine a.m., then burning through rehearsal and performance, often not departing the cavernous theater until almost midnight.

But he also knew he would never be a soloist, or even a fine second-rank dancer. He dreamed of the lead in Square Dance. He’d have happily settled for a side part in Concerto Baroco. Instead, there’d been a dozen years as a dancing rat.

“You’re a foot soldier,” a former lover told him once. “A foot soldier of the arts. Canon fodder!” he added with a laugh. “Get it?”

Philip wryly admitted that he did.

Not that it mattered to him; not much, anyway. He adored being part of the corps, its discipline and competitive fellowship, the perverse haven of a routine that often felt like a calculus of pain. He loved the fleeting nature of dance itself—of all the arts the one that left almost no permanent mark upon the world, even as it casually disfigured its adherents with deformed feet, eating disorders, careers like mayflies. Most of all, he loved those moments during a performance when he could feel himself suspended within an ephemeral web of music and movement, gravity momentarily defeated by the ingrained memory of muscle and bone.

It all ended suddenly. When he was twenty-eight (“that’s ninety in dance years,” he told Emma) Philip shattered his metatarsal during a rehearsal. His foot turned in as he landed from a jump; he hit the floor, crying out in anguish as his leg twisted beneath him. The other dancers rushed over with icepacks and pillows, and arranged transport to NYU Hospital. He spent weeks in a haze of painkillers, his leg in a cast. Months of physical rehab followed, but ever after he walked with a slight limp.

Still, he’d always been popular within the corps, and the ballet masters and rehearsal teachers liked him. At twenty-nine he found himself teaching the company. His former colleagues were now living eidolons of youth, beauty, health, joy, desire flitting past him in the studio, lovely and remote as figures from a medieval allegory. What he felt then was less envy than a terrible, physical ache, as for a lover who’d died. He could still be transported by watching a good performance, the smells of adrenaline and sweat that seeped backstage.

But his ecstatic dreams of flight became recurring nightmares of falling.

Sam had already driven down to the Keys. Emma’s flight left on Sunday, which gave her most of the weekend to show Philip how to work the composting toilet, emergency generator, kerosene lamps, hand pump, outboard motor, woodstove. Philip knew the camp’s layout as though it were the musculature of a familiar body: the old Adirondack-style lodge overlooking the lake; the campers’ log cabins tucked into the surrounding forest, moss-covered roofs and bark exteriors nearly invisible among birch groves and bracken. In the middle of summer, filled with damp children and smelling of sunblock and balsam, it was heartstoppingly lovely.

Now, with only him and Emma kicking through drifts of brown leaves, it all seemed cheerless and slightly sinister. Two miles of gravel road separated the camp from the blue highway that led to an intersection with a convenience store that sold gas, lottery tickets, beer, and not much else. The nearest town was twenty miles away.

“What happens if I cut my hand off with a chainsaw?” Philip asked.

“Well, you’ll be better off treating yourself than calling 911. It could take them an hour to get here. That’s if the roads are clear.”

They spent one morning on a nostalgic circuit of the old camp road, Philip replacing his silver-topped cane with the sturdy walking stick Emma gave him. They were back at the lodge by lunchtime. A stone’s throw from its front steps stretched Lake Tuonela, a cerulean crescent that could, in seconds, turn into frigid, steel-colored chop powerful enough to swamp a Boston Whaler. This time of year there were few boaters on the water: an occasional canoe or kayak, hunters making a foray from a hunting camp. The opposite shore was a nature preserve, or maybe it belonged to a private landowner—Philip had never gotten the details straight. He dimly recalled some ghost story told around the campfire, about early Finnish settlers who claimed the far shore was haunted or cursed.

More likely it was just wildly unsuitable for farming. Philip only knew it formed some kind of no-man’s-land. In all his years visiting Lake Tuonela, he’d never set foot there.

Not that he was tempted to. A mile of icy water lay between the camp and the far shore, and his bad foot kept him from anything resembling a strenuous hike.

“Whenever you go outside, make sure you wear an orange jacket. Even if you’re just walking out to the car,” Emma warned him as they headed back inside. “Waterfowl season now, then deer season. The camp is posted, but we still hear gunshots way too close. Here—”

She pointed to a half-dozen blaze-orange vests hanging beside the door. “Take your pick. You can have your pick of bedrooms, too.” she added. “If you get bored, move to a different room. Like the Mad Tea Party. Just strip the bed and fold the sheets on top, we’ll deal with laundry when we come back in March.”

He chose his usual room on the main floor, with French doors that opened on to the porch overlooking the lake, though he wondered vaguely why he didn’t simply camp in the living room. The lodge had been built over a century ago with hand-hewn logs and slate floor, a flagstone fireplace so massive Philip could have slept inside it. The place had most of the original furnishings, along with the original windows and concomitant lack of insulation, which meant one was warm only within a six-foot radius of the woodstove or fireplace.

Sunday morning Emma gave him final instructions regarding frozen pipes, power outages, wildlife safety. “If you meet a moose, run. If you meet a bear, don’t.”

“What about a mountain lion?”

“Hit him with a rock.”

And that was it. In the afternoon he drove Emma to Bangor to catch her flight. It was very late when he returned, the night sky overcast. He had to use a flashlight to find his way along the leaf-covered path. Branches scraped against each other, the wind rustled in dead burdock. He could hear but not see the water a few yards off, waves slapping softly against the shore, and the distant murmur of wild geese disturbed by the sound of the car.

He slept that night with the outside light on, an extravagance Emma would have deplored.

The camp was less remote than he’d feared. Or, rather, he could choose how isolated he wanted to be. He had to drive thirty minutes to a grocery store, but its shelves held mostly familiar products. If he wanted company, there was a bean supper every Saturday at the Finnish Church, though Emma had advised him to get there early, before they sold out of plates. There was no wireless or DSL at Tuonela; dial-up took so long that Philip soon gave up using it more than once or twice a week. Instead he devoted himself to reading, hauling in firewood, and wandering the trails around the lake.

As a boy, he’d been able to find his way in the dark from his cabin to the main road. Now he was pleased to discover that he could, at least, follow the same woodland paths in daylight, even those trails that had been neglected for the last ten or fifteen years. Stripling oaks and beeches now towered above him; grassy clearings had become dense, unrecognizable thickets of alder and black willow.

Still, some combination of luck and instinct and sense memory guided him: he rarely got lost, and never for long.

He liked to walk in the very early morning, shortly before sunrise when mist hid the world from him, the only sound a faint dripping from branches and dead leaves. After a few days, he began to experience the same strange dislocation he’d experienced when dancing: that eerie sense of being absent from his body even as he occupied it more fully than at other times. The smell of woodstove followed him from the lodge; field mice rustled in the underbrush. As the fog burned off, trees and boulders slowly materialized. Scarlet-crowned oaks atop gray ledges; white slashes of birch; winterberry peppered with bright red fruit. Gold and crimson leaves formed intricate scrollwork upon the lake’s surface, and ducks and geese fed in the shallows.

That was why he went out early, before the sound of shotguns startled them into a frenzy of beating wings. The lake was a flyway for migrating waterfowl. The loons were long gone, but others had taken their place. Goldeneye and teal, pintails and ringnecks; easily spooked wood ducks that whistled plaintively as they fled; hooded mergansers with gaudy crests and wings so vividly striped they looked airbrushed. There were always noisy flotillas of Canada geese, and sometimes a solitary swan that he only glimpsed if he went out while it was still almost dark.

Even as a boy, Philip loved swans. Part of it was their association with ballet; mostly it was just how otherworldly they looked. Some mornings he set his alarm for four a.m., hoping to see the one that now and then emerged from the mist near the far shore like an apparition: silent, moving with uncanny slowness across the dark water. Alone among the other birds, it never took flight at the sound of guns, only continued its languid passage, until it was lost among thick stands of alder and cattails.

He’d been at the camp for two weeks before dawn broke cold and clear, the first cloudless day since he arrived. Vapor streamed across glassy blue water to disappear as the sun rose above the firs. Philip finished his coffee, then walked along the edge of the lake, skirting gulleys where rain had cut deep channels into the bank. A small flock of green-winged teal swam close to shore, the mask above their eyes shining emerald in the sun. It was now early November, and until today the weather had been unseasonably warm. Hundreds, even thousands, of migrating waterfowl had lingered much longer than he’d expected.

Though what did he know about birds? He only recognized those species he’d identified as a boy, or that Emma had pointed out to him over the years. Most stayed on the far side of the lake, though they must have fed elsewhere—at twilight the air rang with their piping cries and the thunderous echo of wings as they flew overhead, heading for the distant line of black firs that shadowed the desolate waters where they slept each night. The sound of their passage, the sight of all those madly beating wings against the evening sky, filled him with the same wild joy he’d felt waiting backstage when the first bars of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Le Baiser de Fée insinuated themselves in the dim theater. He seldom saw birds in flight during his early morning walks—a group of six or eight, perhaps, but never the endless ranks that rippled across the evening sky like waves buffeting an unseen shore.

Now, he saw only the teal bobbing across the bright water. Above him ravens flew from tree to tree, croaking loudly at his approach. He tipped his head back to watch them, slowing his pace so he wouldn’t trip. Something soft yielded beneath his foot, as though he’d stepped on thick moss. He glanced down, and with a shout stumbled backward.

On the ground a body lay curled upon its side. Naked, thin arms drawn protectively about its head. A man.

No, not a man—a boy. Seventeen or eighteen and emaciated, his skin dead-white save for bruised shadows at his groin, the deep hollow of his throat. One shoulder was spattered with blood and dirt. Lank black hair was plastered across his face. A tiny black beetle crawled into a fringe of black hair.

Philip stared at him, light-headed. He took a deep breath, leaned on his walking stick, and reached to touch the corpse, gingerly, on the chest.

The boy moaned. Philip recoiled, watched as a pink tinge spread across the boy’s broad cheekbones and hairless chest. The bluish skin in the cleft of his throat tightened then relaxed. He was alive.

Philip tore off his orange vest and covered him. He ran his hands across the boy’s neck and wrists and breast, searching for a pulse, broken bones, bleeding. Except for that wounded shoulder, he could see or feel nothing wrong.

He sank back onto his heels, fighting panic. He couldn’t leave him here while he ran back to the lodge—the boy looked near dead already.

And what if he’d been attacked? What if his attackers returned?

Philip ran a hand across his forehead. “Okay. Okay, listen. I’m going to help you. I’m just going to try and lift you up—”

Gently as he could, he grasped the boy’s uninjured shoulder. The boy moaned again, louder this time. His eyes opened, pupils so dilated the irises showed no color. He gazed at Philip, then hissed, struggling to escape.

“Hey.” Philip’s panic grew. What if the boy died, now, at his side? He stared into those huge black eyes, willing him to be calm. “Hold on, let me help you. Here, put your weight on me….”

He took the boy’s hand, felt sticklike fingers vibrating beneath his own. An odd, spasmodic quivering, as though bones, not muscles or skin, responded to his touch. Abruptly the hand grew slack. Philip looked down, terrified that the boy had died.

But the boy only nodded, his strange black eyes unblinking, and let Philip help him to his feet.

They walked to the lodge. The boy moved awkwardly, the vest draped across his shoulders, and flinched at Philip’s touch.

“Does it hurt?” asked Philip anxiously.

The boy said nothing. He was taller than Philip, so thin and frail his bones might have been wrapped in paper, not skin. He stepped tentatively among stones and fallen branches, muddy water puddling up around his bare feet. As they approached the lodge his eyes widened and he hissed again, from pain or alarm.

“Lie here,” Philip commanded once they were inside. He eased the boy onto the couch facing the woodstove, then hurried to get blankets. “You’ll warm up in a minute.”

He returned with the blankets. The boy sat, staring fixedly at the window. He was trembling.

“You must be frozen,” Philip exclaimed. The boy remained silent.

Before, Philip been struck by the leaden pallor of his skin. Now he saw that the hair on his arms and legs was also white—not sun-bleached but silvery, a bizarre contrast to the oil-black hair that fell to his shoulders, the dark hair at his groin. His eyebrows were black as well, arched above those staring eyes.

“What’s your name?” asked Philip.

The boy continued to gaze at the window. After a moment he looked away. “What has happened?”

“You tell me.” Philip crossed the room to pick up the phone. “I’m going to call 911. It might take them a while to get here, so—”

“No!”

“Listen to me. You’re in shock. You need help—”

“I’m not hurt.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me. Did you—has someone been hurting you?”

The boy gave a sharp laugh, displaying small, very white teeth. “I’m not hurt.” He had an oddly inflected voice, a faint childlike sibilance. “I’m cold.”

“Oh.” Philip winced. “Right, I’m sorry. I’ll get you some clothes.”

He put down the phone, went to his room, and rummaged through the bureau, returning a few minutes later with a pair of faded corduroy trousers, a new flannel shirt. “Here.”

The boy took them, and Philip retreated to the kitchen. He picked up the phone again, replaced it, and swore under his breath.

He was stalling, he knew that—he should call 911. He didn’t know anything about this kid. Was he drunk? On drugs? The dilated pupils suggested he was, also the muted hostility in his voice. Not to mention Philip had found him stark naked by the lake in thirty-degree weather.

But who to call? 911? Police? His parents? What if he’d run away for a good reason? Would Philip truly be saving him if he rang for help? Or would this be one of those awful things you read about, where a well-meaning outsider wreaks havoc by getting involved in small-town life?

Maybe he’d just been out all night with his girlfriend, or boyfriend. Or maybe he’d been kidnapped and left for dead….

Philip angled himself so he could peer into the living room, and watched as the boy shoved aside the blankets. The bright hairs on his arms caught the sunlight and shone as though washed with rain. He pulled on the corduroy trousers, fumbled with the zipper until he got it halfway up, leaving the fly unbuttoned, then stood and clumsily put on the flannel shirt. It was too big; the pants too short, exposing knobby ankles and those long white feet.

He’s beautiful, thought Philip, and his face grew hot. Clothed, the boy seemed less exotic; also younger. Philip felt a stab of desire and guilt. He stepped away from the door, counted to sixty, then loudly cleared his throat before walking into the living room.

“They fit?”

The boy stood beside the woodstove, turning his hands back and forth. After a moment he looked at Philip. The swollen black pupils made his angular face seem ominous, skull-like.

“I’m thirsty,” he said.

“I’m sorry—of course. I’ll be right back—”

Philip went into the kitchen, waited as the pipes rumbled and shook, and finally produced a thin stream of water. He filled a glass and returned.

“Here….”

Cold air rushed through the open front door, sending a flurry of dead leaves across the slate.

“God damn it.” Philip set the glass down. “Hey—hey, come back!”

But the boy was gone.

Philip walked along the driveway, then retraced his steps to the water’s edge. He considered taking the car to search on the main road, but decided that would be a waste of time. He trudged back to the lodge, his annoyance shading into relief and a vague, shameful disappointment.

The boy had been a diversion: from solitude, boredom, the unending threnody of Philip’s own thoughts. He was already imagining himself a hero, calling 911, saving the kid from—well, whatever.

Now he felt stupid, and uneasy.

What had he been thinking, bringing a stranger inside? It was clear Philip lived alone. The boy might return to rob the place, enlist his friends to break into the cabins, lay waste to the entire camp….

He slammed the front door behind him. Angrily he grabbed the old Hudson Bay blankets and folded them, then picked up the discarded vest from beside the woodstove.

The boy had made off with his clothes, too. The pants were old, but Philip had just bought the shirt for this trip. He glared at the vest and crossed the room to hang it with the other coats. As he reached for the hook, something pricked his hand. He glanced down to see a droplet of blood welling from the fleshy part of his palm. He wiped it on his sleeve, then inspected the vest.

A twig or thorn must have gotten caught in it, or maybe a stray fish hook. He found nothing, until he turned the collar and saw a pale spur protruding from the fabric. He pinched it between his fingers and tugged it free.

It was a white feather, maybe an inch long. The tiny quill had poked through the cloth, sharp as a pin. He examined it curiously, placed it in the center of his palm, and blew.

For an instant it hung suspended in a shaft of light, like a feather trapped in amber; then drifted to the floor. It should have been easy to see, white against dark stone in the early morning sun. Philip searched for several minutes, but never found it.

The rest of that day he felt restless and guilt-wracked. He should have done something about the boy, but what? His remorse was complicated by a growing anxiety. The boy was sick, or injured, or crazy. He’d freeze out there alone in the woods.

And, too, there was the unwanted twinge of longing Philip experienced whenever he thought of him. He’d spent years keeping his own desires in check—he had no choice, with those endless ranks of beautiful creatures that surrounded him in the studio, constant reminders of his own fallibility, the inevitable decay of his limited gifts. The boy seemed a weird rebuke to all that, appearing out of nowhere to remind Philip of what it was like, not to be young, but to be in thrall to youth.

He distracted himself by splitting wood for kindling. As the afternoon wore on, skeins of geese passed overhead, not Canada geese but a species he didn’t recognize, black with white wings and slate-colored necks and heads. They circled above the lodge, making a wild, high-pitched keening; then arrowed downward, so close that he could see the indigo gleam of their bills and their startlingly bright, almost baleful, golden eyes. Philip watched as they flew past, not once but three times, as though searching for a place to land.

They never did. His presence spooked them, even when he stood motionless for their final transit. They swept into the sky and across the lake, their fretful cries echoing long after they were out of sight.

Late that afternoon the wind picked up. Dead leaves rattled in oaks and beech as a cold gale blasted from the north, accompanied by an ominous ridge of cloud the color of basalt. Ice skimmed the gray water closest to shore. Another phalanx of the strange birds wheeled above the lodge, veering toward the woodpile, then soaring back into the darkening sky. Philip was relieved when a flock of quite ordinary Canada geese honked noisily overhead, followed by a ragged group of pintails. Four ravens landed in the oak beside the woodpile and hopped from branch to branch. They cocked their heads toward him, but remained silent.

That unnerved Philip more than anything else. He leaned on the ax handle and stared back, then yelled at them. The ravens stared down with yellow eyes. One clacked its bill, but they made no sign of leaving. He picked up a piece of wood and lobbed it at the tree. The birds flapped their wings and retreated to a higher branch, where they sat in a row and continued to stare at him. Philip picked up the walking stick, brandished it in a feeble show of force, then gave up. He dragged a tarp from the storage shed, covered the woodpile, and painstakingly carried in several armfuls of logs. The ravens remained on the oak tree, heads lowered so they resembled a line of somber, black-clad jurors observing him. When he had brought the last load of wood inside he closed the door, then crossed to the window to gaze out. The birds hopped sideways to huddle together, and in unison turned their heads to stare at the house.

Philip stepped back from the window, his neck and arms prickling. The ravens did not move. When it grew full dark he took a flashlight and shone it through the window.

They were there still, watching him.

He forced himself to move about the room, hoping that routine would eventually drive them from his thoughts. He turned on the radio and listened to the local news. A meteorologist predicted steady high winds all night and a chance of snow. Philip stoked the woodstove and made sure that matches and candles were near to hand. He ate early, lentil soup he’d made several days ago, then settled on the couch beside the stove and tried to read. Once he went to check if the ravens were still outside, and saw to his relief that they were finally gone.

The lodge had always seemed inviolable, with its log walls and beams, stone floor and fireplace. But tonight the windows shuddered as though someone pounded at them. The candles Philip lit for atmosphere guttered, and even in the center of the room, beside the woodstove, he could feel a draft where wind nosed through chinks in the walls and windowpanes. Occasionally the old stove huffed loudly, gray smoke billowing from its seams. Philip would cough and curse and readjust the damper, poking the coals in a vain attempt to create an illusion of heat. Between the cold and smoke and ceaseless clamor of the wind, he found it difficult and finally impossible to concentrate on his book.

“I give up,” he announced to the empty room. He blew out the candles, stuffed another log into the woodstove, and stalked off to bed.

It was barely eight o’clock. Back in the city he might be starting to think about dinner. Here, he felt exhausted. No lights shone beyond the windows of his room. The reflection from the bedside lamp seemed insubstantial as a candle flame; the darkness outside a solid mass, huge and inescapable, that pressed against the panes. His room sat beneath the eaves, where the wind didn’t roar but crooned, a sound like mourning doves. The electric space heater Emma had left for him buzzed alarmingly, so he switched it off and heaped the cast-iron bedstead with Hudson Bay blankets. These smelled comfortingly of cedar, and were so warm he almost forgot the room was chill enough that he could see his breath.

Within minutes he was asleep, and dreaming.

Or perhaps not. Because as he slept, he heard the sound of wings overhead, yet knew these were not wings but wind buffeting glass. The frigid air that bit his face wasn’t a dream, either. He shivered and burrowed deeper beneath the blankets, so that only his nose and cheek were exposed.

When a hand like ice was laid against his cheek, he knew that, too, was no dream.

With a shout he rolled away from the edge of the bed, thrashing against the heavy blankets as he sat up. The darkness was impenetrable: even the faint outlines of window and furniture had vanished. Everything had vanished, save a shape beside the bed. It loomed above him, darker than the surrounding room, so dark that Philip’s eyes were drawn to it as if it had been a flame.

The hand touched him a second time, lingering upon his cheek. “I’m cold,” someone whispered.

Philip lunged for the lamp on his nightstand. Light flooded the room, and for a moment he thought he must be dreaming—nothing extraordinary could withstand a one-hundred-watt bulb.

Then he saw the boy. He still wore Philip’s clothes, the flannel shirt unbuttoned, corduroy pants clumped with burdock and specks of leaf mold. He hugged his arms to his chest and stared with huge black eyes at Philip.

“What the hell are you doing?” shouted Philip.

“I’m cold,” the boy repeated.

Philip stumbled to his feet. He wore only an old T-shirt and flannel boxers, and yes, the room was cold—the door onto the porch was open. He yanked a blanket around him, tossed another at the boy.

“Put that on,” he snapped.

The boy stared at the blanket, then pulled it over his shoulders. Philip edged warily around the bed to close the door, and turned.

The boy didn’t look dangerous, but he was obviously in distress. Mentally ill, probably. And bigger than Philip, too. He cursed himself again for not calling the police earlier.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The boy grimaced, baring those small white teeth.

“Suru,” he said.

“Suru?”

The boy hesitated, then nodded.

“Well, Suru, we need to call your parents.” Philip fought to keep his voice calm. “I’m Philip. What’s your phone number?”

Suru said nothing. He stared at his own hand, lifted then lowered one arm, the blanket suspended beneath like a crimson bat’s wing.

“Come on,” pleaded Philip. “Either you give me your parents’ number or I’ll have to call the police.”

Without warning the boy drew up beside him. His fingers closed around Philip’s hand, a sheath of ice. Again he whispered, “I’m cold.”

The blanket dropped to the floor as he pressed himself against Philip’s chest. Philip tried to pull away, but the boy moved with him, his expression calm even as he thrust Philip back into the room. Philip shoved him, angry, then frightened, as he struck desperately at the boy’s arms and chest.

It was like grasping handfuls of something soft and gelid, fine dry snow or down that shifted beneath his fingers. Emaciated as he was, the boy was frighteningly strong. Philip cried out as the boy forced him onto the bed. He gazed up into Suru’s eyes, no longer black but glaucous, a bright spark within each like a tiny shimmering seed.

Then the boy’s skeletal arms were around him, holding him gently, hesitantly. He cocked his head, as though he listened for a sound other than Philip’s ragged breathing, then slowly lowered his cheek until it rested against Philip’s.

“You’re warm,” said Suru, marveling.

Philip tensed for an assault or whispered threat; a kiss; flight.

But the boy only nestled against him. A minute passed, and Philip extended his hand cautiously, touching Suru’s shoulder where the flannel shirt gaped open.

“Oh my God,” he exclaimed.

It wasn’t dirt flecked across the boy’s shoulder, as he’d first thought, but a number of small black holes. Philip brushed one with a finger, dislodging something that fell to the floor with a loud ping.

Buckshot.

“Someone shot you?” he said, incredulous. “Good lord, you need to see a doctor—”

“No!”

“Don’t be crazy—it’ll get infected. Doesn’t it hurt?”

Suru shook his head. Philip started to scramble from the bed, stopped when the boy cried out.

“No. Please. It does not hurt. Only see—”

Suru gazed out at the snow eddying around the windows and French door, then turned to Philip.

“I lost the way,” he said. “When I fell. I returned but it was gone.”

Philip frowned. “The way?”

“From Tuonela. I fell, and you found me. I tried to go back. The way is gone.”

He clutched his head and began to sob, anguished.

“No—stop, please, really, it’s okay!” said Philip. “I’ll get you back. Just wait a minute and—”

Suru looked at him. His eyes were huge, still that pale gray-green; but they held no tears. “Will you come with me?”

“Go with you?”

“Yes.”

Philip glanced outside. He must be out of his mind, to even think of getting into the car with a stranger in the middle of the night. Though god only knew what kind of people were lurking out there in the woods, if Philip let the boy go off alone.

“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll go with you. But—well, you know where you’re going, right?”

Suru pointed at the window. “There,” he said. “Tuonela.”

“Right.” Philip made a face. “But not from this side, right? You came from over there, by the nature preserve, or whatever it is? I don’t know those roads at all. You’ll have to tell me where to go. I really think we should just call someone.”

But the boy was already walking toward the door.

“Wait!” Philip grabbed him. “Let’s get you some proper clothes, okay? Stay here. And don’t go outside again. Don’t go anywhere, or I swear to god I’ll call the cops.”

He waited until Suru settled back onto the bed, then went to dig around in a closet for shoes and a coat. The snow seemed to demand something more substantial than a blaze-orange vest. He retrieved his own heavy barn coat, after a few minutes located a worn parka for Suru.

Shoes were more difficult. Philip had an old, well-broken-in pair of gumshoes, but when he presented Suru with a similar pair he’d found in Sam’s office, the boy flatly refused to wear them. He dismissed a second pair as well. Only when Philip threatened to remain at the lodge did Suru consent to a pair of high yellow fishing boots, unlined and smelling of mildew.

But no amount of coercion would get him to wear socks. He still hadn’t buttoned his flannel shirt, either, or his fly.

“You better finish getting dressed,” said Philip. Suru stared at him blankly. “Oh, for God’s sake….”

He stooped to button the boy’s shirt. The silvery hairs on Suru’s arms stiffened, though when Philip’s hand brushed against them they felt soft as fur or down. The boy sat compliantly, watching him, and Philip felt a stir of arousal. He finished with the shirt and glanced at the boy’s trousers.

The zipper had come undone. Philip hesitated, then zipped it, fumbling with the fly button. He felt the boy’s cock stir beneath the fabric, looked up to see Suru staring at him. Philip flushed and stood.

“Come on.” He walked from the room. “I’ll start the car.”

Outside, snow fine as sand stung his face. He started the car and sat inside without turning on the headlights, staring at tossing trees, the black chasm where the lake stretched. When he finally headed back, Suru met him on the steps. Philip was relieved to see he still wore the boots and parka.

“You all set?”

Suru gave a small nod. Philip went inside to check the woodstove, grabbing two orange watchcaps and his walking stick as he returned. He shoved one hat onto his head, tossed the other to Suru, and gestured at the car. “Your chariot awaits.”

Suru crouched to peer into one headlight, then pointed at the lake, past the spit of land where Philip had found him. “There.”

“We still have to drive. I’ve got a map in the car, we can figure it out.”

Suru shook his head. “That is not the way.”

“You said you didn’t know the way!”

“I said the way is gone.”

“And?” Philip’s voice rose dangerously. “Has it come back?”

Suru gazed at the sky. Above the lake the clouds parted, a rent just big enough to reveal a moon near full. Beneath it a broken lane of silver stretched across the water, fading then reappearing to ignite a stand of white birch along the shore.

“There!” exclaimed Suru, and headed for the trees.

Philip swore and hurried to turn off the car. When he stumbled back into the snow, Suru was nowhere to be seen. Neither was his walking stick. He kicked at the snow, trying to see where it had fallen, and at last gave up.

“Suru!” he yelled.

A faint voice echoed back from the trees. Philip walked as quickly as he could, praying he wouldn’t fall. At the edge of the woods he halted.

All around him, the ground seemed to erupt into silvery waves. The air glittered and spun with falling snow, incandescent in the moonlight; the black lake appeared endless. A desert of obsidian, or some awful, bottomless canyon, as though the world had suddenly sheared away at Philip’s feet.

He turned, shielding his eyes against the snow, but he could no longer see the lodge. The wind carried a voice to him.

“Here!”

A bright shape bobbed in the distance: Suru, waving excitedly. Philip headed toward him, his feet sliding across the slick ground.

In a few minutes he reached the alder thicket crowding the bank. Here it became less treacherous to move, if no easier—he had to grab handfuls of whiplike alder branches and pull himself between them. Too late he realized he hadn’t worn gloves, but soon his fingers grew so numb he no longer felt where the branches slashed them. Suru’s voice came again, inches from where Philip struggled to free himself from a tangle of snow-covered vines. Fingers stronger than his own closed around his hand, and the boy pulled him through.

“See?” cried Suru with a note of triumph.

Philip blinked. The snow fell more heavily here, though a spinney of young birches served as a small windbreak. Beside him, Suru stared out across the black lake, to where moonlight touched the far shore. Spruce and fir glittered as with hoarfrost. Between that shore and where they stood, moonlight traced a thin, shining crescent along the water’s edge, marking a narrow path.

“The way to Tuonela,” said Suru.

Philip shoved his hands into his pockets, shivering. “I thought this was all Tuonela. It’s a big lake.”

Suru shook his head. “This is not Tuonela. I could not find the way, until you found me.”

“Good thing I did. You would have stayed there till spring. You might have died.”

“No. I would not have died.”

Another sound cut through the steady rush of wind, staccato and higher pitched. Philip cupped his hands around his eyes and stared up through the whirling snow.

A vast, cloudlike shape flowed across the sky, heading toward the opposite shore. As it drew nearer, Philip saw it was not a cloud, but an immense flock of birds—geese with black necks and long white wings. They moved as a school of fish does in deep water, as though they formed a single huge creature that soared high above the trees, blotting out the moon so that only faint shafts of light showed through. He felt again the horror that had gripped him earlier, when a black chasm seemed to yawn at his feet.

For days he had watched them in flight—flock upon flock of mergansers and pintails and teal, endless battalions of geese—yet, until now, he had never registered which horizon they’d been striving toward.

All this time, they should have been flying south.

But they were flying north.

Suru gave a low cry and darted forward, stumbling on a snow-covered rock. There were stones everywhere, frozen black waves that slashed Philip’s hand like razors when he bent to help Suru to his feet. The boy trembled, and pointed at the lake.

The moonlit path had been extinguished, save for a glimmering thread that wound between trees and underbrush, more the memory of moonlight than the real thing. Philip rubbed his eyes—the lashes felt glued together by snow—then looked over his shoulder.

“We have to go back.” His chest ached with cold; it hurt to speak. “We’ll freeze, we’re not dressed for this.”

“No. I cannot return there. You must come with me.”

He gazed down at Philip, unblinking. His sunken eyes seemed part of the surrounding darkness, a skull disinterred by the storm.

Yet the boy’s words held no command, but a plea. The wind whipped his black hair around his face, as in one smooth motion he shrugged the parka from his shoulders. The flannel shirt billowed about his exposed chest, then was torn from him. He lowered his head until his lips grazed Philip’s forehead, a kiss that burned like molten iron.

“Come with me.”

He embraced Philip, and the silvery hairs lengthened into tendrils that coiled around his shoulders. The boy’s mouth pressed against his, as icy thorns pricked Philip’s chest, blossomed into something soft yet fluid that enveloped him from throat to knees. As in his nightmares he fell.

Yet instead of striking granite and frozen earth, he hung suspended between ground and sky, neither falling nor flying but somehow held aloft. As when he had been airborne above the stage, muscles straining as he traced a grand jeté en avant, a leap into the darkness he had never completed in waking life without tumbling to the floor. The dream of flight consumed him: he was part of it, as each individual bird formed part of the vast shadow that wheeled above them in the snow-filled sky. He cried out, overcome with a joy close to pain; felt the boy’s embrace tighten and knew it was not arms that bore him but great wings and feathers like flashing blades. Philip clung to him, his terror flaring into desire as the wings beat furiously against the snow, Suru’s legs tightening around his until with a cry Philip came, and fell back onto the frozen ground.

He rolled onto his side, struggled to pull himself upright and raised his arm, afraid to see what stood before him. White wings and arched neck and those glittering onyx eyes; a bill parted to reveal a tongue like an ebony serpent.

White wings blurred into a vortex of snow. The long neck coiled back upon itself. Only the eyes glowed as before, black and fathomless within that skull-like face.

Philip stumbled to his feet. Freezing wind tore at his clothes, yet it no longer overwhelmed him as it had just minutes before.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“The Guardian of Tuonela,” replied Suru.

Philip shuddered. He was delirious, that was why the cold didn’t bother him—that, or he’d already succumbed to hypothermia, the waking dream that claimed people before they froze to death.

“The guardian of Tuonela?” he repeated stupidly. “But not this Tuonela.”

“No. That is just a name. Tuonela is there.” Suru pointed to the far shore, invisible behind snow and the storm of birds. “I have never left it unguarded. Until now.”

“But—why?”

“I wished to see the other shore. But I had never fallen, or imagined that I could.” He lifted his head to stare at the wheeling birds. “They cannot return until I do. And it will be a terrible thing if they do not return.”

“They’re migrating, that’s all.” Philip’s voice cracked. “Birds fly south in autumn, the storm confused them—”

“They are not birds. I must go back.” Suru extended his hand. “Come with me.”

“I—I can’t. I’ll freeze—I’ll die.”

“You will not die with me. But—”

The boy gestured in the direction of the lodge. A gust of wind stirred the trees, and for the first time Philip could see the glow of yellow windows in the frigid night.

“If you wish to return there,” said Suru, “you must travel alone.”

The boy fell silent. After a moment he went on in a low voice. “I do not want to leave you here, alone. You saved me from exile. In exchange I have given you a gift.”

One finger reached to touch Philip’s forehead, and again icy flame blazed beneath Philip’s skin.

“You’re insane,” said Philip. “Or I am.”

He pulled away, then drove his fingernails into his palm, trying to wake himself; stamped his bad foot upon the frozen ground, a motion that should have sent him reeling.

But just as he no longer felt cold, he could no longer feel pain. The boy’s touch had drawn that from him, as well.

You saved me. In exchange I have given you a gift….

The wind died. Night once more claimed the glowing windows. Philip stared at the darkness that hid the lodge, that hid everything and everyone he had ever known.

Life did not work like this, love did not work like this. Philip knew that. Only stories did, where wonder trumped despair and desire overcame death. The fairy’s kiss, the sacrificial faun; enchanted swans and shoes that sliced like blades, like ice. That was why he had become a dancer, not just to dream of fellowship and flight, but to partake, however fleetingly, in something close to ecstasy—and how long since he had experienced that?

Even if he hadn’t lost his mind—even if this was somehow real, some crazed dream-bargain he’d made with his unconscious—he couldn’t imagine leaving it all behind. How could he leave Emma and their shared childhood? Or the young dancers he’d taught and promised to see when he returned to the city; the city itself, and the little world that nested inside it, with its hierarchy of striving men and women, ballet masters and earnest intructors who might never take the stage again but still couldn’t bring themselves to abandon it completely.

If something opens up, you know we’ll find a place for you.

“This gift.” Philip glanced at Suru. “If I go back, will it—will I still have it?”

The boy nodded, and Philip flexed his leg tentatively.

He could go back. Even if he couldn’t return to his old position, he could look for other work, a smaller company, some private school in the suburbs.

Or he could stay here until he found something. Emma would love it, and Sam. He could see spring for the first time at Tuonela. Wild geese and swallows returning from their winter migration; a solitary swan plying blue water, dark ripples in its wake.

He took a deep breath and turned to where Suru stood, waiting.

“I’ll go with you.”

Suru took his hand and drew him to his side, then led him, slowly, along the water’s edge. Before them the thread of moonlight wove between stones and ice-skimmed pools, frozen cattails and snow-covered spruce and birch. Birds filled the sky, not just waterfowl but owls and ravens, gulls and hawks, great crested herons and tiny kinglets and scissor-winged swallows that soared and skimmed above the lake but never touched its surface.

Pinwheels of snow spun in their wake, extinguished by the black waters of Tuonela. With every step that Suru took, more birds appeared. The air became a living whirlwind, wings and shrill chatter, whistles and croaks; over it all a solitary, heartrending song like a mockingbird’s, that ended in a convulsive throb of grief or joy.

Philip didn’t know how long they walked. Hours, perhaps. The moon never seemed to move from where it shone above the far shore. Snow blew across the moonlit path, but no more fell from the sky. The birds no longer sang, though Philip still felt the rush of untold wings. He was neither tired nor chilled; whenever his hand brushed Suru’s, cold fire flashed through his veins.

The snow grew very deep, so powdery it was like swimming through drifts of cloud. Overhead, evergreen branches made a pattern like frost crystals against the stars. The trees grew taller, and Philip now saw that each had been slashed as with an ax, two deep grooves that formed a V. Suru touched one, withdrew a white finger glistening with sap and fragrant as balsam.

“These mark the border,” he said. “We are within Tuonela now.”

They walked on. Gradually, the distant shore came into view. A long rock-strewn beach and towering pines, stands of birch larger than any Philip had ever seen. Behind the beach rose a sheer black cliff hundreds of feet tall, dappled silver where moonlight touched fissures and ragged outcroppings.

Suru halted. He stared at the desolate trees and that impassable wall of stone, the onyx waves lapping at the beach. Above the cliff countless birds circled restlessly. The great pines bowed beneath the wind of their flight.

“We are nearly there,” said Suru.

He turned to Philip and smiled. The flesh melted from his face. Sparks flickered within empty eye sockets; his mouth opened onto a darkness deeper than the sky. He was neither boy nor swan but bone and flame.

Yet he was not terrible, and he bowed as he took Philip’s hand, indicating where a deep ravine split the ground a short distance from where they stood. A stream rushed through the channel, tumbling over rocks and bubbles of ice, before plunging in a shining waterfall that spilled into the lake. A fallen birch tree spanned the cleft. Ribbons of mottled bark peeled from its trunk, and there were jagged spurs where branches had broken or rotted away.

“I will cross before you,” he said. “Wait until I have reached the other side. Do not look down.”

Philip shook his head. “I can’t.”

His tongue seemed to freeze against the roof of his mouth as he stared into the ravine, those knife-edged rocks and roaring cataract. At its center a whirlpool spun, a dreadful mouth gaping at the moon overheard.

Suru lifted a fleshless hand. “You must. All things make this crossing.” He pointed to where the birds wheeled against the sky. “That is their road. This is mine. No living thing has ever taken it with me. That is my second gift to you.”

Before Philip could reply, Suru turned. His arms stretched upward, all bones and light as he crouched, then leapt above the chasm. For an instant his skull merged with the moon, and a face gazed pityingly down upon the man who remained on the shore.

Then moonlight splintered the cage of bone. Feathers unfurled in a glory of wings that rose and fell, slowly at first, then more and more swiftly, until the night sky fell back before them and light touched the clifftops. The great pines kindled red and gold as thousands upon thousands of birds dove toward the surface of the lake and landed, the cliffs ringing with their cries.

“Come!”

Philip looked up to see the great swan hovering above the far shore, its eyes no longer black but blazing argent. The terrifying joy he’d felt earlier returned. For a second he closed his eyes, trying to summon every memory of the world behind him.

Then he walked to the tree, lifted one foot, and carefully stepped onto it.

Icy spume lashed his face as dread jolted him along with bitter cold. He looked up, terrified, but was blinded by needles of ice; shaded his eyes and took a second, lurching step.

Beneath him the great birch trembled like a live thing. Philip gasped, then edged forward. He could no longer see the other shore; could see nothing but a glittering arc of frozen spray as he inched across the fallen tree. When he was halfway across, he glanced down.

At the edge of the waterfall a figure knelt, her skin white as birch, her head bowed so he could only see a cascade of long black hair tangled in the whirlpool. As Philip watched she grasped her hair with both hands and began to drag it back through the frigid water, as though it were a net, then hoisted it upon the frozen shore, so that he saw what she had captured: countless men and women, infants and children, their eyes wide and staring and hands plucking uselessly at the net that had ensnared them.

With a cry Philip stumbled and nearly fell. The woman looked up, her eyes empty sockets in a barren skull, mouth bared in a rictus of hunger and rage. Philip righted himself, then lurched toward the other bank.

Something coiled around his ankle, taut as a wire. He gave a muffled shout, looked up to see the great swan still hovering above the shore. The bank was yet a few yards off. Another strand of black hair snaked toward him, writhing as it sought to loop around his wrist.

“Jump!” cried Suru.

Philip raised his arms, felt his balance shift from shoulders to calves to the balls of his feet. Faint chiming sounded in his ears: cracking ice, the ballet mistress’s bell when he was a boy; the tree beneath him splintering. Pain sheared his foot as he arched forward; and jumped.

His face burned, his eyes. The chiming became a roar. Around him all was flame but it was not the air that was ablaze but Philip himself. His skin peeled away in petals of black and gold, embers blown like snow.

But it was not snow but wings: Suru’s and his own, beating against the air. Far below, the black waters erupted as wave after wave of birds rose to greet them, geese and hawks and swallows, cranes and swifts and tanagers, gulls with the eyes of women and child-faced doves: all swallowed by the sunrise as they mounted the sky above the cliffs, and two swans like falling stars disappeared into the horizon.

It was several days before Joe Moody checked on the camp. The storm had brought down power lines, but he assumed that Emma’s friend would be fine, what with the generator and four cords of firewood.

He found the lodge deserted, and Philip’s rental car buried under the snow. There were no footprints leading to or from the lodge; no sign of forced entry or violence. Emma and her husband were notified in Key West and returned, heartsick, to aid the warden service and police in the search. Divers searched the frigid waters of Lake Tuonela, but no body was ever found.

Only Emma ever noticed afterward, year after year, that a pair of swans appeared each spring—silent, inseparable—to make their slow passage across dark water before vanishing in the mist.