The Wolves of Midwinter

15

THERE WAS A CHANGE in the atmosphere, a faint draft that made the candle flames shudder. Lisa straightened against the paneled wall and looked sharply towards the far end of the table. Sergei sat back heavily in his chair, sighing, with a smile on his lips as though he were enjoying this.

Reuben followed the direction of Lisa’s gaze and then so did Stuart.

Out of the shadows there, something indistinct took shape. It was as if the darkness itself thickened. The candle flames settled on their wicks. And a figure gradually appeared—resembling first a faint projection of an image and then brightening, and becoming finally three-dimensional and vivid.

It was the figure of a large man, a man slightly taller than Reuben, rawboned, with a massive head of black shining hair. The frame of the man was enormous, and the bones of his face were prominent and beautifully symmetrical. His skin was dark, dark as caramel, but he had large almond-shaped light eyes, green eyes. These eyes shining out of the dark face gave him a slightly manic look, heightened by his thick straight eyebrows, and the faint smile on his large sensuous mouth. He had a high smooth forehead from which his unruly hair erupted in dark glossy waves.

His hair was so full that some of it was pulled back from his face, the great mass of it falling down on all sides to his shoulders. He appeared to be wearing a light beige-colored chamois shirt and pants. The belt he wore was very wide and dark and had a large bronze buckle in the shape of a face.

He had very big hands.

There was no classifying him as to race in Reuben’s mind. He might have come from India. It was impossible to tell.

He looked at Reuben thoughtfully and made a little bow. Then he looked at each of the others in the same way, his face dramatically brightening when his eyes settled on Felix.

He came around the table behind Stuart to greet Felix.

“Felix, my old friend,” he said in clear unaccented English. “How glad I am to see you, and how glad I am that you’re returned to the Nideck woods.” His voice was even, youthful.

They embraced.

His body seemed as real and as solid as Felix’s body, and Reuben marveled that there was nothing even faintly frightening or horrible about this figure. In fact his fantastic materializing seemed like some natural revelation—that is, the uncovering of someone solid who had already been there, obedient to gravity, and breathing just like any one of them.

The man’s eyes fixed on Reuben. Quickly Reuben rose and extended his hand.

“Welcome, young master of these woods,” said Elthram. “You love the forest as we love the forest.” He sounded contemporary, relaxed.

“I do love it,” said Reuben. He was trembling and trying to conceal it. The hand that clasped his was warm and firm. “Forgive me,” he stammered. “This is powerful, all this.” The scent rising from the figure was the scent of the outdoors, of leaves, living things, but also of dust, very strongly of dust. But dust gives off a clean scent, doesn’t it, Reuben thought.

“Indeed, and it’s thrilling for me as well, to be invited into your house,” said Elthram, smiling. “Many’s the time our people have seen you and your lady walking in the woods here, and no human in these parts loves the woods any more than your beloved lady.”

“She’ll be so pleased to hear that,” said Reuben. “I wish she were here now to meet you.”

“But she has met me,” said Elthram. “Though she hasn’t known it. She’s known me all her life, and I’ve known her—knew her when she was a child making her way through Muir Woods with her father. The Forest Gentry know those who belong to the forest. They never forget those who are kind to the forest.”

“I’ll share all of this with her,” said Reuben. “As soon as I’m able.”

Some small derisive sound came from Margon.

The man’s eyes fixed on Margon. To say the appearance of animation drained out of the man would be an understatement. He was immediately bruised and silenced. And it did seem that the entire figure grew paler for an instant, less reflective, the smooth shining skin fading to a matte surface, but this was at once corrected, though the man’s eyes were narrow and quivering slightly as if fending off invisible blows.

Margon stood up and walked out of the dining room.

This was a terrible moment for Stuart, plainly, and he looked miserably after Margon and started to rise. But Felix reached down and put his right hand on Stuart’s shoulder, saying “Stay with us” in a small but authoritative voice. He turned back to the man.

“Sit down, please, Elthram,” said Felix and gestured to Margon’s chair. It was the logical chair, of course, but the gesture seemed a little abrasive, to say the least.

“Now, Stuart, this is our good friend Elthram of the Forest Gentry, and I know you join me in welcoming him to the house.”

“Absolutely!” Stuart responded. His face was flushed.

Elthram seated himself and immediately greeted Sergei, whom he also addressed as “old friend.”

Sergei gave a low rolling laugh and a nod. “You look splendid, dear friend,” said Sergei. “Simply splendid. You always take me back in mind to the most blissful—and the most tempestuous—times!”

Elthram acknowledged this with those intense eyes firing beautifully. Then he looked intently at Reuben.

“Let me assure you, Reuben,” he said, “we did not mean to startle you in the forest. We meant to help you. You were confused in the darkness. And we did not know how quickly you would sense our presence. And so our attempts went wrong.” His voice had a medium pitch, about like Reuben’s or Stuart’s voice.

“Oh, not at all,” said Reuben. “I knew you were trying to help. I understood that. I just didn’t know what you were.”

“Yes,” he said. “Often when we assist someone who is lost, that one is not so quick to realize that it is we who are doing it, you understand. We pride ourselves on subtlety. But you’re gifted, Reuben, and we didn’t realize how gifted, and so misunderstanding was the result.”

Surely the green eyes in the dark face were the most startling trait of this man, and even if they’d been small they would have been startling. As it was, they were very large with large pupils and it seemed impossible they were mere illusion, but then again this wasn’t mere illusion, was it?

And all this is particles, Reuben thought, drawn to an ethereal body? And all this can be dispersed? Now that seemed impossible. No revelation of a presence could compare in shock with the notion that something as solid and vital as this man could simply disappear.

Felix had seated himself again, and Lisa had set a large mug before Elthram, and was filling it from a cold silver pitcher with what appeared to be milk.

Elthram gave Lisa what was surely a bit of a mischievous smile and thanked her. Gratefully, in fact, with remarkably obvious pleasure, he looked at the milk. He lifted the mug to his lips but he did not actually drink the milk.

“Now Elthram,” said Felix, “you know why I’ve asked you to come—.”

“Yes, I do,” said Elthram running over Felix’s words. “And she is here, yes, most definitely here and lingering here and not wanting to go anywhere else. But she can’t see us yet or hear us, but she will.”

“Why is she haunting?” asked Reuben.

“She’s grieved, and confused,” said Elthram. The largeness of his face was slightly disorienting for Reuben, possibly because they sat so close to each other and the man was slightly taller even than Sergei, who was the tallest of the Distinguished Gentlemen. “She does know that she has passed, yes, she knows this. But she’s still uncertain as to what caused her death. She knows her brothers are dead. But she doesn’t grasp that they in fact took her life. And she searches for answers, and she fears the portal to the heavens when she sees it.”

“But why, why fear the portal to the heavens?” asked Reuben.

“Because she is not a believer in life after death,” explained Elthram. “She is not a believer in invisible things.”

His speech was easily more contemporary sounding than the speech of the Distinguished Gentlemen, and his kind and inviting manner was extremely attractive.

“Reuben, when the newly dead see the portal to the heavens, they see a white light. Sometimes in that white light they see ancestors, or parents who have gone on. Sometimes they see only light. We often see what we think they see but we can’t be sure. This light is no longer opening for her, or inviting her to move on. But it’s clear that she doesn’t know why she is still existing as herself, as Marchent, when she believed so firmly that death would be the end of what she was.”

“What is she trying to tell me?” asked Reuben. “What does she want from me?”

“She’s clinging to you because she can see you,” said Elthram, “so in the main she wants you to know that she’s here. She wants to ask you what happened to her and why it happened and what happened to you. She knows you’re no longer a human being, Reuben. She can see this, sense it, probably she’s witnessed you change into the beast state. I’m almost certain she’s witnessed it. This frightens her, terrifies her. She is a ghost filled with terror and grief.”

“This has to stop,” said Reuben. He was trembling again, and he hated it when he started trembling. “She can’t be allowed to suffer. She did nothing to deserve it.”

“You’re right, absolutely,” said Elthram. “But do understand that in this world—in your world, and in our world, the world we share—suffering often has little to do with whether one deserves it.”

“But you will help her,” said Reuben.

“We will. We surround her now; we surround her when she is dreaming and unfocused and unaware. We attempt to rouse her spirit, to provoke it to focus so that she pulls her spirit body together and becomes a learner again.”

“What do you mean, ‘a learner’?” asked Reuben.

“Spirits learn when they are focused. Focus involves the concentration of the spirit body, concentration of the mind. When the newly dead first cross over, their biggest temptation in the earthbound state is to diffuse, to spread out, to become loose and like air, and to dream. A spirit can float in such a state forever, and the mind does not think in such a state so much as it dreams, if there is any narrative in that mind at all.”

“Ah, that’s exactly what I thought,” said Stuart suddenly, but then he sank back and gestured in apology.

“You have studied this,” said Elthram in a very genial manner to Stuart. “You and Reuben both have studied it on your computers, on the Internet, you’ve read all you can find about ghosts and spirits.”

“A lot of jumbled theories,” said Stuart. “Yes.”

“I haven’t studied it enough,” said Reuben. “I’ve been too focused on myself, on my own suffering. I should have studied.”

“But there’s truth in much of those jumbled theories,” Elthram continued.

“So when a dreaming spirit draws itself together,” said Stuart, “when it focuses, then it starts to really think.”

“Yes,” said Elthram. “It thinks, it remembers, and memory is everything for the education and the moral fiber of a spirit. And as it grows stronger, so its senses become stronger; it can see the physical world in the old way again, though not perfectly. And it can hear physical sounds in the old way again, and even smell, and touch.”

“And as it grows stronger, then it can appear,” Reuben volunteered.

“Yes. It can appear to someone who is gifted more readily than to others, but yes, as it condenses its energy, as it envisions its own energy in the form of its old physical body, it can both accidentally and purposefully appear to anyone.”

“I see. I’m getting it,” said Stuart.

“Now do keep in mind that the spirit of Marchent doesn’t know these things—she is responding when she sees or senses Reuben’s presence. And she responds when Reuben responds to her. And the act of concentrating, of focusing, of pulling together, this happens without her fully grasping that that is what she’s doing. This is how ghosts learn.”

“And left to her own devices,” asked Felix, “she will continue to learn?”

“Not necessarily,” said Elthram. “She may remain as she is for years.”

“That’s too horrible,” said Reuben.

“It is horrible,” said Felix.

“Trust in us, old friend,” said Elthram. “We will not abandon her. She’s your blood kin, and you were master of these great woods for many a decade. Once she recognizes us, once she ceases to veer away from us and back into the buffer of her dreams, once she allows herself to focus on us, we can teach her more than I can now explain to you in words.”

“But she could ignore you for years, too, couldn’t she?” asked Felix.

Elthram smiled. It was the most compassionate smile. He extended his left hand and then, turning, placed both his hands over Felix’s right hand. “She will not,” he said. “I won’t let her ignore me. You know how persistent I can be.”

“So you’re saying,” asked Reuben, “that she turned away from the white light, the portal, as you call it, because she didn’t believe in life after death?”

“There can be many tangled reasons why spirits don’t acknowledge the portal,” said Elthram. “I sense this was the reason in her case. And it was mingled with the fact that she feared notions of the hereafter for other reasons, that she would encounter there spirits she didn’t want to encounter, the spirits of her parents, for instance, whom she hated by the end of their lives.”

“Why did she hate them?” asked Reuben.

“Because she knew they’d been treacherous to Felix,” said Elthram. “She knew.”

“And all this you can extract simply by being here where her spirit is?” asked Stuart.

“We’ve been here for a very long time. We were here when she was growing up, of course. We were around her during many moments in her life. You might say we’ve always known her, because we have known Felix and known Felix’s house and Felix’s family, and we know much of what happened with her.”

This was saddening Felix, almost crushing him. He put his face in his hands.

“Don’t fear,” said Elthram. “We are here now to do what you’ve asked us to do.”

“What about the spirits of her brothers?” asked Reuben. “The men who stabbed her to death?”

“Gone from the earth,” said Elthram.

“They saw the portal and went up?”

“I don’t know,” said Elthram.

“What about Marrok’s spirit?” asked Reuben.

Elthram was quiet for a moment. “Not here. But Morphenkinder spirits almost never linger.”

“Why not?”

Elthram smiled as if the question was surprising and even naïve. “They know too much about life and death,” he offered. “It’s those who don’t know much about life and death that linger, those who aren’t prepared for the transition.”

“You help other spirits, lingering spirits?” asked Stuart.

“We do. We have. Our society is like many an earthly society. We meet, we come to know, we invite, we learn from. And so it goes.”

“And your company, the Forest Gentry, you take in wandering spirits.”

“We have. We do.” Elthram seemed to be pondering for a moment. “Not everyone wants to join with us,” said Elthram. “We are after all the Forest Gentry. But we are only one group of spirits in this world. There are others. And many a spirit needs no company and evolves from virtue to virtue on his own.”

“This portal to the heavens,” asked Reuben, “does it ever open for you?”

“I am not a ghost,” said Elthram. “I have always been what I am. I chose this physical body; I constructed it for myself, and perfected it, and now and then alter it and refine it. Because I have never had an ethereal human body, but only an ethereal spirit body. I have always been spirit. And no, there is no portal to the heavens that opens for such as me.”

There came the soft sound of someone walking into the room again, and out of the gloom, Margon appeared and took the chair at the far end of the table.

Elthram’s face was stricken. His eyes quivered again as though someone were hurting him. But he looked steadily at Margon in spite of this.

“If I offend you, I’m sorry,” he said to Margon.

“You don’t offend me,” said Margon. “But you were flesh and blood once, Elthram. All of you Forest Gentry were once flesh and blood. You’ve left your bones in the earth like all living things.”

These words were lacerating Elthram and he was flinching. His whole frame stiffened as if to hunker under an assault.

“And so you’ll teach your clever skills to Marchent, will you?” demanded Margon. “You’ll teach her to rule in the astral sphere as you rule. You’ll use her intellect and memory to help her become a nonpareil of a ghost!”

Stuart looked as if he was going to cry.

“Please don’t say any more,” said Felix softly.

Margon kept his eyes on Elthram, who had drawn himself up, his open hands hovering in front of his face.

“Well, when you speak to Marchent,” said Margon, “for the love of truth, remind her of the portal. Don’t urge her to remain with you.”

“And what if there is nothing beyond the portal?” asked Stuart. “What if it’s a portal to annihilation? What if existence continues only for the earthbound?”

“If that’s so, then that’s the way it’s probably meant to be,” said Margon.

“How do you know what is meant to be?” asked Elthram. He was taking pains to be courteous. “We are the Forest People,” he said gently. “We were here before you ever came into existence, Margon. And we do not know what is meant to be. So how can you know? Oh, the tyranny of those who believe in nothing.”

“There are those who come from beyond the portal, Elthram,” said Margon.

Elthram appeared shocked.

“You know there are those who come from beyond the portal,” said Margon.

“You believe this and yet you say that we did not come from beyond the portal?” asked Elthram. “Your spirit was born of matter, Margon, and thrives in matter now. Our spirits were never rooted to the physical. And yes, we may have come here from beyond the portal, but we only know of our existence here.”

“You become more clever all the time, don’t you? And you grow ever more powerful.”

“And why shouldn’t we?” asked Elthram.

“No matter how clever you become, you’ll never be able to actually drink that milk. You can’t eat the food offerings you so relish. You know you can’t.”

“You think you know what we are, but—.”

“I know what you are not,” said Margon. “Lies have consequences.”

Silence with the two staring at each other.

“Someday, perhaps,” said Elthram in a low voice, “we will be able to eat and drink, too.”

Margon shook his head.

“People of old knew ghosts or gods—as they called them—savored the fragrance of burnt offerings,” said Margon. “People of old knew ghosts or gods—as they called them—thrived on moisture, thrived on the falling rain, and loved the brooks of the woodland or the fields, or liquids turning into steam. That feeds your electrical energy, doesn’t it? The rain, the waters of a creek or a waterfall. You can dip to lap the moisture of a libation poured on a grave.”

“I am not a ghost,” whispered Elthram.

“But no spirit or ghost or god,” Margon insisted, “can really eat or drink.”

Elthram’s eyes blazed with a painful anger. He didn’t answer.

“Beings like this one, Stuart,” said Margon as he glanced at Stuart, “have fooled humans since before recorded time—pretending to an omniscience they do not possess, a divinity they know nothing about.”

“Please, Margon, I beg you,” said Felix gently. “Don’t go on.”

Margon made an airy gesture of acceptance, but he shook his head. He looked off at the fire.

Reuben found himself glancing up at Lisa, who stood very still by the fireplace, staring at Elthram. She had no real expression except that of vigilance. Her mind might have been wandering for all he knew.

“Margon,” said Elthram. “I will tell Marchent what I know.”

“You’ll teach her to invoke the memory of her physical self,” said Margon. “That is, to move backwards—to strengthen her ethereal body to resemble her lost physical body, to seek for a material existence.”

“It’s not material!” said Elthram, raising his voice only slightly. “We are not material. We’ve taken bodies to resemble you because we see you and know you and would come into your world, the world you’ve made of the material, but we are not material. We are the invisible people and we can come and go.”

“Yes, you are material, it’s simply another kind of material,” said Margon. “That’s all it is!” He was becoming heated. “And you’re burning to be visible in our world; you want it more than anything else.”

“No, that is not true,” said Elthram. “How little you know of our true existence.”

“And look how your face reddens,” said Margon. “Oh, you get better at this all the time.”

“We must all get better at what we do,” said Elthram with an air of resignation, his eyes appealing to Margon. “Why should we be different in that respect from you?”

Felix looked down, neither resigned nor accepting, but only unhappy.

“So, what, it’s better to let Marchent suffer in confusion?” asked Reuben, “and hope that she slips permanently into dreams?” He couldn’t keep silent any longer. “What does it matter what it’s called or what science knows about it? Her intellect survives, doesn’t it? She’s Marchent and she’s here and she’s in pain.”

Felix nodded to this.

“In dreams perhaps she can see the portal to the heavens,” said Margon. “Once she becomes focused on the physical, perhaps she will never again see it.”

“What if it’s the portal to nonexistence?” asked Reuben.

“That’s what it sounds like to me,” said Stuart. “The white light, it flashes when the energy of the spirit disintegrates. That’s what I think of this portal to heaven. That’s all I think it might be.”

Reuben shuddered.

Margon gazed across the long table at Elthram, Elthram’s large eyes narrowed as if trying to fathom something about Margon that he could no longer describe in words.

Sergei, who’d sat there quiet all the while, gave a long eloquent breath.

“You want to know what I think?” said Sergei. “I think we leave here tonight, Margon, and me and these boy wolves and we go hunting. And we leave Felix here to keep preparing for the Christmas festival. And we leave Elthram and the Forest Gentry to their task.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” said Felix. “You and Thibault take the boys away from here. Satisfy their need to hunt. And Elthram, if there is anything I can do to cooperate with you, I will do it, you know that.”

“You know the things I love,” said Elthram, smiling. “Let us sup with you, Felix. Bring us to your table. Welcome us into your house.”

“ ‘Sup,’ ” scoffed Margon.

Felix nodded. “The doors are open, my friend.”

“And I think this taking the boys away is an excellent idea,” said Elthram. “Take Reuben away from here. And that will give me my best chance with Marchent.”

He rose slowly, pushing back the chair and standing without using his arms or hands. Reuben noted this, and again noted his tremendous height. Six foot six, he calculated roughly, given that he himself was six foot three, and Stuart was taller than him, and Sergei was very slightly taller than that.

“I thank you for inviting us,” said Elthram. “You can’t know how we treasure your welcome, your hospitality, your invitation to come in.”

“And how many more of you Forest Gentry are in this room right now?” asked Margon. “How many more of you are wandering this house?” It was meant to be accusatory, provocative. “Can you see better when you’ve assembled this physical body for yourself, when you’ve charged its particles with your subtle electricity, when you narrow your vision to look through those ravishing green eyes?”

Elthram looked stunned. He stood back away from the chair, blinking at Margon as if Margon were a bright light, Elthram’s hands apparently clasped behind his back.

He appeared to say something under his breath, but it wasn’t audible.

There came a soft series of sounds again, the woof of the air threatening the candles, and the fire, and then a great darkening of the gloom all around them, as a great mass of figures gradually came into view. Reuben blinked, trying to clear his vision, trying to make them more visible, but they were of their own becoming visible, as so many very long-haired women and children and men, all clothed in the same soft leather garments as Elthram, and quite literally of all sizes, and filling the entire room around them now, all along behind them and in front of them around the table and out to the corners.

Reuben was dazed, aware of shifting movements, gestures, and seeming whispers teeming almost like the drone of insects in midsummer around flowers, trying to fasten on this detail or that—long red hair, fair hair, gray hair, eyes flitting over him, dancing over the table, the wildly flickering candles, and even hands touching him, touching his shoulders, brushing his cheek, stroking his head. He felt he was going to slip out of consciousness. Everything he saw looked material, vital, yet it seemed moment by moment to be pulsing ever more rapidly, as if building to a pinnacle of some sort, while across from him Stuart looked frantically from right to left, his eyebrows knotted, his mouth open in what sounded like a moan.

Margon jumped to his feet and glared at them as if he were the least prepared for their number. Reuben couldn’t see Lisa as too many crowded in front of her, and Felix merely looked up at them, appeared to be smiling at many of them, and nodding in agreement, and the crowd grew even more dense as if others were pressing the front lines slowly forward so that faces were now in the full glare of the candles, faces of all human shapes and sizes, Nordic, Asian, African, Mediterranean—Reuben didn’t have the labels for them, only the associations—all rustic in dress and manner, yet all benign. Not a single face was disagreeable, or even curious, or in any way intrusive so much as passive and vaguely content-seeming at most. There came faint ripples of laughter like something drawn with a fine pen stroke, and again a sense of those around him soundlessly jostling, and he saw across from him two figures bending to kiss Stuart on either cheek.

Suddenly, with a gust of wind that shook the very rafters, the entire company vanished.

The walls creaked. The fire roared in the chimney, and the windows rattled as if about to break. A deep menacing rumble moved through the structure around them; plates and glasses on the hunter’s boards tinkled and clattered, and a zinging sound came from the sparkling crystal on the table.

All of them gone, dematerialized. And like that.

The candles went out.

Lisa was plastered to the wall as if she were on a rolling ship, her eyes half closed. Stuart had gone stark white. Reuben resisted the urge to make the Sign of the Cross.

“Very impressive,” said Margon sarcastically under his breath.

Suddenly sheets of rain were flung against the windows with such force that the glass groaned and strained in its framing. The whole house was creaking, writhing, and the high-pitched whistle of wind in the chimneys came from all sides. The rain pummeled the roofs and the walls. The windows rattled and boomed as if they’d explode.

And then the world, the soft familiar world around them, went quiet.

Stuart let out a long low gasp. His hands went up to his face, blue eyes peering through his fingers at Reuben. He was obviously delighted.

Reuben could scarcely repress a smile.

Margon, who was standing with his arms folded, had an oddly satisfied look on his face, as though he’d proven his point. But what that point was precisely Reuben couldn’t figure.

“Never forget what you’re dealing with here,” Margon said to Stuart and Reuben. “It’s so easy to tempt them to a display of power. I always marvel at it. And never forget that there may be multitudes around you at any moment, myriad homeless, restless, wandering ghosts.”

Felix sat calm and collected, merely looking at the polished wood in front of him, where Reuben could see the reflected glare of the fire.

“Listen to them, my darling Marchent,” Felix said with feeling. “Listen to them and let them dry your tears.”