The Wolves of Midwinter

20

IT WAS ONE of the fastest weeks of Reuben’s life. Having his dad in residence was infinitely more fun than he’d ever imagined, especially since the entire household welcomed Phil, and everyone assumed that Phil had come to stay. It took Reuben’s mind off absolutely everything else.

Meanwhile, the house recovered from the banquet and moved towards Christmas Eve.

The pavilion had been completely cleared by evening on Tuesday, the wooden wind barrier, the tents, and the rented furniture all hauled away. The great marble crèche and stable, with all its lighting and fir trees, had been immediately moved down to the village of Nideck, where it had been set up for the public in the old theater across from the Inn.

The beautiful lighting of the house—of all its windows and gables—and the lighting of the oak forest remained as before. Felix said the lights would remain until Twelfth Night—January 6, or the Feast of the Epiphany—as was the tradition, and there would be people coming up now and then to wander through the woods.

“But not on Christmas Eve,” said Felix. “That night the property is dark for us and our Yule.”

Phil’s books arrived on Wednesday, and so did a venerable old trunk that Phil’s grandfather Edward O’Connell had brought from Ireland. At once Phil started telling Reuben all about the old man, and their times together when Phil was a boy. By the time he was twelve, Phil had lost his grandparents, but he remembered them vividly. Reuben had never in all his life heard Phil talk about this. He wanted to ask all about the grandparents. He wanted to ask about the gift of seeing ghosts, but he didn’t dare to broach the subject. Not now, not so soon, not so close to Christmas Eve, when a veil had to come down between him and his father.

All this took Reuben’s mind off the faintly disturbing memory of the Morphenkinder at the party, and his driving anticipation for the Yuletide reunion with Laura.

At breakfast on Thursday, Margon had told them all offhandedly to pay little mind to the “strange uninvited guests” who’d come to the banquet. To Stuart’s immediate barrage of questions, he replied, “Our species is ancient. You know that. You know there are Morphenkinder throughout the world. Why wouldn’t there be? And you can see well enough how we come together in packs as wolves do, and packs have their territory, do they not? But we are not wolves, and we do not fight those who come now and then into our territory. We bear with them until they move on. That has always been our way.”

“But I can see damn well that you don’t like those others,” said Stuart. “And that Helena, she was frightening. Is she lovers with that man, Hockan? And when you talk about our inherent sense of good and evil, well, I can’t connect it to that dislike. What happens when you hate a perfectly innocent and upright fellow Morphenkind?”

“That’s just it, we don’t hate!” said Sergei. “We are resolved never to hate, and never to quarrel. And yes, from time to time, there is trouble. Yes, I admit, there is trouble. But it’s over quickly, as it is with wolves, and then we go, finding our own peaceful parts of the world, laying claim to them.”

“That might be what’s bothering them the most,” said Thibault softly. He glanced at Margon, and when Margon didn’t interrupt, he continued. “We have laid claim once more to this part of the world, and we have an enduring strength which others find—well, enviable.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Margon, raising his voice. “This is Yule and we receive all others as we’ve always done—even Helena and Fiona.”

It was Felix who brought the discussion to a decisive close, announcing that the guesthouse was now completely ready for Phil, and he wanted to take father and son down now to see it. He confessed that he was mildly annoyed the workers hadn’t had it ready before the banquet, but then he’d pulled them off the guesthouse to work on the party and, well, it just didn’t get done. “It’s ready now for your father,” he said to Reuben, “and I can’t wait to show him the place.”

At once they went up to collect Phil, who’d just finished his own breakfast, and the three proceeded down the cliff in the light rain.

The workmen were gone, all the plastic draping and debris had been taken away, and Felix’s “little masterpiece,” as he called it, was ready for inspection.

It was a spacious gray-shingled cottage with a high-peaked roof and stone chimney. Trellises on the front flanked its double doors where vines would be replanted in spring, said Felix, and the garden beds would be full of flowers. “I’m told that’s how it used to be,” said Felix, “one of the most charming spots on the whole property.” There was quite a little patio now restored in front of the cottage, of old flags uncovered and patched, where Phil could sit out in the spring and summer, and that too would be wreathed in spring flowers. This was the place for geraniums, said Felix. Geraniums love the ocean air. And he promised that it would be spectacular. Giant old rhododendrons grew beyond the trellises in both directions, and when they came into bloom, said Felix, they would be a vision of purple blossoms. In the old days, he’d been told that the house was always covered in honeysuckle, and bougainvillea and ivy, and it would be once again.

A giant sprawling scrub oak stood just below the house on the edge of the patio and there was an old iron bench circling its immense gray trunk.

Reuben had seen little really of the building when first he ventured here with Marchent, to a half-burnt ruin surrounded by Monterey pines and hidden by weeds and bracken.

The little guesthouse hung right on the cliff over the ocean, its large small-paned windows having an unobstructed view of the slate-colored sea. Thick scatter rugs covered the highly polished wide-plank floors, and the bathroom had been upgraded to a marble shower and tub fit for royalty, or so Phil claimed.

There was plenty of room in the parlor bedroom for an oak rocking chair by the large Craftsman-style fireplace opposite a leather recliner, and a rectangular oak table under the window. The bed was on the far north wall opposite the fireplace with a curved lamp at the head for reading. And a good-sized oak desk facing the room fitted comfortably in the far right corner.

A wooden corkscrew stair to the left of the front door went up to a huge finished attic. The window from there had the best view of the sea and the surrounding cliffs as Reuben saw it, and Phil might eventually work up there, yes, he said, but for now the coziness of the house proper was perfect for him.

Felix had picked these furnishings, but assured Phil that he must make the place his own and replace or remove anything that wasn’t to his liking.

Phil was grateful for all of it. And Phil was comfortably ensconced by nightfall.

On the desk he set up his computer and favorite old brass desk lamp, and tolerated the newly installed telephone though he said he would never answer it.

Built-in bookshelves flanking the large fieldstone fireplace were soon filled from the cardboard boxes arriving from San Francisco, plenty of wood was stacked nearby, and the little kitchen was fitted out with Phil’s special espresso machine, and a microwave, which was all he needed, he claimed, to live the hermit life of his dreams. There was a small table beneath the window just big enough for two people.

Lisa stocked the refrigerator for him with yogurt, fresh fruit, avocados, tomatoes, and all the raw stuff he ate all day. But she had no intention, she declared more than once, of leaving him to his own devices here.

A faded patchwork quilt appeared on the daybed, which Phil explained had been made by his grandmother Alice O’Connell. Reuben had never seen this before, and was vaguely fascinated that such family relics even existed. Phil said it was the wedding-ring pattern, and his grandmother had made it before she was married. A couple more things came out of the trunk, including a little white cream pitcher that had belonged to Grandma Alice, and several old silver-plate spoons with the initials O’C on the handles.

And he takes out these old treasures, Reuben thought, that he’s had all these years, and puts the quilt on his bed here because he feels that he can do that now.

Though Phil claimed he didn’t need the huge flat-screen TV over the fireplace, he soon had it turned on with the sound down constantly, as he played one DVD after another from a library of his treasured “great films.”

The rocky paths from the guesthouse to the terrace or to the road were no problem at all for Phil, who had dug out yet another family heirloom from his trunk, an old shillelagh that had belonged to Edward O’Connell. It was a thick and beautifully polished stick with a weighted knob at the end for popping people over the head, presumably, and made the perfect staff for long walks, during which Phil wore a soft gray-wool flat cap that had once belonged to old Edward O’Connell, as well.

With that cap and staff, Phil disappeared for hours on end, rain or shine, into the broad Nideck forests, often not appearing till well after supper when Lisa would force him to sit down at the kitchen table and take a meal of beef stew and French bread. Lisa went down every morning, too, with his breakfast, though often he was gone before she got there, and she left the meal for him on the counter in his little kitchen while she cleaned the guesthouse and made his bed.

A number of times Reuben had roamed down to talk to him, but finding him typing away furiously on the computer, he’d stood outside for a while and then wandered back up the slope. Towards the end of the week, Sergei or Felix might be found visiting with Phil, in fast conversation about some matter of history or the history of poetry or drama. Felix borrowed Phil’s two-volume Mediaeval Stage by E. K. Chambers and sat for hours in the library poring over it, marveling at Phil’s carefully written notes.

It was all going to work out, that was the point, and Felix cautioned Reuben not to worry about it for a single moment more.

The fact was, the Distinguished Gentlemen all loved Phil and were obviously glad of the one night he did come to the big table for the evening meal.

Lisa had all but dragged Phil to it, and the conversation had been great, having to do with the peculiarities of Shakespeare that people mistakenly took as representative of the way people had written in Shakespeare’s time, but were not at all typical, and rather a bit mysterious—as Phil so loved to explore. Margon knew vast blocks of Shakespeare by heart and they had fun going back and forth with chapter and verse of Othello. But it was King Lear that fascinated Phil above all.

“I should be mad and raving on the heath,” said Phil. “By all rights, that’s exactly where I should be, but I’m not. I’m here, and I’m happier than I’ve been in years.”

Of course Stuart threw out the schoolboy questions about the play. Wasn’t the king crazy? And if he was, how could it be a tragedy? And why had he been such a fool as to give all his property to his kids?

Phil laughed and laughed, and never really gave a direct answer, saying finally, “Well, maybe the genius of the play, son, is that all that’s true, but we don’t care.”

Each and every one of the Distinguished Gentlemen, and even Stuart, told Reuben individually how much they liked Phil and how much they wished he’d come to dinner every night, Stuart summing it up with “You know, Reuben, you are so lucky, I mean even your dad is completely exceptionally cool.”

What a far cry from the house on Russian Hill where no one paid the slightest attention to Phil, and Celeste had so often secretly remarked that he was almost unendurable. I feel so sorry for your mother.

There was evidence that certain other mysterious people also loved Phil. On Friday evening, Phil had wandered into the cottage, badly stung by bees on his face and on his hand. Reuben had immediately been alarmed and called Lisa in the main house for Benadryl. But Phil waved it all away. Could have been so much worse than it was.

“They were in a hollowed-out oak,” he said, “and I tripped and fell against it. They were swarming, but fortunately for me, your friends came along, those forest people, you know the ones who were at the fair and the party.”

“Right. Which people exactly?” asked Felix.

“Oh, you know, the green-eyed man with the dark skin, that amazing man—Elthram. That’s his name, Elthram. I tell you the fellow is strong. He carried me away from those bees, just picked me up and carried me. This could have been a lot worse. They got me three times here, and he laid his hands on it, and I’m telling you he has some gift. It was really swelling. Not hurting now at all.”

“Better take the Benadryl anyway,” said Reuben.

“Well, you know, those are nice people, those people. Where do they live, exactly?”

“All through the forest, sort of,” said Reuben.

“No, but I mean where do they live?” asked Phil. “Where’s their home? They were the nicest. I’d like to invite them in for coffee. I’d love to have them as company.”

Lisa came rushing in.

Reuben already had a glass of water ready.

“You need to stay out of that area,” she said. “Those were African killer bees, and they’re very aggressive.”

Phil laughed. “Well, how on earth do you know where I was roaming, Lisa?”

“Because Elthram told me,” she said. “Good thing he was looking out for you.”

“I was just saying to Reuben that they are the nicest people, that family. He and that beautiful redheaded Mara.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met Mara,” said Reuben, struggling to say this in a normal believable voice.

“Well, she was at the fair in the town,” said Phil. “Don’t know that she came to the party. Beautiful red hair, and clear skin, like your mother.”

“Well, stay out of that part of the woods, Philip,” said Lisa sharply. “And take these pills now before you get a fever.”

On Saturday Reuben went into San Francisco to pick up his gifts for family and for friends. Everything had been purchased by phone or online through a rare-book dealer, and Reuben inspected each selection personally before having each wrapped with the appropriate card. For Grace, he’d found a nineteenth-century memoir by an obscure doctor who described a long and heroic life in medicine on the frontier. For Laura, the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus of Rilke in a first edition. For Margon he had an early special edition of T. E. Lawrence’s autobiography, and for Felix, Thibault, and Stuart fine and early hardcovers of several English ghost-story writers—Amelia Edwards, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Algernon Blackwood—whom Reuben especially treasured. He had vintage travelers’ memoirs for Sergei and for Frank, and Lisa; and books of English and French poetry for Heddy and Jean Pierre. For Celeste, he had a special leather-bound copy of the autobiography of Clarence Darrow; and for Mort a vintage edition of Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, which he knew Mort loved.

For Jim, he had books on filmmakers Robert Bresson and Luis Buñuel and a first edition of Lord Acton’s essays. For Stuart, a couple of great books on J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and the Inklings, as well as a new verse translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Lastly for Phil, he had managed at last to score all the small individual hardcover volumes of Shakespeare’s plays edited by George Lyman Kittredge—the little Ginn and Company books which Phil had so loved in his student days. This was a crate of books, all clean of markings and in excellent condition, on good paper and with good print.

After that, he rounded up some newer books to be added to the mix—books by Teilhard de Chardin, Sam Keen, Brian Greene, and others—and then he shopped for some personal gifts for his beloved housekeeper Rosie—perfume, a purse, some pretty things. For Lisa he had found a particularly fine cameo in a San Francisco shop, and for Jean Pierre and Heddy cashmere scarves. And finally he called it quits.

The Russian Hill house was empty when he got there. After putting all the family gifts quietly under the tree, he headed for home.

Sunday, he spent the entire morning writing a long piece for Billie on the evolving concept of Christmas and New Year’s in America, since the ban on all Christmas celebrations in the early colonies to the condemnations today of the commercial nature of the feast. He realized how happy he was writing this kind of informal essay, and how much he preferred this to any kind of reporting. He had it in his mind to do a history of Christmas customs. He kept thinking of those medieval mummers whom Felix had hired for the party and wondering how many people knew that such performers were once an integral part of Christmas.

Billie wasn’t asking him to take any assignments. (She said she understand about Susie Blakely too many times. These were nudges, reminders, which he came to ignore.) She was pleased with his essays and told him so at every opportunity. The essays gave the Observer heft, she said. And when he found old Victorian pen-and-ink sketches to go with his work, that also pleased her. But she wondered how he might feel about covering the arts in Northern California, maybe reviewing some little-theater productions in various towns, or musical events in the wine country. That sounded very good to Reuben. What about the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon? Yes, Reuben would love to cover that, he said. Immediately he thought of Phil. Would Phil like to go up there with him?

Two more “employees” had arrived from Europe on Friday, a young woman and a young man, both of whom were designated as secretaries and assistants for Felix—Henrietta and Peter—but by the next day, it was clear that both worked under Lisa at just about any task that was required. They were fair-haired, possibly a brother and sister, Swiss by birth, or so they said, and they said very little of anything, moving about the house without a sound, attending to the wants of everyone under the roof. Henrietta did spend hours in Marchent’s old kitchen office, working on household receipts. Stuart and Reuben exchanged secretive glances as they studied the movements of the pair and the way they seemed to be communicating with each other without speaking out loud.

Reuben received one brief e-mail written by Susie Blakely saying “I loved the party and will remember it all my life.” He imagined it had been a chore for her to write that much and spell it correctly. He wrote her back to say that he hoped she had the very best Christmas ever and he was here for her anytime that she wanted to write or call. Pastor George sent him a longer e-mail, explaining that Susie was now doing much better, and was willing to confide in her parents again though they still did not believe Susie had been rescued by the famous Man Wolf. Pastor George was driving to San Francisco to have lunch with Father Jim and see his church in the Tenderloin.

Night after night, Reuben woke in the small hours. Night after night, he took a long slow walk around the upstairs hallways and the lower floor, quietly opening himself to a visit from Marchent. But never was there the slightest inkling of her presence.

Sunday afternoon, when the rain let up, Phil and Reuben took a long walk in the forest together. Reuben confessed he’d never covered the entire property. Felix had explained at lunch that he was having the entirety of it fenced, including the Drexel and Hamilton acreages. This was an immense undertaking, but Felix felt in this day and age it was something he wanted to do and of course Reuben was in agreement.

Felix promised that after Christmas, he would take Reuben and Phil to see the old Drexel and Hamilton houses, both big old Victorian country homes that could be remodeled and updated without losing their charm.

The fencing was chain link, and six feet in height. But there would be numerous gates; and Felix would make certain that ivy and other attractive vines covered every ugly inch of it. Of course people could still hike the woods, yes, definitely. But they would enter by the front gate, and Reuben and Felix would have some idea of who was out there. And, well, there would be times when he opened all the gates and people could roam freely. It was wrong to “own” this woods, but he wanted to preserve it and he wanted to get to know it again.

“Well, that won’t keep Elthram and his family out of the woods, will it?” Phil asked.

Felix was startled but quickly recovered. “Oh, no, they’re always welcome in the woods whenever and wherever. I would never dream of trying to keep them out of the woods. These woods are their woods.”

“That’s good to know,” said Phil.

That night, Reuben came upstairs to find a long dark green velvet robe on his bed, and a pair of heavy green velvet slippers. The robe had a hood and was full length.

Margon explained that this was for Christmas Eve, for him to wear into the forest. The robe was very similar to a monk’s habit, long, loose fitting, with large sleeves, except that it was padded and lined in silk, and had no waist or belt, and closed down the front with loops and gold buttons. There was tiny fine gold embroidery along the hem and the edges of the sleeves in what seemed a curious pattern. It might have been writing, like the mysterious writing that the Distinguished Gentlemen shared, the writing that looked Eastern in origin. It conveyed an air of mystery and even sanctity.

The usefulness of this garment was obvious. The group would become wolves in the woods, and they would drop these robes easily at their feet and it would be a simple manner to put on these robes afterwards. Reuben was so eager for Christmas Eve that he could scarcely contain it. Stuart was already being a little cynical. Just what sort of “ceremony” were they going to have, he wanted to know. But Reuben knew this was going to be marvelous. Frankly he didn’t care what they did. He wasn’t worried about Hockan Crost or the mysterious women. Felix and Margon appeared completely calm and quietly eager for the all-important night.

And Reuben would see Laura. At last, Reuben would be with Laura. Christmas Eve had taken on the character and solemnity of their wedding night for him.

Felix had already explained to Phil about their celebrating some Old World customs in the forest, and asked for Phil’s indulgence. Phil had been more than fine with it. He’d spend Christmas Eve as he always did, listening to music, and reading, and probably be asleep well before eleven o’clock. The last thing Phil wanted was to be a nuisance. Phil was sleeping wonderfully out here with the windows open to the ocean air. He’d been falling asleep as early as 9:00 p.m.

At last it was Christmas Eve morning, a cold crisp day with a bright white sky that just might show some sunshine before twilight. The foaming sea was dark blue for the first time in days. And Reuben walked down the windy slope to the guesthouse with his box of gifts for his father.

At home in San Francisco, they’d always exchanged gifts before going to Midnight Mass, so Christmas Eve was the big day in Reuben’s mind. Christmas Day had always been informal and a time for leisure, with Phil going off to watch films of Dickens’s Christmas Carol in his room, and Grace having an informal buffet for her hospital friends, especially the personnel who were far from home and family.

Phil was up and writing, and immediately poured a mug of Italian roast coffee for Reuben. The little guesthouse was the epitome of the word “cozy.” Sheer white ruffled curtains had been put over the windows, a remarkably feminine touch, Reuben thought, but they were pretty, and they softened the stark vision of the endless sea, which was something unsettling to Reuben.

They sat by the fire together, Phil presenting Reuben with one small book wrapped in foil, which Reuben opened first. Phil had made it himself, illustrating it with his own freehand drawings, “in the style of William Blake,” he said with a self-mocking laugh. And Reuben saw that it was a collection of the poems Phil had written over the years expressly for his sons, some of which had been published before, and most of which had never been read by anybody.

For My Sons was the simple title.

Reuben was deeply touched. Phil’s spidery drawings surrounded each page, weaving images together rather like the illuminations in medieval manuscripts, and often amounted to frames of foliage with simple domestic objects embedded in them. Here and there in the dense, squiggly drawings was a coffee mug or a bicycle, or a little typewriter or a basketball. Sometimes there were impish faces, crude but kindly caricatures of Jim and Reuben and Grace and Phil himself. There was one primitive whole-page drawing of the Russian Hill house and all its many crowded little rooms filled with cherished furniture and objects.

Never had Phil put together anything like this before. Reuben loved it.

“Now your brother has his own copy coming to him by FedEx today. And I sent your mother one too,” said Phil. “You mustn’t read a word of it now. You take that up to the castle, and you read it when you want to read it. Poetry should be taken in small doses. Nobody needs poetry. Nobody needs to make himself read it.”

There were two other gifts, and Phil assured Reuben that Jim was receiving identical ones. The first was a book Phil had written called simply Our Ancestors in San Francisco—Dedicated to My Sons. Reuben couldn’t have been happier. For the first time in his life, he really wanted to know all about Phil’s family. He’d grown up under the gargantuan shadow of his Spangler grandfather, the real estate entrepreneur who had founded the Spangler fortune, but had heard little or nothing of the Goldings, and this was not typed, this book, it was written in Phil’s old-fashioned and beautifully readable cursive. There were old photographs reproduced here that Reuben had never seen before.

“You take your time with that, too,” said Phil. “You take the rest of your life, if you like, to read it. And you pass it on to your boy, of course, though I intend to tell that child some of the stories I never told you and your brother.”

The last gift was a soft tweed flat cap, or ivy cap, which had belonged to Grandfather O’Connell—just like the cap Phil had been wearing on his walks. “Your brother got the very same thing,” said Phil. “My grandfather never went out without one of these caps. And I have another couple in my trunk for that boy who’s coming.”

“Well, Dad, these are the best presents anyone’s ever given me,” said Reuben. “This is an extraordinary Christmas. It just keeps getting better and better.” He concealed the low burning pain he felt—that he’d had to lose his life to really understand the value of it, that he’d had to leave the realm of human family to want to know and embrace his antecedents.

Phil looked at him gravely. “You know, Reuben,” he said. “Your brother Jim is lost. He’d buried himself alive in the Catholic priesthood for all the wrong reasons. The world in which he struggles is shrunken and dark. There’s no magic in it, no wonder, no mysticism. But you have the universe waiting for you.”

If only I could tell you the smallest part of it, if only I could confide and seek your guidance. If only …

“Here, Dad, my presents,” Reuben said. And he brought in the big box of carefully wrapped little volumes and set it before Phil.

Phil was in tears when he opened the first one, seeing the little Ginn and Company hardcover of Hamlet, the very textbook version he’d cherished as an undergraduate. And as he came to see that the complete plays were here, every single one of them, he was overwhelmed. This was something he hadn’t even dreamed of—the entire collection. These books had been out of print even when he first came upon them in secondhand shops in his student days.

He choked back the tears, talking softly of his time at Berkeley as the richest period of his life, when he was reading Shakespeare, acting Shakespeare, living Shakespeare every day, spending hours under the trees of the beautiful old campus, wandering the Telegraph Avenue bookstores for scholarly works on the Bard, thrilled every time some piercing critic gave him a new insight, or brought the plays to life for him in some new way. He’d thought then he would love the academic world always. He wanted nothing more than to stay in the atmosphere of books and poetry forever.

Then had come teaching, and repeating the same words year after year, and the endless committee meetings, and tiresome faculty parties, and the relentless pressure to publish critical theories or ideas that he didn’t even have in him. Then had come weariness of it all, and hatred even, and his conviction of his own utter insignificance and mediocrity. But these little volumes took him back to the sweetest part of it—when it had been new, and filled with hope, before it had become a racket for him.

About that time, Lisa appeared with a full breakfast for both of them—scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, pancakes, syrup, butter, toast, and jam. She had it set up quickly at the little dining table, and put on fresh coffee. Jean Pierre appeared with the carafe of orange juice, and a plate of the gingerbread cookies which Phil couldn’t resist.

After they’d demolished the meal, Phil stood for a long time at the large rectangular window looking out at the sea, at the dark blue horizon lying beneath the brighter cobalt of the clear sky. Then he said how he had never dreamed he could be this happy, never dreamed he had this much life left in him.

“Why don’t people do what they really want to do, Reuben?” he asked. “Why do we so often settle for what makes us devoutly unhappy! Why do we accept that happiness just isn’t possible? Look what’s happened. I’m ten years younger now than I was a week ago, and your mother? Your mother’s perfectly fine with it. Perfectly fine. I was always too old for your mother, Reuben. Too old in here, in my heart, and just plain too old in every other way. When I get the slightest doubt about her being happier, I call and I talk to her and I listen to the timbre of her voice, you know, the cadence of her speech. She’s so relieved to be on her own.”

“I hear you, Dad,” Reuben said. “I feel a little the same way when I think of my years with Celeste. I don’t know why I woke up every morning with the idea that I had to adjust, had to accept, had to go along with.”

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Phil said, turning from the window. He shrugged and made a resigned gesture with his hands. “Thank you, Reuben, for letting me come here.”

“Dad, I don’t ever want you to leave,” said Reuben.

The expression in Phil’s eyes was the only response he needed. Phil went over to the box of Shakespeare books and took out the copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “You know, I can’t wait to read parts of this to Elthram and Mara. Mara said she’s never heard of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Elthram knew it. He can recite parts of it by heart. You know, Reuben? I’m going to give my old copy of the comedies to Elthram and Mara. It’s here somewhere. Well, I have two. I’ll give them the one without the notes, the clean one. I think that would be a good present for Elthram and Mara. And look what they gave to me.” He turned and pointed to a small bouquet of brightly colored wildflowers on his desk, with streams of ivy trailing from it. “I didn’t know there were that many wildflowers in the woods this time of year. They gave me that early this morning.”

“It’s beautiful, Dad,” said Reuben.

That afternoon, they drove to the coast and to the town of Mendocino, to have a walk around while the weather held. And it was worth it. The little downtown of beach Victorian buildings was as cheerfully decorated as the village of Nideck, and bustled with last-minute Christmas shoppers. The sea was calm as well as beautifully blue, and the sky overhead, filled with scudding white clouds, was glorious.

But by four o’clock, as they drove home, the slate-colored sky was rolling over them, and the evening gloom was falling around them. Tiny raindrops struck the windshield. Reuben thought to himself how little it would matter when he was in full wolf coat whether a storm descended on Nideck Point, and he settled into his own quiet growing anticipation. Would they hunt tonight? They had to hunt. He was starving for the hunt and he knew that Stuart was starving for it too.

He stayed long enough in Phil’s little house to call Grace and Jim and wish them both the happiest of Christmases. Jim would say Midnight Mass tonight at St. Francis at Gubbio Church as always, and Grace, Celeste, and Mort would be there. Tomorrow they’d all serve Christmas dinner at the St. Francis dining room for the homeless and the poor of the Tenderloin.

Finally, it was time to take leave of Phil. It was Christmas Eve at last. It was full dark, and the rain had become a fine mist outside the windows. The forest beckoned.

As he came up the slope, Reuben realized all the outside lights of Nideck Point had been turned off. The cheerful three-story house so well drawn on the night with bright Christmas lights had vanished, leaving in its place a great dark apparition of glinting windows with only the faintest light within, gables invisible in the shrouding mist.

Only a few candles lighted his way up the stairs. And in his room, he found the green velvet hooded robe laid out for him, with the slippers.

Another spectacular item had been added—a very large drinking horn trimmed in gold and beautifully carved with tiny gold-filled figures and symbols. There was a band of hammered and decorated gold beneath the lip, and a gold tip on the end, and a long thin leather shoulder strap for carrying it. It was a beautiful thing, too big for a buffalo or sheep horn, obviously.

A knock on his door interrupted him as he inspected it. He heard Felix’s faintly muffled voice say: “It’s time.”