Both men went quiet for a moment, as though lost in their reminiscence. Then Thibault, with a dreamy faraway look in his eyes, smiled. “Well, we escaped into Belgrade where Sergei had everything waiting for us. We thought we’d take care of Klopov and Jaska in a matter of days.”
“And it didn’t happen,” Laura affirmed.
“No, it didn’t,” said Thibault. “We were never able to locate them again. I suspect they used other names. But when a doctor’s credentials depend upon the birth name, well, he or she is likely to return to it, for obvious advantages.” His smile became faintly bitter. “And that is what inevitably happened. Of course the pair has found new backing, and we must eventually worry about that backing, but not just now.”
He cleared his throat and went on.
“Then came the news from America that Felix’s beloved Marchent had been murdered by her own brothers and a Morphenkind had dispatched the killers in the age-old way of the beast.”
For a long time they were silent.
“I was certain I would be united with Marchent someday,” Felix said in a small defeated voice. “I was so foolish, not to have contacted her, not to have simply come home.” He looked off, and then at the table in front of him, as though intrigued by the satin finish of the wood. But he was not seeing that at all. “I had come here often enough when she was traveling. And once or twice spied on her from the woods. You see—.” He broke off.
“You didn’t want to tell her who had betrayed you,” suggested Laura.
“No, I didn’t,” said Felix. His voice was low, tentative. “And I didn’t want to tell her that I had paid them both—her father and mother—in kind. How would she have ever understood unless I’d revealed everything to her, and that I did not want to do.”
A silence fell over them all.
“When the news broke about the attacks in San Francisco …,” Felix started, then his voice just trailed away.
“You knew that Marrok had passed the Chrism,” Laura suggested. “And you suspected that the good doctors would be unable to resist.”
Felix nodded.
Another interval of silence fell. The only sounds were the rain pattering on the windowsills, and the fire spitting and crackling in the huge grate.
“Would you have come here,” Reuben asked, “if there had been no question of Klopov or Jaska?”
“Yes,” said Felix. “Most definitely yes. I would not have left you to face this alone. I wanted to come on account of Marchent. I wanted the things I’d left in the house. But I wanted to know you. I wanted to discover who you really were. I wasn’t going to abandon you to all this. We never do that. That’s why I arranged that awkward meeting at the lawyers’ offices.
“And if I’d been unreachable for any reason, Thibault would have come to seek you out. Or Vandover or Sergei. As it was, we were together when the news broke. We knew it was Marrok. We knew that the assaults in San Francisco had been carried out by you.”
“Then whenever the Chrism’s passed, you go to help that individual?” asked Reuben.
“My dear boy,” said Felix. “It does not happen all that often, really, and seldom in such a spectacular way.”
They were both looking fondly at Reuben now, and the old warmth came back into Felix’s face.
“So you were never angry,” asked Reuben, “that I put the Man Wolf in the public eye.”
Felix laughed under his breath, and so did Thibault, as they exchanged glances.
“Were we angry?” he asked Thibault with a sly smile, nudging him with his elbow. “What do you think?”
Thibault shook his head.
Reuben couldn’t figure out what this actually meant, only that it did seem the very opposite of anger, and that was more than he had a right to ask.
“Well, I was not so very delighted with it,” said Felix, “but I would not say I was ever angry, no.”
“There’s so much we can tell you,” said Thibault, affectionately. “So many things we can explain—to you, and to Stuart, and to Laura.”
And to Laura.
Felix looked at the dark window with its glittering sheet of sliding rain. His eyes moved over the elaborate ceiling with its varnished crisscross beams and those panels of painted sky with their gold stars.
And I know what he is feeling, thought Reuben, and he loves this house, loves it as he did when he built it, for surely he did build it, and he needs it, needs to come home to it now.
“And it would take years of nights such as this,” Felix said, dreamily, “to tell you all we have to tell.”
“I think it’s enough for now, for this first night, this remarkable night,” said Thibault. “But remember, you were never in danger as we waited to play our hand.”
“I understand that completely,” said Reuben. There was more he wanted to say, especially now. So much more. But he was almost too dazzled to form words.
His many questions seemed insignificant as a vision of knowledge took form in his mind, vast, well beyond the arithmetical strictures of language, a great organic yet limitless vision that dissolved words. It was something infinitely more like music, expanding and rolling like the symphonic triumphs of Brahms. His heart was beating quietly to the mounting rhythm of his expectations, and a light was slowing breaking in on him, heated, incandescent, like the Shechinah, or the inevitable light of every dawn.
In his mind, he was back in the high forest canopy, a man wolf resting in the branches, seeing the stars again above him, and wondering once more if the great longing he felt was somehow a form of prayer. Why was that so important to him? Was that the only species of redemption he understood?
“It’s Margon who will counsel you,” said Thibault. “It’s always best that Margon do the counseling. He is the very oldest of us all.”
It sent a thrill through Reuben. And Margon, “the very oldest,” was with the Boy Wolf right now. How different all this would be for Stuart who was so energetic and inquisitive by nature, how remarkably different from what it had been for Reuben stumbling from one discovery to another on his unlighted path.
“I’m tired now,” said Felix, “and the sight of so much blood earlier has played upon my inveterate hunger.”
“Oh, give it a rest!” said Thibault in a mock-scolding voice.
“You were born old,” said Felix, gently nudging Thibault with his elbow again.
“Perhaps I was,” said Thibault. “And it’s not a bad thing. I’ll take the offer of any bed in this house.”
“I need the forest,” said Felix. He looked at Laura. “My darling,” he said, “would you allow me to take your young man away for just a little while, should he want to come?”
“Of course, go,” she said earnestly. She clasped Reuben’s hand. “And what about Stuart?”
“They’re close,” said Thibault. “I think Margon is deliberately exhausting him for his own good.”
“There are reporters out there,” said Reuben. “I can hear them. I’m sure you can too.”
“And so can Margon,” said Felix gently. “They’ll come through the tunnel or over the roof into the sanctum. You need not worry. You know that. You need not ever worry. We will never be seen.”
Laura was on her feet and in Reuben’s arms. He felt the intense heat of her breasts against his shirtfront, his chest. He pressed his face against her tender neck.
Reuben didn’t have to tell her what this meant to him, to go out there into the divine leafy darkness with Felix, to go deep into the very heart of the night at Felix’s side.
“You come back to me soon,” she whispered.
Thibault had come round to take her arm, to escort her, as it were, as if this had been a formal dinner in an earlier time, and they left the room together, Laura vaguely enchanted and Thibault doting as they disappeared into the hall.
Reuben looked at Felix.
Felix was again smiling at him, his face serene and full of compassion and a simple, effortless, and shining goodwill.
37
THEY WENT DOWN through the cellar. All one had to do was swing back the heavy door to which the furnace was affixed above a concrete base that was in fact a hollow plastered box, and they were walking through a nest of cluttered dimly lighted rooms, beneath dusty electric bulbs and past heaps of trunks and old garments, and hulking pieces of furniture, and past other doors.
Down the stairs they went, and at last entered the broad earthen tunnel beamed and supported like a coal mine, a faint silvery light sparkling on the rich veins of clay in the damp walls.
Round one turn and another they walked until far ahead of them, there broke the metallic light of the wet sky.
The tunnel went straight to the roaring sea.
Felix, fully clothed, began to run. He ran faster and faster and then leapt forward with his arms out, his clothes breaking from him, his shoes flying away as in midair his arms turned to great wolfen forelegs and his hands to great furred claws. On and on he galloped, gliding through the narrow opening out of sight.
Reuben gasped in astonishment. Then, trusting himself utterly to the example, he too began to run. Faster and faster he ran, the spasms rolling inside him, seemingly lifting him as he too leapt forward, his clothes ripping and releasing him, his limbs elongating, the wolf-coat erupting from the top of his head to his toes.
When he hit the ground again, he was Morphenkind, pounding towards the roar of the surf, the roar of the wind, the welcoming light of the night sky.
He cleared the opening effortlessly, rushing through the icy frothing waves.
Above on the perilous and jagged rocks, the man wolf who was Felix waited for him and then they scaled the impossible cliff together, digging into earth and vine and root, and romping into the dank fragrant refuge of the trees.
Where Felix led, he followed, running as he had run south to Santa Rosa to find Stuart, with that rippling power, as they went north beyond the woods of Nideck Point, farther and farther into cathedral groves of redwoods that dwarfed them in the journey, like the lost monoliths of another world.
Boar, wildcat, bear—he caught the scents, and the hunger rose in him, the imperative to kill, to feast. The wind carried the scent of fields, of flower, of earth baked by sun and soaked with rain. On and on they ran, until there came on the wind the scent he’d never truly relished before: the bull elk.
The bull elk knew it was being pursued. Its heart thundered inside it. It ran with majestic speed and grace, dashing ever faster ahead of them until they both caught it, descending on its broad back, closing their jaws on either side of its mighty arched neck.
Down went the immense animal, its thin graceful legs twitching, its mighty heart pumping, its great gentle dark eye staring unquestioningly at the broken fragments of starry sky above.
Woe to you, all living things that appeal to such a heaven for help.
Reuben pulled loose the long dripping strips of meat as if he’d never known restraint in all his life. He crunched the gristle and bones, snapping the bones, grinding them, sucking at the marrow, swallowing all.
They nuzzled into the soft underdown of the belly—oh, this was always the sweetest with either man or beast—and tore at the richly flavorful rubbery guts, lapping with quick pink tongues at the thickening blood.
And so they feasted together in the soundless rain.
Afterwards, they lay at the base of the tree together, motionless, Felix obviously listening, waiting.
Who could have told the difference between them, beasts of the same size and color as they were? It resided in the eyes.
Critters sang of the fresh kill, the carrion. Slithering through the underbrush an army of tiny mouths moved towards it, the bloody carcass shivering as they assaulted it, as if in being devoured it had taken on a new life.
Out of the deep shadows came the coyotes, huge, hulking, gray, lethal-looking as wolves with their pointed ears and snouts.
Felix appeared to watch, a great silent hairy man being with patient but glittering eyes.
He crept forward now on all fours and Reuben followed.
The coyotes yelped, danced back, snapped at him, and he at them, taunting them with his right paw, laughing under his breath, growling, allowing them to move in again, and teasing them again and then watching them as they tore at the broken body of the elk.
He made himself so still they grew bolder, drawing closer to him, then shying violently at the sound of his laugh.
Suddenly he sprang, pinioning the largest with his paws, and clamped its wolflike head in his jaws.
He shook the dying animal and tossed it to Reuben. The other coyotes had fled in a chorus of cries and yelps.
And they feasted again.
It was almost dawn when they descended the cliff, clutching, sliding, and scampering over the slick rocks to the entrance of the cave. How small it seemed, near invisible, this seam in the thick rocks, a broken narrow cavity hung with gleaming moss and foaming with the lapping tide.
They walked together through the cave, and Felix changed back into the man without ever breaking his stride. Reuben found he could do it too. He felt his feet shrinking, his calves contracting with every step.
They dressed together in the murky light, the clothes soiled and torn, but all they had, and Felix threw his arm around Reuben, his fingers stealing affectionately through Reuben’s hair and then clasping the back of his neck.
“Little brother,” he said.
These were the first and only words he had spoken since they went out together.
And they went up into the welcome warmth of the house and to their separate rooms.
Laura stood at the bedroom window, staring out at the steel-blue dawn.
38
THE DINING ROOM ONCE AGAIN.
The fire was built high and roaring under the black medieval mantel, and the candles flickered and smoked down the length of the table, amid platters of roast lamb fragrant with garlic and rosemary, glazed duckling, steaming broccoli, Italian squash, heaps of unpeeled potatoes, artichoke hearts tossed with oil, and roasted onions, freshly sliced bananas and melon, and hot freshly baked bread.
The wine was red in the delicate stem glasses, the salad glistening in the big wooden bowls, sharp sweetness of the mint jelly as delicious as the aroma of the succulent meats, and sweet butter smeared on the hot rolls.
The company came and went from the kitchen, all hands helping with the feast—even Stuart who had laid out the old linen napkins at every place and straightened the silver, marveling at the size of the old knives and forks. Felix set the bowls of sugared cinnamon-almond rice on the table. Thibault brought the platter of bright orange yams.
Margon sat at the head of the table, his long thick brown hair loose to his shoulders, his burgundy-colored shirt open casually at the neck. His back was to the eastern windows and the not-uncommon sight of a reporter or two out there prowling in the tangled oaks.
The early afternoon light was white but very bright through the thick, twisted web of gray branches.
All were seated finally, and Margon called for a moment of thanks, and bowed his head.
“Margon the Godless, thanks the gods,” whispered Felix with a wink to Reuben who was once again opposite him, and Laura who sat beside him smiling, but Felix closed his eyes and so did all of them.
“Say what you will to the force that governs the universe,” said Margon. “Perhaps we’ll call it into being, and it will yet love us as we love it.”
Again, the silence, the sweet incessant patter of the rain slowly washing the world clean and nourishing it, and the logs sputtering and spitting as the flames danced against the darkened bricks, and a soft distant music emanating from the kitchen—Erik Leslie Satie again, the piano, Gymnopédie No. 1.
Oh, that humankind could make such music, thought Reuben, on this tiny cinder whirling in a tiny solar system lost in a tiny galaxy hurtling through endless space. Maybe the Maker of all this will hear this music as a form of prayer. Love us, love us as we love Yo
u.
Stuart, seated between Felix and Thibault on the other side of the table, in a white T-shirt and jeans, began to cry. He crumpled, his face hidden in his enormous hand, his large shoulders heaving silently, and then he went still, his eyes closed, and puckered, tears spurting as if from a little child.
His curling blond hair was tied back, away from the bones of his large face, and with his short broad nose and the ever-visible sprinkling of freckles, he looked as he so often did like a large little boy.
Laura bit her lip and fought tears watching him. Reuben squeezed her hand.
And a grief took hold of Reuben, but it was mingled entirely with the happiness that he felt. This house, so full of life, life that embraced all that had happened to him, all that had frightened him and at times almost defeated him, well almost—this life was straight from his wordless dreams.
Margon looked up, the moment of silent prayer ended, taking in all those seated with his eyes.
The party came alive. Platters were passed, more wine poured, butter slopped on hot steaming slices of bread and light flaking rolls, the scent of garlic rising from the tumbling, sliding spoonfuls of salad, and great forkfuls of meat slapped onto the old flowered china plates.
“So what am I to offer you?” said Margon as if they’d been talking all the while, instead of attending to a thousand unimportant yet essential things. “What am I to give you to help you with this journey that you’ve begun?”
He took a deep gulp of the sparkling water that stood beside the empty glass for the wine he didn’t drink.
He took a heaping portion of the hot broccoli and green squash, and even more of the artichoke hearts, and tore off a hunk from a hot buttered roll.
“The basic things you must know are these. The change is irreversible. Once the Chrism has taken hold, you are Morphenkinder, as we call it now, and that can never be undone.”
Stuart woke from his tears just as quickly as he’d given into them. He was eating such enormous chunks of lamb that Reuben feared he might choke, blue eyes flashing at Margon as Margon went on.