“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.”
21
ONLY ONE CANDLE LIGHTED his way down the staircase, and he felt the emptiness and the vastness of the house.
From far off came the ominous beat of drums.
When he stepped out onto the back steps, he could barely see the five hooded figures in the heavy darkness. The distant drums sounded a bizarre and faintly menacing cadence. And just below the sound of the wind, he heard the faint melody of flutes. The rain was no more than a thick mist now that he could feel but not hear, though a wind gusted through the distant trees and he heard that awful moaning that can come with the wind.
An instinctive fear gripped him. Far off, he saw the lurid flickering of a fire. It was a huge fire, a fire so huge it struck a deep chord of alarm in him. But the rain-drenched forest was in no danger from the fire. He knew that.
Gradually he made out more clearly the outlines of those nearest him. There was the loud crack of a kitchen match and a little blaze flared revealing Margon with a long slender torch in his hand.
At once, the torch was ignited and the other figures emerged in the burgeoning light.
Reuben could smell the pitch or the tar of the torch, he didn’t know for sure which it was.
They began to walk through the forest with Margon, torch in hand, leading the way. It seemed the distant drums knew they were coming. There came the deep insistent throbbing of big drums, and the relentless goading sound of other smaller drums, and then the horns soaring above them. Another instrumental voice joined in that might have been the Irish pipe, high, nasal, and almost baleful.
All around them the forest rustled, snapped, and moved in the shadows. As they struggled over rocks and fallen bracken moving steadily onwards, he heard hushed and secretive laughter. He could see the dim white faces of the Forest Gentry, mere flashes on either side of the irregular path they followed, and suddenly the faintest eeriest music rose to accompany them—in time with the greater sound summoning them from afar—the roughened mournful notes of wooden pipes, the tap and jingle of tambourines, a restless humming.
He felt the chills come up on the back of his arms and his neck, but they were pleasurable chills. His nakedness beneath the robe felt erotic.
On and on they walked. Reuben began to feel the deep pringling that meant the change. But Felix’s hand gripped his wrist. “Wait,” he said gently, falling into stride beside Reuben, steadying him when he stumbled or almost fell.
The drums in the distance grew louder. The deepest drums slowed to the ominous and terrifying sound of a knell, and the deep whine of the Irish pipes was hypnotic. Overhead the high remote branches of the redwoods groaned and creaked with the Forest Gentry. Sharp sounds came from the underbrush as of vines ripped in the blackness, and of branches beating the underbrush.
The fire was a great red glare in the mist ahead, flashing in a vast mesh of tangled vine and branches.
This way and that they turned as they walked. He had no idea now in which direction he was going except that they were drawing closer and closer, always, to that glare.