The Wolves of Midwinter Page 30

  In front of him, the hooded figures looked anonymous in the distant light of the lone flickering torch, and it seemed suddenly only Felix was real to him, Felix who was beside him, and his heart went out to Stuart. Was Stuart afraid? Was he himself afraid?

  No. Even as the drums grew louder, and as the spectral musicians around him answered and wove their low, harsh threads of melody around the drumbeat, he was not afraid. Again, the prickling began and he could feel the hairs of his scalp wanting to be released, feel the wolf hair in him raging against the skin of the man. Did the wolf in him respond to the drums? Did the drums hold a secret power over the beast of which he’d been unaware? Bravely yet deliciously he struggled against it, knowing it would burst forth soon enough.

  The distant fire grew brighter, and seemed to swallow the feeble light of Margon’s torch. There was something so horrific about the quivering, throbbing glare of the fire that he did feel again a deep and terrible alarm. But the fire was calling them, and he was eager for it, reaching out suddenly and taking firm hold of Felix’s arm.

  Suddenly the anticipation he felt was intoxicating and it seemed to him that he’d been moving through this dark forest forever, and it was the greatest of experiences, this, to be with the others, heading towards the distant blaze that flared and flickered so high above them as if from the throat of a volcano or some dark chimney invisible beneath its light.

  Pungent scents caught his nostrils, the deep rich and living scent of the wild boar he’d hunted all too seldom, and the sweet and seductive fragrance of simmering wine. Cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, the sweet smell of honey, all this he caught with the smell of smoke, the smell of pine, the smell of the wet mist. It was flooding his senses.

  Out of the night, he thought he heard the deep-throated cry of the wild boar, a guttural scream, and again his skin was on fire. Hunger knotted his insides, hunger for living meat, yes.

  A vast wordless song rose from the invisible beings all round them as ahead they drew up to a veritable wall of blackness above which the sparks flew heavenward from the raging fire they could no longer clearly see.

  Suddenly the small torch in Margon’s hand was moving upwards, and dimly Reuben saw the outlines of the gray boulders that he’d once glimpsed by daylight, and all at once he was climbing a steep and rocky incline and entering at Felix’s bidding a narrow, jagged passage through which he could barely move. The drums beat loud against his ears, and the pipes soared again, throbbing, urging, calling to him to move quickly.

  Ahead the world exploded with lurid dancing orange flames.

  The last of the dark figures in front of him had stepped aside and into the clearing, and he stumbled down now and found his footing on the packed earth, the fire for a moment blinding him.

  It was a vast space.

  Some thirty yards away the great exploding bonfire raged and crackled, its dark heavy scaffolding of logs plainly visible within the furnace of its yellow and orange flames.

  It appeared to define the very center of a vast arena. To the right and left of him he saw the boulders spreading out into the inevitable shadows, how far he couldn’t guess.

  Right by the mouth of the passage through which they’d just come stood the company of musicians—all recognizable in their green velvet hooded finery. It was Lisa pounding the kettledrums whose deep rolling booms shook Reuben’s very bones, and around her were gathered Henrietta and Peter playing the wooden flutes, and Heddy with a long narrow drum, and Jean Pierre playing the huge Scottish bagpipes. From high above came the wordless singing of the Forest Gentry and the unmistakable sound of violins and metal flutes, and the twanging notes of dulcimers.

  All contrived to make a song of expectation and reverence, of unquestioned solemnity.

  Between the boulders and the fire ahead stood a giant golden cauldron over a low-simmering fire that glowed as if made up of coals, and Reuben realized that this cauldron defined the center of the circle which the Morphenkinder were now forming around it.

  He stepped forward, taking his place, the fumes of the spiced mixture in the cauldron rising in his nostrils enticingly.

  The music slowed now and softened all around him. The air seemed to hold its breath, with the drum rolling as softly as thunder.

  There came the screams of the wild boar, the grunts, the deep guttural growls, but these animals were safely penned somewhere, he sensed this. He trusted in it.

  Meanwhile, the Morphenkinder drew in as close to the heat of the cauldron as they could, the circle not small enough for them to touch one another, yet small enough for every face to be visible.

  Then from the dancing shadows beyond the blaze to his right emerged a strange figure to join the circle, and as she lifted her green hood back from her face, Reuben saw it was Laura.

  His breath went out of him. She stood opposite him, smiling at him through the faint steam rising from the huge cauldron. A chorus of cheers and murmured greetings rose from the others.

  Margon raised his voice:

  “Modranicht!” he roared. “The night of the Mother Earth, and our Yule!”

  At once the others raised their arms and roared in response, Sergei giving a deep-throated howl. Reuben raised his arms, and ached to let loose the howl that was inside him.

  Suddenly the kettledrums went into a deafening roll, shaking Reuben to the core, and the flutes rose in piercing melody.

  “People of the Forest, join us!” declared Margon, his arms raised. From the boulders all around came a clamor of drums and flutes and fiddles and the shock of brass trumpets.

  “Morphenkinder!” cried Margon. “You are welcome.”

  And out of the darkness came more hooded figures. Reuben saw plainly the face of Hockan, the face of Fiona, and the smaller feminine shapes that had to be Berenice, Catrin, Helena, Dorchella, and Clarice. The circle widened, admitting them one by one.

  “Drink!” cried Margon.

  And all converged on the cauldron, dipping their horns into the simmering brew, and then stepping back to swallow mouthful after mouthful. The temperature was perfect, to make a fire in the throat and in the heart—to ignite the circuits of the brain.

  Again, they dipped their horns and again they drank.

  Suddenly Reuben was rocking, falling, and Felix on his right had reached out to steady him. His head swam and a low boiling laughter came out of him. Laura’s eyes blazed as she smiled at him. She lifted the gleaming horn to her lips. She saluted him. She said his name.

  “This is no time for the words of humankind—for poetry or sermons,” cried Margon. “This is no meeting for words at all. Because we all know the words. But how are we to mourn the loss of Marrok if we don’t speak his name?”

  “Marrok!” cried Felix. And stepping up to the cauldron, he dipped his horn and drank. “Marrok,” said Sergei, “old friend, beloved friend.” And one by one all were doing the same. Finally Reuben had to do it, had to lift the horn and call out of the name of the Morphenkind he’d killed. “Marrok, forgive me!” he cried out. And he heard Laura’s voice echoing the same words: “Marrok, forgive me.”

  Sergei gave a roar again and this time Thibault and Frank roared with him and so did Margon. “Marrok, we dance for you tonight,” cried Sergei. “You’ve gone into the darkness or the light, we know not which. We salute you.”

  “And now, with joy,” cried Felix, “we salute the young amongst us: Stuart, Laura, Reuben. This is your night, my young friends, your first Modranicht amongst us!”

  He was answered this time with terrific howls from the entire company.

  The robes were being thrown aside. Felix had stripped, and throwing up his arms was becoming the Man Wolf. And opposite Reuben, Laura suddenly rose up naked and white, her breasts beautifully visible through the rising steam from the cauldron. Sergei and Thibault stood naked, the wolf hair rising on them as they flanked her.

  Reuben let out a terrified gasp. Waves of desire rose in him with the waves of drunken giddiness.

  His r
obes lay at his feet and the cold air stole over him, awakening him and emboldening him.

  They were all changing. Howls rose from all now irresistibly. The music rose in a deafening clamor. The icy pringling covered Reuben’s face and head first, then raced over his trunk and limbs, his muscles aching for one split second as they expanded into their glorious new strength and flexibility.

  But it was Laura that he was seeing, as if there were no one else in the marvelous expanding universe but Laura, as if Laura’s transformation was his transformation.

  A dreadful horror gripped Reuben, a fear as terrible as the fear he’d known the very first time when, as a boy, he’d seen a photograph of the mature female sex organ, that wondrous and terrible secret mouth, so moist, so raw, so veiled in tangled hair—awful as the face of Medusa, magnetizing him and threatening to turn him to stone. But he couldn’t look away from Laura.

  He was seeing the dark gray hair spring out on the top of her head, as the hair sprang from his own, hair pouring down to her shoulders as the mane poured down to his. He saw the sleek shining fur sheathe her cheeks and her upper lip, her mouth becoming that black and silken band of flesh that was the same as his mouth, the gleaming white fangs descending, the thick bestial coat closing over her shoulders, swallowing her breasts and her nipples.

  Petrified now, he saw Laura’s eyes smoldering from the massive face of the beast, and saw her rise to greater height, her powerful wolf arms lifted, her claws reaching for the sky above them.

  Fear and desire pumped through him, maddening him infinitely more than the scent of the boar, or the pounding music, or the deafening fiddles and pipes of the Forest Gentry.

  But the group opposite was in movement. Laura was shifting places with Thibault, and then with Hockan and then with Sergei and then with another and another until she stood beside Reuben.

  He reached out with his claws and caught the wolf mask of her face in his paws, staring right into her eyes, staring, determined to penetrate the full mystery of the monstrous face he saw before him, hideously beautiful to him with its gray hair and gleaming teeth.

  Suddenly she closed her powerful arms around him, stunning him with her strength, and he returned the embrace, his mouth opening over her mouth, his tongue plunging between her teeth. They were sealed together, the two in the glorious concealment and nakedness of the wolf coat, and the others were all crying their names: “Laura, Reuben, Laura, Reuben.”

  The music was softening, boiling into an obvious dance, and in the dancing glare of the fire, Reuben saw the Forest Gentry closing in, Elthram and the others, with long garlands of ivy and flowering vine with which they decked Reuben and Laura, winding the ivy and vine around their shoulders. From out of the air it seemed flower petals were falling down on them. Petals of white and yellow and pink—rose petals, dogwood petals, the broken fragile petals of wildflowers. And all around, the Forest Gentry pushed in singing, and covering them with light, airy scentless kisses, kisses that had only the scent of the flowers.

  “Laura,” he whispered in her ear, “Laura, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!” He heard her deep bestial voice answering him, her words softened and sweet. “My beloved Reuben, wither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.”

  “And I with thee,” he answered. And the words sprang out of his memory and to his tongue. “And thy people shall be my people.”

  Horns of wine were thrust at them, and they took the horns and drank, and exchanged horns and drank again, the wine flowing out of their mouths, down their heavy coats. How little did it matter. Someone had poured a horn of wine over Reuben’s head and he now saw Laura anointed in the same manner.

  He crushed his face against hers and felt the hot pressure of her breasts against his chest, the heat pounding through the fur.

  “And the hairy ones shall dance!” cried Margon. “ ’Round the cauldron.”

  The drums took up the dancing beat, and the pipes fell into a dancing rhythm.

  At once they were swaying, rocking, leaping, and rushing to the right, all of them, the circle picking up speed.

  The drums described the rhythmic shape of a dance and they were indeed dancing, arms out, knees bent, figures springing up into the air, twisting, turning. Sergei caught Reuben and swung him around, and then moved on to Laura. Again and again, others came together then broke apart, the drive to the right around the cauldron continuing.

  “ ’Round the fire!” roared the giant Sergei, whose rich bass voice in wolf form was unmistakable, and he leapt out of the circle and the others streamed after him, Reuben and Laura together pounding after them as fast as they could.

  The great full circle of the enclosure was theirs as they raced full speed one behind the other.

  The thumping speed of those passing Reuben prodded him on as much as the drums, Laura keeping pace right beside him, in his watchful eye, her flanks now and then crashing against his as they plunged forward together.

  He knew the roars that cut the air, he knew the howls of Frank, Thibault, Margon, Felix, Sergei. He heard the strange high savage cries of the other female Morphenkinder. And then he heard Laura’s voice, beside him, full throated, higher, sweeter than his, and exquisitely savage as she roared past him.

  He tore after her, losing sight of her as others moved more swiftly than he could.

  Never in all his life had he run this fast, had he leapt so far, had he felt himself positively taking flight as he sped along—not even on that long-ago night when he’d pounded over the miles to find Stuart. Too many obstacles had lain in his path; too much fear of injury had inhibited him. But this was ecstasy, as though he were smeared with the secret salve of the witches, and like Goodman Brown he was truly traveling the night air, released from the pull of the Mother Earth, yet buoyed by her winds, touching down not even long enough to feel the ground beneath him.

  A new riff of guttural howls and raw cries rose against the insistent goading throb of the music.

  “Modranicht!” came the cries, and “Yule!,” the words perhaps unintelligible to human ears as they came from the deep throats of the Morphenkinder. Ahead of Reuben two racing figures collided with one another and began to roll on the earth, snarling, growling, playfully nipping at each other, and then one raced off leaving the other to chase after it.

  A figure pounced full weight on top of Reuben and he rolled away from the fire towards the encircling stones, throwing off the other, and then lunging for its throat with a mock thrust as the figure struck out at him like a monstrous feline. He turned and ran on, not caring who this had been, not caring suddenly about anything, but stretching every sinew of his powerful frame, and springing as wildly from the pads of his hands and feet as he could, dashing over the slower figure ahead of him, rounding the great bonfire for perhaps the fifth or sixth time now, he didn’t know, and greedy for the wind on his face as if he were devouring the wind, the menacing shadows thrown by the gargantuan blaze, and driven by the deep rolling drums and the wild grinding song of the pipes.

  The thick musky scent of the wild boar came at him full force. He cried out. There was no human left in him. Suddenly ahead he saw the huge bulk of a monstrous male running as fast and furiously as he was running. Before he could mount it another Morphenkind had overtaken it and had sunk his teeth into the boar’s huge neck and was riding it doggedly, legs flying over the boar’s back.

  Yet another boar and another Morphenkind ripped past him. After them at top speed he went, the hunger exploding in his belly.

  And again, he saw the boar brought down.

  Horrid squeals from the wounded and furious animals filled the night, and roars from the Morphenkinder.

  He pounded on until he saw the figure ahead of him that he knew to be Laura. Quickly he overtook her and they fell into the same stride.

  Suddenly he heard the hooves right by his ears, and he felt the sharp screaming pain of a tusk in his side. He pivoted, enraged, and opening his mouth wide in a delicious roar brou
ght his teeth down on the side of the animal’s neck. He felt the thick musky hide tear, the muscles shred, his claws rending the rough bristling coat, and the delicious taste of the meat overwhelmed him.

  Laura on top of the beast ripped into its lower flank.

  He turned over and over with the shrieking grunting beast suddenly as it struggled for its life, ripping one chunk of live meat from it after another. At last his face found its underbelly, his claws slicing it open for his hungry tongue. Laura sank her teeth into the feast right beside him.

  He gorged himself on the hot bleeding meat, chomping into the flank, as the last life went out of the creature, its hoofed feet still twitching. Laura lapped at the blood, ripped at the strips of bloody muscle. He lay there watching her.

  It seemed an eternity passed in which the squeals and grunts had died away, the pounding of the hooves had died away, and only the distinct sharp roars of the Morphenkinder pierced the night within the hushed cloud of the spellbinding music.

  Reuben was drunk and satiated with the meat, almost unable to move. The hunt was finished.

  A stillness had fallen over the immense clearing in which the monstrous fire burned and the music played on.

  Then a cry went up: “Bones into the bone fire!”

  A huge crashing sound erupted from the heart of the blaze, and then came another as if the fire were a spitting volcano.

  Reuben rose and picking up the torn and bleeding carcass of the boar on which he’d feasted he hurled it into the fire. He could see others doing the same, and soon the stench of burning animal flesh rose all around him, sickening and yet somehow tantalizing. Laura tumbled against him, leaning heavily on him, her breaths coming in hoarse gasps. They were knowing the heat of the wolf coat, the thirst in the wolf coat.

  The figure of Sergei appeared beside him, telling him to come back, to join the others by the cauldron. They found the others crowded about, drinking from their horns, and exchanging horns. Reuben made out the seven who were not of his pack, but he could not tell the identity of the female wolves. Hockan he knew. Hockan had a large heavy wolfen body like that of Frank or Stuart, and his fur was almost entirely white, streaked here and there with gray, powerfully setting off his black eyes. Other dark-eyed Morphenkinder had no such advantage.