Wolfskin

by W. R. Gingell

  “I didn’t begin the quarrel!” she began mulishly. “I don’t fuss when other girls flirt with him. I don’t insist that he should never speak to anyone else.”

  “Thomas doesn’t flirt with anyone else,” I pointed out. Gwendolen would certainly take a dim view of it if any such thing happened, despite her protests. “If you’re going to marry him, you can’t keep flirting with everyone else.”

  “I can’t help it if they all like me!” Gwendolen said, her face flushed. “And I am not going to marry Thomas! I’m not.”

  “I suppose it’s a good thing that I haven’t asked you yet, then,” said Thomas’ voice, calmly amused. “Good evening, Rose. You’re beautiful.”

  I blushed hotly, but Gwendolen scowled at him, and put her little nose in the air.

  “I shall see if Mother and David are ready to go yet,” she said haughtily, and floated coldly away, ignoring Thomas’ quiet interjection that they were on their way downstairs. He smiled at her retreating back, but when he looked at me again his face was serious.

  “I’ve learned a little more of your wolf and his situation,” he said softly. “Enough to make it strangely hard to speak of it, I might add.”

  I nodded in understanding. “It does that to me, too. The only person I can speak to freely is Bastian.”

  “You’ll be careful won’t you, Rose?” There was a crease between his brows that spoke of consideration for me as well as for Gwen, so I stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

  “You’re very nice, and I thoroughly approve. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  To my surprise, a dull red flush crept up in his cheeks. “Thank you. Now all I need is Gwendolen’s approval.”’

  “I’d give you advice, but you seem to be doing very well on your own,” I said. “I’ve never seen her mope over her beaux before. Or mutter. It’s quite good for her, I think.”

  A reluctant smile stole into his eyes. “I flatter myself that I know her quite well. She’s young yet, and I can afford to wait.”

  I looked up at him thoughtfully as he stood before me, rock-like and steady, and knew that he would do just that. Wait and wait until Gwendolen was ready, and be there to catch her when she was. It occurred to me that Gwendolen, all unknowing, had been very fortunate.

  Gilbert was waiting by the front gate when we emerged, whistling at the early moon with his hands in his pockets. He grinned in greeting and offered one arm to me, remarking with a nod at the flowers of my dress and the leafiness of Akiva’s hood: “You’ve brought the forest with you tonight.”

  He offered the other arm to Gwendolen, who was still refusing to acknowledge Thomas’ presence and accepted the arm grandly. Mother and David strolled ahead of us, Thomas with them and seeming not to notice Gwendolen’s ire. He was behaving as if he really had come to accompany them and not Gwen.

  Despite Gwendolen’s annoyance, there was an air of happiness and hilarity to our little group as we approached the dancing green and saw the lights twinkling. The only reminder that all was not quite right was Akiva’s hood, nestling warmly about my shoulders.

  Gwendolen flitted away almost immediately, and Liz Gantry, her arm linked with Harry’s, immediately took her place. She darted toward Gilbert and I, dragging us irresistibly into the dance that was forming.

  “It’s a four-square,” she explained. “We’ll make up our own set. Then we can step on each other’s toes and dance the wrong steps all night if we want to.”

  So we danced and we laughed, amusing ourselves with everyone and everything, and in particular our own bad dancing. It was pleasant not to be serious for a little while.

  Later, when passing in the reel, Gilbert enquired: “Your watchdog couldn’t make it?”

  “He doesn’t leave the forest often,” I said watchfully, turning lightly on my toes at my corner to face him. “I don’t think he likes people very much.”

  “That explains why he’s always glaring at me, I suppose?” Gilbert was grinning as we performed the obligatory last doci-do. Opposite us, Harry swerved wildly to avoid jostling Liz’s shoulder with his own, and collided with another couple. We were laughing then, and I wasn’t obliged to answer Gilbert’s question, much to my relief. To tell the truth, I wasn’t entirely sure why Bastian disliked Gilbert. Toward most humans he showed only indifference, Thomas and Mother being the only notable exceptions to whom Bastian seemed to have taken a liking, apart from myself. Gilbert he seemed to actively dislike, and I could see no reason for it.

  Thinking about it, I found to my surprise that I was missing Bastian. I was by now so used to having him around that when he wasn’t there I felt his absence like a hole in the background. It occurred to me in a moment of clarity that every time I turned to laugh and share a joke with Gilbert, I was startled that the face I turned to wasn’t Bastian’s.

  My thoughts left me unsettled, and when the others suggested a walk along the mill road after the dance, I excused myself to seek out Mother and David. I found David first: he was watching Mother dance with Thomas, a smile on his thin face. It was a warm, personal smile, so I sat beside him without speaking, my eyes also on the dancers; and after a moment David put his arm around me in an absentminded, fatherly hug.

  “Well, Rose? And what is it you want from me?”

  “Want?” I demanded, pretending injury. “Perhaps I like your company.”

  That got me a sideways look and a real smile. “Strange,” he said, turning his gaze back on the dancers. “I could have sworn you only come to see me when you want to pick my brains.”

  I laughed, and we watched the dancers in silence for a moment longer. Then David, with a frown deepening on his face, said suddenly: “You feel it too, don’t you, Rose? I keep thinking I’m imagining it; but it feels like someone has left a door open near the birches. I think something is coming through.”

  I looked at him curiously but felt a few of the lines nearby, and found that he was right.

  “How did you notice that?” I demanded, a little put out that he had sensed something I had not.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know that no one else could sense it until I asked Margot what it was. She didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  Now that it had been pointed out, I could see what he saw. It wasn’t quite a door, as David had thought, it was more of a tiny, deep hole in the small copse of birches that the younger children liked to dance rings around. The copse was clear of the forest but still quite close, and the lines glimmering between it and the forest told me that it was still part of the forest: and more importantly, of deep forest. There was no telling what could come through with the forest in the state it was in. The children were lively tonight: not unusually so, but there was an energy in their leaping and a dexterity in their dancing feet that sent a danger signal prickling across my scalp. It was disturbingly reminiscent of deeper forest and the wildly dancing dryads.

  I stood unhurriedly, but my heart was beating more quickly with a touch of fear.

  “Maybe I’ll dance with the children,” I said. “No one’s chaperoning.”

  “And I will join you,” David said, pulling my hand through his arm. We strolled around the outskirts of the grownup dancers, David’s thin, strong hand clasping mine tightly enough to keep me at an unhurried, unnoticeable pace that matched his.

  “Don’t frighten them,” he said in a low voice. “If they’re panicked it will be impossible to keep them all in sight.”

  I nodded, but my hand felt very cold where I grasped the light cloth of his shirt, my fingers hidden beneath his. He patted my hand once and then released it, as if he were satisfied that I wouldn’t do anything foolish. I kept it tucked in the crook of his arm nevertheless, feeling safer with him there. We joined the children briefly, spinning into the circle and through it in one swift, graceful swirl, and they let us pass without acknowledging us. Their eyes were wide and starry.

  Before long we were at the centre of their straggling loop, the point at which the birch trees were
thinnest. The whole patch of trees was no wider than twenty feet, and we should have been able to see party lights and silhouetted figures dancing between the pale trunks. Instead, we saw only inky blackness, as if we were gazing into the deepest, thickest of forest. I gazed pensively at the darkness and knew that though the trees were merging into deeper forest, what we were looking for was no longer between the trees.

  “There’s nothing here,” I said, my voice small in the face of the massiveness of deeper forest. “Whatever it is has already come through.”

  We turned back slowly to face the circle of dancing children, and found that, beyond them, the party had grown strangely unfocused.

  “We should go back,” I said, a deep thrill of fear leaving me breathless and strangely euphoric; because David wasn’t looking at me any longer. He was gazing intently at a graceful, pale figure as it glimmered among the children, passing from hand to hand through the dance.

  “I don’t think we can,” he said huskily. Just beyond the dancing line I could see Mother standing, her face white and her eyes intent on us, while the dancing figure came ever closer with graceful, strathspey deliberation. It turned in the dance, lights shining full on its face, and I saw, with a jolt of cold recognition, that it was Kendra. Beside me, I heard David’s breath hiss between his teeth, and I shot a look up at him in the conviction that he had got his memory back at last. The look on his face was not one of remembrance, however; it was one of deep confusion. And as Kendra threaded her way closer, I was ashamed to discover in myself a deep desire that he would not remember, that he would not recognise her. I didn’t know how Kendra could be here, but I did know how Mother felt about David, and how he felt about her. For once the thought of David’s memory returning was an undeniably unwelcome one.

  I heard the sound of Mother’s voice calling but it sounded faded and far off. She wasn’t calling my name: she was calling David’s. The sound of it must have penetrated David’s ears, because he tore his eyes away from Kendra with a shuddering breath and fixed his gaze on Mother instead, with the desperate look a drowning sailor has for the wooden plank that will save him. I risked another glance at Kendra, and thought I saw her mouth form my name, but David didn’t look back again. Step by laborious step, he surged through the murkiness, dragging me with him until we were through the dancers. I looked back to catch another sight of Kendra, but she was gone and the dance was breaking up. The clump of birches was just a plot of trees again.

  David gave something like a sob, then Mother had her arms around him, stroking his hair and murmuring in his ear as if he were a little boy, his face pressed tight into her neck and his eyes squeezed shut.

  She spared me a swift look to ask: “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said shortly. “Someone came out of deeper forest and I’m not supposed to know about deeper forest.”

  “You both went blurry,” said Thomas. He had been there beside Mother all the time, though I hadn’t seen him. He put his arm around my waist in a friendly fashion, and added: “I’ll get you some hot chocolate.”

  Mother nodded approvingly at us. “I’ll take David home with me,” she said, gently pushing the hair away from his forehead.

  David raised his head to look wonderingly down at her as if he had not quite seen her before. And then, just like that, Mother was being kissed long and hard before the whole party, David’s thin hands cupped around her face. Someone raised a cheer and several more whistled, but neither of them seemed to care, or even to hear. Thomas chuckled and pulled me away.

  “Close your mouth, Rose. You’re not blind, you must have seen it coming.”

  “Well, yes; but I didn’t think David had that in him,” I said, impressed. “Let go of me, clot! I have to tell Mother to keep away from the forest as they go home.” I was instinctively and perhaps unreasonably convinced that it was me and not David that Kendra had tried to talk to, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  “Margot knows,” Thomas said calmly, ignoring the insult. “Just as soon as I get you some hot chocolate, I will escort them home myself.”

  He was as good as his word. As soon as I was sitting down on a stray chair with a mug of rich chocolate, Thomas was off after Mother and David. I saw them moments later through the throng, Thomas beside and slightly behind them; and it was with gratitude that I noticed he had chosen to walk nearest the forest.

  They had barely gone when Gwendolen swept up to me, simmering with indignation and mortification.

  “Why didn’t you stop them!” she hissed, sweeping her skirts aside with an angry flourish to sit beside me.

  “What on earth could I have done?” I inquired caustically. “Besides, I think it’s sweet.”

  “Sweet!” Gwendolen squeaked, in a strangled whisper. “Sweet? She was kissing him in front of the entire village! Our mother!”

  “I think he was kissing her,” I pointed out, but without much hope that it would abate her anger. It didn’t. I cut in on her tirade to say, experimentally: “You’re only cross because Thomas went with them. None of your young men have ever left a dance while you’re still at it, have they?”

  “Thomas is not my young man!” almost shrieked Gwendolen. Heads turned, and she lowered her voice with flushed cheeks. “I don’t care if he is here or a thousand miles away! I don’t care if I never see him again!”

  A last, angry swirl of muslin, and she was gone. I sat by myself thoughtfully until Gilbert returned with Liz and Harry, demanding a dance. Deep in my thoughts, I hadn’t heard them approach, and Gilbert’s voiced startled me enough to make me spill my hot chocolate. They laughed at me, teasing that I was daydreaming about a certain someone, and I pulled a face at them without denying it. If I had denied it I would have had to tell them what I had been thinking of, and I had no intention of telling them that I had been on the point of slipping away into the forest in an attempt to find Bastian. Kendra’s reappearance had made me uneasy, and I wasn’t entirely sure that Bastian would come if I called. He was still cross at me, and even if I didn’t know why he was so cross, I did know that I didn’t like being at odds with him. I hadn’t sensed him in the forest since he had left me by the creek, and the lack of his familiar presence even in the distance was beginning to make me truly, ridiculously miserable. I found myself, surrounded by party-goers as I was, suddenly forlorn and alone, wanting nothing more than to sense his presence at the edges of my mind.

  Fortunately, Harry was in too boisterous a mood to allow anyone time to notice my quietness, and I was borne away to dance with him before Gilbert could laughingly protest that he had asked me first. Elizabeth pulled him along with the cheerful aside that at least she would not be knocked to the ground this dance, to which Harry replied by making a rude noise over his shoulder.

  The dance was an energetic polka, which we romped through with hilarity, Harry’s high spirits inevitably cheering me up. Around us the party grew louder and more jolly: midnight was fast approaching, but the dance showed no signs of breaking up and the refreshments flowed as freely as before. Before the end of the dance I had begun to think wistfully of Akiva’s cottage and my comfortable little bed.

  Almost before the last hop of my polka with Harry, Gilbert was by my side again.

  “My turn,” he said gaily; and swept me away into the ring that was forming.

  I found myself in an unfamiliar setting and tried to back away, but Gilbert wasn’t minded to let me pull away, and he swung me into a waltz hold with a teasing grin.

  “It’s easy; and you can tread on my toes as much as you please. Just stick with me when everyone else changes partners and I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”

  I assured him sourly that I would make sure to take advantage of his kind permission to tread on his toes, but when the dance began, the tiny, foot-flicking movements were oddly familiar. It took me a few revolutions to discover that I was dancing a variation of the dryad’s wedding dance: less sweeping and spectacular, but unmistakably the same dan
ce.

  I huffed a breath of relief that lasted only until I caught sight of a tall figure threading swiftly through the dance behind us. My first, startled thought, was that Kendra had broken though again; but as my eyes followed it through the dance, it became quickly evident that it was a male figure.

  My breath quickened and I kept him in my sight, caught up with the sudden hope that the golden-haired stranger was Bastian. I couldn’t sense him with my forest sight and I knew my hope was ridiculous, but I still couldn’t help craning my head to keep him in sight. He passed from partner to partner as Gilbert and I dallied together, but I only ever caught glimpses of the back of his head; and once, a patch of corn-golden stubble on his turned cheek.

  I lost sight of him a moment later, and an almost crushing disappointment settled on me as I furled out in what was meant to be the last movement before switching partners, my hand in Gilbert’s. With each change we had taken a waltz hold instead, ducking out and then back into the dance to remain together, but this time when I unfurled from the waltz hold I didn’t get a chance to spin back into Gilbert. Instead, my free hand was seized and I was nipped breathlessly away from Gilbert, circled closely about my waist by a strong arm and held tight to a certain someone whose scent was as familiar as the forest.

  Absurdly happy, I said: “You’re wearing a shirt.”

  It was a simple, exquisitely made shirt; though he wore it unlaced and untucked, as if he weren’t quite comfortable in one anymore.

  Bastian looked down at it with the disinterested, cursory look of one who is used to the finest linens, and said: “Your bumpkin seems to want you back.”

  I peeked around him to find that Gilbert and his new partner were just behind us, ready for the next change when he might reasonably hope to partner me again.

  Bastian, his eyes glittering with sardonic amusement, said softly: “Hold tight, love,” and whisked us from the outer to the inner dancing circle, just before the change. I sputtered my laughter into his shirt, not willing to look up at him because I knew that if I did, I would laugh aloud. Gilbert was looking a touch aggrieved, and I didn’t want him to think that I was mocking him.