“Yes, I do believe that,” he said softly, “with all my heart.”
He was content for them to remain there forever as the rain fell gently around them.
“Listen, do you hear that?” she said.
Below, in the little town, a clock was solemnly chiming the hour of twelve.
“Yes,” he said at once picturing a polished hallway, a quiet parlor, a carpeted stair. “And Christmas is indeed complete upon the midnight,” he whispered to her, “and ‘Ordinary Time’ has begun.”
All the houses looked to him like toy houses, and he heard the chorus of the woods rise around him, his eyes closed, his hearing sharpening, probing over greater and greater distances until it seemed to him all the world sang. All the world was filled with falling rain.
“Listen to it,” he said in her ear. “It’s as if the forest is praying, as if the earth is praying, as if prayers are rising to heaven off every shimmering leaf and branch.”
“Why are we so sad?” she asked. How tender her voice sounded, even deepened and roughened as it was.
“Because we’re moving away from them down there,” he said. “And we know it. And my son when he comes into this world isn’t going to change that. And there is nothing we can do to change it. Can a Morphenkind shed tears?”
“Yes, we can shed tears,” she answered. “I know we can, because I have. And you’re right. We’re moving away from them, all of them, and we’re moving ever deeper into our own story and maybe that is as it should be. Felix has done all he can to help us, but we’re moving so rapidly away from them, what can we do?”
He thought about his little boy, that tiny slumbering creature in Celeste’s womb, that tender hostage to fortune that was his very own. Would he grow up in that cheerful house on Russian Hill with Jamie and Christine? Would he know the wholesome safety and happiness there that Reuben had long ago trusted so completely? It seemed so very distant suddenly, so bound up with sadness, with grief.
His mother was young yet, vital, a woman in her prime. And when Celeste entrusted the newborn infant to her, would Lorraine be there to also take it in her arms? He saw his brother vividly in the picture that began to glow ever more brightly, yet distantly, in his mind. He heard Jim’s words from the sermon at the altar steps: So I come away from Christmas—and that great shining banquet of riches—thankful once more for the absolute miracle of “Ordinary Time.”
“I love you, darling dear,” he said to Laura.
“And I love you, my beautiful one,” she answered. “What would the Wolf Gift be to me without you?”
THE END