“Not exactly,” he said. “If there is a pack there, it’s the women under Helena, and excluding Berenice. Berenice used to spend a lot of time with us, though not lately. But Hockan’s been with them off and on for a very long time now. Hockan has suffered his own losses, his own tragedies. I think Hockan’s under the spell of Helena. They used to confine themselves to the European continent, this bunch, but it’s simply too hard now for Morphenkinder in Europe, especially Morphenkinder who believe in human sacrifice at Midwinter.” He gave a scornful laugh. “And the Morphenkinder of Asia are more jealous of territory than we tend to be. So they’re here, in the Americas, now, been here for decades actually, searching perhaps for some special locale. I don’t know. I don’t invite their confidences. And frankly, I wish Berenice would leave them, and come live with us, if Frank could bear it.”
“Human sacrifice!” Reuben winced.
“Oh, it’s not all that horrifying, really. They select an evildoer, some utterly reprehensible and unredeemable scoundrel, some murderer, and they drug the poor bastard till he’s in a perfect stupor, and then they feast on him at midnight on Christmas Eve. Sounds worse than it really is, considering what we’re all capable of. I don’t like it. I won’t make the killing of evildoers ceremonial. I refuse to incorporate it into ritual. I refuse.”
“I hear you.”
“Put it out of your mind. They talk big but lack a certain collective or personal resolve.”
“I think I see what’s happened,” said Reuben. “You were gone from here for twenty years. And now you’re back—all of you—and they’ve come to look the place over again.”
“That’s it, exactly,” said Felix with a bitter smile. “And where were they when we were captive and struggling to survive?” His voice grew heated. “Didn’t see hide nor hair of them. Of course they didn’t know where we were, or so they’ve said. And said. And said. And yes, we’re back in North America, and they are, shall we say, curious? They make me think of moths collecting around a bright light.”
“Are there others, others besides these, who might show up at the Yule?”
“Not likely.”
“But what about Hugo, that strange Morphenkind we met in the jungles?”
“Oh, Hugo never leaves that ghastly place. I don’t think Hugo has found his way out of the jungles now for five hundred years. Hugo moves from one jungle outpost to another. When his present shelter ultimately collapses, he’ll seek another. You can forget about Hugo. But as to whether others might come, well, I honestly don’t know. There’s no universal census of Morphenkinder. And I’ll tell you something else if you promise to put it out of your mind immediately.”
“I’ll try.”
“We aren’t all the same species either.”
“Good God!”
“Why did I know you’d turn the color of ashes when I told you that? Look. Truly, it doesn’t matter. Now, don’t get agitated. This is why I so hate to inundate you with information. Leave the others to me for the time being. Leave the world to me, and all its myriad predatory immortals.”
“ ‘All its myriad predatory immortals’?”
Felix laughed. “I’m playing with you.”
“I wonder if you are.”
“No, truly. You’re easy to tease, Reuben. You always respond.”
“But Felix, are there universally accepted rules about all this?—I mean do all Morphenkinder agree on this or that law, or—?”
“Hardly!” he said with thinly concealed disgust. “But there are customs among our kind. That’s what I was referring to earlier, the Yuletide customs. We receive each other at Yuletide with courtesy, and woe to one who breaks those customs.” He paused for a moment. “Not all Morphenkinder have a place to celebrate the Yule as we do. And so if others join us on Modranicht, well, we welcome them.”
“Modranicht,” said Reuben with a smile. “I’ve never heard that name for the Yule spoken aloud.”
“But you know the word, don’t you?”
“Night of the Mother,” said Reuben. “From the Venerable Bede, in describing the Anglo-Saxons.”
Felix laughed softly. “You never let me down, my beloved scholar.”
“Night of the Mother Earth,” said Reuben, relishing the words, the thought, and Felix’s pleasure.
Felix went silent for a moment, and then went on:
“In the old days—the old days for Margon, that is—Yuletide was the time to come together, to pledge fidelity, to pledge to live in peace, to reaffirm the resolves to love, to learn, and to serve. That’s what the teacher taught me a very long time ago. That’s what he taught Frank, and Sergei, and Thibault as well. And that’s what Yule still means to us, to us,” he emphasized, “a time of renewal and rebirth, no matter what the hell it means to Helena and the others.”
Reuben repeated it: “To love, to learn, and to serve.”
“Well, it’s not as dreadful as I’ve made it sound,” said Felix. “We don’t make speeches, we don’t offer prayers. Not really.”
“It doesn’t sound dreadful at all. It sounds like one of those concise formulas I’ve been searching for all my life. And I saw it tonight, I saw it in the party, I saw it infecting the guests like some kind of wonderful intoxicant. I saw so many people behaving and responding in the most unusual way. I don’t think my family has ever much held with ceremonies, holidays, any celebration of renewal. It’s as if the world’s gone past all that.”
“Ah, but the world never does go past all that,” said Felix. “And for those of us who cannot age, we must find a way to mark the passage of the years, to celebrate our own determination to renew our spirits and our ideals. We’re fastened to time, but time doesn’t affect us. And if we don’t watch it, if we live as if there were no time, well, time can kill us. Hell, Yuletide is when we resolve to try to do better than we have in the past, that’s all.”
“New Year’s resolutions of the soul,” said Reuben.
“Amen. Come, let’s forget about the others and go walk in the oaks. The rain has stopped. I never had a chance to walk in the oaks while the party was in full swing.”
“Me either, and I so want to do that,” said Reuben.