me. Don,t let that poor kid die. Please. And don,t let - .
He couldn,t endure this panic.
Laura was there, watching him, waiting, sensing something was dreadfully wrong.
He grabbed Laura in his arms, and ran his hands over the thick gray sweater she wore, clutching at the high neck under her chin, then ran his hands down her long pants; warm enough.
I want to change, now, go back into the night. Now.
Holding tight to her, he felt the wolf-coat erupt again. He let go of her only long enough to take off his clothes. The fur was insulating him from the heat of the room, his nostrils as always picking up the heady scent of the forest that pressed against the windows. Ecstasy this, these jarring volcanic waves that almost swept him off his feet.
He lifted her and went out the back door of the house into the night, the transformation now complete, and with her secure against his left shoulder he sped through the forest, bent forward, springing on his powerful thighs, until he,d left the oak wood behind and was now among the giant redwoods.
"Wrap yourself around me," he breathed into her ear, guiding her arms around his neck, and her legs around his torso. "We,re going up, are you game for it?"
"Yes," she cried.
Up and up he climbed until he was in the high branches, beyond the ivy and the straggling vines, up and up, higher until the lower trees were lost, and he could see the sea now above the bluffs, the endless, sparkling sea under the ghostly white of the hidden moon, and finally he found a bed of twisted branches strong enough to hold them. He sat back, his left arm firmly locked around the branch above him, his right arm cradling her.
She was laughing under her breath, delirious with the joy of it. She kissed him all over his face where he could feel it, his eyelids, the tip of his nose, against the side of his mouth.
"Hang on tight," he cautioned her. Then he eased her just a little to the right, so that she sat on his right thigh and his right arm firmly held her. "Can you see the sea?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "But only as utter blackness, and because I know it,s there and I know what it is."
He was breathing easy against the trunk of the monstrous tree. He was listening to the chorus of the woodlands; the canopy seethed and sighed and whispered. Far to the south he could see the lights of the house winkling through the trees, as if they were so many tiny stars, snared in its many windows. Down there, way down there in the world, the house full of light, waiting for them.
She laid her head on his chest.
For the longest time, they remained that way, together, up there, and he looked out at the sea and saw nothing at all but the shimmering water and the inky sky above it and the faintest stars. The clouds gathered and broke over the moon, sustaining that illusion that the moon was again and again burning its way through the clouds. The damp salty wind whispered and blew in the tall trees around them.
Just for a moment, he sensed danger. Or was it merely the presence of some other creature near them? He wasn,t sure, but he was certain that he could not communicate this sudden alarm to Laura. She was totally dependent on him here. Quietly he listened.
Maybe it was only the inevitable rustling of the canopy, and possibly some fleet little beast he didn,t know wending its way nearby. The vesper bats were at these heights, the flying squirrels, the chickadee and the chipmunk could spend their lives in these upper branches. But why would such little things have awakened his protective spirit? Whatever it was, it was gone, and he thought to himself that it was because he had her here, her heart beating against his heart, that he had felt such a vague alarm at all.
All was well around them.
He thought of the boy. He was in agony.
Unspeakable, all this.
He begged the forest to hold him close, to protect him from the merciless sharpness of his own conscience. A long time ago in his short life, the voice of conscience had been the voice of Grace, Phil, Jim, and Celeste. But that was no longer the way it was at all. And now his own conscience sank the knife into