Three miles down the road, he found the Chevy. Another culvert had begun to wash out. The car had hit it, gone out of control, and smashed into a tree. Mary was dead, her chest crushed by the steering column. Little Hilmi was gone, her basket thrown out an open door.

Macurdy howled, grasped the tree with his big hands and beat his head on its trunk. Abruptly he stopped, and began thrashing around in the brush and devil's-club, looking for Hilmi. Not there. In the creek then. He broke into a trot, bulling through the brush along the stream bank, watching for the basket. Within a hundred yards he found it, bobbing upside-down, lodged against the limbs of a fir that had fallen across the stream. He plunged into the turbid rushing water, normally not knee-deep, now above his waist. Dropping to his knees in it, he groped among submerged branches, searching by feel.

After several minutes, blue with cold, he clambered dripping from the water, bellied over the fallen fir, and charged stumbling downstream again. He was too distraught to draw warmth from the Web of the World; it didn't occur to him.

An hour later, other loggers, who'd found his pickup and the wrecked car, found Macurdy. Like some huge beaver, he was groping beneath another blowdown, submerged. They saw him when he came up for air. He did not resist when they dragged him from the icy water.

They took him to town with them. He sat dumbly, shivering violently despite the heater blowing on him, whether from shock or cold they didn't know.

Wiiri and Ruth Saari took him in that night. They were as close to kin as he had in Nehtaka. They did almost all the talking, they and Pastor Ilvessalo from the Finnish church, whom they'd called in. Their guest sat slumped in a wingbacked chair, wearing flannel pajamas and a bathrobe belonging to their large son, off on a football scholarship at Oregon State. The wind whooshed around the house corners and porch posts, and the rain pelting the windows sounded almost as harsh as sleet. Macurdy's responses were mostly monosyllables. At length the pastor put his raincoat on to leave. Only then did Macurdy speak at any length. "Thank you, Pastor," he said. "Thank you, Wiiri. And Rudi. You've helped. You've all helped." Then he relapsed.

After the pastor left, Wiiri helped Macurdy to the guest room. "Sleep," he said from the door. "You won't feel good in the morning, but at least you'll feel alive."

Macurdy lay for some while in a sort of stupor. After a time, it seemed to him that Mary was there in the room. Mary and someone else, whom he could sense but not see. "Hello, darling," Mary said. "Do you know who's with me?"

He stared, unable to respond.

"It's Hilmi, dear. Our daughter. We're fine. We're both fine. And you will be. You'll be fine too. We love you very much."

Through brimming eyes he watched her fade, then sobbed himself quietly to sleep.

The funeral was on February 21, in the Finnish church. A double funeral. Little Hilmi's body had been found floating in the Nehtaka River, a remarkable distance downstream from where she'd died. Her casket was kept closed.

By that time Macurdy was functional, but seemed an automaton. A number of Severtson's loggers attended. Most were as uncomfortable in church as they were in suits. They'd have loved to carry him off to a tavern with them, get him drunk and hear him laugh. But it was, of course, out of the question.

He was more alert than he seemed. When Margaret Preuss came in with her new boyfriend, he wondered how long this one would last.

Wiiri gave the eulogy, breaking once despite his Finnish stoicism.

After the service, the attendees filed past, most murmuring condolences, the loggers shaking Macurdy's strong hand with their own. But afterward, the only one he remembered clearly was Margaret. She said nothing, but her eyes, her smile, bespoke satisfaction. Victory.

She had no idea how close she was to having her throat crushed in his hands. But he had places to go, and though he didn't consciously know it, things to do.

PART TWO

The Lion Returns

Kurqosz stared down from his seven-foot-eight-inch height. His eyes seemed greener, his bristly hair more red, his skin more ivory than Macurdy remembered. His easy laugh was amiable and chilling.

"What then, you ask? Why, we will conquer, as our distant ancestors did in Hithmearc. And do what we please. First of all it will please us to punish the ylver for escaping us. Then we will domesticate the other peoples who dwell there, culling the intransigent. Cattle are invariably more profitable than their wild progenitors."

Crown Prince Kurqosz in a dream by Curtis Macurdy while at Wolf Springs

8 Good-byes and Farewells

In a black mood, Macurdy sold the house in town to Wiiri, from whom he'd bought it. He was leaving Nehtaka County, he said, leaving at once. Wiiri bought the pickup, too, and the saw. As a small-town entrepreneur, he bought and sold a lot of different things.

Mary's Aunt Hilmi offered to broker the sale of the quarter section and its buildings for him. She had wealthy connections in Portland. He said he didn't want to wait, and didn't want anything further to do with the place. So she bought it herself, for what seemed to him a lot of money. She warned him she expected to make money on it. He told her good enough, and welcome to it.

Having converted almost everything he owned into cash, he deposited it in the Nehtaka Bank, in a savings account. The banker suggested more lucrative investments, but he refused them. He then willed it all to his parents, their heirs and assigns, with Frank as executor.

Wiiri had suggested he keep the pickup for transportation, but Macurdy said the railroads and Greyhound would provide all the transportation he needed. When Wiiri asked where he was going, he said to visit his parents. From there, he added, he expected to leave the States, and go to the country his first wife had come from.

He did not, of course, specify the country.

On the 2,400-mile train ride to Indiana, he had abundant uninterrupted time. To think, if he cared to. Some of it he spent watching the mountains slide by, and the Great Plains. Saw pronghorn and coyotes, cattle gathered around toadstool-shaped haystacks, and great expanses of snow. Some of it was spent brooding on the past, and on what might have been. And much he spent reading-a Max Brand novel and Blue Book -escapist adventures.

But he spent none of it planning his future. He already knew what he'd do for his parents. As for himself, he had only intentions of a general sort. He didn't know what conditions he'd find.

One thing though he'd surely do: learn whether Varia was still married. She probably was, and her ylvin lord was a hell of a good man, any way he looked at it.

He spent several days on the farm with his parents. They lived now in the house where Will had lived, and Varia. Frank Jr., his wife and children, lived in the larger house. Curtis told them of losing his wife and daughter, and that he was going to the country where Varia was. "Who knows?" he said. "Maybe she lost her husband. Maybe we can get back together." It was an explanation, something to ease them, and who could say it wouldn't happen.

Frank Sr. and Edith weren't surprised at his youth. After they'd seen Curtis in '42, Charley had told them the family secret, about its occasional men who didn't age. Now Frank and Edith, in turn, told Frank Jr. and his wife. Curtis transferred his account in the Nehtaka Bank to one in Salem, Indiana. He made Frank Sr. a signator, and told him to manage it however he saw fit, for their parents' benefit. The money spooked Frank-he wanted nothing to do with it. But when Curtis countered that his only alternatives were lawyers and bankers, Frank reluctantly agreed.