entered the warm little low-ceilinged hall. Old wood in this place, soaked through and 
through with lacquers or oil. I laid my hands on the beams of the door and saw in a 
shimmer a great oak woodland full of sunlight, and then only the shadows surrounded me. I 
smelled the aroma of the distant fire.
  
  I realized David was standing at the far end of the hallway, beckoning for me to come 
near. But something in my appearance alarmed him. Ah, well, I was covered with snow and a 
thin layer of ice.
  
  We went into the library together and I took the chair opposite his. He left me for a 
moment during which time I was merely staring at the fire and feeling it melt the sleet 
that covered me. I was thinking of why I had come and how I would put it into words. My 
hands were as white as the snow was white.
  
  When he appeared again, he had a large warm towel for me, and I took this and wiped my 
face and my hair and then my hands. How good it felt.
  
  "Thank you," I said.
  
  "You looked a statue," he said.
  
  '"Yes, I do look that way, now, don't I? I'm going on."
  
  "What do you mean?" He sat down across from me. "Explain."
  
  "I'm going to a desert place. I've figured a way to end it, I think. This is not a 
simple matter at all."
  
  "Why do you want to do that?"
  
  "Don't want to be alive anymore. That part is simple enough. I don't look forward to 
death the way you do. It isn't that. Tonight I-" I stopped. I saw the old woman in her 
neat bed, in her flowered robe, against the quilted nylon. Then I saw that strange 
brown-haired man watching me, the one who had come to me on the beach and given me the 
story which I still had, crammed inside my coat.
  
  Meaningless. You come too late, whoever you are.
  
  Why bother to explain?
  
  I saw Claudia suddenly as if she were standing there in some other realm, staring at 
me, waiting for me to see her. How clever that our minds can invoke an image so seemingly 
real. She might as well have been right there by David's desk in the shadows. Claudia, 
who had forced her long knife through my chest. "I'll put you in your coffin forever, 
Father." But then I saw Claudia ail the time now, didn't I? I saw Claudia in dream after 
dream . . .
  
  "Don't do this," David said.
  
  "It's tune, David," I whispered, thinking in a vague and distant way how disappointed 
Marius would be.
  
  Had David heard me? Perhaps my voice had been too soft. Some small crackling sound came 
from the fire, a bit of kindling collapsing perhaps or sap still moist and sizzling 
within the huge log. I saw that cold bedchamber in my boyhood home again, and suddenly, I 
had my arm around one of those big dogs, those lazy loving dogs. To see a wolf slay a dog 
is monstrous!
  
  I should have died that day. Not even the best of hunters should be able to slay a pack 
of wolves. And maybe that was the cosmic error. I'd been meant to go, if indeed there is 
any such continuity, and in overreaching, had caught the devil's eye. "Wolf killer." The 
vampire Magnus had said it so lovingly, as he had carried me to his lair.
  
  David had sunk back in the chair, putting one foot absently on the fender, and his eyes 
were fixed on the flames. He was deeply distressed, even a little frantic, though he held 
it inside very well.
  
  "Won't it be painful?" he asked, looking at me.
  
  Just for a moment, I didn't know what he meant. Then I remembered.
  
  I gave a little laugh.
  
  "I came to say good-bye to you, to ask you if you're certain about your decision. It 
seemed somehow the right thing to tell you I was going, and that this would be your last 
chance. It seemed sporting, actually. You follow me? Or do you think it's simply another 
excuse? Doesn't matter really."
  
  "Like Magnus in your story," he said. "You'd make your heir, then go into the fire."
  
  "It wasn't merely a story," I said, not meaning to be argumentative, and wondering why 
it sounded that way. "And yes, perhaps it's like that. I honestly don't know."
  
  "Why do you want to destroy yourself?" He sounded desperate. How I had hurt this man.
  
  I looked at the sprawling tiger with its magnificent black stripes and deep orange fur.
  
  "That was a man-eater, wasn't it?" I asked.
  
  He hesitated as if he didn't fully understand the question, then as if waking, he 
nodded. "Yes." He glanced at the tiger, then he looked at me. "I don't want you to do it. 
Postpone it, for the love of heaven. Don't do it. Why tonight, of all times?"
  
  He was making me laugh against my will. "Tonight's a fine night for doing it," I said. 
"No, I'm going." And suddenly there was a great exhilaration in me because I realized I 
meant it! It wasn't just some fancy. I would never have told him if it was. "I've figured 
a method. I'll go as high as I can before the sun comes over the horizon. There won't be 
any way to find shelter. The desert there is very hard."
  
  And I will die in fire. Not cold, as I'd been on that mountain when the wolves