Episode 10x23

TITLE: SWAN LAKE, Part II

AUTHOR: Windsinger (AKA Sue Esty)

EMAIL: windsinger@aol.com

RATING: PG-13

CATEGORY: X

KEYWORDS: Casefile, MRS, mild Muldertorture

SPOILERS: Through VS9

ARCHIVE: Two weeks exclusively on VS10, then Gossamer and Ephemeral. Others are fine, though please let me know.

DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully and Skinner belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and Fox. No copyright infringement is intended.

SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully travel to Maine to investigate the story of children who have been lost in a strange, wooded valley and return changed.

FEEDBACK: Gratefully accepted.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks for Suzanne's infinite patience. Many thanks to all of the VS Production staff for not making me carve this down to fit into one part. Many thanks to the original series (the first few seasons anyway) for continuing to be such an inspiration and bringing such joy into my life. And, yes, there really is a play called The Swan (written by Elizabeth Egloff) which was the initial inspiration for this story. Chris Lane, the actor who played 'the swan', has my continuing admiration. He is one incredible physical actor (and not bad sans-clothing either). I wish him well in his career, which my friends and I continue to follow in the Washington area with great zeal.

SWAN LAKE, part II
By Windsinger (AKA Sue Esty)

Teaser
Fall, Winter and Spring, a year earlier

In a wood below where the thick branches of two hedges intertwine, two deer laid face to face in languid repose. One moves and you see that it is not a deer but a woman. Must have been a trick of light and shadow, aided by her long, flowing cloak of deep brown that covers them both. She leans over and tenderly kisses her companion who also stirs. He is not a deer either. What was originally taken to be a wide span of antler must have been that bundle of bare, thorny branches.

Suddenly he jerks awake, stares at the woman with a cry of horror and then, crab-like, scrambles backwards. Naked, and beautiful in his nakedness, he is gone, as fleet as a deer but not with a deer's grace. . In his terror he doesn't pick the smoothest way but blunders on uphill and down. Tearing through the soft, screening branches of white pine, he doesn't see the cloaked figure. Looking behind in fear of pursuit, he runs at full speed into her embrace.

"Don't be afraid," the woman whispers, even as he struggles like a wild thing in her arms. Swiftly before he can break loose, her right arm rises. She must have had the ancient blade in her hand already. "It will be all right. It always has been." His eyes are wide open, golden as ingots, as the stroke comes down across his bare throat deep and sure. The blood flows thick as crimson cream over his golden skin and onto the ground. She kneels as he falls, cradling him in her arms until the long legs cease twitching and death is certain.

His grave is there in the little clearing where his blood and her tears have darkened the autumn grass. She sits beside the mound on a little rock, as silent a witness as the red and gold leaves that fall to cover the broken ground. Night comes -- and day -- and night -- until the sky is deep in iron-gray clouds. The cold wind moans. The cold rain flattens the fallen leaves that are no longer red and gold but brown. It is a blessing when the soft snow comes to cover the grave and her cloak in a similar blanket of white. Her tapping toe, barely visible under her snowy hem, lures the timid doe and the showshoe rabbit, the mole and the fox. During the cruel blizzards, however, she waits alone, frozen hands twisting in her lap. After weeks and months of white, the bitter early rains come to wash away the snow, leaving a dreary mud. Finally, the sun rises bright and yellow on a day when she can raise her head to see the geese winging on the first warm winds from the south.

A single tiny green shoot is the first sign. It struggles from the grave just over the place where his heart lay cold under the earth for so long. More bits of green soon rise from the four corners of the grave. After their first hesitant start they leap up, desperate for the sun, a month's growth in twenty beats of her quickening heart. The grave soon overflows with a dozen varieties of vines, each with its own green leaves, and more spring from the fertile earth every moment. She has risen to her feet, stiff, her back bent as she stares down and down beneath the wild green.

All at once the mass of vegetation begins to boil, but that is because the earth beneath is heaving upwards. Swiftly, she bends down to pull at the thickest vine. At the end of the stem there follows not roots and damp earth but an arm. She is on her knees now, clawing with her white fingers at the grasses and the seedlings and ferns. So full of life are they that they won't die no matter where she flings them. They instantly root and thrive. Her questing fingers find a shoulder. The body itself is moving now. Powerful as a water buffalo emerging from its sucking pit of mud, it pulls itself by will and muscle and her aid from the grave. The head is covered in roots and vines, so is a second shoulder. A second arm ends in an infant willow tree. The torso breaks free with her frantic, eager help. Soon the hips follow and two legs, the toes fringed in fern.

He claws at the green leaves and white roots that obscure where his mouth should be. She pulls the mass free for him, brushing the final loose dirt and stray bit of leaf away with her sleeve. As she plucks the last stems from the corners of his mouth, he takes a deep, gagging breath. With the first full flow of air his struggles lessen and he lies back in her arms exhausted. With great gentleness, she lifts each limb in turn to break off the roots of stems from the tips of finger and toe. She kisses each one into healing as she goes. As best as she can, she removes the last of the dirt from his body with a hem of her cloak. Only now does she rest, holding him to her breast, a Madonna cradling her full-grown son.

For a minute, maybe more, he lies quiet, wrapped in the warmth of her cloak. It is work enough just to breathe. They make a singular tableau considering that the wood around them continues to transform in a riot of growing. Bushes bloom with blossoms. Mighty trees burst forth with tender leaves. Grasses and flowers rise to meet the sun. Moss in jewel tones of green spread over rock and barren ground. A fall of her long butter-yellow hair drifts over his face on a stir of air. As he raises a hand to brush it away, he meets her hand on the same errand. He lies so still now that there is not even the movement of breathing. Eyes as green as emeralds snap open. With an animal howl of anguish, he tears himself from her arms. He is instantly away on long longs as strong as the bones of the earth.

Wearily, she rises from the edge of the hallow that now resembles more garden than grave. To the sky she looks. Her tear-filled eyes follow the flight of a single swan beating its great white wings away from her and into the spring-blue sky.

ACT I
Swan Lake, March 23th , noon

Scully tunelessly whistled as she sauntered down from the porch to spread the towels from her long, warm bath on the clothesline behind the cottage. She realized with some surprise that she was in an exceptionally good mood. Maybe it was because she had slept sinfully late. Here it was nearly noon. But then after the night she had had, why not? Maybe it was because the sun was directly overhead now and warm, and the view of the lake was beautiful. Maybe it was because of the delicious smell of the cockleberry-scented air. A lot of it had to do with the fact that she had nothing right now that she really needed to do. She didn't even have the little cottage to straighten since it was neat as pin already. Yes, this was fine; she was content. All she needed was one person to make the day perfect. He hadn't been there when she woke but that wasn't unusual.

But there he was. As she came out from behind the hanging towels, she saw him. He was just standing there where the trail he had taken the day before ran under the trees. She gave him a slow, sexy smile of greeting, then felt it sag. Something was wrong. He leaned heavily on a stick. When he tried to take a step he nearly fell.

Running to him, she automatically moved to support him. How had he gotten so dirty in such a short time?

"Mulder, what happened to you?"

"Considering how long I've been gone," he growled, "it took you long enough to wonder." Clearly, this was not a good time to ask questions.

"Let's get you into the house and I'll take a look at that leg. At least what happened to that?"

"Got rolled by a stag if you must know."

Because there was no room for her to stand at his side, he had to manage the two steps onto the porch and into the kitchen by himself. His eyes fell on the refrigerator. "Food first, examination later."

She cringed as his filthy hands touched the appliance's sparkling surface.

He had the bread and the lunchmeat out in two reaches of his long arms. He was gobbling the first sandwich even as he made the second and third. Swallowing the first bite, he sighed. "Ecstasy."

"Mulder, that's white bread and bologna."

"Whatever."

She nodded towards the remains of the bowl of the cockleberries that early that morning she had refilled to the brim. "At least eat something healthy."

He startled her by recoiling from the bowl. "Not those! Don't you eat them, either! How many have you had?"

Shaken, Scully realized that she had no idea. A quart a least, probably more, probably a lot more. Her stomach turned queasily. Maybe there was a reason for Mulder's choice of sustenance. "Let's talk about that later. Bring your lunch and let's go into the bedroom so I can take a look at you."

Still chewing the second sandwich and with the third hanging limply from his fingertips, he followed her through the drab little living room. Balancing on one leg, sore shoulder muscles protesting, he began to remove his jacket. She helped with it when she saw how much he was obviously hurting.

"Don't lose that! I had to climb half way up the mountain I fell down yesterday to get it back. It was freezing this morning."

So why leave their lovely, warm bed? But she forgot completely about asking after she began to peel the torn shirt loose from the multiple splotches of dried blood. Bad as his upper body looked, she knew where the real problem lay.

"Hip," she instructed.

"Shower first," he retorted as he stuffed the last of the soft, white bread in his mouth, kicked off his boots and dropped his jeans.

She was still staring at this expanded view of the multi-colored damage to his body as he disappeared into the small bathroom. "At least I'll know what's dirt and what isn't," she mused.

As good as the food was, the shower was better. After soaping he just stood under the spray, drinking and drinking the cool water. Why he hadn't gone for hot water after the night and the morning he had had he had no idea. He really wasn't thinking very clearly at all. There was just this rolling anger in him. It had gotten him out of the woods despite the pain. Not that he had had any choice. There had been no search party in the woods. She hadn't even noticed he was missing. She hadn't even cared enough for that. That hurt.

He didn't even bother to dry off but walked out into the bedroom still dripping. "You're frigid!" she exclaimed at the touch of his bluish skin. "You washed in COLD water?"

Mulder frowned. He had, and not knowing why made him angry all over again. "It felt good," he snapped. "Got a problem with that!"

She didn't take the bait. They could argue later. She was too intent on the network of long red scratches and the blooming patterns of still-rising bruises. She whistled over the huge red and purple bruise on his hip. He must have fallen hard. Drug box open, alternately patting his skin dry and applying antibacterial ointment to scratches, she realized with some consternation that she had not felt so 'aware', so much herself, for hours, perhaps not since dinner at the Hutchinson's. Once his right side had been dried and tended, Mulder collapsed slowly onto the bed as if all the energy had drained out of him. At least she wouldn't have to argue with him to get him to rest this time.

He was still settling into something approaching a comfortable position when she realized that there was more wrong with this picture than his wanting to sleep. There was an unusual amount of puffy redness around the larger scratches. "Mulder, something's not right."

"You're telling me," he grumbled sleepily.

"These scratches look like they're at least twelve hours old."

"I know, got them last night."

"Where? How?"

"When I took my little walk out to the spring, remember?" His voice faded as exhaustion pulled at him. "And I told you how. Got toppled by a buck. Spent the night in a freezing, filthy cave."

Frantically, she shook him. "No, you didn't! You were here! We laid on the rug in front of the fire! We -- "

"Saw the ashes as we walked by," he mumbled. "Couldn't have been much of a fire."

Bewildered, Scully rocked back onto the bed, the tube of antiseptic cream dropping from her hand. He was wrong; it had been a perfect blaze -- and it had just gone on and on and she hadn't tended it once. She clutched at her partner and found him cold in more ways than one. Staring around the room and out the open door into the living room in search of more blankets, the rose-colored lenses finally dissolved completely from her eyes.

It took all her strength to rouse him. "The room! The cabin! Mulder!"

"S-Sorry," came his slurred voice. "It's not exactly a dump, but I had wanted something better for you this time. Woods and all... Not that you would have cared either way."

"That's the point, you idiot! It was nice, it was wonderful! Last night, this morning. It was perfect!" After dragging all the blankets she could find onto the bed -- they might be warn and faded but they were warm -- she crawled in as well, and wrapped herself around his chilled body.

"Mulder, please don't fall asleep again, we need to talk. Who was here if you weren't? God, what did I do! Was I dreaming?"

His head lulled limply from side to side. "Don't know, maybe. Wasn't perfect where I was, that's for sure. Can't think. Sorry... Can't stay wake. Just let me sleep." He yawned and made one last effort. "Whatever you do... don't eat the berries and don't leave me again."

"Again?" she asked, stunned, but he was deeply, deeply asleep. Confused, she continued to lie there, arms around him, only her eyes moving rapidly from bedroom to living room. The cabin was as it had been the first night they had come -- functional but not magical. As she was still wearing all her clothes, she was soon sweating under the blankets with him, but still she trembled.

Monday, March 24th

She woke just as the sun dipped below the westernmost mountain. Her nap had been full of upsetting dreams that she could no longer remember. At least Mulder's warm body was still beside her. Moving carefully so not to wake him, she edged out of the bed, though from the way he slept a gunshot wouldn't have roused him. He had been angry as well as exhausted and it disturbed her that he continued to scowl even in his sleep. Restless, she re-read the case notes they had made after talking with the Hutchinsons, Richard Jameson, and the children. Now more had happened: Mulder had been attacked and she was -- seeing things? Still pondering and remembering with horror the white bread and bologna sandwiches Mulder had wolfed down, she made a chicken and vegetable casserole that would be large enough to eat off of for several days. If they got busy they would need something quick. It was not as if they had much choice. She hadn't seen even a McDonald's in Happenstance and the small coffee shop looked like it closed at dusk, and nights were still long this far north and this early in the year. She read; she paced. Finally she forced herself to lie down next to Mulder again. When he woke, which had to be soon, he'd be burning to sniff out this mystery from one end of the valley to the other so she had better get some rest while she could.

It wasn't until the almost jungle-like chatter of birds woke her near dawn that she was aware again. Mulder was still sleeping. Now she really was worried. Despite the chill in the cabin, he'd pulled the blankets halfway down to his waist. While satisfying her physician's eyes that none of the scratches she could see had become seriously infected and her woman's eyes that her handsome lover lived and breathed, Scully became aware of a fine spray of crumbs caught in the soft hairs of his chest. It appeared that he had been up in the night and had eaten. Curious, she wandered into the kitchen to see what kind of mess he's left.

She couldn't believe what she found. Had he invited an army to supper? All the bread was gone, and the lunchmeat. All but a tiny corner of the huge casserole had been devoured cold. Sweeping into the bedroom, she tried to wake him. Stripping him of blankets displayed his distended stomach. Shouting did no more good than shaking him. He merely turned over. A cup of ice cold water from the tap splashed over his face and chest finally got a kind of groggy, sputtering wakefulness out of him.

"Enough!" she shouted into his ear. "You stagger back here looking like hell and tell me that you spent the whole night in the woods, you don't explain what strange man I slept with, then you sleep like the dead and eat like a horse. I want to know what's going on!"

Dripping, he sat up like a shot. "You slept with _ what _ strange man!" or at least that was what he intended to say. Half was lost for moving quickly had aggravated a hundred muscles gone stiff, one badly bruised hip, and one critically engorged stomach.

One hand went to his hip, the other to his belly. Both soon flew to his mouth. Launching himself from the bed with all the grace of a landed trout, Mulder made it to the small bathroom just to time. The retching went on for a long time.

"Mulder, do you need any --"

"Out!"

After that Scully didn't even try to help. She knew that it was better to keep her distance when Mulder was not actually sick. It was time to worry when he didn't fight her. The toilet flushed, there was a pause, then the faucet came on. The all-too-familiar splashing, spitting, and gagging sounds followed. Finally, Mulder's face, white as paper, appeared in the doorway.

"What man?" he snarled, the shakiness of his words mixing oddly with his anger.

In exasperation Scully ran slender fingers through her hair. "I shouldn't have said that. It must have been a dream, a very vivid dream. It must have been because he looked like you, felt like you, but couldn't have been you if you were in the woods." Something crossed her mind, but she visibly shook it away. "No, couldn't have been real..."

"Why are you now so certain?" her naked, dripping partner demanded. When she was clearly reluctant to talk, he leaped onto the bed and took her shoulders almost painfully in his hands. His red-rimmed eyes and scowl indicated that his male pride was not appeased by the fact that the incident might not have actually happened. The point was, she hadn't been able to tell the difference. "Why now are you so certain that it must have been a dream?"

Scully's eyes grew wide. Mulder could be forceful, but this apparition was truly frightening. "At the risk of sounding like a bad historical romance-- because he gave me pleasure, over and over, but didn't take any for himself."

He rocked back stunned. For almost the first time since he had limped out of the woods the anger was gone from his face. "And I've never done that?" he asked in a small voice.

She blushed, remembering wonderful, sweet times. "Of course you have, or tried, but I've always managed to get you to change your unselfish little mind." Her expression turned pensive. "That's why I'm sure that it must have been a dream. Because I didn't even try. I just -- enjoyed myself." She blushed again. The images were still there of the white fluttering shirt, the kind Mulder didn't own, and of the perfect fire that never went out. It had been a dream! She was going to ignore the memory in the very cells of her body that she had recently been so thoroughly satisfied. Think about something else instead.

"Besides, it's more than that. This place..." she turned around, eyes huge as she stared at the serviceable but unexceptional bed and dresser and the comfortable but tattered couch and chairs that she could see out in the living room. "It's all different. I thought it was so perfect then, so exquisitely furnished, so clean. The linens on the bed --" Feeling the heat rise in her face, she abruptly turned her attention from the thread-bare and rumbled bedclothes. "That whole night and the morning after, it was like I was in a kind of fog."

He was now wearing his that's-why-they-put-the-' I '-in-FBI expression. That was good to see. "Like you were drugged? The berries... You didn't say, how many did you eat?"

"I don't know how many I ate that night, but enough to choke a horse. What's the problem?"

"Just don't eat any more!" he snapped, unexpectedly angry again. "Not a single one." He shivered again then as his expressive eyes flickered back and forth back between black fury to red-rimmed exhaustion. "Sorry, got to take a another shower. Be careful."

"Careful of what?" she wondered only half aloud as he moved like an injured sleepwalker back into the bathroom.

The shower had just started and she was studying her partner's discarded clothes for some clues to this craziness when there came a knock on the cabin door. It was Dr. Hutchinson looking as round and as kindly and as concerned as a country doctor should look.

"I didn't see you around yesterday, I was just wondering --" His eyes widened as he spied Mulder's torn and bloody shirt in Scully's hand. "Someone have a accident?"

She sighed. "Mulder. He went out night before last following one of Reena Jameson's trails and fell down a mountain."

The older man's eyes lit with professional interest. "Let me take a look." Then with disappointment, "Oh, I forgot, you're a physician yourself."

"A forensic pathologist, so my clients are all dead -- all but Mulder. His hip's pretty bad. I guess I wouldn't mind a second opinion."

Hutch brightened. "Lead the way."

They were just entering the bedroom as Mulder emerged from the shower, limping, stark naked and once more dripping cold water.

"What the --! Scully!" he growled as he snatched up the closest blanket to cover himself.

Scully folded her arms and leaned against the door jam. "Dr. Hutchinson's going to examine your hip."

Frowning, but knowing that particular expression on his partner's face all too well, Mulder eased himself down on the bed. Turning to display his left side, he winced as his teeth came down on a previously bitten lip.

The doctor whistled at the colorful spread of purples and reds before him. Gently he prodded from waist to knee.

"Impressive." His patient hissed as blunt fingers hit a particularly tender spot. "Yes, bet that smarts."

"Smarts? That's a highly technical term?"

"Taught in all the best medical schools. What did this? Not a fall unless you fell some distance and came down on something hard, but then I would have expected you to have broken it. Nerve's pinched or at least enflamed, muscles torn, a dozen ligaments stretched, but nothing broken here that I can tell. You should have it X-rayed though."

Hazel eyes flared. "Now I've got two of you!" With considerable effort he rolled off the bed and reached awkwardly for his duffel bag and clean clothes. "More X-rays! One of these days, I'm going to start glowing in the dark."

"Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Scully mumbled, "more than once," but her eyes were more concerned than her words.

"Morning?" Mulder stared unbelieving at the hands of a cheap clock, which was ticking away on the nightstand. His eyes then fixed on the window where golden autumn sunlight lit harvest gold woods.

"It's eight a.m.," he announced bewildered.

"Yes, it is."

"I came in --"

"About noon yesterday."

Wearing only briefs and holding his jeans, Mulder stood as straight as he could, eyes wide. "That's impossible."

Scully felt her tension headache rising from its current two capsule level to a killing three and then some. "Pretty much so," she affirmed, "except for your middle-of-the-night raid on the refrigerator."

Shock only began to describe the expression on his face. "Scully, I'm hungry. No, I'm starving." Without waiting for comment, he began rifling through the far corners of his duffel bag.

"You see, Dr. Hutch, Mulder doesn't generally sleep well, and especially not while on a case. He doesn't eat much while on a case either and he never gorges. He's never hungry after he's sick either and he was sick this morning and lost everything that he didn't remember eating anyway." All this time her partner was still searching. "Don't bother looking for your hoard of power bars," she told him solemnly. "I found the wrappers in the trash. And there isn't anything food-like left in the kitchen either."

Still wearing only his briefs, Mulder sagged back onto the bed, arms wrapped protectively around his abdomen. "It feels like my stomach is digesting itself." His pleading eyes went to her face.

She took a step backwards. "Don't get any ideas. Cannibalism is illegal in Maine."

Dr. Hutch had been listening, fascinated. "There are always cockleberries," he suggested trying to be helpful, not knowing quite how to take these two. "They're everywhere --"

"No!" the agents proclaimed in unison.

**************

With effort and the aid of a stout walking stick that Dr. Hutch found in one of the cabin's storage sheds with the camping gear, Mulder managed to fold himself into the back seat of their rental car. At least there he could extend his left leg along the length of the seat. While waiting for Scully he began forking into a can of stewed tomatoes. He had already finished a small can of baked beans. Hutch had found a few canned goods in the same place as the walking stick. When the physician added his bulk to the passenger seat the car rocked. After a few minutes Scully slid in behind the wheel, a frown on her face.

"Your swan's gone," Mulder intoned from the back seat, a dribble of tomato juice running down his chin.

She shrugged as she backed the car. "I guess he got better." She caught a knowing flicker in a hazel eye through the rear view mirror. "What? Do you know something about Bill?"

"We'll get to that later."

"You didn't eat him, did you?"

Again that flicker as the fork dipped once more into the can.

"I want to know about the cockleberries," Hutch inquired.

"I ate the berries when I was out in the woods. Scully assured me that they weren't in the same family in strawberries, which I can't eat. They really are good. But I did things that night that only seemed reasonable at the time. I ate the most in the shortest period of time just before I found the cave. Shortly thereafter, I had the oddest dreams. My thinking began to go fuzzy only after I had eaten the berries. After that I stayed clear."

"In other words, Mulder thinks that taken in quantity they're hallucinogenic and in this I'm inclined to agree with him." Scully was rewarded for this statement with a warm gaze of gratitude from her partner.

"You'll probably find my next theory more difficult to swallow." Red eyebrows rose at his reference to food. "Scully, what have you noticed that's different about me since the night we got here?"

Through the mirror, her eyes went to the forkful of limp, dripping tomatoes. "You mean other than eating anything that's not tied down, even canned vegetables, sleeping like the dead, and being generally foul tempered? Not a thing."

Before continuing he glared at her but knew that she was only trying to hide her own rising anxiety. "This county has children who have gotten lost in the woods and when they return their personalities are changed. Wait, let me correct that. I reviewed their case histories again and what their personalities seem to do is fluctuate. One minute they are their old selves; the next, someone different. Scully, you just named three idiosyncrasies that I've picked up only since I spent a night in these woods. Keeping in mind that in this area it seems as if winter is approaching, what animal has that kind of temperament?"

"Mulder, I don't --"

Hutch turned his big body around to stare into the back seat. "Bear?" he mouthed, eyes the size of saucers.

Mulder smiled grimly. "The strangest and most clear of the dreams that I had in the cave was that a really large, really smelly, and very furry animal came and breathed into my face for a long, long time." He set down the can of tomatoes, his face pale. "I wanted to stop it, but I couldn't move. That's common enough in dreams but what if it wasn't a dream? Maybe I couldn't move because I was heavily juiced on the berries "

The big physician's face was glowing. "That's amazing. It's as if you were given a piece of its spirit. The Native Americans believe their totem animals bestow similar gifts."

Scully glared at the big man in the passenger seat. What Mulder didn't need in his flights of fancy was a soul mate.

"But it fits, Dr. Scully. It's fall, at least here it is. Bears bulk up, sleep heavily, and being bad tempered is generally the nature of the beast."

"A little grandiose, though, don't you think?" Scully quipped. "Couldn't be a squirrel, could it? Or a skunk? A mole? Mulder, this isn't funny."

"No, it isn't; it's very serious. Do you think I like the idea of spending the next few weeks blowing up like a blimp and then spending the winter in a nearly comatose state?" Curiously, Mulder looked down the collar of his T-shirt at his chest. "Clearly not a physical change though; no increase in chest hair."

"Mulder, stop!"

"At least I could have gotten something useful out of this. So it's only a mental or emotional change."

"What you're suggesting," the physician considered, mostly to himself, "is that the lost children got their new personalities the same way. By eating the berries and being visited by animals of their own. That would explain why they're all different. Some have turned timid, others vicious, others secretive. But you're not a child, Agent Mulder."

Briefly, Scully took her attention from the gravel road to roll her eyes heavenward. Her partner didn't miss her reaction. Mulder directed his comments to the eager Hutch. "Maybe it has happened to adults as well, but they have more practice maintaining the veneer of civilization."

"Will you both stop!" Scully demanded, clearly ready to explode. "Neither of you have come up with a 'why', much less a 'how'."

"I'm well aware that this is wilder than even my usual theories. It began to take shape while I was taking my second shower this morning. Why _ was _ I using cold water? In the past I've reserved that punishment for calming down certain impulses when the time wasn't appropriate. I was using cold water only because warm water just didn't feel natural. And then I thought about all that I ate…" he glared with loathing at the nearly empty can of tomatoes. "Disgusting."

"But why?" Scully demanded, wanting, and needing, an answer.

"If I knew, our work would be done here. Now here's a cultural leap. Remember the Green Man carvings at Jamesons's, especially the Golden Man mask in the workroom that seemed modeled from life? There was incredible power there; we both felt it. This particular nature spirit is far more ancient than signs on pub door or even than the capitals in Romanesque cathedral. Remember, I said that the Green Man has pre-Christian, pre-Roman antecedents."

"So finally we have a connection to Reena Jameson's disappearance."

"Yes, getting to that. She spent a lot of time in the woods looking for inspiration. All at once her art changes drastically. She creates the Golden Man. Now was this piece based on a real person she met out there or did her perceptions change because she picked up one of these souls? One or both kept luring her back. What I'm hoping is that this last time she ate too many of the berries and got herself so lost that she still hasn't found her way home. Unfortunately, I doubt that we're going to find our solution so simple. I think that we're going to find that both are true -- that the Golden Man is out there and that he's somehow linked to her and this 'soul' she's carrying. Dr. Hutch, she's your sister-in-law. Did you notice any changes in her personality in the days or weeks before her disappearance?"

The older man's look of alarm was genuine. "I wish I could say. We didn't see each often during that time."

"Maybe her husband noticed something." Unconsciously, Mulder had polished off the tomatoes, but he hastily dropped an unopened can of gray-green peas. "That's why we are on our way to talk with Richard Jameson."

**********

Act II
Swan Lake, March 24th, 11am

The craftsman was in his workshop releasing an ancient amber violin from the clamps that held it while the glue dried. His eyes could barely be seen in the shadowed hollows of his face. He had looked tired before, but this was far worse than tired. "I really don't have the time for any more useless questions."

"This shouldn't take long," Scully said gently. "Did your wife begin walking in the woods more often just before she disappeared?"

The man's strong, slender hands paused in their task. "I didn't think it worth mentioning. She said that she needed to be one with the spirit of the wood in order to work but it was more than that. She couldn't seem to sit still. She kept hiking over to the lake. To the untrained eye her work was still excellent, but it seemed rushed to me."

From where he paced Mulder inquired suddenly, "Did your wife have a habit of eating the cockleberries that grow around here?"

The craftsman's head jerked up in surprise." I didn't think anyone else but Roz and Reena paid attention to those things. Yes, pints."

"Our working premise is that they contain a mild hallucinogenic," Scully reported. She looked at Hutch. "The active ingredient must be inactivated by heat as in your wife's tea, which is why both Mulder and I were initially misled that the berries were harmless."

Jameson was clearly disturbed. "You think these hallucinations explain her disappearance?" Unconsciously, his hand reached up to rub the side of his skull above his left ear.

"We believe that there may be a tie in, yes," Mulder affirmed, suddenly studying the young husband with an intent expression. "Besides, restlessness, had she picked up any other unusual characteristics recently? Was she more secretive? Did her eating habits change?"

"Timid as a mouse, skittish as a squirrel..." Hutch asked trying to be helpful.

"Sly as a fox, grumpy as a bear," Scully muttered nearly under her breath.

Mulder opened his mouth to offer a grumpy retort of his own then decided to keep his peace. Scully was actually showing less resistance to all this than he expected.. She was clearly still spooked by her own 'dream'. Publicly, she now denied that a 'man' had even come, that the fire had ever burned, that the cabin had ever seemed 'perfect' to her, but he was convinced that all of those things had occurred. Even before coming to picturesque Swan Lake, the very thought of any man touching her against her will -- and by such trickery -- would have driven him to violence. Since the coming of his tempestuous little friend, it wouldn't take much to push him over the edge into a murderous rage. At least for now, therefore, he could not think of it. Dare not think of it. Not and stay sane.

Jameson was looking from one to the other of the agents, deeply confused by the intensity of emotion that radiated from them both. Before he could even consider how to answer their questions, his face suddenly transformed with pain. Bending nearly double, he pressed the heels of his hands hard against his skull.

As one, Hutch and Scully asked. "Headache?"

A knock at the door of the shop interrupted any response. It was Sheriff Abrams, a deputy, and two men in hunting jackets and carrying rifles. The woman wasn't an escaped convict, Scully thought. What did they think they were hunting? Bear? She shivered and thought she saw Mulder do the same.

"A promise is a promise," Abrams was telling Richard. "Last night marked three days since your report and so I've declared Reena Jameson officially missing. The state police have been informed and eight teams are already out on the trails you identified based on our earlier discussions."

Mulder saw Scully start. He knew what she wanted to shout -- 'Call them back!' -- but did they really have the evidence, or the right, to do that with a woman missing? So far the berries' effect had not been fatal. These people also lived in these woods day after day. They must know the dangers -- the normal dangers -- far better than they could.

As if reading her partner's mind, Scully approached the young officer. "Sheriff, it's vital that you instruct your people not to eat the cockleberries until I have them analyzed."

"The berries? Oh, don't go the analysis route. There's really no problem. No one I'm sending out will partake, not in any quantity anyway. Not with guns in hand."

Scully's head cocked like that of an alert terrier. "You know about the berries?"

A shrug. "Sure, we all do."

"Well, we didn't!" Hutch howled and his brother-in-law went a few shades paler.

"Uh, sorry. Guess we all grew up knowin' about them. 'Wine on the Vine' we call them. Gives you a bit of a buzz, a sense of well being, one with the trees. No big deal. They're most potent around Swan Lake, by the way. But the hunters have an unwritten code, no indulging during hunting season."

"And what about your children!" Scully demanded.

"A few won't hurt them. Some mothers pack them with their kid's lunch. Better than Ritalin for the over-active ones."

Mulder thought that Scully's eyes were going to roll right out of her head. "So if these are so wonderful in all possible ways, why don't they sell 'Wine on the Vine' at your corner upscale grocery store? Why don't you have a tourist trade like Atlantic City?"

Another shrug from the sheriff. "They can't be cultivated. Lord knows enough people have tried. So we keep them as our own local secret otherwise the city folk would strip us bare in one weekend."

Which, Mulder thought, certainly was true.

"So don't you worry about the Blue Bombers and my search teams," the sheriff concluded. "I came by, by the way, to see if there's anything else Mr. Jameson could think of which would help in the search."

The craftsman had not moved since Abrams, in his way, had confirmed Scully's warning about the berries. He had the look of having been shot and not with cupid's arrows.

Sheriff Aaron looked at the young man with sympathy. "You're certain that Reena didn't catch a bus to Miami?"

"Not so mundane, I fear," Mulder interrupted, staring directly into the young husband's worried and wounded face. "I'm convinced that we are going to find her in the woods -- one way or the other. To start with, is there a place off one of Reena's trails which has a sharp drop off and perhaps a scenic overlook?"

Scully looked from the miserable young husband to her partner with a curious expression. Mulder seemed to have gotten very specific all of a sudden and she was very afraid that she knew where he had come by this particular leap of logic.

Like a zombie, Jameson led them along a well-used path, another of the paths, not one of his wife's favorites but still one that they both knew well. Refusing both painkillers or to be left behind, Mulder trailed doggedly at the end of the group. At several points, the path ran along the edge of an escarpment. The view each time the path came close to the edge was breath taking. Up here one might truly wish that they could fly.

A young woman had certainly tried. It was the alert and slowly moving Mulder, limping along with the aid of Hutch's walking stick, who noticed the signs of disturbance on the edge. A hundred feet below the third overlook on a bolder-strewn field by a stream lay the rumpled body of Reena Jameson, several days dead.

A silent, somber group stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down.

"How did you know?" the sheriff asked suspiciously. He had directed his question at Mulder, but Jameson interrupted them.

"I just couldn't find her," the young craftsman murmured. "I couldn't. I tried."

"Sheriff, can this wait?" Hutch asked, looking with sympathy at his brother-in-law, "Can't you see he's in shock? Richard didn't kill her if that's what you're wondering. They loved; they loved each other so much."

An exceedingly stiff and pensive Mulder rose from where he was examining the cliff edge. "Could have been an accident. As I remember, you've had a lot rain lately. The edge is soft here and a section seems to have broken off recently. I wouldn't be surprised to find the pieces down there by her body."

The young husband -- the young widower -- was silently but openly weeping. The sheriff studied the man and his gaze was not unkind. "I'm not one to look for trouble where there isn't any. We'll, of course, do what Agent Mulder suggests and look closely at the rock and bits down there, even bring in a botanist and a geologist if we have to, to see if there's a reasonable match. And we'll have to have an autopsy and run a background check on you and your wife, Mr. Jameson. It's routine. Everything'll probably be okay, but until all the forensics come back, please don't leave the county. And, of course, the autopsy will include an analysis of what she's eaten. I get the impression that you and Agent Scully suspect that her being under the 'influence' of the berries contributed to this tragedy. That would shed a new light on our community's little secret vice. That's the last thing we want, but we can take our licks if we have to. You have to believe me, we've had no trouble up till now."

"What he means," Scully explained gently to Jameson, "is if there is a natural drug in the fruit, as we suspect, or even a high alcohol content, and they find it in quantity in your wife's stomach, the coroner will almost certainly rule death by mischance." She stared around the woods and its acres of berry bushes. "And what they'll do then about these woods, I have no idea."

"Likely burn them to the ground," the sheriff said with resignation. "Pity."

It took time to document the scene and gather evidence but they found a significant chunk of rock and dirt bound in roots from plants that grew on the cliff edge but not below which seemed to confirm everyone's expectations. During the process, Richard Jameson had wandered back and along the path, alternately staring over, clutching at this hair, swearing in self-recrimination and crouching down to weep with his face in his hands. At last Abrams, his FBI visitors, and Jameson watched from the overlook as Dr. Hutch and the sheriff's team below began their careful removal of the too-familiar black body bag.

Mulder, whose restlessness had increased as the afternoon progressed, had turned his back on the solemn procession to watch Jameson, who had suddenly become as twitchy as the agent. Mulder's eyes gave nothing away about what he was thinking, however. Scully had learned long ago to be wary of that expression.

"We'll see that Mr. Jameson gets home safely," Mulder assured the officer. Abrams put a hand to the brim of his hat in grave farewell. The remaining three watched as the officer vanished around a bend in the trail as he headed down to join the solemn procession they had seen from above.

Scully studied the two men left with her. Mulder was suspicious about something and Richard certainly didn't act like a man they were keeping from following his wife's body. The young man had been glancing towards the deeper woods. As soon as the sheriff was out of sight, he began edging towards a different path, one that led to Swan Lake.

With three limping steps, Mulder blocked the young man's progress. "We need to talk."

Jameson's eyes flared with annoyance. The expression was enhanced by tracks of dried tears on the lean planes of his face.

"These cockleberries," Mulder inquired, "how many do you eat in a day? I don't think that that's all wood stain under your fingernails." The young widower's hands curled into fists and for the first time Scully noticed the numerous red scratches on the backs of his hands that trailed up under the cuff of each sleeve. Mulder, on the other hand, had clearly seen them before.

"Did you get those in the woods?"

Jameson thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. "What do you think?" he snapped. "I've been looking for my wife," and made an abrupt move to go around the agent. Mulder reached out to hold him back, but it was Jameson who spoke first and in warning.

"You should go back to the city, Agent Mulder, and take Agent Scully with you. You can probably learn to live with what's in you, but only as long as you get away from the woods, especially these woods."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Oh, yes you do. As we walked up here, Hutch told me about your theory, the bear in the cave… and you. You think that the berries and one of these 'little souls' had something to do with Reena's death. Just leave it alone."

Mulder's jaw was set hard. "If your wife's death was an accident, if this animal spirit theory is just some crazy man's idea, then what is there is be afraid of?"

"Did you hear me put down your theory? It's already too late, that's the point. Too late for you, too late for me, certainly too late for Renna." In a rush, grief seemed to crush the young man with a terrible force. "It was my fault. I went searching for her, I saw her from down there." He looked towards the field below the cliff on the opposite bank of the stream. "She was up here. Just standing, swaying and, I think, singing. I called to her." His voice broke as he raised his stricken face to Scully. "Why did I do that? She heard me, saw me… and she smiled. She seemed truly happy and relieved to see me. Arms raised, she came to me. Just stepped off the edge… to come to me."

Scully averted her eyes for a respectful few seconds. That kind of pain no one needed to see. "So you've known all along." When she turned back tears were rolling down the young man's cheeks again and into his close-cropped beard.

"Not exactly. I took her in my arms. She lasted only a moment. Long enough to know that she loved me and also that that she wasn't quite… herself." A deep shudder went through the dark-haired man's frame. "I must have gone mad. I knew who had done this to her. I went dashing into the woods to find him, to kill him, to let him kill me. I didn't care. That was the day before you came. Th-things happened in the woods. I can't remember what, only when I came back to myself I found that I couldn't find this spot again, couldn't find her. I had begun to hope that it had all been a nightmare, that if I offered them enough then maybe they would return her."

"They?" Mulder asked. His senses were clearly on alert but he spoke gently in light of the craftsman's distress.

The widower gave a sad, sad smile of irony. "You know one of them; you don't want to know the other."

In his growing irritation Mulder seemed to grow taller. "But who are 'they'?"

"You wouldn't believe me."

Frustrated, Mulder drew strength from the amused twinkle in Scully's cool gaze. "Agent Scully and I have run into a lot more 'unbelievable' stuff than you could possibly imagine. Try us."

But Jameson wasn't listening, at least not to the agents. Heels of his hands came up to press against his temples as if the pain he had felt in the workroom had returned ten-fold, but there was as much fear as pain in his distorted features. Something was coming that frightened him to the core.

Something did. In a matter of seconds, the woods began to come alive. The transformation began small with a whistling in the very tops of the trees, but from a rising roar in the distance a significant wind storm was drawing rapidly closer. Desperately, Jameson began searching the surrounding forest. His eyes settled on a cluster of the berry bushes overflowing with purple globes. He raced to these and began stuffing the fruit in his mouth. After trading an incredulous look with his partner, Mulder hobbled as quickly as he could over to where the young man was frantically eating.

"Jameson, stop!" Mulder ordered, even going so far as to seize the young man's arm. "Those are dangerous, remember?"

But Jameson only shook off the restraining hand. "I ha' to," he mumbled, cheeks bulging, and by the expression on his face he wasn't enjoying the fruit. He almost gagged on a mouthful but swallowed. "She's _ so _ angry." There were actually tears in his eyes. "Hoisted on my own petard," he mumbled even as he ate, the frenetic pace only slowing slightly as he spoke.

As alert as a hunting dog with the scent of prey in the air, Mulder tuned into the woods. At the same time the nails of one hand bore down hard in the palm of the other. "So there is a 'she'" he breathed, more than a little apprehension mixed with the awe. "Of course, there would be. Is she coming?" he called over his shoulder to Jameson. "Did she start this?"

Jameson didn't answer. He probably hadn't heard the question. They were in the center of a full windstorm now. The movement in the forest was like the heaving breath of an immense giant, yet the wind came from no fixed direction, only grew stronger, and stronger. Everything in the woods was in motion now. Trees swayed as if caught in one great wave after another. The dry grasses alternately snapped in the gale one moment and were flattened the next. The air was filled with stripped leaves and needles that stung. This was more than a storm; there was violence in the air. Scully reached for her weapon though seldom had it felt so totally inadequate.

Mulder must have guessed her thought. "Firepower isn't going to help!" he called over the roaring. She was surprised that he spoke at all so intent was he on the bewitched forest. His expression was open, ready, and a wolf smile was on his face, as wild and dangerous as the storm. Eyes squinted nearly shut against the wind, he searched to his right, his left, behind. The gale whipped at his hair. Where to look when the power was everywhere?

Scully was not immune to the uncanny menace sweeping around them. What she felt most strongly, however, was a nearly overpowering impulse to huddle safely under the thickest mass of bush and begin gobbling berries like Jameson. Remembering the distraught young husband, she struggled against the wind to reach him.

The craftsman was still eating but slower, a dazed expression on his face. She had to stand between him and his selected bush in order to get his attention. The intense, enticing aroma of crushed fruit seemed to be everywhere. "You honestly think that someone is angry enough at you to start this?" she shouted, though close as she was she still wasn't certain that he could hear over the whipping leaves and clashing branches.

Jameson merely stared at his trembling, purple-stained hands. No longer stuffing berries, now that the damage was done, his glazed eyes sought Mulder's. "You feel it, too. How long do you think that you can fight against her? You've even drawn blood fighting her." Mulder had. There was blood on his lip and smears from the oval-shaped wounds in the palms of both hands.

At that moment a branch cracked directly above where Mulder stood. The sound was like a gunshot. He attempted a quick step away from where the heavy branch was falling, but he had dropped the stout walking stick and he was stiff from standing in one place. His bad leg gave way. Hair whipping wildly around her face, Scully shot across a wild open space to push him to safely. The heavy branch had barely missed them when the storm exploded with a deafening new intensity. As the air filled with noise and flying debris of every kind, they clung to each other, automatically, shielding their eyes.

As if the last gust had been its last gasp, the wind quickly dropped to its previous storm-driven levels and then continued to calm. The agents looked first to each other and then back to where Jameson had crouched. He was gone. Alarmed, they turned round and round, searching, but there were too many shadows under the eerie half-light that had descended with the storm. Scully retrieved the fallen walking stick and had just handed it back to her partner when both turned at the sound of something crashing in the woods nearby. The rustle from the dead leaves was out of rhythm with the dying storm. Mulder found the source. Twenty yards from them on a cleared rise above their heads a magnificent buck stood. He carried an impressive rack of antlers and a dark ruff ringed his muscular shoulders. Scully remembered her partner's muttered story of his night in the woods. She expected it to stand still as deer will but this one moved his impossibly slender legs restlessly and kept tossing his proud head as if trying to rid himself of its adornment.

"This is your stag?" she asked, her voice raised over the last of the wind.

Entranced, Mulder had already taken two limping, cautious steps towards the animal. "Not just any stag, the King Stag if I'm not mistaken."

As if in answer, the buck tossed his head one final time and then was off in great effortless bounds. With a less elegant toss, Mulder was after him, only much slower, limping and limping badly. Exasperated, Scully followed. At least this time he couldn't outrun her.

They hadn't gone more than a few yards, however, when a huge white object suddenly burst from the trees, aiming at their heads. Mulder ducked and, off balance, fell awkwardly. As he writhed in pain in the long, dry weeds, Scully knelt at his side. One hand hovered protectively over her partner. In the other she still held her service weapon though she didn't remember why she had bothered to draw it to start with. There never had been anything to aim at.

"Speak to me, Mulder."

" Hurts --" he wheezed. "What do you want me to say?" Then his eyes widened, no sign of pain any more. Whatever discomfort he felt had been replaced by something far more distracting.

Scully knew enough to freeze and follow the direction of Mulder's gaze. No movement came from the thick tangle of bush. Still she saw what he had. Eyes bright in a stray shaft of the lowering sun were glittering green and alive amidst the dark green foliage. The owner of those eyes wasn't trying to hide but peered out at them like a child playing hide and seek.

************

Act III

Swan Lake, 5pm

"Out!" Scully ordered raising her weapon.

The eyes seemed to leap towards her as the face behind pressed forward. "Are you sure that's what you want?" a voice asked, its smooth tones full of some indeterminate British countryside.

"It's what the lady said!" Mulder growled. With considerable effort, he had rolled to his knees and drawn his own weapon and was doing his best to gain his feet but without success. Using her extended free arm for support, he managed though the effort forced out a pair of tears. Despite the pain there was no mistaking the anger in his face and posture. From experience Scully knew that this was not a good sign. "We repeat, out!" her partner ordered.

Their visitor came forward though neither agent could have told when he fully emerged, so perfectly did he blend with his surroundings. His skin was the golden brown of the autumn woods. He was young but no child, tall and lean and almost exactly Mulder's height. His light brown hair was thick and wild and curled like a tangle of vines. On his chin was a fuzzy down. His peasant shirt and trousers were the color of shadow under leaf and seemed to be a part of him rather than worn.

"He's not an Ent, Scully," Mulder admonished when she stared.

"I never thought he was. What he is, is Reena's model for the Green Man in the workroom."

"Bingo. We have questions, Mister….?"

The full lips curled in a faint smile. "You are asking for a name?"

"They're handy for filling out arrest warrants," Mulder replied. His hazel eyes had that predator gleam as if he'd been following a vague scent and just made visual contact. "Let me guess. Would Attis be correct?"

There was no response at first, just a vague processing behind the golden eyes. "That may have been it. If so, no one has called me by it for a long, long time."

"Two thousand years long? Three thousand?"

Attis stiffened, the playfulness totally gone now.

"Is Cybele around here as well then?"

The golden man paled and stared at Mulder with a tense wariness. "One of her names, though she has even less need for a name than I have."

"Where can we find her?"

Attis's golden face, a truly unique and beautiful face, lost some of its pallor. Anger and a little fear returned a ruddy golden color. "The time has passed for questions. Time has come for you to leave the woods."

"That seems to be the general consensus today," Mulder said, "but we're not quite ready. We need to find Richard Jameson. He was just here." No response. "And we'd like to talk about the children. We know about the little 'souls', though you may use another name for those as well."

"I can't help you. That is her doing. She has always enjoyed toying with Man."

"Not good enough. They can't remain the way they are. Two souls where one should be? It's cruel."

The golden man's eyes glittered. He had clearly recovered from his initial shock. "You should know."

Eyes black, Mulder glared back.

Attis tried a careless shug. It wasn't very convincing. "Her magic or her curse, depending on how you look at it."

"Help us find her."

"Do you want worse to happen?" All at once, Attis threw back his head, sending the curls dancing. "Here's an answer to at least one of your questions. You asked about the man Jameson? Then look! For there he goes!"

His slender pointing hand showed the silhouette on a hill above. Once more they saw, not a man, but the stag with the magnificent twelve-point rack. The agents barely had time to turn before it was gone.

"That's a deer," Scully reported.

"Is it? You don't believe that it's only a deer do you, Lord Bruin?"

Mulder frowned. "King Stag in your place? King Stag and Green Man, you're a busy immortal, Attis."

"Have been. No more. Let the honor pass on. Could have been you, you know, if you had been just a couple of days earlier. Though even then I suspect that this Jameson would have won. Like you, he wanted to find 'Her'. He wanted to find a way to get close to Her. Revenge was on his mind. Sad that there is nothing much on his mind now but the rut and being King. He's been that, too, for these three nights of the full moon. So it's too late for you. Come back next year, though you might consider whether you really want four hooves and a head like that. It's a heavy burden. Only the fire in the blood makes the bearin' possible. Of course she could decide to complete what she began and take a bear to her bed after the ceremony. Lord Bruin was her special friend. Pity that the original is dead now." Mulder only had time to look startled before the Golden Man continued. "Not your fault. He was very old. They can only give up their souls when they are on the very threshold of death. Are you sure that you still want to find Her? Better to run away and stay away. One can learn to live with a second soul." The eyes that moved over Scully were too familiar. "She might even grow to like the unpredictability he can bring, though you might need a bed large enough for three."

Mulder bristled and if he had had fangs would have bared them. "The subject is Richard Jameson. He's stumbled into something way out of his league. We're going to release him if we can."

The golden-skinned man's expression was surly. "Leave it alone. Leave here. She's found a new champion. That's what's important."

"Only because you were her old champion." Mulder said. "I sympathize with whatever disagreement you and Cybele have going on but leave Richard Jameson out of it -- except to tell us how we can break this hold she has over him. And while we're at it, what happened to Reena, his wife? Was her death an accident or murder?"

Attis had gone pale under Mulder's questions. His response was quiet but intense. "I loved her! Her eyes were more open than any that I have seen for a long time. She 'saw' the woods, the cycles of the land. I never would have hurt her!"

"But you did. You have the habit of taking on one of the old forms, don't you?" Mulder accused. "You were the swan over our heads just a little while ago and you were the swan Scully nursed, and you were a swan for Reena, too, at least part of the time. And when she choose her husband over you, you gave her a swan's little soul, didn't you? Was that an attempt to bind her to you? Didn't work, did it? When she saw her husband she tried to go to him but, dazzled by too many berries and confused by your gift, she forgot that she couldn't fly. How does it feel to know that she died trying to get away from you?"

"Stop!" The golden man was both white with rage and near to tears.

Mulder actually took a step towards him though it hurt like hell. This next had to be man to man. "After you lost Reena, you tried it with Scully, you bastard!"

For almost the first time, the Golden Man rested his gaze on Scully. "You were kind. I thought maybe --"

"Didn't work, did it?" Mulder snarled.

"Because she only saw _you_ when we were together!" he spat. "My Reena, she saw _ me _!"

"With the eye of an artist!"

"As a man!" Attis retorted.

"Really? Got it up, did you?"

Attis looked ready to explode. "Unlike the rest of you, I'm not an animal!" Then all at once, his head drooped and the golden shoulders hunched. "There's no point in even discussing it. None of that matters now."

He made a motion then as if to melt back into the bushes, but then he paused. "I meant you only good by revealing myself. I try to warn you and you repay me with cruelty. Think… were you always so? The soul she gave you is not so small and will only grow if you stay here where it feels at home. I will only warn you one more time. Leave!"

Moving with unnatural grace and speed, it was Attis who left. An instant later a large ghostly form burst out of the very branches of the trees over their heads but moving too quickly to be seen clearly. Instinctively both ducked, but it was Scully first saw the two large white feathers sailing gently down against a sunset sky. How had it gotten so late?

One of the feathers had landed on a bush, the other on the ground. Reverently, as if he were approaching the Holy Grail, Mulder limped over, picked up the one on the bush and handed it to Scully. It felt real in her hands, even though so much of this didn't feel real at all.

"I hope that the intent of that performance was to humor the poor man in his delusion. I've come to accept a lot, but don't ask me to believe that two-thousand-year-old myths are living in the Maine woods! Attis abducted Reena Jameson and did who knows what to her mind when he realized that she was interested in him only as a model. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that."

Awkward with his bad hip, Mulder stooped for the second feather. The movement must have pinched the enflamed nerve for a shot of pain crossed his. She didn't go to him. He didn't need comfort; he needed a dose of reality. Instead his brows drew together and his expression hardened.

Uh, oh. She knew that stubborn look.

Pain or no pain, he managed two steps towards the deeper woods.

"Mulder, you fool! Where do you think you're going?"

"Where do you think?" he spat. "To find our feathered friend, or, more importantly to find Cybele, who is probably the center of all this. If neither one, then at least to save Richard from his noble foolishness!"

"Not with night falling, not with that leg you won't."

He snarled and, teeth clenched, continued step by anguished step in the direction of Swan Lake.

Exasperated, she looked after him, hands on hips. "Just like that. What about all the promises!" she demanded harshly. "No more ditching me, no more disappearing into dark places without backup?"

He turned only long enough for her to see his strained face. "I thought I had you."

That stung. "Mulder, stop. This is dangerous." She grabbed his arm with iron fingers and forced him around to face her, a move that threw his weight fully onto his bad leg so that he was forced to accept her support or fall. He chose to fall. When he stared back up at her his eyes were black with cold anger.

"Mulder, what's gotten into you?"

A beat. The blackness wavered. All at once he was leaning back on his hands and laughing. It was an eerie, frenzied kind of laughter especially from someone who didn't laugh out loud often.

"Mulder, stop it. Stop it!" She stooped and shook him more strongly than she planned but his behavior was frightening her.

"Ouch!" The laughter eased almost immediately. "All right, already. Scully, I wasn't hysterical. It really was funny in a macabre sort of way." For a moment he sat on the ground just staring up into the gray sky. Tears were in his eyes again, but whether from laughter or pain, she couldn't tell.

"Scully," his voice came softly. "You're going to have to help me."

She wrapped her arms around him. All her irritation was gone; it took a lot for him to ask. "Mulder, see reason. You need a hospital. You need rest. All that you ate before didn't stay down for all that long. You need food."

"Food..." The hysteria threatened to rise again but he held it down by biting down on that poor chewed lower lip. "My stomach wouldn't know what to do with something other than itself to digest."

She helped him to his feet, love and concern in her touch. "Let's get out of here. We'll tell the sheriff about Jameson and get some help. Can you walk?"

No better than before, but he could manage. "Scully, don't you see, I can't just leave." The hand not on the walking stick spread itself wide across his chest. "I can't stay this way."

"You're in pain. You're sick --"

"Weren't you listening!" he snapped, anger flaring like a torch. "It's in me! I have to make her take it out!"

"You can't believe that about the bear!"

"Don't you?" He backed away from her, eyes glowing small and fiery in his shadowed face. "You should. Man isn't as domesticated as you might think. We're not so far from the forest. Think of the men we hunt, the predator in them, what they are capable of. And now something even less human is in me. Can't you tell, on and off, ever since this morning? It's like there was something caged inside and it's been growing and growing and it wants out. And it's all I can do not to let it out. I don't dare let it out!" His free hand came down in a fist, splintering a branch that should have been too thick to crack.

It was with some hesitation that she approached him. He was bent over now, cradling his injured hand, a low sound like a cross between a growl and a deep whimpering rumbled in his throat.

"Let me see."

He leaned away when she reached to examine it. "Scully, you've got to get away from here -- and me."

She gently touched his bowed head, felt the tension like a strung bow vibrating through his body. "I'm not afraid. You've never hurt me."

A lip curled showing an eyetooth, but it was not a grin. "You think. It's not only some mindless lust. If so, we could deal with that and happily." His attempt at a leer falling flat, his head cocked like that of an alert hound. "But there are other scents on the air. Dozens, and it's like my body's on fire. To fight, to flee, to hunt, to eat." His eyes strayed to the deeper woods. "Not just to mate." Uncomprehending eyes went to hers. "I've got to find her. Got to make this stop."

She signed a deep, long sigh. "All right, but not alone, not while there are female predators out there waving their pheromones about. I don't want to have to dig you out of a cave somewhere in the spring." And she handed him his fallen cane and took his other side.

He didn't start immediately however, but stood shaking his head as if some fog were clearing. "Spring, that is the problem, isn't it? It should be Spring. Time is stuck here in autumn. That's what the Green Man's for, you know. To die with the harvest, to lie three months in the ground, and rise again in Spring. Christ wasn't the first."

Scully frowned. Back to that, but better than more talk of leaving her behind while he loped off into the forest aroused by the Call of the Wild. If hunting Green Men got him off that subject, all well and good. Phoebe had been right in this one thing -- Mulder almost always found a good Sherlockian three-pipe problem more absorbing than sex, sex AND a three-pipe problem being the most distracting of all.

It soon became clear that wherever they were going they were getting there very slowly. At least it would take Mulder longer to get into trouble, Scully thought. They traveled in silence as the ground was either broken with rocks, bogs, brambles, or headed uphill. It was only after they hit a long gentle downhill slope that the tension eased and Mulder spoke. "Tell me what you know about the King Stag."

"I know my Arthurian legend if that's what you mean. The chieftain chosen to be the King Stag was sent off into the forest with horns strapped to his head and probably his belly full of hallucinogenic mushrooms. I think running down and killing some animal played a part. Afterwards, covered with the blood of his kill, he would bed one of the priestesses of the sacred grove, thus laying down the virility of his manhood for the land. I can see the similarities to the Green Man who was also sacrificed for the land but not how the story of Cybele and Attis figures in. She was one of the nature goddesses and took him as her human lover but there were a lot of these."

"Attis was unique. If you remember, I got him to admit that he and Reena weren't lovers in the physical sense. And when he bestowed his attentions on you he didn't consummate that liaison either, even though he could have easily enough, since you thought it was me."

Scully felt an embarrassed heat rise up neck. "So how does that make him Attis?"

"That's the part of the story I though you would remember. I certainly do. Cybele became infatuated with a shepherd, our Attis, only he spurned her and instead had an affair with a water nymph. Remember, it isn't nice to fool Mother Nature. In a jealous rage, Cybele drove him mad and in his madness," Mulder twitched uncomfortably, "he castrated himself with a pine branch."

"Ouch."

"Then he hanged himself from the same tree. I can't say that I blame him. He may resurrect every spring, but it seems that he has never quite gotten over that particular incident. The cult of Cybele went on to be big-time popular in Ancient Rome. In the spring a pine tree was dressed in a shepherd's clothes and displayed in her temple. Her priests whipped themselves to draw blood to water the tree and then used its branches to castrate themselves. The blood-soaked branches were carried in procession while the remainder of the tree was left in a crypt to be magically resurrected as a young man on the next day. I think that you know of another story that involves a procession of branches, death on a tree, burial in a crypt, and resurrection in spring."

Mulder paused on a level spot to shake a cramp from his leg. "A couple of millennia later and it seems that our story has evolved. The rite has embraced that of the Green Man and has moved to fall. The King Stag's death is the method of sacrifice for the Green Man. The time in the crypt is now not three days but three months of winter. The young man's return is the return of spring incarnate, but it's a painful rebirth. The first vegetation of spring springs literally from his remains. Vegetation spews from his mouth, that's the most common representation, but growth from the eyes and nose, arms and legs, and the private parts are not unknown in medieval art."

Scully felt her gorge rising. "Mulder…."

"All right. Enough background. After rising in agony every spring and the mutilation he suffered because of her jealousy, is it any wonder that he keeps his distance from our Cybele whenever he can? Incorporation of the King Stag into the mix was her solution to the problem that he isn't exactly enchanted by her charms. Things could have been better between them but our Green Man is a slow learner. He continues to be attracted to other women, if his attentions to Reena and to you are any indication. This year, however, there's a new twist. After three thousand years, Attis seems to have finally grown a backbone. He's decided to fight back. Talk about procrastination."

"Mulder, this is myth! This is not reality."

"Fits the facts, though, intriguing as it sounds, I'll be happier once Jameson is gone from here. He's mad in more ways than one. Even in his right mind he has not only her death to avenge, but his own guilt over his part in her death to assuage. On the other side of the coin, the parties he is seeking believe that the land is overdue for a sacrifice. At least we agree that we ought to stop that!"

Unfortunately, Mulder was the one who stopped. A wrong step on a mossy, leaf covered rock threw him once more onto the undependable bad leg. This time he went down at the edge of a hill and kept going, rolling over and over with Scully slipping and sliding down the slope to reach him. The trunk of a tree stopped his fall but not until he had nearly reached the bottom.

"Damn you, Mulder! You shouldn't be out here! Break anything else, like maybe your other leg, or maybe your head?"

Grimacing, he tried his best to not show how much he did hurt. "None of the above. Let's --"

But he had gone down on the leg one time too many. Spasms surged up and down his left side from knee to well into his back. Worse, as he groaned and lay back in the leaves, he got a really good look at the sky. It wasn't only dark because they were under the shadow of the trees. The sun had set.

Moments later, Scully flopped down on the ground beside him, useless cell phone in her hand. "Looks like we stay here till morning. You certainly can't walk out now, and I am certainly not going to leave you alone to go wandering around in the dark looking for help." Before his jangled brains could come up with a retort, she snapped with irritation, "Just this once, Mulder, let's not go around and around discussing this. How about you hibernate for a few hours?"

He knew that tone of voice; Scully was thoroughly pissed. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to do just what she said. It was a better place than many to spend the night. The hollow he had rolled into sheltered them from the slight wind, and the wide, fanlike fronds of a hemlock spread above them. The pain was even endurable as long as he didn't move. With a sigh, he snuggled as comfortably as he could into the years of leaf mulch and pine straw. After a few moments, he cautiously lifted his head. Company would have been nice, but Scully sat upright, arms around her knees, ignoring him. So she was going to keep watch and keep her anger. He couldn't blame her; he'd been more than useless all day. Maybe she would see her way to forgive him when the dew and the temperature had time to fall. In the meantime, he had to admit that he was even more tired than he was hungry.

Even anger can keep a person alert for so long after the kind of day Scully had had. Uncharacteristically, Mulder had fallen asleep almost immediately. Even if she discounted his flights of fantasy into the world of goddesses and Green Men and his irritation with his injury, she couldn't ignore that this was an atypical Mulder. On one point she had to agree with the crazed Richard Jameson and the angry Golden Man: she wanted Mulder and herself out of this place.

After jerking awake where she sat half a dozen times to find each time that the woods looked and sounded exactly the same, Scully finally decided that she had to have at least some sleep if she was going to have a clear head in the morning. One of them was certainly going to need one. She looked over longingly to where Mulder snored softly. To snuggle next to that warm body would be bliss, but she didn't want to sleep that well. Besides, she wanted to stay angry with him a lot longer. She laid down where she was. 'Just for a few minutes,' she thought. 'Just for a few ...'

She dreamt that she was cold which, as is in the nature of dreams, meant that she probably was cold and was more awake as she thought she was. More than cold she dreamt that there was movement around her, air moving, many feet scuttling about in leaves, grunts and whines, the touch of a hand, the brush of fur on her face, and the soft tickle of feathers.

But the noise didn't wake her fully; the return to silence did. She had a sense that a parade had just marched through her bedroom and then had moved on, and that even now it was just turning at the end of her street. Sleepy and heavy limbed, she felt that she could raise her head only after the last echo of its passing had faded away. Opening her eyes, however, she stiffened. Something tall and slender and ghostly gray wavered above her. Blinking, the vision came into focus. She stared in awe. The glowing object was the trunk of the hemlock under whose branches they had taken shelter. Even as she gaped open-mouthed, the shimmering gray light grew not only brighter, but the fine silver luminescence flowed upwards into the branches, to the very ends of every needle on every branch.

"Mulder… Mulder, look," she called in a voice full of wonder even as her hand groped unsuccessfully towards the place where he was sleeping. It was now brighter than a night under a full moon within their sheltered sleeping place. When she turned in alarm there was easily light enough to see that Mulder was quite gone from his nest in the leaves.

****************

Act IV
Swan Lake, midnight

She was up and out from under the glowing canopy within seconds, calling his name. Her voice faltered as she saw the base of the oaks immediately to her left begin to glow with that silvery light. Like the fir, the light spread up and out until every tip of every twig was bright with the pearly luminescence. The effect was brightest in the branches where the bark was thinner. The dead leaves that clung to some branches stayed black as the night. 'Only the living parts of the tree,' she whispered. Even as she watched, more of the forest to her left went up in similar staggered blazes. To her right the trees and bushes, bits of the very ground where moss showed through, were already alight with the unearthly illumination. That was the direction the radiance came from, like the source of a flowing river. If she remembered her dream well enough, that was also where the parade of figures had gone, towards the wellspring of that brightness. And taken Mulder with them?

It was easy to follow the path of the parade. There had been many of them, and where they passed the dead leaves were disturbed revealing glowing moss and bits of silver grass. 'Follow the yellow brick road,' came to her mind, only this road was a ghostly gray.

She found him less than ten minutes later collapsed against a rock to ease the weight on his injured leg and who knew what other bruises by now. He had been easy to find. Like the living parts of the woods he also glowed just a little from somewhere deep inside. In this respect her skin was unchanged. There were tracks of tears like silver snail trails down his cheeks and a lost expression in his dark, staring eyes. She was reminded of the little crippled boy in the story of the Pied Piper who couldn't keep up with his playmates.

Shuffling her feet in the leaves to announce her presence, she went to his side, calling his name. He wasn't startled. He blinked, turned his head, and his lips arched in the hint of a smile. "This wasn't my fault, not this time."

"I know."

"They picked me up and carried me along with them." He sighed, shoulders slumping. "It was like a happy party until I got too heavy. I slowed them down so they made me walk. That was hard because they didn't bring Hutch's walking stick." But she had and passed it to him as his voice faded. "I couldn't keep up, so they left me. They were in a hurry."

"Who are we talking about exactly?"

He had been wrapped in the dream as he spoke. Now he missed her question as he noticed for the first time the fairyland that was behind her and before them both. His eyes widened in wonder at the sight of the transformed forest, the silver trail that continued both east and west through the woods. He had the look of a child seeing his first Christmas tree.

"Yeah, I know, Mulder. This stuff would save Disney millions in electricity. _ Who _ took you?"

"The children, Scully. Some adults, too, even Dr. Hutch -- he makes a sleepy groundhog, by the way -- but mostly it was the children." With both joy and pain reflected in his eyes, he began hobbling towards where the road was glittering as if strewn with diamonds. He studied his own skin in awe for a moment then set his jaw and continued doggedly forward. "We have to hurry. I'd say that tonight was the night, wouldn't you?" Knowing protest would be less than useless, she placed his arm around her shoulders to give him more support. They limped on together as fast as they could.

It took some effort but there was no doubt when they finally reached the silver heart of the woods. The brightness made them blink as they followed the glittering trail down into the center of a ring of shining white trees.

At first there was no sign of the vengeful goddess they had come to see. Instead a pale, thin woman stood to greet them. Most surprising of all was her size. She was so small, not much taller than the older of the twenty or more children who surrounded her and far smaller than the half dozen adults. These all stiffened and looked up like startled forest creatures as the two agents stumbled into the ring. The children they had interviewed were there, as were Hutch and his unassuming wife, Roz. None showed them a hint of recognition. Only the small, golden-haired woman gave them a smile of welcome.

"So the lord of the woods is able to join us after all," the smile saddened, "if only in spirit."

Mulder shied away as she stretched out her hand to touch him though there was only a gentle sympathy in her expression. "Things were bad enough without your 'gift'," he snarled, not caring if he showed his eyeteeth.

"It _ was _ a gift. You would not have found the strength to make your way out of the woods without it." At the black expression in his eyes she merely shrugged. "I thought for once a spirit had been well bestowed. In any case, it was not my hand that placed it there."

"We certainly are up to our... knees... in denial today," Mulder muttered sarcastically. His eyes drifted to her right hip where she wore a fine, tooled scabbard that seemed to white glow all its own. "You carry a very long knife. Do you plan on performing a sacrifice or two in the near future, Cybele? I am correct? It is Cybele?"

There came another slight shrug from the slim shoulders. "As you will." Her posture hardening to a royal aloofness, she turned her back, walking slowly back to her seat on a smooth stone within the circle of her 'children'. For the first time the agents noticed that she moved like something infinitely fragile, like a frail and very old woman despite the agelessness of her face and body.

As if to acknowledge the continuing accusation in Mulder's expression, she drew the knife. It was slender and intricately patterned but also sharp as lover's words and ancient beyond imagining. "That's what it's for after all -- to take a life in order to bring life." The blade flashed in her hand like white fire. "Note that it is sharp on both sides. The one who wields does not do so without peril."

"And the one that's slain?" Mulder inclined his head towards Scully. "My friend has trouble believing that the King is actually a man. She thinks that I'm living in a fairy tale."

"Fairy tale, myth, they all tell a universal truth."

"Which I would just love to discuss with you at length after Richard is released from this enchantment."

"Richard?"

"Your King for a day."

"Ah. He presented himself to me with his anger and his passion, not his name. As for his being King, I did not choose him. He sought it. Indeed, he fought for it." Distress and a little anger shadowed her face. "There should have been another."

"Attis." This came from Scully, who found it a little disconcerting to stand face to face with someone even smaller than she was.

With some surprise, the golden head lifted. "Yes, Attis." There were lifetimes of meaning in that one word. "Attis would have been my choice, always my choice, but he will not come and there has to be someone. You've seen the wood, frozen in time. Trees are strong, they can survive much, but out of their season and weakened by this age of poisoned air and poisoned water and poisoned earth, the animals are dying." She spread her hands to indicate her adoring children. "There has to be a King or there will be more of these!"

Mulder straightened as if a snowball of truth had suddenly hit him in the face. He ignored the stitch of pain that shot across his back and all the way down his leg. "The animals dying too soon... You're trying to find a substitute home for their souls. That's why they were placed in the children and people you found wandering your woods."

Cybele looked with sympathy on the ring of glowing faces. "I know that they're in pain; that you are. Two souls can't live comfortably where one should be. This is my fault, but not in the way you think. Attis has not been content for many years. Restless, melancholy, rebellious, but not content. I gave him some power like you would give a toy to a child. What he did with that power..." She sighed. "He did not think through clearly what he is doing when he makes the wish to save one of their spirits. He means well but his actions are not often wise."

"He blames you."

The golden head shook in sorrowful weariness. "He would. He remembers what he wants to remember. He doesn't understand, he has never understood."

"A funny way you have of trying to educate him. He looks at another woman so you drive him so mad that he --"

She was up like a shot, barely four and a half feet tall but in her regal posture looking far taller. "Thousands and thousands of years and can I never atone for that!"

"Why didn't you just let him go?"

The storm quieted to a hush. "Because I loved him. How could I see him with another? And yet I know that he has never been quite 'right' since. For that he is also my responsibility. It could be worse. His life is not without meaning. He has a great purpose, yet I would have him content and know that I still love him."

Scully sighed somewhere near her partner's right shoulder and murmured softly, "There's no easy fix here, Mulder. We're talking long term family counseling, not to mention some extensive psychiatric evaluation." Ignoring his scowl, she turned to the small woman who was sitting on her rock with shoulders slumped, her court at her feet. "We're sympathetic to your problems, but our immediate concern is Mr. Jameson. He's just a man, a normal man, and mad in his own way with grief over the death of his wife, a death we've been told that you know something about."

The bowed back raised listlessly. "Attis' swan-woman?" The woman's lips formed a sad, ironic smile. "For the last several seasons he took it into his head that he would be better off if he were not a man. There was then a young female swan that he admired for her peaceful grace. Wishes can be dangerous with the kind of power at his command. One evening upon waking by the lake he found that he had actually transformed into a swan while he slept. Even as he reveled in the sensation, he became convinced in his mind that I had cursed him for desiring the swan, and that his penance was to spend part of each day so. As he believed, so it became true. At least he was devoted to his swan mate." Her expression clearly added, 'as he never was to me'. "He mourned egregiously when she died. He did not want her soul to be lost --"

"-- And Reena Jameson found her artistic inspiration at just the wrong time," Mulder guessed.

A nod. "She happened upon him in the wood and fell under the spell of his beauty. I can understand -- so do I, even after so many years. To her grief, he misread her interest. I pitied her. I tried to intervene but that only made it worse." The small chin was lifted. Altruism had nothing to do with her coming to Reena's aid but injured pride certainly did. "While we argued, she wandered, unwatched, confused, and drunk on the god's fruit. I see in your eyes that you know what happened then." Cybele aimed a level gaze on Scully. "I was relieved that he failed when he tried to transfer that soul yet again. He has caused the two of you distress enough."

"Why did he choose Mulder for his joke?"

"Partially accessibility, for Bruin was dying; but mostly jealousy."

"Jealousy?"

"Because your man could hear my calling of the King." For the first time since their initial greeting, she studied Mulder with real interest. "Any other year and you would have made worthy challenger. Being host to such a soul makes that less likely. As you've found; it isn't healthy."

In that Scully had to agree; Mulder did not look well. "Why did Attis even bother, if he didn't want the job."

"Nothing is so attractive as having another be offered the position you have spurned."

"Well, if it's so dangerous, take the power back and release these people!" Scully cried.

The tiny woman laughed grimly. "If only I could. Can you believe that I no longer have the strength?" She looked around her at the circle of silver trees. Beyond the circle the glittering forest had dimmed considerably. "See? Even this simple illusion is coming undone, unraveling in my hands. My options are so few." She suddenly paused, listening. "But you can see that for yourselves, for here he comes now in all his glorious rage."

She was not referring to Richard, nor any stag, but to Attis, moving as graceful as any dancer and looking wild and beautiful. She said nothing more but seemed to glow brighter and warmer in his presence. His response upon seeing her was to furrow his brow, perplexed.

"You're very small. Why don't I remember that?"

From the way her small frame tensed, she obviously took his faulty memory as an insult.
"There are clearly many things you have forgotten, like the summer on the shores of the Aegean Sea before you learned what I was and fled into that nymph's arms."

His golden eyes flamed in anger. "And as a consequence what did you do, vindictive witch!"

An almost identical heat rose in hers. "You blame me! Your madness came from your own guilt and your own terror of what you imagined I _ might _ do!"

"Selfish, whoring, sadistic bitch!"

"Jelly-spined, egocentric, narcissistic man!"

Beside his partner, Mulder sighed. "I have to agree with you, Scully. I don't think that this relationship can be saved."

"Every year you have murdered me!" Attis was snarling.

"To rise again!"

"Do you have any conception of the agony of having the life of an entire world dragged through your loins."

"Oh, poor male!" she sneered. "Who are you to be better than every mortal woman who gives birth?"

"And what do goddesses know about such pain?"

"Goddess!" she cackled gesturing to her diminutive form. "What goddess do you see? I would have died a thousand times to save you one year of pain, but that was not to be. All I could do was die in tiny bits each time you did, then wait in loneliness and despair by your grave through every bitter month. Companionship from you was all I asked in exchange for life ever renewing, for the joy of being the father of as much of the world as we could hold, for eternal youth and beauty. And how am I repaid! Scorn, desertion and infidelity! Our kingdom once stretched a continent wide, but how could I hold so much when all you did was fight me? When you sought to escape your destiny over the sea, what choice did I have but to follow into a foreign land that has never known the touch of a hand such as mine. Is it any wonder that I have grown so very small! "

He looked shaken. Clearly, there was much here that was new. "I did not ask you to follow me," he whispered in a softer voice.

"Without the rites your death would come swiftly for there is much about you which is mortal still." The sadness in her bright eyes bound them where anger had not. "Ungrateful wretch, I would not have had you so far away over the wild ocean and die hating me."

He stood in shock, a head taller than she was at least, his mouth working, though no words came.

Neither moved but that didn't mean that nothing was going on. The very air seemed to almost crackle with emotions great and small. So absorbed were Attis and Cybele that it was Mulder who heard, or rather felt through the inflamed nerve in his leg, the first rhythmic rumbling through the ground. Before what it meant could register, there came a crash as brittle branches broke and a heavy body came hurtling down from a high knoll just beyond the circle. It was the black-ruffed stag, beautiful and terrible, flecks of spittle on the slender muzzle, hooves as sharp as knives, an arsenal on its head that at the last minute and in a final burst of speed, lowered.

The partners saw the charge. They also saw that there was no time for the children to scatter. Mulder took most of them out of the way of the maddened animal's charge with a low tackle that would have been agony if he had had time to think about it. Scully drew and shot with practiced skill even as Mulder cried 'No!' in pain and horror from where he lay sprawled across at least four of the dazed children. The large animal staggered, but his great momentum carried him forward. The silver forest rang as if a mallet had struck the edge of a huge goblet of the finest crystal. It tolled, however, only to crack, exploding, as if that same goblet had dropped upon stone. With that single chime all of the lights went out. As bright as it had been before, the result was an impenetrable black.

There was absolute silence for several seconds, then a great wave of movement and noise rose in the dark. The children shrieked aloud in terrible pain. A few whelped like kicked puppies. Men and women's voices raised in distress from some deep tearing agony and loss. Before the first cry rang out, Scully was reaching in the pocket of her jacket for a pencil flashlight. At noon when they left the cabin, it had not seemed necessary to come better equipped. At least it was something. The thin, bluish beam revealed only glimpses of writhing bodies, as children and adults fell, or stood and cried, or ran aimlessly about. Some knelt, retching. All looked sick and ghostly pale.

Suddenly, she swung the beam in the direction of a voice that she knew better than any other. He was still on the ground where he had carried the children like a tidal wave but in the stark contrast between pallor and shadow she almost didn't recognize him. His dark eyes were even then rolling back into his head. Stooping by his side, she touched chill, damp flesh. "Don't you faint on me. I need you."

The eyes blinked but didn't entirely focus. Still, he had heard her and nodded slightly in her direction. She noted that his mouth remained tightly shut as if to keep from being sick himself.

"Jameson," he mouthed quickly then rolled onto his knees and proceeded to do just that. At least they were dry heaves.

With more emergencies on her hands than she could count, Scully swung the little flashlight in the direction of his nod, though she hadn't seen the bereaved widower since that afternoon. The craftsman was in the midst of the chaos, a naked, crumpled, dirty figure, clutching his upper arm. Dark rivulets of blood streamed from between his fingers.

Scully froze, confused and horrified. But no one had been anywhere near when she fired! She had shot at a deer! Frantically, she scanned for dark fur on the equally dark ground. No deer and she should have been able to find it, since most of the children and adults had also scattered. She realized that she could now see beyond the cone of the beam, so much so that she turned it off. Her eyes quickly grew accustomed to a new source of light.

Gray dawn was beginning to make itself known even under the trees. It was even more advanced in a tiny clearing just beyond what had been the silver circle. Here was another fairy ring, one even more ancient, whose central oak of innumerable age lay on its side, blasted years before by lightning. There under the open sky, seated on the trunk of the fallen giant, Golden Attis sat hunched over and weeping. Hesitating, Scully took two steps and then felt Mulder's presence by her side, a little unsteady, but solid and warm. They approached together.

The goddess that at one time had been the terror of the Roman world lay in the Golden Man's arms. She had looked the size of a child before, now she looked like that child's limp rag doll drowned in blood. Scully rushed forward. The wounds were indeed terrible. The power of the stag's rush had carried him forward and the rack of antler points had driven with murderous force into their target. The small, fair body was pierced in neck and breast, shoulder and arm. It was the severed artery near the juncture of neck and shoulder that had pumped out the river of blood. Now the river was nearly dry. Attis's strong, beautiful face was nearly unrecognizable in his anguish.

Mulder's soft voice reached him. "You may have the power to save her. Over time she gave you almost everything." But Attis only clutched the tiny body more tightly. "No, I guess not. If you never believed in what you had before," the agent said, sadly shaking his head, "there's no time to convince you now. Is there anything we can do, Scully?"

She met his deep, tired eyes. He already knew the answer. Not now, not here. They could only watch. After a moment Mulder whispered, "Where's her knife? The scabbard's empty."

They found it almost at once on the ground at Attis's feet where it had slipped from his hands. The hilt and its sharp edges were both wet with fresh blood.

Scully was able to pull the dying woman away long enough to see the deep gouges that the blade had made in Attis' own arms. So only half the blood was hers. "We have to find something to bind the wounds with," she said, fruitlessly scanning the clearing, the dead tree, and the forest beyond. Finally, she tore off her own jacket. "How could he do such a thing!"

"He's had practice." With deliberation Mulder placed one strong hand on his partner's shoulder to stop her from trying to separate the two again. "It's too late, Scully. Even if it weren't, he wouldn't thank you for saving him. Who could he relate to but her? What they have isn't much of a relationship, but it's all he has. Without her, he's lost. It's not Attis' world, not his time."

Not looking at all well and dragging the leg that had taken too much, Mulder approached the grieving man, but only close enough so that his question could be heard. "Will you come back?" he asked softly. "Will she?"

He hadn't really expected an answer but got one even if the voice was nearly too weak to stir the air. "There's no point. The light's gone out. She will not and I only returned all those times to see her face. Then I ran. To punish her? Who punished whom? So much time wasted."

A breeze began and caught in the boughs of the trees. If you listened, you could almost hear words.

"You're still here. You could have been free of me."

Wearily, Attis raised his tear-stained face to stare up at the swaying branches. "I don't want to be."

"So _ now _ you will stay?"

A smile played on his lips. "Yes, now I will stay. That means that you must stay, too."

"Too late, but then it was too late the first time I saw you."

"If not this year," he begged, "then next year, or the year after."

"No," and the note was final. "I would be your death only one more time."

He changed his hold on the small body. His arms were going numb, and she was slipping from the blood. "I'm afraid."

"You have known death more than two thousand times. What is once more?"

"I don't know where I'll be going this time."

"With me, into the land where I should have gone long ago. But then I would have missed your rising like glory in the spring. I thought that there were no other choices. I was wrong. I did not foresee that our spirits could flow as one great healing river across this damaged land."

Attis bent to kiss the cold motionless lips. "That would be something to die for."

The partners would disagree later on what happened. The branches swayed for a time and then Attis looked at the sky. At the end he bent for a kiss but never straightened up again. Instead, he kept falling from his perch on the fallen tree as one falls in a dream, Cybele ever in his arms. Shaking herself into motion as if breaking a spell, Scully reached to catch them but Mulder's strong arm held her back.

"Let them go."

She looked up into his face. "Let them go? Where?" But he didn't answer and when she turned back they had both disappeared. She sprang forward not understanding. They weren't lying on the ground in front of the tree, nor behind. It was vaguely possible that they had fallen sideways into the lethal gash in the great tree that the lightning had made, but that also was empty. No, not quite empty. Surprising for this season, the cavity was lined with a green and verdant moss as soft as velvet. Mulder pulled his partner back even farther then, though his eyes never left the tree.

Something was happening. Even as they watched, the green moss from the gash grew up and over the lip of the cut -- and kept growing. Scully couldn't help but be reminded of how the silver had flowed across the forest. The spreading vegetation was like this, only this was a fertile and vibrant green, as life-giving as a river. From the tree's base there sprang up a carpet of new grass shining in the slating rays of the newly risen sun. On it flowed as the silver had, radiating out from this one central point. Where the leading edge touched the base of trees, the over-long autumn leaves fell like old gold. Within seconds buds swelled green and red and burst into tiny green tufts of new leaves, so that before the verse of a nightingale's song could play once through, the tops of all of the trees within sight waved gently in the breeze like giant fans.

Beside Scully, Mulder suddenly gasped. She heard him take a deep breath and hold it. Heart pounding, she stared up into the familiar face, expecting to see him in pain. On the contrary, he was smiling. No wonder, the air had turned suddenly warm and was filled with an energizing and healthy scent, all the more healthy for being free of the sickening sweetness of cockleberries. That was when she realized that the edge of the new spreading growth, the first touch of Spring, had just passed where they stood.

"I take it that this isn't the bear waking?"

He let out his held breath with slow pleasure. "Not at all. He's gone. He left back when the light died, or rather was forced out. The only problem was that he left behind -- call them psychic claw marks. Hurt like the devil. You had to have noticed. The children felt it, too, and Hutch and the others." He took another deep breath, a look of blissful peace on his face. "This is like being healed."

"Almost seems worth it."

"Believe me, it's not."

Around them the children had risen from where they had been lying sick or in a stupor on the ground. Where only minutes before they ha