The Wood Wife

by Terri Windling

  Until we meet again,

  Davis Cooper

  April the 16th,

  the Night of the Dark Stone

  Maggie read the letter over twice more. It made no more sense than the first time. She was right—he’d been writing again, that was clear. But what did all the rest of it mean? And why did he write that he’d meet her again when he’d never met her at all?

  April 16th was the night he had died. The Night of the Dark Stone—whatever that was. The night he’d been left dead out in the desert, his “gin-sodden tongue” silenced forever.

  She folded up the letter again and sat there simply holding it. Sorrow was a rock lodged in her chest. She wished she was a woman who could cry. She wished she could wail and howl with grief—not just for what the world of poetry had lost, but for what she had lost and would not have again: the man whose work had inspired her; whose unexpected friendship had been so conditional, yet so necessary; whose long and supportive letters had followed her halfway around the world. But she never cried. Not once, in all the long years since death had claimed her parents. Back then she had cried enough tears that perhaps she simply had none left now.

  She had a history of losing the ones she loved. She was seven when a car crash took her parents; her only grandmother died not long thereafter. For years she used to watch Nigel while he slept, certain that she’d lose him too. When Tat flew over, Maggie would not rest until the plane safely reached the ground. She called her granddaddy in West Virginia once a week, to be certain he was still there.

  In the hills the coyotes knew her pain, gave voice to the tears the woman would not shed. One called to her; another added his voice; then another; and another. Their eerie song filled up the canyon. The half-blind, lone coyote heard them; and Dora’s cats; and Tomás, in the hills. But Maggie, like Davis Cooper’s God, was deaf to the language of their call.

  • • •

  Dora sat feeding mesquite branches to the fire. Her face was pale, her eyes were red; the cats were huddled close to her side, sensing her distress. Beyond the circle of warmth from the hearth, the early morning was cold, and still. The sun hovered behind Rincon Peak, preparing to start the day. Juan was somewhere out on the hundreds of trails that crisscrossed the mountains. Or had fallen down some steep ravine, or had stepped on a rattlesnake in the dark, and now lay helpless, waiting for day to come and someone to find him.

  She rose stiffly from the chair. The cats jumped down to wind around her feet and herd her into the kitchen. She opened up the cat food tins, feeling dazed by lack of sleep. This was the third time he’d gone off this week. But he’d always returned long before dawn—except for that once, six months ago. She shuddered, and reached for her sweater. It was cold at this end of the room.

  Dora put four cat food bowls on the floor, one for each cat so they would not fight, then she took the dog’s water dish to the sink. The dog had disappeared as well, and she hoped Bandido, their big old mutt, was in the mountains looking after Juan. As she looked out the window over the sink she saw two shadows approaching the house, a smaller shadow trailing behind. She set down the bowl and it shattered, knifing a gash through the palm of her hand.

  Dora grabbed a dishrag, staunched the gush of blood, and rushed to open the door. Outside, Fox was crossing the cobbled stable yard, half carrying Juan as he limped along. Juan’s feet were bare, his chest was bare, and his lips were blue with cold. Dark red paint was crusted on his fingers and streaked his skin.

  “Where was he?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  Fox looked at her, his eyes flat and dark. “By Red Springs. He’s freezing. Help me get him inside.”

  “Juan?” Dora said as she took his other arm. His eyes slid across her face and away. “Come inside now. Lean on me. It’s nice and warm by the fire,” she said, hearing herself speak in the soothing voice that she usually used for the cats.

  She turned and whistled for Bandido del Corazón—but the creature who lurked at the edge of the yard was a coyote, not a dog. It regarded her with steady eyes, and then disappeared through the creosote. Bandido emerged from under the couch where he had been hiding all night.

  They sat Juan down in the chair by the hearth. She wrapped the quilt around him. His feet were torn and bloody, as though he had walked a long, long way. She tucked a pillow under his head, and Bandido settled in close by his feet. Juan’s eyes were closed, his breath even; he was already fast asleep.

  She looked up at Fox, who stood holding a cat, gazing into the fire. “Have tea with me, Johnny?” Dora whispered. He nodded and followed her to the kitchen.

  Fox sat down at the table he’d built for her and Juan last year, made out of mesquite wood polished to a smooth, rich red-brown surface. The cat slid from Fox’s arms to his lap, and two of her litter mates joined her; the fourth sat purring on Fox’s boot with a silly grin on her face. He’d always had a gift for charming cats, and dogs … and women too, Dora thought, as she put the kettle on the stove. He was a good-looking devil, long and lanky, with skin tanned deep by the desert sun, his brown hair as perpetually dishevelled as his rumpled flannel shirts and his dusty jeans. His smile was an endearing one, revealing a chipped front tooth. Dora placed a mug in front of him, and washed another one for herself. Then she sat down at the table, all her energy draining in a rush.

  Fox touched her hand, wrapped with the bloody rag. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Juan has been like that since—well, for a while now. He takes off at night, and when he comes back he’s dazed or half asleep. Then when he wakes up again, he says he doesn’t remember.”

  “He just gets up and starts roaming in the middle of the night?” Fox asked. “Has he seen a doctor?”

  “He won’t go. He says there’s nothing wrong with him. He used to walk in his sleep when he was a boy, and he says there’s nothing harmful in it, but—I don’t know. There’s more to it than that. Juan won’t talk to me about it.”

  She wished he would offer to talk to Juan himself. But she couldn’t ask Fox; the code of etiquette among men was different than that among women friends. If she poured out her fears about Juan to Johnny Foxxe, was she supporting her husband or betraying him?

  “Have you tried locking the door?” Fox asked her.

  “What good would it do? He’s awake when he leaves. I can’t keep him locked inside the house. He’s my husband, not one of my cats.”

  “He could get hurt out there at night.”

  “I know. But how can I stop him?”

  “Look, Dora, there’s some fool with a gun out there, ignoring all the No Hunting signs. Tomás and I have both seen him roaming around, down there by the creek. You tell Juan he’d best be more careful. The idiot will think he’s a deer.”

  Dora swallowed. “I will. I’ll tell him that.”

  They sat in uncomfortable silence then until the kettle whistled loudly and Fox rose to make the tea.

  He measured sticks of Mormon tea into the pot, filled it with hot water, and said in a conversational tone, “That woman has come. Did you know that? The one who’ll live in Cooper’s house. Marguerita Black.”

  “The writer?” asked Dora with surprise.

  “Yeah, I reckon she must be a writer. She’s supposed to be writing a book on Cooper. You heard of her?”

  “Darn right I have. And so have you, you know. Remember I loaned you The Maid on the Shore? That book of essays about the California coast?”

  “Oh yeah? Didn’t Annie Dillard write that? That was Marguerita Black? No wonder the name sounded familiar. I thought I must have heard it from Cooper.”

  Dora shook her head, grateful for the change of subject from Juan. “I would have remembered if Cooper had ever talked about Maguerita Black. I’ve been reading her work since I was in college. She used to publish these travelogue kind of pieces in Harper’s and The New Yorker: very urban, cosmopolitan stuff, full of people who were always dashing off betwe
en London and Rome and Amsterdam, you know what I mean? I ate it up. I used to fantasize about living that kind of life someday. But the sad truth, Johnny,” she said with a wry smile, “is that now I want my own house around me, a comfy chair, a cup of tea and a good travel book instead.”

  “Are we talking about the same writer? The Maid on the Shore is—”

  “Quieter. More down to earth. It surprised me when it came out … but I think I like it the best of all. What a kick that she’ll be living next door, huh? Have you met her? What’s she like?”

  “Like you said,” he replied carefully. “Urban, cosmopolitan. Like someone who wrote for The New Yorker, not like someone who wrote The Maid on the Shore.”

  “Hmmm. That’s interesting,” she said. “Now wait ’til I tell Juan.” But at the mention of Juan’s name the animation drained from Dora’s pale face. She cast a wary look toward her husband where he sat by the fire, sleeping soundly. His own face was clear and untroubled, his cheeks flushed from the heat of the flames.

  She rose, her tea untouched. “I ought to go get Juan into bed.”

  “You need some sleep yourself,” Fox pointed out, spilling cats from his lap as he stood. He cooled his tea with tap water, and then drained it in three long gulps.

  “I wish.” Dora gave him a weary smile and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

  She stood at the door as Fox left the house and watched him amble down the road. A shadow darted at his heels. The small coyote was still out there, its fur matted, its ribs distinct. She watched it weave its way through the trees—almost as if it were following the man but dared not approach too close to him. She was glad the cats were safe inside the house; they’d make a good breakfast for a hungry coyote, and that one looked like it could use a square meal. A whole coyote pack was singing in the hills; there seemed to be a lot of them around. Today she’d keep the cats locked in and send Bandido out to mark their turf.

  The sun was rising above the mountains now, bringing its heat back to the canyon. She still had time for a bath and some breakfast before she headed into town and opened up the gallery again. Juan was sleeping so peacefully that she wouldn’t try to move him after all. She envied him that untroubled sleep. For her, it was going to be another long day. She picked up her cup of tea and went to run the bathwater with four cats trailing along behind. As she did so, she realized she’d never asked Fox what he’d been doing in the mountains himself, up before the crack of dawn. Like Juan that night, six months ago. She frowned.

  No, she wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to put one foot in front of her at a time, take a bath, get dressed, get into her truck, and drive off this mountain into town. When she got back home, if she wasn’t too tired, she’d try to talk to Juan again. Somehow, it was going to be all right. It had to be, that was all.

  • • •

  She sat in the shadows of the mesquite grove, crouched among the tree roots, her long and sensitive rabbit ears twitching as the wind above her changed direction. The voice of the wind was a rustle in the leaves, speaking in a language she’d once known and had forgotten. She did not have a name. She had not earned one yet. Or perhaps she had, and had forgotten that too. She was not old, as her kind reckoned age; and she was old, old as the granite hills. Old as Time, which spiralled like the tattoos on a shape-shifter’s skin.

  She put a pale, human hand to her mouth, licked it, and washed her face with it, smoothing back the soft grey fur. She knew she must sit and wait in this place. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. No matter. The day was warming up; her heart was light; her belly was full. She stretched out on her back and rolled among the leaves, delighted with herself.

  When the coyotes howled she ignored them. It was other meat they hunted now—the coyotes, and the Hounds of the Dark Hunter’s pack. She wondered which of them would reach their prey first. Did it matter?

  She seemed to remember that it did, but she’d forgotten why it mattered. Or what it had to do with her.

  ❋ Davis Cooper ❋

  Redwater Road

  Tucson, Arizona

  M. Tippetts

  New York City

  March 9, 1948

  Dear Maisie,

  I agree completely. A trip to New York is exactly what we need. We have been buried alive out here these last months and the heat that descends on us in June is more than mortal man was meant to bear. I tell you, I think Anna needs a change of scene as much as I do. If you can persuade her to make this trip, I’d be most grateful—as would Riddley, at the gallery.

  Our Anna has become a different creature out here; she is turning into a desert woman. Strip away that Mexico City gloss of urban civilization and the granddaughter of an Indian bruja lies beneath. She is a wonder to me, brown as the stones, fierce as a she-wolf, graceful as the deer. She is something other than woman in this place, she is earth and fire and sky as well. It is all in the paintings. Riddley has a shock in store when he sees the new work.

  But she is too much alone, out in the hills. She rebels at visitors, at seeing old friends. She wants only me and the companionship of these creatures she paints—has she spoken of this? I don’t know what to think. I accept the fact that our Anna has … visions; she is after all a woman, a witch, a lapsed Catholic, a painter, a Surrealist. I am but a war-scarred cynic myself, and perhaps my own vision is thus limited; it is only through the canvas that I can see the world as Anna describes it.

  And yet … even I have begun to think that perhaps there is something in these hills. I can’t see it, but I can almost hear it. A low drum beat. A murmur of language. There are poems in these trees, in the rock underfoot. I resist it, this slow seduction. The land itself fought against Exile Songs, saying: “Write our poems, Cooper, not yours…” And I shut the door and I closed the curtains and I finished the book nonetheless.

  Yes, I must come to the city again—or I shall be lost to the language of this land and forget my own native tongue. Gotham Book Mart has offered to host a publication party when Exile Songs comes out in June. If we can pull our desert woman from her mountains, even for just a few short weeks, I shall wire them and tell them we are coming. Even Anna must long to escape the damn heat.

  Help me, Maisie. She’ll listen to you.

  Yours as ever,

  Davis Cooper

  Chapter Three ❋

  And by whose grace did I arrive here, set down

  in this place where moonlight kills, and

  dreams leave blood and leaves

  upon the twisted sheets of dawn?

  —The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper

  Maggie wiped the sweat from her brow, grateful that evening would fall soon, bringing its chill to the mountain. The midday sun had been fierce, and even though it was cooler in the house she’d had to strip down to her undershirt to work. She didn’t have the proper clothes for this place, or the proper car, or the proper frame of mind. She found herself cursing the heat, the dust, and the pitiless landscape outside.

  There seemed to be no kind of order at all to any of Davis’s papers. The old man had been meticulous enough to make copies of all his correspondence—and then had shoved those papers away into any random corner or drawer. Insurance bills were filed with letters; old galley proof pages were wedged among his books. She’d found notes and roughs of his unpublished poems, but nothing close to a final manuscript. If “The Saguaro Forest” was still in this room, it was not in any obvious place.

  The other place to look, of course, was behind the locked door in the back of the house. She’d tried a nail file on the lock, but the door was good and firmly shut. She wondered if Johnny Foxxe had a key, or could pry it open for her. She decided she’d go out for a walk, and stop by the handyman’s cabin on the way. The sun was sinking low in the hills; it was high time to take a break.

  She put on a shirt, one of Davis’s hats, and laced on her English walking boots. As she stepped on the porch, she saw that someone had left her a basket of apples. Perhaps it had
been her other tenant, the mechanic. What was his name?

  She picked up an apple, rubbed it on her thigh, and bit into it as she crossed the yard. Birds sat on the Three Graces’ arms, scolding noisily as she passed. A jackrabbit crouched in the shade beneath the black trunk of a mesquite tree. A herd of small deer leapt through the wash and into the brush on the other side. She hadn’t expected deer on this land. She watched them vanish with a frown.

  The desert wasn’t as she’d imagined it at all: a Sahara landscape of sand and dunes. Rather, it was a Japanese garden made of stone, a sage-green land of low, gnarled trees, creosote bushes and cactus. The cactus came in a lush abundance of sizes and shapes, all alien to her. Everything here had spines or thorns. The sky was too vast; the light was too clear. There was nothing soft or hidden in the land, and it made her feel raw, overexposed, like a photograph left in the sun.

  She followed a trail through the mesquite grove that stood between the house and the handyman’s cabin. Here there were bits of grass underfoot and wildflowers, small purple blooms against the dark mesquite trunks. A low rattling sound puzzled her until she spied a wind chime in a tree. It was made of stones with holes in them (“hag-stones” she remembered they were called, Davis had used the word in a poem) and bits of something white, like bone, suspended from long waxy threads. There were several of them hanging in the grove, clacking dryly in the wind.

  She emerged from the grove by Fox’s house. His pickup truck was parked out front, and the door was open, but no one was within. He was probably at his workshop on the other side of the wash. She peered through the doorway curiously. The cabin was rustic, sparsely furnished, and neat as a pin, which surprised her. The kitchen and living room were one open space with a sleeping loft above it. The walls were hung with tools, horse-riding tack, and musical instruments: a collection of Indian flutes and drums, an acoustic guitar, an accordion. A single painting hung near the beehive hearth; it looked like an Anna Naverra. On a low table before the hearth was a red clay bowl filled with some green herb, Indian rattles made from two round gourds, smooth grey stones arranged in a circle and a long brown pinion feather. Beside them a sharplooking hunting knife lay open on its leather sheath.