The Wood Wife

by Terri Windling

  Juan looked at his reflection in the dark window glass as Dora came up behind him. A young Chicano man stared back, eyes both dark and bright with visions. He didn’t recognize that man. He had changed. Was changing. Shedding one snake skin and finding another skin beneath. He was turning into someone else. Now he turned, and he embraced his wife. He breathed in Dora’s sharp, sweet scent, holding tightly on to love, remembering, for that moment, that it was precious.

  • • •

  Dora held the storm lamp that lit their path through the dry wash bed. Juan held her other hand, his calloused fingers warm around hers, as they made their way on foot down the sandy bank to Cooper’s house. Maggie Black’s house, she corrected herself. She could see it through the cottonwood trees, the yellow light over the door of the porch. Maggie herself was sitting outside on the steps as they walked up the drive.

  As she introduced Juan to their new neighbor Dora registered the look on the other woman’s face. “Good god, what is it? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said. Then she bit her tongue. What a stupid thing to come out with at a dead man’s house.

  “Something has been inside the house,” Maggie said, speaking perfectly calmly in that low and husky voice of hers. But her eyes, dark and wide, and the pallor of her face betrayed the fact that she was alarmed. “I was out for a while walking in the hills. I came back and the door was unlocked.”

  “Something or someone?” Juan asked her, eyes narrowed.

  “Come look for yourself,” Maggie replied. She led them through the door and into the hallway, stepping over leaves and mud.

  Dora sucked in her breath when she entered the kitchen behind her husband and saw what they’d done. What something had done—for Maggie was right. There were animal tracks, and no human ones. The mud was particularly curious. Outside, the wash was dry as a bone.

  Juan sniffed. “What is that smell?” he asked.

  “It’s in the study,” Maggie said flatly. They followed her to Cooper’s office.

  “Shit,” Dora said.

  Maggie smiled wryly. “My sentiments exactly.”

  Juan stepped carefully over the puddles of urine and squatted in the center of the room. “This is animal scat. Coyote I think. Lots of coyotes, and pretty fresh. They must have gotten into the house somehow. I’ll be damned. They’re not usually so bold as this.” He looked up at them, his face containing more puzzlement than alarm. “Perhaps the doors blew open and they came in looking for some food?” he conjectured. “Or chased a rabbit into the house. That’s the only scenario I can think of that would account for their coming in here. Perhaps a whole hunting pack of them. Are you absolutely sure the doors were locked?”

  “I think so. But no, I’m not absolutely sure. I must not have locked them after all. I didn’t know coyotes could be such a problem. I saw one in the yard just this morning. He was so beautiful, it never occurred to me to wonder if he was dangerous.”

  Dora said, “I’ve never known them to be. Except to mice and rabbits and cats. But I’ve never seen anything like this before either.”

  “They’re wild animals, don’t forget,” said Juan. “They look like dogs, but they’re closer to wolves. When exactly did this happen, Maggie?”

  The woman frowned, considering. “I went out walking just before sunset. I was coming back when Dora stopped me—so sometime in the last couple of hours. I heard coyotes when I was out there. Back in the hills, not near the house. But come to think of it, yesterday Fox and I startled a huge owl nesting in here. Perhaps the local wildlife have gotten used to this house being empty.”

  “In just six months?” Juan said skeptically. “Animals are generally more wary of human habitats than that.”

  “They weren’t wary of this one, were they? It looks like they had the whole pack in here, having a party. I wonder if they’re likely to come back? And what they’d do if they found me here?”

  “They’d run, I should think,” said Dora. “Fox always says they have better reason to be scared of us than we do of them.”

  Juan said, “We should give Fox a call. Maybe he can make head or tail of this.”

  “The phone’s in the kitchen,” Maggie told him. “And that bottle of tequila I promised you. I’m going to open it. I don’t know about you all, but I seriously need a drink.”

  Maggie fetched the tequila bottle and made up a pitcher of strong margueritas, while Dora searched for some unbroken glasses and Juan got Fox on the phone.

  “I don’t think anything’s been stolen,” Dora heard Juan tell him. “I think she just had animals in here. You come look, and then you tell me. All right. We’ll see you in five.”

  He turned around and said to Maggie, “Fox is coming right over. Now listen, why don’t you have supper with us, and spend the night at our place? We should clean up whatever stinks right away, but I’d say leave the rest for the morning. You’re tired now, and things have a way of looking worse at night.”

  Maggie gave Juan a grateful smile. “I’d love to stay at your house tonight. I don’t think I’d sleep, staying here.”

  “I’ve a day off work tomorrow,” Dora told her, “and I can help you clean this up. Not much of a welcome to the mountain is it? Don’t worry. It’s not usually like this. It’s usually quiet and peaceful up here. You’ll love it when you get to know it.”

  “Well, Davis loved it,” she said dubiously. Clearly it wasn’t an opinion Maggie shared.

  But then, she hadn’t been here long; it hadn’t yet gotten into her bones. Dora hadn’t liked the desert herself when she’d first come here, trailing after Juan. But the desert had claimed her, entering her heart and marking her there as one of its own. Now she was like her desert-born husband: unfit to live anywhere else.

  She heard Fox’s boots crunching over the yard, the creak of the porch floor under his step. He gave a low whistle as he came through the door, his eyes surveying the damage. He crouched down and looked closely at the prints, his knees poking through the holes in his jeans. “Animals all right. Maybe coyotes. Doesn’t make a lick of sense though.” He straightened, frowning. “Are you all right?” he asked Maggie with concern.

  Maggie nodded. “Just a bit shook up. This doesn’t happen in California,” she answered with a dry smile. “Breaking-and-entering is generally committed by animals of the two-legged kind.”

  “I’d rather take my chances with coyotes. I’ve never heard tell of them harming anyone.” Fox picked up a kitchen chair and set it on its feet again. Then he gave Maggie a long, thoughtful look. “I think you should talk to John Alder about this—up the road in the Big House. He’s a bit of a wildlife expert. I can take you up there in the morning.”

  “Let’s call John now,” Dora suggested.

  Fox shook his head. “He’s not home. He’s down at Tanque Verde Falls. Just got back from there myself.”

  It was only then that Dora noted Fox had climbing gear clipped to his belt. “You’ve been out with Mountain Search and Rescue again? Has anyone been hurt?”

  “Yeah,” he confirmed, his voice edged with his disgust, “another drunk high school kid and his buddies, messing around down there. Idiot kid nearly drowned.” He sighed and turned to Maggie. “You’ve seen those signs for Upper Falls? In Reddington Pass, as you come up the hill? It’s beautiful there, but treacherous. Seems like damn near every week we’re pulling some fool kid from the canyon. This one broke his leg down there and had to be airlifted out. He’s lucky. People have died there. The water is stronger than it looks, and flash floods come out of nowhere if its been raining farther up the hills. But you can’t keep people away from a bit of water in the desert.”

  Fox sat down at the kitchen table, looking completely exhausted. He shook his head at Maggie’s offer of a drink. She didn’t know he never touched the stuff, not after watching Cooper’s slow self-destruction with whiskey and gin.

  Maggie refilled her own empty glass, and Juan’s, and topped up Dora’s. Her expression wa
s thoughtful. “I never imagined there would be creeks in dry land like this.” She paused, then added hesitantly, “Is that where they found Davis, then? His lawyer told me he’d been drowned. But I couldn’t understand how he’d been drowned in the middle of the desert.”

  Fox shook his head. “No one understands it. He was a good mile from Tanque Verde Creek, or any other water. His body was left in an old wash bed, one that’s been dried out for years. The police don’t know where it was he drowned, but wherever it was, it wasn’t where he was found. That means somebody put him there. That’s how they know it was murder.”

  “But who would possibly have done that?” she asked. Dora could hear a mix of confusion, anger and grief in the woman’s low voice. “He didn’t have any enemies, did he? Other than the usual literary kind. And those old feuds, with deMontillo and that critic … what’s his name … St. Johns? Those are decades past. He doesn’t seem to have owned much of value, if robbery was the motive.”

  “The land. And Anna’s paintings,” said Fox. “But if anyone had a motive to kill him for that,” he added with an odd, small grin, “well, I reckon it would have been you.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I didn’t even know I was in his will,” she told him.

  “No? Well, I’ll be damned,” Fox said, looking startled by this.

  Dora looked around, suddenly realizing just what was missing from Cooper’s house. “Where are all of Anna’s paintings now?”

  Fox looked at Maggie and, at her blank response, he ventured, “Cooper’s lawyer must have had them put somewhere for safekeeping. They’re fairly valuable now, you know. He was always getting letters from museums that wanted to buy them, or even just exhibit a few. But you know Cooper, he’d throw the letters out. The old man couldn’t be bothered.”

  “He’d promised Anna the paintings wouldn’t leave the mountain,” Dora corrected him. “At least that’s what he said to me. I had to promise I’d never take the one he gave me away from here.”

  “The lawyer wouldn’t take them away,” said Juan, “without informing Maggie. And the cops would have noticed if they were missing. They must be here somewhere.”

  Maggie said, “I haven’t seen any paintings. But there’s one room here that’s all locked up; my guess is that they’d be in there.” She looked at Fox. “I meant to ask you for the key to it.”

  “I haven’t got a key,” Fox said. “That door has been locked since I was a boy. The mystery room. My sisters and I always wondered what the hell was in there.”

  “Surely someone opened up the room for the police investigation.”

  “Maybe they did. I don’t know.” Fox shrugged.

  “Hmmm.” Maggie smiled suddenly. “Well, here’s your chance to find out what’s inside. Let’s just break through the lock.”

  “Maybe the cops still have the key,” said Fox. “Maybe you should give them a call before we break down Cooper’s door.”

  “It’s Maggie’s door now,” Dora pointed out.

  “I’m not protesting,” said Fox. “Believe me, there’s no one more curious than I am. I can bring my tool box over in the morning and work on the door after we see John.” He grinned suddenly at Maggie. “I admit, I’ve been sorely tempted to break in myself since Cooper’s death. If I were less honest, or maybe just less superstitious, I probably would have. Lord, how we used to scheme to get in when my sisters and I were growing up. But the windows were nailed, the lock couldn’t be jimmied, and old man Cooper never budged. We couldn’t even talk to him about it—he’d go all funny on us.”

  Maggie gave him a thoughtful look. “It’s strange to hear you talk about him that way. I never pictured Davis with children around. He seemed so solitary.”

  “He was solitary. He was living all alone up here after Anna died, drunk as a skunk.”

  “When did your mother come up here, then?”

  “Sometime in the early fifties, I think; several years before I was born. Cooper was living at the bottom of a bottle and he needed looking after. He said he put an ad in the paper and my mother answered it.”

  “And your father?”

  Fox met her gaze steadily. “Truth is, my mother never married. According to Cooper, our father was some local cowboy Mama went out with from time to time; he came and went, and finally went for good, leaving her with three kids to raise.”

  “You were born here, in the mountains? Then you must have known Cooper quite well,” Maggie said to him with interest.

  “Well sure. I was raised in the house across the wash. The canyon was even more remote back then; we almost never went downtown. My sisters and I got ‘home schooled’ by Cooper—which mostly meant we ran wild on the mountain … and recited a lot of poetry.”

  Dora listened to this, fascinated. She’d never heard Fox say more than two words about his past before.

  Maggie said, “Would you and your mother and your sisters be willing to talk to me about Davis for the biography of him I’m writing?”

  Fox looked dubious. “I reckon I could. But Cooper and me, we didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye, I have to warn you. My sisters don’t come back here much—I never really know when they’ll turn up. And my mother, she’s a sweet old lady, but she’s spent a lifetime in the mountains. It’s made her extremely shy of anyone that she doesn’t know. Mama has always been closemouthed about the past—the way old people are sometimes, particularly when there are things in their lives that they’d just as soon forget.”

  “Still, I’d like to try talking to her.”

  Fox shrugged. “I’ll take you over there, then. She lives out on the west side of town, on a bit of property Cooper left her. She didn’t want to be in the mountains anymore after he died. I think she might have left long ago, except that Cooper needed her here. She worshipped the ground he walked on no matter how drunk or crazy he got.”

  “Crazy?” Maggie picked up on the word.

  Fox grinned at her. “Well, that’s my opinion. You ought to take it with a grain of salt since we didn’t get along these last few years. He said I was too much of a drifter, would never amount to anything. And I thought that was pretty rich coming from a drunk. Even a Pulitzer Prize-winning drunk. Lillian—that’s John Aider’s wife—said we were just doing the Antler Dance. You know, the male territorial thing. Maybe she was right.” Fox shrugged again, and then he suddenly stood, having obviously decided he’d revealed enough confidences for one night. His movements were so eloquent of closure that Dora saw Maggie shut her mouth on whatever her next question was going to be.

  Fox got up and crossed the room. He produced a small plastic container from the cabinet below the. sink. “I’d like to take some of that animal scat from Cooper’s study, for John to look at.”

  “Be my guest,” said Maggie magnanimously. “You’re welcome to it. Take all the crap you want.”

  Juan laughed, and stood. “Well then, we’ve put if off long enough,” he said. “Let’s go get that shit out of there. Have you got some buckets? And a shovel?”

  “I know where they are,” Fox told him.

  They gathered mops, buckets, detergent, and a couple of short-handled shovels. Dora and Maggie set to work washing puddled urine from the rug as Juan and Fox shovelled animal droppings out into the mesquite wood.

  When they were finished the study, unlike the kitchen, was clean and tidy. Too tidy, thought Dora. There was something terribly sad about the room without the poet himself in it, smoking like a chimney, surrounded by papers, books, dirty clothes, half-drunk cups of tea, bits of scavenged desert flora, the inevitable bottles of gin. It was seeing that room, empty of life, that finally convinced Dora the old man was gone and would not be returning. She was glad when they finished up and left, locking the doors carefully behind.

  They parted with Fox at the path through the mesquite wood leading back to his cabin. Juan lit the lamp to light their trail, although it was unnecessary. The moon was very bright tonight, pouring silver into the wash. At the end of the drive Do
ra looked back at the house, sitting dark and empty. It was missing Cooper, Dora thought. Not just the house, the land itself. The three tall saguaro, the cottonwood tree, the mountain beneath her feet. A single coyote sang up in the hills, a thin, high-pitched and lonesome sound. She shivered. Juan put an arm around her and she leaned into his warmth.

  • • •

  She crept from out of her hiding place, trembling, licking the blood from her fur. The Hounds were hunting indeed tonight, but they’d found no satisfaction. The trail was cold. The lock had held. There were still strong old protections here. Moonlight spun to flesh, the Hounds had left the marks of their displeasure. And nearly had her own sweet red life’s-blood in consolation.

  She sat in the silver moonlight, her breath fast, her heart still pounding, her long, silky jackrabbit ears twitching at every sound. Her eyes were dark in a pale, human face. The Hounds had run her to exhaustion. But she must not sleep, for she had promised that she would watch over this land tonight. Who was it she had promised? The Spine Witch, or the Woodmage, or perhaps even the One-Who-Sleeps—she was going to have to remember now. To resist the pull of the animal-self and be present in this place and time, walking that linear human path that went so against her nature.

  She fled into the shadows again as a rumbling sound came to her, carried through the rock below and the wind in the mesquite trees. A truck on the road. Truck. Road. She knew those words—yes, she could do this. She could remember how to be in this place. She concentrated, and the features of her face grew even more human in appearance, except for the ears; the round, unblinking eyes; and a nose colored rabbit pink. She watched the truck approach and stop, shadowed by the limbs of the cottonwood tree. The man inside was the one called Fox. She had nothing to fear from him. He just sat there inside the truck, a blanket wrapped around him. Did he know that she was out here? Were his eyes so sharp, his nose so keen?