The Wood Wife

by Terri Windling

  “Well, I heard she went a bit loco out here. The canyon was pretty isolated. And I guess Anna must have been unstable to begin with, considering how she died.”

  “But you say Cooper was also superstitious. Do you think he believed in this world of Anna’s too?”

  Dora nodded slowly. “But I don’t think I’d call it Anna’s world. It’s more concrete than that. It’s the mountain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dora was embarrassed suddenly. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve probably just read The Wood Wife one time too many.”

  “You’re not comfortable talking about this, are you?”

  “Not really,” Dora admitted. “Talking about the things you secretly believe in is a bit like talking about sex, isn’t it? It’s a private thing. Words diminish it somehow. And I guess I worry that I’m crazy too, the things I feel about this land—or at any rate that someone else would think so.”

  “Like who for instance?”

  “Like you for instance.”

  “Why me? Do I seem so narrow-minded to you?”

  “No, it’s not that. But what I feel about the mountain here isn’t entirely … rational. I feel it with my belly,” she placed a hand on her stomach, “not so much with my head. You’re more … cosmopolitan than me. You’ve seen more; you know more. I just know what I feel.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Maggie said drily, “the original Cosmo Girl. Why do you think I wouldn’t respect your perceptions? You’re smart, you’re sharp and you’re hardly naive.”

  Dora bit her lip. “But not like you.”

  “What on earth do you mean, not like me? Look, Dora, I’m just a cracker from the middle of Nowhere, West Virginia. I grew up in the country. And I know it has a kind of … spirit to it, that you can’t easily put into words. Unless you’re Cooper. He did it. He used words like they were an incantation, a spell, a glamour—do you know what that old word used to mean? A glamour was a kind of spell or enchantment. Somehow Cooper learned to speak the ‘language of the earth’ while he was living up here.”

  “But those images in his poems: the Wood Wife, the Spine Witch, the boy with the owl’s face, the drowned girl in the river… Maggie, are you saying you think they’re real, not symbolic?”

  “Why can’t they be both?” Then Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I think about anything anymore, to tell you the truth. Living in this house, on this land, has turned everything I thought upside down and back again twice over. But I can’t dismiss Cooper as just a drunk, or crazy. The old man may have been both those things, but he was too smart to be only those things. There is something behind those poems and Anna’s paintings, and I reckon Cooper expected me to find it or he wouldn’t have left them to me.”

  “You reckon, huh?” Dora smiled. “Now you’re beginning to sound like Fox.”

  “I am?” Maggie looked more startled by this than she was by any of Cooper’s mysteries.

  “This place is going to rub off on you yet,” Dora warned the other woman as they put away Anna’s paintings in the storage loft overhead. Maggie looked thoughtful. She closed the door of the studio behind them as they left, and as she did so Dora noticed Fox had installed another lock.

  Dora returned to the bedroom while Maggie stopped to put music on the CD player. It sounded medieval. “Is that Estampie?” she asked when Maggie came back into the room.

  “No, Symphonye,” Maggie said. “But you’re close—Nigel has recorded this too. I love this piece of music. It was written by Hildegard Von Bingen, a twelfth-century abbess, and a mystic. She had visions—but she was able to reconcile them with her Catholicism.”

  “Unlike our poor Anna.”

  “That’s right. That’s what made me think of Hildegard just now.”

  “It’s pretty,” Dora said, although in fact she liked music with a little more kick. She boxed up clothes without seeing them, thinking about Anna’s painting.

  She was going to have to talk to Juan, breach that wall that was going up between them. Last night he hadn’t even come to bed. He’d stayed out till well past midnight, and then he’d sacked out on the couch. She had woken up in an empty bed, wondering what had happened to their marriage…

  They finished packing Cooper’s things, and then opened up two bottles of beer, taking them outside to the cool shade of the front porch. The day was a scorcher, more like summer heat than the middle of October. The ocotillo were blooming again, resembling wands in a tarot card deck, bursting into bright plumes at the top, brilliant red against the new green leaves.

  Two figures walked down the road by the wash, kicking up the dust with long, boney feet. “Hey!” Dora called, waving her hand. The taller of the women waved back.

  “Are those Fox’s sisters?” Maggie asked with surprise. “They look so young.”

  “You haven’t met them yet? Come on over then, I’ll introduce you.”

  She called out again, and the women stopped and waited in the shade of a paloverde tree. They were slender and graceful, and looked very much alike. Each had brown hair loose to her waist, and eyes of a brown so dark it was almost black. Their faces were thin and delicate and their long noses ever-so-slightly hooked.

  Each put a long, thin hand in Maggie’s just briefly, and gave her a hesitant smile. Dora often wondered how they could perform when offstage they were so painfully shy. But she’d seen how the sisters transformed when they danced. They’d given an impromptu performance once at the Alders’, at Cooper’s seventy-eighth birthday party. They’d danced to Debussy, Lillian on piano and Fox on an Irish concertina. The magic of that evening was one she’d not forget—nor the sound of Debussy on a squeezebox.

  “If you’d like to come over,” Maggie was saying, “you’re welcome, anytime.”

  Isabella cocked her head, with a strange little smile.

  Angela was silent, her eyes very wide. Then she said, in her quiet, breathy voice, “And you must come to the place where we live. Mustn’t she, Isabella?”

  The other woman said, “My sister isn’t well. She’s had an injury and she needs to rest now.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Dora with concern.

  “I can’t dance,” Angela told her. For a moment Dora saw a glint of anger in the woman’s dark eyes.

  “What happened?”

  “She was hurt,” Isabella told her simply, and the look on her face stopped the rest of Dora’s questions. As they turned to go, Dora saw that Angela was limping, leaning on her sister’s arm.

  They crossed the wash in the direction of their house, identical from behind in their simple yellow shifts. Their feet were bare on the sand and stones, despite the danger of cactus spines, and each wore something circling the left ankle like a thin blue band. A small coyote, the half-blind one, was sitting on the opposite bank, looking as though he waited for them and panting in the midday heat. As the sisters approached, he didn’t turn and run. He waited there, almost expectantly.

  Maggie turned to walk back to her own house, but Dora lingered for a moment more. She watched as one sister stretched out her hand, and the coyote’s pink tongue gave it a kiss.

  • • •

  Fox put another log on the fire. When the sun went down, the evening would chill and the warmth of the flames would be welcome, but now he was stripped down to his jeans and sweating as the fire grew hotter. His silver bracelet lay on the ground along with his shirt and a small suede bag, leaving only a thin cord of knotted leather tied loosely around his wrist.

  Tomás sat and watched Fox work, silently smoking a cigarette. He too was stripped down to the waist, and his hair was loose upon his back. Small white scars puckered the skin across his broad copper chest.

  “There’s too much you’re not telling me,” Fox accused the older man crossly. He picked up an ax and brought it down hard on a long length of mesquite wood, splitting the log in two. He picked up one end to put on the fire, but Tomás got up and took it from him. He placed the wo
od on the fire himself, his movements careful and unhurried.

  He turned to Fox. “If you tend the fire like that it will burn with your anger.”

  Fox dropped the ax, sat down, wiped his face. “I’m not angry,” he said, “I’m frustrated. I want to know what’s out in those hills.”

  “And you think I know?”

  Fox was silent.

  Tomás laughed. “You think I’m some shaman, white boy? Yeah, you think I’m some ‘wise Injun medicine man,’ like something you seen in a movie somewhere. Or read in some woo-woo book from California.”

  “And aren’t you?” Fox asked. It was a question he’d never asked the other man before.

  Tomás gave him a broad smile. “I’m just a man. I fix cars for a living, I watch TV, I go to Burger King like anyone else. I haven’t got the secret of the universe. Don’t make me out to be what I’m not.”

  “What is this you’re teaching me then?”

  “How to listen. To the fire. The water. The wind. Nothing more mystical than that,” he said.

  Fox sat and he considered this. “That seems mystical to me.”

  Tomás laughed again, at some joke of his own. “That’s because you have only begun.”

  • • •

  Maggie got back from town before dusk, and put her groceries away in the house. Then she stood out on the porch looking up the canyon, undecided. She could climb to the peak, watch the sun set and pretend she wasn’t waiting for anyone there; or she could find her way to Red Springs and hope that the stag would appear once again.

  She chose Red Springs, in a spirit of defiance. Why should she wait for that man to return? She’d been on the peak every night again this week. She was starting to feel like a fool.

  She found the trail that Tomás had used, and followed it over the wash, up the hill, past the crumbling house where Fox had grown up, half buried in the creosote scrub. Far up the hill, she could make out the figure of Lillian Alder on an opposite trail. She called up and waved, but Lillian was bent over a plant and oblivious to her.

  The sky overhead was turning deep blue, streaked with banners of orange, red and pink. The desert was bathed in a golden light, each cactus, each small tree vivid, distinct. Its beauty stopped her on the path. Something had changed. Something was different ever since she woke up that morning. Her eyes seemed to have adjusted now to the subtler colors of the Sonoran palette. The desert was no longer an emptiness, an absence of water and dark northern greens, but an abundance: of sky, of silver and sage and sepia and indigo blue, of gold desert light, so pure, so clear she wanted to gather it up in her two cupped hands and drink it down.

  She rubbed her eyes. Her vision kept changing. One moment it was the way it had been and the desert was just a dry, hostile land. In the next moment it was lovely again, a sentient presence beneath her feet, holding her like a stone in its hand. To be one stone more…, she repeated to herself as she walked on into the tall blue hills, Return me, oh sun, to my wild destiny…

  She continued on toward the canyon’s wild heart, toward the sycamore grove and the circle of the springs. The stag would be there. She could almost feel his presence, drawing her closer. She blinked her eyes. Her vision kept wavering. Time felt stretched, as it did in dreams—perhaps she was home in bed dreaming now. But home, where is that? a voice whispered. Was that voice in her head, or in the land?

  She reached Redwater Creek’s rocky bank and then she stopped, her heart in her throat. He was there, by the creek, as though he’d been waiting. He wore only his jeans this time, his thick black hair unbound on his shoulders, his green eyes intent on her. She swallowed, and continued up the path. As she drew close to him he reached out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her up the bank. She was moving in the dreamtime now, although real rock lay underfoot and a real wind ruffled the back of her hair. Wasn’t this why she had looked for him? Hadn’t she been dreaming of him for weeks? His skin was cool and smooth against hers. She could almost hear the rhythm of his pulse, beating like an Indian drum, a sound that carried on the wind from somewhere farther down the canyon.

  They walked hand in hand along the length of the trail, silent, until they reached the springs. The circle of tall white trees was empty. There was only white rock and water and wind. The stag wasn’t there. Maggie let out a long, soft sigh of disappointment.

  Her companion frowned. “So he was the one you were looking for here, not me.” He touched her suddenly on one flushed cheek, then ran his finger down to her chin, down her throat to the skin of her breast.

  She felt fire beneath the touch. But this was no dream, and time, which had slowed, was now moving too fast. She took his hand and lifted it away. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Call me Crow.”

  “Just Crow?”

  “Just Crow,” he said.

  “Even Fox has more of a name than that. Fox, Crow. I feel like I’m living in the middle of Aesop’s Fables.”

  He laughed, showing even white teeth against the sun-browned skin of his face. “Black Maggie,” he named her. She caught her breath.

  “How do you know that name?”

  “Cooper, of course.”

  “You knew Cooper?”

  “I knew Cooper better than he knew himself. Now stand very still.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “Because your man is coming up the canyon now. He knows we’re here, but a sudden movement might still startle him away again.”

  She turned slowly, and saw the great white stag pick its way up the rocks of the creek. His eyes were black as a starless night. His hide was velvet, his horns were ivory, he was made of more than flesh and bones. He gathered the dying light of the sky into his being, like a radiant star.

  They watched as the stag approached the springs and slowly drank his fill there. When he was finished he turned and watched them. The stars seemed to swirl around his great horns. The earth was spinning beneath Maggie’s feet; Crow placed his arm around Maggie’s shoulder and she leaned back, grateful for his touch. But the stag’s big head jerked upward, and he backed away from them, eyes wild.

  He stopped when he reached the water’s edge. Staring at Crow, he lowered his head until it touched the ground. Then he wheeled and ran, hooves striking the stones, disappearing from the canyon. He took the dying light with him, and now the hills were dark.

  She moved away from Crow and stepped up to the springs. There was just one stone where the stag had stood, dark turquoise with veins of black. She picked it up, brought it over to Crow, and placed it in his palm.

  “For protection,” she repeated what Tomás had said.

  But the stone crumbled into bits in his hand. He laughed, and blew the dust away. “You see, I can’t be protected. I’m afraid it’s much too late for that. Now I must give you something in return for the gift,” Crow said.

  He stepped closer to her, put his hand to her face—and did not touch it. They were of a height, although she could have sworn that she’d been the taller when last they met. His smile was tender, but also sad; there was loneliness in the lines of his face. His eyes looked very dark to her now, containing the whole of the mountains.

  He said, “No, I won’t touch you again, Black Maggie. Unless, of course, you ask me to.”

  Maggie smiled back at him. “In that case,” she said, “I’m asking.”

  He put his two hands in Maggie’s hair and his mouth came down on hers, hard and bruising. He tasted salty and he tasted sweet. He had tasted this way in her dreams. She sunk into the depths of his kiss, and then she rose and broke surface again. Her hands were hot where they rested on his hips. She took a breath, and raised her eyes.

  The heat chilled to ice, for the man had gone. A woman held Maggie in her arms. The flushed face that looked back at her was the mirror image of her own. She stared at that familiar face, and it mimicked her confusion.

  Maggie broke from the embrace, stumbling, rocks skittering beneath her boot heels. Her identical twin, her d
oppelganger, smiled then, and laughed at her. The voice, the laughter, was Crow’s, not her own, and sharp with the cactus spines of mockery. Maggie felt her legs give way beneath her and she sat down hard by the edge of the creek. When she looked again it was Crow standing there—male once more, and beautiful, and painfully desirable, tossing back long blue-black hair the color of the darkened hills.

  Perhaps she had imagined that other face; her vision was funny; she’d felt strange all day. But she hadn’t imagined the laughter. He was standing and laughing at her still. His face held no passion or tenderness for her, just amusement. She felt her stomach turn.

  “Who are you?” she asked him once again, her voice low with anger, shame, and disappointment.

  Crow strode up to her and grabbed her arm, hard, pulling her to her feet. “Who are you?” he said close to her face. “Answer me that, and then you can ask me that question for a third time.”

  He let her go abruptly. Then he flung back his head, and he began to howl, an animal sound, filling the hills. The coyotes answered from the slopes all around. The drums in the night were insistent now. Crow laughed, as if he had just received a startling message in one of those sounds.

  He left her then, as suddenly as he had come, and did not look back.

  • • •

  Crow stepped into the circle of the fire. Beyond there was only darkness. The sky was black and starless, merging with the black of the hills below. One man sat in the fire circle, smoking a cigarette, talking to the flames, although Crow could smell the presence of the other who had departed not long before.

  Crow sat down, cross-legged in the dirt, next to the drum that had called him here. Tomás passed him the cigarette. Crow took it, breathed in smoke and flame, and he passed it back again.

  Tomás was silent, until he’d smoked the cigarette down to the very end. He didn’t look at Crow. It was a gesture of respect, and Crow was pleased by this.

  At length Tomás said, “Who comes to my fire? Man or spirit?”