The Wood Wife

by Terri Windling

  He pulled her up, and shook her, hard, his voice worn raw and ragged. “Why can’t you just understand, Dora? Why does it have to be like this?”

  She bit down on his arm; when he jerked in surprise she was able to break from his bruising hold. “Leave me the hell alone. It’s you. It’s not me. Don’t you put this on me.”

  She ran for the bedroom and locked the oak door, hearing things crashing heavily behind her. The cats had retreated to this room, and the dog was cowering on the floor in the corner. Dora slid to the rug beside Bandido, and buried her face in his rough black fur. Tears burned her eyes but they did not fall as she heard things smashing, his voice still railing. She prayed the place didn’t burn down around them. She ought to call someone. Maybe his parents. Maybe even the police. But how could she do that to him? This was Juan, her husband, not some redneck wife-beater. That didn’t happen to people like them. She sat holding tightly onto Bandido, feeling sober, and sick, and frightened now.

  After a while she heard a door slam. And then there was silence. She waited. But Juan did not return—he had probably gone to the hills, to wherever it was that he went. This time she was glad; she wanted him gone. She stood, shaking. She would lock up the house. When he returned, if he returned, he could spend the night out in the barn. When this madness passed, she would let him back in. And then they would talk. Or else she’d leave.

  She opened the bedroom door cautiously, feeling heartsick as she surveyed the damage. She was a wreck, one eye swelling shut. The big room was a wreck as well. And nothing remained on the walls now but the picture by Anna Naverra. Dora crossed over to it, hating it now. She took it down. It ought to burn too. But no, none of this was Anna’s fault. She’d give the painting back to Maggie; she didn’t care what Juan would think of that. She looked down at the ghostly white “Mage” in distaste. She didn’t want it anymore.

  She put it on the floor, faced against the wall. Then she gave a small cry as she looked into the hearth. Her copies of The Spine Witch were smouldering there along with Juan’s old paintings and drawings—every single painstakingly handmade copy of the little book that Dora had. She felt her legs give way beneath her, and she sank to her knees on the cold slate floor. She pulled a charred page from the fire and ran her fingers across the unburned edge, a scrap of back type on thick cover stock embedded with cactus spines, mesquite leaves. She watched as the flames turned the rest into ash. And then, finally, the tears fell.

  • • •

  The boy sat still, perched on one of the granite boulders that had tumbled into Redwater Creek when the One-Who-Sleeps last stirred, or stretched, or turned in his dream of stone.

  The boy’s body was formed of human flesh, but his two arms were a white owl’s wings. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and then he was even more human still, with arms that ended in perfect human hands, and the smooth, hairless groin of a young boy. He wore only a mask of feathers that covered and formed part of his face, and a necklace with a turquoise stone set into a thin piece of copper.

  He looked down into the dark water. In the thin light of the waxing moon he could see the Drowned Girl lying there beneath the creek’s black surface. He called to her in words for which there was no human translation.

  “Mage,” the girl acknowledged him. She opened her eyes. The water rippled.

  “Mage,” he acknowledged the other in turn. “It is the midnight hour. And I have come.”

  “So I see.” She rose from the cold creek bed, silt and small fish streaming from her hair. She rubbed her eyes as though she had just woken up, although she never slept. She was mimicking some human or another; she glanced at him to see if he had guessed. Then she waded from the cold creek water and up onto the stoney bank.

  Her dress was wet, mud-stained, and torn; he could see through the fabric to the white flesh beneath. Her feet were bare; she was oblivious of the cactus spines, the brambles and thorns. She tossed her head, and fire smoked, and then her cloud of white hair was dry, crackling like static on shoulders so thin and pale they were almost transparent. Her bloodless skin was of a white shading on blue; her slanted eyes were black as coal. And yet she was terribly beautiful; she pulsed hot and cold, like a star.

  “The painter is coming,” the Owl Boy told her.

  “Juan,” she said, tasting the name. “I am almost finished with this one, which is a pity. He is exquisite.”

  “You are driving him mad.”

  She acknowledged this with a nod, tilting her lovely head.

  “But will he do what needs to be done? Will he hunt? Will he kill, this painter of yours?”

  The girl smiled, a sharp little smile.

  “And what will you give him in return?” he asked. “What is it he wants?”

  “The usual. His dreams are of wealth and fame. He has asked to paint Great paintings.”

  He yawned. “How dull. He should learn from Anna. He should ask to paint true paintings instead.”

  “Ah, but then he would be dangerous.” She stroked his back, and the boy sprouted feathers beneath the soft pressure of her touch. “And Anna is dead. He’ll learn nothing from her. He does not walk the spiral path.”

  The Owl Boy laughed.

  She cocked her head. “Now he is climbing up the hill. Come, and you can watch me work,” she invited her partner and her rival.

  He flung himself back into the white owl shape, and followed after her.

  ❋ Davis Cooper ❋

  Redwater Road

  Tucson, Arizona

  Sisters of Mercy Convent

  Mexico City

  October 1, 1949

  My beloved Anna,

  Yes, I am writing again. Do you even get these letters, I wonder? Or does someone stop them, your mother perhaps, or the sisters at the convent? I send them out into your silence, still hoping for one small word in return. Can you hear me? Can you see me? Can you forgive me for whatever it is I might have done to drive you away?

  The sycamore leaves are turning to gold along the banks of Redwater Creek. The late summer rains have given us a season of flowers—they are covering the hills now. Pink lantana, lush orange mallows, carpets of deep purple verbena and those yellow, fragile-looking things whose name I can never remember and now you are no longer here to remind me. How is it that a land that grieves for you can look so beautiful? For I can feel its grief, a murmur in the stones, a sigh in the wind through the mesquite wood—or perhaps it is my own grief, heavy as granite in the hollows of my heart.

  Even your creatures sigh and droop and look to me less substantial now, shimmering in the desert heat. Yes I know, you will say they are not “yours” at all, but they wear the shapes you gave to them. They hover in the trees beyond the house seeming puzzled and perturbed by your absence. The Spine Witch peers in the studio window, hissing and bristling, like an angry cat, when she sees my face and not yours through the glass. The rootmegs gather in the mesquite wood; they no longer flee when I walk by, but simply sit in the shadows of the trees, watching me with wide, dark eyes. What would you have me tell them, Anna? And what should I say to Maisie? Or to Riddley Wallace when he writes to ask when you will send him paintings again?

  Forgive me. I will not pressure you. Take what time you need to think, to mend, to do whatever it is you have to do—just so long as you come home again to this sad, drunk poet who needs you. The Rincons need you. The coyotes and the deer and the jackrabbits all need you. I can’t bear to think of you in the flatlands where the stones do not whisper your name. Come home, or let me come to you.

  With my heart in my hands,

  your Cooper

  Chapter Nine ❋

  The Spine Witch searches the soil

  for grubs and beetles, the skeletons of birds

  and discarded poems, their bones

  as weightless as breath. Or prayer.

  —The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper

  The sun was already high above the mountains when Maggie rose the next morning. She rubbed her e
yes, disoriented. The day had started without her. Thumper lay at the foot of the bed, curled into a ball of fur. She’d been there when Maggie had returned last night, snoring softly in the nest of quilts. Maggie slid carefully out from under the blankets, careful not to wake the girl.

  The day was hot, the sky cloudless, as Maggie stepped onto the porch to retrieve the pile of morning mail, including the letters that still came for Cooper, and a thick envelope from London. Beyond the porch were a dozen fat quail, their top-knots bobbing like question marks as they searched out a breakfast of seeds and bugs from the dry and dusty soil. A sidewinder snake divided the group as it undulated across the yard, moving through the sage and the brittlebush with a sideways motion. The quail scattered apart suddenly, and the snake lifted an inquisitive head. The skinny coyote had come into the yard, trotting briskly from the mesquite wood. He ignored the snake but eyed the fat grey birds, licking his chops.

  “Good morning,” Maggie called.

  The coyote cocked his head and looked at her through his one good eye. His long pink tongue was visible, hanging comically to one side.

  Then he came toward her, approaching slowly, moving in a strange, stiff way. His back was arched aggressively, but he held his head tucked low in submission. His mouth gaped in a snarl, or a smile, exposing long rows of canine teeth. She had read about this in the books she’d borrowed from John. This was how coyotes made friends, or communicated peaceful intentions. But nothing she’d read indicated they would do this with humans, only other coyotes.

  Inch by inch the coyote crossed the yard, bowing and bobbing as he came, till he stood just at the edge of the porch by the step where Maggie sat. He turned his head, looking through the good eye. He made a sound deep in his throat. Then he bussed her hand with his long cold nose, gave a bark, and dashed away.

  She waited on the porch a while longer, but the one-eyed coyote did not return. The quail came back to finish their meal. A spotted roadrunner appeared in the yard; it stopped for a moment, raising and lowering its long tail, then it turned and raced on.

  Maggie took the pile of mail inside. She put the teakettle on the stove. The house was quiet. Thumper was still sleeping when she went into the bedroom to grab some clothes. It wasn’t until Maggie sat down to breakfast along with the latest letter from Tat and a copy of last week’s Village Voice that she heard the bedsprings squeak in the other room, and a flurry of footsteps.

  Thumper appeared in the kitchen doorway, one ear standing straight and stiff, the other angled down over one eye. She stood and blinked, her eyes very dark, her hands spread over her belly.

  Maggie swallowed, staring at the girl, who was very real, very dirty, and smelled rather strong as she stood barefoot on the kitchen floor.

  “Are you hungry?” Maggie asked. “I’ve got cereal here. Muesli. You can have some.”

  The girl nodded and came into the kitchen, pelted feet padding softly across the floor. Maggie continued to stare at her. She needed more coffee, no doubt about it.

  Maggie dished muesli into a second bowl, poured milk over it, and placed it on the table. She sat down and gestured to another chair. Thumper looked at it. She climbed over the chair and sat hunched on the tabletop. With small, agile fingers, she fished the oats and nuts from the milk and popped them in her mouth. Maggie watched the girl eat, then she went to the sink and ran tap water into a glass. She passed it to Thumper, who took hold of it, her expression intent, almost reverent. She dipped her tongue into it three times, and then she passed it back to Maggie.

  “No, that’s for you,” Maggie told the girl, and Thumper’s eyes grew even wider. Of course, Maggie realized, water would be precious to a creature of this land. “But let me put it in a bowl for you instead. I think you’ll find it easier that way.”

  The girl emptied the bowl, lapping at the water delicately with her small pink tongue. She looked amazed when Maggie filled the bowl again from the tap at the sink. She said, distressed, in her soft, gravelly voice, “But I mustn’t. I don’t have anything to give to you.”

  “That’s all right,” Maggie told her.

  Thumper shook her head. It wasn’t all right.

  “Well then,” said Maggie, sitting down again, “I’ll tell you what you can give me. I’d like you to answer some questions for me.”

  The girl looked at her warily.

  “Is that the rule,” Maggie asked her, remembering Cooper’s notes about gifts and exchange, “that when you receive something, you must give something back?”

  Thumper nodded, looking down at her toes.

  “But you’ve taken things from this house before. My stones. My Celtic broach.”

  “The Spine Witch took the stones,” she whispered. “And then she gave you Sight.”

  “Sight?”

  “So you could See the desert.”

  “She did? Well now, that’s interesting. Why did the Spine Witch want the stones?”

  “For protection.” Thumper lifted her eyes.

  “Protection from what?”

  The Rabbit Girl frowned. “I don’t remember,” she admitted.

  Maggie smiled, trying to put them both at ease. “What about my silver broach then?”

  Thumper hung her head. “I wanted it. It was pretty,” she told Maggie.

  “And what did you give back for it?”

  Thumper swallowed. “Nothing. I forgot.”

  “What happens if you forget?” asked Maggie.

  The girl looked perplexed. “Nothing happens.”

  “Then why is it a rule?”

  Thumper shrugged, a very human gesture. “It’s just a rule. That’s all. It’s dammas. It’s … it’s what you do.”

  “Dah-maz? What’s that?”

  The girl flushed red, two spots of color beneath the downy cheeks. “Beauty. Motion. That-Which-Moves.” She made a spiral movement with her hands. “I can’t tell you. I don’t have the words… Or maybe I forgot them.”

  “Then who has the words? Who can answer my question?”

  Relief flooded the Rabbit Girl’s face. “A mage. A witch. Or a shape-shifter.”

  Maggie said, “And what are you, then?”

  “A shifter. But only a very little one. I don’t know very many shapes. I always forget them,” Thumper admitted. She held out her hand, so Maggie could see the spiral pattern marked on her wrist.

  Maggie was reminded of Crow’s spiral tattoos. “Is Crow also a shape-shifter? Is he the one I should take my questions to?”

  “Uh-huh. To Crow, or else the One-Who-Sleeps—only you mustn’t wake him up. But not the Drowned Girl. She scares me.” Thumper shivered. “Only I forget why.”

  “All right,” Maggie said, “I’ll ask Crow then. I won’t ask you anything more; I can see my questions distress you. But thank you for trying to answer anyway.”

  Thumper squirmed and ducked her head. “Don’t thank me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s just another rule. I think it is. But—”

  “You forget,” Maggie said. She sighed.

  She rose from the kitchen table and took the empty bowls to the sink. She heard the scrapping of a chair, and when she turned around, Thumper had left the room. Maggie went to the door. The girl was running through Cooper’s front yard, laughing now, pleased with herself.

  “Hey!” Maggie called. “Come back tonight. You’re welcome here. Remember that.”

  “Thumper, Thumper, Thumper,” said the girl. She chanted, almost sang the name. Then she dropped to the ground and rolled in the sandy soil, covering her soft grey pelt with a layer of fine sepia-colored dust.

  Maggie watched her as she rolled and scratched and stretched, and curled into a ball. When the girl uncurled, she had been transformed, or else she had transformed herself, into a grey hare, a desert jackrabbit, covered with a layer of dust. Then the jackrabbit rolled, exuberantly, somersaulting across the sun-baked earth. It turned into a blur of light, a shimmer of heat on the golden stones, and then the creatur
e was gone.

  The yard was empty. The hare, the quail, the skinny coyote—they had all disappeared. Maggie lingered in the doorway nonetheless, admiring the deep lapis blue of the sky, the wind in the trees, the sun on the stones. It took her a while to realize that behind her the phone had begun to ring.

  It was her daily call from her ex-husband. “Nigel,” she said, “isn’t there anything I can say that will persuade you to call me later in the day?”

  “This is later,” Nigel protested.

  “Oh. You’re right. Sorry, Nige. I got up late this morning.”

  “So where were you last night then? Had a hot date, did you?”

  “None of your business,” she told him in a bantering tone. But in fact it was none of his business. “Nigel, what is it you want?”

  “Go get your copy of today’s New York Times. There’s something I want you to see.”

  “I don’t have today’s Times. I get it by post, so it comes a day late up here.”

  “God, you are in the boonies. All right, I’ll read it to you.”

  Maggie sat down, cradling the phone, to listen patiently to a long article on medieval music, Estampie, and the fabulous life of Nigel Vanderlin.

  She was pleased for him, and gratified that those long years of work had come to fruition—even if she didn’t really need to hear the whole thing right now, word for word, long distance. But the words he read seemed unreal to her as she sat in Cooper’s dusty house. There was no hint of the Nigel she knew: those Amsterdam kitchens, underpaid gigs, rooms without heat, months of cabbage soup. In the Times version of Nigel’s history, Estampie was the labor of one brilliant man. Never mind the group, much less the network of people who stood behind the group, who had formed the safety net beneath the highwire rope of success Nigel walked. It wasn’t Nigel’s fault really; this was the mold their culture fit heroes in. The independent man, the solitary cowboy striding into town at high noon.