The Wood Wife

by Terri Windling

  “What is it, Bandido?” Dora said. “What is it you see out there, boy?”

  As Dora peered into the darkness, Crow studied this second woman with interest. Her husband was the young painter that the Floodmage claimed as her masterpiece. The mage had made a Hunter of the man, and tonight he’d run with her spectral Hounds. If he survived that hunt, then he would win the skill with paint he’d bargained for. But the Hounds would hunt what they wished to hunt—perhaps the white stag, perhaps the man.

  There were many in the shadows of the hills who wagered now on the outcome of that hunt: would the painter and the Hounds draw blood that night? Or would the poacher reach the white stag first, led to his prey by the Owl Boy, the Windmage, who had taunted him with it for months? Or perhaps the stag himself might prevail, as he had before, to run another year—wild, wily, beautiful, shedding turquoise stones across the mountain slopes.

  Crow’s bet was on the stag. The beast was canny, quick, and powerful. Crow’s kind would not kill one such as that; no one of them would take down a creature in its prime. A bullet to the heart, a knife to the throat: a human hand must do that work. Crow wagered that the painter’s hand would falter. But the poacher was an unknown factor, and that made it more interesting to him.

  Crow heard gunshot crack through the hills: two quick shots, in rapid succession. The Owl Boy’s pet must be close by. Crow sniffed the air with his pointed nose. There was no scent of magic or the stag. The man was hunting other game now. Practicing the art of death.

  “It’s that poacher out there,” Black Maggie was saying to the others. “The one who shot at Cody, and Pepe. I saw his truck parked off the road. Tomás says he’s out to hunt the white stag.” Her face was grim as she rose to her feet. “The stag is One of Them. The Nightmage. Anna’s ‘guardian angel of the east.’ ”

  “In that case, can it be killed?” Fox asked her.

  “In that shape, yes, I think it can. Look at the damage a gun did to Cody; and what happens to the ones caught in animal traps. I don’t know what will happen if a guardian dies. I don’t think I want to find out.”

  Dora looked troubled. “You know, Juan has taken up an interest in deer hunting lately.”

  “Juan?” said Fox. “He’s got to be the least violent person—” Fox stopped abruptly, looking uneasily at Dora’s black eye.

  “Yes, I know,” said Dora, “but he’s been asking Tomás all about it. He even bought a hunting knife. I thought it was weird—but then so much has been weird about Juan these last few months.”

  Fox and Maggie exchanged a look. “I don’t like the sound of any of this,” she muttered.

  Fox said, “All right, here’s what I think. You and Dora should hike back to the Alders’ house and phone the sheriff’s office. We’ve got to get this trigger-happy young fool out of the canyon, particularly with Juan still out there. We don’t know where Tomás is now either, and this poacher could mistake either one for a deer. My sisters are out there somewhere too. They weren’t at the house when we stopped by.”

  “What exactly do you plan to do here alone?” said Maggie. “Threaten the guy with your flashlight, maybe? I say we stick together.”

  Dora agreed. “The Alders are bound to be calling the sheriff by now anyway. I don’t want to go back, not while Juan is still in the hills.”

  Fox sighed. “All right. I’m overruled. But I don’t like it. I’d feel better if the two of you would go back.”

  “Stop playing the cowboy,” Maggie said drily. “Three of us will be more intimidating than one, and I don’t really believe he’d shoot at us. It’s the stag he wants, not the law on his heels.”

  “I reckon you’re right about that,” Fox conceded. “All right, then, let’s head for the springs. That’s where Tomás has seen the stag; that’s where the poacher will be.”

  Crow crept quietly after them on the path that ran along Redwater Creek. Their trail was lit by the copper glow of the huge, round moon hanging overhead. The moon was high. The air was sharp. An owl hooted somewhere in the night. Soon the Hounds would reach Red Springs Canyon, and then the hunt would begin.

  The three ahead were silent on the trail, oblivious to the changes in the desert around them. Rootmegs had begun to gather beneath the mesquites’ gnarled black limbs. The willow witch was braiding her long green hair by the rocky edge of the creek; the three passed right by her, seeing only a willow sapling clinging to the rocks. The rocks themselves shifted and groaned, exposing wrinkled faces shaped of granite, veined with quartz, their blind eyes flashing silver mica. Overhead, the winged ones hovered, wearing shapes of mist and dust and light, leaking trails of color behind them onto the stones of the desert floor. In the thorny green cholla, a pale face lifted to drink that color down like rain, while the purple staghorn cholla tied on their staghorn caps over their spiney little heads.

  They gathered, the thornwights, the tumbleweeds, the fierce devil’s claws, and the tiny fairy dusters. The witches, the mages, the shape-shifters. Phantasms, fairies, spirits, and ghosts. To Maggie and the others it was just rising mist, inexplicably covering the dry, stony soil. Soon the moon would reach its peak. And then, yes, the hunt would begin.

  Crow’s coyote mouth gaped wide in a smile of anticipation. He sniffed the air. The stag was still distant. The poacher waited at the canyon’s heart; his blood lust had a distinct, acrid smell. Crow could also smell blood. The scent of death. He recalled those two shots that had rung through the night. The Owl Boy’s pet had killed once already, preparing for the prize to come. Whatever it was he had killed lay somewhere ahead, near the circle of the springs.

  Then Crow heard a thin cry, a wailing, a howling more eerie than the coyotes’ song. The Hounds were loose, coming over the hills, driving the stag before them. The Floodmage ran in the wake of the Hounds, limned by the light of the copper moon. An owl called again, the Windmage, her rival. Crow shifted into a bird shape himself, rising into the clear night sky above the trail by Redwater Creek. Enough of Black Maggie and her foolish companions. They were slow. They were growing tedious. They were going to miss the hunt.

  Crow soared, and circled, and settled on the limb of a sycamore tree arched over the springs. The spring water was hot tonight, steaming in the cold night air. The water ran red, the heart-blood of the mountain, pumping through the land’s dry veins. The white trees, the white tumbled stone glowed luminescent in the full moon’s light. From that perch, Crow could see the approach of the spectral Hounds, and the Drowned Girl with them, her white hair streaming behind her, her small white feet pounding over the stones.

  The Hounds glowed golden, ghostly, formed of moonlight turned to flesh and bone. Their bodies were thin and skeletal, whipcord muscles rippling under the fur. Their eyes were red, their jaws enormous—too large for the rest of them, grotesque, crowded with long, sharp teeth and lolling crimson tongues. The earth was scorched where they passed by, howling in their blood lust.

  But where was the stag? Ah, there he was. The Hounds had split into two packs, herding the wild-eyed animal between them. In one pack was the Bright Hunter, the painter, marked as One of Them. His breath was labored; as was the stag’s. They had harried the beast for some distance. The Hounds breathed smoke in the cold desert air, their eyes were flames, their teeth like knives. The stag could be hurt, but not killed by them. He was bound as tightly with protection from the Hounds as the witch woman, Anna Naverra, had been. The stag knew the man was the danger here, on this night of all nights in human Time.

  The Hounds herded him to the circle of the springs, the land rising steep around them here, trying to drive the stag to exhaustion and to bring him down, so the man could strike. Crow rocked on his perch with his amusement. The little Floodmage claimed to disdain all of humankind, and yet she overestimated them. That man was no match for the big white stag, even when the Hounds had done with it. The man was a painter, not a hunter; a creator, not a killer. The stag would win, and then the Hounds would feed on the man instead.


  The stag wheeled, chunks of turquoise flying where his hooves hit the rock of the canyon’s floor. The Floodmage’s pack was closing in. But where had the Windmage’s poacher gone? Crow lifted lightly into the sky, circled the clearing and found the man at the edge of the trailhead, waiting there. Waiting for what? This was interesting. Crow fluttered and settled on a rock ledge above, where the Owl Boy sat, his masked face intent. Crow fanned his black wings, startling the boy. “And what are you up to, my pretty?”

  The Windmage put a finger to his lips. “Be quiet, Fool, and you shall see.”

  Crow surveyed the night: the stag, the Hounds, the man with the knife, the man with the gun. Black Maggie was coming up the trail, the witch woman’s son close at her heels. She spied the poacher, just as the poacher spied the stag bounding up the hill. The Hounds drove the stag up toward the springs. The stag wheeled. Then the animal gathered himself, to bound through the clearing and up the steep slope, toward the east, toward escape, away from the Hounds. He ran, made the leap. He folded in midair, and fell heavily to the hard ground.

  Crow shifted to his true shape, his dual horned-man shape, where his quick eyes were the sharpest. Then he saw the cold, metallic gleam of a wire stretched across the clearing. A trap, a poacher’s dirty trick. He looked at the Windmage with sharp disapproval. “That is not well done. There’s no beauty in it.”

  The boy shrugged. “The man’s doing, not mine,” he said. “And I’ll still win the wager.”

  The stag climbed slowly to his feet, moving with effort, with great heaving breaths. One leg bone had snapped, another fractured. The Hounds surrounded him, holding off now. The poacher smiled, and came out from the rocks. He lifted his gun up to his shoulder, the smile wide on his red, flushed face. Behind him, Black Maggie snarled like an animal herself and launched into the man.

  Gunshot cracked, ricochetting on rock. A tall sagauro was hit and one long green arm fell heavily to the ground, pinning the leg of the poacher, piercing through flesh with its hundreds of razor-sharp spines. The young man howled in agony. Crow laughed aloud on his ledge of stone. The boy hissed, “You brought that woman here! She’s spoiling the hunt! She’ll change everything.”

  “Look there,” said Crow. “At the Floodmage’s pet.”

  The painter was stalking the white stag now, his hand trembling, his shoulders tensed. Even with the Floodmage’s glamour on him, he was thinking twice of this work tonight. He was a sorry sight for a hunter, and the Owl Boy smiled wickedly.

  Crow made an elaborate show of yawning. “The hunt is almost over now, before it’s even truly begun. That puppy won’t strike. The stag has won. Now all that remains to be seen is whom the Hounds choose as their consolation prize.”

  The Windmage shrugged. “It could be your own pet, Fool. Look, the woman has broken herself. How will she run from the Hounds?”

  Crow frowned. Black Maggie was climbing to her feet, braced by Fox, her face tight with pain, cradling one arm against her. Beside her, the poacher lay flat on the ground, leaking tears into the dry soil. Crow pointed, and said, “She carries turquoise—”

  “That will protect her from glamour, not the Hounds.”

  “—and she wears a white feather in her hair. That feather is one of yours, pretty boy. She’s under your protection now. The Hounds aren’t going to touch her.”

  The boy shrugged. “In that case they’ll take her friends.”

  “What is that to me?” Crow answered him, but he knew the words were false as he said them. The witch woman’s son was of interest to him; it would be a great pity to lose him now. And little Dora had taken his fancy. He watched as she ran across the clearing to her husband, calling out his name.

  The Floodmage reached the painter first, her eyes like burning coals, her hair streaming smoke and fire behind her. “Strike! Strike! Why do you not strike?”

  Juan swallowed. “I can’t. He’s so beautiful…”

  “You must!” she shrieked. “You must! Or the bargain’s off, and I shall take something else! Your limbs, your life! Your work, your wife! Strike, or you will owe me one of them!”

  “What fun!” said the Windmage.

  Dora reached Juan, her hair as wild and as bright as the mage’s. She grabbed his arm, but he wheeled away, holding the knife between them. “Don’t listen,” said Dora. “Don’t do it. Don’t listen. Just give me the knife, dear heart.”

  “I can’t,” Juan said, his voice breaking. “I made a bargain. I promised to hunt the stag. I can’t back out.”

  “You’re hunting an angel, not a stag,” said Johnny Foxxe, coming up behind Dora. He looked warily at the knife held between them. His eyes flickered to the Floodmage and back.

  The painter’s face twisted with some strong emotion. Crow couldn’t begin to imagine what it was. “The stag will die anyway,” the young man said. “It can’t survive crippled in the wild. It would be a mercy to finish it off.”

  “No,” said Fox. “You know that’s not true. The Alders can look after him. Give me the knife, Juan. It’s over now. Just call the bargain off.”

  “He can’t,” hissed the Floodmage.

  “I can’t,” said Juan. “Something is going to die tonight. The Hounds are loose and they’ll have to feed now.”

  “Put down the knife, boy. The Hounds will feed,” said another voice altogether.

  Tomás Yazzie appeared on the rock ridge above him. He jumped the last drop to the canyon floor, breathing hard, his brown face stern.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” the Owl Boy hissed. The Hounds growled, and the trapped beast trembled.

  “Give me the knife. You’re no hunter, boy,” Tomás said. He took it from the startled painter’s hand.

  “Thank God,” said Fox, closing his eyes as he breathed out one long sigh of relief.

  “No!” Maggie screamed from behind him.

  Fox’s eyes snapped open. Tomás approached the stag, wading through the unresistant Hounds, the knife held in a hunter’s grip.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Fox yelled, running after the other man. The Hounds turned, snarling, snapping at him, separating him from Tomás and the stag.

  “I’ve said the prayers,” Tomás said to the stag. The stag attempted to back away, moving awkwardly, painfully. Tomás said, “I’ve burned tobacco. I’ve said the prayers. Gift me with your life, my brother.”

  The stag attempted one last lunge, one desperate leap to break free of the Hounds, the man, the walls that encircled him. Tomás ran, flung one arm around its neck, snapping back the great stag’s head, plunging the knife behind the jawbone, as Maggie screamed again: “No!”

  The stag slumped to the ground, and the man fell with him heavily. “Go with the wind, brother,” Crow heard him tell the stag.

  Crow leapt from the ledge on a black crow’s wings, and landed behind Tomás, shaped as a man. “Take the skin,” he urged him. “Quick! Or else he’ll be trapped in the white stag’s death, as he was trapped in its life.”

  Tomás slowly stood and turned to the Floodmage, who was watching him with bright-eyed interest. “Call off your dogs, girl.”

  “I cannot,” she said.

  He looked at her sternly. “Then you don’t deserve to run them.”

  Anger crossed the lovely young face. “Give me the blood, and I’ll call them off.” She gathered a handful of sandy soil, and fire blossomed in her hand. The flames died, and she held a large earthenware bowl. She tossed the bowl to Crow.

  Crow held the bowl as Tomás bled the stag. Then the Drowned Girl took the bowl from him, a trail of hot blood staining her thin white dress. “Come,” she said to her terrible Hounds. “You will feed soon, my beautiful ones.”

  When the Hounds had turned from the stag’s body, moving like water through the circle of stones, Fox approached Tomás and Crow, Black Maggie close behind. Fox took the leather pouch from his belt and spilled tobacco into his palm. He knelt before the stag’s great head, and he poured the offering to t
he ground.

  Tomás bent over the stag’s body, the hunting knife clutched in his hand. Then he gutted the beast, pulling the blade from the chest, down the length of the smooth white belly. As the body opened, the entrails steamed hot as a fire to warm the ones gathered round. Steam billowed in the cold desert air, rising as smoke to the clear night sky, forming the shape of a man made out of mist and stars, crowned with horns. His face was narrow, his nose was hooked; the great horns lifted from the curve of his brow. He stepped from the broken body of the stag, pulling himself from the shape beneath. When his feet touched ground, he solidified; the mist became flesh, but just barely so. Crow could still see the night sky through him, the stars and the round copper moon.

  The Floodmage looked up from her Hounds, and smiled at Crow smugly. “You see, I was right. I knew that he was trapped somewhere here on the mountain—and not in that witch woman’s painting at all. I told you even she would not send his essence away from the land.”

  The girl had been right, Crow would give her that. The Nightmage had been here all along. They’d known the stag was one of his creatures. They’d not known he’d been bound inside it, bound so deep in the animal-self that not one of them saw him there.

  Crow rose from the carcass and stared at the mage. But the Stag Man who stared back at him was not the creature that he remembered; the arrogance, the intelligence, the sly wit of the mage were gone now. The Stag Man stood and he looked at them all with an animal’s wild-eyed wariness. He was panting, his thin chest rising and falling. Crow began to laugh.

  “Why do you laugh?” hissed the Owl Boy from the trees.

  “Because I was right as well. You can’t have your Nightmage back again—this one is a mage no longer. Look at him! He’s been in the animal shape too long. He’s forgotten what he is.”