The Wood Wife

by Terri Windling

  “That’s impossible,” said the Floodmage sharply, leaving her Hounds to come stand with them. “This land is alive. It would taste ugly and dead if there was no guardian here.”

  Crow smiled at her, enjoying this game. “Then there must be another guardian. A Spiritmage watching over the east. A human mage, my dear.”

  “Cooper is dead,” said the Drowned Girl, glaring darkly at the Trickster.

  “Then a new Spiritmage has taken his place.” Crow’s wolfish smile grew wider.

  “Impossible,” the girl said again. “This painter of mine is no Spiritmage. And your little poet hasn’t been here long enough.”

  “Then I think it is neither a painter nor poet,” said Crow. “Am I right, Tomás Yazzie?”

  Tomás inclined his head. “I look after this land as best I know how. I listen to it with respect. Mage, shaman—those are just words. Call me what you will, spirit-brother.”

  “You can’t be a mage,” the girl spat out. The ends of her white hair smouldered. “You have no mastery, no artistry. There is nothing about you that is beautiful.”

  Tomás gave the girl a charming smile. “No mastery? No artistry? You’ve never looked at my garden, then, have you? My beans, my corn, my big gourd vines—they are beautiful indeed.”

  The girl’s pale face grew paler still. Her eyes were wide and black as the sky.

  But Tomás turned his back on her. “I need your help,” he said to Fox. “You too, boy,” he called to Juan.

  He lifted the entrails from the stag’s body and left them steaming on the cold ground. Together, they roped the body, lifted and hung it from a sycamore’s strong limb. Crow watched with interest as Tomás expertly flayed the skin from the warm flesh beneath. Black Maggie also watched, sitting by the springs until the long job was done. The Nightmage just stood. His eyes never left Tomás, or the gleam of the knife.

  When he was finished, Tomás folded the heavy white deerskin into his arms. “Cut the body down,” he said to Juan. “Let the Hounds feed and be done.” He turned to Crow, and gave him the skin. “Do what must be done with this. No tricks. No games tonight.”

  Crow barked with laughter, barely conscious of having shifted to half-coyote form now. His arms were still manshaped. He held the skin, and presented it to the Stag Man.

  “Your freedom,” Crow said. “Take it. Go on and take it. It’s a gift.”

  The Stag Man took the soiled white skin. He wrapped it around his shoulders. As he did so, he solidified farther, a creature now of true flesh and blood, the great horns on his head forked into points that glowed like flame. His cheeks were drawn with lines and spirals; he wore six copper bans on his wrist. He removed one band and awkwardly tossed it to the ground at Tomás’s feet. He gazed long at the seventh mage, his animal eyes unreadable. Then he shifted back into his stagshape, whole now, and unbloodied. This time it was only one shape among many, a shape to carry him away from the springs, from the canyon, out into the night. The Hounds ignored him, letting him pass, his hooves striking sparks from the rocky ground. And when he left, no turquoise marked the trail that he had taken.

  Tomás knelt down by the edge of Red Springs to wash the blood of the stag from his hands. The spring water ran clear and cold. The moon was sinking into the west.

  “How did you know?” Black Maggie asked him. “You told me you’d never hunt the white stag. How did you know what had to be done?”

  Crow drew close to hear his answer.

  “I got lost in the hills… No. Led astray. And so I lit a fire. I listened to the flames, the wood, the wind. They told me on this night the stag would die, and by my hand.”

  “I see. And can you teach me how to listen to the fire, the wood, and the wind?”

  “You already know. You’re a poet,” he said. “I’ll teach you something better.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How to grow beans and corn and squash in the middle of the desert.”

  “All right. It’s a deal,” Black Maggie agreed, smiling at the hunter.

  Crow frowned. She hadn’t even asked the man what he wanted in return.

  Crow cocked his head and looked at Maggie out of dark coyote eyes; and then at Dora, quiet, shivering, leaning against her husband. The painter was fey and wild-eyed; the glamour was still upon him. By morning it would fade away; he would not remember the work of this night. He might not remember the Drowned Girl at all. Crow turned suddenly to the Floodmage.

  “Release this man from your bargain. The terms are met. The stag was killed.”

  “But not by his hand,” the Drowned Girl said.

  Crow wrinkled his coyote nose. “The shape you have made him is not beautiful. Nor is it amusing. Let him go back to his true shape now; it was more interesting than this one.”

  She smiled at him, a cold little smile. “He’ll never be a great painter without me. He’ll only be good. Content, nothing more.”

  Crow shrugged. “And what does that matter to me?”

  “Then what will you give me if I do?”

  “What do you want?” he bargained.

  “Give me lightning, thunder and storms. I’ll flood Tanque Verde Falls this year.”

  His own smile was sly. “You’ll have it,” he said. “Yes. That will be amusing.”

  When the Hounds had fed, they followed the Drowned Girl back into the Rincon hills, growing more indistinct with every step, turning back into moonlight. The Owl Boy leapt into the sky, careful to leave no feathers behind. The coyotes crawled from the shadows then, and one black dog followed after them, trying to pretend they had never hidden there, never been afraid of the Hounds. Their song echoed through the canyon once more, along with the song that Crow alone could hear: the rootmegs singing, the water chanting, the mountains humming in their deep baritone. Spirits returned to rock, root, and thorn; ghosts drifted back to the dry, sandy soil. The night would end, day could come, and That-Which-Moved kept on turning.

  “Look Fox, there’s One-Eye,” said Maggie as a small black shape came trotting up Red Springs Trail, two coyotes trailing behind him, one limping as she walked.

  “Thank heavens,” breathed Fox, rubbing weary eyes, leaving a smear of blood on his cheek. The three coyotes surrounded him; he knelt down by the largest. “Pepe, please go find the Alders. Have them call out Search and Rescue, if they haven’t called them already. We’re going to need a medic back here, and a stretcher. As quick as you can.”

  Fox rose, crossed the clearing, and squatted on his heels beside the poacher. He took the water bottle from his pack and persuaded the whimpering man to drink. “We can’t move you yet. The medics will have to pry you loose from those cactus spines; we’ll hurt you more if we move you ourselves. Just hang on. Help’s on its way.”

  “Goddamn cactus,” the young man muttered weakly. “Worse than goddamn coyotes.”

  Fox looked up. “Go on, Pepe. Hurry.” But One-Eye had stopped at the head of the trail, nosing something in the shadows beyond. Crow stepped behind him, wearing his manshape, and peered into the darkness.

  “What is it?” said Maggie. She switched on her flashlight. And then she dropped it with a hoarse, abrupt sound. She dropped to her knees, and gathered the shape of the Rabbit Girl into her arms. “Get John and Lillian here quick, Pepe.”

  It would not be quick enough. The creature was dead. Crow knew that even before he squatted down beside her and put one hand upon the Rabbit Girl’s chest. Gunshot. She had been target practice for the poacher, grown bored while he waited by the springs. The girl had shifted into her almost-human form some time after the fatal bullet had struck, shattering one skinny rib, piercing the flimsy tissue of a lung. Crow closed his eyes, and he shifted her back to her core, made of wind, earth, bone, and fur; the grey not-quite-a-jackrabbit shape; something more and something less than all that.

  “Come away, Black Maggie,” Crow said to her with a gentleness that surprised even him. “It is finished here. It is dammas.”

  Tears ran
down the woman’s face, floodwater in a wash, spilling over its banks. She cried with the awkward heavings of someone who had long forgotten how to cry. In the anguish on her face, Crow could almost glimpse what it was that human anguish was. Johnny Foxxe came up behind her, bracing her with his arms, his presence, looking warily at the shape-shifter beside her.

  She said finally, “We can’t just leave her here.”

  “You must,” Crow said, taking the body from her and laying it out on the ground. “Another will eat, and live another day. The gift of life passes on. It is dammas,” he repeated, helpless, perplexed, unable to understand the emotions that pulled the woman as strongly as the winds of the mountain pulled on him. “Come away now,” he said again.

  She turned her stricken face to him. “I can’t do it. We can’t just leave her here.”

  “Maggie, look,” Fox said to her. He pointed to the slope beyond, where the Spine Witch climbed through the prickly pear, barefoot on the sharp cactus thorns, her pointed face expressionless, thoroughly ignoring them all. Her tattered wings dragged on the ground as she crossed over cactus, sage and stone. She stood looking down at the jackrabbit’s body. Then she lifted it gently in her arms. She cradled the furry creature to her breast, and started back the way she had come.

  “Where is she going?” Maggie asked Crow, her eyes wide and dark with wonder.

  “To sing the death song.”

  “Will we hear it?” Maggie whispered, wiping the tears from her hot, red cheeks.

  “If you wish to, yes.” The shape-shifter leaned over and kissed the woman behind her left ear.

  In the hills, the coyotes were singing.

  This time, she knew the language of their song.

  ❋ Davis Cooper ❋

  Redwater Road

  Tucson, Arizona

  Marguerita Black

  London, U.K.

  September 22, 1979

  Dear Ms. Black,

  In response to your letter of September I, which Maisie Tippets has passed on to me, I regret to tell you that I am not prepared to authorize a biography of my life; in fact, it would be exceedingly against my wishes for any such endeavor to begin. Obscurity has few rewards, Ms. Black, but privacy is one of them, and I value it. Maisie tells me you are a sensible woman; I trust you will respect my wishes.

  She has also given me a copy of your thesis regarding my ‘Wood Wife’ poems. I never read such things. There is little that can be said about them, good or bad, that hasn’t been said before, usually at ridiculous length; and I put little stock in the writings of theorists. A theorist is not a poet.

  I would far rather you had sent me your poems. As it happens, I am familiar with your work and have followed your career since your first publication, The Coalminer’s Tale. The Harper’s article on Tippetts was very good, very facile—but you are a poet. And poems are the language of the gods, not magazine reportage. Perhaps you would indulge a cranky old man and permit me to read what you have written since your last publication (the collection from Bank Street Press, I believe, or have I missed one?). You interest me greatly, Marguerita Black. I remain

  Yours truly,

  Davis Cooper

  Chapter Eleven ❋

  Twined together, root to root,

  sap seeping from flesh,

  the Wood Wife plants me in the soil

  and gives me language once again.

  —The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper

  Maggie looked out the window at the London sky. Low, grey and oppressive. Threatening to rain again. She let the curtain fall back over the window, preferring the brightness and the warmth of Tat’s loft: the big monoprints with their planes of color, and the furniture that Tat had painted yellow, purple, indigo blue and apple green, like the colors from a crayon box. The industrial walls had been softened with a wash of paint the color of milk in tea, reminding her of Cooper’s walls, the mottled tones of old adobe.

  Maggie shut her eyes and sighed. It seemed that everything conspired to remind her of Cooper and the mountain.

  “Are you okay?” Tat said, looking up from the floor where she was framing a print. The English woman was as tall as Maggie, but in every other way she was the reverse of her American friend. Where Maggie dressed only in men’s clothing, Tat favored long, loose dresses, albeit worn over army boots. Where Maggie’s hair was dark and sleek, Tat’s was an unusual silver-white, quite short, and raggedly cut. Tatiana had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis some years before; the illness had stolen the prettiness from her face, and given her back something more compelling. She was frowning now, looking up at Maggie with worry in her shadowed eyes. “You’ve been sighing all day,” she pointed out.

  “It’s just the weather,” Maggie assured her. “The sky looks so small and closed-in here, after those big, blue desert skies.”

  “Welcome to London.” Tat gave Maggie a wry look as she screwed the frame together. She used the screwdriver carefully, slowly. Such things gave her trouble now. “I, for one, am glad you made it back in time for the Private View of my show. Even if you don’t seem so certain that you want to be here yourself…”

  “Of course I’m glad I’m here for your show,” Maggie said. And then she sighed again. “I just don’t know where I want to be after that. And that’s the problem.”

  She got up and went into the bedroom that Tat had built at the end of the loft. She still wasn’t ready to talk to her friend about what exactly had happened in Arizona. She would—she didn’t keep secrets from Tat. But the words to explain it all hadn’t come yet. She felt empty of language, for once in her life. Empty of everything except confusion. She had run from the desert like she had run from everything that had ever sought to bind her. But she couldn’t seem to run far enough. It was all she could think about here.

  She picked up her bag and sat on the futon mattress, emptying the bag beside her. She was getting good at doing things one-handed, but it would be a relief when the cast came off her arm and she could have her normal life back again. Whatever that was, she thought, and a sour look crossed over Maggie’s face. She wasn’t sure she knew anymore. She had thought coming back to safe, familiar ground would begin to make things clear again. She had thought she could find the shape of the woman she’d been, before she’d gone to Cooper’s mountain.

  She looked at the objects spread on the quilt: a single white feather, a string of bells, chunks of raw turquoise, a silver Hopi bracelet. Cloth-wrapped bundles of cedar, sage, and tobacco. Cooper’s edition of The Wood Wife. She picked up the sage and inhaled it, breathing the scent of another world altogether, another life, another Maggie Black, another shape over the essence beneath. She didn’t know if it was a true shape, or if the land had overwhelmed her with one of its own. Perhaps in this place, where the land did not sing beneath her, she’d be able to tell. And when she finally knew the answer to that riddle, she’d write to Fox, as she had promised.

  She picked up The Wood Wife and opened it. Several of Cooper’s letters and an old bill for his dry cleaning were stuck inside its pages. She opened one of the letters and read, “I’ll tell you, after arguing with Anna about coming to New York, I find I don’t want to be here after all… I want silence again, and vast blue skies. I want the heat, honest earth underfoot. I can’t sleep here. I don’t think I’ll sleep till I reach the mountains, and Anna.”

  She read another. “… It is not possible, it is not conceivable that she will stay away for good. Anna loves these hills, this sky, this house. She’ll come back for the land, if not for me.”

  And another. “I can’t bear to think of you in the flatlands, where the stones do not whisper your name.”

  Maggie put the letters down. Here in the city, the stones below were mercifully silent. She could understand why there may have come a time when Anna Naverra needed that. She sat now and listened. Outside the bedroom door was a steady hammering, a muttered curse, and the music of the Desert Winds tape she’d brought to London for her friend, filling the loft w
ith Indian flute and the whisper of another land. Beyond that was the sound of London traffic, someone shouting in an Asian tongue, trucks rattling over the cobbled stone of the alley below the warehouse windows: sounds less beautiful to her than the desert’s, but just as dear.

  Maggie opened The Wood Wife, and she looked down at the ninth of Davis Cooper’s poems. She read:

  The ghost comes from the wood holding

  the future, not the past, a fragile gift

  as weightless as the smoke

  that rises where she steps…

  She read it slowly, haltingly, as though translating from a foreign tongue. Her eyes skimmed down the rest of the page. She turned it, and she read:

  … the night visitors, three women, three Fates,

  three Graces, the ghosts who haunt me here;

  the painter who stands behind me; and

  the poet who stands before me; and

  the wood wife, silent at my side,

  rooting me to this earth…

  She looked at the words. Type on a page. Runic shapes in black, black ink. Words were chunks of turquoise in her hand; words were what protected her. Only right now she couldn’t remember just what it was they protected her from.

  She closed the book and swept the desert back into her leather bag. She went to the kitchen. She switched the electric kettle on, and spooned black tea into Tat’s china pot, thinking of another poem. This one was by Michael Hannon:

  Work with words cannot save us.

  Nothing can do that,

  but perhaps to be saved is not salvation.

  I see the trees along this road

  turn into smoke at sundown,

  and know them for the very ones

  I was meant to see.

  When the tea was made, she balanced a tray with her good arm and carried it over to Tat. Then she sat down on the floor beside her, resting her back against a flat-file painted the red of an ocotillo bloom.