Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  Sunday gave him a reluctant shrug. “It’s been seen. The details are less than clear, but you are involved.”

  “But manitou ... you’re talking campfire stories.”

  “Not true, nephew. The manitou are real. And they are dangerous.”

  Of course. In the stories, they were always dangerous. But true?

  Tommy sighed. He loved his aunts, and trusted their instincts, heeded their advice. But this … it would have been funny if Sunday didn’t seem to be taking it so seriously. And he still felt like laughing all the same. But then he made the fateful mistake of asking, “Who’s seeing me in these stories?”

  “Jack Whiteduck.”

  A great stillness entered Tommy and he felt like he needed to sit down.

  There was a certain hierarchy on the rez. The chief and council were elected, but only with the approval of the Aunts—not his aunts, but the elders. On the rez there was no need to differentiate between the two. Everyone knew who you were talking about without the need to explain that you were referring to the elders, or the Creek sisters. In time, his aunts would be counted as elders, too, but that day was still in the future. For now, the Creek sisters answered to the elders, as did everyone on the rez. Everyone, that is, except for one man. Jack Whiteduck. The shaman. He answered to no one except the manitou and the Grandfather Thunders.

  “This is … serious,” Tommy said.

  Sunday nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I wish there was something more we could do besides pass on his warning.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Should I talk to him?”

  Which was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. Like most of the people on the rez, Tommy had grown up in fearful awe of the old man. No one wanted to come to his attention because when you did, your life changed. For good or bad—it didn’t really matter. Afterwards, you were a different person. The spirits knew your name. They could take you away, anytime.

  A few moments ago, Tommy had been laughing about manitou. But now that he knew that Whiteduck was involved …

  Sunday shook her head in response to his question. “Wait,” she said. “If he wants to talk to you, he’ll let you know. Just be careful, nephew.”

  She turned away, covering up her discomfort with the message she’d brought by fussing with the tea bags steeping in the pot, pouring their tea. She handed Tommy a mug, took the other for herself. Tommy cupped his hands around the china mug, feeling the tea heat the porcelain, but the warmth brought him no ease.

  “I already feel changed,” he said.

  Sunday nodded sympathetically. “That’s the way it starts.”

  And how does it end? he wanted to know, but he didn’t ask the question aloud. He knew his aunt felt bad enough as it was, having had to tell him about Jack Whiteduck’s vision. He took a steadying breath, sipped at the tea.

  “So,” he said after a moment. “How’s my mother? Your sisters?”

  Sunday gave him a grateful look. When they retreated to the other room to sit on the bed, she brought him up to date on all the gossip since he’d last been back home. It had only been a couple of weeks, but something was always happening on the rez. Events could run the gamut, from silly to tragic, but at least they were mundane, rooted in the real world rather than that of the spirits. Listening helped keep Tommy’s panic at bay, but a supernatural dread had settled deep inside him now, along with the knowledge that his life was no longer his own.

  Why did Jack Whiteduck have to see him in a vision?

  16

  SUNDAY NIGHT, JANUARY I 8

  Miki let herself into her apartment a little after eleven. Closing the door behind her, she shed her boots and hung her jacket on the doorknob of the closet. The apartment was quiet—Donal’s absence reminding her of how angry she was with him all over again. She’d been able to forget for a while, comfortable in Hunter’s company, enjoying the tasty, if somewhat basic fare at the Dear Mouse Diner.

  He was quite the man, Hunter was. He’d always treated her well, right from the start, standing up for her when she was a bratty fifteen-year-old and trying to sneak into The Harp for the sessions, never talked down to her or tried to make her feel out of place or stupid. He’d stop and chat when he came upon her busking somewhere, take her out for a meal if he decided she was looking too skinny.

  She’d played a battered-up old Hohner two-row in those days that was pure shite—not because of the brand, it was just such a sad old beast of a box. But she’d kept the reeds tuned, patched the tears in the bellows whenever a new one appeared, and it had treated her right, or as well as it could, all things considered. A bit like Hunter, really. Steady. No airs with either of them. She still had the Hohner sitting in a case at the back of her clothes cupboard— didn’t have the heart to toss the poor old bugger out—and she still had Hunter as a friend.

  Tonight was a perfect example. He hadn’t pushed when he knew she wasn’t up to talking about what had upset her. Instead he’d eased their conversation into silly, harmless discussions on new releases, odd customer encounters in—and out—of the store, and deliberations on just how weird their co-workers were. As usual, Titus had won out, hand over fist, but then how could he not? Adam was merely an arrested adolescent; one day he might actually grow up. But Titus … Titus was almost pathological.

  But now they’d left the easy companionship of the restaurant behind, Hunter had gone off home after seeing her to her door, and all the bad feelings she’d left in the apartment—firmly shutting the door on them for the few hours she was gone—were back once more. Sighing, she went into the living room and slouched down on the couch. She left the lights dark, the sound system off, and waited.

  Donal didn’t get in until almost one, fumbling with his key in the lock, tripping over her boots when he got through the door, reeking of alcohol. She let him get his boots off and drop his parka on the floor. It wasn’t until he went stumbling down the hall toward his bedroom that she called out his name.

  “Jaysus,” he said, banging back against the wall. “You gave me a right bloody start.”

  Miki said nothing for a moment. She had to concentrate on breathing evenly, to get her temper under control before she spoke.

  “So what’re you doing, sitting here in the dark?” Donal asked.

  “Waiting for you.”

  There. That was good. Level tone. Breathing calm. Pulse still too fast.

  Donal came into the room and dropped into one of the club chairs.

  “Now isn’t that sweet,” he said. “Waiting up for her brother, she is. Why one would almost think she had no life of her—”

  “Don’t you dare start in with that shite,” she told him.

  So much for staying calm.

  “That time of month then, is it?” he asked.

  The thing many people didn’t realize, mostly because of her size, was just how strong Miki was. It didn’t take much—a good diet, plenty of the right kind of exercise. You didn’t have to be big to be strong. Donal should have remembered, but he was too soused. He should have remembered her temper as well.

  She shot out of the sofa, grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, and hauled him out of his chair.

  “Christ, woman!”

  Instead of answering, she shoved him towards the hall. He went stumbling, arms flailing. As soon as he almost caught his balance, she shoved him again, continuing to keep him off balance until they reached the door of his studio. Her bedroom that she’d gone and given up like the bloody fool he’d played her for. At the door she gave him one final shove and he went tumbling. He grabbed at the nearest surface and brought a shower of paint tubes, rags, and brushes down upon himself as he fell.

  She stood in the doorway, glaring at him. He made no effort to get up, but there was a royal anger in his eyes as well.

  “So,” he asked, the tone of his voice deceptively mild. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  Miki knew that voice too well. It was the same one their father had used b
efore he’d beat the shite out of one or the other of them. Sometimes both. It didn’t scare her now. But it hurt, because the drunken brother lying on the ground was the same one who’d protected her from the worst of their father’s rages, who’d looked out for her when they’d escaped the clutches of Social Services and went to live on the street.

  “No,” she said. “But it looks like you have.”

  Donal sat up. “What’re you on about?”

  She pointed at the canvas behind him. In the faint light that came in the window from the street lamps outside it looked even more realistic than it had earlier in the evening, as well as more disturbing.

  “Oh, that.”

  “What’s it about, Donal?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a bloody painting—what does it look like?”

  “I’ll tell you what it looks like,” Miki said. “It looks like that shite Uncle Fergus was always on about. All that mad ugly talk about the Gentry and stringing up some poor sod who they’d treat like a king all summer, then nail up to a tree come Samhain for the luck of the community.”

  “Fergus would be our great-uncle, actually.”

  “And you know as well as I that his spew of meanness and spite, with its pretensions to Celtic Twilights and druids and Yeats and all, has no real basis in fact, mythical or historical—not the way he tells it. What he and his cronies spout is just some bloody hodgepodge stolen from a half-dozen different folklores that they’ve bent to their own liking.”

  Donal shook his head. “It’s real.”

  “Oh, aye. In bits and pieces, each belonging to its own. But not the way they tell it. Their telling is just an excuse to nail up some bugger they don’t like and fuck a few flower-draped handmaidens who’re too scared of their stories about the Gentry and the like to tell them no.”

  “The Gentry are real,” Donal told her.

  “And my shite smells of roses.”

  “Who do you think the hard men are?”

  An unhappy quietness settled over Miki. For a long moment she couldn’t speak.

  “Don’t tell me you’re spending time with the likes of them,” she said finally.

  “It’s not a matter of choice,” Donal said. “Once you’ve gained their attention, you’re either with them or against them. You know what’s said of them: There’s no middle ground with the Gentry.”

  “Oh, Donal…”

  “Don’t you worry for me. They won’t be hurting me.”

  No, just Hunter and whoever else came in their way. She’d been young when she’d had to sit there and listen to Fergus and his cronies go on with their hateful talk, voicing all their petty revenges and lusts with no thought of the children—her brother and herself—sitting there listening to them. But she hadn’t bought into their rationalizations then, and she wasn’t about to do so now.

  “It’s not you I’m worried about,” she said. “It’s those you plan to hurt.”

  “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph. I haven’t turned into some monster overnight.”

  Miki looked at the painting. On its own, it was a startling image, beautifully rendered, disturbing, but so were many of the images of Christ’s crucifixions that hung in Catholic churches. She knew that. But Donal’s painting spoke to her on a deeper level. It told her just how much her brother had listened to those mad ugly stories of their uncle, how different a man he really was from who she’d thought he was, to ally himself with men who would kill another for the luck it would give them, who would use fear and intimidation to take advantage of a susceptible young woman.

  It was the symbol of it, that her brother could depict such hurt, that he could consider such hurt…

  “Get that thing out of here,” she told him. “And take yourself with it.”

  “Miki—”

  “Go and live in the wilds with your Gentry. Bugger yourselves, for all I care. But don’t be back here. And don’t even consider hurting any of my friends again. They’re under my protection—do you hear me? Go and tell your hard men that, and if they have a problem with that, they can come see me about it.”

  “It’s not like you’re thinking,” Donal told her. “They’re just looking for a home. For someplace they can call their own.”

  “And if it already belongs to someone else?”

  Donal shook his head. “These aren’t human men we’re talking about. They’ll take nothing from us.”

  “Then who will they be taking it from?”

  “Jaysus, that’s so like you. Why do you have to think anything’ll be taken from anybody?”

  “Because that’s what their kind do, Donal. They take from others—and do you know why? Because it tastes sweeter to them when it’s bathed in another’s hurt. That’s who you’ve allied yourself with.”

  “Now you’re talking mad.”

  “Am I? Why don’t you ask your hard men yourself? Better yet, why don’t you stand in their way and see how well you remain friends.”

  “Miki…”

  She shook her head. “It goes, and so do you.”

  Donal nodded slowly.

  “Fine,” he said.

  The look in his eyes broke Miki’s heart all over again. Standing up, he put his foot through the painting, then grabbed the torn edges of the canvas and tore it in half. The sound of the canvas ripping felt like pieces of Miki’s soul being torn from her.

  “There,” he added. “That make you feel better?”

  Miki took a deep, steadying breath. She faced his glare with a firmness she didn’t feel.

  “If only you could tear it out of yourself as easily,” she said after a long moment.

  “Jaysus woman. I was doing this for us.”

  “For us?”

  “Who else?” Donal demanded. He softened his voice. “Do you never get tired of scrabbling for every penny?” he asked her. “Did you never want that one sweet chance to strike back at all those who spat and shat on us every chance they could?”

  Miki shook her head. “That’s not what it’s about,” she said. “And we both know it. It’s you being himself—our father. Or Fergus. It’s you being the big man.”

  “If you really believe that…”

  “What else am I supposed to believe?” she asked. “If you want to be something, why don’t you be a real man for once in your life? Admit that what you’re doing is wrong. That the hard men are no more than a band of thugs who care only for themselves.”

  Donal gave her a grim look. He made a fist and smacked it against his breast.

  “Here beats an Irish heart,” he told her, the softness left his voice again. “I’ll not bow down to any man—neither here nor at home.”

  “At home? Ireland’s not our home and you and your hard men are no more Irish patriots than some IRA bomber, taking the war to the innocent.”

  “Fuck the IRA,” Donal said. “And fuck the Provos, too. This is an older struggle.”

  Miki nodded. “Oh, aye. Between the mad and the sane.”

  He took a step to her, still the stranger, and once again she gave him a shove. But their argument had sobered him up some and this time he didn’t lose his balance. For a moment, she thought he was going to strike her, but then he lowered his fist and sadly shook his head.

  “You’re blind, is all,” he said. “I’ll forgive you that.”

  When he moved forward, Miki stepped back into the hall, but he wasn’t coming after her. He walked down the hall and picked up his parka from the floor.

  “You’ll forgive me?” Miki cried.

  Donal nodded. He put on his boots. Taking out his key ring, he took off the key to the apartment door and tossed it onto the sofa.

  “This is how you get a home,” Miki told him, making a motion with her hand to take in the apartment. “You work for your money—earn it honestly. You pay your rent, or you buy a home. You fill it with things that mean something to you and you welcome your friends into it. It’s not something you can simply take from a person.”

  “Oh, no? And those who took our
home from us?”

  “When you take a home, it’s not a home anymore, is it?”

  “It’s whatever you make it to be,” Donal told her.

  Then he stepped out of the apartment, closing the door softly behind him.

  Miki stared at the closed door. The enormity of what this argument had wrought settled inside her with a deep, sorrowful hurt. Her eyes filled with tears and she made no move to wipe them away as they ran down her cheeks. She made no sound either, as she wept.

  Oh, Donal, she thought. Why did you have to listen to them?

  She remembered overhearing someone in a pub once, the conversation coming around to the Troubles, saying how when the Irish get hurt, they stay hurt. It was true, too. Donal had never recovered from the pain of their childhood; why else would he have let the hard men take him in the way they had with all their shite of leaf-masked Summer Kings and the need for a home— not one made through love, but taken by pain.

  No, Donal had never recovered. She had, but then she’d had Donal to look up at, to depend on. He’d had no one. She’d always thought his morose-ness was only a kind of play; now she knew it was a true, deep melancholy that ran below everything he thought or did. She’d never really understood it until now. But now she knew just how he felt. Now it seemed that all the joy had been sucked out of the world and she couldn’t imagine it ever returning again.

  3

  Chehthagi Mashath

  Haz el bien y no veas a quien.

  Do good and don’t worry to whom.

  —MEXICAN SAYING

  SONORAN DESERT, SPRING, 1990

  One Friday afternoon in early April, the year Bettina turned sixteen, her grandmother met her as she and Adelita were leaving school. Abuela pulled up at the curb in her dusty pickup and honked to get Bettina’s attention. Beside her, Adelita rolled her eyes and stayed with their friends, but Bettina went running over to the truck. Standing on the running board, she leaned her forearms on the warm metal frame of window and poked her head into the cab.

  “Abuela. What are you doing here?”

  “We are going on a journey,” her abuela told her.