Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  “All… all of us,” she managed.

  “Oh, aye,” the man said. “And is the whole fucking world under your protection?”

  “I… I…”

  He walked past Tommy, stopping by the black jeep with the broken window. He bent down and hooked the fingers of one hand under the running board. In one sudden movement he lifted the vehicle and heaved it onto its side.

  Ellie winced at the sound of the crash, her eyes wide with shock. The small gibbering voice of panic that had been hiding in the back of her head reared in mindless fear and it was all she could do to just stand there and at least pretend to be strong.

  “Fair enough,” the man said, still grinning. There was no humor in his eyes. “But remember to fulfill your side of the bargain or I’ll hunt the lot of you down and gut you like the little shites you are.”

  Bargain? Ellie thought. What bargain?

  But she knew enough to keep her mouth shut and simply nod her head.

  The hard man held her gaze for a long moment. Ellie could feel her knees turning to water. Then he finally gave a brusque nod to his companions and turned away. As silently as they’d come, untouched by the weather and unencumbered by the unsteady footing, the men went back the way they’d come.

  Ellie collapsed against the side of the van, holding onto the mirror for support.

  “Somebody want to tell me what the hell that was all about?”

  She glanced over at Tommy to see he was now standing. His hair and shoulders had acquired a thin sheath of ice and his face was dripping. She was getting soaked herself, standing out here in the freezing rain, but he’d landed in a puddle and was far wetter than she was.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. Her gaze drifted to the far end of the street where the men were just turning the corner. “Those are Donal’s hard men, but they could be twins to the guys I saw at Kellygnow.”

  “M-m-miki says they’re called the Gentry,” Hunter put in.

  They both turned to look at him. He was like a wet rat, utterly drenched and shivering, and somewhat ludicrous with the bright yellow rubber gloves he was wearing.

  “What’s with the get-up?” Tommy asked him. “You given up selling CDs for some new career as a janitor?”

  “C-c-can we take this inside?” Hunter said. “I’m fr-fr-freezing.”

  Ellie nodded. She slid open the side door and they all piled in. Too cold and miserable to be shy, Hunter stripped off his sodden clothes and put on dry pants, socks, a shirt, and a sweater that he picked out of the spare clothes they kept in the back for the homeless. When he was dressed, he wrapped himself up with a couple of blankets. It made him look like a derelict—a weird derelict with those rubber gloves. Ellie watched him try to deal with the gloves, but his hands were too numbed from the cold. She helped him peel them off, then handed him a coffee. He cupped his hands around the Styrofoam cup, spilling hot coffee onto fingers, but he didn’t seem to feel the liquid.

  Ellie and Tommy used a couple of other blankets to dry themselves off and helped themselves to coffee as well.

  “Th-th-thanks,” Hunter said finally. “For everything. For all of this. I mean it. But especially for getting those guys off my back.” He took a sip of the coffee, sloshing more down his chin than he got in his mouth. “How did you do that anyway?”

  “Yeah, Ellie,” Tommy said. “What gives? That one guy was talking about some bargain.”

  “I don’t know,” she told them. “I’ve seen them in The Harp whenever there’s a session on, but I’ve never talked to them. They’re the ones who beat Donal up awhile back, remember?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “But the weirdest thing is, give them long hair and they could be the men I saw this morning at Kellygnow, hanging around in the backyard, some of them just in shirtsleeves. Like the cold couldn’t touch them.” She turned to Hunter. “What did you call them?”

  “Ge-gentry. They’re some kind of…”

  His voice trailed off and he got an embarrassed look on his face.

  “Spirits,” Tommy put in.

  Hunter gave him a grateful look and nodded. He took another long swallow of coffee, this time drinking more than he spilled. The hot liquid seemed to be helping, since he wasn’t shivering so much and his teeth had finally stopped chattering.

  “They trashed Miki’s place earlier this morning,” he went on. “I went out there tonight and thought I’d try to clean things up for her, but then one of those guys showed up and … and …”

  He had such an anguished look on his face that Ellie reached over and laid a comforting hand on his arm.

  “I think I killed him,” Hunter finished.

  “Oh, man,” Tommy said. “No wonder they’re so pissed off at you.”

  “They haven’t liked me from the start,” Hunter said. “Ever since—” His gaze went to Ellie. “—that night at the community center when I met you and one of them warned me to stay away from you.”

  “What?”

  Hunter nodded. “I know. It didn’t make any sense to me either. Donal said he’d figure out what they wanted—what was going on, you know?—but that was before he went all weird.”

  “All weird how?” Ellie asked.

  Hunter told them then. About the painting Donal had been working on, Donal and Miki’s fight, how she’d thrown him out of the apartment after he’d destroyed his canvas, all the weird things she’d told him, what had happened to her apartment, meeting Donal just before the hard man showed up. It was a long convoluted story that complicated things more than it explained, so far as Ellie was concerned. The more Hunter talked, the more she shook her head in disbelief. None of this made any sense.

  “Has the whole world gone insane?” she asked when he was done.

  “Is that a rhetorical question,” Tommy asked, “or did you really want an answer?”

  “You’ve got an answer?”

  He nodded. “The world’s like it always was. You’re just seeing it differently.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “So what do you think the hard man was talking about?” Hunter asked. “With this bargain, I mean.”

  Ellie thought she knew at least that much, though it didn’t explain things any better.

  “You said the figure in the painting was wearing a mask?” she asked.

  Hunter nodded. “Miki called it a Green Man’s mask. It looks like it’s made of leaves and vines and stuff.”

  “I know what it looks like,” Ellie said. “That’s what my commission from Musgrave Wood is. To make a new version of this old wooden mask they have.”

  “So that’s the bargain,” Tommy said.

  She nodded. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  “So now what do we do?” Hunter asked.

  “There’s going to be hell to pay if I make this mask, isn’t there?”

  “And hell to pay if you don’t,” Tommy put in.

  “Thank you for that.”

  “Come on, Ellie. I’m not trying to—”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “But I’m just so confused about all of this…”

  She stared out the front windshield, not that there was anything to see. They had the van’s engine still running, but a coat of ice was already thickening on the glass. Angel really needed to get some new vehicles.

  “We need help,” she said. “Expert help.”

  “Fiona,” Hunter offered. “One of the women who works for me. She was telling me about these Creek sisters …”

  He broke off as Tommy began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “They’re his aunts,” Ellie explained.

  “That’s what Fiona called them. The Aunts.”

  “I mean they’re literally his aunts.”

  Hunter gave Tommy a considering look. “But Fiona made it sound like they were these, I don’t know, supernatural wise women or something.”

  “What can I say?” Tommy told him.

  “Maybe we should talk to them,”
Ellie said. “I can’t believe what I just said,” she added in a mutter.

  Tommy was kind and made no comment. Nodding, he took out the cell phone and punched in a number. After a few moments, he hit the “End” button and punched in another number, repeating the process a few more times.

  “Looks like the phone lines are down on the rez,” he said.

  “Then we’re going to have to drive out there,” Ellie said.

  Tommy shook his head. “With this rain? I don’t think so. The roads are going to be a mess. I doubt the highway’s even open. We’ll have to wait until the weather clears.”

  “That might not be until the end of the week,” Ellie said. “I don’t know if we can wait that long. I’m supposed to be working on this mask, but now we know I can’t because who knows what sort of horrible thing those guys’ll do with it. So what’s going to happen when they figure out I’m stalling?”

  No one wanted to put it into words. They’d all seen the hard man lift the jeep like it was no heavier than a cardboard cut-out and flip it over on its side.

  “Thing is,” Tommy said. “If they’re so tough, how come just whacking one with a pail of water was enough to kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” Hunter told him. “I don’t even know for sure that he is dead.”

  “But still.”

  Hunter nodded. “And remember what Donal said before he left me: Everything can die. When it comes to these Gentry, I figure he should know.”

  “After what you’ve told us,” Tommy said, “I don’t know if I’d trust him on anything.”

  Reluctantly, Ellie had to agree. She supposed the most depressing thing about all of this was that she wasn’t particularly surprised by what Hunter had told them. There had always been something about Donal that had made her keep a certain distance between them. It was why she hadn’t been able to reciprocate his love, why even as a friend, his moroseness could sometimes be wearying. It was one thing to tell yourself it was only a mannerism—which is what it had always seemed to her, part of the angsty, Irish-expatriate artist image he liked to project—but when it went on as relentlessly as it did … She hadn’t been able to live with it. And now this.

  The mask had been pulled away and who would have guessed what had really been lying there under the façade?

  “We’re getting off the topic here,” she said. “Let’s concentrate on getting out to the rez to see Tommy’s aunts.”

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” Tommy asked. “If we get stranded halfway there, slide off the road in some godforsaken part of the mountains …” He shook his head. “The cops have probably already closed off the highway.”

  “You think?”

  He shrugged. “If not yet, then soon.”

  “So let’s get out on the road before they do.”

  13

  After dinner, Miki pulled one of the dining-room chairs over to the window that overlooked the street below Fiona’s apartment and sat there for the rest of the evening. She watched the sleet come down outside, cradling her old Hohner on her lap. Occasionally she fingered a tune on its keyboard, but since she didn’t work the bellows, the only sound she made was that of the buttons being pressed and released, a series of soft, almost inaudible, hollow clicks. Mostly she smoked her cigarettes and stared out the window. Fiona tried striking up a conversation from time to time, but Miki simply couldn’t muster the energy. The events of last night and this morning, and then having worked to put on a good face about it through the day, had left her too drained.

  “It’s not you,” she told Fiona. “Honestly. You’ve been great. But I’ve run out of steam, you know?”

  “If you want to go to bed … ?”

  Miki shook her head. “No, I’ll just sit here for a while.”

  And try not to feel so bloody depressed. But it was hard, and Fiona’s apartment didn’t help.

  Fiona had carried the Goth obsession of her wardrobe over into her interior decorating scheme. Between the promo posters of Morrissey, The Cure, Dead Can Dance, Rhea’s Obsession, and the like, and the somber minimalism of the furnishings—really, who put up solid black curtains?—it would be hard to feel cheerful in this room in the best of circumstances. All the furnishings were black, what little of them there were. Entertainment unit holding the stereo and TV. Wooden IKEA couch and chairs that Fiona had repainted, recovering the cushions with black fabric. Coffee table, lamp, and a small bookcase. The chairs and dining-room table in the part of the room where Miki was sitting. Only the mantel was cluttered, draped with black and red lace and holding a fake human skull, an obviously beloved collection of Anne Rice novels, and what looked like two hundred candles. It was enough to make Miki want to slit her wrists.

  She didn’t blame Fiona. Her co-worker was actually a very sweet woman for all her fixation with the dark and gloomy. She’d cooked a great stir-fry for dinner, kept up a cheerful conversation from when they’d first left the store through when they sat down to dinner, and even put on an Enya CD after the meal, making some comment about how it bridged the gap between Celtic and Goth. Miki didn’t have the heart to tell her that the cloying harmonies and sameness of the disc put her nerves on edge. She’d have preferred some early ‘Trane or Lester Young. A remastered Bird reissue or Wayne Shorter’s new CD. Anything with an edge. She’d even have settled for one of Fiona’s Goth bands, if there actually existed any recordings among them where the tempo changed from one cut to another.

  She half-listened to Fiona making some phone calls. One to her friend Andrea, commiserating on the closing of the club where she was supposed to start working that night. Another to Jessica, tracking down a telephone number for the Creek sisters. Passing that information on to Hunter’s answering machine since it seemed he was still out. God, what could he be finding to do on a night as miserable as this?

  “What are you looking at?” Fiona asked as she pushed the “End” button on her phone and laid it on the floor by her feet.

  Miki turned from the window and shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Though that wasn’t true, she realized as she turned back to her vigil. The real reason she was keeping watch was that at any moment she expected to see the Gentry come ambling down the street. The slippery footing wouldn’t bother them and the rain would simply run off their trench coats, if they even bothered to wear them. They’d come stomping up the stairs to Fiona’s place and trash it just as they had hers. But first they’d vent their anger on Fiona and her.

  “Whoever wrecked your place isn’t going to find you here,” Fiona said.

  Miki turned to look at her again, a little embarrassed that she was being so transparent.

  “Is what’s going on inside my head that obvious?” she asked.

  Fiona shook her head. “You wouldn’t be normal if you weren’t worried about that. How would they even know to look for you here?”

  “These aren’t your run-of-the-mill, intolerant assholes,” Miki said. “Finding someone who’s trying to hide anywhere in this city is the least of their abilities.”

  “This have anything to do with why Hunter wants to contact a Native elder?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Fiona pulled her feet up onto her chair and wrapped her arms around them, looking at Miki over the tops of her knees.

  “No offense,” she said, “but neither you nor Hunter seem much inclined to the spiritual.”

  Miki wanted to laugh. Spiritual was the last word she would have used to describe the Gentry. They were so wired into base, earthly concerns that the only thing spiritual about them was their love for Guinness and whiskey. Not quite the spirits Fiona had in mind.

  “I guess,” she said. “I can’t really speak for Hunter, but the only experiences I’ve ever had with things not quite of this world have been shite.”

  Fiona regarded her for a long moment.

  “You mean your place got trashed by bad spirits?” she finally asked. “Like some kind of, what? Poltergeists?”

  “Oh, no
,” Miki told her. “The Gentry have physical presence. Too bloody much of it, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “The Gentry?”

  Miki sighed. “It’s a long story,” she said. “But to give you the short version, I had a big fight with Donal last night because he was acting like a stupid little self-centered shite—”

  “Or, in other words, he was being himself.”

  Miki raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, really,” Fiona said. “I mean, I’m sorry, he being your brother and all, but he’s never exactly made himself easy to like, has he? At least not for us. What does he call everyone who doesn’t quite match up to his obviously high standards?”

  “Punters?”

  “Exactly. Sometimes all he has to do is walk into the store and it’s all I can do to not give him a good smack across the head.”

  Miki was so used to the way Donal could be that she never really thought all that much about how negatively other people might view him. She supposed it was because she’d always gotten to see the other side of him, the protective older brother capable of great generosity. Gone now. Lost to her in a welter of Gentry lies and promises.

  “He’s not all bad,” she said, surprised that she could still defend him after the past twenty-four hours.

  “Neither’s getting sick with a really bad cold—I mean, you do get the time off work—but still, who wants one?”

  “Anyway,” Miki went on. “We had this fight and that brought me to the attention of these friends of his who ended up trashing my place.”

  “Nice friends.”

  Miki nodded. “But what makes it complicated is… well, they’re not exactly human.”

  “Say what?”

  “I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous.”

  “Well, that depends,” Fiona said. “Do you mean not human as in they’re such nasty pieces of work we don’t want to claim them as part of the human race, or are you talking X-Files?”

  Miki never watched the show, but you couldn’t have any awareness of contemporary pop culture and not know something about it by now.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Does The X-Files deal with genii loci? We’re talking immortal earth spirits here, bad-tempered ones with a mean streak a mile wide who can change shape and pull your arms and legs off if they happen to get pissed off with you.”