Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  “I don’t know…”

  “Look, you have to shoulder some of the responsibility, too,” Tommy said. “No question. But you also have to cut yourself some slack. You didn’t ask to step into a war zone. He had to know the risks, though a guy like that, he was going to think he’s immortal anyway.”

  “They are immortal. Isn’t that what your aunts said?”

  “Good point. Doesn’t change a thing, though, except you’d think he’d have gotten some smarts over the years.”

  “Tommy!” one of the aunts called from the hallway. Hunter couldn’t see which one.

  “We’re on it!” Tommy called back. He turned back to Hunter. “But seriously, you want a break, take it, because things aren’t going to get any less dangerous from here on out.”

  Hunter shook his head. “It’s hard to explain, but I have to see it through.”

  “I understand.”

  No, you don’t, Hunter thought. Because it wasn’t just sticking with them to see this thing through. There was also the way Ria had been after him to get out of, and stay out of the safe cocoon of his life. This wasn’t exactly what she’d meant, or the way he’d planned it, but he couldn’t back out now. That was too much like giving up—not only this, but everything.

  “But just let me add this,” Tommy said. “Once things get hairy… if you’re with us, we’re going to be depending on you. So if you are going to bail, now’s the time to do it.”

  Thanks, Hunter thought. Put the pressure on. But he refused to bow to it.

  “I thought you said we weren’t even going to get out of the driveway,” he said.

  Tommy grinned. “There’s that. But then you don’t know my aunts. If they think we’re going somewhere, we probably are.”

  As they walked towards the hall they met up with Ellie and Tommy’s Aunt Nancy. Ellie looked the way Hunter felt, washed out and exhausted, but there was also a lost, anguished look in her eyes.

  “Did you feel it?” she asked. “It was like someone tore out a piece of my heart.”

  Hunter shook his head.

  “Only you superhero magic types got to feel it,” Tommy told her.

  Ellie gave him an exasperated look, but then she shook her head. Smiling, she punched him in the shoulder.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”

  “What? The punch or the compliment?”

  “There was a compliment?”

  Tommy put a finger to his lips and nodded in the direction of the waiting aunts with an exaggerated look of alarm. Shaking her head again, Ellie continued down the hall. Tommy and Hunter followed behind.

  Outside it was worse than Tommy had predicted. The driveway was like polished glass, the highway beyond one smooth sheet of ice. All around them, the fields were littered with broken branches and trees bent almost in half. And the rain continued to fall without respite from the thick gray cloud cover above. Tommy stepped gingerly out from under the porch’s overhang and immediately lost his balance. Before he could fall, Aunt Nancy seemed to almost pluck him from the air and bring him back to steadier footing.

  Hunter and Ellie exchanged glances. Like the Gentry, Aunt Nancy was a lot stronger than she looked.

  “I told you,” Tommy said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “You’ve lived in the city too long,” Aunt Nancy told him.

  She directed them all to hold hands.

  Now what? Hunter wondered. Were they going to have a prayer circle?

  But no words were spoken. Instead, the ground seemed to shift underfoot and an unaccountable nausea rose up in his stomach.

  Should have taken the time to have some breakfast, he thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had something to eat. That was all this was, though it felt more like motion sickness. When he glanced at Ellie, she seemed to feel it as well, maybe worse than he did. She leaned against him, stifling a burp. He let go of Zulema’s hand and put his arm around Ellie’s shoulder to steady her. She gave him a weak smile in return.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  Tommy appeared to be feeling a little queasy as well. Only the aunts seemed unaffected.

  “We have stepped into a place between our world and that of the manitou,” Sunday explained. “It can make you feel a little sick to your stomach until you get used to being here.”

  Hunter shook his head. “But… why are we here?”

  Wherever here was, because except for the nausea, nothing seemed to have changed at all.

  “In this place we aren’t affected by the climate in either world.”

  When Hunter still looked confused, Sunday pointed to where Aunt Nancy and Zulema were confidently walking across the sheet of ice that covered the driveway.

  “Come on,” Sunday said. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

  Reluctantly, he followed the older woman out onto the ice, his arm still around Ellie’s shoulders to give her support. Ahead of them they saw Tommy gingerly step onto the ice. He took one step, another, then turned to grin at them.

  “This is unbelievable,” he said. “Look.”

  He did a little dance step on the ice, as surefooted as though it was dirt underfoot. But Hunter was no longer so surprised, because he and Ellie were out on the ice now as well. It was a little disconcerting, knowing the ice was there but not slipping on it, like going down a stopped escalator, only this was easier to adjust to.

  “Can you do this number on the truck?” Tommy was asking Aunt Nancy.

  She nodded and laid her hand on the bed of the vehicle. Zulema tossed some blankets into the back, then she and Aunt Nancy got into the cab with Tommy, leaving Sunday, Hunter, and Ellie to clamber up into the bed.

  “Is it passing?” Sunday asked as they settled on the blankets. “The queasiness?”

  “Not really,” Hunter said.

  Ellie shook her head.

  Sunday dug into a pocket and offered them each what looked like a small round cookie.

  “Here,” she said. “These will help.”

  Hunter shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  The thought of eating anything right now made his stomach do a slow flip.

  “What is it?” Ellie asked. “Some kind of magic?”

  Sunday smiled. “Hardly. Mostly oatmeal, sugar, and flour, with some herbs to help the nausea. Anise, cinnamon. Peppermint.”

  Tommy started the engine. Putting the pickup into gear, he started cautiously up the incline, but he needn’t have bothered. The tires had no trouble finding traction. The vehicle’s motion quickened the nausea Hunter and Ellie were feeling.

  “I’ll have one,” Ellie said, taking the cookie from Sunday.

  “Me, too,” Hunter said.

  The mix of licorice with cinnamon and peppermint made for an odd flavor, but it left an oddly refreshing taste in his mouth. And better yet, worked almost immediately on his queasiness. By the time they were a mile or so down the road, the nausea had completely fled and he found himself actually enjoying this odd drive. He could see the rain, but it didn’t touch them. He could see the ice, but the pickup stayed on the road as though the tires were rolling across dry asphalt.

  “This is really weird,” he said.

  Sunday nodded. “It’s not how we normally use the between, but it is proving helpful today.”

  “Now all we have to do is figure out how to deal with this thing Donal called up,” Ellie said. “The Glasduine.”

  “What are we going to do with it?” Hunter asked.

  Whatever it was. He wasn’t that worried himself about some forest spirit Donal might have called up with an old mask—not when there were the hard men still to deal with. The last time they’d been protected because they wanted some service from Ellie. Now all bets were off, which made the Gentry seem to be a much more immediate concern.

  “We’ll have to see when we get there,” Sunday said. “Hopefully we can banish it deeper into manidó-akí where it won’t be able to hurt anyone, though how we’ll manage that
with a creature as strong as this, I have no idea.”

  “But Aunt Nancy knows what to do,” Ellie said. “Right?”

  Sunday shrugged. “Nancy tends to play everything by ear.”

  “Great.”

  Ellie settled back on her share of the blankets and leaned against Hunter. He hesitated a moment, then put his arm around her shoulders again.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  “Circumstances notwithstanding,” Hunter told her, “I’m glad to be here.”

  They rode for a while in silence, listening to the hum of the engine. The freezing rain continued to fall everywhere except on them. Hunter let his gaze travel to the side of the road. The roadside vegetation was decimated by its burden of ice, weeds all flattened, trees bent over at alarming angles where the branches hadn’t simply snapped off.

  He was about to turn away when he caught movement in between the decimated trees. His breath went still and he stiffened when he recognized the shapes for what they were.

  “Manitou,” Sunday said, turning to see what had captured his attention. “Don’t worry. They won’t harm us.”

  Ellie pressed closer to him. Hunter knew just what she was feeling. Until he’d experienced the presence of the Gentry, and later the native manitou, he hadn’t really known the meaning of awe. But then that begged the question …

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “They look so powerful—they are powerful,” he corrected himself, remembering how the leader of the Gentry had so effortlessly turned a car over onto its side back in the city. “How could I possibly have killed one just by banging him on the side of the head with a pail of water?”

  “Spirits become susceptible when they take physical form,” Sunday explained. “They retain a supernatural strength, but are no longer impervious to pain or death.”

  “But why would they do it?”

  She gave another one of her easy shrugs. “To fully experience life, I suppose. Without a physical form, they can’t experience the tactile. I have traveled in spirit form and can tell you that even your sight and hearing have more presence in a physical body. Everything is more fully rounded, more rooted in this world where our physical senses rule. Think of how you feel a bass drum resonating in your chest at the same time as you hear it.”

  Hunter nodded slowly. It was like the difference between a recording and a live concert, he decided. We made do with recordings, but nothing could take the place of actually being there at the performance. Seen like that, he could easily understand what would make spirits take on physical form. Especially the Gentry, considering their love of music and Guinness.

  But then the memory of what he’d done to the hard man in Miki’s apartment came crushing down on him again. The life taken.

  He could feel the tightness swell up in his chest once more and forced himself to breathe normally.

  “Are you okay?” Ellie asked, giving him a worried look.

  Hunter shook his head. “Not really. But I’m working on it.”

  9

  Under Nuala’s direction, the current residents of Kellygnow had gathered up boards and other scrap wood from the basement and outbuildings, using it to erect a makeshift wall in the sculpting studio where the creature had broken through the side of the house. They could have easily closed off the door to the studio—which they did anyway once they were done with the wall—but Bettina understood Nuala’s rationale behind the manual task. It was a way to get the residents’ minds off the impossibility of what had occurred. Only a few of them had actually caught a glimpse of what Donal had become, but their descriptions of it, along with the wreckage the Glasduine had left behind, was enough to put everyone in a high state of agitation.

  It didn’t help that their power and phone lines were down. The only news available from the outside world was what they could get from Penny’s battery-operated radio. According to the most recent reports, the city was on the verge of being declared a disaster zone with the mayor having already called in the army to help with evacuating seniors and the disabled from their homes, removing dangerous power lines, and guarding against looters.

  “Looters?” Bettina had repeated, incredulously, when Penny passed along that last piece of information.

  “Hey, the city’s shut down,” one of the other residents replied. “For some people that’s an open invitation to help themselves.”

  “Isn’t that the sorry truth,” Chantal said.

  None of the residents had to stay in Kellygnow. While its steep driveway and the streets beyond were too treacherous to chance, they could still leave the way Donal had claimed he’d come, down through the backyards where they could break a trail through the ice-covered snow to gain firmer footing. But where would they go? They were better off than most. Here at least they had the woodstove for heat, food, and water, and each other’s company.

  When someone suggested they see if any of their neighbors needed help, Nuala nodded in agreement.

  “I’ll go,” Chantal said. “I really need to be doing something …”

  Her voice trailed off and she looked at Bettina, who understood all too well what her friend was going through. The storm on its own was stressful enough; everything else Chantal had experienced today would only have added to her need to immerse herself in some mundane, useful task. Something that would allow her to understand that while there was more to the world than she’d ever realized, the world she did know was still carrying on with the business of living.

  “I’ll come with you,” Bettina said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Nuala told her.

  “Pero—“

  “We have things to discuss, you and I,” Nuala said, pitching her voice low so as not to carry beyond where the three of them were standing.

  She needn’t have worried about being overheard. The other residents were already too busy making their own plans to pay any attention. Now that the house had been secured against the elements, their charitable impulses had risen to the fore. They were all eager to get outside and assay the damage to the area, lending a hand where it might be needed.

  “It’s okay,” Chantal said. “There’s plenty of us to do what needs to be done. You go on and deal with, you know, the stuff you deal with.”

  Her smile was a little too bright, Bettina thought, but she didn’t argue with her friend. Chantal needed to be grounded more than any of the others. Bettina only wished she’d realized sooner how badly the experiences of the morning had affected Chantal. She would have prepared a soothing tea for the sculptor had she thought of it, but her own mind wasn’t as clear as it could be either.

  “Cuidado,” she told her friend. “Be careful.”

  Chantal nodded and went to join the others, leaving Bettina standing with Nuala.

  “Bien,” she said to the housekeeper. “What would you have me do?”

  Nuala waited while the residents put on jackets and boots and trooped out of the house before she replied.

  “I’m not sure,” she said then. “Is there anything in the lore of your people that can help us deal with this creature? Something that might tell us how it can be slain?”

  “I won’t knowingly cause harm to any of God’s creatures,” Bettina said, her voice firm.

  Nuala smiled. “God?”

  “Who do you think made the world? Who else peopled it? Even the spirits are here because He gave them the gift of life.”

  “Perhaps God is a woman,” Nuala said, her amusement still apparent.

  “No estoy así seguro de eso,” Bettina replied. She wasn’t so sure of that. “It seems too much a man’s world for that to be true.”

  “What if I told you it wasn’t always so?”

  Bettina shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. But at least He gave us the Virgin to intercede on our behalf.” She smiled herself as a thought came to her. “Perhaps it is the same in God’s house as it is down here. The man thinks he runs the household, but the woman actually does.”

  “Yo
u are such an innocent.”

  Bettina frowned. This again.

  “Don’t mistake my youth or peaceful intentions for ignorance,” she said. “I am a curandera. Something summoned me to this place for my healing talents—not as a warrior.”

  “And if your life, or the lives of your friends, depend upon battle, what will you do then?”

  “She will have me to fight for her,” a new voice said.

  Bettina turned to find that her wolf had joined them in the kitchen. So intent had she and Nuala been upon their conversation that neither had heard his approach. Bettina nodded a greeting to him, but Nuala was furious.

  “You!” she said, eyes dark with anger. “You dare enter this house—”

  She took a step towards him, stopping only when Bettina moved to block her path.

  “He is my guest,” she said. “And he is not what he seems.”

  She hoped it was true. She needed it to be true.

  “He is one of them,” Nuala said, her voice as cold as the ice that blanketed the landscape outside, “and you presume too much to protect him under this roof.”

  Bettina straightened her shoulders and wouldn’t budge.

  “I say again, he is not what he seems. Look at him. Do you see a darkness in him?”

  “I see shadows.”

  “But he is not like the others,” Bettina insisted.

  Nuala narrowed her eyes, studying him. El lobo, for his part, lounged against the door jamb, regarding the pair of them with mild amusement.

  “I see what you mean,” Nuala said finally. Her voice admitted defeat, but her wariness didn’t lessen. “He is, indeed, something else again.”

  “I think I prefer your other friend’s description,” el lobo said to Bettina.

  Bettina had to laugh.

  “She called him ‘tall, dark,’“ she told Nuala.

  “Inferring the handsome, of course,” Nuala said.

  El lobo grinned. “Of course.”

  “Well, you’re no more shy than the Gentry,” Nuala said, “but at least you have a sense of humor that doesn’t depend on another’s misfortune.”