Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  “I am everything they are not,” el lobo told her.

  “Are you now.”

  El lobo shrugged. “You would know best.”

  Bettina turned to the housekeeper when Nuala made no reply. She could taste some undercurrent running through their conversation—merely its presence, not what it augured. All she could be certain of was that it had something to do with the ongoing enmity between Nuala and the wolves.

  “What does he mean by that?” she asked. “That you would know best?”

  “Better you ask him,” Nuala replied.

  But one look at el lobo told Bettina he would be no more forthcoming than the housekeeper.

  “And you call me childish,” she said.

  That woke a laugh from her wolf and another frown from Nuala. But then the housekeeper sighed.

  “You are right,” she said. “I shouldn’t measure you by my own experiences. Just because I was foolish when I was your age, does not mean the mistakes I made apply to how you choose to live your life.”

  “I’m impressed,” el lobo said. “It’s almost an apology.”

  “But not an explanation,” Bettina said.

  “The history that lies between the Gentry and me is too long a story,” Nuala told her, “and not relevant to our present situation.”

  El lobo nodded in agreement. “We have more pressing business anyway,” he told Bettina. “It’s time we were going.”

  Bettina gave him a puzzled look.

  “Because your fierce friend’s right,” he explained. “We can’t leave the Glasduine to wreak havoc out in the world as it surely will.”

  “But what can we do?”

  “If you can’t heal it, then I’ll have to kill it.”

  She shivered, unsure if his breezy confidence was feigned or sincere. How he would even do such a thing was beyond her. If Nuala was at a loss, what could he, a sombrito, hope to accomplish?

  “And it’s we who must go,” he added, “because—what shall I call you?” His gaze turned to Nuala, the laughter still flickering in his eyes. “My aunt?”

  Nuala glared at him. “You could lose that tongue if it keeps wagging that way.”

  “Our brave housekeeper, then,” el lobo said, ignoring her threat. “You see, she can’t, or at least won’t, leave her charge.”

  Bettina gave him another puzzled look. What was it with spirit folk that had them make everything a secret and a riddle?

  “Kellygnow,” he said. “This house. She would sooner die than forsake it now. Am I not right?”

  Nuala gave him a reluctant nod.

  Bettina recalled the recent argument between Nuala and the Recluse.

  “Because it is your home?” she asked, wondering again at the need spirits seemed to have to claim a place as their own.

  “Because it is my responsibility,” Nuala said.

  “Which among us,” el lobo added, “amounts to much the same thing. After all, spirits of a place need a place. Without it, they become like certain wolves we won’t mention.”

  “You would not understand such a thing,” Nuala told him.

  “That is where you are gravely mistaken,” he replied. “My stake in this is higher than yours. My flesh is borrowed. Were I to shirk my own responsibility, this gift of a body I wear could well be reclaimed, leaving me nothing more than a shadow again.”

  Nuala regarded him for a long moment, then slowly nodded her understanding.

  Bettina shook her head. “But the one who gave you this … your body. You told me he was dead.”

  “I didn’t only accept his body,” el lobo said. “I also accepted the responsibilities he once held when I took on his flesh. There are higher powers than us in the world and they are very specific in dealing with those who renege on their promises—at least among beings such as Nuala and I. Now come. We must go. Every moment we stand here, the masked one grows that much stronger.”

  Nuala nodded. “Go. But only mark where the Glasduine bides for now, what it appears the creature means to do. I will consider other strategies until your return. Between the three of us, we will find a solution to this.”

  El lobo grinned. “You have to love a woman so sure of herself.”

  Nuala stiffened.

  Dios dame fuerza, Bettina thought. Her wolf seemed to thrive on rubbing everyone the wrong way.

  “That’s not helping,” she told him.

  “Perhaps not. But it’s in my nature.”

  “Then you should consider changing that part of it,” she said.

  Before he could reply, she crossed the kitchen and took down her coat from the pegs by the door. She put on a pair of boots, nodded to Nuala, then stepped out into the rain, quickly moving into the between so that she wouldn’t get wet again. Her hair had only just dried from her last outing. El lobo joined her before she was on the lawn, that infuriating smile still flirting in his eyes.

  “I don’t know why I trust you,” she said as they walked toward the woods.

  “Your heart knows I mean you no harm.”

  “Perhaps. And yet…”

  El lobo smiled. “Your heart has played you false before.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” she asked.

  “Never. But I rarely have the opportunity for conversation. Perhaps I overcompensate when the opportunity does arise.”

  “And is that almost an apology from you?” she asked.

  “Almost.”

  He moved ahead to where the creature had broken a trail through the undergrowth, pausing when the spoor disappeared. Where at first the creature had simply forced its way through the trees and brush, at this point it seemed to have suddenly acquired the ability to move across the terrain without disturbing even a twig.

  “We watched it go,” Bettina said. “When it first came out of the house, it was ungainly, as though unused to its body.”

  “I remember that feeling.”

  Bettina glanced at him. She couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like.

  “But step by step,” she added, “it gained confidence until, by the time it was out of our sight, its passage was silent.”

  “Or it walked elsewhere,” el lobo said.

  “You think it crossed over?”

  His nostrils flared. “I can’t catch his scent, not here, nor in the world we’ve just quit.”

  While he considered the direction the Glasduine would have taken, Bettina studied him.

  “You don’t have a plan at all, do you?” she said finally.

  He shook his head. “But I know we must do something.”

  “What made you change your mind about helping with the creature?” she asked.

  “I never said I wouldn’t help. Only that I’d enjoy seeing it deal with the Gentry. I have as much unfinished business with them as either Nuala or your friend Donal.”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  El lobo shrugged. “The pup, then.”

  They stood silent for a long moment, listening to the sound of dripping that came from all around them.

  “If the Glasduine’s gone into the otherworld,” Bettina finally said, “we might never find it. Unless your nose is as sharp as your tongue.”

  He smiled. “Alas, I can’t make that claim. But you have the means to find him.”

  “I?”

  “Not you, precisely, but the dogs I can hear singing in you.”

  Bettina regarded him steadily. “I hear nothing. Los cadejos are long gone.”

  “Or you have simply turned your back on them.”

  That cut too close to home, for she’d done exactly that. When la Maravilla led her abuela away into the desert, when no one and nothing could help her find Abuela again, she had turned her back on the whole of the canine clan as it related to la época del mito, utterly and completely until this wolf had pushed himself into her life.

  “They would be of great help to us at the moment,” he said.

  Bettina shook her head. “I don’t trust them.”r />
  “You don’t trust me either.”

  “That’s different. You…”

  “I, what?” he asked when her voice trailed off.

  You are too handsome to ignore, she’d wanted to say. Too charming not to want to trust.

  “How can I hear them again?” she asked instead. “How can I call them up?”

  El lobo shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “But you hear them.”

  “I do, only—”

  “So you must call them up for me. You will, won’t you?”

  She couldn’t understand his reluctance until he explained, “If they do prove untrustworthy, you will blame it on me.”

  “Perhaps. But I will try not to.”

  He smiled. “What if I told you it requires a kiss?”

  “Does it?”

  He shook his head. “No. But I’ve wanted to find an excuse to kiss you since the first time I saw you.”

  A flush rose up Bettina’s neck and spread to her cheeks.

  “We… the Glasduine,” she said, stumbling over her words. “We are upon a serious undertaking.”

  “I am serious, too. Perhaps if we kissed once, I wouldn’t be so distracted from the task at hand.”

  Bettina remembered all the warnings Nuala had given her. A kiss now, then it was off into the woods with her jeans pulled down about her ankles. Her abuela had been full of warnings, too, of getting too close to beings who had originated in la época del mito. Relationships with the spirits were always doomed to failure, Abuela would say—speaking from the voice of experience, Bettina assumed, since she knew that her grandmother had dallied more than once with such beings.

  She didn’t doubt the danger, of either being pulled off into the woods or having her heart broken, but somehow it didn’t matter. Not with el lobo’s handsome features so close to her own, his breath on her face, sweet as a summer garden. Not with the loneliness that rose in her, so many months away from home, so many longer with no close confidant. No lover.

  So she lifted her face to his and their lips met. His arms went around her, drawing her close, enfolding her with warmth and a gentle strength, and time stopped. When they finally drew apart, she was breathless. But so was he.

  “Ah,” he said, adding after a moment, “Now I have no choice but to prove myself worthy so that you will trust me.”

  He laid a finger across her lips. “Not yet. Say nothing. Let there only be hope between us until the task is done.”

  He took her hand then and led her deeper into la época del mito.

  “For the moment,” he added with a grin, “we have singing dogs to find.”

  This time Bettina thought she could actually hear them. Distant, but for the first time in years, clearly audible. Their voices were no longer simply a memory.

  10

  After her argument with Nuala, Musgrave returned to her cottage in a foul mood. She slammed the door and stood staring about herself. The place was as much a prison as a haven. She could never be away from it for too long because it was only on this estate that she had access to the otherworld. She wasn’t like the Gentry, or as Ellie could be, able to cross over wherever and whenever she so desired. Because of her weak geasan, she had only the access gate here that the Gentry had provided for her, a space between two trees that, when she spoke a certain charmed word, allowed her to cross over. And she needed to cross over, for it was only by spending the better part of the year in the otherworld that she was able to prolong her life as she had.

  All that had been supposed to change with the mask. The Glasduine they planned to call up with it would have given the Gentry power over the local manitou, but it would also have given her immortality and enough geasan to be a player rather than a pawn in the world of spirits and magic.

  Now Donal Greer had stolen that opportunity from her and she was back to where she had started before she’d used her wealth and influence to track down the pieces of the mask. The difference was, she was older. So much older. Her youth had been stolen from her. Damn Greer. He had stolen it from her.

  By the time she heard the Gentry outside her door, her anger towards Nuala and Donal both had grown into a smoldering rage. She opened the door only to find that the wolves had bypassed her cabin and were walking deeper into the woods. When she called after them, the one in the rear turned to look at her, but then moved on with the others.

  Their forms flickered, half in this world, half in the other, until they suddenly disappeared from sight. Cursing, Musgrave closed the door to her cabin and hurried to her own gate into the otherworld. Speaking the charm the Gentry had given her, she stepped through the trees into that other place. She turned slowly, listening. She saw her cottage where it stood under the trees, beleafed now, winter fled in this place. Here the small building was the only man-made structure on the hill. There was no city below, no road leading up from congested streets to the quiet of the hilltop, no estates scattered like an uneven quilt pattern on the slopes rising up to what bore the name of Kelly-gnow in the world she’d just quit.

  Her gaze moved on, finally settling on the pool where Father Salmon slept. There she saw the Gentry, gathered around its rough stone wall, smoking cigarettes as they stared into the dark, still water. There was no pleasure in the leader’s face when he looked up at her approach. Turning away, he reached into the water and stroked the scaled back of the sleeping fish.

  A thrill of anticipation and fear went up Musgrave’s spine at the thought that the salmon might wake. It would bring great change, but perhaps now, with all their plans in shambles, a change might be welcome. They would be transformed, but into what? Musgrave wondered if will was enough on its own to guide the change. If so, she had will and to spare, and she knew exactly what she would become.

  “Was he brought here, do you think?” the leader of the Gentry said, speaking around the cigarette that dangled from his lips. “Or did he come on his own?”

  “I think it’s like the First Forest,” she replied, crouching beside him so she could look into the water. “All forests are a reflection of it, but they are all a path back to it as well.”

  The leader nodded. “Which would make this pool connected to where he sleeps at the beginning of time.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Yet I can feel him under my hand. I could wake him.” He looked at her. “Yet one more mystery, eh?”

  “I suppose…”

  He straightened up and wiped his hand dry on his trousers. Turning, he sat on the stones that lipped the pool. He took a final drag from his cigarette, then flicked the butt away. Around him, the other wolves lounged. They gave the appearance of being half-asleep, uninterested in anything, but Musgrave knew they followed every word, every motion.

  “It’s all gone to shite, these plans of ours,” the leader said.

  Musgrave sat back on her heels. “We can blame Nuala for that.”

  “How so?”

  “She should have kept better guard of the mask.”

  The leader shook his head. “She was never a part of this. How would she have known to guard it?”

  Musgrave didn’t really hear his words—she heard the sound of them, but not their meaning.

  “I think she did it on purpose,” she said, still seething at how the housekeeper had spoken to her. She straightened her back and gave the leader a stern look. “She is no longer under my protection. You and the others … you can do with her what you will.”

  For a long moment there was only silence, then the wolves began to snicker. The leader laughed out loud.

  “She was under your protection?”

  “‘Was’ being the operative word,” Musgrave said. “She was useful, I’ll admit, and could possibly remain so if she were able to mind her own business, but I won’t have my employees speak to me with the disrespect she did earlier today.”

  “Gave you a dressing-down, did she?”

  “What do you find so amusing?”

  The leader smiled. �
�That Nuala would need protection, for one thing. How small is your brain, woman?”

  “I don’t understand. The enmity between you“

  “Oh, there’s no love lost, I’ll-grant you that, but even if we could harm her, we wouldn’t.”

  Musgrave began to get an uneasy feeling. What did he mean by even if they could harm her?

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because she has the right to feel as she does for us. I’m surprised that with all your study and research you never unearthed the story.”

  Musgrave’s uneasiness grew. There was a dangerous look in the leader’s eyes, a sense of anticipation that rose from the other Gentry.

  “Will you tell me?” she said.

  “Why not? It’s old business. Here’s the way I know it. Back in the homeland, some randy old godling grabbed himself a lovely maiden, stole her from her sacred wood and dragged her into the deeper forest where he and his mates had their way with her for a month or so. Do you want the details?”

  Musgrave shook her head.

  The leader smiled and lit another cigarette. “Well, they finally grew tired of the game and tossed her away. Trouble is, they left her with child—not a single birth, as a human might have, but a litter.

  “She fled her homeland and came here, stealing passage on one of the famine ships. Deep in the forests of this new land, hiding from both men and the native spirits on whose lands she encroached, she gave birth to her litter. She did her best with her unruly pack, raising them from pups to young men. But every time she looked upon them, she was put in mind of their sires, and finally she could bear the memories no more. So she left them to fend for themselves and went wandering.

  “Does any of this sound familiar yet?”

  Musgrave shook her head, though she could guess where the story was going. “I don’t know what hardships she faced,” the leader went on, “though loneliness must have been one. Loss of place another. But finally she found a haven and though she didn’t call for us, blood calls to blood, and we came anyway.”

  “She’s your mother,” Musgrave said.

  “And a loving woman, too, don’t you think?”

  Musgrave ignored the comment. “So you’ve never even been to Ireland.”