Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  That night they sat inside “la casa del cadejos,”; as her companions insisted it be called and watched the sunset. Bettina was so tired that she fell asleep early. When she woke, los cadejos were gone, but they had pulled her blanket over her. She had a bean tortilla and the remainder of the oranges for breakfast, then got back to work.

  A day later she had finished two sides, but she’d run out of saguaro ribs. The next morning she went out in search of more, this time accompanied by her raucous band of cadejos.

  “Why did you come to me, that first time?”; Bettina asked as they walked along.

  “We didn’t come to you.”;

  “You came to us.”;

  “You asked us in and gave us a home.”;

  “But then you wouldn’t play with us anymore.”;

  Bettina thought back to that day in I’itoi’s cave and realized that it was true. She had gone to them.

  “I’ve been very rude, haven’t I?”; she said.

  “Sí.”;

  “Muy rudo.”;

  “But now you are our friend.”;

  “We like having friends.”;

  “Yo, también,”; Bettina told them. Me, too.

  They had to range farther and farther afield to gather the ribs, often walking all day, from dawn to dusk. But the weather was temperate and Bettina was enjoying this opportunity to ground herself once more in her beloved desert. A few days later, the lean-to was finished, three sides with a roof, a bench along the back wall to sit upon and a platform along one wall to lie upon.

  They all sat inside again to watch the sunset. Bettina cupped her tea in one hand and leaned contentedly with her back against the wall of the lean-to, her other hand ruffling at the short stiff fur of the closest of her companions.

  “Do you know my father?”; she asked. “He is … an old spirit, I’ve been told. He can soar high above the desert like a hawk.”;

  “We don’t really know any birds,”; they replied.

  “We are the oldest spirits that we know.”;

  There was a general chorus of agreement.

  “Salvo las muchacbas del cuervo,”; one of them said.

  “Y la Urraca.”;

  “Sí. La bella Señorita Margaret.”;

  Bettina didn’t quite know what to make of their talk of crow girls and this woman Margaret who, from the sounds of it, was also a magpie. When she asked about them, she was simply told, “They were here when the world was born.”;

  The cooking fire had long since died down and the night was dark, a cloud cover hiding the stars. Even with the night vision that was a part of the gift of her brujería, Bettina could not see far into the desert.

  “Have you thought more of our bargain?”; she asked. “What you would like in return for the help you gave me?”;

  “Sí. We want you to be our friend.”;

  Bettina laughed and shook her head. “We are already friends.”;

  “We want to be friends forever.”;

  “That is not something friends bargain over,”; Bettina told them.

  “That is all we want.”;

  “Nothing more.”;

  “¡Nada, nada, nada!”;

  “But you have this already,”; Bettina said.

  “Then we are content.”;

  “Here in the forest of your heart.”;

  “Where we have our beautiful home.”;

  “La casa del cadejos.”;

  “We are content.”;

  Now that she had finished the house for los cadejos, Bettina began to search for her father in earnest. She journeyed in ever widening circles, sometimes accompanied by los cadejos, more often alone. She spoke to the spirits, tracked every hawk she saw, but there was no word, no sign of either Papá or his peyoteros. One afternoon, coming on to the sunset and many miles from her bosque del corazón, she heard a quiet weeping. When she turned in the direction from which she thought the sound was coming, she dislodged a pebble and there was immediate silence. She waited, listening.

  “¡Hola!”; she called after a moment. “Who is there?”;

  Still there was silence.

  “Do not be frightened. I am Bettina San Miguel. A simple curandera.”;

  “¿Verdaderos?”;

  It was a woman’s voice, soft, anxious.

  “Truly,”; Bettina assured her. “Are you hurt? Can I help you?”;

  Another silence followed, then a fearful, “For favor.”;

  Following the sound of the woman’s voice, Bettina found her on the far side of a jumble of boulders, pressed up against the red stone, her eyes wide with fear. She seemed to be a Native woman, long of feature with dark braids hanging down either side of her face. She was dressed in a simple cotton shift, bare-legged and barefoot. She shivered and pressed closer to the boulders when Bettina moved towards her.

  “Oh, no,”; Bettina said when she saw the ugly gash on the woman’s leg. “What happened to you?”;

  “Coyote.”;

  Bettina blinked in surprise. “I have never heard of a coyote attacking a person before.”;

  “I… I was not a person when he attacked …”;

  “Ah…”;

  The woman began to tremble as Bettina approached, jerking when Bettina sat down and drew the woman’s leg onto her lap.

  “Don’t be afraid,”; she said in a soothing voice. “I can mend this.”;

  She looked over at the woman, her smile faltering for a moment. The woman’s features had changed, nose and jaw extending into a long snout, a hare’s long ears hanging where the braids had been. But there was still much human about her, as well. It was only the unexpected odd combination of animal and human features that had startled Bettina.

  “What is your name?”; she asked as she gently probed the woman’s calf with her brujería, hands resting on either side of the wound, gently stroking the skin.

  “Chuhwi.”;

  Of course, Bettina thought. What else but “jackrabbit”; in the language of the Tohono O’odham.

  “Close your eyes, Chuhwi,”; she said, “and lie still for a moment. This shouldn’t take long.”;

  The gash was not nearly so bad as it looked. The bones weren’t broken, which would greatly speed her ability to heal the wound.

  “Will… will it hurt?”;

  “Not even for a moment.”;

  As she concentrated on repairing the damage, Bettina marveled again on how much she had wasted this healing talent of hers with potions and charms. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to heal truly degenerative diseases—cancers and their like—but there were still many people with lesser complaints that she could ease.

  As she promised, it didn’t take long. Chuhwi regarded her with awe when it was done, running her fingers over and over the raised tissue of the scars.

  “Try not to run on it for awhile,”; Bettina told her.

  Chuhwi nodded. She was at ease now, her only sign of nervousness what Bettina assumed was a habitual twitch of her nose.

  “You were in the shape of a rabbit when the coyote caught you?”; she asked.

  “You should have seen his face when I became a woman. I would have laughed if it hadn’t hurt so much.”;

  Bettina smiled. Somewhere a coyote was telling an impossible story to his companions, none of whom would believe him.

  “You’re the one looking for your father,”; Chuhwi said.

  “Sí. Do you have word of him?”;

  “No, it’s just… now that I have met you, I don’t understand why you are looking for him.”;

  “Es mi papa.”;

  “But surely you would understand why he would leave?”;

  Bettina shook her head.

  “Considerelo,”; Chuhwi said. Think about it. “He is an ancient spirit who has fallen in love with a mortal woman and raised a family with her. Year by year, she ages, yet he remains forever unchanged. When they finally die, when even the children of his grandchild’s children dies, he will still be here, alive, unchanged. It hurts less to go away. The f
amily can remember him as a man. And he, he can lose himself in another skin until finally the pain has faded to no more than a dull ache in his memory.”;

  Bettina could only stare at the woman.

  “Such spirits will swear never to fall in love again,”; Chuhwi went on, “but they always do. It is our nature. The flame of life burns so bright in humans, if brief. How can we ignore it?”;

  Bettina thought of her wolf. She knew that, circumstances being how they were, there would be many times when they would be apart. But if he were to simply walk away from her, disappear the way her papa had vanished, it would break her heart. A tightness grew in her chest. As it must have broken Mama’s heart.

  “Is it better to have the brief time together,”; Chuhwi said, “or to have none at all? Which hurts more? I don’t know. But there are many young men I cherish in my memory, and though I promise myself differently, I know there will be more.”;

  Bettina was unable to speak. How could she not have realized this before? Papa must have tried to bring Mama into la época del mito, to extend her life the way Abuela’s had been extended, the way her own would probably be. But even such extended lives were no more than brief moments in the lifetime of an immortal, and Mamá… she had always been too devout. She would never have gone into la época del mito, with Papa. She might have been able to accept a being such as him into her world, but she would never have stepped outside of her world into his.

  How things must have changed when they moved closer to town. When they exchanged the dirt floor for linoleum and wood. When they could ride in a bus or a car, instead of walk. Their two worlds had collided and the impact had eventually driven them apart. Mama to her faith and the church, Papa to his beloved desert.

  Oh, mi lobo, she thought, fingering the milagro that hung from the thong around her neck. How will it be with us?

  Bettina camped that night with Chuhwi, leaving her the next morning when she was sure that her patient could manage on her own. Returning to her bosque del corazón, she sat outside the lean-to she had built for her cadejos and stared at the distant height of Baboquivari Peak. She was still sitting there late in the afternoon when los cadejos came ambling out of the desert and gathered around her. Most of them flopped on the dirt close by, but two of them lay down on either side of her and rested their heads on her knees. Bettina ruffled their short rainbow fur.

  “When will you fly?”; one of them asked her.

  “Fly?”; she said. “I don’t know what you mean.”;

  But the wings moved in her chest, feathers ruffling, and something shivered its way up her spine.

  “Wake the hawk in you,”; los cadejos told her.

  “Speak to your father’s blood.”;

  “Claim your birthright.”;

  “You can’t have forgotten so soon.”;

  No, she hadn’t forgotten. Even in the blur that made up her memories of their final confrontation with the Glasduine, she could remember how her flesh had twisted and shrunk, her bones had hollowed, the feathers bursting from her skin, the strange perspective as her eyes moved to the side of her head, the incredible sharpness of her vision, how the hawk spirit in her had recognized and greeted Aunt Nancy’s spider spirit…

  She stirred and the closest cadejos moved their heads from her knees. Standing up, she spread her arms wide and let her brujería fill her, twinning the involuntary shifting of her shape that had occurred in the struggle with the Glasduine, but this time she reached for the hawk spirit, greeted it, accepted its dominance. She gasped as the change came over her. She had time to wonder, where does the excess flesh go when woman becomes bird? Where does it come from when the bird shifts back once more? Then she was a red-tailed hawk standing in the dirt among a crowd of cadejos, wings outspread.

  She flapped them, trying to take flight, but all it did was unbalance her.

  “No, no,”; los cadejos told her.

  “Don’t fight the hawk.”;

  “She knows how to fly.”;

  “You don’t.”;

  No, she didn’t. But she was afraid to let go too much. Afraid of forgetting herself in the shape of a hawk and becoming as lost to those she loved as had her papa.

  She tried to convey her fears to los cadejos, but all that came from her beak was a loud, wheezing kree-e-e.

  “Don’t be afraid,”; los cadejos told her.

  “We are always near.”;

  So she let herself go, retreated in her mind until the hawk spirit was dominant. Under its guidance, she stepped forward to where the land dropped away into the arroyo and launched herself forward, into the air. Powerful wings beat at the air, lifting her up, up.

  She cried out again, a joyful sound this time. Far below, her cadejos bounded in and out of the cacti, yipping and laughing as they chased the shadow of the hawk that raced across the desert floor ahead of them.

  3

  MANIDÒ-AKÌ, MID-MARCH

  El lobo stood among the trees on a hill above the housing development that had proved too much to bear for the spirit whose body he now wore. On the edge of the development, the bulldozers were already at work, clearing trees and leveling the land for more houses. The roar of their engines was loud, even at this distance. The sky was gray overhead, loosing the odd flurry, the temperature hovering at the zero mark. The ground was frozen. But still they were out there.

  Soon it would be all gone, all of Shishòdewe’s territory, now his, consumed by houses and roads, by power lines, sewer and water pipes. Already the forest where he now stood was the playground of children and teenagers from down below. Pop cans and beer bottles lay under the snow, balled-up potato chip bags and candy wrappers, a thoughtless litter.

  Sighing, he faded back into the trees and stepped across into manidòak í the spiritworld. Here it was late summer and quiet, the loudest sound the cluttering of a pair of squirrels, high in the pines above him, the raucous caw of a crow, close, but out of sight. He rolled a cigarette and lit it, then walked deeper into the forest until he came to a clearing. The ground dropped at the far end, fifty feet down in a jumble of granite and limestone, dotted with stunted cedars.

  When he was finished his cigarette, he put it out under the heel of his boot and pocketed the butt. From overhead he heard the sharp kree-e-e of a hawk and looked up to see a russet shape circling high above him. The sight of it depressed him, reminding him of Bettina. But then everything did.

  A hundred times a day he thought of her, his fingers straying to the milagro she had given him, the tiny silver heart that symbolized the promise she had made. He would want to leave right then to be with her, go to her if she would not come to him, but he knew he couldn’t. Shouldn’t. He could leave his responsibility to Shishòdewe’s territory for a few days. That wasn’t the problem. It was that what Bettina needed to do, she needed to do on her own.

  Still, it was hard, this waiting.

  The hawk cried again, closer.

  Looking up once more, he saw it dropping towards him. A spirit bird, then. Well, he could use some company.

  But the relief of some diversion quickly gave way to astonishment as the hawk came in close to the ground. Just before it landed, it transformed into human form. A woman. But that it could shapeshift was not the surprise.

  “Bettina,’’ he said.

  She gave him a grin. “Está bueno—?Sí? I’ve been practicing.”;

  “I’ve missed you,”; he told her.

  “Oh, mi lobo, I’ve missed you, too.”;

  When they embraced, he could feel a difference in her, as though the hawk’s powerful muscles were still present, under the softness of her skin.

  “You feel so strong,”; he said.

  “But this is a good thing.”;

  “Anything you do is a good thing.”;

  She gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “Flatterer.”; But he could see she was pleased.

  They walked then, hand in hand, while she told him of all she had managed to accomplish since they’d parted, o
f what still remained undone.

  “I didn’t know what to think anymore after meeting Chuhwi,”; she said when she came to the end of her story. “Embracing my hawk only made me miss Papa more. So I went to see my family. I met Mama at mass, but—”; She shrugged. “This is still something I can’t share with her. Later, we ate at Adelita’s house. She, at least, I can speak to now, but when I told her what Chuhwi told me, she could see no more of a solution to it than I can.”;

  She paused and looked at him.

  “So I’ve come to you,”; she said.

  El lobo shook his head. “I only know of your father. We’ve never met.”;

  “Sí. But you are a spirit, like him.”;

  “Hardly. He is ancient and I—I don’t know what I am.”;

  “But you would know. Is this the way of it? Will it cause less heartbreak if I give up my search?”;

  “I can’t answer that,”; he told her. “I have no answer.”;

  She hesitated, then asked the question he realized was the true reason for her coming here to him today.

  “And what of you?”; she asked. “Will you vanish from my life when I grow old and you remained unchanged?”;

  He shook his head.

  “But I’ll be all wrinkled and feeble.”;

  “Bettina,”; he said. “You are more like your father than I am. I should be asking you this question.”;

  “Don’t joke …”;

  “I’m not joking,”; he told her. “Many people carry the blood of the old spirits in them, but how many do you think can shift their shape as you can? Your father is one of the First People. His blood will run very pure in his children.”;

  “In … in both of us? In Adelita as well?”;

  He nodded.

  “But then why would he leave us? Wouldn’t he have known that?”;