Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

When they finally reached Kellygnow, Aunt Nancy directed Tommy to drive by the house, crossing the lawn and then in between the trees. She had him park by the Recluse’s cabin and everybody scrambled out. Aunt Nancy turned to Zulema.

“Ellie and I will go on alone from here,” she said. “See if you can find where the creature crossed over, then use its spoor to lay a doubling-back charm that will return it to the spiritworld whenever it tries to cross over here. You remember how to do that?”

Both Zulema and Sunday nodded, but Ellie was sure she hadn’t heard right.

“You want me to go with you?” she said.

“Of course. Who else? You wanted to help, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes. But why me? I don’t know anything.”

Aunt Nancy’s dark gaze settled on her.

“I need you,” she said, “because your medicine is stronger than any I have seen outside of the spiritworld. Between the two of us… you have the medicine and I know how to use it. If we’re lucky, that will be enough. And no,” she added, turning to Tommy. “You’re not coming. Remember what White-duck said.”

“He didn’t say I was in any real danger,” Tommy said. “Only that I would be involved.”

“He didn’t need to say you were in danger. Just telling us you were involved was specific enough. Why else would he have bothered?”

“Since when do you listen to him?” Tommy asked.

“I have the utmost respect for Jack Whiteduck,” Aunt Nancy said in a deferential tone of voice that even Ellie could tell was insincere. “Especially when he’s right.”

“They don’t usually get along?” Ellie asked Sunday.

The other woman shrugged. “He doesn’t much care for the Creeks.”

“Why not?”

“Women’s magic versus men’s. He has a problem with it. We don’t.”

“And,” Aunt Nancy put in, showing that she was listening to their conversation as well, “we aren’t so foolish as to ignore his wisdom when it’s sound. Are we, nephew?”

“Okay,” Tommy said. “I’ll stay already. But I don’t like it.”

Hunter cleared his throat. “But I’m coming,” he said.

“You?” Aunt Nancy turned her gaze on him, but Hunter didn’t flinch. “What do you have to offer?”

“I…”

“Don’t forget, he killed one of the wolves,” Tommy put in.

“Um, that’s right,” Hunter said. “And… well, Mr. Whiteduck…”

Aunt Nancy smiled. “Mr. Whiteduck. Oh, he’d like that.”

“He didn’t have any warnings about me, did he?”

“He doesn’t even know you,” Ellie said, but Aunt Nancy was already nodding,

“True enough,” she said. “We could use a warrior to watch our backs.” When she turned back to the truck to get a small backpack she’d left there, Ellie touched Hunter’s arm.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

“And you do?”

“That’s different. Somehow I managed to get involved and I can’t back out now.”

“Me, too,” Hunter told her.

“Remember what I said about seeing this through,” Tommy said.

“I won’t let anybody down,” Hunter said.

Tommy regarded him for a long moment, then nodded.

“I’m glad you’re going,” he said. “Aunt Nancy doesn’t always remember the frailties of human flesh. With two of you going, you’ll keep her honest. Pace yourself, no matter how she tries to shame you otherwise. Don’t forget, she’s lived her whole life in the bush. She can wear out half the Warrior’s society lodge when she gets going.”

He broke off when he saw Aunt Nancy looking at him.

“You Raven boys,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know where you get your sass.”

“Probably from our side of the family,” Sunday said.

Aunt Nancy shook her head, but she was smiling. “Come on, then,” she told Hunter and Ellie.

Hunter fell in step with her, but Ellie paused beside Tommy for a moment.

“Look,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while. I don’t know why it’s important, but it just is. I guess it’s because I’m always feeling guilty about it.”

“Oh-oh. You’re not going to tell me you’ve been badmouthing me to my supermodel girlfriends, are you?”

She punched his arm. “No. It’s just… I want you to know that I don’t have the same background as you or anybody else that works with Angel. I don’t come from a broken home or any kind of a tragedy.”

“I already knew that,” Tommy said.

“You did? How?”

He shrugged. “It’s just something you know as a survivor.”

“It made me feel like such a phony. But I just wanted to help.”

“Ellie,” he said. “Don’t you see? That only makes the time you put in that more precious. I mean for the rest of us, it’s payback. A way for us to say thanks to Angel for how she helped us by helping others.” He grinned. “But you. Not only are you a superhero, but you’re a saint as well.”

“Great. Now I’m a saint.”

“Seriously,” Tommy said. “You’ve nothing to feel guilty about. Go and fight the forest monsters with a clear conscience.”

“Right.”

“And, Ellie?”

She turned back to look at him.

“Be careful, okay?”

“I will,” she said.

Then Aunt Nancy took her and Hunter by the hand. With her leading the way, they passed through the far border of the between and stepped into another world entirely.

Tommy hated feeling so useless. Once Aunt Nancy took Ellie and Hunter away into the spiritworld there was nothing for him to do but sit on the front bumper of the pickup and watch his other two aunts wandering about between the ice-covered trees, casting for spoor like a pair of blue tick hounds.

Funny how your world changes, he thought.

A day ago, the most he had to worry about was whether or not he was doing as much as he could to help Angel’s clients. Were they reaching everyone? How could they raise more money? What other sources could they hit for food and coffee, clothing and blankets? Could he convince the garage on Perry Street to give the van yet one more free tune-up?

Now he was sitting—literally—on the edge of the manidò-aki, the spirit-world, hidden in some between place that separated the world of the manitou from the one he knew. He was untouched by the freezing rain that continued to drizzle onto the trees all around them, and everything was different. Manitou had stepped out of campfire stories into the real world. Some magical forest monster was running amok. Nice, normal Ellie turned out to be carrying some sort of deep well of medicine. And his aunts really did have the spooky powers everybody on the rez had always attributed to them.

That was the real kicker. Maybe if he hadn’t come to the city, looking to count coup in a whiskey bottle, he could have been learning some of this stuff from them. He could be out there with Ellie and Aunt Nancy right now, hunting down this spirit monster, doing something, instead of sitting here twiddling his thumbs. The stoic Indian bit had never been something he could pull off; he just didn’t have the patience. Not like his aunts, who could sit there for hours waiting for whomever had come to them to explain what it was they wanted.

But back then he’d been as interested in shamanism as he’d been in the traditionalism of the Warrior Society, which was not at all. He’d been, and still was, all for Indian rights, but he saw them as something one had to look for in the future, not in the past. In the end, he’d gone looking for them in a bottle. By the time he finally surfaced to some level of rationality once more, he didn’t see himself as an Indian so much as a survivor. Which was why he was sitting here, on the sidelines. If he’d had some knowledge, some experience with all this weird stuff, then Whiteduck probably wouldn’t have given his aunts the warning he had, or if Whiteduck still had, Tommy’s aunts would have ignored it because they’d have known that he could handle himself.