Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

At least Hunter had gone with them. Tommy loved Nancy as much as he did any of his other aunts, but he didn’t entirely trust her. It wasn’t that she was prone to meanness, so much as that she used whatever was at hand to deal with a problem. If she happened to need Ellie’s medicine, she was as likely to take it all. Though what Hunter would actually do if that situation arose…

Hell, Tommy thought. Hunter had killed one of the Gentry, hadn’t he? So he just had to trust that, if Hunter had to, he would find a way to deal with Aunt Nancy as well. Tommy looked up when he heard his aunts returning to the pickup where he was waiting for them.

“Any luck?” he asked.

They shook their heads.

“The spoor is everywhere,” Zulema said. “It’s like a berry dye dissolving in water. It starts out distinctly enough, but give it enough time and your whole bucket takes on the color.”

Sunday nodded.

“Which means?” Tommy asked.

“That we can’t contain the creature in the spiritworld,” Zulema said. “Anytime it wants to come back here, all it has to do is step across.”

“And it will come back,” Sunday said.

“Oh, yes,” Zulema agreed. “Out there it’s a little fish in a big pond. But here… here it can have anything it wants.”

“But if it’s taken on physical form, it can be hurt,” Tommy said. “Right? Like the Gentry.”

His aunts exchanged a glance.

“This is something older and far more dangerous than the simple spirits of a place,” Sunday said.

“Then what’s Nancy going to do with it?” Tommy asked.

“I’m guessing she’ll try to use its own strength against it,” Zulema said.

“Which is easier to do in the spiritworld,” Sunday added.

Zulema nodded. “And if its path back here is cut off.”

“But you can’t get a fix on where it went through?” Tommy asked.

“It’s too powerful,” Sunday explained. “Everything reverberates with its presence.”

Tommy looked from one to the other. “So Ellie and the others… they’re on their own? Without any backup?”

“I’m afraid so,” Zulema said.

“Great.”

“We’re not giving up,” Sunday told him. She looked to her sister. “Maybe we can go back to where the creature was first called into the world and work our way out from that point.”

“It’s worth a try,” Zulema said. When Tommy got up, she added, “You might as well stay here—you know, in case the others come back and need something.”

“Sure,” Tommy said.

Right, he thought as he watched them go back towards Kellygnow. Stay here in case the others needed something, translated into keeping out of the way.

Sighing, he opened the door of the cab. He paused as he started to get in, gaze alighting on a crushed cigarette butt that somebody had left on the floor. Picking it up, he looked out toward the trees where his aunts had been searching earlier. After a moment, he leaned into the cab and opened the glove compartment. He took out the matches that he kept there with a couple of candles—emergency heating in case he ever broke down on some back roadand walked around the front of the pickup to where a piece of granite pushed up by the roots of one of the big oaks, protected from most of the freezing rain by the trees’ drooping boughs.

He split open the cigarette butt and made a little pile of the leftover tobacco on the rock, then lit it with a match. Sitting on his heels, he watched the tendril of smoke rise and returned his gaze to the trees.

“Grandfather Thunders,” he said. He had to stop, clear his throat. “Look, I’m not exactly the best example of my people, but I never meant any disrespect, you know. And I’m not asking anything for myself, here, just so’s we understand. But if you could see your way clear to making sure Ellie makes it through this in one piece, I’d be really grateful.”

The tobacco was mostly ash now, smoldering on the rock.

“I know this offering’s pretty puny,” he went on, “but as soon as I can get to a store, I’ll get you a whole pouch of the stuff. And I’ll have the Aunts teach me how to offer it up to you properly, okay?”

He watched the last of the tobacco burn. The thin thread of smoke finally died. He waited a while longer, almost expecting some response, now that he knew that all the campfire stories were true. But there was nothing. He had to laugh at himself as he stood up. Like the manitou were suddenly going to come at his beck and call. He’d probably wet himself if one of them actually did show up. But maybe what he’d done would make a difference.

“If you hear me,” he said, “I just want to say, you know, thanks. For listening, I mean.”

He waited a while longer, then returned to his seat on the front bumper. The hardest thing about being useless, he realized, was knowing that you were. And there was not a damn thing you could do about it.

Christ, he could really use a drink. And that was something he hadn’t felt this strongly in a long time.

He was seriously considering going into Kellygnow himself to see if he could cadge one from somebody when he heard a sound, far off in the distance. He lifted his head, waiting for it to be repeated, but it didn’t come again.

Okay, he thought. It’s raining. Big storm. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. But it was also the middle of winter, and how often did you hear thunder in the winter?

“Thank you,” he said. “Really, I mean it.”

He was still grinning when his aunts returned from Kellygnow with a tall red-headed woman in tow.

Wasn’t that just like a man, Bettina thought as she followed her wolf into la epoca del mito. Where did they learn to keep everything in its own box the way they did? She knew the kiss had meant as much to him as it had to her, yet he was able to put everything aside and carry on with the task at hand as though nothing had happened between them. Which was what they should do, she knew. What they must do. But it still made the promise woken from that kiss seem of so much less consequence than she hoped it was.

El lobo looked back at her when they’d crossed over.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “No importa.”

“When a woman says, ‘nothing,’ ” he said, “she means, ‘everything.’ ”

“You shouldn’t generalize.”

A flicker of amusement woke in his eyes. “Or I should at least encompass more with my generalizations. Perhaps I should have referred to most people instead.”

Bettina sighed. “My grandmother and Nuala both warned me about keeping company with wolves. El qué con lobos anda a aullar se ensena, Abuela would say.”

“He who keeps company with wolves learns to howl,” el lobo translated.

“Literally, perhaps. But it means that bad habits are acquired from bad companions.”

“And what bad habits have you acquired from me?”

“None,” Bettina said. “So far.”

“I like the literal meaning better.”

“Sí. But you would.”

He nodded, serious now. “Though perhaps not for the reason you think. Sometimes it’s better to cut yourself free from what you know and…” He shrugged. “Howl is as good a word as any. To let loose the constrictions that normally bind your actions and run wild for a time.”

“Only we can’t, can we? We have a duty.”