Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“Ah, so that’s what this is about.”

Bettina shook her head. “No, I understand that we must first deal with the task at hand. But you seem to put the… other business away so easily.”

“Would you rather I bed you right now, here among the ferns and leaves?”

Sí, Bettina found herself thinking even as she shook her head again. It was bluntly put—deliberately so, she didn’t doubt, to get a rise out of her—but the thought of it appealed to her all the same, though only if he felt what she was feeling…

“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “It’s all very confusing.”

“I know,” he told her. “Don’t doubt that I am any less confused.”

“Truly?”

He nodded.

“That makes it easier for me,” she said.

He shook his head, but then offered her his hand. “Come,” he said, and led her in the direction of the pool where, in this world, an ancient salmon lay sleeping. The forest was different by day, still mysterious with the cathe-dralling trees rearing above them as they walked, but it felt more welcoming than it had when she’d been here the other night, also in the company of her wolf. The ice storm had vanished, left behind with the winter they’d escaped. Here it felt like late autumn, the air rich with a musky scent of dark earth and secrets. Bettina had almost forgotten why they’d come until they neared the pool and saw the Recluse lying on the grass by its low stone wall. El lobo glanced at the body.

“It seems they’ve had a falling-out,” he said, then meant to continue on his way.

Bettina pulled him to a stop. Letting go of his hand, she knelt by the still form. She could tell by the angle of the neck that it was hopeless, but she still felt for a pulse, still called up the healing spirit in her heart and asked for help from the spiritworld to diagnose what might be used to help the hurt woman.

“Bendígame, Virgen. Bendígame, santos, Bendígame, espiritus,” she murmured. “Deme la fuerza a ayudar está pobre alma.”

The blessing rose in her but it was too late. The woman’s death wound was far too grievous, and here in la epoca del mito, spirits were quick to leave their bodies and travel on.

“You’re wasting your time.”

Bettina looked up to el lobo, a little disappointed that he would be so callous of one so recently slain.

“I had to try,” she said.

“But why? She is the cause of all our troubles.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed and crouched beside her, sitting on his ankles. She felt a pang of memory when she looked at him. So her father had sat, he and his peyoteros, talking long into the night, smoking their cigarettes. Men unused to chairs, who could find no use for man-made conveniences.

“Until she came along,” el lobo said, “the Gentry were no different from Nuala. Content to roam the city, to have a den in the wild acres behind Kellygnow. They didn’t need to take anything from the native spirits—they had all they wanted already: a den they could call their own, pubs for drink and the craic, the music. It was she who woke ambition in them, woke the evil we all carry in us, fanned it with admiring words and false promises.”

“You said you didn’t know about the mask.”

“I didn’t. But I still knew there was something, some artifact they sought after, and would, as we’ve seen, eventually find. And all the while the Gentry, their baser instincts awoken, simply grew worse. It was she who encouraged them to be more territorial. To be harder of heart and mean-spirited. To take what they wished, for it was owed to them.”

“Why would she do such a thing?” Bettina asked.

El lobo shrugged. “To keep them from thinking too much, I suppose. From seeing how she led them about by their noses.”

Bettina looked down at the dead woman.

“What did she get from it?” she asked.

“A longer life. The Gentry showed her a way into the spiritworld, where she spent most of the year.”

Bettina nodded. Time moved differently here and didn’t rest so heavily on the body.

“And for power, of course,” el lobo added.

“Power.”

“She meant to use the Glasduine as much as the Gentry did. I don’t doubt she chose both who would wear the mask and who would repair it.”

“Ellie was supposed to make a new one,” Bettina said. “A copy, but infused with her own spirit and creative impulses.”

“To infuse it with her own considerable, if untapped, power, you mean.”

Bettina nodded. It was all so depressing.

“The Recluse should have asked for luck,” she said, remembering a conversation she’d had with Ban, years ago now.

“How so?”

“Luck is sweet. A gift, a loan. When you have made your use of it, it goes on, undiminished. Power is finite and when one has it, it means another doesn’t.”

El lobo nodded with understanding.

“And now look at her,” Bettina said. “For all the heartache and pain she caused, she has earned nothing but the death that was always waiting for her. What an evil woman.”

“Or a fool.”

Bettina gave her wolf a questioning look.

“There’s often not a great deal of difference between the two,” he said.

He rose easily from his crouch. Turning, he offered Bettina his hand and lifted her to her feet. They paused at the pool, looking down at the sleeping salmon. El lobo plucked a cigarette butt from the water and carefully placed it on the stone wall among the other offerings.

“We should go,” he said.

Bettina nodded. But having seen the dead woman made her question once more her own involvement in this hunt.

“¿Y bien?” she said. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“To right a wrong.”

“Is that it? I felt the pull of these forests, I left my beloved desert, and for this? To try to heal some monster that will no doubt need to be killed anyway?”

“I don’t think you were called to try to heal any monster,” el lobo said. “How could you have been? It didn’t even exist until today.”

“Then who have I been called to heal? You?”

“I think you are here to heal yourself.”

She shook her head. “No seas tonto. I don’t need healing.”

“No? Perhaps I’m not so crazy. You’ve been here for months, but to what use have you put your studies beyond some simple charms? Calling on the spirits to help the Gentry’s pet human is the closest you’ve come to being a true curandera since you arrived.”

“I have been waiting…”

“Yes, to be healed.”

Bettina frowned at him. He could be so infuriating.

“Healed?” she demanded. “Of what?”

“Shall I make a list of all that troubles you?” her wolf asked.

“Please do.”

He counted the items off on his fingers. “There is the question of your faith, how the spirits confuse your feelings towards the church and cause a rift with your mother. There is your grandmother’s abrupt disappearance from your life. Your sister’s denial of the spiritworld and how she belittles your grandmother’s teachings. The guilt you feel for sending los cadejos away after promising them a true home. The confusion of having a father who lives in the desert as a hawk, forgetting he was ever a man. The loneliness that comes from how you long for love, but believe no man will understand you, and no spirit will keep faith. Shall I go on?”

She was too shocked to be angry. “Who are you? How can you know all of this?”

“I am who I have said I am.”

Bettina shook her head. “You know too much about me.”

“I’m a good listener,” el lobo said.