Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

Bettina nodded. “I have heard of that. Abuela called it el bosque del corazon. The forest we carry with us in our heart.”

“When you are here, in the spiritworld, you are always but one step away from that place. The actual location, I mean.”

Bettina’s eyes lit up. “So that’s why she called it el bosque del corazon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Abuela would often make these pronouncements, but before you could ask her what she meant, she had already gone on to something else. It never made sense to me that she would call it a forest, but now with what you’ve told me, I understand.”

“I still don’t follow you,” her wolf said.

“You know the story of the First Forest—how all forests are an echo of it and reach back to it?”

“Of course.”

“Then don’t you see? This is our own version of it— we connect to our heart home just as all forests echo back to the First Forest.”

El lobo smiled. “Good. So you understand. And does the forest in your heart echo back to the desert?”

“I have never considered it. But it must. That’s the only place I am ever truly happy.”

“Then that is where you must bring us,” he said.

For a long moment Bettina could only look at him. Everything he said made perfect sense, but it still left her feeling dizzy. She had never looked inside herself for her own basque del corazon, so how could she bring them to the place it echoed? And never having attempted such a task before, who was to say where they might end up? She was not exactly the most focused individual when it came to journeying through la epoca del mito. As easily distracted as she could be in myth time, anything could happen to them.

“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Look inside yourself,” el lobo told her. “Call that place up in your mind, clearly and truly.”

“And then?” Bettina asked, unable to keep the doubt from her voice.

“Hold it in your mind like a waking dream and will us to be there. Your father’ s blood will ensure that we will journey true.”

“My father’s blood.”

El lobo smiled. “Have you studied your grandmother’s teachings so diligently that you’ve forgotten your father’s lineage? You have the blood of shapeshifters and shaman running in your veins—the oldest and truest geasan.”

“I...” She hesitated, then knew she had to admit it to him. “I’m not the most assured of travelers in la epoca del mito.”

“I say again, your father’s blood will see us through. Tell me, have you ever been harmed in the spiritworld?”

She shook her head.

“I would wager that your father’s blood keeps you safe. Any you meet here would recognize that old blood of his that you carry. I wouldn’t doubt it’s what first called los cadejos to you.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple. Especially here, in the spiritworld. We are the ones who make such things complicated.”

“Now you sound like Abuela.”

“Just try,” he said, his voice gentle.

Bettina truly didn’t know where to begin. The desert was the forest she carried in her heart, a seeming contradiction in terms unless one knew the Sonoran. But what part of it? She understood from what her wolf was saying that she must focus on a particular aspect of it, but she’d walked so much of it, alone or in the company of her abuela and Adelita, with Ban and his mother and her own father. What one place could her basque del corazon echo? The desert was large and she loved it all. And complicating matters was how she’d always wandered in and out of la epoca del mito when she did go out hiking.

But then she remembered another gift that had arrived the morning she’d been reminded so strongly of los cadejos. She reached into the pocket of her vest and drew out the rosary that her mama had sent along in Adelita’s package. Though undoubtedly Mama hadn’t meant it to be used for such a purpose, it was exactly what Bettina knew she could use to focus.

Her wolf regarded the rosary with interest.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“My mamá sent it to me.”

He reached out with a hesitant finger to touch it.

“This is a potent geasan” he said as he let his hand fall back to his side. “Your mother has Indio blood, too?”

Bettina nodded.

“I didn’t think the geasan of old spirits and the church could join in such a fashion,” he said. “She must be a remarkable woman.”

Bettina hadn’t even considered that her mother might have made this herself. How could she have known how to do it, to combine the mysteries of church and desert like this? Who would have guided her hand? No one in the church, that was certain, but when had her mother even believed in the spirits of the desert, little say let one of them instruct her in anything?

But, “She is,” was all she told her wolf.

She held the rosary in both hands.

“Virgenbendita,” she said, closing her eyes. “Espíritus de los lugares ocultos salvajes. Help me find this place I seek. Lo imploro.”

When the image came slipping into her mind it was like greeting an old, long-lost friend. Of course, she thought. How could she not have remembered this place on her own? It was the crest of low-backed rise that stood in a part of la epoca del mito a few miles from her mother’s house, a secret place guarded by saguaro aunts and uncles that looked down into a dry wash. In the human world, one could see the Baboquivari Mountains in the distance, rising tall and rugged on the western horizon. In la epoca del mito, those same mountains shone with an inner light, the mystery of I’itoi Ki rising up from Rock Drawn at the Middle in a spiraling column of multicolored hues, reaching for the heavens. It was as though the most amazing desert sunset had been captured in cadejos…

How often had she and Abuela walked there, camped there, talked long into the night and through the day in that place? She had been there with her father, too, on more than one occasion.

There, she thought, gathering her will and focusing it on that image in her mind. That is where we must go.

There was no sensation of transition. She only heard her wolf say something softly in Gaelic that roughly translated to “Oh my,” and then the cool autumn glade was gone and she had bright sunlight bathing her face. She could smell the desert, felt the shifting dirt underfoot, heard the quail and doves in the mesquite that grew down in the wash.

She opened her eyes, the rosary still held fast in her hands, her face turned to the sky. The first thing she saw was a red-tailed hawk, coasting on its broad wings as it rode the air currents high overhead.

“Papa,” she said.

But it was only a bird, not an old spirit in the shape of a hawk, his human form lying forgotten under his feathers. She knew a moment’s sadness, then put the old ache aside. It was too hard to hold onto it at this moment. She drew a deep breath, tasting again the familiar air. It was enough to lift her spirits once more. She turned to her wolf, astonishment and delight dancing in her eyes.

“Well done,” he said. “If this is the forest of your heart, then you are well-favored, indeed. Only… where are the trees? Or did your grandmother only mean this to be a forest in a figurative sense?”

Bettina laughed and pointed to the tall saguaro.

“What do you think those are?” she asked.

“Very tall cacti.”

She nodded. “A forest of aunts and uncles.”

El lobo smiled at her infectious pleasure.