Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“Do not be so quick to judge,” he told Nuala. “She came all this way, in this weather, to help you. It’s not her fault she is too late to stop her brother.”

Miki thought the housekeeper was going to bite off his head, she gave Salvador such a hard stare, but then the woman sighed.

“You’re right,” she told Salvador, then turned to Miki. “I’m sorry. This hasn’t been the best of days.”

Miki nodded. “So where did the creature go?”

“Into the spiritworld,” one of Tommy’s aunts said. It took Miki a moment to remember her name. Sunday.

“And Donal… ?”

“He is the Glasduine’s host,” Nuala said.

Miki had known this, but she’d needed to hear someone say it all the same. But even hearing it said, the words hanging there in the air between them, it was simply too big for her to process. Donal was really gone. Swallowed into some pathetic piece of half-baked mythology that shouldn’t have been able to exist in the first place. How could her Uncle Fergus and his loser cronies have been right? Why would any supernatural being listen to the likes of them, or Donal for that matter?

“What about the Gentry?” she asked, more to distract herself than because she actually wanted to know. “The last time I saw them I was sure they were headed this way.”

The housekeeper’s gaze clouded for a long moment before she finally replied. “Happily, they at least have been absent.”

“You must let us into the room where the Glasduine was called forth,” the other aunt, Zulema, said. She was obviously continuing the argument that Miki and Salvador’s arrival had interrupted. “Unless we can track it to where it crossed over, we won’t be able to block its return from the spiritworld.”

“An admirable objective,” Nuala said, “but there will be no more magics called up inside Kellygnow. There has already been enough damage done.”

“You don’t understand. If we don’t—”

“No, I understand all too well,” Nuala told her. “This house is under my charge and I will not allow it to be used as a battleground.”

“There will be no battles fought inside its walls,” Sunday assured her.

“And you can guarantee this?”

“I—”

“Because I am no stranger to enchantment,” Nuala said. “You must know as well as I do that every time a spell is cast, it leaves a door ajar to the spirit-world. Those rifts can linger open for weeks, even months. I will not have Kelly gnow riddled with the remnants of your spells and enchantments.”

“Why don’t you do it from outside the window where the Glasduine broke through?” Tommy asked. “Wouldn’t that be close enough?”

His aunts looked to Nuala.

“Will you allow us that much?” Zulema asked.

The housekeeper hesitated.

“Don’t forget,” Sunday added. “If we don’t block the Glasduine’s return to this world, who’s to say that, when the creature does come back, it won’t smash in a few more of your precious walls? Are you capable of standing up to it by yourself?”

“She will not be alone,” Salvador said. “There will be no more smashing of walls while I am here.”

If determination alone could stop the Glasduine, Miki thought, it would be hard pressed to get past the combination of Salvador and the housekeeper.

But Nuala gave up. She put a hand on the gardener’s arm.

“They’re right,” she said. “There’s no way we could hope to stop the Glasduine on our own. Go ahead,” she added to Tommy’s aunts. “Only, please. Try to be careful with what you call up.”

“Thank you,” Sunday said.

Zulema nodded. “You could help us. Your own medicine runs strong and by helping us, you would be there to keep watch and sweep away any residue my sister and I might miss.”

“I don’t know…”

“We don’t plan any sort of complicated ceremony,” Sunday assured her. “More a mild form of divination. We only want to call up a memory of the Glasduine’s passage so that we can then track it to where it crossed over.”

Nuala remained reluctant, but gave in. “Very well. I will help you.”

“It would be better if we had a drum,” Zulema said. “Do you have one in the house? We didn’t think to bring one.”

“A drum,” Nuala repeated.

“It will make it easier to connect to the world’s heartbeat,” Sunday explained. “So the manitou will hear us.”

Nuala nodded in understanding. “I don’t have one,” she said. “But I do have something else that would work.”

She left them to go into the house. Tommy’s aunts stepped through the rubble to get closer to the wall, with Salvador trailing along behind. Miki took the time to light a cigarette, then she turned to Tommy.

“So do you do a lot of this in your spare time?” she asked.

“Yeah, right. This is as new to me as it is to you.”

“Hey, I could be some big-time sorceress. How would you know?”

He only smiled and shook his head. “And that’s why you work in a record store.”

“It could be my secret identity.”

“Could be,” Tommy agreed. “Just like I’ve got a harem of supermodels waiting for me at home for when we’re done here.”

Miki sighed. “Bloody hell. Can you believe we’re actually here, taking any of this seriously?”

“It’s probably a little easier for me,” Tommy said. “I mean, these are my aunts, after all. The thing is, I just always thought it was stories, all this talk of manidò-akì and manitou.”

“Yeah, I had my own fill of fairy tales when I was growing up.”

They fell silent when Nuala returned. She carried a small brassy-looking dish about the size of a salad bowl that Miki recognized from having seen a bunch of them in a shop on Lee Street specializing in jewelry and clothing imported from the Far East. Their stock also included all kinds of incense and soaps, statues and knickknacks, bamboo flutes, meditation mats, but it was the Tibetan singing bowls like the one Nuala was carrying that had really captured Miki’s fancy. The store’s stock had ranged from those tiny enough to hold in the palm of your hand to one so big it would take a couple of husky men to simply lift it.

The shopkeeper had talked about the seven different metals that were used in the casting of the bowls, showed her the wooden stick shaped like a pestle that was used to play it, and then demonstrated how the bowls were used. First he tapped the stick against the side of the bowl, waking a clear, bell-like sound that seemed to ring for ages. But what had really sold Miki on them was when he rubbed the stick around the lip of the bowl. It was like the way you could get a musical note using a wet finger on the rim of a wineglass, but the sound he woke from the bowl was like the voice of the earth itself, a low, thrumming sound that felt as though it was coming up from the center of the world to resonate deep in her chest and belly.

She would have bought one then and there, but if she was to have one, she’d want one of the big ones, and they were selling for a few hundred dollars, which she couldn’t possibly afford at the time.

“What’s with the Tibetan bowl? Tommy asked Nuala, obviously recognizing the instrument as well. “I thought you were Irish.”

“Should we all be defined by only one facet of who we are?” she replied. “Would you prefer to only be known as an Indian? Or the driver of one of Angel’s vans? As an abused child? As a recovered alcoholic? Or aren’t you all these things and more?”

Tommy flushed. “How do you know all this?”

“How can she not?” Sunday said, laying a hand on his shoulder. She gave Nuala a small, respectful bow. “I see now that you are a manitou yourself. Far from home, perhaps, but no less venerable because of that.”