Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

El lobo considered going for the Glasduine’s throat while it was down, but he hesitated a moment too long and the opportunity was gone.

The Glasduine rose in a fury. The man who’d knocked it down the second time tried to scrabble out of its reach, but the Glasduine struck him across the back, cutting through cloth to the flesh below. The man was thrown a dozen feet or more, landing on the far side of the canyon where he lay as he’d fallen, limbs splayed, blood welling up from his wounds.

No, el lobo thought. How can the light allow this?

But then he realized what that light was—not a green and golden echo of the world’s grace, come to answer his cry for help, but rather a ribboning tether of memory, like the thread that connected a spirit to its body when it traveled outside of its flesh. It was a display of the route the Glasduine had taken to get here, but to the Glasduine, it also served as a reminder of the place from which it had been drawn. That was why the Glasduine had been stopped so suddenly in its tracks when the tether of light manifested. The light was pure grace—an unpleasant and discomforting remembrance to a creature that was now the antithesis of the ancient mysteries that light represented.

El lobo gave over considering the light when the Glasduine returned its attention to Bettina. He lunged across the dirt to put himself between the two, calling out again to anything that might hear him and lend them aid.

You can have my life if you wish, he promised, only spare hers.

Ellie clung to Aunt Nancy’s spider back as she sped down the canyon, scuttling over the stones with a surefooted grace that Ellie might have admired if she wasn’t feeling so disoriented and scared. At one point, the spider eschewed a slower, more roundabout passage by securing a dragline and dropping them down a thirty-foot drop with a stomach-lurching motion. Just as they reached the bottom, Ellie caught a flow of motion from the corner of her eye. Something green, touched with gold. The spider saw it, too, and paused in its flight.

They watched the ribbon flow by.

I smell my sisters’ involvement in this, Aunt Nancy’s voice said in Ellie’s head.

As soon as she spoke, Ellie heard faint echoes of powwow chanting and a low thrumming drone, here one moment, then gone again.

“What—?” she began.

The question died in her throat as she saw Miki come bobbing by, riding the stream of light as though it was a watery current. What on earth was she doing here? But then this wasn’t earth, was it? That was all part and parcel of the problem. This was the world where nothing made sense, landscapes changed at the drop of a hat, old Native women turned into spiders…

When would the improbabilities stop?

But they had nothing to do with that, Aunt Nancy added, plainly puzzled.

A moment later, a dark-haired figure shot by, also riding the green-gold stream. For one hysterical moment Ellie thought it had to be Elvis, but then his passing features registered.

“Tommy… ?”

Aunt Nancy made an inarticulate sound. Her head turned, gaze fixing on her passenger. Ellie was held in spellbound horror by the grotesque features. It was the eyes that got to her the worst. Four small ones looking slightly down from the face and a little to each side. On top of these, two larger ones looking directly at her. Lastly, another pair, on top of the head, looking up. Each and every one of them, for all their silvery alien sheen, recognizably Aunt Nancy’s.

Someone will suffer for this, the voice in Ellie’s head said.

The grimness of its tone turned Ellie’s blood to water.

Enough, she thought. This is where I get off.

But before she could slide down, Aunt Nancy sprang into motion and Ellie had to cling once more to the furry back. If anything, they went even faster down the canyon, chasing the bobbing forms of Miki and Tommy around one curve, another, before they abruptly came to the end of the chase.

They saw Bettina, crouched in the dirt and coughing. Her wolf companion charging the Glasduine, getting batted away as though he was nothing more dangerous than a stuffed toy. Miki lying sprawled on the ground on the far side of the creature. And Tommy… Tommy lying so still, his back torn open and bleeding.

Now I will have further loan of your medicine. Aunt Nancy said in a voice that would brook no argument. The battle is at hand.

“But…Idon’t know…”

It’s simple. Keep a grip on my back and give me permission.

“But how—”

Just say it.

Ellie couldn’t look away from Tommy’s body. She cleared her throat.

“Do it,” she said.

She clung tighter as the spider leapt for the Glasduine.

Bettina didn’t see Miki and Tommy’s arrival on the ribbon of light. Disoriented by the abrupt transition from hawk shape back into her own body, she lay on the ground for a long moment before finally sitting up. She coughed, choking, her throat and nose filled with dust. When her blurred vision cleared enough it was only to see the Glasduine coming for her, her wolf batted helplessly aside as he tried to protect her. In her mind she heard el lobo’s cry for help, ringing out through the otherworld with an urgency that made her own earlier summoning call seem to have been no more compelling than a whispered request. She heard that cry for help, and then the promise he made to whoever might answer.

You can have my life if you wish. Only spare hers.

¡Es un trato! came an immediate response. It is a bargain.

No, she wanted to cry, even with the Glasduine upon her. I won’t let you give your life for mine.

The Glasduine hoisted her up, rough bark fingers digging into her shoulders as it lifted her from the ground. Though she struggled, the effort was futile. The creature’s grip was immovable. It shook her with a fierce grin distorting its features and held her high, as though she was some prize that all the world must see it had acquired. But it had only the one moment of triumph before Bettina’s rescue was at hand, the rescue for which her wolf had traded his life.

A monstrous wolf spider leapt seemingly out of nowhere and bore the Glasduine to the ground, jaws closing on its shoulder. Once again Bettina was thrown clear, this time rolling across the dirt towards her wolf. She rose into a crouch and stared aghast at the struggle as the two monsters fought, her gaze widening in surprise when she realized there was a woman clinging to the spider’s back.

She jumped when a hand touched her shoulder. Turning, she found her wolf tottering in human form, his features drawn with pain. She drew him down beside her, only just supporting his weight until he was able to kneel on the ground beside her.

“It… it’s the sculptor…” he said, his gaze on the struggling figures.

Ellie? It couldn’t be.

But when the Glasduine gave the spider a sudden shake, making her scrabble for balance, Bettina got a different view of the pair and she saw that her wolf was right.

She shook her head. “But if Ellie brought this spider,” she said, “then who answered your call?”

“They spoke Spanish,” he reminded her.

“They… ?”

She realized what he meant as soon as the word left her mouth. The reply had been made up of many voices, speaking in unison. So she wasn’t surprised by their arrival, a line of brightly colored cadejos on the heights above the canyon. They came down the steep sides, finding passage along almost invisible ridges and trails, goat hooves scrambling in the loose rocks. When they reached the bottom of the canyon, they paid no attention to Bettina and her wolf. Launching themselves at the battling monsters, they broke the pair apart and herded them to separate sides of the canyon with all the assurance and skill of a pack of border collies.