Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“The Glasduine was called up by a mask, wasn’t it?” he said when Bettina had turned back to him.

Understanding began to dawn in her eyes.

“So we need to make a new mask,” Hunter went on, “to undo what was done before.”

“Is that even possible?” Bettina asked. Hunter realized that she wasn’t asking him directly

“If it was made by someone with powerful geasan,” the man who looked like one of the Gentry said.

That brought Ellie into the conversation.

“I guess that means me,” she said, looking up from where she worked.

Under Aunt Nancy’s direction, she’d taken a water bottle and a packet of dried, powdered comfrey roots. Cleaning the long narrow wounds on Tommy’s back with the water, she then applied a liberal dose of the rootstock. Tommy remained unconscious throughout the procedure, which didn’t bode well so far as Hunter was concerned. He remembered Tommy’s aunts talking about this warning they’d gotten from some shaman back at the rez. They’d tried so hard to keep him out of the line of fire, but here he was anyway, the shaman’s predictions coming true.

“Well, you know,” Ellie went on. “I’m supposed to have all this magic floating around inside in me—”

“Oh, you do, girl,” Aunt Nancy said. “Trust me on that. You’ve got medicine like nobody’s business. I’ve never shifted over to a spider that size before. You’ve got to know it was all your doing.”

Ellie shrugged. “And I’m the one who was supposed to make the mask in the first place.”

“This wouldn’t be a copy,” Bettina told her.

“I know. I don’t much care to do copies anyway.”

“But you think you can do it?”

“I can make a mask,” Ellie said. “And I can make it be positive—you know, uplifting to look at and… well, feel, I guess. But put magic into it?” She gave another shrug. “Someone’s got to show me how.”

“There’s nothing to show,” Aunt Nancy told her. “What do you think the creative impulse is but apiece of magic?”

“I never thought of it like that. I just think of it as a way of people expressing themselves.”

The older woman nodded. “Sure. But it also holds echoes of the place that stick and leaf monster came from in the first place. Some people have a closer connection to it than others. People like you.”

“So what? Is that supposed to make me more creative or something? I don’t think so.”

“No, it makes what you do more powerful.”

“Do we have time to go back to Kellygnow for her to make the mask?” Bettina asked.

“We can’t hold the monster here forever,” one of the little dogs told her.

“It grows stronger every minute.”

“Its vida en hilodela feeds it with strength.”

“Is there some way we can cut it off from that source?” Bettina asked.

The little dog shook its head. “That would not be wise.”

“We speak of ancient powers here.”

“Older even than us.”

“You would not want them to be angry with you.”

“But we only want to stop the Glasduine from causing any more harm,” Bettina said. “Surely they would understand.”

“They do not see the world as you do,” the little dog told her.

“They would not understand.”

“They would see only that you impede the flow.”

“I don’t have to go back to Kellygnow,” Ellie said, “if we can find clay around here.” She looked at Aunt Nancy, then Bettina’s companion. “The clay doesn’t have to be fired, or even dried, does it?”

“It only needs to be true,” the dark-haired man told her.

Aunt Nancy nodded. “And that is something you already know how to do.”

“Okay,” Ellie said. “Then let’s get to it.”

Hunter and Ellie accepted complete responsibility for making the mask, Ellie to do the actual hand-building of it, Hunter the grunt work of fetching and carrying.

First they had to break up the red clay they found lower down in the canyon, bringing it back with them using jackets as makeshift sacks. For the water she needed to make the clay pliable enough to work with, one of los cadejos showed them to a small seep still lower down in the canyon. It took Hunter a dozen or so trips to get enough water since they only had Aunt Nancy’s water bottle to carry it in. As it was, the resulting mixture was far coarser than what Ellie was accustomed to, though it was still workable for hand-building. It wasn’t as though she would be using the clay on a wheel or was going to fire the mask when it was done.

While they worked on the mask, Bettina tended to Tommy. With her mother’s rosary wrapped around the fingers of one hand, she called on the spirits and los santos to help her diagnose what was needed to help him.

“I will have to gather medicines,” she told Aunt Nancy when she had the information she needed. She turned to los cadejos. “Will you let me do this?”

“We have a bargain,” one of the dogs replied.

“We are not your masters.”

“You may go where you will.”

Leaving Aunt Nancy to watch over her nephew, Bettina went searching for the plants she needed. Her wolf accompanied her, insisting he’d only been bruised in his brief encounter with the Glasduine. Bettina was grateful for the company, only worried that he might hold her back. But like so many of the spirits she had met in la epoca del mito, he was resilient and quick to heal.

While they were gone, Aunt Nancy cradled Tommy’s head on her lap as he drifted in and out of consciousness. She burned smudgesticks, thrusting them on end into the dirt beside them, and crooned old healing songs into his ear. The smoke rose skyward in pungent trails, speaking her need to the Grandfather Thunders. She trusted in Bettina’s abilities, but she also wanted the manitou of Tommy’s own people to be aware of his situation and lend what aid they might.

“He is a good man,” she would say when she paused in her singing. “A strong warrior. He works with those who need help most, but today he needs your help.”

Tommy’s wounds were extensive and the only reason he wasn’t feeling the pain of them at those points when he did regain consciousness was because of something Bettina had done as soon as she had come to help him, manipulating pressure points so that the pain was diverted before it could reach the nerve bundles in his mind. After one of Aunt Nancy’s prayers to the manitou, he opened his eyes to look up at her.

“Who are you talking to, Aunt?” he asked.

She took comfort in the clearness of his gaze.

“The grandfathers,” she told him. “I’m asking them to look in on you.”

He regarded her for a long moment, then smiled.

“So that’s why I keep hearing this drumming,” he murmured before he drifted away again.

Los cadejos watched the doings of the humans with great interest, small dark gazes following every movement with all the single-minded curiosity of ordinary dogs. They were most interested in Miki, smelling in her the blood kinship she bore to the Glasduine. Miki hadn’t spoken to anyone since she’d arrived except to tell Hunter she was fine when he’d asked after her. All she had done was sit cross-legged in the dirt, as close to the creature as the little dogs would let her, smoking cigarettes and staring at the monster her brother had become.

But one by one los cadejos had to turn their attention to the Glasduine. As they had warned Bettina, the creature continued to grow more powerful. It didn’t yet strain their abilities, but as time progressed it required more and more of their concentration to keep it contained.