Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

Bettina and the others couldn’t look away.

Something became visible in that light. They were being given a glimpse, as though through a stained-glass window, of enormous trees, giants that dwarfed the cliffs around them. Impossible behemoths that rose and rose up into the sky.

“Forever trees,” Bettina heard her wolf whisper. “In the long ago.”

By that she knew they were looking in on the First World, the source from which the Glasduine had been drawn. She drank in the sight, leaning closer when she saw a woman walking under those trees.

Bettina wasn’t sure who the others saw—she sensed that each of them recognized her in their own way—but she saw a dusky madonna, modestly clad in blue and white robes, and knew it was Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin as first seen in a vision by Juan Diego at the chief shrine of Tonantzin on Tepeyac Hill, centuries ago. Those trees were far from Cuautlalpan in Mexico, but La Novia del Desierto’s presence felt as natural in that ancient forest as it did in the Sonoran.

The woman lifted her head and looked their way. She smiled and Bettina’s heart grew glad in a way it hadn’t since her abuela had followed the clown dog into the storm. Then the vision was gone.

But the marvels continued.

The pillar of light dwindled until it pooled around the fallen body of the Glasduine. Bettina held her breath, watching the liquid light pulse. Then something moved in the center of the pool. For a moment Bettina thought it was the salmon from the pool behind Kellygnow, but then a saguaro rose up, swallowing the body of the creature as it grew.

By the time it stopped growing, it towered fifty feet into the desert sky, two tons of cactus, enormous by any standards, though dwarfed in Bettina’s mind by her brief glimpse of the incredible heights of the forever trees.

The giant stood there for a long moment, gleaming in the sunlight, gleaming with its own inner light. Then one of its arms dropped off. Another. And it fell apart as quickly as it had grown, the green waxy skin browning, rotting. In no time at all the only thing that remained were the saguaro’s ribs, the lower halves still standing tall, their upper halves drooping like the spokes of an umbrella. Caught in the middle, with ribs thrusting up from its chest, was a small body.

Donal, Bettina realized at the same time as Miki ran forward. Miki wept, trying to break off the saguaro ribs. Hunter joined her, pulled her away.

“Let me try,” he said.

He lowered her to the ground and with el lobo’s help began the grisly task of breaking the brittle ribs so that they could free Donal’s body. Miki remained where Hunter had left her, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Bettina glanced at Ellie. The sculptor’s eyes were wet with her own tears when she turned to Bettina.

“What… what happened?” she asked.

“Neither Donal nor the creature lived a good life,” Bettina said. “So the shape would not hold for them. There is an old Indios saying. If you live a good life, you come back as saguaro; you become one of the aunts and uncles. Live a bad life, and you come back as a human.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “You chose well for your mask.”

“Yeah, like I knew what I was doing.”

Bettina shrugged. “Your heart and your hands… your brujería knew.”

Ellie slowly stood up.

“So… we won, I guess.”

Bettina nodded.

“So why do I feel like shit?”

“Because we are just people,” Aunt Nancy said, joining them. “Because the world isn’t black and white and it cuts us so deeply when those we love—those we think are good people—do bad things. It’s hard to celebrate a victory that has come about through the death of one we loved.”

Ellie gave a slow nod. “I still can’t believe Donal had it in him.”

“There was goodness, too,” Bettina said. “In the end, that’s what saved us.”

“It just seems like such a senseless waste.”

“Sí.”

“Let me see your hands,” Aunt Nancy said to Bettina.

Ellie went pale at the sight of them.

“Oh, my god,” she said. “Your hands…”

“They will heal.”

“I have a small jar of bunchberry/cattail paste in my pack,” Aunt Nancy said. “Let me get it.”

“Thank you.”

“Can’t you, you know, heal it with magic?” Ellie asked.

“I have been working on it,” Bettina told her, “but such healing never works as well on yourself. Mostly I’m concentrating on dampening the pain and retaining my hands’ mobility.”

Aunt Nancy returned and with a touch as gentle as the brush of a butterfly wing, she applied a thinned mixture of the paste to Bettina’s hands. The bunchberry immediately cooled the burns, penetrating deep under them to relieve the pain. The cattail helped to numb the worst of it.

“There’s always a price,” Aunt Nancy said.

Bettina nodded. She thought of los cadejos. They hadn’t even named theirs yet.

“Some pay in coin more dear than others,” she said.

She looked at the slope of Miki’s back as she continued to weep, silent now. Then past her to where Hunter and her wolf were freeing Donal’s body.

“My sympathies lie with the living,” Aunt Nancy said. “And the innocent.”

“You’re tougher than I am,” Bettina told her.

Aunt Nancy shook her head. “No, I’m just older. I’ve seen that much more of the hurt we do to each other.”

It took them over an hour to free Donal’s body from the wreckage of the dead saguaro. Without el lobo’s exceptional strength, it would have taken them much longer, for the saguaro ribs that pierced the body were resilient and hard to break. It was a grisly, unhappy task, but they finally pulled the body free and were able to lay it out on the flat stone where Ellie had worked on the mask. Hunter fetched more water and Miki carefully washed Donal’s face and hands. Her tears were gone, but Bettina could see that the heartbreak remained.

Later, they sat in a half-circle around the body, all except for Tommy, • who was propped up against another stone close at hand, cushioned on a thin mattress of dried grasses that Ellie and Hunter had gathered lower down in the ; canyon. He had to lay on his side because of the long furrows the Glasduine had torn across his back. Bettina had worked on them again, ignoring her own pain when she had to lay her hands directly onto the wounds. All that remained now of the furrows were thick, red welts that were still very tender. While Tommy tried to remain alert and follow their conversations, he kept drifting in and out of consciousness. But at least when he closed his eyes now, it was because he was sleeping.

Aunt Nancy lit a smudgestick and set it on the stone by Donal’s head.

“I always thought I was the strong one,” Miki said after a moment, rocking back on her heels.

She reached out and brushed the hair back from Donal’s brow. When she sat back again, Ellie put her arm around her shoulders.

“But I see now,” Miki went on, “that a lot of that was Donal looking out for me that let me be strong. For so many years, he kept all the bad things in the world at bay.”

“He wasn’t an evil person,” Bettina said. “Misguided, yes, but—”

“Oh, please,” Miki told her. “He was a bloody, self-centered bastard. Look at what he did. We could all be dead.” Her voice went quieter. “But he was still my brother.”

“What he did was wrong,” Bettina agreed, “but in the end, he allowed us to banish the creature.”

Miki shook her head. “I don’t know that it makes up for it. I always knew he was bitter, but I never knew he was carrying such venom around inside him.”