Charles de Lint: Forests of the Heart

The house seemed empty as they went to her room. Where was everyone?

They paused in the sculpting studio where Donal had called up the Glas-duine and stood there awhile in the doorway. The memory of what had been done here lay heavy in the room, a palatable presence of twisting shadows that made Bettina shiver. She turned away and led her wolf to the hidden alcove that was her bedroom.

El lobo helped her gather her things, being the hands she could not use herself at the moment. There was not a great deal to pack. She left most of the books, taking only her clothing and the artwork she’d been given, which she meant to leave with Adelita.

“What of these?” el lobo asked.

He indicated the colorful carved dogs her sister had sent. They still stood ranged around the feet of the Virgin. She nodded and he stowed them away in her suitcase.

Finally they went down to the kitchen. Nuala was sitting there, alone, staring out at the miserable night. El lobo set Bettina’s suitcase and backpack down by the back door. Bettina stood in the doorway through which they’d entered, waiting for the housekeeper to acknowledge their presence, but el lobo approached Nuala first. When he was a few steps away, Nuala looked up and el lobo went down on one knee in front of her.

“Lady,” he said. “I hope you won’t think ill of the one who brings you the bad news.”

“What bad news?”

“An felsos… they didn’t survive.”

Nuala’s lip twitched, “What makes you think I care?” she asked

“Lady, I know they were your sons.”

“And you?” she said. “I suppose you now expect to take their place.”

“I would not presume.” He hesitated a moment, then added. “And I was never like them.”

Her steady gaze lay on him. “No, you are all the parts they discarded—isn’t that the tale you tell?”

He shook his head. “I do not tell tales.”

Bettina hated seeing her wolf be like this. With all she’d learned recently, she felt Nuala deserved no one’s respect, least of all his. She walked to his side, laid a hand carefully on his shoulder.

“They were your children,” she told the housekeeper.

“I didn’t ask for them,” Nuala replied. “And look how they turned out—the spitting image of their sire.”

“Because you abandoned them.”

“Do you really think so? You know nothing of the true nature of these wolves.”

“I know that everyone, human or spirit, can become the being you expect them to be. If they had been mine, I would never have abandoned them.”

“I would do it again,” Nuala said.

“I’m sorry for you.”

Nuala shook her head. “Come speak to me of this again when you’ve experienced rape and exile from all you hold dear.”

Bettina turned away. Her wolf joined her and gathered up her belongings.

“Did your grandmother never teach you about the dangers of consorting with wolves?” Nuala called after her.

“Yes,” Bettina told her. She looked back and met the housekeeper’s gaze. “She also taught me about forgiveness.”

She stepped outside with her wolf and he closed the door behind them before the housekeeper could respond.

“I would have liked to have said goodbye to some of the others,” Bettina said as they crossed the lawn, walking back towards the woods.

“You’ll be back,” her wolf said. When she made no comment, he added, “Won’t you?”

Bettina nodded. “Mas pronto o mas tarde.” Sooner or later.

She glanced at her companion, but his features were expressionless. She wanted to explain that she couldn’t stay here, it wasn’t her home. That if she’d come here to heal herself, then the process was only begun. It could only be completed at home. In the desert. But the words were locked in her throat. He had to stay; she had to go. It left them little room to get to know each other any better, less still to make a life together.

“What will happen to the house now?” she said instead.

El lobo shrugged. “Nuala will remain in it, of that we can be sure. A spirit such as she is difficult to exorcise. It won’t matter who inherits the property now that the woman you called the Recluse is dead.”

“The Recluse,” Bettina repeated. “We left her by the pool.”

“Yes…” el lobo said, drawing the word out.

“We can’t just leave her there. She needs to be buried.”

“If we’re lucky,” her wolf muttered, “the carrion birds will have done our work for us.”

But he got a shovel from one of the sheds behind the house and led her back into la epoca del mito all the same.

Nothing had changed by the pool where an bradán slept. The hazel trees still leaned over the water. The low stone wall, haphazardly built of fieldstone and found rocks, still held its clutter of offerings. Antlers, posies of flowers, beaded bracelets and necklaces. The little bone and wood carvings that reminded her of her milagros. It was peaceful, a place that bespoke quiet wisdom and eased the spirit.

Or at least it would without the addition of the corpse.

Bettina sat by the pool, frustrated that she couldn’t help her wolf with the task of burying the Recluse. He dug only a shallow grave some distance away and carried the body over to it, quickly filling in the grave once more. When he was done, all that remained was a long mound of dirt that made Bettina unhappy to look upon. She was unhappy the woman was dead, unhappy with all the Recluse had done, the lives she had ruined. And for what? To end up dead and buried unceremoniously, all her dreams turned to smoke and ash.

They walked back to the pool and sat on a clear space on the low stone wall. She gave him a small smile, then looked back into the pool, her gaze drawn to the salmon floating there, sleeping. It was all she could do to not reach in and stroke the shimmering scales. She couldn’t have said why she felt the urge to touch it.

“It’s still asleep,” she said.

“What were you expecting?”

“Remember the first night we met?” she said. “You told me that if it woke, I would be changed forever.”

“I remember.”

“So that’s why I thought it would be awake,” Bettina told him.

Her wolf smiled. “Are you so different now?”

Bettina nodded.

Her wolf rolled a cigarette and offered it to her. When she shook her head, he lit it and leaned back, blowing a stream of smoke up into the boughs of the hazels. When he was finished, he ground the butt out in the dirt and put it in his pocket. Bettina asked him to bring over her backpack, to take out the small pouch in which she kept her milagros and asked him to look through them. He spread them on his hand, moving them about with a finger.

“That one,” she said, pointing to a heart. “El corazón. There should be more than one.”

“I can only find two.”

“We only need two.”

She had him put the rest away, then take out a spool wound round with a thin leather thong. Under her direction, he cut two lengths and threaded a heart-shaped milagro onto each one. When he was done she had him tie one around her neck. The milagro threaded onto it rested in the hollow of her throat. He held the other in his hand and looked at her.

“Do you want me to wear this?” he asked.

She studied him, trying to read what he was thinking, what he was feeling in that wolf’s heart of his.

“Only if you want to,” she said. “Consider it a promise. If you can wait for me, if you have the patience…”

“So you will return.”

“We will be together,” she promised him. “It’s just… I need to understand these wings that flutter in my chest. I need to find Papa, to speak to him of our blood… of hawks. And then los cadejos… ”