Charles de Lint: Forests of the Heart

“You asked us in and gave us a home.”

“But then you wouldn’t play with us anymore.”

Bettina thought back to that day in I’itoi’s cave and realized that it was true. She had gone to them.

“I’ve been very rude, haven’t I?” she said.

“Sí.”

“Muy rudo.”

“But now you are our friend.”

“We like having friends.”

“Yo, también,” Bettina told them. Me, too.

They had to range farther and farther afield to gather the ribs, often walking all day, from dawn to dusk. But the weather was temperate and Bettina was enjoying this opportunity to ground herself once more in her beloved desert. A few days later, the lean-to was finished, three sides with a roof, a bench along the back wall to sit upon and a platform along one wall to lie upon.

They all sat inside again to watch the sunset. Bettina cupped her tea in one hand and leaned contentedly with her back against the wall of the lean-to, her other hand ruffling at the short stiff fur of the closest of her companions.

“Do you know my father?” she asked. “He is… an old spirit, I’ve been told. He can soar high above the desert like a hawk.”

“We don’t really know any birds,” they replied.

“We are the oldest spirits that we know.”

There was a general chorus of agreement.

“Salvo las muchachas del cuervo,” one of them said.

“Y la Urraca.”

“Sí. La bella Señorita Margaret.”

Bettina didn’t quite know what to make of their talk of crow girls and this woman Margaret who, from the sounds of it, was also a magpie. When she asked about them, she was simply told, “They were here when the world was born.”

The cooking fire had long since died down and the night was dark, a cloud cover hiding the stars. Even with the night vision that was a part of the gift of her brujería, Bettina could not see far into the desert.

“Have you thought more of our bargain?” she asked. “What you would like in return for the help you gave me?”

“Sí. We want you to be our friend.”

Bettina laughed and shook her head. “We are already friends.”

“We want to be friends forever.”

“That is not something friends bargain over,” Bettina told them.

“That is all we want.”

“Nothing more.”

“¡Nada,nada, nada!”

“But you have this already,” Bettina said.

“Then we are content.”

“Here in the forest of your heart.”

“Where we have our beautiful home.”

“La casa del cadejos.”

“We are content.”

Now that she had finished the house for los cadejos, Bettina began to search for her father in earnest. She journeyed in ever widening circles, sometimes accompanied by los cadejos, more often alone. She spoke to the spirits, tracked every hawk she saw, but there was no word, no sign of either Papa or his peyoteros. One afternoon, coming on to the sunset and many miles from her bosque del corazón, she heard a quiet weeping. When she turned in the direction from which she thought the sound was coming, she dislodged a pebble and there was immediate silence. She waited, listening.

“¡Hola!” she called after a moment. “Who is there?”

Still there was silence.

“Do not be frightened. I am Bettina San Miguel. A simple curandera.”

“¿Verdaderos? “

It was a woman’s voice, soft, anxious.

“Truly,” Bettina assured her. “Are you hurt? Can I help you?”

Another silence followed, then a fearful, “Por favor.”

Following the sound of the woman’s voice, Bettina found her on the far side of a jumble of boulders, pressed up against the red stone, her eyes wide with fear. She seemed to be a Native woman, long of feature with dark braids hanging down either side of her face. She was dressed in a simple cotton shift, bare-legged and barefoot. She shivered and pressed closer to the boulders when Bettina moved towards her.

“Oh, no,” Bettina said when she saw the ugly gash on the woman’s leg. “What happened to you?”

“Coyote.”

Bettina blinked in surprise. “I have never heard of a coyote attacking a person before.”

“I... I was not a person when he attacked…”

“h…”

The woman began to tremble as Bettina approached, jerking when Bettina sat down and drew the woman’s leg onto her lap.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said in a soothing voice. “I can mend this.”

She looked over at the woman, her smile faltering for a moment. The woman’s features had changed, nose and jaw extending into a long snout, a hare’s long ears hanging where the braids had been. But there was still much human about her, as well. It was only the unexpected odd combination of animal and human features that had startled Bettina.

“What is your name?” she asked as she gently probed the woman’s calf with her brujería, hands resting on either side of the wound, gently stroking the skin.

“Chuhwi.”

Of course, Bettina thought. What else but “jackrabbit” in the language of the Tohono O’odham.

“Close your eyes, Chuhwi,” she said, “and lie still for a moment. This shouldn’t take long.”

The gash was not nearly so bad as it looked. The bones weren’t broken, which would greatly speed her ability to heal the wound.

“Will… will it hurt?”

“Not even for a moment.”

As she concentrated on repairing the damage, Bettina marveled again on how much she had wasted this healing talent of hers with potions and charms. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to heal truly degenerative diseases—cancers and their like—but there were still many people with lesser complaints that she could ease.

As she promised, it didn’t take long. Chuhwi regarded her with awe when it was done, running her fingers over and over the raised tissue of the scars.

“Try not to run on it for awhile,” Bettina told her.

Chuhwi nodded. She was at ease now, her only sign of nervousness what Bettina assumed was a habitual twitch of her nose.

“You were in the shape of a rabbit when the coyote caught you?” she asked.

“You should have seen his face when I became a woman. I would have laughed if it hadn’t hurt so much.”

Bettina smiled. Somewhere a coyote was telling an impossible story to his companions, none of whom would believe him.

“You’re the one looking for your father,” Chuhwi said.

“Sí. Do you have word of him?”

“No, it’s just… now that I have met you, I don’t understand why you are looking for him.”

“Es mi papá.”

“But surely you would understand why he would leave?”

Bettina shook her head.

“ Considerelo,” Chuhwi said. Think about it. “He is an ancient spirit who has fallen in love with a mortal woman and raised a family with her. Year by year, she ages, yet he remains forever unchanged. When they finally die, when even the children of his grandchild’s children dies, he will still be here, alive, unchanged. It hurts less to go away. The family can remember him as a man. And he, he can lose himself in another skin until finally the pain has faded to no more than a dull ache in his memory.”

Bettina could only stare at the woman.

“Such spirits will swear never to fall in love again,” Chuhwi went on, “but they always do. It is our nature. The flame of life burns so bright in humans, if brief. How can we ignore it?”

Bettina thought of her wolf. She knew that, circumstances being how they were, there would be many times when they would be apart. But if he were to simply walk away from her, disappear the way her papá had vanished, it would break her heart. A tightness grew in her chest. As it must have broken Mama’s heart.