Charles de Lint: Forests of the Heart

“Is it better to have the brief time together,” Chuhwi said, “or to have none at all? Which hurts more? I don’t know. But there are many young men I cherish in my memory, and though I promise myself differently, I know there will be more.”

Bettina was unable to speak. How could she not have realized this before? Papa must have tried to bring Mama into la epoca del mito, to extend her life the way Abuela’s had been extended, the way her own would probably be. But even such extended lives were no more than brief moments in the lifetime of an immortal, and Mama… she had always been too devout. She would never have gone into la epoca del mito, with Papa. She might have been able to accept a being such as him into her world, but she would never have stepped outside of her world into his.

How things must have changed when they moved closer to town. When they exchanged the dirt floor for linoleum and wood. When they could ride in a bus or a car, instead of walk. Their two worlds had collided and the impact had eventually driven them apart. Mama to her faith and the church, Papa to his beloved desert.

Oh, mi lobo, she thought, fingering the milagro that hung from the thong around her neck. How will it be with us?

Bettina camped that night with Chuhwi, leaving her the next morning when she was sure that her patient could manage on her own. Returning to her basque del corazon, she sat outside the lean-to she had built for her cadejos and stared at the distant height of Baboquivari Peak. She was still sitting there late in the afternoon when los cadejos came ambling out of the desert and gathered around her. Most of them flopped on the dirt close by, but two of them lay down on either side of her and rested their heads on her knees. Bet-tina ruffled their short rainbow fur.

“When will you fly?” one of them asked her.

“Fly?” she said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

But the wings moved in her chest, feathers ruffling, and something shivered its way up her spine.

“Wake the hawk in you,” los cadejos told her.

“Speak to your father’s blood.”

“Claim your birthright.”

“You can’t have forgotten so soon.”

No, she hadn’t forgotten. Even in the blur that made up her memories of their final confrontation with the Glasduine, she could remember how her flesh had twisted and shrunk, her bones had hollowed, the feathers bursting from her skin, the strange perspective as her eyes moved to the side of her head, the incredible sharpness of her vision, how the hawk spirit in her had recognized and greeted Aunt Nancy’s spider spirit…

She stirred and the closest cadejos moved their heads from her knees. Standing up, she spread her arms wide and let her brujería fill her, twinning the involuntary shifting of her shape that had occurred in the struggle with the Glasduine, but this time she reached for the hawk spirit, greeted it, accepted its dominance. She gasped as the change came over her. She had time to wonder, where does the excess flesh go when woman becomes bird? Where does it come from when the bird shifts back once more? Then she was a red-tailed hawk standing in the dirt among a crowd of cadejos, wings outspread.

She flapped them, trying to take flight, but all it did was unbalance her.

“No, no,” los cadejos told her.

“Don’t fight the hawk.”

“She knows how to fly.”

“You don’t.”

No, she didn’t. But she was afraid to let go too much. Afraid of forgetting herself in the shape of a hawk and becoming as lost to those she loved as had her papá.

She tried to convey her fears to los cadejos, but all that came from her beak was a loud, wheezing kree-e-e.

“Don’t be afraid,” los cadejos told her.

“We are always near.”

So she let herself go, retreated in her mind until the hawk spirit was dominant. Under its guidance, she stepped forward to where the land dropped away into the arroyo and launched herself forward, into the air. Powerful wings beat at the air, lifting her up, up.

She cried out again, a joyful sound this time. Far below, her cadejos bounded in and out of the cacti, yipping and laughing as they chased the shadow of the hawk that raced across the desert floor ahead of them.

El lobo stood among the trees on a hill above the housing development that had proved too much to bear for the spirit whose body he now wore. On the edge of the development, the bulldozers were already at work, clearing trees and leveling the land for more houses. The roar of their engines was loud, even at this distance. The sky was gray overhead, loosing the odd flurry, the temperature hovering at the zero mark. The ground was frozen. But still they were out there.

Soon it would be all gone, all of Shishòdewe’s territory, now his, consumed by houses and roads, by power lines, sewer and water pipes. Already the forest where he now stood was the playground of children and teenagers from down below. Pop cans and beer bottles lay under the snow, balled-up potato chip bags and candy wrappers, a thoughtless litter.

Sighing, he faded back into the trees and stepped across into manidò-akì, the spiritworld. Here it was late summer and quiet, the loudest sound the cluttering of a pair of squirrels, high in the pines above him, the raucous caw of a crow, close, but out of sight. He rolled a cigarette and lit it, then walked deeper into the forest until he came to a clearing. The ground dropped at the far end, fifty feet down in a jumble of granite and limestone, dotted with stunted cedars.

When he was finished his cigarette, he put it out under the heel of his boot and pocketed the butt. From overhead he heard the sharp kree-e-e of a hawk and looked up to see a russet shape circling high above him. The sight of it depressed him, reminding him of Bettina. But then everything did.

A hundred times a day he thought of her, his fingers straying to the milagro she had given him, the tiny silver heart that symbolized the promise she had made. He would want to leave right then to be with her, go to her if she would not come to him, but he knew he couldn’t. Shouldn’t. He could leave his responsibility to Shishòdewe’s territory for a few days. That wasn’t the problem. It was that what Bettina needed to do, she needed to do on her own.

Still, it was hard, this waiting.

The hawk cried again, closer.

Looking up once more, he saw it dropping towards him. A spirit bird, then. Well, he could use some company.

But the relief of some diversion quickly gave way to astonishment as the hawk came in close to the ground. Just before it landed, it transformed into human form. A woman. But that it could shapeshift was not the surprise.

“Bettina,” he said.

She gave him a grin, “Está bueno —¿ Sí? I’ve been practicing.”

“I’ve missed you,” he told her.

“Oh, mi lobo, I’ve missed you, too.”

When they embraced, he could feel a difference in her, as though the hawk’s powerful muscles were still present, under the softness of her skin.

“You feel so strong,” he said.

“But this is a good thing.”

“Anything you do is a good thing.”

She gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “Flatterer.” But he could see she was pleased.

They walked then, hand in hand, while she told him of all she had managed to accomplish since they’d parted, of what still remained undone.

“I didn’t know what to think anymore after meeting Chuhwi,” she said when she came to the end of her story. “Embracing my hawk only made me miss Papa more. So I went to see my family. I met Mama at mass, but—” She shrugged. “This is still something I can’t share with her. Later, we ate at Adelita’s house. She, at least, I can speak to now, but when I told her what Chuhwi told me, she could see no more of a solution to it than I can.”