Charles de Lint: Forests of the Heart

The candlelight glittered on the small silver votive offerings and made shadows dance in the corners of the room whenever Bettina moved her arm. Those shadows continued to dance when the candle’s flame pointed straight up at the ceiling once more, but she ignored them. They were like the troubles that come in life—the more attention one paid to them, the more likely they were to stay. They were like the dark-skinned men who had gathered outside the house again tonight.

Every so often they came drifting up through the estates that surrounded Kellygnow, a dozen or so tall, lean men, squatting on their haunches in a rough circle in the backyard, eyes so dark they swallowed light. Bettina had no idea what brought them. She only knew they were vaguely related to her grandmother’s people, distant kin to the desert Indios whose blood Bettina and Adelita shared—very distant, for the memory of sea spray and a rich, damp green lay under the skin of their thoughts. This was not their homeland; their spirits spread a tangle of roots just below the surface of the soil, no deeper.

But like her uncles, they were handsome men, dark-skinned and hard-eyed, dressed in collarless white shirts and suits of black broadcloth. Barefoot, calluses hard as boot leather, and the cold didn’t seem to affect them. Long black hair tied back, or twisted into braided ropes. They were silent, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes as they watched the house. Bettina could smell the burning tobacco from inside where she sat, smell the smoke, and under it, a feral, musky scent.

Their presence in the yard resonated like a vibration deep in her bones. She knew they lived like wolves, up in the hills north of the city, perhaps, running wild and alone except for times such as this. She had never spoken to them, never asked what brought them. Her abuela had warned her a long time ago not to ask questions of la brujería when it came so directly into one’s life. It was always better to let such a mystery make its needs known in its own time.

“And of course, Mama wants to know when you’re coming home,” Adelita was saying.

Usually they didn’t continue this old conversation themselves. Their mother was too good at keeping it alive by herself.

“I am home,” Bettina said. “She knows that.”

“But she doesn’t believe it.”

“This is true. She was asking me the same thing when I talked to her last night. And then, of course, she wanted to know if I’d found a church yet, if the priest was a good speaker, had I been to confession…”

Adelita laughed. “¡Por supuesto! At least she can’t check up on you. Chuy’s now threatening to move us to New Mexico.”

“Why New Mexico?”

“Because of Lalo’s band. With the money they made on that last tour, they had enough to put a down payment on this big place outside of Albuquerque. But it needs a lot of work and he wants to hire Chuy to do it. Lalo says there’s plenty of room for all of us.”

“Los lobos.”

“That’s right. You should have come to one of the shows.”

But Bettina hadn’t been speaking of the band from East L.A. Those lobos had given Lalo’s band their big break by bringing them along on tour as their support act last year. The wolves she’d been referring to were out in the cold night that lay beyond the kitchen’s windows.

She hadn’t even meant to speak aloud. The words had been pulled out of her by a stirring outside, an echoing whisper deep in her bones. For a moment she’d thought the tall, dark men were coming into the house, that an explanation would finally accompany their enigmatic presence. But they were only leaving, slipping away among the trees.

“Bettina?” her sister asked. “¿Estás ahi?”

“I’m here.”

Bettina let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. She didn’t need to look out the window to know that the yard was now empty. It took her a moment to regain the thread of their conversation.

“I was just distracted for a moment,” she said, then added, “What about the gallery? I can’t imagine you selling it.”

Adelita laughed. “Oh, we’re not really going. It’s bad enough that Lalo’s moving so far away. Chuy’s family would be heartbroken if we went as well. How would they be able to spoil Janette as much as they do now? And Mama…”

“Would never forgive you.”

“De veras.”

Bettina went back to sorting through her milagros, fingering the votive offerings as they gossiped about the family and neighbors Bettina had left behind. Adelita always had funny stories about the tourists who came into the gallery and Bettina never tired of hearing about her niece Janette. She missed the neighborhood and its people, her family and friends. And she missed the desert, desperately. But something had called to her from the forested hills that lay outside the city that was now her home. It had drawn her from the desert to this place where the seasons changed so dramatically: in summer so green and lush it took the breath away, in winter so desolate and harsh it could make the desert seem kind. The insistent mystery of it had nagged and pulled at her until she’d felt she had no choice but to come.

She didn’t think the source of the summons lay with her uninvited guests, los lobos who came into the yard to smoke their cigarettes and silently watch the house. But she was sure they had some connection to it.

“What are you doing?” Adelita asked suddenly. “I keep hearing this odd little clicking sound.”

“I’m just sorting through these milagros that Ines sent up to me. For a…” She hesitated a moment. “For a fetish.”

“Ah.”

Adelita didn’t exactly disapprove of Bettina’s vocation—not like their mother did—but she didn’t quite understand it either. While she also drew on the stories their abuela had told them, she used them to fuel her art. She thought of them as fictions, resonant and powerful, to be sure, but ultimately quaint. Outdated views from an older, more superstitious world that were fascinating to explore because they jump-started the creative impulse, but not anything by which one could live in the modern world.

“Leave such things for the storytellers,” she would say.

Such things, such things. Simple words to encompass so much.

Such as the fetish Bettina was making at the moment, part mojo charm, part amuleto: a small, cotton sack that would be filled with dark earth to swallow bad feelings. Pollen and herbs were mixed in with the earth to help the transfer of sorrow and pain from the one who would wear the fetish into the fetish itself. On the inside of the sack, tiny threaded stitches held a scrap of paper with a name written on it. A hummingbird’s feather. A few small colored beads. And, once she’d chosen exactly the right milagro, one of the silver votive offerings that Ines had sent her would be sewn inside as well.

Viewed from outside, the stitches appeared to spell words, but they were like the voices of ravens heard speaking in the woods. The sounds made by the birds sounded like words, but they weren’t words that could be readily deciphered by untrained ears. They weren’t human words.

This was one of the ways she focused her brujería. Other times, she called on the help of the spirits and los santos to help her interpret the cause of an unhappiness or illness.

“There is no one method of healing,” her grandmother had told her once. “Just as la Virgen is not bound by one faith.”

“One face?” Bettina had asked, confused.

“That, too,” Abuela said, smiling. “La medicina requires only your respect and that you accept responsibility for all you do when you embark upon its use.”

“But the herbs. The medicinal plants…”

“Por eso,” Abuela told her. “Their properties are eternal. But how you use them, that is for you to decide.” She smiled again. “We are not machines, chica. We are each of us different. Sin par. Unique. The measure given to one must be adjusted for another.”