Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“Well, it can’t be good. That lot aren’t exactly renowned for their charity and goodwill towards others.”

“Someone should tell Ellie.”

Miki nodded. “But first I’ll have a word with Donal. I’ll ask him when I get home tonight and see what he’s got to say for himself.”

“Sure,” Hunter said. “He must have had a good reason to want to keep it from her.”

“He’d better. Or I’ll give him such a rap across the head he won’t see straight for at least a week. Ellie doesn’t need this sort of thing, and neither do you.”

“I forget how fierce you can be,” Hunter said, laughing.

Miki gave him her most innocent look. “Why don’t you come along after we close up tonight and be reminded?”

“Dinner afterwards at the Dear Mouse?”

“Done.”

Miki took a swig of her coffee, then picked up the stack of inventory cards from beside the cash register and swaggered off to restock the items that had been sold yesterday.

“Stop smirking,” she told Hunter who was hard put to stop from laughing at her antics. “I’m trying to be a manly man,”

“It’s not working.”

She rolled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and flexed her muscles. “How can you say that? Just look at these biceps.”

Hunter dutifully admired them. “Donal will be shaking in his boots,” he assured her.

“If he’s involved in any of this, he’ll be doing more than shaking. And that’s a promise.”

They closed the store a half-hour early. Along with freebie promotional copies of new releases—or better yet, pre-releases—making a judgment call about closing early was one of the few perks of actually owning the store. It hadn’t been a hard one to make today. Except for a brief flurry of business in the midafternoon, they’d only had a half-dozen customers for the rest of the afternoon, and none at all for the last half-hour. Miki had wanted to hang a GONE FISHING sign in the door, just in case some diehard showed up at the door before the official closing time, but Hunter—using the power of ownership once again—vetoed that idea.

“Too frivolous,” he explained.

Miki grinned. “As if. You need some frivolity in your life. An extra helping, in fact.”

They took the subway across town to the market, and then walked the ten blocks or so up Lee Street to the Rosses and the apartment that Miki shared with her brother near the Kelly Street Bridge, going at a slow pace because of the steady ache in Hunter’s side. It was still cold, and the temperature was dropping, but after being cooped up inside the store all day and then the crowded subway ride, they enjoyed being outside, never mind the chill.

“You’ve never been here before, have you?” Miki said as she ushered Hunter inside her building.

“Not since you and Judy had your house-warming.”

“That’s right. I forgot you’d come. But you didn’t stay long.”

Hunter nodded. “Ria got bored.”

“I thought you said you were going to a gallery opening.”

Hunter shrugged. “It sounded better than Ria being bored.”

The building didn’t look like much from the outside—just another ratty downtown brownstone—but once Hunter stepped into the foyer he realized that its tenants still took pride in the old war-horse. He’d forgotten how well maintained it was. There were still a few of these places left in the downtown area, buildings where the tenants refused to be intimidated by the steady exodus from the inner-city core and the subsequent arrival of those with less than a personal pride in keeping up the neighborhood. The tile floors of the foyer were clean, the walls freshly painted, all the overhead lights were in working order. The brass bank of mailboxes by the door was polished and gleaming.

“This place is in great shape,” he said as they walked down the hall to Miki’s ground-floor apartment.

“I know. Everyone puts the time in to keep it that way. Mind you, we do it for ourselves. The landlord couldn’t give a shite.”

“You’d think he’d be happy.”

“I doubt he’s ever set foot in this building,” Miki said. She turned the key, unlocking the door. “Hey, Donal!” she called when the door was open. “Put on your trousers—we’ve company.”

There was no response.

“I guess he’s still out,” Miki said.

Hunter followed her inside to find things no more familiar here than the foyer had been. No surprise, he supposed, considering how brief that earlier visit had been. The front hall was also part of the living room which boasted a pair of club chairs, an old stuffed sofa with a flower print that didn’t quite match the Oriental rug under it, and a handmade shelf running along one wall that held Miki’s stereo and a haphazard collection of vinyl albums, CDs, cassettes, books, and magazines.

From where they stood removing their boots and jackets, Hunter could see the kitchen at the end of the hall, and part of the dining room. The latter had been turned into a bedroom—Miki’s, Hunter realized after a moment, noting a poster of John Coltrane and another advertising Italian-made Castag-nari melodeons on the walls. Miki was always raving about their tone and the beautiful wood finishes on the Castagnaris, though she herself played a bright red Paolo Soprani that she’d had for ages, replacing her old Hohner that had wheezed more than offered up musical notes towards the end.

“You gave up your bedroom?” he asked as they walked past the dining room towards the kitchen.

Miki shrugged. “Donal needed the space for his studio. I didn’t want him sleeping in the same room as all those noxious turps and the like. Bad enough he works with them.”

“But it’s your apartment,” Hunter said. “It doesn’t seem right that you don’t even get your own space.”

Miki glanced at him. “There were times when we didn’t have anyplace to live and if it hadn’t been for Donal, I’d have been taken in by social services and put into some foster home. I’d give up a lot more than a bit of personal space for him.”

“You’re right,” Hunter said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know he can be a right little shite, but he is my brother and he really does mean well.”

On the other side of the hall they passed an open door which was obviously DonaPs bedroom. Sparsely furnished, clothes draped everywhere. Miki paused at the closed door a little farther down the hall.

“Donal?” she called, rapping on the wood with a knuckle.

When there was no answer, she opened the door.

“Sometimes when he’s really involved in his work,” she told Hunter, “he doesn’t even hear…”

Her voice trailed off.

“What is it?” Hunter asked.

He stepped around her and then he saw what had stolen away her voice. The room was dominated by a large canvas that had to be at least six foot by nine. Though obviously incomplete, the image caught in the paint was riveting. A naked man wearing a mask of leaves hung Christ-like from an enormous oak. His body was clothed in a nimbus of gold light that was picked up again in the leaves of his mask and the trunk of the tree behind him. Green blood poured from his mouth, the palms of his hands where they were nailed to the tree, and a gaping wound in his abdomen. No, Hunter realized as he stepped closer. Not blood. What poured out of the wounds was a liquid spill of finely detailed leaves and spiraling vines.

The rendering was so perfect that, at a first glance, you thought there really was a man hanging there. No wonder Miki had been so startled.

“Well, it’s an amazing painting,” Hunter said, “but I sure wouldn’t want it hanging on my wall.”

When Miki didn’t respond, he turned to look at her. Her usually cheerful features were pulled into an unfamiliar scowl. Lurking in her eyes was an old sorrow that Hunter had never seen before.