Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“It is only what it seems,” her abuela told her. “A bird, nothing more.”

Bettina gave a little nervous laugh.

“I knew that,” she said.

Her grandmother said nothing.

The riverbed they walked along was mostly a dry wash now, damp in places from the spring rains, the only water puddled in the bed’s lowest depressions. Mesquite and palo verde grew along the river’s banks, sometimes hanging over the path where they walked. On the other side of the path patches of Mexican poppies the color of marigolds and purple blue lupines clustered around cholla skeletons.

The sun rose over the peaks of the Rincon Mountains just as they reached the shrine. The white wax covering the adobe bricks gleamed in its light, highlighted by the small milagros and other metal offerings that were caught in its flow. Bouquets of drying flowers lay around the base of the shrine, tied together with ribbons and strings. Photos, curling and sun-bleached, lay among them. While Abuela lit a single candle and placed it on the shrine, Bet-tina knelt on the ground. All the wax on the shrine made it look as though it was melting back into the earth, she thought. There was little bird sound, little sound at all. Closing her eyes, she prayed, asking the spirit of the shrine to cast out the cadejos if they meant her harm.

When the candle was lit, Abuela sat beside her and they remained so for some time. After a while Bettina opened her eyes, blinking a little in the light. She let her gaze travel over the shrine, then to the vegetation beyond it. Prickly pear and the mesquite. A few saguaro, one tipped at such an angle that it would surely topple over this year. The palo verde trees. A barrel cactus growing under them with a large yellow blossom growing from its thorny top.

“Do you see him?” she asked her grandmother. “¿El inocente?”

“No. But I feel his presence. Can you?”

“I feel something…”

Her abuela nodded. “And los cadejos?”

Bettina thought for a moment before answering.

“You know when someone is laughing, but making no sound?” she said. “They’re like that inside me. Like a tickle, or a happy thought.”

“Does their presence frighten you?”

Bettina shook her head. “But it’s a funny feeling, to have little mysteries living inside you like this.”

“We all carry mysteries,” Abuela told her. “Some are merely less hidden than others.” She looked out across the dry wash of the river, past the mesquite to the mountains beyond. “The next time you visit la epoca del mito,” she added, “you will not travel alone. I should have taken you a long time ago, but I was waiting…”

Her voice trailed off.

“For what?” Bettina asked.

“For when the time felt right.”

Bettina sighed. Sometimes it seemed as though her entire life was simply made up of waiting.

“When do you think Ban will realize that I’m a woman?” she asked.

Abuela smiled. “When you become a woman. You are still a girl, Bettina. Mi chiquita. Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up. Age will come to you soon enough. Never fear. There will be many boys in your life, many men. And much mystery, too. That is the way it is with women such as us with the brujería in our blood. But only the mystery stays with us.”

“All I want is a boyfriend. Like Ban. He’d be perfect.”

“Sí. And what does Ban want?”

Bettina shrugged. “I don’t know. I never asked him.”

“Perhaps he is ready for a wife and children. Are you ready to be a mother?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you think I should talk to him?”

“I think you should wait. The world is large with possibilities for those with patience.”

“But sometimes you have to do something,” Bettina said. “You can’t always just wait for things to come to you.”

“Of course not. That is where the wisdom comes in.”

“What wisdom?”

The wisdom you got from growing older, Bettina supposed, feeling like she was walking around and around in circles.

“The wisdom I share with you,” Abuela said.

Bettina studied the shrine for a long moment. She thought about how frightened she’d been in la epoca del mho, but how exciting it had been, too. Her life had changed this weekend, she realized. Now she had the children of volcanoes living inside her and she’d talked to a man who could change his shape. She almost laughed. Talked to a man who could change his shape? ¿ Y qué tiene? Her Papa flew the desert skies on a hawk’s wings.

She turned to look at her grandmother, thinking of all the wisdom Abuela had to offer her if she could only be patient.

“I can wait for that,” she said.

Ellie checked, her watch again. Almost nine and Donal still hadn’t shown up to give her a ride as promised. Nor was he answering his phone. It figured. Knowing him as long as she had, and having lived with him for part of that time, she knew exactly how untogether he could be about the simplest thing. But this was really pushing it.

It had been over an hour now while she sat with her parka close at hand, a packed suitcase and a box of art materials on the floor by the door, waiting for something, she began to realize, that wasn’t going to happen. Still, she allowed Donal another fifteen minutes before giving up and calling Tommy’s apartment. A woman answered the phone, startling Ellie. Tommy never had anyone over at his apartment, never mind a woman.

“Who’s this?” she found herself asking before it occurred to her how rude the question might seem.

“Sunday.”

“You’re kidding. As in his Aunt Sunday?”

The woman on the other end of the line laughed and Ellie realized that now she’d compounded rudeness with stupidity.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s just…” I didn’t believe any of you really existed, she’d been about to say, which would have only made things worse.

“You’ll be Ellie,” the other woman said.

“How could you know—”

“I’m psychic.”

She’d have to be, Ellie thought.

Sunday laughed again, a throaty, pleasing sound that woke a smile on Ellie’s lips.

“Don’t take me so seriously,” Sunday said. “The truth is, except for his family, I think you’re the only woman in Tommy’s life.”

“That’s not true,” Ellie said. “He knows any number of women.”

“Really?” Sunday replied. “Are you keeping secrets from your aunt?” she added, her voice growing fainter as she took the receiver away from her mouth. “I’ve just been told that you’re a regular Casanova.”

“Give me that,” Ellie heard Tommy say.

“What have you been telling your aunts about me?” Ellie asked when Tommy came on the line.

“Don’t you start,” Tommy growled, but there was no real anger in his voice.

“Easy does it, Romeo.”

Tommy sighed. “So what’s up, Ellie?”

“I was going to ask you for a ride up to Kellygnow, but now that I know you have a guest—”

“It’s okay. She was just leaving—weren’t you?” he added, obviously to his aunt. “What time do you have to be there?” he asked Ellie.

“There’s no rush.”

“I’ll be over in ten minutes or so.”

“But—”

She was too late. “Catch you,” Tommy said and the line went dead.

Ellie slowly hung up the receiver on her end and went to sit by the window where she could see the street outside her front door. She felt a little guilty for imposing on Tommy like this. He so rarely did normal things like visit with his family.