Charles de Lint: Forests of the Heart

She closed her eyes, imagining them loping through the city’s streets. Had they even kept to human form, or was there now a wolf pack running through the city? Perhaps a scatter of wild dogs since dogs would be less likely to attract unwanted attention. Or had they taken to the air as hawks, or crows? Knowing as little as she did about them, it was impossible to say.

She walked on, past the gazebo, into the trees where, in places, snow lay in thick drifts. The cottages were all dark, their occupants asleep. A thin trail of smoke rose from the chimney of Virgil Hanson’s, the only one of the six to have a working fireplace. She regarded it curiously for a moment, wondering who was inside. In all the months that she had been living here, that cottage had stood empty.

Past the buildings, the trees grew more closely together. She followed a narrow trail through the undergrowth, snow constantly underfoot now, but it had a hard crust under a few inches of the more recent fall, and held her weight.

There was no indication that anyone had been this way before her. At least not since the last snowfall.

There was a spot at the back of the property, an enormous jut of granite that pushed out of the wooded slope and offered a stunning view of the city spread out for miles, all the way north to the foothills of the mountains. Bet-tina was careful as she climbed up the back of it. Though there was no snow, she remembered large patches of ice from when she’d been here a week or so ago. In the summer, they would sometimes sit out near the edge, but she was feeling nowhere near so brave today. She went only so far as she needed to get a view of the mountains, then straightened up and looked north.

At first she couldn’t tell what was wrong. When it came to her, her legs began to tremble and she shivered in her borrowed parka with its long dangling sleeves.

“Dios mio,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

There were no lights from the city to be seen below. None at all.

She felt dizzy and backed slowly away until she could clutch the trunk of one of the tamaracks that grew up around the rock. For a long moment, it was all that kept her upright. She looked back, past the edge of the stone where normally the glow of the city would rise up above the tops of the trees, but the sky was the dark of a countryside that had never known light pollution. The stars felt as though they were closer to her than she’d ever seen them in the city. They were desert stars, displaced to this land, as feral as los lobos.

Myth time, she thought. She’d drifted into la epoca del mito without knowing it, walked into a piece of the past where the city didn’t exist yet, or perhaps into the days to come when it was long gone.

“It is easier to stray into another’s past than it is to find one’s way out again,” someone said.

The voice came from the trees, the speaker invisible in the undergrowth and shadows, but she didn’t have to see him to know that he was one of los lobos. “We are wise women,” Abuela liked to say. “Not because we are wise, but because we seek wisdom.” And then she’d smile, adding, “Which in the end, is what makes us seem so wise to others.” But Bettina didn’t feel particularly wise tonight, for she knew what he’d said was true. It was not so uncommon to step unawares into myth time and never emerge again into the present.

“Who’s to say I strayed?” she said, putting on a much braver face than she felt.

With a being such as this, it was always better to at least pretend you knew what you were doing. Still, she wished now that she’d taken the time to invoke the protection of Saint Herve before going out into the night. He would know how to deal with wolves—those who walked on two legs, as well as those who ran on four.

El lobo stepped from out of the shadows, a tall, lean form, smelling of cigarette smoke and musk. There was enough light for her to catch the look of mild amusement in his features and to see that he was indeed, oh so handsome. After all those nights of watching him from the window, his proximity, the smell and too-alive presence of him, was like an enchantment. She had to stop herself from stepping close, into his embrace. But she had enough brujería of her own to know that there was no enchantment involved. It was simply the man he was. Dangerous, perhaps, and far too handsome.

“Ah,” he said. “I see. And so it was simple delight at your success and not surprise that made you dizzy.”

Bettina shrugged.

“And now?” he asked.

“Now, nothing. I’m going home to bed.”

“Indeed.”

He leaned back against a tree, arms crossed, smiling.

Bettina sighed, knowing that el lobo was now waiting for her to step back into her own world, confident she wouldn’t be able to. And then what? When he decided she was helpless, what would he do? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps he would bargain with her, his help in exchange for something that would seem like poquito, nada, yet it would prove to cost her dearly once he collected. Or perhaps his kind had other, less pleasant uses for las curanderas tontas who were so foolish as to stumble into such a situation in the first place. She remembered what Nuala had said about the wolves who’d come to watch her, how they were waiting for her to lift her skirts, to spread her legs. Handsome or not, she would not let it happen, no matter how attracted to him she might be.

She stifled another sigh as the quiet lengthened between them.

He could wait forever, she knew, amused and patient. ¿Pero, qué tiene? She could be patient, too. And she could find her own way home. All she needed was a moment to compose herself, enough quiet for her to be able to concentrate on the threads of her spirit that still connected her to the world she’d inadvertently left behind. She needed only the time to find them, to gather them up and follow them back home again.

Behind el lobo there was movement in the forest, a small shape that darted in between the trees too quickly for her to see clearly. There was only a flash of small, pale limbs. Of large, luminous eyes. Here, then gone. A child, she thought at first, then shook her head. No, not in this place. More likely it had been some espíritu. Un deunde—an imp, an elf. Some creature of the otherwhere.

Eh, bueno. She would not let it bother her.

She unzipped the front of her parka and let it hang open.

“It’s warmer here,” she said.

El lobo nodded. His nostrils flared, testing the air. “The air tastes of autumn.”

But what autumn? Bettina wanted to ask. Though perhaps the true question should be, whose autumn? And how far away did it lie from her own time? But then a more immediate riddle rose up to puzzle her.

“You’re not speaking English,” she said.

“Neither are you.”

It was true. She was speaking Spanish while he spoke whatever language it was that he spoke. It held no familiarity, yet she could understand him perfectly.

“¿Pero,como… ?”

He smiled. “Enchantment,” he said.

“Ah…”

She smiled back, feeling more confident. Of course. This was myth time. But while he might appear mysterious and strong, in this place her own brujería was potent as well. She wasn’t some hapless tourist who had wandered too far into uncertain territory. The landscape might be unfamiliar, but she was no stranger to la epoca del mito. She might find it confusing at times, but she refused to let it frighten her.

El lobo pushed away from the tree. “Come,” he said. “Let me show you something.”

She shrugged and followed him into the forest, retracing the way she’d come earlier, only here there was no snow. There were no outlying cottages, either. No gazebo, no house with its tower nestled in between the tall trees. But there was a hut made of woven branches and cedar boughs where Virgil Hanson’s original cottage stood in her world, and further on, a break in the undergrowth where the main house should have been—a clearing of sorts, rough and uncultivated, but recognizably the dimensions of the house’s gardens and lawn.