Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“I love your work,” she told Chantal.

“Thanks. It’s something new for me.”

Which was what Kellygnow was all about, Ellie thought. A place where you could try out new things, where you could experiment without having to worry about your overhead. And now she was taking that away from Chantal.

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to take this commission,” she said.

“What commission is that?” Chantal asked.

Ellie couldn’t figure her out. Chantal seemed genuinely interested and not in the least bit upset about losing her studio here.

“Look, this isn’t right,” she said. “I feel terrible. If I’d known they were booting somebody out to make space for me, I would’ve told them to just forget it.”

Chantal waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, enough worrying about it already. I’m not upset about it, so why should anybody else be? Honestly. I’ve had a wonderful stay here and now it’s someone else’s turn. It’s not such a big deal and I think it’s a great opportunity for you…” She glanced at Ellie, raising her eyebrows in a question.

“Ellie Jones.”

“Oh, Jilly’s raved to me about your work, but I’ve never had the chance to see any of it myself. Did you bring any finished pieces with you?”

Ellie blinked in surprise. Was there no end to this woman’s generosity?

“No,” she said. “I didn’t really think to…”

“Well, maybe some other time. Anyway, like I was saying, a residency here is a great opportunity for you, so let’s not spoil it with feeling awkward or carrying around bad feelings. Kellygnow is a place where the Muses live side-by-side with us—which I think is a blessing one doesn’t get to experience very often. Don’t you think it’d be pretty small-minded of us to get all petty and catty with each other in an environment such as we’ve been provided with here?”

“Well… yes,” Ellie said. “Except you’re the one who’s getting the short end of the stick.”

“Except I’m not unhappy, so why should anyone else be?”

Ellie shook her head. “Wow. Are you for real?”

“She is very much so,” Bettina said.

Ellie pulled a chair out from under a table and turned it around, sitting down with her arms leaning on the backrest.

“This is a pretty big room,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of space you need to work in, but I could do with half or even less.”

Chantal smiled. “You see?” she said to Bettina. “Things work out.” Then she returned her attention to Ellie. “We can ask and see what they say. But can you work with someone else in the room?”

“Are you kidding? I’d love it. I’m way tired of being shut away by myself in my own studio. I lived with another artist for a while and it was great working together—at least until our relationship went on the rocks and we spent more time arguing about things than doing art.”

Chantal laid a hand over her heart. “Avowedly heterosexual in this corner,” she said.

Ellie had to laugh. “Yeah, me, too.”

“So tell us about the commission that got you into Kellygnow,” Chantal said.

“It has to do with this mask,” Ellie said and she got up to show it to them.

The two women had completely different reactions to the mask. Chantal regarded it much the way Ellie had when she first saw it yesterday, enamored with the beauty of its lines and marveling at the skill it had taken to render it so perfectly in wood. She immediately picked up one of the broken halves and ran her fingers across the mask’s smooth contour cheek, up into the braiding of carved leaves.

“This was planed by hand,” she said, her fingers returning to the cheek. “Can you imagine how hard it would be to get it this smooth without a lathe and sandpaper?”

When she went to hand it to Bettina, the smaller woman frowned and shook her head. She appeared, not exactly frightened, but certainly wary of it.

Chantal smiled. “It won’t bite,” she said.

“It is very old,” was all Bettina would say.

Ellie nodded. “I wonder how old? Ms. Wood gave me the impression it’s completely ancient, but how long does wood stay in such excellent condition?”

“Don’t ask me,” Chantal said. “I work with clay.”

“Anyway,” Ellie went on, “I’m supposed to make a copy of it in clay for a casting.”

“What will you cast it in?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ellie said. “My only instructions were that there’s to be no iron in the metal I end up choosing.”

“Weird.”

“Mmm.” Ellie’s gaze drifted to where Chantal’s busts stood alongside her more whimsical work. “I wonder why they didn’t just ask you to do it?”

“Beats me.”

“Because of your brujería,” Bettina told Ellie.

As Ellie turned to her that strange buzzing that Tommy’s Aunt Sunday had woken in her whispered up her spine again.

“My what?” she said.

“Your magic. It is very potent. As is this mask. To make a new one as potent as the old needs a person such as you—someone with a powerful spirit as well as the necessary artistic skills.”

Twice in one day was just too weird. Like Sunday, Bettina stated it completely matter-of-factly, none of this glib, trying-to-impress, New Age, aren’t-we-spooky-and-wise-stuff here, which only made Ellie feel all the more uncomfortable with it. What was happening anyway? Did she have “I’m gullible, tease me about mysterious stuff” written on her forehead or something? But before she could get too caught up in the strange coincidence of it, Chantal gave one of her merry laughs.

“Bet you didn’t know we have our own resident wise woman,” she said. “Seriously. It’s kind of eerie the way Bettina can pick up on stuff no one else notices. And she makes these charms that really work.”

“Urn, no offense,” Ellie said, “but I don’t really buy into that kind of thing.”

“You can be a friend of Jilly’s and say that?”

“I think Jilly has enough belief for the both of us and then some.”

Chantal smiled. “Yes. But don’t you want to believe?”

“Not really.”

“We’ll just have to win her over,” Chantal said to Bettina.

The dark-haired woman shook her head. “The spirits do not require anyone’s belief to exist. They were there at the beginning of the world and they will still be here, long after we are gone. Whether or not we believe in them is irrelevant.”

“She can be way more fun than this,” Chantal assured Ellie.

The twinkle in her eye made it plain she was teasing, but Bettina seemed to take it seriously.

“Me pasa,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was being rude.”

“No,” Ellie told her. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

“Oh, please,” Chantal said. “Enough with the ‘I’m sorrys’ already. The one of you’s worse than the other.”

Ellie and Bettina exchanged self-conscious smiles.

I like her, Ellie thought, talk of spirits and magic notwithstanding. And if she could put up with the way Jilly and Donal carried on about the strange and mysterious at times, then she could do it with Bettina as well.

She turned to Chantal and said, “Maybe we should go find Nuala and see where Kellygnow stands on shared studios.”

“Are you certain this is what you want?” Nuala asked Ellie when they caught up with her in an upstairs hallway.

Ellie thought it was a little odd that the housekeeper seemed to be making a point of only asking her, but she nodded. Nuala regarded her for a long moment, as though giving Ellie one more chance to reconsider.

“Very well,” she said. “I will speak to the executors about it. I’m sure they’ll agree when they learn this is your wish.”