Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

He continued to the exit. It wasn’t until he’d pushed through the dirty glass doors and stepped onto the street outside that he realized it wasn’t eight in the bloody morning. It was eight at night and pissing down rain. Freezing rain.

“You see what I mean about everything being shite,” he muttered.

A businessman passing by shot him a quick look, then hurried on his way.

“The hookers are over on Palm!” Donal shouted after him. If they were stupid enough to be out in this foul weather. Of course, their pimps and whatever jones rode around in their guts weren’t about to let them take the night off, regardless.

The man ducked his head, slipped on the icy sidewalk, and only just caught his balance before continuing on his way.

Donal looked away. He sighed, the man already forgotten. Ellie was going to be livid and that wasn’t good. Part of what made him important to the Gentry was the closeness of his relationship to her. Lose that and the Gentry could try to cut him out and find someone else to wear the mask, and that wouldn’t bloody do at all.

Not that he gave one silver shite what they thought or did. As soon as the mask was his, they’d be the first to go. But until he had it, it had to be, yes, mister scary elf lord this and, of course, mister scary elf lord that. Bloody punters.

So first thing on the agenda: Make nice with Ellie.

As he got ready to leave the shelter of the hotel’s awning, the heavy canvas sagging about him, he caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the glass door of the hotel. Jaysus, didn’t he look the sight. Before heading out to see Ellie he’d better take a run by Miki’s and get some clean clothes. With any luck, she’d have climbed down from that high horse of hers by now and would let him in long enough to have a shower and change. And if his luck really held, she wouldn’t be at home at all.

He hunched his collar up against the freezing rain.

Stop for a pint on the way? he wondered as he stepped out from under the hotel’s awning. Better not, though lord knew he could do with a drink. Maybe Miki’d have some beer in the fridge.

He took a brisk step, another, and then did the same comical lunge for balance that the man passing him earlier had done, only just managing to stay on his feet.

Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph. What a foul night.

After dinner, Bettina walked with Ellie to the front door where the sculptor planned to wait for her ride. Neither had been outside since the morning and while they’d been aware of the nasty turn in the weather, they hadn’t really Paid much attention to how much freezing rain had actually fallen. When Ellie opened the door to see if Tommy had arrived yet, Bettina gave a small gasp of pleasure.

“What is it?” Ellie asked.

Bettina made a motion with her hand, encompassing the whole of the outdoors.

“Es muy hello,” she said.

And it was beautiful. The lights from the house awoke a thousand highlights on the ice-slicked trees and other vegetation. The longer grass and bushes at the edges of the property were stiff and beginning to droop, as were the boughs of the trees as the weight of the ice built up, but the reflected lights shimmered and sparkled in the ice, turning everything they saw into a magical fairyland.

“Beautiful,” Ellie agreed. “But treacherous, too.”

Bettina only shrugged. She’d had so little experience with ice and snow before coming to Newford that every new aspect of winter delighted her. Sleet and snow. The cold, the frost. Bone-chilling winds and sun so bright on the snow that it blinded you. Blizzards. An ice stonn such as this. Perhaps in a year or two, if she was still living in this city, she’d grow as tired and blase with winter as most of the natives seemed to be, but somehow she doubted it. She knew snow, but it rarely lasted out the day in the saguaro forests where she’d grown up. And something like this… could one ever become indifferent to such marvelous beauty?

But she could also understand the danger presented by the ice-slicked roads and tree limbs growing too heavy under the steadily increasing weight of the ice. As if to punctuate that realization, there came a sharp crack from the woods behind the house, followed by the crash of a falling limb and a muffled sound like breaking glass that Bettina realized was the ice fragments rattling , against each other in the wake of the fallen bough.

“If this doesn’t let up soon,” Ellie said, “that’s going to become an all too-familiar sound.”

Bettina nodded. And they wouldn’t simply be falling in the woods. Trees and boughs would come toppling down onto houses, across streets, taking down power lines…

She turned to her companion. “Do you really think you should go out on a night such as this?”

“I have to,” Ellie told her. “It’s at times like this when the street people need us the most.”

“But—”

“You should come out with us sometime,” Ellie went on. “Maybe you could use your magic to help them.”

Bettina gave her a considering glance. She could tell that Ellie had surprised herself in saying that, was perhaps even a little embarrassed by it, considering her vehement denials to the subject earlier. Eh, bueno. Bettina didn’t blame the sculptor. Anything could be disconcerting, if you weren’t familiar with it. Something like la brujería would be even more so, since to someone like Ellie, it went against all she’d been taught and had experienced in the world to date. It wasn’t as though she had grown up with a curandera for a grandmother, or spent her whole life as Bettina had, with one foot in this world, one foot in the other.

“La brujería,” she said, “only helps those who want to be helped, Ellie.”

“Don’t you have to believe as well?”

Bettina shook her head. “Does the sun require our belief before it can rise or set?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Bettina laughed. “Don’t look so glum. What’s happening to you doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

Before Ellie could reply, they heard the approach of an engine on the driveway, then saw the vehicle’s headbeams. A few moments later, the Angel Outreach van made its way up the last part of incline, tires slipping as they sought traction.

“Here’s my ride,” Ellie said, no doubt relieved at the timely rescue.

Bettina nodded. “Cuidado, “she said. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Bettina watched Ellie pick her way carefully across the icy driveway to where the van waited. Reaching the vehicle, the sculptor got in, waving before she closed the door behind her. Bettina returned the gesture. She waited until the van had made its slow way back down the sharp incline of the driveway before turning to go back inside, but once she’d closed the door on the wet night, she felt uncharacteristically restless. It was nothing she could put her finger on, only a disconnected feeling that had her wandering from one common room to another until she finally found herself in the kitchen. There she stood by the window and looked outside at the freezing rain, her gaze settling on the uninvited visitors who had gathered on the ice-covered lawns.

How could they be here again, on such a night… ?

She put on her coat and boots and went outside to where the wet night was waiting for her. The wet night and los lobos.

Once outside, she paused for a long moment by the back door of the kitchen, sheltered from the freezing rain by its overhang, and watched the dark-haired men. They didn’t sit tonight, standing in their rough circle instead, still smoking their cigarettes, gazes still on the house. Not all of them at once, but there was always at least one of them regarding the building.