Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

Basta, she thought. Enough, She only had so much patience.

She pushed herself away from the door and started towards them, losing her balance in the process. Her boots slipped out from under her on the slick ice and she flailed her arms. She was falling, she would have fallen, except strong hands caught her from behind and held her upright. As she turned, her rescuer keeping a grip on her arms so that she wouldn’t lose her balance again, she found herself facing one of the wolves. Which one? She couldn’t tell at first. They were all too much alike. And when she glanced at where they’d been standing, there was no sign of them at all. The others had all slipped away and only this wolf remained, holding her arms the way one held a child just beginning to walk. Despite herself, her pulse quickened when she realized he was the same one who had approached her the other night.

“Can you stand on your own?” el lobo asked her.

He let her go as he spoke and Bettina had to do an awkward shuffle to stay upright.

“Who are you?” she demanded when she finally had her balance. “What do you want from me?”

“Not even a thanks?”

“Perdona. I am grateful for your help.”

Her hair was rapidly getting plastered against her head—a cold and decidedly uncomfortable sensation. El lobo, she noticed, wasn’t even damp. Nor had the others been. Of course. They were only partly in this world, enough to see and be seen, but not enough to be affected by the inclement weather. She concentrated for a moment and sidled into that in-between place herself. The relief from the freezing rain was immediate, though she still had a chill and her hair continued to drip icy water down the back of her neck.

“But you have questions,” el lobo said, smiling.

He began to walk across the lawn to where the woods began. Bettina couldn’t help but return the smile. She fell in step beside him, neither of them touched by the sleet, their footing steady in that in-between place.

“Claro,” she said when they reached the first trees. Of course. There were always questions.

El lobo nodded. “You asked what was wanted from you. They,” he nodded to where the other wolves had been, “want nothing. Their concern is with the sculptor.”

“They,” Bettina thought. He says “they.” Why not “we?”

“Do you mean Ellie?” she asked.

Again he nodded. “If that is her name.”

“But you’ve been out here long before she arrived.”

“There is another in that house with whom they have unfinished business.”

Once more it was “they.” But he didn’t have to identify Nuala by name for Bettina to know who he meant.

“What business?” she asked.

He shrugged. “That is between them. My interest is with you.”

Bettina schooled her features to show nothing of how he’d made her blood quicken. She considered all of Nuala’s warnings. Was this the moment when he would try to drag her off into the woods? She would have a surprise for him, if he tried. She was stronger than she looked, and not afraid to use that strength. But perhaps he’d come with gentler courting in mind.

“Do you have a name?” she asked, pretending a calm she didn’t feel.

“You may call me Scathmadra.”

Not, “My name is Scathmadra.” Only that she could call him by it, this apodo of his, and he would answer, but it would have no hold over him as would his true name. And what sort of a nickname was Scathmadra? A felsos name. A Gentry’s name.

“Bueno , “Bettina said. “And what is it you want from me?”

“Your help.”

Bettina studied him for a moment, surprised. Was this who had called her up out of the desert, this wolf of a spirit who wouldn’t even share with her his true name?

“And yet you are the enemy,” she said.

His eyebrows rose in a question.

“I have been warned against you.”

“Who… ?” he began, then nodded. “Of course. The housekeeper. What did she say about us?”

Now he included himself with the others, Bettina noted.

“Only that you mean me no good, ¿ Y bien?”

“I cannot speak for the others,” he told her, “but for myself… you could be putting yourself in danger if you agree to help me.”

“Danger from whom?”

“The others.”

Bettina smiled humorlessly. “And yet you are one of them.”

“No,” he corrected. “I am part of them, but no more one of them than you are one of your father’s peyoteros.”

“What do you know of my father?”

“That we share a kinship, no matter how distant.”

He spoke the truth. Bettina couldn’t explain it any more than she could this unfamiliar attraction she felt towards him. It wasn’t that he was so handsome. She had met handsome men before.

“No one in my family has ever been to Ireland,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

She had to shake her head.

“I’ve never been there either,” he said.

“But…”

“And neither have the wolves. They were born and bred here, but they are no more native to the land than are those who sired them. And if anything, their hunger for the land is stronger than that of their parents. All they’ve ever had to claim for their own are the cities—and those they have to share with mankind. Outside of the cities, others hold sway. Your people.”

“My…?”

Bettina didn’t try to hide her confusion.

“Peyoteros, like your uncles.”

He meant shaman, she realized, rather than the peyote men in particular.

“And other, older spirits,” he went on. “Like your father.”

“My father was a man.”

“Was he?”

Bettina didn’t have to close her eyes to picture the hawks, soaring above the desert.

“Not all of your uncles needed a ceremony to change their shape,” el lobo went on. “And your father never did.”

Bettina had always suspected as much. It explained the claim the desert had on him. Why her mamá was so patient with his absences. You didn’t tame a wild creature; you only shared his company.

“How do you know him?” she asked.

“I didn’t know him. I only know of him. I...”

He hesitated.

“Bueno, “Bettina told him. “If you want my help, then you must be honest with me.”

He waited a heartbeat longer, then nodded in agreement.

“Few in this present day and age ask for truth as payment,” he said.

“I didn’t say it was payment.”

He smiled, rakish again for a brief moment. “No, but it will be. You will see.”

“¿Ybien? I see only a wolf in man’s skin who loves the sound of his own voice too much—especially when he talks in riddles. It may amuse you, but it annoys me.”

“I apologize.”

Bettina refused to let him win her over so easily.

“Tell me this truth of yours.”

“Did your father or grandmother—”

How do you know my abuela as well? she wanted to ask, but she made herself listen to him, to hold her questions and let him finish.

“—ever speak to you of shadow people?”

Bettina regarded him for a long moment, remembering a conversation she’d had with Abuela on one of their desert rambles. “You must be careful,” she’d said, “of all the parts of yourself that you discard. It might make you feel good and strong, denying hatred and anger and whatever other base emotions you manage to set aside, but remember this: they can take on a life of their own. And the stronger, the more potent your brujena, the stronger this shadow self will be. Better to hold these things inside, to accept that you can feel such things the same as any other does, rather than deny them. Hold them fast, bind them in some hidden place inside you where they can harm no one but you can still guard them. Freed, there is the chance that they will become an enemy, one strong enough that few can easily dispel.”