Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“So that’s the bargain,” Tommy said.

She nodded. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“So now what do we do?” Hunter asked.

“There’s going to be hell to pay if I make this mask, isn’t there?”

“And hell to pay if you don’t,” Tommy put in.

“Thank you for that.”

“Come on, Ellie. I’m not trying to—”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But I’m just so confused about all of this…”

She stared out the front windshield, not that there was anything to see. They had the van’s engine still running, but a coat of ice was already thickening on the glass. Angel really needed to get some new vehicles.

“We need help,” she said. “Expert help.”

“Fiona,” Hunter offered. “One of the women who works for me. She was telling me about these Creek sisters…”

He broke off as Tommy began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“They’re his aunts,” Ellie explained.

“That’s what Fiona called them. The Aunts.”

“I mean they’re literally his aunts.”

Hunter gave Tommy a considering look. “But Fiona made it sound like they were these, I don’t know, supernatural wise women or something.”

“What can I say?” Tommy told him.

“Maybe we should talk to them,” Ellie said. “I can’t believe what I just said,” she added in a mutter.

Tommy was kind and made no comment. Nodding, he took out the cell phone and punched in a number. After a few moments, he hit the “End” button and punched in another number, repeating the process a few more times.

“Looks like the phone lines are down on the rez,” he said.

“Then we’re going to have to drive out there,” Ellie said.

Tommy shook his head. “With this rain? I don’t think so. The roads are going to be a mess. I doubt the highway’s even open. We’ll have to wait until the weather clears.”

“That might not be until the end of the week,” Ellie said. “I don’t know if we can wait that long. I’m supposed to be working on this mask, but now we know I can’t because who knows what sort of horrible thing those guys’ll do with it. So what’s going to happen when they figure out I’m stalling?”

No one wanted to put it into words. They’d all seen the hard man lift the jeep like it was no heavier than a cardboard cut-out and flip it over on its side.

“Thing is,” Tommy said. “If they’re so tough, how come just whacking one with a pail of water was enough to kill him?”

“I don’t know,” Hunter told him. “I don’t even know for sure that he is dead.”

“But still.”

Hunter nodded. “And remember what Donal said before he left me: Everything can die. When it comes to these Gentry, I figure he should know.”

“After what you’ve told us,” Tommy said, “I don’t know if I’d trust him on anything.”

Reluctantly, Ellie had to agree. She supposed the most depressing thing about all of this was that she wasn’t particularly surprised by what Hunter had told them. There had always been something about Donal that had made her keep a certain distance between them. It was why she hadn’t been able to reciprocate his love, why even as a friend, his moroseness could sometimes be wearying. It was one thing to tell yourself it was only a mannerism—which is what it had always seemed to her, part of the angsty, Irish-expatriate artist image he liked to project—but when it went on as relentlessly as it did… She hadn’t been able to live with it. And now this.

The mask had been pulled away and who would have guessed what had really been lying there under the facade?

“We’re getting off the topic here,” she said. “Let’s concentrate on getting out to the rez to see Tommy’s aunts.”

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Tommy asked. “If we get stranded halfway there, slide off the road in some godforsaken part of the mountains…” He shook his head. “The cops have probably already closed off the highway.”

“You think?”

He shrugged. “If not yet, then soon.”

“So let’s get out on the road before they do.”

After dinner, Miki pulled one of the dining-room chairs over to the window that overlooked the street below Fiona’s apartment and sat there for the rest of the evening. She watched the sleet come down outside, cradling her old Hohner on her lap. Occasionally she fingered a tune on its keyboard, but since she didn’t work the bellows, the only sound she made was that of the buttons being pressed and released, a series of soft, almost inaudible, hollow clicks. Mostly she smoked her cigarettes and stared out the window. Fiona tried striking up a conversation from time to time, but Miki simply couldn’t muster the energy. The events of last night and this morning, and then having worked to put on a good face about it through the day, had left her too drained.

“It’s not you,” she told Fiona. “Honestly. You’ve been great. But I’ve run out of steam, you know?”

“If you want to go to bed… ?”

Miki shook her head. “No, I’ll just sit here for a while.”

And try not to feel so bloody depressed. But it was hard, and Fiona’s apartment didn’t help.

Fiona had carried the Goth obsession of her wardrobe over into her interior decorating scheme. Between the promo posters of Morrissey, The Cure, Dead Can Dance, Rhea’s Obsession, and the like, and the somber minimalism of the furnishings—really, who put up solid black curtains?—it would be hard to feel cheerful in this room in the best of circumstances. All the furnishings were black, what little of them there were. Entertainment unit holding the stereo and TV. Wooden IKEA couch and chairs that Fiona had repainted, recovering the cushions with black fabric. Coffee table, lamp, and a small bookcase. The chairs and dining-room table in the part of the room where Miki was sitting. Only the mantel was cluttered, draped with black and red lace and holding a fake human skull, an obviously beloved collection of Anne Rice novels, and what looked like two hundred candles. It was enough to make Miki want to slit her wrists.

She didn’t blame Fiona. Her co-worker was actually a very sweet woman for all her fixation with the dark and gloomy. She’d cooked a great stir-fry for dinner, kept up a cheerful conversation from when they’d first left the store through when they sat down to dinner, and even put on an Enya CD after the meal, making some comment about how it bridged the gap between Celtic and Goth. Miki didn’t have the heart to tell her that the cloying harmonies and sameness of the disc put her nerves on edge. She’d have preferred some early Trane or Lester Young. A remastered Bird reissue or Wayne Shorter’s new CD. Anything with an edge. She’d even have settled for one of Fiona’s Goth bands, if there actually existed any recordings among them where the tempo changed from one cut to another.

She half-listened to Fiona making some phone calls. One to her friend Andrea, commiserating on the closing of the club where she was supposed to start working that night. Another to Jessica, tracking down a telephone num-her for the Creek sisters. Passing that information on to Hunter’s answering machine since it seemed he was still out. God, what could he be finding to do on a night as miserable as this?

“What are you looking at?” Fiona asked as she pushed the “End” button on her phone and laid it on the floor by her feet.

Miki turned from the window and shrugged. “Nothing.”

Though that wasn’t true, she realized as she turned back to her vigil. The real reason she was keeping watch was that at any moment she expected to see the Gentry come ambling down the street. The slippery footing wouldn’t bother them and the rain would simply run off their trench coats, if they even bothered to wear them. They’d come stomping up the stairs to Fiona’s place and trash it just as they had hers. But first they’d vent their anger on Fiona and her.