Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“And you?” she asked.

Papa shrugged. “I am not easily enchanted, by man or spirit.”

Who are you truly? Bettina wanted to ask him. Or perhaps the question should be, what are you? Man, hawk, desert spirit. Curandero, shaman, peyotero. Which, or all? But in the end, she realized, it didn’t really matter. He was her papá and that was enough.

She leaned closer to him, wishing it was as easy to call Abuela back from where the little dog had led her as it was to be comforted by her papá ’s embrace.

But she could not spend her life attached to Papa like some Siamese twin. They had each their separate lives. Being able to share the loss of her abuela with him helped some, but her sadness remained a gaping hole that nothing seemed to fill. When he went back into the desert, this time to stay, though she did not know that until much later, she tried to carry on with her own life. A life without Abuela who was gone now forever, but who would never be forgotten. She lit a candle in church and another at the shrine of the inocente. She skipped school every day and walked out in the desert, repeating Abuela’s lessons to herself so that she wouldn’t forget them. One day she packed some clothes and went to stay with Rupert and Loleta Manuel, to complete her education in herbal and desert lore.

Mama would not, could not understand, why she needed to do this. They argued until finally Bettina simply had to walk away. It was months before they spoke again, for Mama had a formidable way with silence, wielding it like a weapon.

Life with the Manuels was different from how it was at home. Loleta treated her as an adult, spoke to her as an equal, but Bettina also had to shoulder far more responsibility than she did living with her own family. Often it was she alone who set the meals on the table for Loleta and Rupert and what guests they might have visiting that day. She gathered wood for the fire, shared the cleaning, the washing, the preparing of ointments and amuletos, learned when to ask assistance of los santos and when of the spirits, when to massage an ill, when to treat it with medicine.

But she had freedom, too. Early mornings, afternoons, and sometimes late at night, she walked in the desert surrounding the Manuels’ home.

One day Ban came over for dinner and she was surprised to discover that she was no longer interested in whether he viewed her as a woman or a girl. The realization made her feel both relieved and sad. She helped clean up after dinner and sat with the family for a little while before finally making some excuse and escaping out into the night. She wore a sweater against the coolness and went up into the hills, winding through the scrub and cacti until she came to a favorite sitting spot on the stone lip of an arroyo. Far below, mesquites, willows, and cottonwoods clustered along the length of a dry wash. Closer, a few handbreadths from where her feet dangled, petroglyphs had been cut into the gray-brown stone. I’itoi’s spiral. What looked like hand prints. Stylized lizards and frogs. Small patch patterns such as could be seen on pottery. Wiggly lines that might be winding rivers or snakes.

It was amazing, Bettina thought every time she saw these ancient markings, that they could last so long. That made her wonder if the occasional spray-painted graffiti she stumbled across would also be here for the next thousand years. She had to smile. Who was to say that the petroglyphs weren’t the ancient people’s graffiti?

She heard Ban approaching long before he reached her, sensed his brujería moving through the scrub. She nodded to him when he sat down on the stone beside her. He hung his long legs over the edge beside hers, toes pointing at the wash below. Somewhere close by she heard an owl hoot. Moments later, they heard the sound of its wings as it passed by overhead, so close that Bettina felt she could have lifted her hand and brushed its wings with her fingers.

Ban pulled an apple out of his pocket and offered it to her. Bettina polished it on her sweater, felt the smoothness of the apple’s skin where her gaze saw only a dark round shape in her hand.

“Gracias,” she said and bit into it. The sweet juice ran from the corners of her mouth. “Mmm. Está bueno. ”

Smiling, he reached back into his pocket and took out another for himself.

“I was in the spiritworld today,” he said after they’d been munching on their apples for a while. “I went to meet with my namesake, but instead I had a conversation with the spirit of a fairy duster.” He hesitated before adding, “Have you met them yet?”

Bettina nodded. Like the flower whose shape they wore, they had a delicate appearance, hair like a pink mist of curls, sweet bony features, eyes slightly too large for their features. She regarded Ban, wondering what it was that had brought him out into the desert to sit with her, what it was that he didn’t want to tell her.

“What did you speak of?” she asked.

“Su abuela. She…” He gave her a pained look. “She is not coming back.”

Bettina could feel the tears press against the back of her eyes. Two months now, but the pain was still as constant as her breathing.

“I know,” she said, her voice tight.

“This trip she undertook…”

“It was no trip. Not like you or I would take—that we, or anybody, is ever ready to take. She followed the clown dog.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw them go.”

“But you never said anything.”

“What could I say?” Bettina asked. “Everybody except for Papa and I were under un encantamiento.”

Ban gave a slow nod. “Sí. It was an enchantment. I was held fast in it as much as anyone else, until the fairy duster told me as much. When she spoke, I could feel the veil lift from my eyes. It was like that time when we were looking for I’itoi’s cave. Until you pointed it out, none of us could see the entrance, though it was there in front of us all the time.”

“What do you see now?” Bettina asked.

Ban looked away, into the darkness that lay on the far side of the arroyo.

“Sadness,” he said. “Yours, mine. My mother and father’s when they learn what I have just told you.”

“It doesn’t go away,” Bettina told him.

“How could it?” Ban said. “She filled our lives.”

Was that the reason behind the enchantment? Bettina wondered. Had the spirits meant it as a kindness so that Abuela’s departure would not leave them all feeling so bereft?

“This spirit you met… did she say why Abuela was taken?”

“It was to ransom her daughter—your mother. Long ago, before either you or Adelita were born. One of los santos came to bear the child’s spirit away, but your abuela would not allow it. She made a bargain with Death, who laid his protection upon the child and kept los santos from taking her.”

So that explained Abuela’s distrust of the church, though not Mama’s devotion.

“Because of that, her life was forfeit to him,” Ban went on. “A la Muerte.

Not then. Not for many years, as it turned out. But when he called, she would have to come, willingly and alive.”

“Why alive?”

“Of what use is a dead curandera ? Dead, she is only a spirit such as the rest of us will one day be.”

“But what would Death need with a healer?”

“Who can say what illnesses they might suffer, even in Mictlan.”

Bettina nodded. She considered what she’d been told.

“It was for la brujería” she said finally. “That is why Abuela made her bargain. That la brujería pass through Mama to Adelita and me.” She shook her head. “It was not worth her life.”