Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“Interesting, isn’t it?” a voice said.

Bettina looked away from the house to find her wolf leaning against the trunk of a tree, his own gaze fixed on Kellygnow. His pose was as languid as ever, but his dark eyes glinted with tension.

“Who’re you?” Chantal asked, obviously disconcerted at his sudden appearance.

“Está bien,” Bettina said. She rose slowly to her feet, grateful for Chan-tal’s arm to keep her steady. “It’s okay. He’s a friend… I think.”

“You never answered my question from last night,” el lobe said.

“I haven’t had time to think about it with all the trouble this storm has brought.”

“And now it’s too late. They have their monster.”

Bettina shook her head. “This is different. Ellie never finished the mask.”

“Then what was screaming inside my head a few moments ago?” el lobo asked.

“A man named Donal Greer.”

“I know him. He’s a puppy. Desperate to run with the pack, but he lacks the geasan to be more than a hanger-on.”

By geasan Bettina intuited he meant brujería. Though he might have meant cojones.

“Quizá, quizá, no,” she said. “But all the same he was able to wake some old forest spirit with nothing more than his will and that broken mask.”

El lobo returned his gaze to the house once more.

“I see,” he said softly.

“Well, I don’t,” Chantal said. “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Where to begin?” Bettina said. “We’ve stumbled into what my papá once warned me against, and in no uncertain terms: a struggle between the spirits that has spilled out of la epoca del mito into this world of ours.”

“And this epoca de whatever would be what?”

“The spiritworld.”

“Of course.” Chantal looked from Bettina to el lobo. “And you’re the good guys, right?”

Bettina shook her head. “I don’t even want to be involved, but… so qué va. Here I am in the middle of it all the same.”

“And tall dark here?” Chantal asked.

She left “handsome” unsaid, but el lobo stood straighter and smiled all the same.

“He is… related to those on one side of the struggle.”

“Oh, well put,” el lobo said. “I am Scathmadra,” he added, bowing slightly to Chantal and offering her his hand. “At your service.”

Chantal shook his hand and introduced herself.

“I know what your name means,” Bettina told him. “Surely you can come up with something better?”

“Than the truth?” he said.

“I am so far out of my depth here,” Chantal began, “that I don’t even—”

She broke off as they heard a great crash from the direction of the house. It was the sound of masonry collapsing, breaking glass, stone blocks tumbling against each other. They turned as one toward Kellygnow.

“¿Qué… ?” Bettina said.

She’d thought for a moment that one of the towering oaks had come down upon the house, but she soon saw it was something worse. A great, ragged gap had been pounded out in a portion of the wall facing them. Through it came such a creature that even Bettina, in all she had experienced in her travels through la epoca del mito, had never seen the like of before.

It was tall and broad-shouldered with a man’s shape, but the proportions were not quite right and its skin seemed more like rough bark than human flesh. The mask Bettina remembered from Ellie’s worktable was now a face, fluid, mobile, dark-eyed. Its scraggly hair and beard were a thick tangle of vines. Branches sprouted from its temples like a stag’s antlers. A cloak of bark and leaves and tangled vines fell from its shoulders. Caught up in the folds of the cloak and pushing up out of the creature’s barklike skin were feathers and bits of fur, moss, fungi, and other less recognizable things.

The creature moved awkwardly, as though uncomfortable in, or unused to its body. For a long moment none of them could speak. They watched it lumber into the woods, its gait growing more graceful with each step. By the time it was lost from their sight, it was moving soundlessly, slipping between the trees like a whisper.

“Madrede Dios,” Bettina murmured finally.

“Indeed,” el lobo said. “The Glasduine is woken and won’t this keep the pack busy. There will be no war between them and the local spirits now.”

Bettina gave him a questioning look.

“Think of it,” he told her. “The pack was to be the creature’s master. Now they will be the hunted.”

“Why would it go after them?”

El lobo shook his head, as though he was dealing with a child.

“Do you think the Glasduine wouldn’t know what they had planned for it?” he said. “How they would profane its mystery and glory?”

“Sí,” Bettina agreed. “If it was only that great spirit on its own. But Donal called it up. His desires will set its emotional balance.”

“If you would know how the pack treated that pup,” el lobo said, “then you would know for certain how not one of them is now safe.”

“Sí, pero todavía …”

But el lobo was already gone, stepping into la epoca del mito. Bettina heard Chantal gasp beside her. Of course. To her friend it would seem as though the wolf had simply disappeared. She gave Chantal a sympathetic look.

“It can’t be easy,” she said. “So many marvels, all at once.”

Chantal gave a slow nod. “Remember when I was saying I’d like to be able to see the stuff you do? Well, I take it back—okay?”

“It’s too late for that.”

“I kind of thought you’d say something like that.” She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Okay. I’m going to deal with it. One step at a time—if I get to choose the pace at all.”

“This is new to me as well,” Bettina said. “I can’t promise anything.”

“So what do we do now?”

Bettina pulled her gaze away from where the creature had disappeared to look back at the house.

“We should make sure no one was hurt,” she said.

Chantal nodded and fell into step beside her.

“You know what it looked like?” she said after a moment. “That thing that came out of the house? Like those Green Men from British folklore. You see the image all over the place in England, in churches and the like.”

“Donal said something about that.”

Donal had said a lot, Bettina remembered, that morning when he and Ellie had first come to the house. Much of it, in retrospect, unpleasant. He’d subscribed such hedonistic and shallow impulses to the Glasduine he remembered from his own childhood stories. If those were what he was using to focus its spirit, the creature would indeed be a monster.

“But I don’t remember those Green Men being thought of as evil,” Chantal went on. “They were more like primal forest spirits. Jack-in-the-Green. Robin Hood. Even Shakespeare’s Puck. More like a trickster than something nasty.”

“Old spirits such as they dwell too far away from the world now,” Bettina said. “They live deep in the spiritworld, deeper than most travelers can access. To be able to return, they need a vessel to hold their spirit and that’s usually a man or a woman. The trouble is, the vessel brings his or her own influences into what has been called forth.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you bring something like that into the world,” Bettina explained, “it takes on your characteristics. If you’re kind, it will be a benevolent spirit. But if you are mean-spirited…”

“Oh, I get it,” Chantal said. “And this Donal guy, he’s… ?”