Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“Very troubled,” Bettina told her. “I saw a lot of unhappiness and darkness in him. There was goodness as well, but it was a servant to the shadows, not its master.”

She put up a hand suddenly and brought Chantal to a stop.

“What… ?”

Bettina put a finger to Chantal’s lips. “Wait,” she said, her voice pitched soft.

Ahead of them they saw the Recluse leave her cabin and stare across the back lawn to where the hole gaped in the side of the house. She began to walk over to it, but then Nuala stepped out of the gap and clambered across the rubble. Nuala met the Recluse halfway across the lawn where an animated argument ensued.

“I’m going to do something that will feel odd to you,” Bettina said, still whispering, “but I need to get closer to them to hear what they’re saying and I don’t have time to explain.”

Before Chantal could question her, she pulled the other woman with her into the between, deep enough inside so that they wouldn’t be easily remarked by anyone who might look their way, but not so far that they would miss what was being said.

Chantal leaned against her. “I think I feel sick to my stomach.”

“I’m sorry,” Bettina said.

She would have left Chantal behind, but she was afraid of the creature circling back through the woods and coming upon the sculptor.

“It will pass,” she assured Chantal.

“Not quick enough to suit me,” Chantal grumbled.

Her face had gone pale and perspiration beaded on her brow.

“Truly,” Bettina said. “I’m sorry.”

Chantal tried to smile. “What did I tell you about apologizing all the time?”

Eh, bien, Bettina thought. She would make it up to her friend, that was a promise. But for now she took Chantal’s hand and led her closer to where Nuala and Musgrave Wood were arguing. The freezing rain had plastered the women’s hair to their faces, a rain that Bettina and Chantal no longer felt in the between.

“—wake such a thing inside?” Nuala was saying. She was angrier than Bettina had ever seen her, her brujena flashing in her eyes. “Someone could have been killed.”

“This wasn’t what we had planned when—”

But Nuala wasn’t listening. “I thought I’d made it clear. Kellygnow is under my protection and I will not have you playing the Morgana within her walls.”

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me,” Musgrave told her, standing taller, glaring at the other woman. “You forget who I am. You are here only on my sufferance.”

Nuala shook her head.

“And if it wasn’t for me,” Musgrave went on, “the Gentry would have taken you down from that high horse of yours a very long ago.”

Nuala laughed, but without humor. “Is that what they told you?”

“I know what I know.”

“Then mark this, woman. I have always been what you only pretend to be.”

“Don’t you—”

“And,” Nuala went on, “I have what they don’t. I have a home; they have only the wilds.”

When she said that, Bettina was reminded of her first encounter with her cadejos, those rainbow dogs who had been silent for so long, silent because she’d turned away and refused to listen to them after the death dog had stolen her abuela away. They, too, had spoken so longingly of a home, had been so grateful to find it in her. She felt a sudden shame to have denied them for so long, for she knew what Nuala was saying was true. All spirits yearned for a home. To be grounded in one place, to have a safe haven waiting for them no matter how far their wanderings might take them.

She wanted to listen for her cadejos right now, to call to them, but she couldn’t concentrate with the argument going on in front of her.

Musgrave was shaking her head. “You don’t have any power…”

Nuala’s laughter darkened. “Power? Power is for little boys such as those wolves you run with. It’s a hurtful thing—have you not understood that yet?”

“You can say that, being what you are. Death has no hold on you.”

“Oh, no, Sarah,” Nuala said.

Her voice had taken on a sympathetic tone. Bettina and Chantal exchanged glances, the same question rising in both of them. Sarah?

“That’s another Gentry lie,” Nuala went on. “We can die as readily as a human. Perhaps not by illness or age, but by accident and murder, certainly. The difference is, not all of us fear dying.”

“Says the immortal,” Musgrave said, bitter. “Death doesn’t wait for you around every corner. It doesn’t require you to make bargains with the wolves simply to maintain your health.”

Nuala shook her head. “No,” she said. “So says one who lives in harmony with life, who knows that it is defined by its limitations. Who sees death not as the closing of a door, but the opening of one.”

“I can’t believe you,” Musgrave told her.

“I know. That is why I live in your house, why I have the home, while you live in the wilds with the wolves.”

“I have no choice.”

“There is always choice,” Nuala told her. But she seemed to be growing tired of the argument, and her tone grew less sympathetic. “And here is one you will not forget again: in future, choose to keep your games out of the house, or truly, you will understand what suffering can be.”

“You—”

“Listen to me,” Nuala told her, her voice hard now. “I am older than those wolves you run with and I am patient, but my patience has limits. Leave me and the house in peace. Do not involve the residents in your games. Ignore my request again and I will wake the salmon and you will finally understand what change means.”

Musgrave took a quick step back from the other woman.

“What?” Nuala said. “Do you think I haven’t seen you sniffing around his pool, your little mind whirring as you try to see a way to steal his wisdom without risking his waking?”

Musgrave turned abruptly and stalked back to her cabin. Her route took her within a few feet of where Bettina and Chantal were standing in the between, but she took no notice of them.

“They really can’t see us, can they?” Chantal whispered to Bettina.

“Or hear us. Are you feeling better now?”

Chantal nodded. “Do you understand any of what they’re talking about?”

“Not everything,” Bettina told her. “But it has cleared up some things that were puzzling me. Unfortunately, none of it helps in dealing with this creature Donal has pulled into the world.”

She paused suddenly, realizing that while Musgrave had been oblivious to their presence, Nuala had not been so easily fooled. Of course she wouldn’t be, if all she’d told the Recluse was true. Sighing, Bettina took Chantal by the hand again and stepped back into the world, back into the winter with its wet snow underfoot, the chill in the air and the freezing rain.

“I didn’t take you for a spy,” Nuala said.

“I’m not,” Bettina said, dropping her gaze. “I mean, I’m not usually. I’m just pulled by curiosity into places I shouldn’t necessarily be.”

“I know,” Nuala told her.

Bettina looked at her. “You do?”

Nuala’s laugh had all the warmth that her humor with Musgrave had lacked.

“Not the details,” she said. “Only that you have a good heart. And that is often enough—if you are also willing to do more than think kindly of others, but help them as well.”

“You know that I—”

“Whisht,” Nuala said. “I’m not angry. In truth, it’s good to not have to hide who I am from at least a few.”

“You’re like a brownie or a hob,” Chantal said. “Aren’t you? Keeping everything shipshape, but you’d have to leave if people knew who you were and showed their appreciation.”