Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

Sunday smiled. “Hardly. Mostly oatmeal, sugar, and flour, with some herbs to help the nausea. Anise, cinnamon. Peppermint.”

Tommy started the engine. Putting the pickup into gear, he started cautiously up the incline, but he needn’t have bothered. The tires had no trouble finding traction. The vehicle’s motion quickened the nausea Hunter and Ellie were feeling.

“I’ll have one,” Ellie said, taking the cookie from Sunday.

“Me, too,” Hunter said.

The mix of licorice with cinnamon and peppermint made for an odd flavor, but it left an oddly refreshing taste in his mouth. And better yet, worked almost immediately on his queasiness. By the time they were a mile or so down the road, the nausea had completely fled and he found himself actually enjoying this odd drive. He could see the rain, but it didn’t touch them. He could see the ice, but the pickup stayed on the road as though the tires were rolling across dry asphalt.

“This is really weird,” he said.

Sunday nodded. “It’s not how we normally use the between, but it is proving helpful today.”

“Now all we have to do is figure out how to deal with this thing Donal called up,” Ellie said. “The Glasduine.”

“What are we going to do with it?” Hunter asked.

Whatever it was. He wasn’t that worried himself about some forest spirit Donal might have called up with an old mask—not when there were the hard men still to deal with. The last time they’d been protected because they wanted some service from Ellie. Now all bets were off, which made the Gentry seem to be a much more immediate concern.

“We’ll have to see when we get there,” Sunday said. “Hopefully we can banish it deeper into manidò-aki where it won’t be able to hurt anyone, though how we’ll manage that with a creature as strong as this, I have no idea.”

“But Aunt Nancy knows what to do,” Ellie said. “Right?”

Sunday shrugged. “Nancy tends to play everything by ear.”

“Great.”

Ellie settled back on her share of the blankets and leaned against Hunter. He hesitated a moment, then put his arm around her shoulders again.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

“Circumstances notwithstanding,” Hunter told her, “I’m glad to be here.”

They rode for a while in silence, listening to the hum of the engine. The freezing rain continued to fall everywhere except on them. Hunter let his gaze travel to the side of the road. The roadside vegetation was decimated by its burden of ice, weeds all flattened, trees bent over at alarming angles where the branches hadn’t simply snapped off.

He was about to turn away when he caught movement in between the decimated trees. His breath went still and he stiffened when he recognized the shapes for what they were

“Manitou,” Sunday said, turning to see what had captured his attention. “Don’t worry. They won’t harm us.”

Ellie pressed closer to him. Hunter knew just what she was feeling. Until he’d experienced the presence of the Gentry, and later the native manitou, he hadn’t really known the meaning of awe. But then that begged the question…

“I don’t understand,” he said. “They look so powerful—they are powerful,” he corrected himself, remembering how the leader of the Gentry had so effortlessly turned a car over onto its side back in the city. “How could I possibly have killed one just by banging him on the side of the head with a pail of water?”

“Spirits become susceptible when they take physical form,” Sunday explained. “They retain a supernatural strength, but are no longer impervious to pain or death.”

“But why would they do it?”

She gave another one of her easy shrugs. “To fully experience life, I suppose. Without a physical form, they can’t experience the tactile. I have traveled in spirit form and can tell you that even your sight and hearing have more presence in a physical body. Everything is more fully rounded, more rooted in this world where our physical senses rule. Think of how you feel a bass drum resonating in your chest at the same time as you hear it.”

Hunter nodded slowly. It was like the difference between a recording and a live concert, he decided. We made do with recordings, but nothing could take the place of actually being there at the performance. Seen like that, he could easily understand what would make spirits take on physical form. Especially the Gentry, considering their love of music and Guinness.

But then the memory of what he’d done to the hard man in Miki’s apartment came crushing down on him again. The life taken.

He could feel the tightness swell up in his chest once more and forced himself to breathe normally.

“Are you okay?” Ellie asked, giving him a worried look.

Hunter shook his head. “Not really. But I’m working on it.”

Under Nuala’s direction, the current residents of Kellygnow had gathered up boards and other scrap wood from the basement and outbuildings, using it to erect a makeshift wall in the sculpting studio where the creature had broken through the side of the house. They could have easily closed off the door to the studio—which they did anyway once they were done with the wall—but Bettina understood Nuala’s rationale behind the manual task. It was a way to get the residents’ minds off the impossibility of what had occurred. Only a few of them had actually caught a glimpse of what Donal had become, but their descriptions of it, along with the wreckage the Glasduine had left behind, was enough to put everyone in a high state of agitation.

It didn’t help that their power and phone lines were down. The only news available from the outside world was what they could get from Penny’s battery-operated radio. According to the most recent reports, the city was on the verge of being declared a disaster zone with the mayor having already called in the army to help with evacuating seniors and the disabled from their homes, removing dangerous power lines, and guarding against looters.

“Looters?” Bettina had repeated, incredulously, when Penny passed along that last piece of information.

“Hey, the city’s shut down,” one of the other residents replied. “For some people that’s an open invitation to help themselves.”

“Isn’t that the sorry truth,” Chantai said.

None of the residents had to stay in Kellygnow. While its steep driveway and the streets beyond were too treacherous to chance, they could still leave the way Donal had claimed he’d come, down through the backyards where they could break a trail through the ice-covered snow to gain firmer footing. But where would they go? They were better off than most. Here at least they had the woodstove for heat, food, and water, and each other’s company.

When someone suggested they see if any of their neighbors needed help, Nuala nodded in agreement.

“I’ll go,” Chantai said. “I really need to be doing something…”

Her voice trailed off and she looked at Bettina, who understood all too well what her friend was going through. The storm on its own was stressful enough; everything else Chantai had experienced today would only have added to her need to immerse herself in some mundane, useful task. Something that would allow her to understand that while there was more to the world than she’d ever realized, the world she did know was still carrying on with the business of living.

“I’ll come with you,” Bettina said.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Nuala told her.

“Pero—”

“We have things to discuss, you and I,” Nuala said, pitching her voice low so as not to carry beyond where the three of them were standing.

She needn’t have worried about being overheard. The other residents were already too busy making their own plans to pay any attention. Now that the house had been secured against the elements, their charitable impulses had risen to the fore. They were all eager to get outside and assay the damage to the area, lending a hand where it might be needed.