Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

Nuala nodded. “Go. But only mark where the Glasduine bides for now, what it appears the creature means to do. I will consider other strategies until your return. Between the three of us, we will find a solution to this.”

El lobo grinned. “You have to love a woman so sure of herself.”

Nuala stiffened.

Dios dame fuerza, Bettina thought. Her wolf seemed to thrive on rubbing everyone the wrong way.

“That’s not helping,” she told him.

“Perhaps not. But it’s in my nature.”

“Then you should consider changing that part of it,” she said.

Before he could reply, she crossed the kitchen and took down her coat from the pegs by the door. She put on a pair of boots, nodded to Nuala, then stepped out into the rain, quickly moving into the between so that she wouldn’t get wet again. Her hair had only just dried from her last outing. El lobo joined her before she was on the lawn, that infuriating smile still flirting in his eyes.

“I don’t know why I trust you,” she said as they walked toward the woods.

“Your heart knows I mean you no harm.”

“Perhaps. And yet…”

El lobo smiled. “Your heart has played you false before.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” she asked.

“Never. But I rarely have the opportunity for conversation. Perhaps I overcompensate when the opportunity does arise.”

“And is that almost an apology from you?” she asked.

“Almost.”

He moved ahead to where the creature had broken a trail through the undergrowth, pausing when the spoor disappeared. Where at first the creature had simply forced its way through the trees and brush, at this point it seemed to have suddenly acquired the ability to move across the terrain without disturbing even a twig.

“We watched it go,” Bettina said. “When it first came out of the house, it was ungainly, as though unused to its body.”

“I remember that feeling.”

Bettina glanced at him. She couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like.

“But step by step,” she added, “it gained confidence until, by the time it was out of our sight, its passage was silent.”

“Or it walked elsewhere,” el lobo said.

“You think it crossed over?”

His nostrils flared. “I can’t catch his scent, not here, nor in the world we’ve just quit.”

While he considered the direction the Glasduine would have taken, Bettina studied him.

“You don’t have a plan at all, do you?” she said finally.

He shook his head. “But I know we must do something.”

“What made you change your mind about helping with the creature?” she asked.

“I never said I wouldn’t help. Only that I’d enjoy seeing it deal with the Gentry. I have as much unfinished business.with them as either Nuala or your friend Donal.”

“He’s not my friend.”

El lobo shrugged. “The pup, then.”

They stood silent for a long moment, listening to the sound of dripping that came from all around them.

“If the Glasduine’s gone into the otherworld,” Bettina finally said, “we might never find it. Unless your nose is as sharp as your tongue.”

He smiled. “Alas, I can’t make that claim. But you have the means to find him.”

“I?”

“Not you, precisely, but the dogs I can hear singing in you.”

Bettina regarded him steadily. “I hear nothing. Los cadejos are long gone.”

“Or you have simply turned your back on them.”

That cut too close to home, for she’d done exactly that. When la Maravilla led her abuela away into the desert, when no one and nothing could help her find Abuela again, she had turned her back on the whole of the canine clan as it related to la epoca del mito, utterly and completely until this wolf had pushed himself into her life.

“They would be of great help to us at the moment,” he said.

Bettina shook her head. “I don’t trust them.”

“You don’t trust me either.”

“That’s different. You…”

“I, what?” he asked when her voice trailed off.

You are too handsome to ignore, she’d wanted to say. Too charming not to want to trust.

“How can I hear them again?” she asked instead. “How can I call them up?”

El lobo shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“But you hear them.”

“I do, only—”

“So you must call them up for me. You will, won’t you?”

She couldn’t understand his reluctance until he explained, “If they do prove untrustworthy, you will blame it on me.”

“Perhaps. But I will try not to.”

He smiled. “What if I told you it requires a kiss?”

“Does it?”

He shook his head. “No. But I’ve wanted to find an excuse to kiss you since the first time I saw you.”

A flush rose up Bettina’s neck and spread to her cheeks.

“We… the Glasduine,” she said, stumbling over her words. “We are upon a serious undertaking.”

“I am serious, too. Perhaps if we kissed once, I wouldn’t be so distracted from the task at hand.”

Bettina remembered all the warnings Nuala had given her. A kiss now, then it was off into the woods with her jeans pulled down about her ankles. Her abuela had been full of warnings, too, of getting too close to beings who had originated in la epoca del mito. Relationships with the spirits were always doomed to failure, Abuela would say—speaking from the voice of experience, Bettina assumed, since she knew that her grandmother had dallied more than once with such beings.

She didn’t doubt the danger, of either being pulled off into the woods or having her heart broken, but somehow it didn’t matter. Not with el lobo’s handsome features so close to her own, his breath on her face, sweet as a summer garden. Not with the loneliness that rose in her, so many months away from home, so many longer with no close confidant. No lover.

So she lifted her face to his and their lips met. His arms went around her, drawing her close, enfolding her with warmth and a gentle strength, and time stopped. When they finally drew apart, she was breathless. But so was he.

“Ah,” he said, adding after a moment, “Now I have no choice but to prove myself worthy so that you will trust me.”

“I—”

He laid a finger across her lips. “Not yet. Say nothing. Let there only be hope between us until the task is done.”

He took her hand then and led her deeper into la epoca del mito.

“For the moment,” he added with a grin, “we have singing dogs to find.”

This time Bettina thought she could actually hear them. Distant, but for the first time in years, clearly audible. Their voices were no longer simply a memory.

After her argument with Nuala, Musgrave returned to her cottage in a foul mood. She slammed the door and stood staring about herself. The place was as much a prison as a haven. She could never be away from it for too long because it was only on this estate that she had access to the otherworld. She wasn’t like the Gentry, or as Ellie could be, able to cross over wherever and whenever she so desired. Because of her weak geasan, she had only the access gate here that the Gentry had provided for her, a space between two trees that, when she spoke a certain charmed word, allowed her to cross over. And she needed to cross over, for it was only by spending the better part of the year in the otherworld that she was able to prolong her life as she had.

All that had been supposed to change with the mask. The Glasduine they planned to call up with it would have given the Gentry power over the local manitou, but it would also have given her immortality and enough geasan to be a player rather than a pawn in the world of spirits and magic.