The Wood Wife

by Terri Windling

  “Girl,” said Tat, reaching for the cup, “do you want my opinion?”

  Maggie looked at her best friend warily. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted it or not; Tat’s perceptions could cut close to the bone. They’d known each other so long now, the other woman could probably read her mind.

  “All right,” she said, “what’s your opinion?”

  “I think you done fell in love on me,” Tat said, mimicking her American drawl. “You’ve got that lovesick look on you. Aren’t you even going to tell me his name?”

  “Johnny Foxxe,” she said, looking down at her knees. “Johnny Foxxe Cooper,” she amended.

  “Cooper as in Davis?”

  Maggie nodded glumly. “Cooper’s son by Anna Naverra.”

  Tat narrowed her eyes, looking thoughtful now. “So they had a child, did they? Back in the forties, it must have been. Hmmm. You’ve fallen for an older man.”

  “Not exactly,” said Maggie vaguely.

  “Then what exactly?” Tat prodded her, nudging Maggie’s foot with the toe of her boot. “And what exactly are you doing here in London, if that’s the case? Not that it’s not fantastic to have you, sweet Magpie. But what are you running from this time?”

  Maggie bit her lip, and did not answer her.

  “You’re always running from something,” Tat persisted with the brutal honesty that only she could get away with. “You’re always up and gone before your heart can engage—with a place, with a man. Even with writing poems again. Girl, if love outran you this time, I’m not sure that’s so bad.”

  Maggie bowed her head and considered Tat’s question. What exactly was she running from? Not Fox. Well, not precisely. And not from the spirits of the mountain. She frowned. “Look, I never imagined ending up in Tuscon, of all places. Loving this man could change my whole life. I’m just not sure I’m ready for that.”

  Tat put down the teacup and flashed her a grin of commiseration. “Girlfriend, no one’s ever ready for that. But life changes on us anyway. And I’m not convinced we get to choose who we love, or when it would be most convenient.”

  “Now that’s a comforting thought,” Maggie muttered.

  “Well, if you’re just going to sit and mope, how about giving me some help here? I have to haul this piece downstairs, and I’m having trouble lifting. Think you can lend me the one good hand you’ve got? Between us we almost make one normal person.”

  “Honey, there’s no way either of us is going to make a normal person. But I’ll help. Is this for the show? I thought it was hung? It opens tonight, for gawd’s sake.”

  “When have you ever known me to do anything before the last possible minute? Yann and Larry are over at the gallery now, making sure it’s all properly hung.”

  “Together?” Maggie asked. Her friend merely shrugged. Only Tat could pull off having two different men in her life, and have both get along.

  “I promised them they’d have the last piece by five, which gives us …” Tat consulted her watch. “Bloody hell, we’d better get a move on it. I hope you don’t mind leaving early? I promised them Indian take-out for dinner.”

  “How are we supposed to get the print over there? It’s not going to fit in your Morris, you know.”

  “I’ve got Yann’s van.”

  “The new one? And you’re doing the driving?” Maggie said skeptically, rising to her feet. Tat’s bad driving was notorious, even before the MS. “He’s going to want it back in one piece.”

  “What do you suggest? That you drive? What are you going to shift with, your feet?” she growled, grinning at her girlfriend. She picked up one end of the frame. “See if you can lift that side.”

  The phone began to ring before they made it out the door. Tat put the print down. “You get it. That’s Nigel,” she predicted. “I’d know that imperious ring anywhere.”

  It was indeed Nigel; his third call that week. She hadn’t even told him she was coming to London, and he’d tracked her down within twenty-four hours. She still couldn’t decide if she thought this was endearing, or just annoying.

  “Hi,” she said now. “Where are you today? Atlanta? D.C.?”

  “Back home in L.A. Atlanta was last week, don’t you remember? The tour is over, thank God. My percussionist’s wife has left him for the soundman, and it’s all a bloody mess.”

  He sighed, and Maggie frowned. He sounded genuinely troubled. She knew him too well not to hear it in his voice. Something was wrong besides a colleague’s marriage, and she wondered what it was. But she resisted her old, habitual reaction: to ask, to jump in, to soothe, to help. Whatever it was, it was Nigel’s problem, not hers, she reminded herself firmly.

  “Well,” she said simply, “get some rest now that you’re home. See a movie. Go hear a new band. Do something fun, Nige—something that hasn’t got anything at all to do with Estampie.”

  He sighed again, waiting for her to pick up the cue and ask him what was wrong. Transatlantic silence stretched between them. Finally Nigel said, “Look, Puck. Well. I’ve got some news.”

  He sounded unusually hesitant, and Maggie was suddenly wary. “It’s not about Harvey, is it? Promise me you didn’t sign anything.”

  “Harvey?” he said as though he couldn’t place the name. “Oh, no. Not that. It’s about Nicole.”

  “What about Nicole?”

  He was silent again. It was very unlike him, and Maggie’s mind was racing. Had Nicole left him? Were all the Estampie wives suddenly defecting at once? Would Nigel be a free man again? And if he was, did that even matter to her?

  “Come on, Nigel, what is it?”

  “Good news, actually. Nicole’s…” He cleared his throat, sounding as if he wasn’t quite certain if it was good news at all. “It seems we’re going to have a baby. It’s due in the middle of June.”

  “Oh. Good heavens. That’s great news,” she said. And found, to her relief, that she meant it.

  “Yes, great,” he repeated tentatively.

  “Nigel, are you happy about this?” she asked her ex-husband with concern. “You always expected to have kids some day, and you’re not getting any younger, dear.” She smiled drily as she said it. It was only his lovers that were getting younger.

  “Of course I’m happy. Certainly. Well. It’s just… I hadn’t planned on a baby. It’s totally fantastic, of course. But. Well. It’s going to change things here.”

  “Life changes anyway,” she told him. Tat was smirking at her in the doorway. Maggie picked up a book and threw it at her.

  “Nicole is thrilled. She’ll have to stop modeling for a while. I don’t think she cares. I think she’d rather be home; the traditional wife. She’s not much like you are, Maggie.”

  “No, she’s not. And that’s why you married her, remember?”

  “Damn straight,” he shot back, teasing her, but his voice still sounded distracted.

  Silence stretched again. Tat was looking at her watch, a worried expression on her face. “Nige, I’ve got to go. But I’m really glad that you called to tell me the news.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll ring you tomorrow. How long are you going to be in London?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

  “Well, just make sure you’re back in L.A. by June,” Nigel commanded.

  Why? she thought, as she hung up the phone. This was their baby, not Maggie’s. It was Nicole who mattered now, not her. The Nigel part of her life was finally ending—and something new could begin. She was startled, and a little abashed, by the feeling of liberation that washed over her.

  She turned to Tat. “It looks like our Nigel’s going to be a daddy.”

  Tat’s eyes grew bright. Her grin was wicked. “Now won’t that be a sight. Nigel changing nappies. Babies drooling on his posh designer suits.”

  “No way,” wagered Maggie as she lifted the end of Tat’s big print with her one good arm. “He’ll have Nicole and nannies to do the work.”

  “Until it’s old enough to boss around; then the kid
will be working for Nigel,” Tat agreed. She picked up the other end of the frame, and they hauled it to the freight elevator. Tat lowered them down to a loading dock, and they packed the piece up in Yann’s big van.

  “Brilliant,” said Tat, with satisfaction. “Now come upstairs and tell me what to wear.”

  “That’s easy,” said Maggie, following her. “Wear that black dress that barely covers your bum.”

  “The one that gives Larry apoplexy?”

  “The very one,” said Maggie.

  Tat disappeared into the bathroom, and reappeared in a skintight dress that exposed a lot of long white leg, spotted with streaks of paint. She glared at Maggie. “Do I look like an artist or a prostitute?” she demanded.

  Maggie laughed. “Honey, in those army boots, nobody’s going to mistake you for a hooker, don’t you worry.”

  Tat continued to frown. “Do my eyes deceive me, or have you let a bit of c-o-lo-r actually come in contact with your virgin flesh?”

  Maggie flushed. She wore Fox’s shirt under her black Armani jacket. “Big deal,” she mumbled. “Life changes, right?”

  “Will wonders never cease?” said Tat, putting her arm through Maggie’s as they headed for the elevator.

  The traffic was heavy as Tat drove from her loft in the industrial streets of Spittalfields to the gallery in the West End where her show would open that evening. Tat’s sweet French lover, Yann Kerjean, looked relieved when the two women finally arrived, glad to get the last of the prints and to see that his van was still intact. Maggie left Tat in Yann’s capable hands, and went off in search of dinner.

  She eyed the sky suspiciously as she stepped back out onto the street. The rain was holding off, but it wouldn’t hold off for very much longer. Tat had said a good Indian place was up the street and to the left. Maggie passed trendy dress shops, other galleries, a noisy pub … no Indian food. She felt a drop of rain on her face, and then another. She walked another block. She passed a Greek restaurant, a leather shop, then a gallery window that stopped her in her tracks. She looked at the exhibition sign again. The show was of work by Brian Froud, Cooper’s friend, and Dora’s favorite painter. She looked at her watch. There wasn’t much time, but she went inside anyway.

  The gallery was long, narrow and well lit. Maggie barely noticed any of these things. Her eyes were caught and held by the paintings themselves, glowing on the gallery walls as though all the color that was missing from the grey London sky was captured here. The paintings were of fairy creatures drawn from shapes of brown oak leaves, of moss on stone, of water and wood, of light and wind and stars. She knew these creatures. Or if not precisely these, then their kin, born from the dry desert soil. Looking at those haunted faces made something ache deep down inside her.

  It was a low, dull pain, both bitter and sweet. It was homesickness, she realized; a feeling she’d never once felt before. She missed the desert. She missed its colors, its spirits, its scent after the rain. She missed Johnny Foxxe. Maggie closed her eyes, and took a steadying breath.

  She stayed in that gallery for a long time. When she finally left, it was raining in earnest. She fumbled left-handed with her small and useless umbrella, hurried up the darkened street, and found Tat’s take-out place up the block on the right, not the left. Good old Tat.

  There was a phone booth just beyond the restaurant. Maggie stopped and looked at it. The wind snapped her umbrella inside out, breaking its brittle, cheaply made spines. The rain drenched her as she stood, indecisive. She ran to the booth, closed the door. Water pounded overhead as she slid her credit card into the machine with cold, numb fingers. She punched in the long transatlantic number and waited, wet and shivering.

  The connection was made, but just as the phone began to ring, she slammed the receiver down. What on earth was she doing? It was still early on the mountain—half a day and half a world away. And what would she have said to Fox? She was just as confused as when she left. She stepped outside, her heart heavy, her fleeting connection to the desert soon washed away by the cold London rain.

  She purchased curries, rice and naan and hurried back through the flooded streets. By the time she reached the door that led to the gallery on the floor above, she was thoroughly drenched. There was water in her boots. Her hair dripped rainwater down her neck. She had spent so much time in the other gallery that Tat’s Private View had already begun. Maggie sidled into the artsy crowd, embarrassed, feeling like a drowned rat.

  She handed the sodden bag to Tat. “Dinner,” she said with an apologetic smile.

  “Put it in back. We’ll eat it later. Go towel off in the loo or something.”

  Maggie did as she was told, grimacing at her bedraggled reflection in the bathroom mirror. She dried her face and slicked back her wet hair before returning to the crowd.

  A blues trio played in one corner: a tiny, wrinkled black man on guitar, an Irish woman she knew on bass, and long, lean Larry Bone, Tat’s other lover, on harmonica. Tat was on the other side of the room, talking with a man Maggie recognized as a journalist who worked for Time Out. Yann was cornered by a woman in spandex and spike heels, looking rather alarmed.

  The gallery owner was fluttering around the room. He’d make few sales tonight. There were too many other artists here, with barely a quid between them. They’d come for Tat, and the free champagne; the art itself was mostly ignored. Maggie gazed around the room, nodding at old friends and pleased by the good turn-out. Then she saw another face she recognized. Standing over by the windows.

  She stared at him. Then she crossed the room, oblivious to the greetings that followed her. When she stood before Fox, she just looked at him. She was silent. She had no words at all. She wondered how he had found her.

  He held up the invitation to Tat’s show. “This was on your refrigerator,” he said to her with a sheepish grin. Then he looked at her warily. “I’m not like Nigel. If you don’t want me here, I won’t bother you again. It’s just …”

  His voice trailed off, and she continued to look at him silently.

  “It’s just,” he said, “that you once told me that if I wanted something, I should go after it. And you were right. That’s why I’m here.”

  He watched her with that wary expression.

  “Say something. What do you reckon, Maggie? Do you want me to go away again?”

  Maggie swallowed. She took hold of Fox’s hand, feeling the warmth and strength of it. He carried the scent of the desert with him, in his clothes, in his hair, in the wind of his breath. But words had utterly deserted her. His question had too many others crowded beneath. One thing at a time, she told herself. She swallowed again, raised her eyes to his. One thing at a time, one step at a time; everything changed, it was all dammas.

  “What I reckon,” she said, reaching for the only words she could seem to find right now, “is that when I go home to the mountain, I’m going to have to get me a truck.”

  “Home?” Fox smiled, relief in his eyes. “You know, I think that’s the word I came across an entire ocean to hear.”

  She gripped his hand, feeling confusion and indecision draining away. Drying up like water in the hot desert sun that he carried. Language was slowly returning to her, a foreign tongue that she remembered after all.

  She said, “There’s something I’d like to do here. Before heading back to Tucson again.” She looked up at him, at the question in his eyes. “I’d like to take you out to Dartmoor. Where Cooper was born. Where I went to school. I’d like to show you my Wood Wife. The English one. Will you go with me?”

  “You bet. It’s a deal.”

  She smiled at Fox, reminded of Crow and his bargains. “And what do you want in return?”

  He considered the bargain carefully. “I want to meet Tat, your mysterious best friend.”

  “My other best friend,” she corrected him. She tugged at his hand. “Come with me,” she said. And then the bargain was sealed.

  Epilogue ❋

  On the night that the Trickste
r returned to the Rincon Mountains, the coyotes began to sing. Not as they sang most other nights: to hunt, to make love, to cherish the moon; on that night they sang as the angels sing, filling the valley with one great song that rang from the mountains east, west, north and south, to the city below.

  He had wandered far in the form of a wolf, a coyote, a fox, a crow, and a man. The Sonoran land that formed Crow’s bones stretched from Arizona into Mexico, but his heart was baked from the Rincon clay and it was there that he always returned.

  Now he sat on Rincon Peak, the stars around him like a cloak. He listened to the song of his four-legged kin; then he threw back his head and he answered them. He laughed, the wind whipping back his black hair, delighted with the night, and with himself.

  In Red Springs Canyon, the Alders watched as a lame mule deer gave birth to a fawn. The little one stepped into the dark world on wobbley legs, its black eyes wide, trusting the hands that held him, trusting that the night meant him no harm.

  In the old ranch stable, Dora del Río did not wake, but Juan listened to the nightsong from his lonely bed on the living-room couch. The coyotes sang, and Bandido howled. Something frozen inside Juan seemed to melt. He missed his wife. He had her love, but he needed more, to earn back her trust. He lay there and prayed that the wounds would heal from a night he still couldn’t remember.

  Up the hill, Tomás heard the nightsong. He stood in his garden for a long while, listening to those voices and the others that came on the wind. Then he smiled and closed the cabin door. Spencer Tracy was on the movie that night. He was a man like any other, and he turned on the television.

  The old Foxxe house was empty now. Dust lay on the pots and pans, on the table Johnny Foxxe had built. Pepe ran the hills with his kind, adding his voice to the midnight song, but Angela and Isabella were clothed in their slender human forms. In the circle of stones surrounding Red Springs, the Foxxe sisters were dancing.

  Far to the west, the wood wife sat by her trailer and smoked another cigarette. When it was done, she shook off the shapeless dress, the folds of woman-flesh; she put on her cloak of leaves and slowly walked through that land, humming as she went. Where she passed, saplings of ironwood and mesquite rooted in the dry soil.