Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  Finally there was a use for the buggers, he thought as the Gentry fled.

  He just hoped they’d lead the Glasduine long and deep into the other-world, so far that it might never find a way back to this world where he’d so stupidly called it up.

  13

  They returned to the city in only a fraction of the time it had taken Tommy to drive them up to the rez the night before. Driving smoothly through the between, unencumbered by either the weather or poor driving conditions, they were soon coming down from the mountains and approaching the outskirts proper.

  “Look,” Hunter said, his voice reflecting the awe he was obviously feeling. “There they go.”

  Ellie leaned on the side of the truck bed and watched the manitou step away, moving deeper in amongst the ice-covered trees. They faded like deer or wolves, seen for a moment along the highway, then gone, but she knew they were so much more. An ache woke in her heart when they were gone.

  What if I never see them again? she wondered.

  Sunday touched her arm.

  “You will,” she said, as though Ellie had spoken the words aloud. At Ellie’s surprised look, the older woman added with a smile, “You look just the way I felt the first time I saw them—like your best friend had disappeared. But don’t worry. Part of their mystery is that once you become aware of them, you will always be able to see them again.”

  “I like the way you put that,” Hunter said. “They did feel like friends. A little scarier than the people I normally hang out with, mind you, but there was definitely some deep connection thing happening here.”

  Ellie nodded, wondering if she’d be able to hold enough of them in her mind to sculpt them, though she had no idea how she would even begin to bring them to life. So much of them lay between the lines of what one saw. But if she could capture even a fraction of the feelings they’d woken in her, she’d have accomplished some remarkable work indeed.

  Tommy pulled over to the side of the road then and she had to hold onto the side of the truck bed for balance. Looking in through the back window of the cab, she could see him arguing with Aunt Nancy. She rapped on the window and Tommy slid it open.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked.

  “Aunt Nancy wants us to drive straight up to Kellygnow.”

  “But wasn’t that the plan?”

  Tommy nodded. “Except we’re in the big wide world now. What’s going to happen when people see us cruising by, easy as you please, making time the way we are on roads that nobody else can use?”

  “I don’t really see the problem.”

  “Maybe not now. But some cop sees us, he’s going to wonder, take down my plate number, and then, when this is all over, I’m going to have to answer questions I don’t have answers for. I’m supposed to tell them about the between?”

  “Why don’t we go by the manidó-akí?” Sunday said.

  “If you can find me a road in the otherworld, I’m game,” Tommy told her. “But this is no all-terrain vehicle. I’m guessing we’ll get about the length of a meadow.”

  “What we need,” Zulema said from where she sat between Aunt Nancy and Tommy, “is for Nancy to put a charm on the truck, but—” She glanced to her right. “Someone considers that a waste of her juju.”

  “Who cares what white people think?” Aunt Nancy asked. She glanced back at Ellie and Hunter and added, “No offense.”

  “Tommy has to live here,” Sunday said. “I think we should respect his wishes.”

  “No, Tommy chose to live here.”

  “Hey, Tommy’s sitting in the cab with you,” Tommy said, “and he’s getting real tired of being referred to in the third person.”

  “That’s the problem with these Raven boys,” Aunt Nancy said. “Can’t seem to get them into mischief when you want to; can’t get them out when you don’t.”

  “Please?” Zulema asked.

  Aunt Nancy gave a heavy sigh. “Oh, fine. Put an old woman out.”

  She opened the passenger door and stepped onto the side of the road, moving with exaggerated stiffness. Once she was outside, she gave a theatrical stretch, then went around to the four corners of the pickup. Muttering to herself, she took pinches of some powder out of a small buckskin bag and sprinkled it on the end of each bumper.

  “Is she always like that?” Ellie whispered once Aunt Nancy was back in the cab.

  “Only when she doesn’t get her own way,” Sunday replied, also in a whisper.

  “I heard that,” Aunt Nancy said through the window. Then she turned to Tommy. “Well? What are you waiting for, Raven boy? Drive.”

  “Um…”

  “Don’t worry. No one will see us. Or they will, but they’ll see something they’re expecting to see, not precisely us.”

  “It’s okay,” Zulema said.

  So Tommy started up the truck and on they went again.

  The city, once they were driving through it, was a disaster zone. Ellie felt as though they were in some end-of-the-world movie. The ice was a slick carpet covering everything. Trees and telephone poles littered the sides of the road; buildings were all dark. There were next to no people. There were no other vehicles, except for those that had been abandoned at curbs and medians, though once they got closer to the city core they saw hydro trucks and various army vehicles.

  No one gave them a second glance, but Tommy got off Williamson as soon as he could anyway. He drove toward the Beaches by back streets, crossing the river at the Kelly Street Bridge, then taking River Road through the Butler University campus to where it met up with Lakeside Drive. If anything, the storm damage was worse once they got to the Beaches. Or perhaps it only seemed worse, since no one had been working on clearing the streets of fallen trees and utility poles so they were strewn where they’d fallen—across porches and houses, crushing vehicles, blocking parts of the street. Twice they had to turn around and find an alternate route, but eventually they reached Handfast Road and began the long climb up to Kellygnow.

  Ellie stared around herself in shock. There was so much damage from the ice storm. She glanced at Hunter.

  “You wouldn’t think that something as simple as freezing rain could create such a disaster zone, would you?”

  “Depends on how much of the stuff you get,” Hunter replied.

  Ellie nodded, still stunned at the chaos that surrounded them.

  When they finally reached Kellygnow, Aunt Nancy directed Tommy to drive by the house, crossing the lawn and then in between the trees. She had him park by the Recluse’s cabin and everybody scrambled out. Aunt Nancy turned to Zulema.

  “Ellie and I will go on alone from here,” she said. “See if you can find where the creature crossed over, then use its spoor to lay a doubling-back charm that will return it to the spiritworld whenever it tries to cross over here. You remember how to do that?”

  Both Zulema and Sunday nodded, but Ellie was sure she hadn’t heard right.

  “You want me to go with you?” she said.

  “Of course. Who else? You wanted to help, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes. But why me? I don’t know anything.”

  Aunt Nancy’s dark gaze settled on her.

  “I need you,” she said, “because your medicine is stronger than any I have seen outside of the spiritworld. Between the two of us … you have the medicine and I know how to use it. If we’re lucky, that will be enough. And no,” she added, turning to Tommy. “You’re not coming. Remember what White-duck said.”

  “He didn’t say I was in any real danger,” Tommy said. “Only that I would be involved.”

  “He didn’t need to say you were in danger. Just telling us you were involved was specific enough. Why else would he have bothered?”

  “Since when do you listen to him?” Tommy asked.

  “I have the utmost respect for Jack Whiteduck,” Aunt Nancy said in a deferential tone of voice that even Ellie could tell was insincere. “Especially when he’s right.”

  “They don’t usually get along?” E
llie asked Sunday.

  The other woman shrugged. “He doesn’t much care for the Creeks.”

  “Why not?”

  “Women’s magic versus men’s. He has a problem with it. We don’t.”

  “And,” Aunt Nancy put in, showing that she was listening to their conversation as well, “we aren’t so foolish as to ignore his wisdom when it’s sound. Are we, nephew?”

  “Okay,” Tommy said. “I’ll stay already. But I don’t like it.”

  Hunter cleared his throat. “But I’m coming,” he said.

  “You?” Aunt Nancy turned her gaze on him, but Hunter didn’t flinch. “What do you have to offer?”

  “Don’t forget, he killed one of the wolves,” Tommy put in,

  “Urn, that’s right,” Hunter said. “And … well, Mr. Whiteduck …”

  Aunt Nancy smiled. “Mr. Whiteduck. Oh, he’d like that.”

  “He didn’t have any warnings about me, did he?”

  “He doesn’t even know you,” Ellie said, but Aunt Nancy was already nodding.

  “True enough,” she said. “We could use a warrior to watch our backs.” When she turned back to the truck to get a small backpack she’d left there, Ellie touched Hunter’s arm.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said.

  “And you do?”

  “That’s different. Somehow I managed to get involved and I can’t back out now.”“Me, too,” Hunter told her.

  “Remember what I said about seeing this through,” Tommy said.

  “I won’t let anybody down,” Hunter said.

  Tommy regarded him for a long moment, then nodded.

  “I’m glad you’re going,” he said. “Aunt Nancy doesn’t always remember the frailties of human flesh. With two of you going, you’ll keep her honest. Pace yourself, no matter how she tries to shame you otherwise. Don’t forget, she’s lived her whole life in the bush. She can wear out half the Warrior’s society lodge when she gets going.”

  He broke off when he saw Aunt Nancy looking at him.

  “You Raven boys,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know where you get your sass.”

  “Probably from our side of the family,” Sunday said.

  Aunt Nancy shook her head, but she was smiling. “Come on, then,” she told Hunter and Ellie.

  Hunter fell in step with her, but Ellie paused beside Tommy for a moment.

  “Look,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while. I don’t know why it’s important, but it just is. I guess it’s because I’m always feeling guilty about it.”

  “Oh-oh. You’re not going to tell me you’ve been badmouthing me to my supermodel girlfriends, are you?”

  She punched his arm. “No. It’s just… I want you to know that I don’t have the same background as you or anybody else that works with Angel. I don’t come from a broken home or any kind of a tragedy.”

  “I already knew that,” Tommy said.

  “You did? How?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just something you know as a survivor.”

  “It made me feel like such a phony. But I just wanted to help.”

  “Ellie,” he said. “Don’t you see? That only makes the time you put in that more precious. I mean for the rest of us, it’s payback. A way for us to say thanks to Angel for how she helped us by helping others.” He grinned. “But you. Not only are you a superhero, but you’re a saint as well.”

  “Great. Now I’m a saint.”

  “Seriously,” Tommy said. “You’ve nothing to feel guilty about. Go and fight the forest monsters with a clear conscience.”

  “Right.”

  “And, Ellie?”

  She turned back to look at him.

  “Be careful, okay?”

  “I will,” she said.

  Then Aunt Nancy took her and Hunter by the hand. With her leading the way, they passed through the far border of the between and stepped into another world entirely.

  14

  Tommy hated feeling so useless. Once Aunt Nancy took Ellie and Hunter away into the spiritworld there was nothing for him to do but sit on the front bumper of the pickup and watch his other two aunts wandering about between the ice-covered trees, casting for spoor like a pair of blue tick hounds.

  Funny how your world changes, he thought.

  A day ago, the most he had to worry about was whether or not he was doing as much as he could to help Angel’s clients. Were they reaching everyone? How could they raise more money? What other sources could they hit for food and coffee, clothing and blankets? Could he convince the garage on Perry Street to give the van yet one more free tune-up?

  Now he was sitting—literally—on the edge of the manidò-akì, the spirit-world, hidden in some between place that separated the world of the manitou from the one he knew. He was untouched by the freezing rain that continued to drizzle onto the trees all around them, and everything was different. Manitou had stepped out of campfire stories into the real world. Some magical forest monster was running amok. Nice, normal Ellie turned out to be carrying some sort of deep well of medicine. And his aunts really did have the spooky powers everybody on the rez had always attributed to them.

  That was the real kicker. Maybe if he hadn’t come to the city, looking to count coup in a whiskey bottle, he could have been learning some of this stuff from them. He could be out there with Ellie and Aunt Nancy right now, hunting down this spirit monster, doing something, instead of sitting here twiddling his thumbs. The stoic Indian bit had never been something he could pull off; he just didn’t have the patience. Not like his aunts, who could sit there for hours waiting for whomever had come to them to explain what it was they wanted.

  But back then he’d been as interested in shamanism as he’d been in the traditionalism of the Warrior Society, which was not at all. He’d been, and still was, all for Indian rights, but he saw them as something one had to look for in the future, not in the past. In the end, he’d gone looking for them in a bottle. By the time he finally surfaced to some level of rationality once more, he didn’t see himself as an Indian so much as a survivor. Which was why he was sitting here, on the sidelines. If he’d had some knowledge, some experience with all this weird stuff, then Whiteduck probably wouldn’t have given his aunts the warning he had, or if Whiteduck still had, Tommy’s aunts would have ignored it because they’d have known that he could handle himself.

  At least Hunter had gone with them. Tommy loved Nancy as much as he did any of his other aunts, but he didn’t entirely trust her. It wasn’t that she was prone to meanness, so much as that she used whatever was at hand to deal with a problem. If she happened to need Ellie’s medicine, she was as likely to take it all. Though what Hunter would actually do if that situation arose …

  Hell, Tommy thought. Hunter had killed one of the Gentry, hadn’t he? So he just had to trust that, if Hunter had to, he would find a way to deal with Aunt Nancy as well.

  Tommy looked up when he heard his aunts returning to the pickup where he was waiting for them.

  “Any luck?” he asked.

  They shook their heads.

  “The spoor is everywhere,” Zulema said. “It’s like a berry dye dissolving in water. It starts out distinctly enough, but give it enough time and your whole bucket takes on the color.”

  Sunday nodded.

  “Which means?” Tommy asked.

  “That we can’t contain the creature in the spiritworld,” Zulema said. “Anytime it wants to come back here, all it has to do is step across.”

  “And it will come back,” Sunday said.

  “Oh, yes,” Zulema agreed. “Out there it’s a little fish in a big pond. But here … here it can have anything it wants.”

  “But if it’s taken on physical form, it can be hurt,” Tommy said. “Right? Like the Gentry.”

  His aunts exchanged a glance.

  “This is something older and far more dangerous than the simple spirits of a place,” Sunday said.

  “Then what’s Nancy g
oing to do with it?” Tommy asked.

  “I’m guessing she’ll try to use its own strength against it,” Zulema said.

  “Which is easier to do in the spiritworld,” Sunday added.

  Zulema nodded. “And if its path back here is cut off.”

  “But you can’t get a fix on where it went through?” Tommy asked.

  “It’s too powerful,” Sunday explained. “Everything reverberates with its presence.”

  Tommy looked from one to the other. “So Ellie and the others … they’re on their own? Without any backup?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Zulema said.

  “Great.”

  “We’re not giving up,” Sunday told him. She looked to her sister. “Maybe we can go back to where the creature was first called into the world and work our way out from that point.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Zulema said. When Tommy got up, she added, “You might as well stay here—you know, in case the others come back and need something.”

  “Sure,” Tommy said.

  Right, he thought as he watched them go back towards Kellygnow. Stay here in case the others needed something, translated into keeping out of the way.

  Sighing, he opened the door of the cab. He paused as he started to get in, gaze alighting on a crushed cigarette butt that somebody had left on the floor. Picking it up, he looked out toward the trees where his aunts had been searching earlier. After a moment, he leaned into the cab and opened the glove compartment. He took out the matches that he kept there with a couple of candles—emergency heating in case he ever broke down on some back road— and walked around the front of the pickup to where a piece of granite pushed up by the roots of one of the big oaks, protected from most of the freezing rain by the trees’ drooping boughs.

  He split open the cigarette butt and made a little pile of the leftover tobacco on the rock, then lit it with a match. Sitting on his heels, he watched the tendril of smoke rise and returned his gaze to the trees.

  “Grandfather Thunders,” he said. He had to stop, clear his throat. “Look, I’m not exactly the best example of my people, but I never meant any disrespect, you know. And I’m not asking anything for myself, here, just so’s we understand. But if you could see your way clear to making sure Ellie makes it through this in one piece, I’d be really grateful.”