Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  The tobacco was mostly ash now, smoldering on the rock.

  “I know this offering’s pretty puny,” he went on, “but as soon as I can get to a store, I’ll get you a whole pouch of the stuff. And I’ll have the Aunts teach me how to offer it up to you properly, okay?”

  He watched the last of the tobacco burn. The thin thread of smoke finally died. He waited a while longer, almost expecting some response, now that he knew that all the campfire stories were true. But there was nothing. He had to laugh at himself as he stood up. Like the manitou were suddenly going to come at his beck and call. He’d probably wet himself if one of them actually did show up. But maybe what he’d done would make a difference.

  “If you hear me,” he said, “I just want to say, you know, thanks. For listening, I mean.”

  He waited a while longer, then returned to his seat on the front bumper. The hardest thing about being useless, he realized, was knowing that you were. And there was not a damn thing you could do about it.

  Christ, he could really use a drink. And that was something he hadn’t felt this strongly in a long time.

  He was seriously considering going into Kellygnow himself to see if he could cadge one from somebody when he heard a sound, far off in the distance. He lifted his head, waiting for it to be repeated, but it didn’t come again.

  Okay, he thought. It’s raining. Big storm. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. But it was also the middle of winter, and how often did you hear thunder in the winter?

  “Thank you,” he said. “Really, I mean it.”

  He was still grinning when his aunts returned from Kellygnow with a tall red-headed woman in tow.

  7

  En el Bosque del Corazón

  El que con lobos anda a aullar se enseña.

  He who keeps company with wolves learns to howl.

  —MEXICAN-AMERICAN SAYING

  1

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JANUARY 20

  Wasn’t that just like a man, Bettina thought as she followed her wolf into la época del mito. Where did they learn to keep everything in its own box the way they did? She knew the kiss had meant as much to him as it had to her, yet he was able to put everything aside and carry on with the task at hand as though nothing had happened between them. Which was what they should do, she knew. What they must do. But it still made the promise woken from that kiss seem of so much less consequence than she hoped it was.

  El lobo looked back at her when they’d crossed over.

  “What’s the matter?’’ he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “No importa”

  “When a woman says, ‘nothing,’“ he said, “she means, ‘everything.’“

  “You shouldn’t generalize.”

  A flicker of amusement woke in his eyes. “Or I should at least encompass more with my generalizations. Perhaps I should have referred to most people instead.”

  Bettina sighed. “My grandmother and Nuala both warned me about keeping company with wolves. El que con lobos anda a aullar se enseña Abuela would say.”

  “He who keeps company with wolves learns to howl,” el lobo translated.

  “Literally, perhaps. But it means that bad habits are acquired from bad companions.”

  “And what bad habits have you acquired from me?”

  “None,” Bettina said. “So far.”

  “I like the literal meaning better.”

  “Sí. But you would.”

  He nodded, serious now. “Though perhaps not for the reason you think. Sometimes it’s better to cut yourself free from what you know and…” He shrugged. “Howl is as good a word as any. To let loose the constrictions that normally bind your actions and run wild for a time.”

  “Only we can’t, can we? We have a duty.”

  “Ah, so that’s what this is about.”

  Bettina shook her head. “No, I understand that we must first deal with the task at hand. But you seem to put the … other business away so easily.”

  “Would you rather I bed you right now, here among the ferns and leaves?”

  Sí, Bettina found herself thinking even as she shook her head again. It was bluntly put—deliberately so, she didn’t doubt, to get a rise out of her—but the thought of it appealed to her all the same, though only if he felt what she was feeling…

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “It’s all very confusing.”

  “I know,” he told her. “Don’t doubt that I am any less confused.”

  “Truly?”

  He nodded.

  “That makes it easier for me,” she said.

  He shook his head, but then offered her his hand. “Come,” he said, and led her in the direction of the pool where, in this world, an ancient salmon lay sleeping. The forest was different by day, still mysterious with the cathedralling trees rearing above them as they walked, but it felt more welcoming than it had when she’d been here the other night, also in the company of her wolf. The ice storm had vanished, left behind with the winter they’d escaped. Here it felt like late autumn, the air rich with a musky scent of dark earth and secrets. Bettina had almost forgotten why they’d come until they neared the pool and saw the Recluse lying on the grass by its low stone wall. El lobo glanced at the body.

  “It seems they’ve had a falling-out,” he said, then meant to continue on his way.

  Bettina pulled him to a stop. Letting go of his hand, she knelt by the still form. She could tell by the angle of the neck that it was hopeless, but she still felt for a pulse, still called up the healing spirit in her heart and asked for help from the spiritworld to diagnose what might be used to help the hurt woman.

  “Bendígame, Virgen. Bendígame. santos, Bendígame, espíritus,” she murmured. “Deme la fuerza a ayudar esta pobre alma.”

  The blessing rose in her but it was too late. The woman’s death wound was far too grievous, and here in la época del mito, spirits were quick to leave their bodies and travel on.

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  Bettina looked up to el lobo, a little disappointed that he would be so callous of one so recently slain.

  “I had to try,” she said.

  “But why? She is the cause of all our troubles.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sighed and crouched beside her, sitting on his ankles. She felt a pang of memory when she looked at him. So her father had sat, he and his peyoteros, talking long into the night, smoking their cigarettes. Men unused to chairs, who could find no use for man-made conveniences.

  “Until she came along,” el lobo said, “the Gentry were no different from Nuala. Content to roam the city, to have a den in the wild acres behind Kel-lygnow. They didn’t need to take anything from the native spirits—they had all they wanted already: a den they could call their own, pubs for drink and the craíc, the music. It was she who woke ambition in them, woke the evil we all carry in us, fanned it with admiring words and false promises.”

  “You said you didn’t know about the mask.”

  “I didn’t. But I still knew there was something, some artifact they sought after, and would, as we’ve seen, eventually find. And all the while the Gentry, their baser instincts awoken, simply grew worse. It was she who encouraged them to be more territorial. To be harder of heart and mean-spirited. To take what they wished, for it was owed to them.”

  “Why would she do such a thing?” Bettina asked.

  El lobo shrugged. “To keep them from thinking too much, I suppose. From seeing how she led them about by their noses.”

  Bettina looked down at the dead woman.

  “What did she get from it?” she asked.

  “A longer life. The Gentry showed her a way into the spiritworld, where she spent most of the year.”

  Bettina nodded. Time moved differently here and didn’t rest so heavily on the body.

  “And for power, of course,” el lobo added.

  “Power.”

  “She meant to use the Glasduine as much as the Gentry did. I don�
�t doubt she chose both who would wear the mask and who would repair it.”

  “Ellie was supposed to make a new one,” Bettina said. “A copy, but infused with her own spirit and creative impulses.”

  “To infuse it with her own considerable, if untapped, power, you mean.”

  Bettina nodded. It was all so depressing.

  “The Recluse should have asked for luck,” she said, remembering a conversation she’d had with Ban, years ago now.

  “How so?”

  “Luck is sweet. A gift, a loan. When you have made your use of it, it goes on, undiminished. Power is finite and when one has it, it means another doesn’t.”

  El lobo nodded with understanding.

  “And now look at her,” Bettina said. “For all the heartache and pain she caused, she has earned nothing but the death that was always waiting for her. What an evil woman.”

  “Or a fool.”

  Bettina gave her wolf a questioning look.

  “There’s often not a great deal of difference between the two,” he said.

  He rose easily from his crouch. Turning, he offered Bettina his hand and lifted her to her feet. They paused at the pool, looking down at the sleeping salmon. El lobo plucked a cigarette butt from the water and carefully placed it on the stone wall among the other offerings.

  “We should go,” he said.

  Bettina nodded. But having seen the dead woman made her question once more her own involvement in this hunt.

  “¿Y bien?” she said. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “To right a wrong.”

  “Is that it? I felt the pull of these forests, I left my beloved desert, and for this? To try to heal some monster that will no doubt need to be killed anyway?”

  “I don’t think you were called to try to heal any monster,” el lobo said. “How could you have been? It didn’t even exist until today.”

  “Then who have I been called to heal? You?”

  “I think you are here to heal yourself.”

  She shook her head. “No seas tonto. I don’t need healing.”

  “No? Perhaps I’m not so crazy. You’ve been here for months, but to what use have you put your studies beyond some simple charms? Calling on the spirits to help the Gentry’s pet human is the closest you’ve come to being a true curandera since you arrived.”

  “I have been waiting …”

  “Yes, to be healed.”

  Bettina frowned at him. He could be so infuriating.

  “Healed?” she demanded. “Of what?”

  “Shall I make a list of all that troubles you?” her wolf asked.

  “Please do.”

  He counted the items off on his fingers. “There is the question of your faith, how the spirits confuse your feelings towards the church and cause a rift with your mother. There is your grandmother’s abrupt disappearance from your life. Your sister’s denial of the spiritworld and how she belittles your grandmother’s teachings. The guilt you feel for sending los cadejos away after promising them a true home. The confusion of having a father who lives in the desert as a hawk, forgetting he was ever a man. The loneliness that comes from how you long for love, but believe no man will understand you, and no spirit will keep faith. Shall I go on?”

  She was too shocked to be angry. “Who are you? How can you know all of this?”

  “I am who I have said I am.”

  Bettina shook her head. “You know too much about me.”

  “I’m a good listener,” el lobo said.

  “Those are things I’ve not spoken of with anyone. And certainly not here.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t hear it from you. I listened to the gossip of the spiritworld. When you first came, I asked after you, and the stories came to me. Of you, your abuela, your parents.”

  “Why would they speak of me? What could they hope to gain?”

  El lobo laughed. “They would gain nothing. It’s simply the nature of spirits to gossip. Surely you’ve seen by now that they’re worse than humans? If you don’t want to be gossiped about, you must ask them specifically not to.” He shrugged. “But even then they will still talk, couching their stories in riddles and half-truths.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know about me?” she asked.

  “Everything.”

  “You can say that after the list you’ve just recited.”

  “Those are things that are spoken of about you,” he said. “One can infer a great deal from such, but not what matters most. I don’t know how you truly feel. What your hopes and dreams might be. I have listened to the spirits speak of you; I have yet to hear you speak.”

  Bettina turned from the pool with its sleeping salmon and walked away, under the trees. El lobo fell in step beside her, quiet now. His gaze, when she glanced his way, held only concern; the teasing humor fled.

  “It’s all true,” she said after a while. “Mas o menos. I did not specifically send los cadejos away, but I have not made them welcome since the night Abuela followed the clown dog into the desert. And my beliefs, Abuela’s teachings. While it’s true they have caused a rift between my mother and sister and myself, I have reconciled my faith with my knowledge of the spirits.” She looked at him again. “I see room for all in God’s world. Perhaps we do not all practice the charity we should to each other, but surely He does.”

  “I know nothing of your god,” el lobo said.

  “Why would you?”

  “But I would like to understand this hold he has on his followers.”

  She nodded. “Ése está extraño,” she said. “The first night you took me to the salmon’s pool, I saw the Recluse there, but she seemed like a mission priest to me. You told me you saw no one.”

  “I told you I saw no man.”

  “Ah. But why would you keep her a secret from me?”

  “Because you weren’t involved,” he said. “If you weren’t a part of what she and the Gentry were up to, why draw you into it?”

  They’d walked farther now than Bettina had ever been in this part of la época del mito. By now, in the world where Kellygnow stood, their way would have taken them through the neighboring estates. Here, there was only the wild wood, ancient and tall, the immense trees untouched by the lumbermen who had founded so much of Newford.

  “I hadn’t known about my father,” she said. “That he had forgotten he was a man. I thought he had abandoned us—out of love,” she added. “That he thought it would hurt us to grow old while he remained forever unchanged.”

  “Only he can say.”

  She nodded. “When this is done, I will find him and ask him.”

  El lobo hesitated, then said, “It’s not always wise to question the motives of an old spirit such as he.”

  “Are you warning me against asking you too many questions?” she asked with a smile.

  The humor returned to his eyes. “I am hardly an old spirit. To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely certain what I am.”

  “But still I will ask him,” Bettina said. “He may be an old spirit, but he is still my papá.”

  “This is true.”

  “¿Y bien? And as for love—do any of us trust or understand it?”

  “I don’t understand it,” her wolf told her. “I can only feel it.”

  “Do you trust it?”

  “If you mean, do I trust the feeling? Then certainly. Do I feel it will be returned …” He shook his head. “I have no idea. Do you seek it?”

  “Everyone looks for love,” she said. “But I have learned not to make my happiness depend upon it. My abuela would say that even in a relationship, one must be happy with oneself as an individual, or what do you have to offer the other?”

  “I would have liked to have met your grandmother. You still miss her, don’t you?”

  “Si,” Bettina said. “I think of her every day.”

  She gave him a wan smile and they walked on in silence for a time. The forest remained unchanged, the tall trees rearing skyward to their impossible heigh
ts, the footing even, mostly moss and a carpet of autumn leaves with little undergrowth to impede their way. It was not a forest they could have found in the world they’d left behind.

  “I thought we would have come across some sign of the creature by now,” el lobo said finally. “Or at least heard about its passage. But the trees are silent to my ears and the gossips are most noticeable by their absence.”

  Bettina nodded. This aspect of la época del mito was completely unfamiliar to her, so she had been following her wolf’s lead. Now she glanced at him.

  “You were going to show me how to call up los cadejos,” she said.

  The thought of their return filled her with mixed emotions. She’d realized ever since her dream and Adelita’s gift the other morning just how much she missed them. She was anxious as well. How would they react to her contact after such a long silence?

  “I was,” el lobo said. “I will. But I was hoping to find the creature’s trail before we needed to do so.”

  So he was nervous, too. That didn’t bode well. What wasn’t he telling her now?

  “Why was that?” she asked, striving to sound calmer than she felt.

  He shrugged. “Because there is always a danger in coming to the attention of old powerful spirits.”

  He left so much unsaid, Bettina thought, but she understood exactly what he meant, his reservations obviously mirroring her own. She stopped and turned to him.

  “Even if we didn’t need their help,” she said, “this is something I must do. I have not treated them fairly. I must make amends for my broken promise.”

  El lobo nodded.

  “Y así,” Bettina said. “So how do we do this?”

  El lobo shook his head. “Not we, but you. You must welcome them back to you. But we must do it in some place that is familiar and dear to you both or else they might choose not to hear you.”

  “The desert is too far from here,” Bettina said. “We don’t have the time to make such a trip.”