Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  “I think I misjudged their intentions.”

  “What? You saw them call up the Glasduine.”

  Aunt Nancy nodded. “Except it seems to me that they summoned it for the same reason we’ve been chasing it.”

  Well, that was one small comfort, Ellie thought. She’d hated the awful feeling that she’d so misjudged her new friend. Although even if Bettina was trying to stop the Glasduine, what was she doing in the company of one of the Gentry? For all the things Ellie didn’t know she was at least sure of this: the hard men weren’t their friends.

  “Now come,” Aunt Nancy said. “We have no time to lose.”

  “What about Hunter?” Ellie said, turning to where he lay.

  He didn’t seem to be physically hurt. He’d saved himself from cracking his head on the rocks by falling forward onto his own arms, but he lay there, immobile and pale.

  “We’ll have to come back for him,” Aunt Nancy said.

  Ellie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “If we try going up against that thing we just saw, we’re not coming back at all.”

  “Then Hunter will be on his own.”

  Ellie shook her head. “No, this is way too far off the map of anything I can deal with.”

  “You said you would help.”

  “Yeah, but help with what? Killing ourselves?”

  Aunt Nancy sucked in a breath between her teeth. Before Ellie knew what she was doing, the older woman grabbed her by the arm and slung her over a bony shoulder. Ellie had to put her arms around Aunt Nancy’s neck to keep from falling back down the slope behind them. Once she had her balance, she tried to slip off Aunt Nancy’s back, but then the body under her changed.

  The transformation was as sudden as that of Bettina’s companion, but rather than man to wolf, it was woman to spider. A gibbering panic began to howl in the pit of Ellie’s stomach. The change was impossible enough—never mind how she’d just seen Bettina and her companion shift their shapes—but to add to Ellie’s terror, the spider Aunt Nancy had become stood as tall as a horse. It was as if she had become that enormous shadow Ellie had seen looming behind Aunt Nancy. A fantastically oversized wolf spider, and here she was, clinging to its back.

  She started to loosen her grip—she no longer cared how far she fell down the slope behind them—but the spider suddenly launched itself forward, leaping over the rocks and scuttling down the far side with a blinding speed.

  “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!” Ellie cried.

  But she had no choice but to tighten her grip around the spider’s neck, her own torso and legs splayed out along the breadth of its thick-furred back. It was that or fall off and crack her skull. Her skin shrank in on itself, she was so repulsed at the contact, so frightened by the terrible speed as those eight, many-jointed legs carried them down the canyon.

  Quiet, a voice she recognized as Aunt Nancy’s said in her head. The god you call upon won’t answer you here, but if you call loud enough, something else may. And trust me, girl You wouldn’t like what that might be. Not everyone you meet here is as nice as I am.

  Please, let me be dreaming, Ellie prayed. Just let me wake up.

  Gather your courage. It was Aunt Nancy’s voice, ringing in her head again.

  Trembling, Ellie could only tighten her grip.

  “I’m too scared to be brave,” she mumbled into the thick fur under her face.

  It was softer than she might have expected, like a cat’s rather than a boar’s.

  Here in manidò-akìour medicines are strong, Aunt Nancy told her. Trust in it. Trust in yourself. We may not be as strong as that panàbe, so we will have to be that much more clever.

  “You’ve got a plan?”

  I am working on one.

  Ellie went back to her prayers.

  10

  Hunter regained consciousness just in time to see what he thought was a giant spider scuttling off down the canyon—with Ellie clinging to its back. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. The apparition was gone. Just some leftover weirdness from whatever it was that had knocked him out, he decided.

  He didn’t feel as bad as he thought he should after having passed out. The only other time he’d fainted like that was one night when he’d accidentally taken too many prescription painkillers. He remembered standing at the sink one moment, the next he was coming out of some strange dream to a whirligig of faces that spun around above him for a long moment until they’d finally settled into Ria’s features. He’d been so weak he’d barely been able to stand, and when Ria finally got him to his feet, he’d wished she hadn’t, because it only made him feel sicker.

  Right now he only had the fading residue of a headache and felt a little weak-kneed. That was about it.

  He shifted his position, and turned to look back down the slope where Ellie and Aunt Nancy had been just moments ago. They were gone.

  How long had he been unconscious, anyway? And why would they just leave him here? Though maybe they hadn’t. Maybe something had taken them away.

  The image of Ellie riding that giant spider popped into his head again.

  Yeah, right.

  He made his way back down the slope and looked around, softly calling their names. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a struggle, but he wasn’t exactly Daniel Boone. Give him a trashed apartment in the city and he could figure out that something bad happened. Out here, everything just looked the same. There could be a thousand clues staring him in the face and he wouldn’t recognize one of them.

  After calling some more, he made his way around the jumble of boulders, down to where Bettina and her friend had been earlier.

  Again Ellie and the spider popped into his mind.

  Okay, he thought. Let’s pretend that she rode away on a spider. So where was Aunt Nancy?

  That was when he remembered something Ellie had told him about this big shadow spider she kept seeing behind Aunt Nancy.

  He shook his head. No way. He didn’t care how deep they’d stumbled into Neverneverland, people didn’t turn into giant spiders. The truth was, he must have been unconscious for a lot longer than he’d thought. No surprise there. You couldn’t trust the way time moved here—not the way they’d been traveling through landscapes and climates like turning the pages of an encyclopedia. Ellie and Aunt Nancy were somewhere ahead of him. For whatever reason, they’d had to go on without him, that was all. He’d find out why once he caught up with them again.

  When he reached the area where Bettina and the hard man had been earlier, he realized there was something different. It took him a moment to remember. Right by this flat stone where Bettina had been sitting, there’d been the huge fallen trunk of one of those tall cacti. It was gone now. All that remained was dirt and sand, swirled into a spiral pattern and overlaid with seriously large footprints.

  He put his own foot inside one of the footprints. There was enough room for him to put both feet in there.

  Okay, this was creepy.

  Then he saw the bits of wood scattered all around. It was as though the fallen cactus had exploded.

  What exactly had happened here?

  He started to move back to the where the dirt had been swept into a spiral, pausing to pick up what looked like a necklace made of seeds. No, it wasa rosary, he realized, when he saw the small, roughly carved cross. Who had this belonged to? With it dangling from his fingers, he returned his attention to the spiral, hastily stepping back when a greenish-gold light began to glow in the center of it.

  This couldn’t be good, he thought as he took a few more steps back.

  He jumped when a flood of the light suddenly flowed out of the ground. It pooled for a moment in the spiral, then flowed off down the canyon, rippling like a wide ribbon in a breeze. He stared at it, this river of unnatural light, trying to figure out what it was.

  There’s an explanation for this, too, he told himself. Somewhere. Nothing that would make sense to him, probably, but to somebody. Every
thing was eventually labeled and put in a box. In the meantime, would somebody please wake him up.

  That was when he saw Miki come bubbling up out of the ground and go tumbling down the ribbon of light. Before he could come to terms with the shock of her sudden appearance, Tommy came up next. He called out to them, but neither of them seemed able to hear or see him.

  Oh, man, he thought. There’s got to be way too many mind-altering drugs in the air of this place.

  He stood watching as the light carried his friends down the canyon, watched until a bend in the landscape took them out of his sight, the two of them bobbing like driftwood, Miki’s blonde hair contrasting sharply with Tommy’s black.

  Who’s next? he wondered. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see Titus or Adam go sailing by next.

  The ribbon was following the same route his hallucination of Ellie and the giant spider had gone. If they had been a hallucination. He looked down at the ribbon. Because if this could be real…

  He found himself wanting to touch it, but knew that would be just stupid. Instead, he set off at a trot, the rosary still dangling from his fingers as he followed the stream of light to wherever it had taken his friends.

  11

  It didn’t take long for el lobo to realize that they weren’t going to outrun the Glasduine. He ran at full tilt and the creature only continued to gain ground. It was like trying to outrun the wind. The Glasduine would be on them in moments and he had no idea what they could do to escape.

  If Bettina had any experience with this hawk shape of hers, it would have been different. Then she could at least evade the creature’s grasp by taking to the sky. The Glasduine was an earthbound spirit, its existence still entwined with the root voice of the world, for all that it was an aberration to the heart of the grace from which it had been drawn. It would be unable to chase her if she followed the wind roads. But the skies were closed to them. Bettina’s hawk wings were too new to her and he was tied to the ground, like the Glasduine, so he was denied escaping by air as well. That only left turning to confront the Glasduine—as sure a form of suicide as slitting their own throats, though far more painful. Judging by the blood splattered on the creature, its prey did not die easily.

  As they came around another curve of the canyon and raced down a straight stretch, the decision was taken out of his hands. The Glasduine drew near enough to take a swipe at him. The thick bark tips of its fingers brushed against his hindquarters, just enough to make him lose his balance. He went down, the hawk knocked from his mouth. She rolled across the dirt in a tangle of panicked flapping wings and then the change came over her again. By the time she landed up against the red dirt at the base of the canyon wall, it was Bettina who lay there, coughing in the dust she had churned up with her fall.

  He didn’t fare much better. He kept his shape, but went tumbling, tail over head, bouncing off a boulder before he could scramble to his feet. He ignored the pain in his side where he’d hit the boulder and rose snarling to face the Glasduine, but it was already out of range.

  The Glasduine overshot both of them. Turning quicker than should have been possible for its bulk, it went for Bettina, its strange mask-like features twisted into a grin.

  El lobo howled his frustration. He called to any power that would listen, promised anything, if she would only be spared.

  As if in response, a stream of green-gold light came pouring down the canyon, following the path they’d just taken themselves. El lobo recognized the ancient mystery of that ribbon of light as it shot straight for the Glasduine, stopping it dead in its tracks before it could reach Bettina, but he didn’t understand its presence here, at this time. There was no reason that the powers that light represented would ever listen to one such as him, little say respond to his call for help.

  A moment later he saw two figures in the light, bobbing like corks in a fast-moving stream. A small, blonde-haired woman came first. The Glasduine stood in her path, swaying and unbalanced. She hit feet-first, knocking it off its feet before she bounced from its broad back and went sprawling onto the dirt beyond it. The Glasduine was just recovering from her impact when the second figure, this time a dark-haired man, smashed it with a full body check, knocking the creature down again.

  El lobo considered going for the Glasduine’s throat while it was down, but he hesitated a moment too long and the opportunity was gone.

  The Glasduine rose in a fury. The man who’d knocked it down the second time tried to scrabble out of its reach, but the Glasduine struck him across the back, cutting through cloth to the flesh below. The man was thrown a dozen feet or more, landing on the far side of the canyon where he lay as he’d fallen, limbs splayed, blood welling up from his wounds.

  No, el lobo thought. How can the light allow this?

  But then he realized what that light was—not a green and golden echo of the world’s grace, come to answer his cry for help, but rather a ribboning tether of memory, like the thread that connected a spirit to its body when it traveled outside of its flesh. It was a display of the route the Glasduine had taken to get here, but to the Glasduine, it also served as a reminder of the place from which it had been drawn. That was why the Glasduine had been stopped so suddenly in its tracks when the tether of light manifested. The light was pure grace—an unpleasant and discomforting remembrance to a creature that was now the antithesis of the ancient mysteries that light represented.

  El lobo gave over considering the light when the Glasduine returned its attention to Bettina. He lunged across the dirt to put himself between the two, calling out again to anything that might hear him and lend them aid.

  You can have my life if you wish, he promised, only spare hers.

  12

  Ellie clung to Aunt Nancy’s spider back as she sped down the canyon, scuttling over the stones with a surefooted grace that Ellie might have admired if she wasn’t feeling so disoriented and scared. At one point, the spider eschewed a slower, more roundabout passage by securing a dragline and dropping them down a thirty-foot drop with a stomach-lurching motion. Just as they reached the bottom, Ellie caught a flow of motion from the corner of her eye. Something green, touched with gold. The spider saw it, too, and paused in its flight.

  They watched the ribbon flow by.

  Ismell my sisters’ involvement in this, Aunt Nancy’s voice said in Ellie’s head.

  As soon as she spoke, Ellie heard faint echoes of powwow chanting and a low thrumming drone, here one moment, then gone again.

  “What—?” she began.

  The question died in her throat as she saw Miki come bobbing by, riding the stream of light as though it was a watery current. What on earth was she doing here? But then this wasn’t earth, was it? That was all part and parcel of the problem. This was the world where nothing made sense, landscapes changed at the drop of a hat, old Native women turned into spiders …

  When would the improbabilities stop?

  But they had nothing to do with that, Aunt Nancy added, plainly puzzled.

  A moment later, a dark-haired figure shot by, also riding the green-gold stream. For one hysterical moment Ellie thought it had to be Elvis, but then his passing features registered.

  “Tommy … ?”

  Aunt Nancy made an inarticulate sound. Her head turned, gaze fixing on her passenger. Ellie was held in spellbound horror by the grotesque features. It was the eyes that got to her the worst. Four small ones looking slightly down from the face and a little to each side. On top of these, two larger ones looking directly at her. Lastly, another pair, on top of the head, looking up. Each and every one of them, for all their silvery alien sheen, recognizably Aunt Nancy’s.

  Someone will suffer for this, the voice in Ellie’s head said.

  The grimness of its tone turned Ellie’s blood to water.

  Enough, she thought. This is where I get off.

  But before she could slide down, Aunt Nancy sprang into motion and Ellie had to cling once more to the furry back. If anything, they went eve
n faster down the canyon, chasing the bobbing forms of Miki and Tommy around one curve, another, before they abruptly came to the end of the chase.

  They saw Bettina, crouched in the dirt and coughing. Her wolf companion charging the Glasduine, getting batted away as though he was nothing more dangerous than a stuffed toy. Miki lying sprawled on the ground on the far side of the creature. And Tommy … Tommy lying so still, his back torn open and bleeding.

  Now I will have further loan of your medicine. Aunt Nancy said in a voice that would brook no argument. The battle is at hand.

  “But… I don’t know…”

  It’s simple. Keep a grip on my back and give me permission.

  “But how—”

  Just say it.

  Ellie couldn’t look away from Tommy’s body. She cleared her throat.

  “Do it,” she said.

  She clung tighter as the spider leapt for the Glasduine.

  13

  Bettina didn’t see Miki and Tommy’s arrival on the ribbon of light. Disoriented by the abrupt transition from hawk shape back into her own body, she lay on the ground for a long moment before finally sitting up. She coughed, choking, her throat and nose filled with dust. When her blurred vision cleared enough it was only to see the Glasduine coming for her, her wolf batted helplessly aside as he tried to protect her. In her mind she heard el lobo’s cry for help, ringing out through the otherworld with an urgency that made her own earlier summoning call seem to have been no more compelling than a whispered request. She heard that cry for help, and then the promise he made to whoever might answer.

  You can have my life if you wish. Only spare hers.

  ¡Es un trato! came an immediate response. It is a bargain.

  No, she wanted to cry, even with the Glasduine upon her. I won’t let you give your life for mine.

  The Glasduine hoisted her up, rough bark fingers digging into her shoulders as it lifted her from the ground. Though she struggled, the effort was futile. The creature’s grip was immovable. It shook her with a fierce grin distorting its features and held her high, as though she was some prize that all the world must see it had acquired. But it had only the one moment of triumph before Bettina’s rescue was at hand, the rescue for which her wolf had traded his life.