Forests of the Heart (18 page)

Opening the lid of the brown betty and peering inside, Wood pronounced the tea steeped and poured them each a cup. She drank hers black, pushing the sugar and milk over to Ellie’s side of the table.

“So you used to see the ghosts of mice,” Ellie found herself saying.

That was the sort of thing she expected from Jilly or Donal, not this rather formidable woman sitting across from her. Whimsical was not a word Ellie would have used to describe her.

“I still do,” Wood informed her. “Mousy ghost,… and others, too.”

I’m not going there, Ellie thought.

She stirred her tea and took a sip. Setting her mug down, she regarded her host.

“Why am I here, Ms. Wood?” she said. “Why did you leave your business card in our van the other night? And what did you mean with ‘you’ve finally come’ when you opened the door?”

“I have a proposition for you,” Wood said. “A commission.”

Don’t let it have anything to do with ghosts, Ellie thought, of mice or otherwise.

“A commission,” she repeated.

Wood nodded. “I would like you to cast a mask for me. You still do masks, don’t you?”

“I haven’t for years, but I can still do them.” She paused, and gave her host a sharp look. “But how would you even know that? Actually, when it comes down to it, how did you know to approach me on the street the other night? And why didn’t you ask me then?”

“My, you are full of questions, aren’t you?”

“I think they’re reasonable.”

“Yes, well. Shall we take them one at a time then? I know your work because I make it my business to keep informed of such endeavors.”

“But I haven’t done masks in ages—and never to sell. The last ones I did were for a friend’s play. And they weren’t cast, either. They were papier-mâché.”

“Nevertheless, masks you have cast.” She smiled. “That rhymes, doesn’t it?”

Ellie dutifully returned her smile.

“Now,” Wood went on. “I hadn’t planned to approach you on the street as I did—that was merely happy circumstance—though I certainly recognized you immediately. You have a—shall we say—quality that is unmistakable.”

“What sort of quality?”

Wood regarded her for a long moment, then waved a hand dismissively. “And lastly, I didn’t ask you then as you seemed somewhat otherwise occupied.”

Ellie wanted to pursue this quality business, but realized that there probably wasn’t much point. She remembered how earlier Wood had told her that evasiveness was a habit she had. Obviously she hadn’t been lying about that.

“But you could have given me the card yourself,” she said, “instead of leaving it on the dash like you did. You could have given me your phone number, or called me.”

“Look around. I have no telephone.”

“But…”

Ellie sighed. There didn’t seem to be anything to be gained by pointing out that there were such things as payphones, or that the main house at Kellygnow had a phone. She knew that, since
it
was listed in the phone book.

“Okay,” she said. “Never mind about the phone. What kind of a mask did you want to commission?”

And I hope I’m not going to regret getting involved in this, she added to herself.

“Perhaps it would be easier if I simply showed you,” Wood said.

She rose from her chair and went to the chest at the foot of the bed where she took out a cloth bundle. When she brought it back to the table, Ellie saw that the soft cotton was merely being used as wrapping. Wood undid the leather thongs holding the pieces of cloth in place and folded them back to reveal two halves of a carved wooden Green Man mask.

Ellie had seen Green Men in numerous churches while traveling through England a few years ago—strange carved or stone faces that peered out from an entangling nest of twigs and leaves. She hadn’t been much interested in the folklore behind them, but she’d loved the images themselves. This one was gorgeous. The wood was dark and polished—what sort, she couldn’t say, but it had a beautiful grain. The carved leaves were life-size and remarkably lifelike. The odd face they half-revealed was a strange cross between a gargoyle and a cherub, a fascinating mix that repelled Ellie as much as it appealed to her. The openings for the eyes were the most disturbing, she decided, though she couldn’t say why.

The separation between the two halves was clean, as though the mask had broken along a meandering hairline crack, or perhaps a natural weakness in the wood. Ellie traced the edge of the crack with the tip of her finger, then ran her hand along a smooth wooden cheek until it was stopped by a spray of carved leaves.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, looking up at Wood.

Her host nodded.

“But it’s made of wood,” Ellie went on.

“Oak, actually.”

“Whatever. The problem is, I don’t work in wood.”

“I realize that. I want you to make me a copy in metal.”

“What sort or metal?” Ellie asked. “Like a bronze?”

“Something pure. No alloys. And nothing with iron.”

Ellie gave a slow nod. “No iron,” she repeated. An odd request, but what wasn’t odd about this whole situation? She picked up one half of the mask and studied it for a moment. “I could make a cast directly from this, I think.”

“No, it must be new,” Wood told her. “You must start over from the beginning and redo it.”

Was there any point in asking why? Ellie wondered as she set the piece back down on its cotton wrappings.

“I’m not asking for an exact copy,” Wood said, “but rather for something that captures the spirit of the original. It’s important that you have some leeway.” She smiled, adding, “By which I mean that I expect you to use your artist’s intuition in your rendering.”

Ellie gave a slow nod. “It seems very old,” she said.

“One might call it a family heirloom.”

Not it was, but “one might call it.” Ellie sighed. Why did some people have to make a mystery out of everything?

“How did it get broken?” she asked.

For a long moment Wood made no response.

“I’m not sure,” she finally said. “The two halves have not been together for a very long time. There are stories as to how it came to be broken, the halves separated, but…” She shrugged. “There are always stories, aren’t there? Suffice to say that I have been looking for them for many years now.” She touched the right half. “This was recovered in England a decade or so ago, in a forest on the edge of Dartmoor.”

“And the other?” Ellie asked when Wood fell silent.

“Was brought to me this summer. Friends tracked it down in Britanny, in the Forest of Paimpont—what was once called Broceliande.”

She spoke as though the places she referred to should be instantly familiar, but they were mostly only words to Ellie. She’d heard of Dartmoor, of course. Britanny she thought was somewhere in France. But the others? They had the ring of storybook names to her.

Returning her attention to the broken mask, she found herself wondering what it had been used for. It didn’t have the look of something that was simply decorative.

“I can offer you five thousand dollars,” Wood said. “Plus expenses, of course.”

Ellie blinked. “You’re kidding.”

Wood gave an apologetic shrug. “I’m afraid I’m on somewhat of a budget. I can’t afford to pay you any more.”

Ellie cleared her throat. It had suddenly gone all dry on her.

“No,” she managed. “Five thousand dollars would be fine.”

Like it wasn’t a fortune. Five thousand dollars would go an awfully long way at the rate that she spent money.

“I’ll, um, need to take the mask for reference,” she added, trying to be businesslike about all of this when all she wanted to do was dance around the room.

“That’s impossible.”

“But—”

“Having so recently recovered the mask,” Wood said, “I’m afraid that I’m too nervous about losing it again to allow it be taken very far from where I can keep an eye on it. I was thinking of having some studio space put aside for you in the house and that you could work on it there. Would that be suitable?”

Five thousand dollars
and
a residency in Kellygnow—if only for the duration of this commission? The residency alone was worth it, considering the gallery doors it would open for her.

“Yes,” she said, managing to keep her voice level. “That would be fine.”

Wood smiled. “Good. I’m glad that’s settled. I’m sure you’ll find everything you’ll need to work with in the studio, but don’t hesitate to ask if you require anything else.”

“I, um, won’t.”

“Can you start tomorrow?”

Ellie nodded.

“Very well then.”

When Wood stood up, Ellie scrambled to her feet as well.

“I’d like to apologize again for my bad humor when you first arrived,” Wood said. “You caught me at a somewhat inopportune time.” She gave Ellie a small smile. “In the middle of an old argument.”

Ellie schooled her features to remain blank, but a warning buzz began to sound in the back of her head. Argument? she thought. With whom? There was no phone and the only door out of the building was the one she’d come in. Unless there was a back door behind the curtain in the far corner, which she doubted.

No, if her host had been having an argument, it had been with herself, and Ellie knew what that could mean from riding with Tommy in the Angel Outreach van. Hearing voices, arguing with them … when you put that together with sharp mood swings, you had the makings of a mental disturbance of some sort. It didn’t mean the person was necessarily violent, but the potential was there, which was why Angel had her people work in pairs, with the women always having a male partner for more protection. Angel taught them that the people they had to deal with were usually not to blame for their condition—the chemical imbalance that was at the heart of most of these problems was simply a matter of genetic roulette. But that didn’t make them any less dangerous. Or potentially so. Especially if they refused, as many did, to take their medication.

Are you taking yours? Ellie wondered, regarding Wood in a new light. Her gaze dropped down to the two halves of the broken mask. For that matter, could she take any of this seriously? The commission, the residency …

You’re blowing this all out of proportion, she told herself. Musgrave Wood was simply an eccentric old woman with money to throw around, end of story. Don’t pull a Tommy and look for the kind of deeper meaning that only the Aunts could unravel. But the warning buzz had never been wrong before and it wouldn’t go away.

“Well,” she said. “I’m glad you’re feeling better now.”

She kept her voice evenly modulated and held herself so that there was nothing threatening in how she stood. Smiled brightly.

Wood regarded her curiously for a moment, then shrugged.

“When you come tomorrow,” she said, “go directly to the house and ask for Nuala. She’ll see that you’re looked after.”

“Great,” Ellie said. “And the mask … ?”

“Nuala will have it in keeping for you.”

Ellie kept her smile in place. She knew it had to look phony, because it certainly felt phony, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She was on automatic, following the rules that Angel had drilled into them during their training. Smile a lot. Keep your voice even. Never appear threatening.

“Until tomorrow, then,” she said.

Wood gave her a slow, thoughtful nod, then walked with her to the door.

Musgrave stood with her hand against the door for a long moment before stepping over to the window. She watched Ellie walk across the snow-covered lawn towards the main house and marveled. So much
geasan,
housed all unknowingly in that mortal frame. It was as though an echo of the Northern Lights had been caught under her skin and was now escaping from her pores in pulsing waves.

I was like that once, Musgrave thought. Not nearly so strong, of course, but at least I knew. Oh, I knew.

There was the sound of movement behind her, a curtain moving, footsteps on the pine floor, but she didn’t turn from the window until she heard the strike of a match on the wood surface of her table.

“I told you not to smoke in here,” she said to the tall, dark-haired man lounging in the chair that Ellie had so recently quit.

The man regarded her, eyes dark, hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth, lit match in his hand. For a long moment their gazes held, then he smiled and shook out the match. He put the cigarette behind his ear, dropped the match on the table.

“ ‘Many Mice Wood?’ “ he asked.

She laughed and joined him at the table. There was still tea left in the brown betty. She poured them each a mug, giving him the one Ellie had been using. Since
it
hadn’t been rinsed, a light film of milk rode to the top of the tea. The man didn’t appear to notice, or if he did, care.

“Actually, it’s a true story,” she said.

“I’m sure it is.”

He added milk and sugar to his tea and drank it down with relish. Setting the mug down, he picked up the two halves of the mask and held them up, looking at her overtop of them.

“Iron doesn’t hurt us,” he said.

“I know. But it doesn’t conduct
geasan
well and…” She shrugged. “I thought it might set her thinking.”

“She doesn’t strike me as one overly interested in anything that can’t be measured and weighed by some man in a white coat holding the same blinkered views of the world as she does.”

“Don’t start on that again,” Musgrave told him. “She’s an artist.”

“She’s human.”

“She may not embrace the mysteries, but she still sees more than most do. That’s the gift and curse of an artist. I agree it would be better if she realized she was working with truths, rather than stories, but consider what she has to offer.”

It seemed that the argument Ellie’s arrival had interrupted was about to begin again, but then her guest shrugged.

“The
geasan
runs strong,” he conceded.

Musgrave nodded. After meeting the girl again today, she realized it was even stronger than she’d remembered. But that was the way of the
geasan.
It sidled and slipped, danced like shadows and light. Out of sight, out of mind. She’d given up wondering why a long time ago. If the mysteries were fathomable, they wouldn’t be mysteries.