Forests of the Heart (31 page)

Hunter turned around, tried to stop Miki from coming in and seeing what had been done, but she pushed by him. For a long moment she stood there, staring at the ruin of her apartment, her gaze finally resting on what had been done to her accordion.

“You see what I mean?” she said in a tight, hard voice.

She was so angry that the awful stench didn’t even seem to register, but it was all Hunter could do to keep down his tea.

“I’m surprised they didn’t just level the whole building with a bomb,” she went on, toeing the remains of her accordion with her boot. “This was to cut me right to the heart.”

“We’ll buy you a new one,” Hunter said.

“And get the money from where? A store that’s going under? Get real.”

Hunter shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.” He knew how inadequate this was, how the loss of her accordion was, perhaps, the least of her worries, but he seemed to be stuck focusing on it, like a needle caught in the groove of a vinyl record. “We’ll figure out some way to raise the money.”

All Miki did was look at him. The unfamiliar mix of sorrow and rage that warred across her features turned her into a stranger, though he’d seen that face before on newscasts, on the faces of victims when they looked at the remains of their homes and families. In Belfast. In Oklahoma City. In Sarajevo. It wasn’t the look of one who’d survived a natural disaster, but that of one left standing in the aftermath of some horror for which a human being was responsible.

There were those you’d see, numbed by shock, or with tears blinding them, streaming down their cheeks. Huddled in small groups, or standing alone, staring, stunned, miserable in their loss, empathetic towards those whose loved ones had died so that some megalomaniac could make an obscene point.

Then there were those whose faces plainly said, someone must pay for this. Who stood stiffly, their backs straight, fists clenched.

“Now do you see what shites they are?” Miki said, her voice as unfamiliar as her expression, low, dangerous. “Do you see why we should ally ourselves with anyone who stands against them?”

Hunter felt a twinge in his side, not a real pain, for he hadn’t moved. It was the memory of the pain. Of when the hard man hit him. Of the threat of what he’d do to Hunter if he had to come back.

Hunter shook his head. “They’re too dangerous,” he told her. “Too powerful.”

“Exactly. And we’re on their shit list, so what we have to do is ally ourselves with those who are just as powerful.”

“Spirits,” Hunter said slowly.

Miki nodded.

“Local spirits. Magical beings.”

She nodded again.

“How would we even find them?” Hunter asked, adding to himself, that’s saying they even exist.

“I don’t know. But there’ll be a way. Someone will know them, how to contact them.”

It was so preposterous, such a long shot, Hunter had no trouble agreeing. It wasn’t that he didn’t crave a bit of his own revenge—for how the hard man had made him feel with that sucker punch, for what they’d done to Miki’s place; it was just that, if Miki was right, if the hard men were everything she said they were, then they were way out of his league.

“We should call the police,” he said.

Miki shook her head. “I can’t stay in here.”

“I meant from a neighbor’s apartment.”

“I just can’t, Hunter. The longer I’m here, the more I want to kill somebody.”

“Okay. But—”

“And we can’t call the police anyway.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. But it’d make them crazy.” She looked at him, that stranger’s light
in
her eyes, a smoldering dark anger. “I want them to think they’ve won. They’ve beaten me and I’m running with my tail between my legs.”

Nobody’d ever think that, Hunter thought, but he wasn’t up for the argument.

“Then let’s get back to the store,” he said. “You can stay at my place, but we’ll have to get you some stuff. Clothes, toiletries …”

Miki gave him a distracted nod before stepping over the mess that had been her accordion. She held her scarf to her face to cut back on the stench. Hunter followed her lead, breathing through his mouth into his own scarf as he trailed her through the apartment, assessing the damage. She stopped at her clothes cupboard, an old pine armoire that she’d bought in a junk shop and refinished into something both useful and attractive. It lay on its side, door kicked in, old planks that had withstood who knew how many years of normal wear and tear finally undone by a hard man’s boot. Her clothes were shredded and soaked with urine—How could anyone piss this much? Hunter wondered—but at the back of the armoire they could make out the corner of a black box that seemed unscathed.

Miki kicked the sodden clothes out of the way, then gingerly lifted the box out.

“Well, they left me this,” she said.

“What is it?”

“My old Hohner.”

Pulling a face when she had to touch it some more, she laid the box on its side and undid the clasps, lifted the lid. The accordion sat inside, unharmed. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she pulled the instrument out, cradling it as though it were a child.

“Now we can go,” she said, standing up once more.

Hunter thought of telling her that they could wash down the outside of the case, but then realized that no matter how clean they got it, she’d still smell the stink of urine, still feel a dampness in the leather that covered the wooden case.

“Is there anything else you want to take?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not now. We should open the windows and then we can come back after it’s had a chance to air out.”

Hunter didn’t think this stench would ever air out, but he went and opened all the windows, then walked with her back to the store. He’d never breathed air that tasted as clean and crisp as it did once they were outside on the street once more. He turned to Miki to remark on it, then saw her still cradling the child that was her accordion, still with that dark anger in her eyes. They walked back to the store in silence.

Talk about your awkward moments, Ellie thought.

She gave a quick look down the hall, but the housekeeper who’d met her at the door and brought her here had abandoned her and was already out of sight. Reluctantly, Ellie turned back into the studio to where the two women were waiting. She remembered Bettina from yesterday, but the tall blonde woman was a stranger. Obviously, from the looks of this studio, she was a sculptor. And also obviously, from all the boxes in various stages of being packed, she was being kicked out of her work space so that Ellie could take it over.

“Well, this is a little embarrassing,” Ellie said.

“Don’t fret it,” the blonde woman said.

“Yes, but—”

“It’s all right, really. My name’s Chantal and this is—”

“Bettina. We met yesterday.”

“Truly,” Bettina said, turning to the blonde. “I had no idea.”

But Chantal only laughed. “Come in, come in,” she told Ellie. Shaking her head, she added, “I’d swear. From the pair of you, you’d think the world was ending.”

Well, yours is, Ellie thought. At least insofar as Kellygnow was concerned.

But she set down the box she was holding and came over to the other side of the room where they were. Lined up along the worktable behind the women were a fascinating array of sculptures waiting to be packed, mostly teapots and bowls that were outrageous in their proportions and completely impractical, but nevertheless lovely and whimsical. They listed, one towards the other, frozen dancers with inspired glazes that appeared to have been applied in a dream state. There were also a few more traditional busts, beautifully rendered, including a work-in-progress draped with a damp cloth and so remained a mystery in terms of its subject. Ellie doubted she would have known the model anyway.

“I love your work,” she told Chantal.

“Thanks. It’s something new for me.”

Which was what Kellygnow was all about, Ellie thought. A place where you could try out new things, where you could experiment without having to worry about your overhead. And now she was taking that away from Chantal.

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to take this commission,” she said.

“What commission is that?” Chantal asked.

Ellie couldn’t figure her out. Chantal seemed genuinely interested and not in the least bit upset about losing her studio here.

“Look, this isn’t right,” she said. “I feel terrible. If I’d known they were booting somebody out to make space for me, I would’ve told them to just forget it.”

Chantal waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, enough worrying about it already. I’m not upset about it, so why should anybody else be? Honestly. I’ve had a wonderful stay here and now it’s someone else’s turn. It’s not such a big deal and I think it’s a great opportunity for you …” She glanced at Ellie, raising her eyebrows in a question.

“Ellie Jones.”

“Oh, Jilly’s raved to me about your work, but I’ve never had the chance to see any of it myself. Did you bring any finished pieces with you?”

Ellie blinked in surprise. Was there no end to this woman’s generosity?

“No,” she said. “I didn’t really think to …”

“Well, maybe some other time. Anyway, like I was saying, a residency here is a great opportunity for you, so let’s not spoil it with feeling awkward or carrying around bad feelings. Kellygnow is a place where the Muses live side-by-side with us—which I think is a blessing one doesn’t get to experience very often. Don’t you think it’d be pretty small-minded of us to get all petty and catty with each other in an environment such as we’ve been provided with here?”

“Well… yes,” Ellie said. “Except you’re the one who’s getting the short end of the stick.”

“Except I’m not unhappy, so why should anyone else be?”

Ellie shook her head. “Wow. Are you for real?”

“She is very much so,” Bettina said.

Ellie pulled a chair out from under a table and turned it around, sitting down with her arms leaning on the backrest.

“This is a pretty big room,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of space you need to work in, but I could do with half or even less.”

Chantal smiled. “You see?” she said to Bettina. “Things work out.” Then she returned her attention to Ellie. “We can ask and see what they say. But can you work with someone else in the room?”

“Are you kidding? I’d love it. I’m way tired of being shut away by myself in my own studio. I lived with another artist for a while and it was great working together—at least until our relationship went on the rocks and we spent more time arguing about things than doing art.”

Chantal laid a hand over her heart. “Avowedly heterosexual in this corner,” she said.

Ellie had to laugh. “Yeah, me, too.”

“So tell us about the commission that got you into Kellygnow,” Chantal said.

“It has to do with this mask,” Ellie said and she got up to show it to them.

The two women had completely different reactions to the mask. Chantal regarded it much the way Ellie had when she first saw it yesterday, enamored with the beauty of its lines and marveling at the skill it had taken to render it so perfectly in wood. She immediately picked up one of the broken halves and ran her fingers across the mask’s smooth contour cheek, up into the braiding of carved leaves.

“This was planed by hand,” she said, her fingers returning to the cheek. “Can you imagine how hard it would be to get it this smooth without a lathe and sandpaper?”

When she went to hand it to Bettina, the smaller woman frowned and shook her head. She appeared, not exactly frightened, but certainly wary of it.

Chantal smiled. “It won’t bite,” she said.

“It is very old,” was all Bettina would say.

Ellie nodded. “I wonder how old? Ms. Wood gave me the impression it’s completely ancient, but how long does wood stay in such excellent condition?”

“Don’t ask me,” Chantal said. “I work with clay.”

“Anyway,” Ellie went on, “I’m supposed to make a copy of it in clay for a casting.”

“What will you cast it in?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ellie said. “My only instructions were that there’s to be no iron in the metal I end up choosing.”

“Weird.”

“Mmm.” Elbe’s gaze drifted to where Chantal’s busts stood alongside her more whimsical work. “I wonder why they didn’t just ask you to do it?”

“Beats me.”

“Because of your
brujería,”
Bettina told Ellie.

As Ellie turned to her that strange buzzing that Tommy’s Aunt Sunday had woken in her whispered up her spine again.

“My what?” she said.

“Your magic. It is very potent. As is this mask. To make a new one as potent as the old needs a person such as you—someone with a powerful spirit as well as the necessary artistic skills.”

Twice in one day was just too weird. Like Sunday, Bettina stated it completely matter-of-factly, none of this glib, trying-to-impress, New Age, aren’t-we-spooky-and-wise-stuff here, which only made Ellie feel all the more uncomfortable with it. What was happening anyway? Did she have “I’m gullible, tease me about mysterious stuff” written on her forehead or something? But before she could get too caught up in the strange coincidence of it, Chantal gave one of her merry laughs.

“Bet you didn’t know we have our own resident wise woman,” she said. “Seriously. It’s kind of eerie the way Bettina can pick up on stuff no one else notices. And she makes these charms that really work.”

“Um, no offense,” Ellie said, “but I don’t really buy into that kind of thing.”

“You can be a friend of Jilly’s and say that?”

“I think Jilly has enough belief for the both of us and then some.”

Chantal smiled. “Yes. But don’t you
want
to believe?”

“Not really.”

“We’ll just have to win her over,” Chantal said to Bettina.

The dark-haired woman shook her head. “The spirits do not require anyone’s belief to exist. They were there at the beginning of the world and they will still be here, long after we are gone. Whether or not we believe in them is irrelevant.”

“She can be way more fun than this,” Chantal assured Ellie.

The twinkle in her eye made it plain she was teasing, but Bettina seemed to take it seriously.