Forests of the Heart (34 page)

“If this doesn’t let up soon,” Ellie said, “that’s going to become an all too-familiar sound.”

Bettina nodded. And they wouldn’t simply be falling in the woods. Trees and boughs would come toppling down onto houses, across streets, taking down power lines …

She turned to her companion. “Do you really think you should go out on a night such as this?”

“I have to,” Ellie told her. “It’s at times like this when the street people need us the most.”

“But—”

“You should come out with us sometime,” Ellie went on. “Maybe you could use your magic to help them.”

Bettina gave her a considering glance. She could tell that Ellie had surprised herself in saying that, was perhaps even a little embarrassed by it, considering her vehement denials to the subject earlier. Eh,
bueno.
Bettina didn’t blame the sculptor. Anything could be disconcerting, if you weren’t familiar with it. Something like
la brujería
would be even more so, since to someone like Ellie, it went against all she’d been taught and had experienced in the world to date. It wasn’t as though she had grown up with a
curandera
for a grandmother, or spent her whole life as Bettina had, with one foot in this world, one foot in the other.

“La brujería,”
she said, “only helps those who want to be helped, Ellie.”

“Don’t you have to believe as well?”

Bettina shook her head. “Does the sun require our belief before it can rise or set?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Bettina laughed. “Don’t look so glum. What’s happening to you doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

Before Ellie could reply, they heard the approach of an engine on the driveway, then saw the vehicle’s headbeams. A few moments later, the Angel Outreach van made its way up the last part of incline, tires slipping as they sought traction.

“Here’s my ride,” Ellie said, no doubt relieved at the timely rescue.

Bettina nodded.
“Cuidado,”
she said. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Bettina watched Ellie pick her way carefully across the icy driveway to where the van waited. Reaching the vehicle, the sculptor got in, waving before she closed the door behind her. Bettina returned the gesture. She waited until the van had made its slow way back down the sharp incline of the driveway before turning to go back inside, but once she’d closed the door on the wet night, she felt uncharacteristically restless. It was nothing she could put her finger on, only a disconnected feeling that had her wandering from one common room to another until she finally found herself in the kitchen. There she stood by the window and looked outside at the freezing rain, her gaze settling on the uninvited visitors who had gathered on the ice-covered lawns.

How could they be here again, on such a night… ?

She put on her coat and boots and went outside to where the wet night was waiting for her. The wet night and
los lobos.

Once outside, she paused for a long moment by the back door of the kitchen, sheltered from the freezing rain by its overhang, and watched the dark-haired men. They didn’t sit tonight, standing in their rough circle instead, still smoking their cigarettes, gazes still on the house. Not all of them at once, but there was always at least one of them regarding the building.

Basta,
she thought. Enough. She only had so much patience.

She pushed herself away from the door and started towards them, losing her balance in the process. Her boots slipped out from under her on the slick ice and she flailed her arms. She was falling, she would have fallen, except strong hands caught her from behind and held her upright. As she turned, her rescuer keeping a grip on her arms so that she wouldn’t lose her balance again, she found herself facing one of the wolves. Which one? She couldn’t tell at first. They were all too much alike. And when she glanced at where they’d been standing, there was no sign of them at all. The others had all slipped away and only this wolf remained, holding her arms the way one held a child just beginning to walk.

Despite herself, her pulse quickened when she realized he was the same one who had approached her the other night.

“Can you stand on your own?”
el lobo
asked her.

He let her go as he spoke and Bettina had to do an awkward shuffle to stay upright.

“Who are you?” she demanded when she finally had her balance. “What do you want from me?”

“Not even a thanks?”

“Perdona.
I am grateful for your help.”

Her hair was rapidly getting plastered against her head—a cold and decidedly uncomfortable sensation.
El lobo,
she noticed, wasn’t even damp. Nor had the others been. Of course. They were only partly in this world, enough to see and be seen, but not enough to be affected by the inclement weather. She concentrated for a moment and sidled into that in-between place herself. The relief from the freezing rain was immediate, though she still had a chill and her hair continued to drip icy water down the back of her neck.

“But you have questions,”
el lobo
said, smiling.

He began to walk across the lawn to where the woods began. Bettina couldn’t help but return the smile. She fell in step beside him, neither of them touched by the sleet, their footing steady in that in-between place.

“Claro,”
she said when they reached the first trees. Of course. There were always questions.

El lobo
nodded. “You asked what was wanted from you. They,” he nodded to where the other wolves had been, “want nothing. Their concern is with the sculptor.”

“They,” Bettina thought. He says “they.” Why not “we?”

“Do you mean Ellie?” she asked.

Again he nodded. “If that is her name.”

“But you’ve been out here long before she arrived.”

“There is another in that house with whom they have unfinished business.”

Once more it was “they.” But he didn’t have to identify Nuala by name for Bettina to know who he meant.

“What business?” she asked.

He shrugged. “That is between them. My interest is with you.”

Bettina schooled her features to show nothing of how he’d made her blood quicken. She considered all of Nuala’s warnings. Was this the moment when he would try to drag her off into the woods? She would have a surprise for him, if he tried. She was stronger than she looked, and not afraid to use that strength. But perhaps he’d come with gentler courting in mind.

“Do you have a name?” she asked, pretending a calm she didn’t feel.

“You may call me Scathmadra.”

Not, “My name is Scathmadra.” Only that she could call him by it, this
apodo
of his, and he would answer, but it would have no hold over him as would his true name. And what sort of a nickname was Scathmadra? A
felsos
name. A Gentry’s name.

“Bueno,”
Bettina said. “And what is it you want from me?”

“Your help.”

Bettina studied him for a moment, surprised. Was this who had called her up out of the desert, this wolf of a spirit who wouldn’t even share with her his true name?

“And yet you are the enemy,” she said.

His eyebrows rose in a question.

“I have been warned against you.”

“Who … ?” he began, then nodded. “Of course. The housekeeper. What did she say about us?”

Now he included himself with the others, Bettina noted.

“Only that you mean me no good.
¿Y bien?”

“I cannot speak for the others,” he told her, “but for myself… you could be putting yourself in danger if you agree to help me.”

“Danger from whom?”

“The others.”

Bettina smiled humorlessly. “And yet you are one of them.”

“No,” he corrected. “I am part of them, but no more one of them than you are one of your father’s
peyoteros.”

“What do you know of my father?”

“That we share a kinship, no matter how distant.”

He spoke the truth. Bettina couldn’t explain it any more than she could this unfamiliar attraction she felt towards him. It wasn’t that he was so handsome. She had met handsome men before.

“No one in my family has ever been to Ireland,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

She had to shake her head.

“I’ve never been there either,” he said.

“But…”

“And neither have the wolves. They were born and bred here, but they are no more native to the land than are those who sired them. And if anything, their hunger for the land is stronger than that of their parents. All they’ve ever had to claim for their own are the cities—and those they have to share with mankind. Outside of the cities, others hold sway. Your people.”

“My…?”

Bettina didn’t try to hide her confusion.

“Peyoteros,
like your uncles.”

He meant shaman, she realized, rather than the peyote men in particular.

“And other, older spirits,” he went on. “Like your father.”

“My father was a man.”

“Was he?”

Bettina didn’t have to close her eyes to picture the hawks, soaring above the desert.

“Not all of your uncles needed a ceremony to change their shape,”
el lobo
went on. “And your father never did.”

Bettina had always suspected as much. It explained the claim the desert had on him. Why her
mama
was so patient with his absences. You didn’t tame a wild creature; you only shared his company.

“How do
you
know him?” she asked.

“I didn’t know him. I only know of him. I…”

He hesitated.

“Bueno,”
Bettina told him. “If you want my help, then you must be honest with me.”

He waited a heartbeat longer, then nodded in agreement.

“Few in this present day and age ask for truth as payment,” he said.

“I didn’t say it was payment.”

He smiled, rakish again for a brief moment. “No, but it will be. You will see.”

“¿Y
bien?
I see only a wolf in man’s skin who loves the sound of his own voice too much—especially when he talks in riddles. It may amuse you, but it annoys me.”

“I apologize.”

Bettina refused to let him win her over so easily.

“Tell me this truth of yours.”

“Did your father or grandmother—”

How do you know my
abuela
as well? she wanted to ask, but she made herself listen to him, to hold her questions and let him finish.

“—ever speak to you of shadow people?”

Bettina regarded him for a long moment, remembering a conversation she’d had with Abuela on one of their desert rambles. “You must be careful,” she’d said, “of all the parts of yourself that you discard. It might make you feel good and strong, denying hatred and anger and whatever other base emotions you manage to set aside, but remember this: they can take on a life of their own. And the stronger, the more potent your
brujería,
the stronger this shadow self will be. Better to hold these things inside, to accept that you can feel such things the same as any other does, rather than deny them. Hold them fast, bind them in some hidden place inside you where they can harm no one but you can still guard them. Freed, there is the chance that they will become an enemy, one strong enough that few can easily dispel.”

“She called them
sombritas”
she said.
“Las pequeñas sombras
—little shadows.”

El lobo
nodded. “As good a name for them as any.” He fell silent, gaze turned inward to some distant memory, Bettina thought, before blinking back to the present. “I was a
sombrita”
he told her. “I was all the discarded pieces of the one who leads these displaced Gentry, a tattered and fraying bundle of hope and kindness and whatever else he wouldn’t keep in that black heart of his.”

“But
sombritas
have no real substance,” Bettina said, interrupting despite herself. “They are little more than uncertain ghosts or … or …”

“An aisling,”
he said, his voice gone soft. “A dream.”

“I suppose…”

“And they can take on substance,” he went on. “Surely your grandmother told you that as well?”

Bettina nodded. “She said they could be dangerous.”

El lobo
gave her a feral grin. “She spoke truly. I
am
dangerous.”

Bettina swallowed thickly, but managed to stay her ground.

“So you are his shadow?” she asked. “The one who leads the pack.”

“Indeed.”

“What is his name?”

“We don’t have names,”
el lobo
told her, “except for those you give us. We have no need for names amongst ourselves, no more than a true wolf has need for a name. We know who we are.”

So he hadn’t been keeping his name from her, she thought. She refused to consider why this should please her.

“¿Y bien?”
she said. “How does this explain your kinship—” To me, she almost said. “—to my father?”

“While what you call
sombritas
have no substance of their own, they can acquire substance.”

“I know this.”

El lobo
nodded.

Bettina felt uneasy now. What he said was true, but Abuela had told her that the way the shadow people gained substance was by acquiring the bodies of the recently dead.

She frowned at him. “What is it that you’re saying?”

“I harmed no one,” he assured her. “But I found one dying, a spirit of this land. Before he passed on, I asked him for his body and he gave it to me.”

“His body … ?”

“The shell he would leave behind. I made this of it.”
El lobo
touched his chest. “This shape I wear.”

“From this you claim kinship?” she said. What he suggested seemed preposterous.

He nodded. “We are blood kin through this body. Distant, it is true, but still kin. And
an felsos
can claim kinship to my spirit. So I have a foot in each of their worlds, the same way we stand in between time and timelessness in this place.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I spoke the truth when I said that helping me could be dangerous for you. I have no idea how much control the pack leader has over me. It is possible he can influence me, make me do things I would not do of my own free will.”