Forests of the Heart (52 page)

That was more like it. Being able to move like this could almost make up for not having a body, though being unable to drink in this form was definitely shite. Jaysus, but he had a thirst.

One thing at a time, he told himself.

He directed himself towards the Glasduine just as the creature crashed its way through the windows, taking down huge chunks of the stone walls with it as it pushed its way out onto the lawn.

Now that was subtle, Donal thought, the great big stupid git. Tell the whole bloody world you’re here, why don’t you? Though he supposed the Glasduine wouldn’t care. After all, what could hurt it? Nothing in this world, that was sure.

It didn’t slip on the ice outside—either it was too heavy of foot and deliberate in its movement or, more likely, too grounded, too much a part of the heartbeat of the world to be inconvenienced by ice and slush.

As it lumbered across the lawn, he willed himself to its side, sticking to one of its enormous shoulders like a burr on a wolf’s pelt. Contact made the Glasduine aware of him, but it also opened the creature up to him and his mind filled with the roil and burn of its thoughts.

No! he thought, breaking away to float in the Glasduine’s wake. I never wanted any of that.

But even as he denied it, he knew the images he’d seen were based on the endless fantasies he’d carried around in his head. Of revenge for a life of hurt. Of a final payback to all the shites who’d done him wrong. Of wallowing in oceans of Guinness with any woman he bloody well fancied to be had for the bedding.

Inside the Glasduine’s mind, Donal had seen it viewing itself awash in blood and gore, creating some huge fresco on the side of a building with body parts and organs, blood, and the tears of the dead and the dying while the sky rained whiskey and Guinness. Some mad reel played dissonantly against the sound of a storm and all around the Glasduine’s feet lay naked women, broken and weeping, discarded now that the creature was done with them. Donal had recognized familiar faces in amongst those of strangers. Ellie and Bettina and—

Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.

Miki.

If he’d had a body, Donal would have lost the contents of his stomach at that moment. As it was, he reeled in sick disbelief that he’d brought such a thing into existence.

Where was the wonder, the calm power, the majesty of the Green Wood captured in human form? Not in this monster.

His gaze followed the Glasduine as it lumbered on through the woods, its passage quieting as it grew more assured with its new physical form.

I never wanted any of that, he thought. I only wanted my due, for the world to play me fair for once. Not that. Never that.

But it didn’t matter what he’d wanted before he picked up the mask, or what he wanted now. Regrets never solved anything. The Glasduine was born, brought into this world by his own small-minded arrogance, and it was up to him to set things right before the monster ravaged the world. If even one innocent was harmed, Donal knew he was damned forever.

But sweet Jaysus, where did he even begin to stop it?

Contacting that foul mind again was the last thing he wanted, but he knew he had no choice. He had to confront the Glasduine. So he followed after, steeling himself for what was to come. It would not be an easy struggle, he knew. The chances were bloody good that he wouldn’t survive it either. But that didn’t matter so much anymore. He didn’t matter at all. Only that the Glasduine was stopped.

Because perhaps the worst thing of all was that the Glasduine had also discarded parts of itself when it was born and these lay inside Donal’s spirit now, dormant, sleeping, never to waken. They were all the things the Glasduine could have been. Prosperity for the natural world. A presence in the wild that would rekindle the awe and wonder that mankind had once held for the forests and hills that had lain unclaimed and untamed beyond their farm lots and city walls. An old magic that Donal had quenched with the raw torrent of his angers and hatred.

Fergus and his cronies had lied, Donal realized. The Gentry, that hag in her cabin. All of them. What the Glasduine should have been wasn’t some chess piece to be moved about on a gaming board. It was an echo of the life spirit itself, of all that was good in the world. If it was to be reawoken, it would be to bring an echo of that grace back into the world. But just as he’d allowed rage to corrupt himself, he had corrupted that old magic. Others might have lied to him, but he had actually called it up and fed it with his despair and rage. He was the serpent in the garden and he had no one to blame but himself.

He could see the Glasduine ahead of him again, moving silent as a ghost through the trees, each of them covered with a frozen sheath of ice. The creature didn’t dislodge a single icicle or twig as it moved. Neither did Donal, though he would have given much to be able to do so. He’d rather turn back the clock, he’d rather be stumbling around in these frozen woods in his own body, risking hypothermia, with the Glasduine never woken. But wishes were shite.

He launched himself at the Glasduine, not clinging to its shoulder this time, but plunging deep into the morass that was its mind. And there they fought for control of Donal’s transformed body. The Glasduine had the advantage of the greater strength, but Donal had the stubbornness of a Gael. The more he was beaten and pushed away, the harder he clung, the deeper he burrowed into the miasma of the Glasduine’s mind.

Time lost any meaning. They might have struggled for only moments; they might have struggled to the edge of forever. Battered and numbed, Donal held firm, but he knew it was a losing battle. He simply didn’t have the strength. Unlike the Glasduine, he had no mystical reserves to call upon. He had only himself, and a weakened, subdued version of himself at that. He knew it was only a matter of time before the Glasduine dealt with him and the carnage would begin.

But then, just as he was losing all hope, he caught a flicker of motion from the corner of the Glasduine’s eye, saw with its vision shadow shapes flitting through the ice-bedecked trees. They were a long way off, more in the between, or even the otherworld, than the world of the here and now, but he marked them, recognized them, saw a use for them.

There,
he told the Glasduine, directing the creature’s attention in their direction.
There is the true enemy,

It had acquired his most powerful emotions and one of strongest among them was the resentment and hatred he’d felt towards the Gentry for the way they treated him like such a useless little shite. He wasn’t sure that the Glasduine would understand or care at this point, but it grunted when it recognized the shapes. With a roar, it set off in pursuit. Donal clung to the Glasduine’s mind, egging it on.

Finally there was a use for the buggers, he thought as the Gentry fled.

He just hoped they’d lead the Glasduine long and deep into the other-world, so far that it might never find a way back to this world where he’d so stupidly called it up.

They returned to the city in only a fraction of the time it had taken Tommy to drive them up to the rez the night before. Driving smoothly through the between, unencumbered by either the weather or poor driving conditions, they were soon coming down from the mountains and approaching the outskirts proper.

“Look,” Hunter said, his voice reflecting the awe he was obviously feeling. “There they go.”

Ellie leaned on the side of the truck bed and watched the
manitou
step away, moving deeper in amongst the ice-covered trees. They faded like deer or wolves, seen for a moment along the highway, then gone, but she knew they were so much more. An ache woke in her heart when they were gone.

What if I never see them again? she wondered.

Sunday touched her arm.

“You will,” she said, as though Ellie had spoken the words aloud. At Ellie’s surprised look, the older woman added with a smile, “You look just the way I felt the first time I saw them—like your best friend had disappeared. But don’t worry. Part of their mystery is that once you become aware of them, you will always be able to see them again.”

“I like the way you put that,” Hunter said. “They did feel like friends. A little scarier than the people I normally hang out with, mind you, but there was definitely some deep connection thing happening here.”

Ellie nodded, wondering if she’d be able to hold enough of them in her mind to sculpt them, though she had no idea how she would even begin to bring them to life. So much of them lay between the lines of what one saw. But if she could capture even a fraction of the feelings they’d woken in her, she’d have accomplished some remarkable work indeed.

Tommy pulled over to the side of the road then and she had to hold onto the side of the truck bed for balance. Looking in through the back window of the cab, she could see him arguing with Aunt Nancy. She rapped on the window and Tommy slid it open.

“What’s the problem?” she asked.

“Aunt Nancy wants us to drive straight up to Kellygnow.”

“But wasn’t that the plan?”

Tommy nodded. “Except we’re in the big wide world now. What’s going to happen when people see us cruising by, easy as you please, making time the way we are on roads that nobody else can use?”

“I don’t really see the problem.”

“Maybe not now. But some cop sees us, he’s going to wonder, take down my plate number, and then, when this is all over, I’m going to have to answer questions I don’t have answers for. I’m supposed to tell them about the between?”

“Why don’t we go by the
manidó-akí?”
Sunday said.

“If you can find me a road in the otherworld, I’m game,” Tommy told her. “But this is no all-terrain vehicle. I’m guessing we’ll get about the length of a meadow.”

“What we need,” Zulema said from where she sat between Aunt Nancy and Tommy, “is for Nancy to put a charm on the truck, but—” She glanced to her right. “Someone considers that a waste of her juju.”

“Who cares what white people think?” Aunt Nancy asked. She glanced back at Ellie and Hunter and added, “No offense.”

“Tommy has to live here,” Sunday said. “I think we should respect his wishes.”

“No, Tommy
chose
to live here.”

“Hey, Tommy’s sitting in the cab with you,” Tommy said, “and he’s getting real tired of being referred to in the third person.”

“That’s the problem with these Raven boys,” Aunt Nancy said. “Can’t seem to get them into mischief when you want to; can’t get them out when you don’t.”

“Please?” Zulema asked.

Aunt Nancy gave a heavy sigh. “Oh, fine. Put an old woman out.”

She opened the passenger door and stepped onto the side of the road, moving with exaggerated stiffness. Once she was outside, she gave a theatrical stretch, then went around to the four corners of the pickup. Muttering to herself, she took pinches of some powder out of a small buckskin bag and sprinkled it on the end of each bumper.

“Is she always like that?” Ellie whispered once Aunt Nancy was back in the cab.

“Only when she doesn’t get her own way,” Sunday replied, also in a whisper.

“I heard that,” Aunt Nancy said through the window. Then she turned to Tommy. “Well? What are you waiting for, Raven boy? Drive.”

“Um…”

“Don’t worry. No one will see us. Or they will, but they’ll see something they’re expecting to see, not precisely us.”

“It’s okay,” Zulema said.

So Tommy started up the truck and on they went again.

The city, once they were driving through it, was a disaster zone. Ellie felt as though they were in some end-of-the-world movie. The ice was a slick carpet covering everything. Trees and telephone poles littered the sides of the road; buildings were all dark. There were next to no people. There were no other vehicles, except for those that had been abandoned at curbs and medians, though once they got closer to the city core they saw hydro trucks and various army vehicles.

No one gave them a second glance, but Tommy got off Williamson as soon as he could anyway. He drove toward the Beaches by back streets, crossing the river at the Kelly Street Bridge, then taking River Road through the Butler University campus to where it met up with Lakeside Drive. If anything, the storm damage was worse once they got to the Beaches. Or perhaps it only seemed worse, since no one had been working on clearing the streets of fallen trees and utility poles so they were strewn where they’d fallen—across porches and houses, crushing vehicles, blocking parts of the street. Twice they had to turn around and find an alternate route, but eventually they reached Handfast Road and began the long climb up to Kellygnow.

Ellie stared around herself in shock. There was so much damage from the ice storm. She glanced at Hunter.

“You wouldn’t think that something as simple as freezing rain could create such a disaster zone, would you?”

“Depends on how much of the stuff you get,” Hunter replied.

Ellie nodded, still stunned at the chaos that surrounded them.

When they finally reached Kellygnow, Aunt Nancy directed Tommy to drive by the house, crossing the lawn and then in between the trees. She had him park by the Recluse’s cabin and everybody scrambled out. Aunt Nancy turned to Zulema.

“Ellie and I will go on alone from here,” she said. “See if you can find where the creature crossed over, then use its spoor to lay a doubling-back charm that will return it to the spiritworld whenever it tries to cross over here. You remember how to do that?”

Both Zulema and Sunday nodded, but Ellie was sure she hadn’t heard right.

“You want
me
to go with you?” she said.

“Of course. Who else? You wanted to help, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes. But why me? I don’t know anything.”

Aunt Nancy’s dark gaze settled on her.

“I need you,” she said, “because your medicine is stronger than any I have seen outside of the spiritworld. Between the two of us … you have the medicine and I know how to use it. If we’re lucky, that will be enough. And no,” she added, turning to Tommy. “You’re not coming. Remember what White-duck said.”

“He didn’t say I was in any real danger,” Tommy said. “Only that I would be involved.”