Forests of the Heart

  He was a looter, she thought. Because there was no way anyone from the Beaches would be driving such a scruffy old truck. But he didn’t look mean, and she was so bloody wet and tired, and he was going right to Handfast, and what was he going to get from her anyway? There was nothing to loot except a baseball bat and she was sure she didn’t exactly look the picture of enticement and allure, no matter how hard-up he might be. She was more like some half-drowned alley cat.

  “Okay,” she said, sliding her way over to the pickup. “Thanks.”

  When she got in, he turned up the heat then reached behind the seat and pulled out a colorful Mexican blanket which he handed to her.

  “Here,” he said. “Maybe this will help you warm up a little. There’s coffee in the thermos.”

  Oh, lord. Coffee. Warmth.

  She hesitated a moment, then took the blanket and wrapped it around herself.

  “How come you’re being so nice to me?” she asked.

  He gave her a surprised look.

  “I don’t mean to be rude or anything,” she went on, “but it just seems a little weird. It’s not like you know me or anything.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a better world if we all looked out for each other?”

  “Well, yeah,” Miki replied. “Except it’d also mean that we were on Mars or something.”

  He gave her a thin smile. Putting the pickup into gear, he started it on its forward crawl once more.

  “I think this storm is a good thing,” he said. “It reminds us that we don’t have to live in a faceless city, where we are all strangers. We are a collection of communities. To get by, we need to count on each other.”

  “Until someone stabs you in the back.”

  “I live over on the East Side,” he told her.

  Miki nodded to show she was listening, though she didn’t understand the context of what he was telling her. There was a regular barrio there in amongst the projects, separate from, yet a part of the cheap housing the city had put up for those in need of shelter. The buildings had all been filled up and fallen into disrepair almost before they’d been erected.

  “Today,” her Good Samaritan went on, “I saw known drug dealers and gang members helping neighborhood widows clear ice from their roofs, pick up groceries, move their families to the shelters when they lost their power.”

  “And the point being?”

  He shrugged. “We are working together for a change. I find myself wishing this community spirit was something that would last beyond the storm.”

  Miki nodded. She helped herself to a Kleenex tissue from the box on the dash, then poured herself a cup of the coffee. All she needed now was a cigarette.

  “So why are you going to the Beaches?” she asked.

  “I work on one of the Estates,” he said. “At a place called Kellygnow. Their phone is out and I’m worried about how they are doing. I would not have come but Maria Elena—my wife—could see how I was worrying, so after I took her to stay with a neighbor who still has electricity, she told me to go.” He glanced at Miki. “I would not have left her otherwise.”

  Miki felt about two inches tall.

  “I thought you were a looter,” she said.

  “Why? Because I’m Latino?”

  “God, no. Because of the truck. I mean, can you see the rich hoity-toits up there driving something like this?”

  “And now?” he asked.

  “I feel like a bloody eejit.”

  He smiled and took a hand from the wheel, offering it to her. “I am Salvador Flores.”

  “Miki Greer,” she said, shaking.

  “Should that not be Minnie?”

  “What… ? Oh, right. Ha ha. Big Disney fan, then?”

  “So where are you going?” he asked.

  “Same place as you—Kellygnow.”

  “I’ve not seen you there before.”

  “I’ve never been there before,” she told him. “But I think my brother’s gone up there to cause some trouble and I want to stop him before he does.”

  Salvador frowned. “Trouble? What sort of trouble?”

  “I wish I knew. He’s fallen in with a rough crowd. Do you know anything about the Gentry?”

  He shook his head. When Miki went on to describe the hard men, he added, “I’ve seen no one like that on the grounds.”

  “Then maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re not at Kellygnow.”

  “I hope they’re not. We don’t need more trouble. The weather’s enough.”

  “Nobody needs trouble,” Miki said.

  She sunk lower in her seat and finished off her coffee. She was warmer, but that only made her wet clothes that much more clammy and uncomfortable. Her throat was feeling worse by the minute.

  “You are not a happy woman,” Salvador said after a few moments.

  Wet and bedraggled as she was, who would be? But she knew that wasn’t what he meant.

  “There hasn’t been a lot of good going on in my life these days,” she said. “Too many disappointments, I guess.”

  “Because of your brother?”

  Miki shook her head. “Not really. I’m more disappointed in myself.”

  “That’s not so good,” Salvador said. “In the end, all you have is yourself.”

  And when that’s shite? Miki wondered. Great. That made her feel just bloody wonderful. But he was right. If you couldn’t like yourself, how could you expect anybody else to like you?

  “Do you mind if I have a smoke?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “But we’ve arrived.”

  She looked up through the windshield as he pulled over towards the curb. The pickup slid to a stop against the sidewalk. Salvador shifted into neutral and put on the hand brake.

  “Or at least we’ve come as far as the truck will take us.”

  No kidding, Miki thought. Handfast Road was one solid sheet of ice going up the hill. There was no way the pickup could make it up that slippery grade. She didn’t think anyone could even walk up it.

  “Perhaps you should stay in the truck,” he added. “There’s plenty of gas and you can warm up while you wait.”

  “No,” Miki told him. “This is something I’ve got to do.”

  Salvador shrugged. Reaching behind the seat again, he pulled out a yellow rain slicker to match the one he was wearing.

  “Put this on,” he said. “It’s Maria Elena’s, but she won’t mind.”

  “Thanks.”

  He waited for her on the pavement while she struggled to put the rain slicker on. Outside she lost her balance, but he plucked her up as she was falling and set her on her feet. He was strong, she thought.

  “We can’t use the road,” he said, nodding towards it with his chin.

  Miki took in the ice-slick slope of the street once more and sighed. Lighting a cigarette, she let him lead the way around behind the houses where they crunched a path through the crust of snow that covered the lawns in back.

  3

  After all he’d experienced in the past twenty-four hours, Hunter felt he shouldn’t have been surprised by anything at this point. He’d already learned the hard way that the world held far more in its familiar boundaries than he could ever have imagined. It was all so astonishing, from the mean-spirited threat of the Gentry to the quiet awe of the native manitou, never mind the business of avoiding the ice storm by moving through some between place where the foul weather couldn’t touch them. But nothing could have prepared him for that moment when they stepped from winter into autumn.

  The otherworld forest reared about them like some fairy-tale wood. There was nothing New World about it. Any time Hunter had been in the bush around Newford it was all undergrowth, the spaces between the trees choked with new growth, fallen trees, weeds, saplings, brambles. This forest was like something out of the Brothers Grimm. The trees were the size of redwoods, rearing up to impossible heights, except they were oaks and ashes, chestnuts and beech, trees that had no business being this big. The ground between them was covered with ferns
and a carpet of moss and fallen leaves that was springy and soft underfoot.

  “So there really is a wood beyond the world,” Ellie said, her voice holding the same astonishment and awe he was feeling.

  He turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just this book I read when I was a teenager. I fell in love with the art of the Pre-Raphaelities, so I thought I’d try one of William Morris’s novels.”

  “I thought he designed furniture and wallpaper patterns and that kind of stuff.”

  She nodded. “He did. He also painted and drew, had his own printing press and designed books, wrote essays and poetry, and still found the time to invent the fantasy novel while he was at it.”

  “How very interesting,” Aunt Nancy said. “And how will this help us with the Glasduine?”

  They both started, having forgotten her presence. Hunter turned to face the older woman’s frowning features.

  “Look,” he said, surprising himself that he could talk back so firmly to her. “We’re just trying to put this into some kind of perspective, okay? I know it’s all old business for you, but we’re feeling kind of cut off from anything that makes any sense. So if we grab a few moments of just normal conversation, it’s not because we don’t care. It’s because we’re trying to connect, if only for a moment, to something that actually does make some sense.”

  Aunt Nancy regarded him with a long considering look, then smiled. For some reason, Hunter wasn’t particularly put at ease by that smile.

  “You’ll do,” she said. “Take your moment. I have some business of my own to attend to.”

  She walked a little way from them and sat down on the roots of one of the giant oaks, her backpack between her legs as she rummaged around in it. For all her talk about being an old woman, not to mention the fact that she looked her sixty-plus years, she moved with an easy grace that Hunter had only ever seen in dancers and gymnasts.

  “Can you see it?” Ellie whispered to him.

  “See what?”

  “It’s like her shadow’s got a mind of its own—and it doesn’t even have her shape. It looks more like this huge spider.”

  “Oh, man …”

  He didn’t see it, but he could all too easily imagine it. Somehow he knew that he was never going to be able to trust anything anymore, that what he actually saw was ever all that was there.

  “What’s she doing now?” Ellie asked.

  Hunter shook his head. He had no idea.

  As they watched, Aunt Nancy used the side of one boot to clear a flat patch of ground by her feet. Then she took a small pouch from her backpack and shook a handful of what looked like bird bones into the palm of her hand. Setting the pouch aside, she cupped her hands around the bones and gave them a brisk shake before dropping them onto the dirt.

  “Hmm,” she said.

  Hunter and Ellie approached her. Hunter could see nothing in the pattern of the bones, but Ellie seemed entranced.

  “They’re so full of light,” she said.

  Aunt Nancy nodded. “I’ve had them for a long time. Things people like us use a lot tend to store medicine like a battery.”

  “What are they?” Hunter asked. “Something like an oracle?”

  She gave him a grin. “Something like that.”

  “So what do you see in them?”

  “More questions than answers,” she replied. She swept the bones up and replaced them in their pouch. “I was hoping to get a fix on the Glasduine, but it’s too new-born. Doesn’t have much scent. Doesn’t really leave a trail. And it’s not using its medicine, so I can’t track it by that either. What little it has used is just kind of spreading out like a mist and soaking into everything.”

  Looking up at them, she added, “But the interesting thing is, we’re not the only ones out here looking for it.”

  “The Gentry,” Ellie said.

  Aunt Nancy shook her head. “Nope, I caught a trace of them, but they’ve lit a shuck for the territories, so far as I can tell. Finally gave up on trying to take what wasn’t theirs, I’m guessing, and they’ve headed somewhere else where the pickings might be easier. West, it seems, though compass directions aren’t as reliable here as back home.”

  “Then who?” Hunter asked.

  “Can’t tell for sure. There’s two of them—full of medicine, but nobody I know. Everybody’s got a kind of signature, you know, the way the medicine runs in them, how they use it, if they use it. So what’s strange is, one of this pair reminds me of a spirit guide I met back when I was a girl. Hadn’t seen him for a time and then I heard he died some years back.”

  “And the other?”

  “That one’s got First People medicine, real strong, but not any kind I know.”

  “You mean Native American?” Ellie asked.

  “No. Older than that.”

  Hunter and Ellie exchanged glances. Hunter couldn’t shake the impression that this new complication had Aunt Nancy feeling nervous, and if she was feeling nervous, how were he and Ellie supposed to feel?

  “So is this good or bad news?” he asked.

  Aunt Nancy shrugged. Standing up, she brushed bark and moss from her jeans, then swung her pack onto her back.

  “Hard to tell,” she said. “The good news is that while we can’t track the Glasduine, we can follow them. Kind of like tracking the coyote that’s hunting the rabbit we’re really after.”

  “And the bad news?” Ellie asked.

  “We don’t know what the coyote wants.”

  “So … are they dangerous?” Hunter asked.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Aunt Nancy replied. “They’re powerful. And everything you meet in the spiritworld has the potential of being dangerous. But there’s no point in worrying over any of it right now. We’ve got a ways to go before we run into them. I know a few shortcuts, but nothing like they seem to know.”

  Ellie and Hunter fell in step behind her as she set off. The awe that Hunter had felt when they’d crossed over into the spiritworld had shifted into nervousness. Every tree trunk, he realized, could hide some danger. Some big danger, because these weren’t exactly shrubs. Then he had to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Ellie asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s not really funny, ha ha. I was just thinking of how Ria was on at me about getting out of the ruts of my life.”

  “So?”

  “Well, look at where we are, what we’re doing. I mean how far could I have gotten from the way things were than where we are now?”

  “Point,” Ellie said. “But at least we’re not alone.”

  “Like I said before we crossed over,” he told her. “I’m in for the duration.”

  She offered him her hand. “I’m glad you came.”

  “Well, you know, this is the weirdest date I’ve ever been on.”

  “We’re on a date?”

  “I’d like to think so,” he said. “Helps make it seem more normal. I mean, first dates are always a little awkward, don’t you think?”

  She leaned closer and kissed his cheek.

  “You’re an idiot,” she told him.

  “But an idiot on a date.”

  She smiled. “Definitely a date. But what’ll we do for a second one?”

  “I was thinking of a trip to the moon.”

  She gave him a whack on the shoulder with her free hand, but she laughed and squeezed his fingers at the same time.

  Hunter wanted to keep it light. That way it wouldn’t feel as weird as it was. It would stop him from brooding about what he’d done already, what he might have to do when they caught up with this thing they were chasing. He glanced ahead to catch Aunt Nancy giving them a look. Her eyes were so dark, her features stoic; she was impossible to read. He thought she might say something again about how they should be taking things seriously, but then she smiled. Turning her head forward again, she continued to lead them on.

  4

  “So,” el lobo said. “Do you think they remember that you’re
supposed to be friends?”

  “No lo sé,” Bettina told him. I don’t know.

  Because it was impossible to say. These cadejos weren’t the whimsical creatures she’d taken to heart all those years ago. In their place had come strangers to answer her call, dark-eyed, aloof, and dangerous. They neither spoke nor sang and that silence frightened Bettina more than anything. There was no happy dancing, little cloven hooves keeping time as they clicked and clacked on the stones. No childlike songs. These cadejos approached on stiff legs, the hackles of their brightly coloured fur lifted at the back of their necks and down along their spine.

  “But can we blame them for their anger?” she added. “Perhaps I was never such a good friend to them. Does a true friend shut you out of their life the way I did with them?”

  “I suppose not,” her wolf said.

  He moved closer to her, standing in such a way that should the dogs attack, he could easily step forward to protect her. But Bettina put a hand on his shoulder and gently moved him to one side.

  “We’re not here to fight,” she said. “But to ask forgiveness.” She turned her attention back to the little rainbow dogs. “¿Me perdona?” she asked of them. Will you forgive me?

  Still they remained silent, dark gazes watching them with the singular intent of hunters. She saw there were seven of them. Que extraño. How odd, she thought, that she should be able to number them like this. They’d never stayed still for long enough before for her to get an accurate count, always dancing, gamboling, never all of them quite in her line of sight at the same time. Now they sat in a half-circle, the colors of their pelts making a peculiar, furry rainbow against the desert soil—like one that had been drawn by a child who had her own idea as to how the bands of colors should be ordered.

  “You know I meant you no harm,” she said. “But my sorrow was so great. When the clown dog came and led Abuela away …”

  “No somos la Maravilla,” one of them finally said.

  Its voice gave away nothing of what it was feeling, but at least they had spoken, Bettina thought. At least they were willing to communicate. She knelt on the ground to bring herself closer to the level of their heads. Beside her, el lobo followed suit, sitting on his heels.