Forests of the Heart

  Then the light swallowed him and he was gone.

  18

  Bettina stared in growing horror as the Glasduine batted away her cadejos. She could feel the creature growing stronger, rather than weakening. She saw its power flood out into its vida en hilodela, fouling the purity of the greens and golds until the ribbon boiled and foamed. The light lost its intensity. It became discolored and spent as it sped back to its source while the Glasduine stood taller than it had before. Something was sprouting from where los cadejos had torn off its arm, a bristle of twigs and buds that quickened and grew as she watched.

  “We blew it,” Ellie said. She stood so close the words were like a breath in Bettina’s ear.

  Though Bettina shook her head, she couldn’t even convince herself. Her cadejos continued to rush at the Glasduine but it was much stronger than the little dogs now and it was all they could do to keep it backed up against the wall of the canyon. Ellie’s clay mask was still attached to the creature’s face, the features mobile now, the good humor and warmth of the saguaro that Ellie had infused into it distorted and changing.

  What had gone wrong? Bettina had been so sure that they’d found a creative solution rather than a destructive one. That they could heal the Glasduine, turn it from the awful path it had stumbled upon when Donal first called it up. But the healing hadn’t taken. Instead the Glasduine’s dark nature had swallowed the brujería of the mask, spoiling it like a cancerous growth as it rampaged through a once-healthy body.

  For some things it seemed there was no healing. That realization made the world feel like a smaller place, raising walls where once the view had been unending. Except…

  Bettina looked down at her hands.

  She’d learned today of the healing gift she’d been given. But such healing required the laying on of hands. And strength. More strength than she had, certainly, but she wasn’t alone here.

  “No,” her wolf said as she turned to Ellie.

  Oh, he was quick, that one, Bettina thought. He could read her like a tracker read signs.

  But she shook off his grip.

  “Ellie,” she said. “Will you lend me your brujería as you did Aunt Nancy?”

  “Bettina, please,” her wolf tried.

  Los cadejos chorused their own protests.

  “No good will come of this,” they cried.

  “The monster is too strong.”

  “You can only flee.”

  “We will hold it back as long as we can.”

  “But go now.”

  “¡Pronto!¡Pronto!”

  “We must flee.”

  “Do what you must,” she told them. “And so will I. Ellie?” she asked again.

  The sculptor gave her a slow nod.

  “I understand your fear,” Bettina told her. “I’m scared, too.”

  “No, no, no!” los cadejos cried.

  “You risk your life.”

  “You risk your wings.”

  “You risk our home.”

  Bettina ignored them. She looked to Aunt Nancy.

  “I’m not in the kind of league that can handle this sort of thing,” the older woman said, nodding at the monster with her chin, “but you’ve got my support. If I can do anything …”

  “Only say the word,” el lobo told her.

  “You’ve changed your mind?” Bettina asked.

  He shook his head. “Not about our chances. But I was never going to walk away and leave you to face this on your own.”

  “Count me in, too,” Hunter said. He stood with his arm around Miki whose gaze remained locked on the Glasduine. “Don’t know what use I can be, but…”

  Miki finally looked away, turning her anguished gaze to Bettina.

  “Just finish it,” she said.

  “You can all help,” Bettina told them. “Pray for us. Lend us your hopes and strengths.”

  Aunt Nancy nodded. She crossed her arms, making an X of them upon her chest. The shadow of a spider rose up behind her, inclining its head to the shadow of a hawk that lifted its strong features behind Bettina in response to the spider’s appearance.

  Anansi, the hawk said, its voice ringing in all their minds. You are far from home.

  The spider shook its head. Not I, it replied. I am but an echo of my father’s presence.

  As am I, the hawk replied.

  “Àngwàizin,” Aunt Nancy said.

  Bettina smiled. Yes, she thought. That was what was needed here. Luck, not power. The borrowed, not the owned. And the reminder that not all the spirits of la época del mito stood against them—only this one, and even it was not to blame for the horror it had become.

  She reached forward and took Ellie’s hands.

  “Hold my shoulders,” she said.

  She gave Ellie’s fingers a squeeze, then let go and turned around. Ellie hesitated for a moment, then placed her hands on Bettina’s shoulders and fell in step behind her as Bettina approached the monster.

  The Glasduine was twice as large now, barely contained by the wearied cadejos, a towering monstrosity that seemed only mildly affected by the pain that had so ravaged it earlier. Its lost arm had partially grown back. Glittering eyes focused their gaze on the two women. The kind smile Ellie had worked into the red clay of the mask twisted into a grin.

  At Bettina’s approach, los cadejos finally broke from the Glasduine. One by one, they circled the two women, flowing like quicksilver, a shimmering rainbow of colored fur. Then, as they had so many years ago in another part of la época del mito, on the slopes below the Baboquivari Mountains, they entered her, vanishing into her torso like ghosts. Spirit dogs, adding their strengths to hers.

  Bettina knew a surreal calmness. Her father had told her about it once, how it could come to you when you were in enemy territory and all the odds were against you. You told yourself, I won’t get out of this alive. I am already dead and there is nothing to be gained by worrying over the exact details, the how and when of it happening.

  She held the rosary her mother had sent her in one hand, the strand of desert seeds wrapped round and round her palm, the carved cross hanging free. She called on the spirits of the desert, on the saints and the Virgin, to help her with this healing.

  The Glasduine grinned hugely. It opened its arms to embrace them, the one arm stunted, the other long, a supple branch. Then lifting from between its legs came a third appendage, knobbed and swollen.

  “Oh god, oh god,” Ellie moaned.

  The sculptor gripped Bettina’s shoulders too tightly, hands shaking.

  But neither the proximity of the Glasduine nor her companion’s fear were able to pierce the calm that had come over Bettina. Part of this was a gift from los cadejos, she realized, given to her so that she could face the creature unencumbered by fear, clear-headed, her entire being focused and sure.

  Bettina drew on Ellie’s brujería and felt the warm pulse of it flow into her. She heard the supportive chants of los cadejos echoing deep inside her. The spirits of the desert drew close, the living presence of the aunts and uncles; of coyote, mesquite, and marigold; of cholla, lizard, and mountain lion; of turtle, poppy, and javalina. A hawk’s wings unfolded inside her chest. The soothing voice of St. Martin de Porres, the patron of paranormal powers, seemed to join her own as she sent a silent prayer to the Virgin.

  Ave Maria

  gratia plena

  Dominus tecum

  Benedicta tu in mulieribus

  et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus

  Sancta Maria,

  Mater Dei

  ora pro nobis peccatoribus

  nunc et in bora mortis nostrae

  Amen

  She spoke the last word aloud and the Glasduine laughed, a harsh booming sound that echoed up and down the canyon. Bettina merely gave the creature a serene smile in response. Beyond fear or anxiety now, she was strong with Ellie’s brujería and her faith, bolstered by the support of those gathered here to help her and a host of invisible spirits. She stepped into the Glasduine??
?s open arms and laid her hands upon its chest, pushed through the tangle of vines and leaves to the bark beneath that served as skin.

  The Glasduine’s laughter died, cut off as though severed by a knife.

  Their gazes locked, Bettina’s and the Glasduine’s. The healing brujería mixed with that of Ellie’s mask and the creature’s own. White light flared, deep inside them and burst out through the pores of their skin like a hundred thousand laser slivers, blinding those that watched. The Glasduine’s vida en hilodela was immediately made pure.

  But there was a price. Their blood turned to lava, hot and burning. Every nerve end screamed. Wailing filled the air, harsh and keening, both their voices howling their pain. The Glasduine bucked and Ellie lost her grip on Bettina’s shoulders. She went stumbling, blinded and moaning, before she fell into the dirt. But Bettina dug her fingers into the vegetative matter of the Glasduine’s chest and held fast. She repeated another “Hail Mary.” The Glasduine grew again, a sudden spurt that took Bettina’s feet from under her. She kept her grip, hanging from the Glasduine’s chest, forcing herself to ignore the pain, to concentrate on the task that had put her here.

  Under the blinding light she could feel the darkness of the creature rising up once more, swelling like a maggot-ridden corpse. She caught the tattered wisps of the brujería born in Ellie’s mask, and holding onto them like a handful of threads, she plunged an arrow of her spirit into the morass, searching for some part of Donal that the Glasduine hadn’t already swallowed and taken into itself.

  She had to navigate through the flood of the creature’s hatreds and lusts, experience the gruesome deaths of the Gentry, delve deeper and deeper until she felt she could go no further and was ready to give up.

  But finally, there it was.

  A tiny, warm kernel of Donal’s goodness, hard-shelled like a seed, protecting itself from the awful stew in which it floated.

  Bettina focused the arrow of her spirit until it was so small and sharp it could pierce the kernel and enter it. Before the darkness could rush in after her, she connected the tattered threads of the mask’s burjería to it, then sealed the opening she’d made and enclosed the whole of it, kernel and connecting threads, in a protective sheath. She waited only long enough to see that the kernel was beginning to swell, then retreated, her stamina spent.

  She allowed the Glasduine to expel the arrow of her spirit. It returned to her with a shock, withered and trembling. Loosening the numbed grip of her fingers, she let the Glasduine fling her away. She hit the ground hard, went tumbling over the loose stones and dirt. Her fingers, the palms of her hand were raw, the skin burned away. There was nothing left of the rosary her mother had sent her. She could barely lift her head, but she did. She couldn’t look away.

  The Glasduine had fallen to its knees. Illumination still flared from its pores, laser-thin and bright, a thousand blinding lines of white light. It was still howling, but the sound was different. Almost fearful.

  Grow, Bettina told the seed she’d found in the Glasduine’s darkness. Be strong.

  She said another “Hail Mary.”

  She couldn’t bring her hands together—even the movement of air across the raw wounds was agony. With an effort, she managed to dampen the worst of the pain. Her gaze remained locked on the Glasduine.

  The shafts of light began to swell, to join. The Glasduine’s upper torso drooped. By the time it had bowed its head, pressing its face into the dirt, all the shafts of light had joined into one tall pillar that rose up from the arch of the creature’s back. Colors swelled up from the bottom of the pillar, the familiar greens and golds of the creature’s vida en hilodela. A moment later and the light had swallowed the Glasduine whole.

  Bettina and the others couldn’t look away.

  Something became visible in that light. They were being given a glimpse, as though through a stained-glass window, of enormous trees, giants that dwarfed the cliffs around them. Impossible behemoths that rose and rose up into the sky.

  “Forever trees,” Bettina heard her wolf whisper. “In the long ago.”

  By that she knew they were looking in on the First World, the source from which the Glasduine had been drawn. She drank in the sight, leaning closer when she saw a woman walking under those trees.

  Bettina wasn’t sure who the others saw—she sensed that each of them recognized her in their own way—but she saw a dusky madonna, modestly clad in blue and white robes, and knew it was Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin as first seen in a vision by Juan Diego at the chief shrine of Tonantzín on Tepeyac Hill, centuries ago. Those trees were far from Cuautlalpan in Mexico, but La Novia del Desierto’s presence felt as natural in that ancient forest as it did in the Sonoran.

  The woman lifted her head and looked their way. She smiled and Bettina’s heart grew glad in a way it hadn’t since her abuela had followed the clown dog into the storm. Then the vision was gone.

  But the marvels continued.

  The pillar of light dwindled until it pooled around the fallen body of the Glasduine. Bettina held her breath, watching the liquid light pulse. Then something moved in the center of the pool. For a moment Bettina thought it was the salmon from the pool behind Kellygnow, but then a saguaro rose up, swallowing the body of the creature as it grew.

  By the time it stopped growing, it towered fifty feet into the desert sky, two tons of cactus, enormous by any standards, though dwarfed in Bettina’s mind by her brief glimpse of the incredible heights of the forever trees.

  The giant stood there for a long moment, gleaming in the sunlight, gleaming with its own inner light. Then one of its arms dropped off. Another. And it fell apart as quickly as it had grown, the green waxy skin browning, rotting. In no time at all the only thing that remained were the saguaro’s ribs, the lower halves still standing tall, their upper halves drooping like the spokes of an umbrella. Caught in the middle, with ribs thrusting up from its chest, was a small body.

  Donal, Bettina realized at the same time as Miki ran forward. Miki wept, trying to break off the saguaro ribs. Hunter joined her, pulled her away.

  “Let me try,” he said.

  He lowered her to the ground and with el lobo’s help began the grisly task of breaking the brittle ribs so that they could free Donal’s body. Miki remained where Hunter had left her, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Bettina glanced at Ellie. The sculptor’s eyes were wet with her own tears when she turned to Bettina.

  “What… what happened?” she asked.

  “Neither Donal nor the creature lived a good life,” Bettina said. “So the shape would not hold for them. There is an old Indios saying. If you live a good life, you come back as saguaro; you become one of the aunts and uncles. Live a bad life, and you come back as a human.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “You chose well for your mask.”

  “Yeah, like I knew what I was doing.”

  Bettina shrugged. “Your heart and your hands … your brujería knew.”

  Ellie slowly stood up.

  “So … we won, I guess.”

  Bettina nodded.

  “So why do I feel like shit?”

  “Because we are just people,” Aunt Nancy said, joining them. “Because the world isn’t black and white and it cuts us so deeply when those we love— those we think are good people—do bad things. It’s hard to celebrate a victory that has come about through the death of one we loved.”

  Ellie gave a slow nod. “I still can’t believe Donal had it in him.”

  “There was goodness, too,” Bettina said. “In the end, that’s what saved us.”

  “It just seems like such a senseless waste.”

  “Sí”

  “Let me see your hands,” Aunt Nancy said to Bettina.

  Ellie went pale at the sight of them.

  “Oh, my god,” she said. “Your hands …”

  “They will heal.”

  “I have a small jar of bunchberry/cattail paste in my pack,” Aunt Nancy said. “Let me get it.”


  “Thank you.”

  “Can’t you, you know, heal it with magic?” Ellie asked.

  “I have been working on it,” Bettina told her, “but such healing never works as well on yourself. Mostly I’m concentrating on dampening the pain and retaining my hands’ mobility.”

  Aunt Nancy returned and with a touch as gentle as the brush of a butterfly wing, she applied a thinned mixture of the paste to Bettina’s hands. The bunchberry immediately cooled the burns, penetrating deep under them to relieve the pain. The cattail helped to numb the worst of it.

  “There’s always a price,” Aunt Nancy said.

  Bettina nodded. She thought of los cadejos. They hadn’t even named theirs yet.

  “Some pay in coin more dear than others,” she said.

  She looked at the slope of Miki’s back as she continued to weep, silent now. Then past her to where Hunter and her wolf were freeing Donal’s body.

  “My sympathies lie with the living,” Aunt Nancy said. “And the innocent.”

  “You’re tougher than I am,” Bettina told her.

  Aunt Nancy shook her head. “No, I’m just older. I’ve seen that much more of the hurt we do to each other.”

  19

  It took them over an hour to free Donal’s body from the wreckage of the dead saguaro. Without el lobo’s exceptional strength, it would have taken them much longer, for the saguaro ribs that pierced the body were resilient and hard to break. It was a grisly, unhappy task, but they finally pulled the body free and were able to lay it out on the flat stone where Ellie had worked on the mask. Hunter fetched more water and Miki carefully washed Donal’s face and hands. Her tears were gone, but Bettina could see that the heartbreak remained.

  Later, they sat in a half-circle around the body, all except for Tommy, who was propped up against another stone close at hand, cushioned on a thin mattress of dried grasses that Ellie and Hunter had gathered lower down in the canyon. He had to lay on his side because of the long furrows the Glasduine had torn across his back. Bettina had worked on them again, ignoring her own pain when she had to lay her hands directly onto the wounds. All that remained now of the furrows were thick, red welts that were still very tender. While Tommy tried to remain alert and follow their conversations, he kept drifting in and out of consciousness. But at least when he closed his eyes now, it was because he was sleeping.