The Wood Wife by Terri Windling (the false prince TXT) 📕

the Three Graces’ arms, scolding noisily as she passed. A jackrabbit crouched in the shade beneath the black trunk of a mesquite tree. A herd of small deer leapt through the wash and into the brush on the other side. She hadn’t expected deer on this land. She watched them vanish with a frown.

The desert wasn’t as she’d imagined it at all: a Sahara landscape of sand and dunes. Rather, it was a Japanese garden made of stone, a sage-green land of low, gnarled trees, creosote bushes and cactus. The cactus came in a lush abundance of sizes and shapes, all alien to her. Everything here had spines or thorns. The sky was too vast; the light was too clear. There was nothing soft or hidden in the land, and it made her feel raw, overexposed, like a photograph left in the sun.

She followed a trail through the mesquite grove that stood between the house and the handyman’s cabin. Here there were bits of grass underfoot and wildflowers, small purple blooms against the dark mesquite trunks. A low rattling sound puzzled her until she spied a wind chime in a tree. It was made of stones with holes in them (“hag-stones” she remembered they were called, Davis had used the word in a poem) and bits of something white, like bone, suspended from long waxy threads. There were several of them hanging in the grove, clacking dryly in the wind.

She emerged from the grove by Fox’s house. His pickup truck was parked out front, and the door was open, but no one was within. He was probably at his workshop on the other side of the wash. She peered through the doorway curiously. The cabin was rustic, sparsely furnished, and neat as a pin, which surprised her. The kitchen and living room were one open space with a sleeping loft above it. The walls were hung with tools, horse-riding tack, and musical instruments: a collection of Indian flutes and drums, an acoustic guitar, an accordion. A single painting hung near the beehive hearth; it looked like an Anna Naverra. On a low table before the hearth was a red clay bowl filled with some green herb, Indian rattles made from two round gourds, smooth grey stones arranged in a circle and a long brown pinion feather. Beside them a sharplooking hunting knife lay open on its leather sheath.

Maggie backed away from the door. What if he caught her here looking? And yet, apparently she owned this cabin; perhaps she’d every right to look. The lawyer for the estate hadn’t mentioned cabins or tenants—or maybe she had and Maggie hadn’t paid attention. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to change Davis’s arrangements or try to kick anyone out. This mountainside was their world, not hers. She felt like a guest on Davis’s land, waiting for her host to return.

There was a path at the back of the cabin running up the slope into the hills. Another path went down the slope. She chose the upper one and climbed. The path snaked up the mountainside, looping back and forth across it. She climbed steadily on a well-worn trail that led her up and over a ridge. When she reached the crest she paused. The trail dipped slightly down again into a long half-moon of land tucked into a fold of the cliffs. A population of saguaro grew there, from knee-height up to ten feet tall. Behind them was a small cabin with its back up against the rock.

The cabin was much like the one Fox lived in: made of flourcolored adobe with rounded edges and a stone chimney built into the shortest end. This one had outbuildings as well, and a small ramada made of untrimmed mesquite branches holding up the woody growth of a tombstone rose. Beneath the ramada was a battered formica table and a couple of kitchen chairs. A dish of apples on the outdoor table and a half-dozen chickens in a fenced-in yard were the only signs of life up here. A narrow road led up to the cabin but no vehicle was parked out front.

The trail led through the saguaros and past the cabin, then began to climb upward again. Above her a bird rode the wind in circles, too far away for her to make out what it was. It was dark, like a crow, but large—perhaps a buzzard or local species of hawk. The bird was hunting its supper, no doubt. It would circle lazily until it spied movement below and then it would attack. She stood and watched its elegant flight, and then she turned back to the climb. The path was hard to negotiate, full of loose stones that shifted underfoot and went skittering down the dry hill.

The bird had gone and she was breathing hard by the time she reached the top of the trail. She sat on a boulder to catch her breath. The peak was a rounded outcrop of stone, adorned with prickly pear cactus and yellow flowers clustered on brittle grey leaves. Sun-bleached boulders made her a seat surrounded by mountains and sky. In the distance she could see the lights of Tucson spreading out from the Rincons’ feet. Beyond it, the Tucson Mountains’ silhouette had the sinking sun balanced on its jagged edge. The sky was a blue she’d seen before only in the Mediterranean, streaked with an improbable shade of scarlet fading into mauves and pinks. Even after years of Pacific sunsets, Maggie admitted that she was impressed. The sky was as vast as an ocean and the mountain was an island in its midst.

“Sky islands, that’s what we call them.”

Her heart leapt, startled by the voice and the man who had read her mind. He was not breathing hard from his climb up the trail. His feet were bare on the sharp stones. He greeted her with an intimate smile, although she’d never seen him before.

“You’ve found the best place for the sunset already,” he said