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

with distinct approval. “This is where I often come to see it too, so you’ll have to share.”

She found she had lost the power of speech. She stared at him, but he didn’t seem to mind this evident rudeness. He stood engrossed in the setting sun’s gaudy technicolor display, standing braced against an evening wind that pushed long, dark hair from his shoulders.

He was not a tall man, not so tall as Maggie, but fit and lean, and beautiful. He was dressed oddly in a plain buckskin shirt held closed at the throat with what looked like long thorns. His jeans were tied with long buckskin strips around the shins and ankles. He looked part Native American, with that rich black hair, a white feather tied in it; but his face had a European cast as well, and his eyes were a deep moss green. He wore several thongs around his neck hung with hag-stones, turquoise, a little leather bag and a silver disk with a Celtic design. Copper bands encircled one wrist, etched with an intricate spiral pattern. The same spirals were drawn around his other wrist, or else it was a tattoo.

She wanted to introduce herself, and ask his name and if he lived below. Instead Maggie said nothing at all, feeling herself grow younger, shyer, struck dumb by his physical beauty; turning, in an instant, back into the tongue-tied teenager she’d been many years before: too tall, too bookish, too altogether odd for those small-town West Virginia boys. She didn’t like feeling that way again. She reminded herself she was forty years old and that was all far in the past now…

Yet she watched the sun sinking lower in silence. Her companion never sat; he stood quite still, close behind her on the narrow perch. So close she could smell the musky scent of sweat and wood smoke on his skin—and something more which she couldn’t name, teasingly half-familiar. The moon was rising, round and pale and melancholy in the darkening sky. The coyotes began their evensong. For some reason this made the stranger laugh.

She found her voice at last and asked him, “This is your particular sunset place then?”

He looked at her and cocked his head. She saw that he had lines lightly drawn across the high bones of his cheeks—odd, but not unattractive. He did not answer the question she’d asked but the one that lay underneath it.

“We’ll meet again,” he answered her, with the gravity of a promise. She was chilled by the echo of Davis’s words, and yet unaccountably pleased by this. She nodded in acknowledgment, masking the confusion she felt.

He gave her a smile she couldn’t read—there was amusement in it, flirtatiousness, and a glimpse of something lost and sad. Then he left, abruptly, stepping easily down the steepest side of the mountain slope. He did not follow the trail she’d used; he struck off on an unmarked route. The coyotes’ song grew louder as he went, sounding to her like laughter. It reminded her of his.

She sat still while the sun disappeared, her heart beating loudly in her chest. Her heart seemed to beat to a rhythm that was pulsing in the stones, in the ground beneath her feet. The night was filled with scents and sounds that were strange to her, and heady. There was something primal about this land, a language spoken by the stones and the wind. What had Davis’s letter said? The stars, the stones, the very trees reveal the language of the earth.

Maggie stood finally to begin her descent, knowing she should have done so long since, while there was light left in the sky. The canyon below was a black river. She could just make out the tops of the trees. A truck was traveling toward Redwater Road, its headlights piercing the dark.

She was wary, almost frightened, as she picked her way down the treacherous slope. The night was very black up here. The stars hung so low and close it seemed she could brush her head on them. Below, the lights of Tucson spread an impossible distance away. She was closer to the stars than she was to the world, but it was to the world that she must return. She could barely see the path she walked, edged by sharp cactus on either side. The saguaro loomed tall and ghostly as she passed through their ranks by the upper cabin. There were no lights on inside the cabin. Below, Fox’s place was dark as well.

She reached the bottom of the trail at last and skirted Fox’s house on the way to her own. The chimes rattled loudly in the mesquite wood, and something small skittered close by her feet. The truck was coming up the road now. It turned and she was caught in its lights. She stared at it, blinded, as it came up her drive. The engine stopped and the headlights went out.

A young woman climbed down from the truck and extended a bandaged hand to Maggie. “I’m Dora del Rio. My husband and I live in that old stable up the road. I don’t mean to disturb you. Just wanted to stop by and say welcome.”

“Thanks for stopping,” Maggie said a bit breathlessly, glad after her trip down the dark mountainside for this simple human interaction. “It’s nice to meet you. My name’s Maggie Black.”

“I know.” Dora flushed. “I mean, I know your work. I loved The Maid on the Shore.”

“That’s kind of you.” Maggie smiled at Dora. The younger woman was small and pretty in a delicate, almost childlike way, the kind of woman that always made Maggie feel like a leggy giraffe. She had thick red-gold curls pulled back with a velvet band, clear brown eyes and a heart-shaped face. Maggie instantly liked the look of her; her eccentric dress sense reminded her of Tat: a vintage fifties’ flowered skirt over purple leggings and green cowboy boots. Her suede jacket was beaded and fringed, and underneath it was