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

mother and your sisters be willing to talk to me about Davis for the biography of him I’m writing?”

Fox looked dubious. “I reckon I could. But Cooper and me, we didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye, I have to warn you. My sisters don’t come back here much—I never really know when they’ll turn up. And my mother, she’s a sweet old lady, but she’s spent a lifetime in the mountains. It’s made her extremely shy of anyone that she doesn’t know. Mama has always been closemouthed about the past—the way old people are sometimes, particularly when there are things in their lives that they’d just as soon forget.”

“Still, I’d like to try talking to her.”

Fox shrugged. “I’ll take you over there, then. She lives out on the west side of town, on a bit of property Cooper left her. She didn’t want to be in the mountains anymore after he died. I think she might have left long ago, except that Cooper needed her here. She worshipped the ground he walked on no matter how drunk or crazy he got.”

“Crazy?” Maggie picked up on the word.

Fox grinned at her. “Well, that’s my opinion. You ought to take it with a grain of salt since we didn’t get along these last few years. He said I was too much of a drifter, would never amount to anything. And I thought that was pretty rich coming from a drunk. Even a Pulitzer Prize-winning drunk. Lillian—that’s John Aider’s wife—said we were just doing the Antler Dance. You know, the male territorial thing. Maybe she was right.” Fox shrugged again, and then he suddenly stood, having obviously decided he’d revealed enough confidences for one night. His movements were so eloquent of closure that Dora saw Maggie shut her mouth on whatever her next question was going to be.

Fox got up and crossed the room. He produced a small plastic container from the cabinet below the. sink. “I’d like to take some of that animal scat from Cooper’s study, for John to look at.”

“Be my guest,” said Maggie magnanimously. “You’re welcome to it. Take all the crap you want.”

Juan laughed, and stood. “Well then, we’ve put if off long enough,” he said. “Let’s go get that shit out of there. Have you got some buckets? And a shovel?”

“I know where they are,” Fox told him.

They gathered mops, buckets, detergent, and a couple of short-handled shovels. Dora and Maggie set to work washing puddled urine from the rug as Juan and Fox shovelled animal droppings out into the mesquite wood.

When they were finished the study, unlike the kitchen, was clean and tidy. Too tidy, thought Dora. There was something terribly sad about the room without the poet himself in it, smoking like a chimney, surrounded by papers, books, dirty clothes, half-drunk cups of tea, bits of scavenged desert flora, the inevitable bottles of gin. It was seeing that room, empty of life, that finally convinced Dora the old man was gone and would not be returning. She was glad when they finished up and left, locking the doors carefully behind.

They parted with Fox at the path through the mesquite wood leading back to his cabin. Juan lit the lamp to light their trail, although it was unnecessary. The moon was very bright tonight, pouring silver into the wash. At the end of the drive Dora looked back at the house, sitting dark and empty. It was missing Cooper, Dora thought. Not just the house, the land itself. The three tall saguaro, the cottonwood tree, the mountain beneath her feet. A single coyote sang up in the hills, a thin, high-pitched and lonesome sound. She shivered. Juan put an arm around her and she leaned into his warmth.

• • •

She crept from out of her hiding place, trembling, licking the blood from her fur. The Hounds were hunting indeed tonight, but they’d found no satisfaction. The trail was cold. The lock had held. There were still strong old protections here. Moonlight spun to flesh, the Hounds had left the marks of their displeasure. And nearly had her own sweet red life’s-blood in consolation.

She sat in the silver moonlight, her breath fast, her heart still pounding, her long, silky jackrabbit ears twitching at every sound. Her eyes were dark in a pale, human face. The Hounds had run her to exhaustion. But she must not sleep, for she had promised that she would watch over this land tonight. Who was it she had promised? The Spine Witch, or the Woodmage, or perhaps even the One-Who-Sleeps—she was going to have to remember now. To resist the pull of the animal-self and be present in this place and time, walking that linear human path that went so against her nature.

She fled into the shadows again as a rumbling sound came to her, carried through the rock below and the wind in the mesquite trees. A truck on the road. Truck. Road. She knew those words—yes, she could do this. She could remember how to be in this place. She concentrated, and the features of her face grew even more human in appearance, except for the ears; the round, unblinking eyes; and a nose colored rabbit pink. She watched the truck approach and stop, shadowed by the limbs of the cottonwood tree. The man inside was the one called Fox. She had nothing to fear from him. He just sat there inside the truck, a blanket wrapped around him. Did he know that she was out here? Were his eyes so sharp, his nose so keen?

No, he didn’t know that there were two of them there to guard the house, to watch through the long and moonlit night. It didn’t matter. She was glad of his presence. She curled herself into the hollow in the ground between the three saguaro, and she waited, shivering, long ears cocked, listening for the baying of the Hounds.

❋ Davis Cooper ❋

c/o F. M. Martino

New York, New York

H. Miller

Big Sur, California

June 15, 1948

So Henry,

Anaïs tells