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

Chapter One ❋

The hills call in a tongue

only the language-haunted hear,

and lead us back again

into the place where we have started.

—The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper

Nigel came down the street toward her, his face shadowed with annoyance. Her heart, that traitorous organ, still leapt when she saw her ex-husband through the window glass. She knew then why she’d run back to Los Angeles, away from the nice man up north who said he loved her; Nigel was a hard act to follow. He entered the cafe, his irritation and his energy like a cloud that entered with him, changing the weather of the entire room. And reminding her of why she’d once run away from Nigel too.

He looked around the cafe with displeasure. Maggie had picked the place, a little Czech bakery popular with film students and would-be poets half her age. She imagined that he would have preferred some trendy new restaurant where he could make a point of paying the extravagant bill. But this was her turf, not his, for once in their lives. She needed every advantage she could get. And he’d be mollified once he tasted the pastry. Good food, in Nigel’s book, always won out over ambiance.

“For god’s sake, there you are.” Nigel threaded his way through the students to her table in the corner. She stood for his embrace. In her boots with the heels she was even taller than he was. He kissed her on both cheeks, the European way, and said, “You’re looking well. Fantastic, in fact.”

Maggie shrugged off the compliment as lightly as it was given. Unbidden came the image of Nigel’s current wife, a skinny young Parisian fashion model.

“How are you, Nige? You look … tired,” she said.

He sighed as he sat, rested his chin on his hand, and gave the grin that had won her heart years ago. “What day is this? Thursday? Still Wednesday for me. I never got home to bed last night. We play Toronto this weekend, Chicago on Tuesday, my alto is sick and my percussionist has just discovered his wife is sleeping with the soundman. So what’s good here?”

“The coffee. The strudel. Any of the unpronounceable Czech pastries. The French ones will disappoint you.”

He signalled the waitress, a young woman with hair dyed an alarming shade of magenta wearing a “Kafka in Prague” T-shirt covered with paint. Nigel ordered for both of them without consulting Maggie, a habit she’d never been able to get him to break. He remembered this too late, and gave her a guilty smile. “Is there something else you wanted? I’ll call her back.”

Maggie shook her head. “So long as there’s coffee and lots of it. Look, Nige, I can’t stay that long. I’ve got a plane to catch at four.”

“Today?” he said, genuinely taken aback. “I thought you’d be in L.A. a while.”

“This is just a stopover. To pick up a few things. And see you.” She rolled a fork across the table nervously. “Actually, I’m headed for Tucson.”

“Tucson? As in Arizona? Whatever for?” He leaned back in the chair and asked the question casually, but she knew that she had rattled him. His transatlantic accent shifted back to his native British whenever he was feeling out of sorts.

Despite her nervousness, she took a certain malicious pleasure in telling him, “I’m going to live there for a while. I found another tenant for the house here; I told that piano player of yours he could have it. He’s made an offer to buy it, and I think we should consider it. I can’t honestly imagine coming back to Los Angeles.”

Nigel sat still, with the ominous quiet he sunk into whenever something displeased him. She envied him that. She always spoke first and thought after—and usually regretted it.

The waitress brought their order as Maggie waited for the inevitable barrage of questions. She picked up the coffee cup gratefully, letting its warmth dispel her anxiety. She didn’t need Nigel’s permission or blessing. She needn’t have told Nigel any of this at all. So why did she feel nervous as a cat on a griddle, as her granddaddy in West Virginia used to say?

For all Nigel’s attempts at cool British reserve, his emotions were as tangible in the static field around him as if the air had changed color. Surprise shaded into suspicion and anger. It was not that he needed her here in L.A. But he didn’t like things happening outside of his control. They still co-owned the little house by Venice Beach where she’d lived for several years after the divorce, and it was his plan that she should come back to it. They prided themselves on a “friendly divorce.” She went to his concerts and he went to her book signings, the former considerably more frequent and star-studded than the latter; she was seen in the better L.A. restaurants in the company of Nigel and his current wife Nicole.

But for the last two years she’d been renting out the beach house, determined to stay away from L.A. and the circle of friends who still thought of her as half of the Nigel-and-Maggie Show. First she’d gone up to San Francisco, living on a boat owned by an actor friend of Nigel’s who was filming abroad for the winter. Then farther up the coast to Inverness, and then even farther to Mendocino. Each time, although the destination had been her choice, the way had been comfortably paved by Nigel. Accommodations had miraculously appeared which she never could have afforded on her own—always “on loan” from some friend of his but subsidized, she suspected, by Nigel’s wealth.

It was still odd to think of her ex-husband as wealthy, although he had always assumed he would be. The popular and financial success of the medieval music group he directed had taken everyone but arrogant Nigel by surprise; whereas the fact that she was barely making it on a writer’s income came as a surprise