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

close to him he reached out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her up the bank. She was moving in the dreamtime now, although real rock lay underfoot and a real wind ruffled the back of her hair. Wasn’t this why she had looked for him? Hadn’t she been dreaming of him for weeks? His skin was cool and smooth against hers. She could almost hear the rhythm of his pulse, beating like an Indian drum, a sound that carried on the wind from somewhere farther down the canyon.

They walked hand in hand along the length of the trail, silent, until they reached the springs. The circle of tall white trees was empty. There was only white rock and water and wind. The stag wasn’t there. Maggie let out a long, soft sigh of disappointment.

Her companion frowned. “So he was the one you were looking for here, not me.” He touched her suddenly on one flushed cheek, then ran his finger down to her chin, down her throat to the skin of her breast.

She felt fire beneath the touch. But this was no dream, and time, which had slowed, was now moving too fast. She took his hand and lifted it away. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Call me Crow.”

“Just Crow?”

“Just Crow,” he said.

“Even Fox has more of a name than that. Fox, Crow. I feel like I’m living in the middle of Aesop’s Fables.”

He laughed, showing even white teeth against the sun-browned skin of his face. “Black Maggie,” he named her. She caught her breath.

“How do you know that name?”

“Cooper, of course.”

“You knew Cooper?”

“I knew Cooper better than he knew himself. Now stand very still.”

“Why?” she said.

“Because your man is coming up the canyon now. He knows we’re here, but a sudden movement might still startle him away again.”

She turned slowly, and saw the great white stag pick its way up the rocks of the creek. His eyes were black as a starless night. His hide was velvet, his horns were ivory, he was made of more than flesh and bones. He gathered the dying light of the sky into his being, like a radiant star.

They watched as the stag approached the springs and slowly drank his fill there. When he was finished he turned and watched them. The stars seemed to swirl around his great horns. The earth was spinning beneath Maggie’s feet; Crow placed his arm around Maggie’s shoulder and she leaned back, grateful for his touch. But the stag’s big head jerked upward, and he backed away from them, eyes wild.

He stopped when he reached the water’s edge. Staring at Crow, he lowered his head until it touched the ground. Then he wheeled and ran, hooves striking the stones, disappearing from the canyon. He took the dying light with him, and now the hills were dark.

She moved away from Crow and stepped up to the springs. There was just one stone where the stag had stood, dark turquoise with veins of black. She picked it up, brought it over to Crow, and placed it in his palm.

“For protection,” she repeated what Tomás had said.

But the stone crumbled into bits in his hand. He laughed, and blew the dust away. “You see, I can’t be protected. I’m afraid it’s much too late for that. Now I must give you something in return for the gift,” Crow said.

He stepped closer to her, put his hand to her face—and did not touch it. They were of a height, although she could have sworn that she’d been the taller when last they met. His smile was tender, but also sad; there was loneliness in the lines of his face. His eyes looked very dark to her now, containing the whole of the mountains.

He said, “No, I won’t touch you again, Black Maggie. Unless, of course, you ask me to.”

Maggie smiled back at him. “In that case,” she said, “I’m asking.”

He put his two hands in Maggie’s hair and his mouth came down on hers, hard and bruising. He tasted salty and he tasted sweet. He had tasted this way in her dreams. She sunk into the depths of his kiss, and then she rose and broke surface again. Her hands were hot where they rested on his hips. She took a breath, and raised her eyes.

The heat chilled to ice, for the man had gone. A woman held Maggie in her arms. The flushed face that looked back at her was the mirror image of her own. She stared at that familiar face, and it mimicked her confusion.

Maggie broke from the embrace, stumbling, rocks skittering beneath her boot heels. Her identical twin, her doppelganger, smiled then, and laughed at her. The voice, the laughter, was Crow’s, not her own, and sharp with the cactus spines of mockery. Maggie felt her legs give way beneath her and she sat down hard by the edge of the creek. When she looked again it was Crow standing there—male once more, and beautiful, and painfully desirable, tossing back long blue-black hair the color of the darkened hills.

Perhaps she had imagined that other face; her vision was funny; she’d felt strange all day. But she hadn’t imagined the laughter. He was standing and laughing at her still. His face held no passion or tenderness for her, just amusement. She felt her stomach turn.

“Who are you?” she asked him once again, her voice low with anger, shame, and disappointment.

Crow strode up to her and grabbed her arm, hard, pulling her to her feet. “Who are you?” he said close to her face. “Answer me that, and then you can ask me that question for a third time.”

He let her go abruptly. Then he flung back his head, and he began to howl, an animal sound, filling the hills. The coyotes answered from the slopes all around. The drums in the night were insistent now. Crow laughed, as if he had just received a startling message in one of those sounds.

He left her then, as