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

Unless it was Anna who … No, Maggie answered the half-completed thought. Anna left the mountain in 1949. Johnny Foxxe was born in—hmmmm. Maggie did a rapid calculation. He was thirty-five years old. Yes. 1958, the date of this notebook.

A knock at the front door interrupted her conjectures. Perhaps, she thought, it was Fox himself. She looked at her watch. It was much too early for Fox. He was going to take her to meet his mother, but not until later in the day.

When she reached the door she found the mailman, late with delivery this morning. The man looked like an overgrown Boy Scout in his little blue uniform shorts and knee socks, driving a U.S. Mail jeep. She had a bulky package to sign for, along with letters with foreign postmarks, an invitation to Tat’s upcoming show, and a campy postcard from Nigel. His card gave a name and an L.A. phone number and read: Film interest. Call him.

She took the mail into the kitchen, and put Tat’s invitation on the refrigerator with a howling-coyote magnet. She put Nigel’s card in the rubbish bin, then repented and fetched it back out again. The package, she discovered, was from Maisie Tippetts, postmarked New York City. Maggie had contacted the playwright again, hoping for another interview and help in tracking down Cooper’s old friends. In response Maisie had sent her a parcel of letters from Anna Naverra.

The letters, written in fluent English, covered a five-year period, in Mexico City and Tucson. At the bottom of the box was a slim copper bracelet. She looked at it closely. It had spiral designs. It was similar, if not identical to, the copper bracelet Crow wore on his wrist. A note in the box read simply,

My dear Marguerita,

These are all I have left of Anna, aside from a handful of paintings. I thought you should have the letters, and this bracelet she once gave to me. If you can ever be persuaded to part with any of her artwork, I hope you will tell me. I’ll pay any price. But I’ll understand if you, like Anna and Cooper, feel it shouldn’t leave the mountains Anna loved.

With warm regards,

Maisie Tippetts

Maggie held Maisie’s note and looked at the well-worn bundle of Anna’s correspondence. Then she poured herself another cup of coffee, and took all the letters into her study. She laid them out on Anna’s desk in chronological order. She made a new file on her computer: A. Naverra to M. Tippetts, February 1944–April 1949.

April. She picked up the last of the envelopes that Maisie had received. It was postmarked in Tucson on April 24th. Seven days after the Night of the Dark Stone. She resisted the strong urge to open it right up, and she began properly at the beginning.

When Fox arrived for her several hours later, she barely heard the knock on the door.

• • •

Maggie seemed distracted when Fox came over to drive her to his mother’s place. Her dark hair was dishevelled and there was a smudge of pencil lead on her cheek. She said, “I’ll follow you in my car, okay?”

“I thought you were coming in my truck?”

“I have to stop at the grocery store after,” she explained. “I forgot half the things I needed yesterday. I’m a city girl. I haven’t got the knack of stocking up.”

“So we’ll stop. You can’t take that,” he said dismissively, nodding at the small rental car. “If you think the road up here is bad, wait ’til you see my mother’s.”

“Oh, I see. All right then.” She picked up her bag. “I ought to get rid of that car anyway, if I stay up here much longer. Buy a cheap truck or something.”

“Ask Tomás,” Fox advised. “He’ll find you something, and keep it running for you.”

“Is he good then?”

“Best damn mechanic I know. Tomás says machines talk to him,” Fox told her as she climbed into the pickup.

For a city girl, she was looking rather western today. She still wore men’s clothes, in black and white, but now it was black jeans over Tony Lamas boots, and a white cotton shirt rolled up at the sleeves. Yet there was still something about her, beyond the artsy haircut, that subtly marked her as different. Different, and special, Fox said to himself, although perhaps she didn’t see it that way. People generally just wanted to fit in, and Maggie wasn’t the type who ever would.

He whistled to the music that was on the tape deck as he rolled the truck back from the drive; Tex-Mex music, with Mexican guitars and songs in both English and Spanish. “Do you mind this?” he asked her. “Or would you rather listen to something else?”

“No, it’s good. What is it?”

“Tish Hinojosa. You like this? This is Border music. You’ll hear a lot of it here.” Maybe Dora was right. Maybe she would have liked Diamondback Rattlers after all.

They bounced down the mountain to Tanque Verde, then on to the traffic of Sabino Canyon. He picked up River Road, which meandered through the city but still had the flavor of an older Tucson, lined with farms, horse corrals, a few old adobe houses. He pointed out the little road signs that marked specimens of desert flora: Agave. Prickly pear. Teddy-bear cholla. At the sign for desert broom, some wag had planted a straw kitchen broom, upside down. Maggie laughed and he loved the way that it sounded, low in the throat, thoroughly wicked.

The music ended, and Fox said, “Choose another tape. There’s a box of them on the floor there.”

Maggie picked up the box and set it on her lap, looking through his tapes with interest. “Blues. Reggae. Pearl Jam. Vaughan Williams. Sioux Ceremonial Songs,” she read aloud. “You can always tell a lot about a person from their music collection, don’t you think?”

“Maybe a journalist can,” he teased her. “What does that tell you except my taste is eclectic?”

“Well, let’s see now. Here’s tapes of Irish and Hopi flute,