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

three different solo accordion recordings—not exactly Top Ten is it? I could cleverly deduce that you play those instruments yourself—but in fact I saw them hanging in your cabin, so I reckon that wouldn’t be fair.”

Fox smiled. “You reckon, do you?”

Maggie picked up another handful of cassettes. “Beau de Soleil—a Cajun band. Here’s Peter Rowan’s latest. Two Estampie tapes, one Gothic Voices. June Tabor. A harp duo from Scotland—and this is interesting, the price tag on it is in sterling. Hmmm, here’s some European folk music and the tapes were clearly bought over there. Either you’re well traveled, Fox, or you have nice friends who send you things.”

“A little bit of both,” he admitted.

“So you’ve been to Europe by the looks of this. And Mexico, no big surprise. And, whoa, Africa?”

“Africa,” he confirmed.

“But not Asia. Or else you don’t like Asian music.”

“I do. I haven’t gotten there yet.”

“You see?” said Maggie smugly. “That’s more than I knew about you before.”

“You’re right,” he conceded with amusement. “Someday you’ll have to show me your collection. Now how about choosing a tape to listen to?”

She looked through the box again. “We’re spoiled for choice here. What about … This looks interesting. Desert Wind, music for flute, percussion and didjeridoo.” She looked more closely. “By Wood, Begay and Foxxe. Hey, this is you.”

“That was me. Five years ago. Begay and I still play together sometimes, but Wood’s moved back to Australia.”

“I didn’t know you played professionally, Fox.”

He laughed. “That’s because I don’t. That recording is from a little local company, now defunct; it sold six copies, to us and our mothers. Begay still has a garage full of them.”

“Have you recorded anything else?”

Fox shook his head.

“Well why not? Look, my first book didn’t sell many copies, or even the one after that. It was only with Low Life and The Maid on the Shore that anyone paid attention. But you have to believe in your work anyway. Keep putting yourself out there. Go after what you want.”

“And that’s what you’ve done? You’ve gone after what you wanted?”

“Yes.” Maggie looked uncomfortable. “Well, kind of.” She did not elaborate.

Fox glanced at her as he turned off River and onto a busy road running north. “But you assume that what I want is what you would want: Success. Recognition. I’m not like you. I’m not like Cooper. That’s not what a good life means to me. Playing music is a high, for sure—but there’s other things that I like just as much. Carpentry, for instance; it’s honest work, it’s solid, it’s real, it pays a living wage. And the Mentor Program, that’s another kind of high.”

“What’s that?”

“I give free music lessons to kids—in the barrio, and on the reservations. I like having time for things like that. And time for my friends. And for myself. I don’t want to spend all my time hustling music. Just want to play it, enjoy it, and have a life.”

Fox braked abruptly, turning toward the Interstate. Then he glanced over at Maggie again, and saw that she was smiling.

He said, “Sorry for that diatribe. You pushed some old buttons, that’s all.”

“You’re arguing with Cooper’s ghost again, aren’t you?”

Then he smiled himself. “I reckon I am.”

Maggie said, “You’re right, though. I am like Cooper. Art is the thing that matters to me. It’s not the desire for fame that drives me, but to do good work, the best that I can. When I was married, it was as if my energy was in hock—to Nigel, to the magazines, to anyone who asked for it loudly enough. Now I’m more single-minded, I admit it. I want to leave something good behind me when I go, something that will last.”

“There’s the difference between us then. Immortality means nothing to me. I’m a desert boy. ‘I have learned to walk lightly on this land, and to leave no trace behind.’ ”

“Ghalad Keller’s ‘Stone Canyon’?” she guessed.

He was pleased that she recognized it. “ ‘The mountains reach into heaven,’ ” Fox said. “ ‘And a man, so small. And a man, so small.’ ”

As they climbed the ramp to the Interstate, the city stretched around them, filling the valley from the mountains in the east to the mountains in the west. The sky was a clear, deep blue above them, the rich color of old Bisbee turquoise. The sound of flute and drums filled the truck, masking the traffic’s noise.

The traffic was light on the highway as soon as they left the city center. It disappeared almost altogether when they turned off the Interstate again, heading west into low hills. Fox’s mother lived north and west of the city, between the Tucson and Tortolita Mountains. The desert here was drier, scrubbier than the land below the Rincon range. The Tucsons were volcanic plugs with the jagged profile seen in a hundred cowboy movies. It was a land of saguaro and ironwood trees, unique in Sonoran ecology. Builders’ signs were everywhere on it, announcing high-density developments to come.

The imminent construction disappeared as the road beneath them turned to dirt. There were still houses here, but individually built and tucked into the low desert scrub. The desert was peaceful, but arid and rough. The sky made a vast blue dome overhead. The heat shimmered in waves just above the dusty road they travelled on.

He turned suddenly onto a narrow track that bumped its way along a dry creek bed. Maggie grabbed for the dashboard as the truck hit a rock. “My god, what kind of a road is this?”

“We’re on Cooper’s land. Well, it’s my mother’s land now. Two hundred acres, going up into the Tortilitas. These last ten years he was buying up what he could, one step ahead of the developers. Cooper’s version of the National Trust. It was one thing we could agree on.”

“How does your mother get in and out?”

“She doesn’t. She doesn’t like to leave it. There’s a Mexican family that lives over that way.” He gestured vaguely to the north. “They look after things and look after