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

have liked. I feel the new paintings must not leave the mountains, but I wish to give you something of mine. And so I send this sketch, this child of mine, and ask that you please give it a home, as skinny and ragged and humble as it is. I send this parcel with my love, and Cooper would surely send his as well, if he were speaking today.

• • •

March 3, 1949

Sweet Maisie,

How is it I have a friend who is so strong and brave and vital as you? I would hide at home by my nice, warm fire, but there you are, speaking out from the stage, the street corner, the lecture room—and now you are ready to go before Congress and speak out for Women once again. Surely Injustice must tremble in his boots when he hears that Maisie Tippetts has come in. You are trying to change the world, my dear, and I but to understand my little piece of it. It is good of you to love me anyway, foolish little dreamer that I am.

And I cannot even claim that I am succeeding in my own small task. The land baffles me, showing me a strange new face every time I walk it. But this is one thing I have discovered to be true: the land will mirror back at you whatever it is that you most expect to see. Whether that be good or ill. When I look in that mirror, I see images in oil paint, spirals, feathers, creatures metamorphosizing from leaf to flesh and back again. Cooper, of course, sees language in the mirror of the stones, the sky, the trees. And you, what will you see, my Maisie? You must come, please—come and tell me.

• • •

April 20, 1949

My dear,

I am sorry. I know you must be hurt, or angry. I don’t know what I can say to explain. I only know you mustn’t come. It is because I love you that I keep you away. Can you understand? It is difficult now. I fear that I have made a terrible, terrible mistake. I keep thinking back to the years of my girlhood, before I lost the state of Grace. I have no such protection here, no holy water, no penitence. Only a stone, that crumbles in my hand like my hopes, my work, our future.

I set pen to paper in order to explain, and now I give you riddles, like Cooper. Let me be clear then. I found myself pregnant with Cooper’s child. I am no longer pregnant. There. The words are said.

Maisie, I am not a good woman. I have done things no one should do. I’ve loved these paintings, these breathing images, more than any flesh and blood, more than anyone but Cooper, maybe even more than him. And the God that I knew as a child would surely Damn me now for that.

Please understand, I couldn’t bear for you to see me now, like this. I must be still, regain my strength. And then, my dear, I must paint.

• • •

April 24, 1949

Dearest M.,

As you see, I have sent you a canvas. It is my final painting: The Nightmage. The other paintings must remain on the mountain, but this one, my dear, you must promise me to keep safe in New York, far from here.

It is the finest I have ever done, this stagman with his horns of flames. He is a master of fire, and an artist himself. He was my muse, but no longer. I have been his creature, while I thought he was mine. I have been his canvas, his chalk and his paint. I know I will not paint again. I am emptied out. I am hollow inside. The land mirrors my nightmares now and I cannot bear this emptiness. Worst of all, I can not answer the questions I see in Cooper’s eyes.

He doesn’t know there was a child, Maisie. I cannot tell him. I cannot tell him.

Now I want only peace, silence, empty white walls around me. I don’t want to see these colors, these spirals, these lines, this terrible beauty anymore. And so I entrust my work, my muse, my passion for the land, my love for Cooper into your strong and capable hands, where I know they will find safe haven.

A.N.

Maggie held Anna’s last letter in her hand, staring out at the mesquite wood that lay beyond the window glass. Anna may have sat in this very same spot when she wrote the letter to Maisie. Never dreaming that half a century later a stranger would read those anguished words. She felt again that pang of conscience that made her wonder if she was even cut out for the role of biographer. It was different than journalism, different than interviewing a living and willing subject.

Cooper must have wanted this, or he’d never have left his papers to her. Maisie must approve as well, or she wouldn’t have sent Anna’s letters. But what about Anna Naverra herself? Maggie sighed. She knew what the answer would be. And she didn’t know if she had it in her to ignore it, to publish these letters anyway. But she also could not simply abandon the work, and leave the riddle of Cooper unsolved.

At the very least she wanted to find, or reconstruct, The Sagauro Forest. She owed him that, for bringing her here to this land that was stealing her heart.

• • •

Dora put on a silk chemise, a man’s vest, and a long bright skirt—a full one, good for dancing, with a lace petticoat of Anna Naverra’s peeking out from underneath. She tied back her hair, and put on earrings of dangling Mexican milagros. Around her neck she wound the strands of a Zuni necklace: silver beads and malachite. She pulled on her scuffed green cowboy boots, and smiled at herself in the bedroom mirror. It had been too long since she and Juan had gone out on a date and enjoyed