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

Maggie’s gaze. The other woman was watching Fox. He stood beating out the time with his boot heels, fingers flying across the accordion keys, and it seemed remarkable to Dora that he could make even that maligned instrument sexy. Though he’d only dressed as he always dressed—ripped jeans, flannel shirt, the inevitable cowboy boots—he had a presence on stage that drew more women’s eyes than Maggie’s tonight. If Fox spent his time alone these days, it was by choice, not necessity. For the next tune Fox picked up his flute, leaning close into the microphone. The sound trembled over the wailing guitars, bluesy, throaty and compelling.

Dora leaned over to Maggie again. “Our Johnny Foxxe is good, isn’t he? I mean, maybe not quite like your ex-husband, but…”

Maggie shook her head. “So what? You can’t compare them. Nigel is utterly sublime; he’s in another league altogether. But Nige,” she told Dora, “needs to be at the top. He’s more businessman than musician now. When I met him, he’d play for the sheer pleasure of it.” She made a face. “Now it’s only for a crowd.”

“They can give him a crowd here at the Hole,” Dora teased, “and all the free beer he can drink.”

Maggie laughed. “You know, it might do him a world of good. I worry about Nige. He’s brilliant, successful—but he never seems to be very happy to me.”

“Happiness is a talent like any other,” Dora told her. “It’s another artform. Some people are good at it, some people aren’t.”

Maggie looked at her thoughtfully. “Neither Cooper nor Anna were very good at it. They had a lot of talents between them, but not that one.”

“Honey,” said Dora with exasperation, “I think you ought to give that book a rest tonight.”

“Am I sounding as single-minded as Nigel?” Maggie asked her, looking up with a guilty expression.

Dora decided not to answer that question. She gestured to the stage instead. “Now, look at Fox,” she said to Maggie. “He’s got the talent for happiness in spades.”

Fox was completely absorbed in the music, the rhythm, the give-and-take of the session, playing with the calm and steady concentration that he gave to everything he did. The band had launched into an old Billie Holiday number, the lyrics sung in Spanish. The combination of instruments was bizarre, but its quirky energy won the crowd. The musicians were skilled, the jam was surprisingly tight and completely infectious.

The song ended, and Dora drained her beer, looking at the empty pitcher on the table. “It’s a good thing you’re driving,” she said to Maggie. “I think I’m getting a bit drunk.”

“Slow down, okay? You’re going to get sick.”

“You’re right,” she replied as the band struck up a fairly straightforward Cajun tune. The accordion player from Bayou Brew took over for the set, giving Fox a break. Dora said, “I think I’ll dance again. Want to come?”

“I don’t know how to dance to this.”

“Fox will teach you. He’s the one who taught me and Juan how to two-step. It’s not so hard.”

“I don’t think—”

Dora turned to Fox as he came over to their table. “Johnny, teach Maggie to two-step, will you?”

He blinked at Dora. “All right,” he said, taking Maggie by the hand. She could see Maggie still protesting as he pulled her onto the dance floor.

Dora smiled to herself as she watched them together, moving across the crowded floor. Maggie was having a good time out there—tripping over her feet, laughing hard, her hazel eyes very bright. Then someone touched Dora on the shoulder. Matt Romero, from her bookmaking class.

“Do you want to dance, Dora?”

“You bet I do.” She smiled up at the young Apache man, feeling slightly giddy as he swung her into the crowd.

She was feeling more than slightly giddy by the late hour when the music stopped. The last remaining dancers stumbled out of the bar to the sidewalk, reeking of beer and smoke. The electric signs in the window switched off. The musicians were hauling equipment to their trucks. The sky was clear in the valley tonight, but the stars seemed distant compared to the canyon’s stars. She’d be glad to get back home to the Rincons now, and gulp down that bracing mountain air.

She was feeling rather dizzy. She leaned on Matt as she followed the others to the parking lot. “Good night,” she told him. “Great to see you again.”

He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips. “So call me,” he said. “We’ll do it again.”

She shook her head. “I’m a married woman.”

“Not so very married tonight,” he pointed out.

“I know. But this is an exception.”

“Too bad,” he said softly, looking disappointed. As he walked away, he said over his shoulder, “But call me anyway, Dora, okay?”

She smiled at him, knowing she wouldn’t, unless it was to talk about bindings and type. She’d had four good years of marriage with Juan; he was her lover, her family, her best friend. She wasn’t going to throw it all over because things had gotten rough these last months. Not without a fight, she wasn’t, she decided as she climbed into the jeep.

Maggie drove them home, and the ride went fast, for the traffic had thinned on the city streets. In the back seat, Angela and Isabella were singing Billie Holiday songs, in Spanish, the way the band had played them—their lovely voices too soft, too ethereal to do justice to the blues. When they reached the eastern part of town, the roads grew dark and quiet at last. They turned up the dirt road into the mountains. The Foxxe sisters were singing songs now in a language Dora didn’t know—low, haunting songs, like a Navajo flute given voice, or the songs a saguaro might sing; or perhaps it was just that Dora was very drunk. She groaned and closed her eyes.

Maggie parked the jeep at Dora’s house. “Good night everybody. Good night, Dora. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“Just fine,” Dora reassured her as Isabella, Angela, and Pepe disappeared down the