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

“That’s all right. We’ll let it burn out soon.” He picked up a pouch, drew out a handful of something and tossed it onto the embers. A sharp, sweet fragrance filled the air.

“Am I allowed to ask what it is you’re doing?”

“A lot of sweating.” He laughed suddenly. “The stone people were very hot tonight. This is cedar I’m putting on the flames, to thank them.” He showed her the dried green leaves in his palm, then tossed another handful.

“Why was there smoke inside the hut?”

“In the willow lodge? It was from the stones.” He wiped sweat from his face and said, “The stones are from the mountainside. So is the willow, and so is the wood that fuels the fire, heating the stones until they glow red hot. Then I took the stones inside, and poured water from Red Springs on them.”

“Like a sauna,” she said.

He nodded. “Like a sauna. Like a sweat lodge. Like many other rituals from cultures all around the world. It’s one way I know of to talk to the land. And to let the land talk to me.”

“And do they always come when you do this?”

“They never have before. They may never again. But they did tonight, and that’s enough.” He looked at her, his eyes full of shadows. “I’m glad you were here,” he said.

Maggie was silent, watching the dying flames. After a while she told him, “I needed to see you. To talk to you.”

“What about?”

“About them.”

He looked at her closely. He said, “I’m going to wait here until the fire goes out. Then I’m going to go home, make some tea, and eat—I’ve been fasting all day. Why don’t you come back with me, have some tea and some food, and then we’ll talk?”

“All right,” she said. Beside her, One-Eye stirred in some coyote dream. The night was still as the fire burned low; she could hear the distant cry of an owl, the bark of a fox, the chatter of the stream, but the coyotes were silent in the hills and the night air seemed empty without them. This would be what every night would sound like if the poacher and others like him had their way. The world would be a tamer place. And that, Maggie thought, would be a loss.

Fox rose and put on warm, dry clothes, unself-conscious as she watched him dress. Then he pulled the tarp from its circular frame. Underneath were stripped willow boughs lashed together. He carefully untied them, and soon all that was left was a pile of long, thin poles. He broke them up and fed them to the fire. The wood was green and it hissed as it burned. Fox kneeled down, and picked up the tin whistle. “This one is Irish,” he said to her. Maggie didn’t know if he meant the whistle, or the song he played as the willow burned.

When the fire grew low, he played another song. The fire burned down to embers again, and then to hot ash that he covered with sand. By the time they left the clearing, carrying the tarp, a bucket and Fox’s bulky pack, it was as though nothing had ever been in the clearing that night at all.

When they reached Fox’s cabin the place was cold, but a fire in the hearth began to heat it up. He tossed her a shirt. “Here, put this on. You’re going to freeze in your own.”

The shirt was wool flannel, a red plaid faded from many washings, and it smelled like Fox. “Ummm. Nice and soft. Look out,” she warned him, “or you might not get it back.”

“But it’s not black,” Fox teased her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in color before.”

“Neither has half of the western world,” said Maggie as she buttoned it up.

He put a pot of water on the stove. “Look, I’m afraid it’s just pasta tonight, and sauce from a jar. I’m not much of a cook.”

Maggie went over. “Let me see what’s in your fridge. We can always doctor the sauce.”

“Be my guest. I’ll brew the tea,” he said. “I think I can handle that.”

As she sauteed garlic in olive oil with slices of fresh green Mexican chilis, she began to tell Fox everything she knew about Anna Naverra and Davis Cooper. And about the creatures Naverra had painted, still haunting the mountainside. She told him about Thumper, and her meetings with Crow. Then she looked at him closely, eyes narrowed. “You believe me. I can see it in your face. Nigel would have had me committed by now.”

“Nigel doesn’t live on this mountain,” he said. “Nigel wasn’t in that lodge tonight.”

Maggie smiled at the incongruous mental picture of Nigel by that fire in his Armani suit. But then, she thought, looking down at Fox’s red shirt and her jeans, torn and streaked with ash, she wasn’t exactly the same woman who’d first come to this mountain herself.

Fox said, “So Anna didn’t believe that her paintings had somehow created these creatures?”

Maggie shook her head. “Anna believed that all she was doing was creating shapes for them to wear. Like clothes, she said, that they put on for our sake, not for theirs. I think maybe they’ve always been here.”

“They seem to be part of the land,” he said. “They’re probably as old as it is—assuming time even works the same for them as it does for us.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Because of Cooper, and that ‘Time is a spiral’ business of his that I never understood.”

Maggie sighed. “I sure wish Cooper were here. I’ve got about a million questions to ask him.”

“And what makes you think he’d answer them?” Fox asked her drily.

“You’ve got a point.” She tossed the contents of the frying pan into the steaming pasta. “Have you got some plates?”

He produced two and they took the food over to the fire, sitting on the Mexican rug with the plates held in their laps.

“This tastes good.” He glared at