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

The wind groaned as it crossed the peak. It tugged at the girl’s white hair, the Owl Boy’s feathers, the leaves of the Woodmage’s cloak. The Rootmage braced herself against it and she said in a voice not unlike the call of the wind, “No, but is that wise?”

The girl smiled. “What has that to do with me? Wisdom belongs to you, Grandmother. Wisdom belongs to the soil, not the flood. I have spent many months in preparation. I will now set things in motion, that’s all.”

“Things you cannot control,” said the old woman. “You run with the Hounds but you have not mastered them. The Hounds will hunt as they wish to hunt.”

“Take care, water witch,” the Owl Boy hissed, “or the hunter will be the hunted.”

She shrugged, unconcerned. “Then a man will die. They die anyway, sooner or later.”

He said, “Your tender concern for that little painter of yours is touching.”

The girl shrugged again. “And is he concerned for the paint and the canvas? He is a tool, nothing more.”

Crow barked in laughter. “You foolish creatures. Kill a man, kill a hundred of them if you can—but it won’t bring your Nightmage back. What makes you think he can come back? What makes you think that he wants to?”

They ignored him. The Woodmage spoke, her voice so low that Crow had to strain to hear it. “There is another way. Another could be found, a new Nightmage perhaps—”

“Ridiculous,” Crow commented. “You’d have to wake the One-Who-Sleeps.”

“—or else,” the Woodmage continued, “another Spiritmage to stand in the east.”

The Drowned Girl spat into the sand. “You’ve been with humankind too long, wood wife. A Spiritmage is no mage at all. Humans can’t be true mages. They live, they eat, they fornicate, they die.”

“They create,” said the Woodmage calmly.

“They destroy,” the Floodmage countered.

“They exist,” said Crow conversationally, “so it’s no use pretending they don’t, or that they’re simply going to go away.”

The Floodmage turned black eyes on him before she remembered that he didn’t exist, not here, not in this circle with them. She turned away, ignoring his laughter, the jingle of bells, the rattle of seeds.

“I hunt,” the Floodmage announced. “The moon will be full; the Hounds will rise. I hunt tomorrow. Will anyone stop me?”

The mountain was silent. The wind died down.

The Floodmage bowed her lovely head, a cold smile on her pale, young face. “Pity. It might have been amusing.”

Crow laughed again, delighted now.

“Poof, go away,” he said to them. And they did, disappearing in a flash of light. Thunder cracked loudly in the sky above. Lightning danced, and the rain began to fall. He jumped to his feet, threw back his head, and he howled as the rain came down.

❋ Davis Cooper ❋

Redwater Road

Tucson, Arizona

The Riddley Wallace Gallery

New York City

December 3, 1950

Dear Riddley,

I apologize. I suppose I was drunk when I wrote you last. These past months since the news of Anna’s death came to me—well, they’ve been hard. You caught me on a bad day. I confess I can’t remember what I wrote.

Today I am sober and contrite. You were always good to Anna in your way, and so of course I know you are not capitalizing on her death by planning a retrospective now. And you are right, it is more important than ever that Anna’s work be exhibited. But you can’t have the Rincon series for the show. You can have all the work through ’47, but the other canvases must remain here. Those creatures belong to the mountain, Riddley. Don’t ask me about them again.

Your words of concern were kindly meant, old boy, but don’t waste time worrying about me. Yes, I drink, so what? Half the poets I’ve known have been drunks, and the other half are dead. I’m doing fine, or at least as well as a man in my position can do. The light has left my world with Anna, and I am learning now to see in the dark. I’m at work on a new collection of poems. I plan to call it The Wood Wife.

Thanks for the tip about Jack’s place but I don’t intend to come back to New York. I have my work. I have the mountain, and solitude. It’s enough. It’s everything now.

Yours as ever,

Davis Cooper

Chapter Ten ❋

Rain and sun shall feed me now,

and roots, and nuts, and wild things,

and rustlings in the midnight wood,

half-mad, like Myrddin, wandering.

—The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper

There were rocks, trees, water, wind, words, the rise and fall of breath, of sounds, of language, of poetry as she crossed the wash of dreams, and climbed up the banks of wakefulness…

Cooper’s bedroom was dark when she opened her eyes. The dream slowly faded. Rain tapped on the roof. The featherbed was warm around her, and someone was whispering in her ear.

“At night I dream that you and I are two plants that grew together, roots entwined, and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth, since we are made of earth and rain.”

“Ummm, Neruda,” Maggie murmured. She pulled Fox closer around her, curled into the warmth of him. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. He whispered,

“How shall I touch you unless it is everywhere? I begin here and there, finding you, the heart within you, and the animal, and the voice; I ask over and over for your whereabouts, trekking wherever you take me, the boughs of your body leading deeper into the trees…”

She placed her hand over his on her belly. “Are you quoting Neruda again?” she asked him softly.

“No. Mary Oliver,” he whispered. He kissed her down the curve of a shoulder blade. “I want to seduce you with language, but I don’t have any words of my own. My language, my skill, is all in my hands. A working man’s hands.”

“A craftman’s hands, a musician’s hands,” she murmured, feeling the warmth of his rough, calloused fingers against her softer skin.

“So let