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

Dora looked at Maggie, her eyes narrowed. “All right. If you say so, I believe you. I can’t believe you’d lie to me. I’ve never seen anything like that myself; but yes, I’ve always felt something in these hills. Something … I don’t know, more like Cooper’s poems, or Froud’s paintings … that’s how I’d imagined it. Not like Anna’s paintings. I don’t love Anna’s work, like the rest of you. Her vision is too somber for me; I just don’t see the world like that.” She shivered, letting go of Fox’s hand, wrapping her arms around herself as though the morning air had turned cold.

“And that,” said Fox softly to Maggie, “is why Dora’s okay, and Juan is not.”

Maggie met Fox’s eyes. He might be right. Then she thought about her encounter with Crow, when the face he’d shown back to her had been her own. She wondered what she should make of that, and what that meant about her own psyche.

Dora was shaken, but there was color in her cheeks and a spark of life coming back to her eyes, replacing that dull, defeated look that she’d worn when she first came up the wash, alarming Maggie more than the bruises.

Maggie said, “How long has Juan been gone now?”

“We fought just after I got home from the bar with you, night before last. Then he walked out and he hasn’t been back.”

Fox asked, “Did he take anything with him? Camping gear, anything like that?”

Dora shook her head.

“Then I think we should call out Search and Rescue,” Fox said.

Maggie protested. “If the mountain is crawling with people, it’s going to scare off Crow and the others. And they may be the only ones who know where Juan is now.”

Fox considered this. “You’re right,” he said, “but we’ve still got to go out there and find him. Juan is completely unequipped for the desert. He’s got no water if he strays from the creek; he’s got no protection from exposure. There are mountain lions, and rattlesnakes—yes, I know I’m scaring you, Dora, and I mean to. This is serious.”

“John and Lillian will help us look, won’t they?” said Dora anxiously.

“And Tomás,” Fox said, “if he’s home. I’ll call him. But we can’t go off half-cocked, like Juan. That means hiking boots, water, food, sunscreen, and first-aid supplies.” He ticked these items off on his fingers. “I’ll bring my Search and Rescue pack; some climbing gear; cedar and sage…” His eyes met Maggie’s. “We don’t know what we’re going to find out in those hills.”

She suspected finding Juan would have more to do with Crow and his kind than it would with mountaineering. Yet she found Fox’s physical competence and knowledge of the desert comforting nonetheless. She said, “I’ll go get dressed. Then I’m going to scramble up some eggs—I think we should eat before we go. Dora, try to think if there is anything that Juan has mentioned that might be useful. Or anything that Cooper might have told you, for that matter. Anything at all.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

Fox went home to get his gear and Dora stepped into Cooper’s kitchen to put in a call to the Alders. She came into the bedroom and reported, “They’re expecting us over there within the hour. I told them we’d explain it all then.”

She sat down on the bed while Maggie dressed, her eyes lingering on Fox’s silver bracelet resting on the bedside table. She gave Maggie a speculative look, but when she spoke it was about the Alders.

“What are we going to tell them?” she asked.

“That Juan is missing in the hills. It’s up to you how you want to account for that black eye—but if it were me, I’d tell the truth.”

“I meant about the Drowned Girl and the rest.”

Maggie sighed. “As little as possible, I reckon. At least for now, anyway. You believed me, and Fox believed me. I’m not sure I want to push my luck.”

Dora put her arms around her knees. “Are they beautiful?” she asked wistfully. “Juan said that they’re much more beautiful than us.”

“Did he? Crow is beautiful. And Thumper—”

“Thumper?”

Maggie smiled. “That’s my name for her. She’s beautiful like wild animals are, or else like the trees and cactus are. They look just like they should look. No more, no less than that.”

Dora herself looked rather forlorn. “Juan said that we’re pathetic next to them.”

“Well now, if Fox’s theory is right, that’s how Juan is feeling about himself—not about you.” Maggie sat down on the bed and put her arm around the smaller woman. “Look, Dora, we’ll find him.” At least she hoped they would; and if they did, that he’d want to return. Old folktales were running through her head, about men entranced by beautiful fairy women, spirited away into the fairylands for seven years … or the rest of their mortal lives.

Dora leaned her head against Maggie’s shoulder. Then the phone began to ring.

“Oh god, that’s probably Nigel,” Maggie said. She sighed deeply; she didn’t want to answer it.

Dora sat up. “I’ll get it,” she said. “I’ll tell him that you can’t talk now.”

“God bless you, dear,” said Maggie gratefully.

She followed Dora into the kitchen. It took the other woman a while to get back off the phone again.

“Nice voice,” said Dora as she hung up the receiver. “But he’s persistent, isn’t he? He kept saying he just had one little itty bitty question. Something about a guy named Harvey? He didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“That sounds like Nigel all right,” Maggie said.

“He’s always like that? No wonder you left,” Dora muttered, rolling her eyes.

Maggie took out eggs, peppers, tortillas. She heated oil in a frying pan. Something was nagging at the back of her brain. Something about that familiar word, “mage.” She thought about where she’d heard it before… Thumper had said she could ask her questions of “a mage, a witch, a shape-shifter.” Lines from The Wood Wife drifted into her head; she