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

repeated them silently as she broke the eggs:

… and the mages gathering,

a crescent moon,

the land stretched taut between them, between

tree and stone; west and south;

north, the solemn slumbering rock;

east, there is only poetry,

the poet stumbling, the broken moonlight.

Mages. The word was plural there. Were there other mages in Anna’s paintings? She stopped suddenly, remembering Anna’s letters. Mages. That’s where she’d heard the word before. She turned the flame off under the frying pan just as Fox came through the door.

“What is it?” said Fox when he saw her expression.

“I’m not sure,” Maggie admitted. “But come back to Anna’s room with me.”

In the small studio, she took out the packet of letters and explained what they were to Fox and Dora. She shuffled through them, and found the one she wanted. It was dated November 9, 1948. She sat on the table, her boots resting on the seat of the chair, and read the letter aloud.

“My dearest M.,” she read to them, “I have learned so much. I have learned at last how to talk to the paint, and through the paint to the fire, the water, the stones, the wind in the mesquite. There are seven paintings that must be done, and yet I only know six of them:

The Windmage

The Rootmage

The Floodmage

The Woodmage

The Stonemage

The Nightmage.

Those are their names. I have not discovered who the Seventh is, or even if the Six are true images, or merely the reflection of my own ideas. But I work hard every day. I am thin and strong. I can walk for hours into the hills. I will learn to walk the spiral path and when I do, ah, then how I shall paint!…”

Maggie looked up them.

Fox said, “See? This fits. She’s worried that her own ideas might shape who they are—and it sounds like she wants to get beneath the shapes she created, down to the ‘true’ essence.”

Dora’s eyes were narrowed with concentration. “Where have you put those journals, Maggie, that I was looking at the first day we came in here?”

Maggie pointed to the shelf beside the desk. Dora knelt down and began to pull them out. “I’m trying to find the one that I was looking through that day,” she explained. “Remember I said there were notes for paintings in there? Well, this is all beginning to sound familiar: the Nightmage, the Stonemage…” She flipped through the pages of a journal, then pulled another out. “No, these are Mexico City journals … wait. Here we are. The Rincons.” She bit her lip as she turned the pages. She stood and brought the journal over to the others. “Here it is. See?” She set the book down on the table, and they looked at it together.

The pages were filled with thumbnail sketches for paintings Maggie recognized: the white girl of Dora’s canvas; a tree woman like the one in Fox’s cabin; a sleeping figure made of stones like the painting up at Tomás’s place; and a stag man like the pencil sketch that Tomás also owned. Maggie pointed to an owl-feathered boy. “That one’s in here,” she said to them.

Fox nodded. “Cooper used to have that one hanging in the living room.”

“I’ve got it back here, in storage. As well as the one of Crow.” Then Maggie pointed to the sketch of the Stag Man. “Tomás has a larger sketch of this. But where is the painting now?”

Fox shook his head. “I’ve never seen one. It’s not here?”

“No, definitely not,” she said. She pointed to another sketch of a bright-eyed, wrinkled woman with a stone tied to her back. “I haven’t seen this one before either.”

“Cooper gave that to the Alders,” Dora told her. “Anna called it The Root Mother. He said it reminded him of Lillian, since she’s a botanist and all—and then Lillian pretended to be offended, saying she wasn’t that old and wrinkled yet.” She smiled. “I’ve always liked that one. It’s not so dark or sad as the others.”

Maggie turned the page. There were notes printed in Anna’s neat handwriting and, unlike the titles under the sketches, they were written in her own language. “Can you translate?” she asked Dora.

“Yes, but Fox’s Spanish is better than mine.”

He frowned down at the journal. “Can you give me a pen and some paper? I’ll copy out the list she’s made.” He took a notebook from Maggie and wrote:

The Guardians

Windmage/Owl Boy: Sky

Rootmage/Root Mother: Earth

Floodmage/Drowned Girl: South

Woodmage/Wood Wife: West

Stonemage/the One-Who-Sleeps: North

Nightmage/Stag Man: East

Seventh mage: ???

Fox pointed to a note in Anna’s margin, next to the name of the mage of the east, the Stag Man.

“What does that say?” Maggie asked him.

“It says: The Muse. Guardian of our hills.”

“Well, we’re in the east here in the Rincons,” Dora pointed out. “East of Tucson anyway.”

“Anna calls them guardians?” said Maggie.

“Ángel de la guarda is the term that she uses.”

“Guardian angels?” Maggie said, and he shrugged.

“She was Spanish Catholic, right?” said Fox. “So she’s put a Catholic spin on it. If she’d been Irish, she probably would have called them fairies. And Tomás would call them spirits, I reckon.”

“Tomás? Has he ever seen them?”

Fox smiled drily. “You ask him,” he told Maggie “Maybe he’ll give you a straight answer.” He looked down at the page again. “This reminds me of something he told me once. He said there are seven directions. North, south, east, west. The sky. The earth.”

“Then what’s the seventh?”

“The seventh lies within the heart. He says that we carry it inside of us.”

Maggie met Fox’s eyes, his clear grey gaze. She said, “Let’s go find Tomás.”

“Breakfast first, remember?” said Dora. “And John and Lillian are waiting for us.”

“Breakfast first,” Maggie agreed, closing the studio door behind them.

When the meal was finished, Maggie put on her English walking boots and one of Cooper’s hats. She filled up a knapsack with apples, chocolate, a bottle of water, Fox’s warm shirt, a flashlight, a trail map of the Rincons. She handed Fox his silver bracelet, and she put Anna’s bracelet on her own wrist. “Are you