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

took the water bottle from his pack and persuaded the whimpering man to drink. “We can’t move you yet. The medics will have to pry you loose from those cactus spines; we’ll hurt you more if we move you ourselves. Just hang on. Help’s on its way.”

“Goddamn cactus,” the young man muttered weakly. “Worse than goddamn coyotes.”

Fox looked up. “Go on, Pepe. Hurry.” But One-Eye had stopped at the head of the trail, nosing something in the shadows beyond. Crow stepped behind him, wearing his manshape, and peered into the darkness.

“What is it?” said Maggie. She switched on her flashlight. And then she dropped it with a hoarse, abrupt sound. She dropped to her knees, and gathered the shape of the Rabbit Girl into her arms. “Get John and Lillian here quick, Pepe.”

It would not be quick enough. The creature was dead. Crow knew that even before he squatted down beside her and put one hand upon the Rabbit Girl’s chest. Gunshot. She had been target practice for the poacher, grown bored while he waited by the springs. The girl had shifted into her almost-human form some time after the fatal bullet had struck, shattering one skinny rib, piercing the flimsy tissue of a lung. Crow closed his eyes, and he shifted her back to her core, made of wind, earth, bone, and fur; the grey not-quite-a-jackrabbit shape; something more and something less than all that.

“Come away, Black Maggie,” Crow said to her with a gentleness that surprised even him. “It is finished here. It is dammas.”

Tears ran down the woman’s face, floodwater in a wash, spilling over its banks. She cried with the awkward heavings of someone who had long forgotten how to cry. In the anguish on her face, Crow could almost glimpse what it was that human anguish was. Johnny Foxxe came up behind her, bracing her with his arms, his presence, looking warily at the shape-shifter beside her.

She said finally, “We can’t just leave her here.”

“You must,” Crow said, taking the body from her and laying it out on the ground. “Another will eat, and live another day. The gift of life passes on. It is dammas,” he repeated, helpless, perplexed, unable to understand the emotions that pulled the woman as strongly as the winds of the mountain pulled on him. “Come away now,” he said again.

She turned her stricken face to him. “I can’t do it. We can’t just leave her here.”

“Maggie, look,” Fox said to her. He pointed to the slope beyond, where the Spine Witch climbed through the prickly pear, barefoot on the sharp cactus thorns, her pointed face expressionless, thoroughly ignoring them all. Her tattered wings dragged on the ground as she crossed over cactus, sage and stone. She stood looking down at the jackrabbit’s body. Then she lifted it gently in her arms. She cradled the furry creature to her breast, and started back the way she had come.

“Where is she going?” Maggie asked Crow, her eyes wide and dark with wonder.

“To sing the death song.”

“Will we hear it?” Maggie whispered, wiping the tears from her hot, red cheeks.

“If you wish to, yes.” The shape-shifter leaned over and kissed the woman behind her left ear.

In the hills, the coyotes were singing.

This time, she knew the language of their song.

❋ Davis Cooper ❋

Redwater Road

Tucson, Arizona

Marguerita Black

London, U.K.

September 22, 1979

Dear Ms. Black,

In response to your letter of September I, which Maisie Tippets has passed on to me, I regret to tell you that I am not prepared to authorize a biography of my life; in fact, it would be exceedingly against my wishes for any such endeavor to begin. Obscurity has few rewards, Ms. Black, but privacy is one of them, and I value it. Maisie tells me you are a sensible woman; I trust you will respect my wishes.

She has also given me a copy of your thesis regarding my ‘Wood Wife’ poems. I never read such things. There is little that can be said about them, good or bad, that hasn’t been said before, usually at ridiculous length; and I put little stock in the writings of theorists. A theorist is not a poet.

I would far rather you had sent me your poems. As it happens, I am familiar with your work and have followed your career since your first publication, The Coalminer’s Tale. The Harper’s article on Tippetts was very good, very facile—but you are a poet. And poems are the language of the gods, not magazine reportage. Perhaps you would indulge a cranky old man and permit me to read what you have written since your last publication (the collection from Bank Street Press, I believe, or have I missed one?). You interest me greatly, Marguerita Black. I remain

Yours truly,

Davis Cooper

Chapter Eleven ❋

Twined together, root to root,

sap seeping from flesh,

the Wood Wife plants me in the soil

and gives me language once again.

—The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper

Maggie looked out the window at the London sky. Low, grey and oppressive. Threatening to rain again. She let the curtain fall back over the window, preferring the brightness and the warmth of Tat’s loft: the big monoprints with their planes of color, and the furniture that Tat had painted yellow, purple, indigo blue and apple green, like the colors from a crayon box. The industrial walls had been softened with a wash of paint the color of milk in tea, reminding her of Cooper’s walls, the mottled tones of old adobe.

Maggie shut her eyes and sighed. It seemed that everything conspired to remind her of Cooper and the mountain.

“Are you okay?” Tat said, looking up from the floor where she was framing a print. The English woman was as tall as Maggie, but in every other way she was the reverse of her American friend. Where Maggie dressed only in men’s clothing, Tat favored long, loose dresses, albeit worn over army boots. Where Maggie’s hair was dark and sleek, Tat’s was an unusual