Forests of the Heart (17 page)

Bettina wasn’t so sure it was as simple as that, but it was hardly her business. Shrugging, she led the way under the trees. The temperature immediately dropped when they stepped out of the sun and it took their eyes a few moments to adjust to the change in the light. This close to the cottage, Bettina could feel the presence of the Recluse’s
brujería,
as potent and strange as it had been yesterday, but stronger now. She glanced at her companions. They gave no more indication of noticing it than they did the magic coursing through Ellie’s own blood.

At the door of the cottage, Bettina rapped with a mitten-covered knuckle on the wooden panel. There was no immediate response so, after a moment, she rapped on it again, a little harder this time to make up for the muffling of the wool. She stepped back when she heard movement on the other side of the door. It was well she did. The door was flung open, banging on the log wall beside it, and then the Recluse was standing there, filling the doorway with her height. She regarded them each for a long moment, before her gaze settled on Ellie.

“So,” she said. “You’ve finally come.”

Bettina could readily appreciate the return of Ellie’s shyness in the face of the Recluse’s brusque manner.

“Um,” Ellie began. “Did you leave …” She pulled off a mitten and dug into the pocket of her parka, producing a creased business card. “Did you leave this in the van for me?”

“Yes, yes,” the Recluse told her, obviously impatient.

“So your name is Musgrave Wood?”

“It’s as good as any.”

Ellie cleared her throat. “Why did you—”

“Come inside,” the woman said, stepping aside. “You’re letting all the cold in.”

Ellie went first. Before Donal could follow, the Recluse moved forward to block the door again. She reached for its inner handle and gave them each another considering look, her gaze lingering longer on Bettina.

“Go amuse yourselves,” she finally said and pulled the door shut in their faces.

Bettina blinked in surprise, then turned to look at Donal.

“Jaysus,” he said. “Your man’s not exactly polite, is he?”

“She,” Bettina told him.

“She?”

“She’s a woman, not a man.”

Donal gave a slow nod. “That’s right. Ellie said something about that. But still. Bloody hell. It’s cold out here.”

Bettina had been looking at the cottage again. Now she returned her attention to him, noting the darkness in his eyes. She doubted it had all that much to do with the Recluse’s rudeness.

Why are you so angry anyway? she wanted to ask, but instead she said, “Would you like to come back to the house for something to drink? Some cocoa or coffee?”

“You wouldn’t have any Guinness, would you?”

She shook her head. “There might be a Corona.”

He pulled a face. “Coffee’ll do.”

¡Por supuesto!
Now she was stuck with him for who knew how long? May Santa Irene give her patience. Too long in Donal’s company and she’d be pouring the coffee over his head. Whatever did his friend see in him?

“So speaking of yourself,” Donal said as they walked back toward the house. “Would you be an artist or a writer?”

“Neither. I just model for some of the artists.”

“Ah.”

She gave him a sharp look.

“Gentle, now,” he said. “I only meant that you’d be a delight to paint. There’s so much character in your features.”

¡Y qué!
Bettina suppressed a sigh.

“I suppose you’re an artist?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s the one thing I don’t screw up.”

Bettina stopped. She thought that was probably the first honest thing he’d said since he’d arrived.

Donal took another step before he realized she wasn’t coming. Turning, he looked back at her.

“Why do you think that is?” she asked.

He regarded her for a long moment. “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph. Don’t you think it’s a bit early in the day to be philosophizing? We don’t even have a pint in us yet.”

She nodded and started to walk again, leading him to the kitchen door. Just before they went in, he caught her arm. She looked pointedly down at his hand until he let go.

“Look,” he said. “We’re getting off on the wrong foot. I don’t mean to be such a shite. It just happens. I don’t even know what I’m saying ‘till the words’re out of my bloody mouth.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“But I want to.”

She waited.

“You’re not making this easy,” he went on. Before she could speak, he held up a hand. “I know, I know. There’s no reason you should. It’s just… I’m not much good with the social graces, you see, so I act like an eejit.” He gave her a quick smile. She could tell he was trying, but the warmth still didn’t quite reach his eyes. “When I’m painting, it’s the only time I feel like I have … you know … any worth….”

His voice trailed off. Bettina considered him for a moment. She could feel a fetish taking shape in her mind, how she would define him if he came to her for healing. She could see the stitches, knew the
milagro
she would choose. There would be paint pigment mixed in with the dirt. Cobalt blue, definitely. A touch of raw sienna.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you should approach the rest of life as though you had a paintbrush in hand.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. This time, when his lips twitched, the smile reached his eyes.

“That’s good, you know,” he said. “It’s worth a try.”

She shrugged, not entirely sure if he meant it.

“Go on inside,” she told him, “and warm up. I’m just going to top up the birdfeeders and then I’ll put on a pot of coffee for us.”

“Let me help.” When she hesitated, he added, “I’ll keep my gob shut.”

“Gob?”

“My mouth. I mean I’ll be quiet.”

“Bueno,”
she said. “We keep the seed in the shed out back.”

True to his word, he held his peace, and surprisingly, the silence that fell between them as they measured out seed and filled the feeders wasn’t uncomfortable.

Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Bettina found herself thinking, but then she had to smile at herself. And maybe
el cuervo
could bleach its black wings and pass itself off as a dove. But it wasn’t likely. Like a crow, this Donal Greer was no innocent. Let the smile reach his eyes. But beneath the kindly charm he presented to her now, a darkness remained

Y
bien.
It wasn’t her problem.

The day wasn’t unfolding at all the way Ellie had expected it would. Which, she decided, was becoming the story of her life, really. Just consider how well things had gone yesterday morning when Henry Patterson threw his control-freak hissy fit, ha-ha. Bloody hell, as Donal would say. She’d much prefer sailing through life on an even keel to the seesawing highs and lows that the weekend had produced so far, but what could you do? Unless you were Jilly or Miki—both of whom seemed to be gifted with the innate ability to spin some kind of gold out of the worst situation’s straw—you simply had to take what was thrown at you and make the best of it.

And when you thought about, she really shouldn’t complain. Take the good with the bad, as her mother would always say. Unlike the people she and Tommy saw most nights driving the Angel Outreach van, she at least had ups to compensate for the otherwise less-than-wonderful parts of her life.

Patterson had ruined yesterday morning, it was true, and he might well kill any potential she had to make a career as a portraitist of the city’s business community, but she’d had a good time at the dance last night and it had been nice to get to know Hunter as more than a face behind the counter at the record store. And Hunter had seemed attracted to her as well, which was no small thing for a woman to whom the word “date” had simply come to mean the edible fruit of a palm tree. So he couldn’t hold his liquor. So he’d had to go home early. That was no big deal. Considering how much Donal could put away—”I’m your man for the gargle,” as he liked to put it—and how their relationship had gone, she wouldn’t mind if the next man in her life was a complete teetotaler.

As for today’s seesaw … Well, she’d had the pleasure of meeting Bettina, and wouldn’t she make a great subject for a bust with her striking Latina features—those eyes, that hair—but then Donal had to start acting like such a little shit.

And now this.

Musgrave Wood, if that even was his/her name, was proving to be more cantankerous than Donal at his worst, and wasn’t that saying something? The Old World charm Wood had conveyed when they’d met the other night wasn’t even remotely in evidence today.

Ellie had been nervous enough about coming to Kellygnow in the first place, and she was of half a mind to simply walk right out of the cottage now, if this was what she could expect. But for all her dislike of mysteries and puzzles, curiosity had managed to get the better of her and she found herself staying. She supposed she’d been hanging around with Tommy too much lately. The next thing you knew she’d be driving up to the rez with him to ask the Aunts for advice.

“Would you like some tea?” her androgynous host asked.

Ellie glanced at the door Wood had so recently closed in Donal’s face. She was surprised that he wasn’t hammering on its panels.

“My friend,” she began.

“Will be fine. No doubt they’ll be waiting for you in the house.” When Ellie didn’t immediately respond, Wood added, “You’ve come this far. At least hear me out.”

“I suppose. It’s just…”

“First let me get the tea,” Wood said. “Go on and take off your coat and sit. And don’t worry about your boots. The floor’s seen worse than a bit of snow in its time.”

Ellie hesitated a moment longer before finally crossing the floor to where a pair of rustic wooden chairs stood at an equally roughly hewn table. Her boots shed melting snow with every step.

She’d often had a fantasy of moving into some little log cabin in the Kick-aha Hills—the idea of it appealed to the same part of her that thought she liked camping. However the two times she’d actually gone camping, the discomforts had seemed to far outweigh the pleasanter aspects of those outings. But she thought she could live in a place like this.

The open-concept room was dominated by a rather large cast-iron wood-stove. One corner of the floor space, the part where she was sitting, had been sectioned off as a kitchen area. The rest formed a combination sitting room and bedroom, furnished with a rather narrow four-poster brass bed that had a cedar chest at its foot, and a reading chair that was pulled up by the stove, a floor lamp standing behind it. The kitchen boasted a sink and counter, a hutch, fridge, and some cupboards under the counter. There was a row of books on a shelf near the bed, leather-bound, their titles indecipherable from where she was sitting, and a small curtained area in the far corner that was probably the bathroom, or a closet. Or both. It seemed wonderfully cozy, with the views from the windows looking out on only trees and lawn. One could almost think they were out in the hills somewhere, instead of the middle of the city.

Before Ellie sat down, she unzipped her parka, but kept it on, making it plain that she didn’t expect to stay long. She glanced at her host. Wood gave no indication that she’d noticed, or understood, what was implied by Ellie’s keeping her coat on, and busied herself at the woodstove. Pouring hot water from a kettle into a brown betty tea pot, she brought it and a pair of mugs over to the table where Ellie sat waiting.

“Milk? Sugar?” Wood asked.

“Both, please.”

“Now then,” Wood said, returning from the small old-fashioned refrigerator that hunched, murmuring to itself, beside the sleeker wooden kitchen hutch. “Where shall we start?”

She placed a sugar bowl and a carton of milk between them on the table and sat down across from Ellie, giving her an expectant look. Ellie was still holding the business card she’d found in the van the other night. Smoothing out its creases, she dropped the card onto the table beside the brown betty.

“Outside,” she said. “When I asked you if this was your name, you were … evasive.”

Wood nodded. “Yes, I was. I’m sorry. It’s a bad habit.”

“So is it? Your name, I mean.”

“Why is it so important?”

Ellie shrugged. “I just like to know who I’m dealing with.”

And what, she added to herself. She was sure, now, that Wood was a woman. A very mannish woman, though a woman nevertheless. But there was still something odd about her that had nothing to do with the blurring of genders.

Wood tapped the business card with a long finger and smiled. “I do answer to this,” she said, “though it’s not the name I was born to. It’s a bit of a joke, really. Do you know what ‘musgrave’ means?”

Ellie shook her head.

“ ‘Grove full of mice.’ “

All Ellie could do was give her a blank look.

“When I was a child,” Wood explained, “the Kickaha lived closer to the lake than they do now. I used to be haunted by the ghosts of the dead mice that we had to kill—to keep them out of our dry goods, you understand. So the Indian children that I played with took to calling me Many Mice Wood— ‘Wood’ is my actual surname. I related this story to a philologist friend of mine some time later and he promptly christened me Musgrave. Wood/grove—do you see? Full of mice.”

“And all of this relates to … ?” Ellie asked.

“You wanted to know my name.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I was born Sarah,” Wood went on, “which was also my best friend’s name in college. To lessen the confusion, I decided to rename myself.” She tapped the card again. “To this. Of course Sarah—my friend Sarah—is long gone now and I’ve since reclaimed the name.” Her gaze rose from the card. “Though Musgrave, I’ll admit, still has a certain resonance for me that Sarah will never have, and I can’t quite seem to let it go.”

Since sitting at the table, Wood’s manner had regained that Old World charm that Ellie remembered from the other night. The woman’s moodiness was something else Wood shared with Donal, she realized. When the fancy struck him, he could switch as readily as Wood had between being cranky and wonderfully likable. Still, while that was true, and interesting on some level, it brought her no closer to understanding why Wood had left the card in the van than she’d been before coming up here to Kellygnow.