“If you hear me,” he said, “I just want to say, you know, thanks. For listening, I mean.”
He waited a while longer, then returned to his seat on the front bumper. The hardest thing about being useless, he realized, was knowing that you were. And there was not a damn thing you could do about it.
Christ, he could really use a drink. And that was something he hadn’t felt this strongly in a long time.
He was seriously considering going into Kellygnow himself to see if he could cadge one from somebody when he heard a sound, far off in the distance. He lifted his head, waiting for it to be repeated, but it didn’t come again.
Okay, he thought. It’s raining. Big storm. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. But it was also the middle of winter, and how often did you hear thunder in the winter?
“Thank you,” he said. “Really, I mean it.”
He was still grinning when his aunts returned from Kellygnow with a tall red-headed woman in tow.
7. En el Bosque del Common
El qué con lobos anda a aullar se ensena.
He who keeps company with wolves learns to howl.
1
Wasn’t that just like a man, Bettina thought as she followed her wolf into la epoca del mito. Where did they learn to keep everything in its own box the way they did? She knew the kiss had meant as much to him as it had to her, yet he was able to put everything aside and carry on with the task at hand as though nothing had happened between them. Which was what they should do, she knew. What they must do. But it still made the promise woken from that kiss seem of so much less consequence than she hoped it was.
El lobo looked back at her when they’d crossed over.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “No importa.”
“When a woman says, ‘nothing,’ ” he said, “she means, ‘everything.’ ”
“You shouldn’t generalize.”
A flicker of amusement woke in his eyes. “Or I should at least encompass more with my generalizations. Perhaps I should have referred to most people instead.”
Bettina sighed. “My grandmother and Nuala both warned me about keeping company with wolves. El qué con lobos anda a aullar se ensena, Abuela would say.”
“He who keeps company with wolves learns to howl,” el lobo translated.
“Literally, perhaps. But it means that bad habits are acquired from bad companions.”
“And what bad habits have you acquired from me?”
“None,” Bettina said. “So far.”
“I like the literal meaning better.”
“Sí. But you would.”
He nodded, serious now. “Though perhaps not for the reason you think. Sometimes it’s better to cut yourself free from what you know and…” He shrugged. “Howl is as good a word as any. To let loose the constrictions that normally bind your actions and run wild for a time.”
“Only we can’t, can we? We have a duty.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is about.”
Bettina shook her head. “No, I understand that we must first deal with the task at hand. But you seem to put the… other business away so easily.”
“Would you rather I bed you right now, here among the ferns and leaves?”
Sí, Bettina found herself thinking even as she shook her head again. It was bluntly put—deliberately so, she didn’t doubt, to get a rise out of her—but the thought of it appealed to her all the same, though only if he felt what she was feeling…
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “It’s all very confusing.”
“I know,” he told her. “Don’t doubt that I am any less confused.”
“Truly?”
He nodded.
“That makes it easier for me,” she said.
He shook his head, but then offered her his hand. “Come,” he said, and led her in the direction of the pool where, in this world, an ancient salmon lay sleeping. The forest was different by day, still mysterious with the cathe-dralling trees rearing above them as they walked, but it felt more welcoming than it had when she’d been here the other night, also in the company of her wolf. The ice storm had vanished, left behind with the winter they’d escaped. Here it felt like late autumn, the air rich with a musky scent of dark earth and secrets. Bettina had almost forgotten why they’d come until they neared the pool and saw the Recluse lying on the grass by its low stone wall. El lobo glanced at the body.
“It seems they’ve had a falling-out,” he said, then meant to continue on his way.
Bettina pulled him to a stop. Letting go of his hand, she knelt by the still form. She could tell by the angle of the neck that it was hopeless, but she still felt for a pulse, still called up the healing spirit in her heart and asked for help from the spiritworld to diagnose what might be used to help the hurt woman.
“Bendígame, Virgen. Bendígame, santos, Bendígame, espiritus,” she murmured. “Deme la fuerza a ayudar está pobre alma.”
The blessing rose in her but it was too late. The woman’s death wound was far too grievous, and here in la epoca del mito, spirits were quick to leave their bodies and travel on.
“You’re wasting your time.”
Bettina looked up to el lobo, a little disappointed that he would be so callous of one so recently slain.
“I had to try,” she said.
“But why? She is the cause of all our troubles.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed and crouched beside her, sitting on his ankles. She felt a pang of memory when she looked at him. So her father had sat, he and his peyoteros, talking long into the night, smoking their cigarettes. Men unused to chairs, who could find no use for man-made conveniences.
“Until she came along,” el lobo said, “the Gentry were no different from Nuala. Content to roam the city, to have a den in the wild acres behind Kellygnow. They didn’t need to take anything from the native spirits—they had all they wanted already: a den they could call their own, pubs for drink and the craic, the music. It was she who woke ambition in them, woke the evil we all carry in us, fanned it with admiring words and false promises.”
“You said you didn’t know about the mask.”
“I didn’t. But I still knew there was something, some artifact they sought after, and would, as we’ve seen, eventually find. And all the while the Gentry, their baser instincts awoken, simply grew worse. It was she who encouraged them to be more territorial. To be harder of heart and mean-spirited. To take what they wished, for it was owed to them.”
“Why would she do such a thing?” Bettina asked.
El lobo shrugged. “To keep them from thinking too much, I suppose. From seeing how she led them about by their noses.”
Bettina looked down at the dead woman.
“What did she get from it?” she asked.
“A longer life. The Gentry showed her a way into the spiritworld, where she spent most of the year.”