Bettina nodded. Time moved differently here and didn’t rest so heavily on the body.
“And for power, of course,” el lobo added.
“Power.”
“She meant to use the Glasduine as much as the Gentry did. I don’t doubt she chose both who would wear the mask and who would repair it.”
“Ellie was supposed to make a new one,” Bettina said. “A copy, but infused with her own spirit and creative impulses.”
“To infuse it with her own considerable, if untapped, power, you mean.”
Bettina nodded. It was all so depressing.
“The Recluse should have asked for luck,” she said, remembering a conversation she’d had with Ban, years ago now.
“How so?”
“Luck is sweet. A gift, a loan. When you have made your use of it, it goes on, undiminished. Power is finite and when one has it, it means another doesn’t.”
El lobo nodded with understanding.
“And now look at her,” Bettina said. “For all the heartache and pain she caused, she has earned nothing but the death that was always waiting for her. What an evil woman.”
“Or a fool.”
Bettina gave her wolf a questioning look.
“There’s often not a great deal of difference between the two,” he said.
He rose easily from his crouch. Turning, he offered Bettina his hand and lifted her to her feet. They paused at the pool, looking down at the sleeping salmon. El lobo plucked a cigarette butt from the water and carefully placed it on the stone wall among the other offerings.
“We should go,” he said.
Bettina nodded. But having seen the dead woman made her question once more her own involvement in this hunt.
“¿Y bien?” she said. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“To right a wrong.”
“Is that it? I felt the pull of these forests, I left my beloved desert, and for this? To try to heal some monster that will no doubt need to be killed anyway?”
“I don’t think you were called to try to heal any monster,” el lobo said. “How could you have been? It didn’t even exist until today.”
“Then who have I been called to heal? You?”
“I think you are here to heal yourself.”
She shook her head. “No seas tonto. I don’t need healing.”
“No? Perhaps I’m not so crazy. You’ve been here for months, but to what use have you put your studies beyond some simple charms? Calling on the spirits to help the Gentry’s pet human is the closest you’ve come to being a true curandera since you arrived.”
“I have been waiting…”
“Yes, to be healed.”
Bettina frowned at him. He could be so infuriating.
“Healed?” she demanded. “Of what?”
“Shall I make a list of all that troubles you?” her wolf asked.
“Please do.”
He counted the items off on his fingers. “There is the question of your faith, how the spirits confuse your feelings towards the church and cause a rift with your mother. There is your grandmother’s abrupt disappearance from your life. Your sister’s denial of the spiritworld and how she belittles your grandmother’s teachings. The guilt you feel for sending los cadejos away after promising them a true home. The confusion of having a father who lives in the desert as a hawk, forgetting he was ever a man. The loneliness that comes from how you long for love, but believe no man will understand you, and no spirit will keep faith. Shall I go on?”
She was too shocked to be angry. “Who are you? How can you know all of this?”
“I am who I have said I am.”
Bettina shook her head. “You know too much about me.”
“I’m a good listener,” el lobo said.
“Those are things I’ve not spoken of with anyone. And certainly not here.”
He nodded. “I didn’t hear it from you. I listened to the gossip of the spir-itworld. When you first came, I asked after you, and the stories came to me. Of you, your abuela, your parents.”
“Why would they speak of me? What could they hope to gain?”
El lobo laughed. “They would gain nothing. It’s simply the nature of spirits to gossip. Surely you’ve seen by now that they’re worse than humans? If you don’t want to be gossiped about, you must ask them specifically not to.” He shrugged. “But even then they will still talk, couching their stories in riddles and half-truths.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about me?” she asked.
“Everything.”
“You can say that after the list you’ve just recited.”
“Those are things that are spoken of about you,” he said. “One can infer a great deal from such, but not what matters most. I don’t know how you truly feel. What your hopes and dreams might be. I have listened to the spirits speak of you; I have yet to hear you speak.”
Bettina turned from the pool with its sleeping salmon and walked away, under the trees. El lobo fell in step beside her, quiet now. His gaze, when she glanced his way, held only concern; the teasing humor fled.
“It’s all true,” she said after a while. “Mas o menos. I did not specifically send los cadejos away, but I have not made them welcome since the night Abuela followed the clown dog into the desert. And my beliefs, Abuela’s teachings. While it’s true they have caused a rift between my mother and sister and myself, I have reconciled my faith with my knowledge of the spirits.” She looked at him again. “I see room for all in God’s world. Perhaps we do not all practice the charity we should to each other, but surely He does.”
“I know nothing of your god,” el lobo said.
“Why would you?”
“But I would like to understand this hold he has on his followers.”
She nodded. “Ese está extraño,” she said. “The first night you took me to the salmon’s pool, I saw the Recluse there, but she seemed like a mission priest to me. You told me you saw no one.”
“I told you I saw no man.”
“Ah. But why would you keep her a secret from me?”
“Because you weren’t involved,” he said. “If you weren’t a part of what she and the Gentry were up to, why draw you into it?”
They’d walked farther now than Bettina had ever been in this part of la epoca del mito. By now, in the world where Kellygnow stood, their way would have taken them through the neighboring estates. Here, there was only the wild wood, ancient and tall, the immense trees untouched by the lumbermen who had founded so much of Newford.
“I hadn’t known about my father,” she said. “That he had forgotten he was a man. I thought he had abandoned us—out of love,” she added. “That he thought it would hurt us to grow old while he remained forever unchanged.”
“Only he can say.”
She nodded. “When this is done, I will find him and ask him.”
El lobo hesitated, then said, “It’s not always wise to question the motives of an old spirit such as he.”
“Are you warning me against asking you too many questions?” she asked with a smile.
The humor returned to his eyes. “I am hardly an old spirit. To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely certain what I am.”
“But still I will ask him,” Bettina said. “He may be an old spirit, but he is still my papá.”
“This is true.”
“¿Y bien? And as for love—do any of us trust or understand it?”