Forests of the Heart (45 page)

“This is serious,” she said.

“Very much so,” the housekeeper replied. “We have a generator to keep the freezer going and the pipes from freezing if the temperature should drop, and we can heat many of the rooms with their fireplaces, but others in the city aren’t going to be so well prepared.”

“We’ll have to help them.”

“We will do what we can,” Nuala agreed. “But first we need to take a head count to make sure everyone here is accounted for. Has anyone seen Franklin or Ellie?”

There was a general shaking of heads, with one person asking, “Who’s Ellie?”

Bettina shook her head. “I just got up.”

“How about James?” Nuala asked.

“I don’t think Ellie came back last night,” Chantal said. “We were going to share a room, remember, but she wasn’t back by the time I went to sleep and her bed hasn’t been slept in.”

“If she was out last night,” Lisette said, “she’d never make it back up Handfast Road again. It’s got to be a skating rink, except—” She tilted her hand at a forty-five-degree angle. “It won’t exactly be flat.”

“Are the phones working?” Bettina asked.

Nuala shook her head.

Bettina sighed. “I hope Salvador and his family are all right.”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Nuala said.

Taking charge, Nuala divided them up then, sending them off in pairs to go through the house for the head count. Bettina and Chantal were given the cottage detail. Chantal gave Bettina a look of mock horror and mouthed the words “the Recluse.”

Qué suerte,
Bettina thought, remembering the unfriendly woman from the other day. How lucky for them.

But she was curious to go outside.

They put on coats and boots and headed out the door, where Bettina found last night’s wonderland transformed into this morning’s dismal prospect. Water dripped everywhere, as though the world had come down with a bad cold overnight and woke with a runny nose. Everything was depressingly gray. Even the evergreens, coated as they were with ice and drooping, had been leached of most of their color. There were puddles the size of small ponds in the lower parts of the lawn and at least an inch of water lay on top of the ice at the bottom of the stairs and along the walk. The smaller trees were bent almost in two, the boughs of the larger ones dipped alarmingly. Everywhere she looked there was a clutter of fallen branches.

“God, what a miserable day,” Chantal said, the gloomy view penetrating even her usual good humor, if only for a moment. “Still it could be worse.”

“It can always be worse,” Bettina agreed.

“Yeah. We could be mailmen, or meter-readers. Imagine having to make rounds on a day like this. Though maybe it’d be considered a, what? A rain day, I guess, and they’d get the day off, so actually it would be good to be a mailman today.”

Bettina laughed. “I don’t think Nuala will give us a rain day,” she said and started down the stairs.

Her feet went out from under her as soon as she stepped on the ice at the bottom of the stairs. She grabbed for Chantal and they both would have gone down if Chantal hadn’t managed to catch hold of the end of the banister and steady them. They grinned at each other.

“Well, now,” Chantal said. “If they start considering synchronized falling for the Olympics, we’d be a shoo-in.”

Bettina thought of simply taking Chantal into the between where they’d have neither ice nor rain to contend with, but she knew it wouldn’t be a good idea. Most people found the sensation of that place between this world and
la época del mito
as disorienting as
la época del mito
itself.

“You’re knocking on the Recluse’s door,” Chantal said as they edged their way toward the lawn where at least they could break the crust of ice on top of the snow and get some steadier footing.

“No, no,” Bettina told her. “It’ll have to be you.”

“I don’t want her snapping at me the way she did with you the other day.”

“Your smile will win her over.”

“Oh, right.”

They reached the snow and Bettina immediately felt better with the surer footing. They started across the lawn towards the cottages, only stopping when a man’s voice hailed them.

“Bettina! Wait up there!”

Turning, they found a wet Donal slogging across the lawn towards them. Bettina regarded him suspiciously. He was wet, but not as wet as he should be. It was more as if he’d been hiding in one of the sheds, waiting to make his presence known.

“Do you know him?” Chantal asked as they waited for him to join them.

“He’s Ellie’s friend.”

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” Donal said as he reached them. “Can you believe this shite for weather? I’m Donal,” he added, offering his hand to Chantal.

Bettina introduced Chantal, then asked, “What brings you up here?”

“I’m looking for Ellie. Is she inside?”

“She never came back last night.”

“Bloody hell.”

“How’d you get here?” Chantal asked.

“I feel like I swam, and uphill to boot. My van got bogged down in a puddle the size of a lake over by Battersfield and I came the rest of the way on foot. The roads are pure shite, sheets of ice from one side to the other. So what’re you lot up to?”

There was the smell of the wolf about him, Bettina found herself thinking.

“We’re just checking to make sure everyone’s okay in the cabins,” Chantal said.

“You mind if I go in the big house and dry off?” Donal asked.

Bettina thought that perhaps she did. She’d been uneasy with him the first time they’d met. Today she didn’t trust him at all, though she couldn’t have said why. But they couldn’t simply send him away, not in this weather.

“Sure,” Chantal told him, obviously unaware of the signals Bettina was receiving. “Go in through the kitchen door. If no one’s there, help yourself to some coffee. We won’t be long.”

“Brilliant. I’ll see you inside when you get back.”

Bettina stood where she was, watching him go, until Chantal touched her arm.

“Earth to Bettina.”

She turned to look at her friend.
“Perdona.
It’s just… he worries me, that man.”

Chantal’s gaze went past Bettina, following Donal as he reached the kitchen door and went inside.

“Is this magic worry or everyday worry?” she asked.

“I can’t tell,” Bettina said. “It’s only a feeling.”

Chantal’s gaze returned to Bettina. “What do you know about him?”

Bettina shrugged. “Nothing. Just that he’s a friend of Ellie’s.”

Chantal considered that for a moment.

“Well,” she said finally. “Nuala won’t let him get out of line. And we won’t be long. Unless you want to keep arguing about who’s going to knock on the Recluse’s door.”

“We’ll save her for last,” Bettina said. “Besides, there’s smoke coming from her chimney. I’m sure she’s okay.”

“At least the place isn’t made of gingerbread,” Chantal said as they walked by, their footsteps crunching in the snow.

Bettina gave her a confused look.

“You know,” Chantal said. “As in Hansel and Gretel, wicked witches eating innocent passersby.”

“Oh, the fairy tale.”

“Well, yes. Jeez, where did you grow up?”

“In the desert.”

Chantal ducked under a low-hanging branch that was twice its usual diameter with the thick sheath of ice coating it.

“I knew that,” she said.

“I learned different stories,” Bettina told her as she ducked under the branch as well.

A twig caught in her hair. When she pulled free, dozens of little shards of ice fell around her, tinkling on the ice-encrusted snow.

“Is it always like this in the winter?” she asked as she caught up to Chantal.

“Pretty much. I mean, we always get some freezing rain, but I can’t remember it ever being this bad before. Something else we can blame on El Niño, I suppose.”

“Since we won’t take responsibility for it ourselves.”

Chantal nodded thoughtfully. “That’s true.”

They’d reached the first of the cabins. Chantal rapped on the door with a mittened knuckle.

“Anybody home?” she called.

Perfect, Donal thought as he slipped into the kitchen. He paused a moment to get his bearings, then crossed the floor to where a door opened out into a hallway. The sculptors’ studios were all on the ground floor, he remembered from when he’d come up for a couple of parties with Jilly, though that was years ago. Still, he doubted things had changed much. He stopped again in the main hall, undecided, then he heard footsteps approaching. Turning, he saw a short blonde woman wearing a Walkman.

“Hello, there,” he said.

This moment’s mask was warm and friendly, projecting all harmlessness and charm. He had every right to be here. No, he was
expected
to be here.

The woman pulled the earphones from her head. “Hello. Are you looking for something?”

“I just need to know where the sculptors’ studios are.”

“Down that hall,” she told him, pointing. “Follow the right turn, then it’s the next three or four doors on your right.”

“You’re a dear,” Donal said, letting his accent grow a little stronger. He turned up the wattage on his smile. “Ta.”

She returned his smile, and then he was off again, ambling, no hurry, no worry, until he turned a corner and quickened his pace. He counted doors, opening the third. He took a quick look, definitely a sculptor’s studio, but he didn’t recognize anything that belonged to Ellie and there was no mask. He tried the next room. Bingo. There it was, lying on what must be Ellie’s work-table as though it were no more than some curious knickknack.

He glanced down either side of the hallway, saw he was still alone, and slipped into the room, closing the door behind him. There was no lock, but he didn’t need any more time than it would take to slip the two halves of the mask into one of the oversize pockets of his coat. Crossing over to the work-table, he studied Ellie’s sketches. There were more of Bettina and the woman he’d seen her with outside than there were of the mask, but enough that he could see where she was planning to go with it.

No doubt about it, it would be a beauty. But it wasn’t necessary. All that was needed was a little glue and what was already here would do admirably— he was sure of it. Never mind the Gentry’s convoluted plans. They were only complicating matters. The mask was here, the two pieces so long separated finally brought together again. Jaysus, wasn’t that magic enough?

He could feel the power pulsing in the wood when he picked the pieces up and fit them together. The join was almost seamless. He hesitated, smoothing the wood with his thumbs, but couldn’t resist fitting the mask up against his face, carefully holding the two pieces together. For a moment there was nothing, only the odd view of the room as seen through the eye slits and a deep, woody smell—mulch and black dirt and old rotting wood all swirling together into a heady brew. But then he could feel the mask settling against his face, embracing his features as though it was no longer wood, but something more pliable like cloth, fitting itself to the contours of his face.

Spooked, he started to pull it off. The bloody thing wouldn’t budge.

What the… ?

He didn’t panic until the burning began. It felt like the mask was metal, hot from the forge, pressed against his face, searing his skin. The pain dropped him to his knees. He scrabbled at the mask with his fingers, trying to find the edges, but there was no longer any differentiation between the mask and his body. The edges of the mask had grown into his skin. He dug harder, fingernails burrowing into what felt like bark and pulpy plant tissue. His hair and beard were thick vines now, sprouting tendrils and splays of leaves. He could feel his body swelling, pressing against his shirt and coat until the cloth split along the length of his spine.

The pain spread everywhere, burning deep into his chest, his groin, his limbs. He pressed his head against the floor, fell over onto his side, still clawing at the mask.

Sweet Jaysus …

He could hear a distant wailing and realized it was his own voice, a desperate, wretched sound that rang only in his head because his jaws were locked shut, more wood than flesh and bone.

He found himself remembering a bad acid trip he’d taken once. His last one. No sooner had he dropped the tab, than he knew it was all going wrong and there was not a thing he could do until the drug had worked its way through his system.

“What did you do?” a friend asked him.

“I just let go,” he’d replied. “I just lay there in the middle of the bloody floor and let it take me away. Eight hours, gone out of my life, just like that. And that’s why it’s Guinness, and only the gargle, for me now.”

And that’s what he did now. He stopped struggling and let the monstrous beast fill him. It allowed the pain to go away. It allowed him to go away. Where his spirit had been, there was now only the raw emotion that had fueled so much of his life. The anger. The rage. The pent-up fury. The railing against the unfairness of the world when it came to how it treated Donal Greer.

Ellie woke suddenly out of a dead sleep. She bolted upright, pulse racing, confused, wondering where she was, why she was still wearing her clothes, what had woken her. Then she felt it again, a sensation like fabric tearing, except the fabric was a piece of the world and she was feeling it through the threads that connected her to it. It was as if someone was tearing away a piece of her.

She put her hands to her head and pressed against her temples, as though the pressure would restore her equilibrium the way it could sometimes ease a headache. It helped, but only a little. At least she was able to orient herself. She was in a back bedroom in the house of one of Tommy’s aunts, a room where the warmth from the stove didn’t reach. She was wearing all her clothes because it was so damned cold with all the power lines down and she’d been too tired to get undressed anyway.

But this thing that had woken her, this lost and desperate feeling …

Then the door of the bedroom opened and a tall woman stood there, the shadow of an enormous spider rearing up behind her. Aunt Nancy, Ellie thought and she shivered. For this time the impression of the spider didn’t slip away.