El lobo nodded. He glanced up the hill to where los cadejos had disappeared.
“And the little dogs?” he asked.
“They will find us when they’re ready.”
He nodded again. Neither of them said what lay unspoken between them: If there was anything left of them to find after they had confronted the Glasduine.
They made their way down to the dry wash and walked along the smooth sand under the mesquite trees, backtracking the course the water took rushing down from the higher ground during the rainy seasons. After a while, the wash brought them to a long, meandering arroyo that cut deeply into the hills. Scrambling around boulders, they moved steadily uphill, the sides of the arroyo rising just as constantly on either side of them until eventually they reached a place where the peaks of the Baboquivari Mountains could no longer be seen. Bettina finally stopped by the long, ribbed remains of a saguaro that had toppled over many years ago. It was obviously a place where others had stopped in some long-ago time for many of the stones on either side of the gorge held marks that the previous visitors carved onto their surfaces.
“This will do,” Bettina said.
El lobo nodded. He wandered over to the side of the gorge and traced a spiraling pictograph with his finger before joining her by the fallen saguaro.
“Have you been here before?” he asked.
She shook her head. “But I’ve been in places like it outside of la epoca del mito.”
“I have not,” he told her. “It’s all rather… remarkable. There seems to be so much space and the sky has such weight I almost find it hard to breathe.”
Bettina smiled. “It’s just the opposite for me,” she said. “Here I feel light-footed and my heart swells to fill the space around me. Your forests make me feel claustrophobic.”
“But it’s easier to avoid prying eyes in my forests. And here everything is so… prickly.”
“It’s easy enough to find privacy here if you want it,” she told him. “The difference is it has more to do with stillness and distance.”
“You will have to show me… when this is done.”
“Sí. When this is done.”
She chose a broad, flat stone near the dead saguaro and sat cross-legged upon it. From her pocket she took the rosary her mother had sent her. Her wolf gave it a dubious look.
“Do you think that will help with a spirit as old as this?” he said.
“It’s not for the Glasduine,” Bettina told him. “It’s for me. To remind me that I have my own ancient spirits looking out for me.”
El lobo regarded the small cross. “The Glasduine was already ancient when the man they hung on that cross was born.”
“Perhaps,” Bettina said. “But who made spirits such as the Glasduine? Who called it and all the world into being? Is He not more ancient still?”
“I have heard a different story as to how the world came into being.”
Bettina shrugged.
“And you trust this God?” her wolf asked. “I’ve heard he doesn’t think so highly of women.”
“I’ll admit I’ve had my difficulties with that as well,” Bettina said. “But when I pray, it’s not to the Father or the Son, but to la Novia del Desierto. The Mother who was a bride of the desert before she was a bride of the church.”
El lobo regarded her for a long moment, then nodded. “As things stand, I wouldn’t turn my back on anyone who might be able to help us. I’d welcome the devil himself if I thought he could give us a hand.”
“Don’t even joke about such a thing,” Bettina said and quickly made the sign of the cross.
“Who said I was joking?”
“Please…”
“I’m sorry,” he told her, when he saw that she was genuinely upset. “But you know, one religion’s demons can be another’s gods.”
“Sí,” Bettina said.
She knew that. She had only to look at herself, at how she was brought up with the curious mix of folklore and Christianity, to understand the contradictions that could mingle, jostling elbow to elbow in one’s belief systems.
“But I think,” she went on, “that we have only ourselves to look to for strength in what we undertake today.”
Her wolf nodded. They both knew the dangers of what they were about to attempt. De verdad, Bettina doubted they’d be able to either heal or destroy this creature she was about to call up. But they had to make the attempt.
“I’ve had a thought,” el lobo said, as though reading her mind. “About the Glasduine.”
Bettina raised her eyebrows in a question.
“It came to me,” he said, “from this business of croí baile we spoke of earlier. What you call el bosque del corazón.”
“What of it?”
“Well, the Glasduine must have one as well—don’t you think? Its own heart home.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“But it stands to reason. All spirits must have one.”
“¿Y así?”
“Well,” her wolf said. “If it turns out that you can’t heal it, and I can’t kill it, perhaps we can trap it in its croi baile. Lock it in there so that the only thing it can hurt is itself.”
“It would be a terrible place,” Bettina said. “Wouldn’t it? If the Glasduine was created out of Donal’s basest instincts…”
“It would probably not be good,” he agreed.
“And Donal? Do we trap him in there with it?”
“There is always a price to be paid,” el lobo said. “The pup knew the danger when he played with the mask.”
Did he? Bettina wondered. But she knew her wolf was right. If Donal needed to be sacrificed for the greater good of ending the Glasduine’s menace, she could make no argument against it.
“Es verdad, “she said. It’s the truth. “Now prepare yourself.”
Her wolf shook the tension out of his hands and rolled his shoulders.
“I’m ready,” he said.
At least one of them was, Bettina thought.
Running her finger along the seeds of the rosary her mother had sent her, she closed her eyes and sent out the summoning call. Not asking this time, as she had with los cadejos, but demanding. Firmly, with a strength she didn’t truly feel.
5
Aunt Nancy lifted her head. “Did you hear that?” she asked.
Ellie swallowed, and gave a slow nod. She realized that it had been floating there on the periphery of her senses for some time now, only drifting into her awareness at this moment, when the call had suddenly grown so much stronger. It was an eerie sound, audible only inside her head. She recognized it as a summons, but while it made her skin prickle, she knew it wasn’t directed at her. When she glanced at Hunter, she saw that even he had heard the silent call. The unnatural intrusion into his mind had drained his features of much of their color.
“What… what is it?” he asked.
“That pair we’re following,” Aunt Nancy said. “They’re calling the Glasduine to them. Come, we must hurry.”
If Ellie had ever taken a stranger journey, it was only in her dreams. Truth was, all of this felt like dream—from first seeing the men smoking their cigarettes in Kellygnow’s backyard to this increasingly disconcerting expedition. Stepping across from the Newford ice storm into a fairy-tale autumn wood had been unsettling, though not altogether unpleasant, but the subsequent journey was leaving her feeling more and more disoriented with each chunk of distance they put behind them. Because nothing stayed the same.