The Wood Wife

of the mesquite grove, crouched among the tree roots, her long and sensitive rabbit ears twitching as the wind above her changed direction. The voice of the wind was a rustle in the leaves, speaking in a language she’d once known and had forgotten. She did not have a name. She had not earned one yet. Or perhaps she had, and had forgotten that too. She was not old, as her kind reckoned age; and she was old, old as the granite hills. Old as Time, which spiralled like the tattoos on a shape-shifter’s skin.

She put a pale, human hand to her mouth, licked it, and washed her face with it, smoothing back the soft grey fur. She knew she must sit and wait in this place. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. No matter. The day was warming up; her heart was light; her belly was full. She stretched out on her back and rolled among the leaves, delighted with herself.

When the coyotes howled she ignored them. It was other meat they hunted now—the coyotes, and the Hounds of the Dark Hunter’s pack. She wondered which of them would reach their prey first. Did it matter?

She seemed to remember that it did, but she’d forgotten why it mattered. Or what it had to do with her.

❋ Davis Cooper ❋

Redwater Road

Tucson, Arizona

M. Tippetts

New York City

March 9, 1948

Dear Maisie,

I agree completely. A trip to New York is exactly what we need. We have been buried alive out here these last months and the heat that descends on us in June is more than mortal man was meant to bear. I tell you, I think Anna needs a change of scene as much as I do. If you can persuade her to make this trip, I’d be most grateful—as would Riddley, at the gallery.

Our Anna has become a different creature out here; she is turning into a desert woman. Strip away that Mexico City gloss of urban civilization and the granddaughter of an Indian bruja lies beneath. She is a wonder to me, brown as the stones, fierce as a she-wolf, graceful as the deer. She is something other than woman in this place, she is earth and fire and sky as well. It is all in the paintings. Riddley has a shock in store when he sees the new work.

But she is too much alone, out in the hills. She rebels at visitors, at seeing old friends. She wants only me and the companionship of these creatures she paints—has she spoken of this? I don’t know what to think. I accept the fact that our Anna has … visions; she is after all a woman, a witch, a lapsed Catholic, a painter, a Surrealist. I am but a war-scarred cynic myself, and perhaps my own vision is thus limited; it is only through the canvas that I can see the world as Anna describes it.

And yet … even I have begun to think that perhaps there is something in these hills. I can’t see it, but I can almost hear it. A low drum beat. A murmur of language. There are poems in these trees, in the rock underfoot. I resist it, this slow seduction. The land itself fought against Exile Songs, saying: “Write our poems, Cooper, not yours…” And I shut the door and I closed the curtains and I finished the book nonetheless.

Yes, I must come to the city again—or I shall be lost to the language of this land and forget my own native tongue. Gotham Book Mart has offered to host a publication party when Exile Songs comes out in June. If we can pull our desert woman from her mountains, even for just a few short weeks, I shall wire them and tell them we are coming. Even Anna must long to escape the damn heat.

Help me, Maisie. She’ll listen to you.

Yours as ever,

Davis Cooper

Chapter Three ❋

And by whose grace did I arrive here, set down

in this place where moonlight kills, and

dreams leave blood and leaves

upon the twisted sheets of dawn?

—The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper

Maggie wiped the sweat from her brow, grateful that evening would fall soon, bringing its chill to the mountain. The midday sun had been fierce, and even though it was cooler in the house she’d had to strip down to her undershirt to work. She didn’t have the proper clothes for this place, or the proper car, or the proper frame of mind. She found herself cursing the heat, the dust, and the pitiless landscape outside.

There seemed to be no kind of order at all to any of Davis’s papers. The old man had been meticulous enough to make copies of all his correspondence—and then had shoved those papers away into any random corner or drawer. Insurance bills were filed with letters; old galley proof pages were wedged among his books. She’d found notes and roughs of his unpublished poems, but nothing close to a final manuscript. If “The Saguaro Forest” was still in this room, it was not in any obvious place.

The other place to look, of course, was behind the locked door in the back of the house. She’d tried a nail file on the lock, but the door was good and firmly shut. She wondered if Johnny Foxxe had a key, or could pry it open for her. She decided she’d go out for a walk, and stop by the handyman’s cabin on the way. The sun was sinking low in the hills; it was high time to take a break.

She put on a shirt, one of Davis’s hats, and laced on her English walking boots. As she stepped on the porch, she saw that someone had left her a basket of apples. Perhaps it had been her other tenant, the mechanic. What was his name?

She picked up an apple, rubbed it on her thigh, and bit into it as she crossed the yard. Birds sat on