Forests of the Heart Read Online Free PDF

those nights of watching him from the window, his proximity, the smell and too-alive presence of him, was like an enchantment. She had to stop herself from stepping close, into his embrace. But she had enough
brujería
of her own to know that there was no enchantment involved. It was simply the man he was. Dangerous, perhaps, and far too handsome.
    “Ah,” he said. “I see. And so it was simple delight at your success and not surprise that made you dizzy.”
    Bettina shrugged.
    “And now?” he asked.
    “Now, nothing. I’m going home to bed.”
    “Indeed.”
    He leaned back against a tree, arms crossed, smiling.
    Bettina sighed, knowing that
el lobo
was now waiting for her to step back into her own world, confident she wouldn’t be able to. And then what? When he decided she was helpless, what would he do? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps he would bargain with her, his help in exchange for something that would seem like
poquito, nada,
yet it would prove to cost her dearly once he collected. Or perhaps his kind had other, less pleasant uses for
las curanderas tontas
who were so foolish as to stumble into such a situation in the first place. She remembered what Nuala had said about the wolves who’d come to watch her, how they were waiting for her to lift her skirts, to spread her legs. Handsome or not, she would not let it happen, no matter how attracted to him she might be.
    She stifled another sigh as the quiet lengthened between them.
    He could wait forever, she knew, amused and patient.
¿Pero, qué tienef
She could be patient, too. And she could find her own way home. All she needed was a moment to compose herself, enough quiet for her to be able to concentrate on the threads of her spirit that still connected her to the world she’d inadvertently left behind. She needed only the time to find them, to gather them up and follow them back home again.
    Behind
el lobo
there was movement in the forest, a small shape that darted in between the trees too quickly for her to see clearly. There was only a flash of small, pale limbs. Of large, luminous eyes. Here, then gone. A child, she thought at first, then shook her head. No, not in this place. More likely it had been some
espíritu. Un deunde
—an imp, an elf. Some creature of the otherwhere.
    Eh,
bueno.
She would not let it bother her.
    She unzipped the front of her parka and let it hang open.
    “It’s warmer here,” she said.
    El lobo
nodded. His nostrils flared, testing the air. “The air tastes of autumn.”
    But what autumn? Bettina wanted to ask. Though perhaps the true question should be, whose autumn? And how far away did it lie from her own time? But then a more immediate riddle rose up to puzzle her.
    “You’re not speaking English,” she said.
    “Neither are you.”
    It was true. She was speaking Spanish while he spoke whatever language it was that he spoke. It held no familiarity, yet she could understand him perfectly.
    “¿Pero, como
… ?”
    He smiled. “Enchantment,” he said.
    “Ah…”
    She smiled back, feeling more confident. Of course. This was myth time. But while he might appear mysterious and strong, in this place her own
brujería
was potent as well. She wasn’t some hapless tourist who had wandered too far into uncertain territory. The landscape might be unfamiliar, but she was no stranger to
la época del mito.
She might find it confusing at times, but she refused to let it frighten her.
    El lobo
pushed away from the tree. “Come,” he said. “Let me show you something.”
    She shrugged and followed him into the forest, retracing the way she’d come earlier, only here there was no snow. There were no outlying cottages, either. No gazebo, no house with its tower nestled in between the tall trees. But there was a hut made of woven branches and cedar boughs where Virgil Hanson’s original cottage stood in her world, and further on, a break in the undergrowth where the main house should have been—a clearing of sorts, rough and