"Charles de Lint - Forests Of The Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

from the forested hills that lay outside the city that was now her home. It had drawn her from the desert to
this place where the seasons changed so dramatically: in summer so green and lush it took the breath away,
in winter so desolate and harsh it could make the desert seem kind. The insistent mystery of it had nagged
and pulled at her until she’d felt she had no choice but to come.
She didn’t think the source of the summons lay with her uninvited guests, los lobos who came into the yard
to smoke their cigarettes and silently watch the house. But she was sure they had some connection to it.
“What are you doing?” Adelita asked suddenly. “I keep hearing this odd little clicking sound.”
“I’m just sorting through these milagros that Ines sent up to me. For a ...” She hesitated a moment. “For a
fetish.”
“Ah.”
Adelita didn’t exactly disapprove of Bettina’s vocation—not like their mother did—but she didn’t quite
understand it either. While she also drew on the stories their abuela had told them, she used them to fuel her
art. She thought of them as fictions, resonant and powerful, to be sure, but ultimately quaint. Outdated views
from an older, more superstitious world that were fascinating to explore because they jump-started the
creative impulse, but not anything by which one could live in the modern world.
“Leave such things for the storytellers,” she would say.
Such things, such things. Simple words to encompass so much.
Such as the fetish Bettina was making at the moment, part mojo charm, part amuleto: a small, cotton sack
that would be filled with dark earth to swallow bad feelings. Pollen and herbs were mixed in with the earth to
help the transfer of sorrow and pain from the one who would wear the fetish into the fetish itself. On the inside
of the sack, tiny threaded stitches held a scrap of paper with a name written on it. A hummingbird’s feather.
A few small colored beads. And, once she’d chosen exactly the right milagro, one of the silver votive offerings
that Ines had sent her would be sewn inside as well.
Viewed from outside, the stitches appeared to spell words, but they were like the voices of ravens heard
speaking in the woods. The sounds made by the birds sounded like words, but they weren’t words that could
be readily deciphered by untrained ears. They weren’t human words.
This was one of the ways she focused her brujería. Other times, she called on the help of the spirits and los
santos to help her interpret the cause of an unhappiness or illness.
“There is no one method of healing,” her grandmother had told her once. “Just as la Virgen is not bound by
one faith.”
“One face?” Bettina had asked, confused.
“That, too,” Abuela said, smiling. “La medicina requires only your respect and that you accept responsibility
for all you do when you embark upon its use.”
“But the herbs. The medicinal plants ...”
“Por eso,” Abuela told her. “Their properties are eternal. But how you use them, that is for you to decide.” She
smiled again. “We are not machines, chica. We are each of us different. Sin par. Unique. The measure given
to one must be adjusted for another.”
There was not a day gone by that Bettina didn’t think of and miss her grandmother. Her good company. Her
humor. Her wisdom. Sighing, she returned her attention to her sister.
“You can’t play at the brujería all your life,” Adelita was saying, her voice gentle.
“It’s not play for me.”
“Bettina, we grew up together. You’re not a witch.”
“No, I’m a healer.”
There was an immense difference between the two, as Abuela had often pointed out. A bruja made dark,
hurtful magic. A curandera healed.
“A healer,” Bettina repeated. “As was our abuela.”
“Was she?” Adelita asked.
Bettina could hear the tired smile in Adelita’s voice, but she didn’t share her sister’s amusement.
“¿Cómo?” she said, her own voice sharper than she intended. “How can you deny it?”
Adelita sighed. “There is no such thing as magic. Not here, in the world where we live. La brujería is only for