The Wood Wife by Terri Windling (good books for 8th graders .TXT) 📗

in her hands, enjoying the music, the chaos of Dora’s kitchen, the smells of breakfast to come. Sunlight streamed through vines over the windows, heavy with clusters of purple blooms. Between the windows hung a large framed drawing depicting a very different view: birch trees in a field of snow, rendered in charcoal on white rag paper in an angular, abstracted style. It was an attractive piece of work, if not quite exceptional.

“Is this your drawing?” she asked Dora.

“That’s Juan’s, that one, and the paintings on the wall to the left of the fireplace.”

Maggie crossed the room to look at the paintings. They were all paintings of northern woods.

“Vermont,” Dora explained to her. “That’s where I’m from. And where we met. Juan did a painting residency at Bennington College, when I was a student. But you can’t keep a desert boy from the desert. I knew when I married him I’d have to pull up stakes and come down here.”

“This is lovely work,” Maggie said. “But why no paintings of the Southwest?”

Dora shrugged. “Beats me. He spent years painting the desert. Here. Texas. New Mexico. Even down in Sonora. Now he doesn’t like those paintings anymore. I don’t know why. They’re beautiful. But he just doesn’t like them all of a sudden. Do you ever feel like that with your writing?”

“All too goddamn often,” Maggie said with sympathy.

Below the paintings, a framed photograph stood perched on top of a table’s clutter. She picked it up. It was a wedding picture: Dora in an antique dress, Juan in a tux, and what seemed to be one huge extended Mexican-American family crowded in behind them. Dora had not only married a desert man, she’d married a clan.

“Yep, those are all del Rios,” Dora confirmed. “It’s an old, old family in these parts. And huge! I still can’t keep all the names straight. Half of them live in Tucson, and the other half over the Border. They’ve all been really sweet to me since I moved down here with Juan.”

Maggie put the picture down again. She asked, “So what do you do here? Are you an artist too?”

“Me? No, I work in a gallery downtown. Typing and filing and watching the shop, mind you; nothing glamorous. And I tend bar in a hotel three nights a week. You know the kind: a kitschy Border motif and we all have to wear fruit on our heads. The tourists seem to think that’s Mexican.” Dora rolled her eyes. She turned back to the stove. “I’ve always liked to hang around with artists, though. The boyfriend before Juan was a painter too. And the one before that called himself an artist, although he liked the pose more than the work.”

Maggie laughed, commiserating. “I had one of those myself, in my misbegotten youth. He was totally romantic, and totally a mess.”

“You got it. Mine was Mr. Romance: bedroom eyes, and those nice strong hands that sculptors always have … ummmm. I’m a sucker for that. He gave me the best two weeks of my life, and then the worst two years.” She flipped the bacon out of the pan and onto a plate. “Do you eat meat? Never mind. I’m making pancakes too. I’d better make extra for Fox. He always turns up hungry.”

Maggie was still exploring the room with her usual curiosity, which she liked to blame on her journalist training although she’d always been that way. Above a crowded desk in the corner were several prints in simple wood frames, images of fairy tale creatures formed out of tree roots, limbs, and leaves. “Are these by Brian Froud?” she asked, and Dora turned and nodded. “I like them. His work has the spirit of Cooper’s poems—the later ones, I mean. In The Wood Wife.”

“That’s why I have them there,” Dora said. “To tell you the truth, I like Froud’s work much better than Anna Naverra’s—but I don’t dare say that in front of Juan! Cooper gave me these reproductions. He has one in his study.”

“I saw it.” Maggie looked down and picked a book up off the desk. The Spine Witch, by Dora del Rio. It was a small edition, barely bigger than Maggie’s hand, printed on beautiful creamy paper, the type letterset in the blackest of inks. The frontispiece was an etching by Juan. The publisher was Rincon Press. Maggie looked up at Dora. “So you’re a writer,” she said.

Dora flushed. “Not like you are. I just make up my own books. Little limited editions like that one. The Spine Witch is an image from one of Davis Cooper’s poems—well, you know that. He gave me permission to write a story about her. It’s kind of a children’s story.”

Maggie took the book over to the table. “What do you mean, you’re not a writer like I am? A writer is a writer. What’s Rincon Press?”

“Oh that. That’s me as well. They have an old letter press at the back of the gallery that I use to set the books. I learned about printing and hand-binding from a class at the university. I even made the paper—it’s got bits of cactus spines embedded in it, see?”

“And you don’t think you’re an artist? Girl, you’ve got a modesty problem. This is lovely work.”

Dora shrugged, turning her back to Maggie as she cooked. “It’s just … well, you know how it is. We’ve been concentrating on getting Juan’s painting career off the ground. When that happens, then I’ll have the time to do a few things myself.” She turned suddenly. “That sounds terrible doesn’t it? Like I’ve no life or ambition of my own. But I honestly enjoy supporting what Juan is doing. When I look at his paintings and then at my little books, the books just don’t seem as important. He’s a very gifted painter.”

“I used to think that way,” Maggie told her. “I supported my ex-husband all through the lean years at the beginning of his career. I stopped writing poetry and hustled my