Chapter 3
The stile into the woods was considerably better behaved than its colleague at the top of the field: some swaying of the foot-piece and a slightly rubbery cross-bar, but nothing he couldn't handle. Once over he found himself in bright woodland. The trees were small, slender and tightly packed, jostling each other like rush-hour Tube passengers in the fight to reach the sun. Between the trunks grew clumps of writhing bramble and swaying ferns with neon-bright leaves cut into fractal patterns of sub-atomic perfection. To his right a sea of bluebells stretched into the distance, flooding the ground between the trees; the fleshy leaves undulated like fronds of seaweed and the blueness of the flowers coalesced into a rippling ocean.
Here and there trees had fallen, losers in the battle for space. Some still refused to die and lay propped at odd angles against reluctant neighbours, their spindly branches reaching up in vain desperation to the lost light. Others had given up the struggle, lapsing into the quiet dignity of death. These lay rotting into the leaf mould, sprouting fungi in a final efflorescence of life: yellow shells, each as neat and fresh as a baby's ear; tight clusters of orange parasols, like crowds of tiny geishas; and huge slabs of flesh, red and raw. The leaf canopy was low and broken, shattering the sunlight into dappled patches. Birdsong echoed languorously through the liquid air, seeming to emanate from the trees and plants themselves.
The intricate beauty was too powerful for him and it swamped all his other thoughts, pouring in through his eyes and his ears, filling his skull, his body, his soul. It possessed him. He became his senses, he was no more than what he saw and heard: the writhing branches and the coiling briars, the dazzling, flowing colours and the swimming sounds. He had ceased to exist – he was the wood, the wood was him.
After an era (or possibly two) there was a sensation. Was it vision? No – then it must be hearing. But it was neither; a butterfly had settled on what seemed to be his hand – so he did have a body after all. The great insect hung there, nonchalantly opening and closing its electric blue wings. Not blue, green. Wait, surely it was yellow, metallic yellow – or orange? As the creature flew off into the liquid air, a flash of red flickered in the broken sunlight.
With his independent existence rekindled, he looked all about and saw that he was now in the midst of the wood – there was no stile behind him, there was no path in front of him. He wasn't concerned though, for he liked the wood, it was his friend. Perhaps he could stay here forever. If he stood still long enough, he might even become a tree himself. But as he began to subside once more into the liquid stillness, he noticed a movement in the distance; flying shapes were flitting through the trunks. As they got closer, he saw that they were hovering, like bees, and a quiet buzzing murmured in the turgid air, only just audible.
They were not bees, however, they were tiny people, each about two feet in length. A family of five – a man, a woman and three children – dressed casually for a pleasant day out. They flew horizontally, like swimmers buoyed up by the liquid air. Above the shoulders of each was a diaphanous blur, only just visible, which could have been buzzing membrane wings or a half-existent helicopter blade. And in place of eyes were jewelled visors: curved discs of crystal, the surfaces broken into hundreds of glittering hexagons that shivered the sunlight into the flashing colours of the rainbow.
They came closer and closer, hovering to and fro through the shimmering air, unconcerned by his presence. He hoped they would come closer still, possibly even close enough to speak to, but after investigating a clump of foam-splashed elder they drifted away through the trees, carried by some mysterious purpose. He watched until the last flicker of movement vanished into the distant blur of trunks, and then it was time he moved on too. Lifting his left foot he stepped out into the uncharted sea of ferns and bracken.
And like the Red Sea the undergrowth parted, moving politely aside to reveal a path that wound away between the trees. He puzzled for a moment before starting forward, wondering why they had kept it hidden from him; soon, however, he was lost again in the colour and the sound, both too real and too strong, again overpowering his senses.