“Chloe,” Katie says. “Chloe?” She bends down and kisses her on the forehead.
Are there places too far away even for love to reach?
Behind spines and thorns and briars?
I won’t believe that.
I will never believe that.
Though I am small, I have fought
in the ranks of the forest.
“THE BATTLE OF THE TREES”
Rob had never had to fight.
In school he had always been popular, not one of those who got picked on. He was tall and had always been absorbed in his art, and though he’d once done a term of martial arts classes, the real thing had never happened.
Besides, this was an animal. It had no mercy, no fear.
It wouldn’t hesitate.
Rob felt the weight on his arm ease; the King pulled himself straighter.
The wolf paced toward them, head low. Its ears were flat, its teeth yellow. When it leaped, the impact would be staggering, its bite would rip through muscle and bone.
He searched under his coat. Then flicked one despairing glance sideways.
The crane-skin bag lay under the trees, where he had tossed it.
He inched a foot toward it. The wolf’s hackles rose, the growl deepening in its throat.
And to his astonishment the tree bent down between them. At least that was what he thought was happening; then with a flash of understanding he saw one dark bird had landed on the branches above, its weight bending them. Then another, and a third.
Long-legged, thin-billed, the three silent cranes perched in the branches. In the dimness they gleamed pale. The King whispered, “The guardians,” his voice a cracked breath of hope.
The cranes looked at the wolf.
Doubtfully, its amber eyes moved from Rob, surveyed the birds.
Nothing moved.
And then with a crashing of branches they could hear something approaching through the icy forest, its weight vibrating the ground. Something vast, something enormous, something that cracked and splintered its way through the undergrowth, so that Rob flattened his back even harder against the tree, wishing it would open, wishing there was a doorway inside it that would open and swallow him.
The wolf slunk back. Its teeth were still bared but its eyes darted in fear.
To the left, a thicket of blackthorn trembled. A shadow shouldered through, leaves and berries dropping from it, soil sliding from it, as if it had reared itself up from some mud hollow.
A great horned head, a dark pelt, rain-soaked, two tiny red baleful eyes.
A bull.
“Quietly.” It was Clare’s whisper. Rob felt a hand grab his, pull him gently behind the tree. The King seemed transfixed; Rob had to tug at him urgently before he stumbled, and at the movement the three cranes all swiveled their beaks and looked down, fixing him with their gaze.
Clare drew him around the bole of the gnarled oak into the dimness behind, but even as they moved the bull lumbered forward, dropping its head. Its mouth opened like a pit of darkness; it bellowed, a terrifying roar of defiance, advancing on the wolf.
The wolf snarled, but it was slinking, its belly low, its ears flat.
Then it turned, and ran.
“She’s totally useless.” Chloe folded her arms in fury. “Twice now she’s supposed to have stopped you, and yet here you are.”
Vetch nodded mildly. “It’s gone on longer than you think.”
“And you brought Rob here. Of all people!” Without waiting for him she turned and marched into one of the looped openings, holding Callie’s harness tight. The horse’s bulk was warm and comforting, her flank steaming slightly after the swift ride, but even behind the thud of hooves Chloe felt Vetch’s presence stride after her like a shadow.
“You won’t slow me down,” she said angrily. “I’m going to the Chair. I’m going as far in as I can get.” She glanced back and saw how his dark eyes watched her, irritatingly calm. “I could kill you,” she said. “I could make you die, just by wanting it.”
“Perhaps you could,” he said. “But you won’t.”
She walked faster, but he was tall, and kept up easily. Ducking under skeins of the flecked ceiling, she said, “Out there I was small and weak. Have you any idea what it’s like to be a little girl? I didn’t have any power, but that’s different here. The King told me about the Chair. Whoever sits on it holds all the power of the Unworld. Was he lying to me?”
“If this world is yours,” Vetch remarked, “you could make such a chair, couldn’t you? If it is. But have you thought, Chloe, that in fact it may not be?”
She stopped, dragging Callie around. Vetch was a little breathless, but then so was she. “No I haven’t! I don’t believe that. You’re full of tricks and lies and stories. You never tell the straight truth.”
He smiled ruefully. “Now that’s unkind, coming from you.” Taking a step forward, he put his hand on Callie’s slender neck and smoothed her mane. The horse whickered, nestling up to him. “Because you never do either, do you? You pretended, but you were bitter in secret. Rob, your parents—you never really told them how you felt.”
He was looking down at her; she felt humiliated. “What was the point? I couldn’t explain.”
“Then how can you blame them for not knowing?”
“I do! I blame Rob.” She wished she was older, taller. She wished she knew how to argue, how to be logical, how to use words back at him. Tears choked her; she swallowed them, turned, marched on.
The thick wool grew tangled. She had to step over it, duck under it, draw Callie around vast impenetrable knots that blocked the way; she strode fiercely through openings and gaps, taking any way that seemed open, and all the time Vetch came behind, silent, as if he was biding his time.
She wanted to race away from him, but the castle tripped her and snagged her; it looped around wrist and ankle. Denser now, it closed in, growing colder, as if she was forcing her way to the heart of the mesh. Small things began to scuttle past, always running outward; they looked like mice and spiders and beetles, and once a snake, wriggling in panic. And the tunnels weren’t still either. Sometimes they rose under her feet, or twisted, or even rippled, so that she and Vetch and the horse all lost their footing and staggered against the stretchy, yielding threads.
And then Vetch began to talk.
His words were quiet, and though she wanted to block them out, she couldn’t.
“It’s not easy, is it, to find your way through? Yet it should be, if this Unworld is yours. But have you thought, Chloe, that it’s you that’s hindering yourself?”
“Shut up,” she snapped.
“Tripping yourself up, tangling yourself? That we’re struggling deeper into your own doubt? That secretly, far down somewhere inside, you don’t want to get to the Chair at all. You want to be stopped. You want to be made to go back, to wake up safe in your bed and see Mac leaning over you, and your mum and dad crying with joy. You want to make it up with Rob. You want it to be all right.”
“I said, shut up! You don’t know anything! Rob’s dead. I’ve killed him.” She turned, hot and hurt and desperate not to hear him, flung out a fist at him. He grabbed it, and his hand was cool, the marks of his theft three red coils on his pale skin.
“No you haven’t.”
“What do you know?”
“I know about the struggle with words. About ‘The Battle of the Trees.’”
For a moment she just stared at him. Through him. Saw a white room full of nurses, Mac in the background looking sick and old, a broken window where the ivy was creeping in. Felt a small cool kiss on her forehead.
For a moment she was there and wanted to be there.
And then she saw the painting. It was on the wall, behind Mac. It was brilliant, it was beautiful, it was hateful. It was her own face, the portrait she’d always wanted Rob to paint, which he must have done since she’d left; it looked down at her with that light, mischievous grin she fell into sometimes, when things were good,
when she could forget about being their Chloe, and be her own.
It hurt her. It stung tears into her eyes.
Vetch recognized the change. He looked dismayed.
She shook his hand off and stabbed a finger at him. “That’s enough! No more words!”
Red rope dropped around him; he dragged it from his lips. “Don’t! Chloe, wait…”
Around his neck, another loop. It tightened; he choked, tore at it, but his arms were held, his wrists dragged back.
She stepped up close to him. “No more words, Vetch. Now you’re the one who’s tangled. See how you like being speechless. I’m going on.”
She turned Callie and strode away.
Vetch fought. He struggled and pulled at the red-flecked ropes, but they held him and slithered around him and crushed his chest. He was suffocating in them; as she climbed up on Callie’s back, Chloe said without turning her head, “That’s enough.”
The threads were still.
Vetch tried to loosen them. He said, “You know I’m right. My words will go with you.”
She smiled at him kindly. “It’ll take you long enough to get out of there. Good-bye, Vetch. I’m sorry you won’t see me reach the Chair. Any of you.”
“We made a truce,” Clare said sourly. She held a whippy branch aside for Rob; before them the hillside ran down, the grass smooth. “He’s gone on to find her; I came for you. She’s on horseback, so we’ve got no time to talk.”
Rob looked back. “But … the bull. Those birds.”
“Guardians of the crane-skin bag. There are many such magical beasts in the wood. I brought the bull because I couldn’t deal with the wolf myself.” She smiled a tight smile. “Chloe may think the Unworld is hers, but it isn’t yet. There are powers here stronger than she is, until she reaches the Chair.” She turned then, and he saw with dismay that she had the crane-skin bag.
It hung on its string around her neck. Now she took out a single ogham stick and held it up like a wand.
“I’m afraid I have to change you.”
Rob said, “That’s Vetch’s. What do you mean, change?” Alarm flooded him; he said, “I don’t want—”
“I’m sorry, Rob. It will hurt a little, but it’s necessary.” She tapped his face, then the King’s, quickly, and as he looked he saw the King’s mask alter. The blackthorn leaves shriveled, the eyes widened, became round; tufts of feathers sprouted.
And then he felt it himself, the contraction within him, the sudden gasping agony that made his eyes water. He knew that his body was twisting, that his mind was collapsing, all its thoughts and reason folding away, leaving only light and pain and hunger and fear.
His bones hollowed, his skull attenuated, his hands clawed.
And then he lifted himself up from the ground.
And flew away.
This caer. She had no idea what it was called. She galloped away from Vetch’s imprisoned shape quickly, ignored his hoarse plea. “What good is a queen without subjects, Chloe?” he yelled.
The tunnels narrowed. Red and warm. She rode faster into veins and blood vessels. Flocks of birds flew against her, a scatter of scarlet moths, a swarm of bees.
Far ahead, the bell chimed, and then a clattering grew clearer. It sounded like the clack of great needles, as if someone was knitting the castle, as if stitches were being formed and slipped and counted in some enormous chamber ahead.
But all she found when she finally burst through the last knot was a room she knew very well indeed.
Her bedroom at home.
It was exactly the same, except that the bed here was all made of antler, and bones, and rough branches tied together, with four posts of dark wood inside a ring of high, unshaven timbers.
She slithered down from Callie’s hot back, and looked around.
Her wardrobe. She could change, and wash.
Her clock. The small hands said 4:50 AM.
Her photograph of Mum and Dad and Rob on holiday.
Her notebook.
Suddenly, she was so tired. She sat on the bed and it was soft and full of feathers. The duvet was white, embroidered all over with snowflakes; it wasn’t hers, but she liked it.
She drew it around herself, and it was warm, and smelled sweet, so she curled up, kicked her boots off and yawned.
A small sleep wouldn’t matter.
And Rob was alive.
Smiling, she touched one of the embroidered flakes with her fingers, watching it detach and float up, letting sleep open under her.
Vetch gasped a ragged breath, then another. He had managed to wriggle his long fingers up to his throat; now he rubbed it and swallowed, feeling the red soreness of the tight threads.
He was shaking.
To discover the uselessness of words was too terrible a fate for a poet.
A small wetness stung his hand. Then another. He looked up quickly, his breath smoking, and despair chilled him to the bone.
He had failed to persuade Chloe. And now she was making sure they never caught up with her.
For through all the interstices and webs of the Woven Castle, through all the hollows and loops and tunnels, small white flakes were falling.
Snow.
UI. UILLEAND: HONEYSUCKLE
In the corridor, Dan’s sitting with Rosa. I wonder how she’s explaining her idea of where Rob is. And Vetch.
It’s 4:50 AM.
Her eyes are slits. Outside it’s raining. John is standing at the window, shredding ivy. On the floor are petals of honeysuckle, sweet and wet. “Look at this, Mac,” he says dully.
Three great birds, like herons, have perched up on the next-door roof. Their narrow eyes look down at me, and somehow, they’re a comfort.
Beyond, like a dark ridge, the downs rise over the town.
And I can sense Vetch, his irritating calm....
Vetch is close.
But he may be finally lost for words.
I was at the fortress
when the trees and shrubs marched…
“THE BATTLE OF THE TREES”
Someone was flying. Rob realized it was him.
His body was a creaking, lightweight framework, jointed in impossible places. He was streamlined, and currents of cold air moved above and below him, and he banked and tilted on them, as if they were solid.
Far down, lost deep inside a tiny skull, his mind looked out through wide-angled eyes, saw a concave hemisphere, its colors muted and new and unnamed. Were there words for the colors only birds could see, or the instinctive lift and balance of feathers on the wind?
In Vetch’s druid bag, maybe. Nowhere else.
Ahead flew a hawk and a white owl, who had once had names. He had no name either, but was a floppy-winged creature, green-sheened, with a quill of feathers. He searched for words and they came, but from another life far away, lying in the grass, birdwatching on the downs with Mac. Plover. He was a plover.
Snow stung him. He realized it had been snowing for a long time, a swirling whiteness that was frosting the air and almost obliterating the forest below. But through gaps, between gusts, he could see enough.
He could see that the forest was on the move.
Did it walk? Or did it just grow? He sensed its progress, the swift, purposeful surge toward the east, a million slithers and rustles and strides. There were beasts down there, migrating or fleeing; glimpses of strange-skinned creatures among the massed trees, birds that swooped and circled in flocks above the impenetrable canopy.
But it was the trees that were terrifying. Ancient oak and flimsy hawthorn, coppery stands of beech, stocky elms, streaming in movement. All the hedgerow growth, elder and blackthorn and ivy and gnarled apple. Willows along the banks of invisible streams. Rank on rank of conifer, dark armies of fir and pine and spruce.
From this height he saw that the landscape they invaded was his own landscape, the Wiltshire hills that he knew as green and sheep shorn, smothered now under the primeval forest, as it must have been centuries ago, before Darkhenge was mad
e; that secret wildwood of shadows and magic animals, of outlawed men who lived like beasts. The forest that was mankind’s enemy and the place where his imagination was born, that he destroyed and dreamed of, burned and built in, cut down and made of its timbers entrances back into himself.
A draft from the hawk’s swoop tipped him.
Below, he saw a structure in the wood, a tormented red castle, its shape mystifying. The hawk began to drop toward it, circling deftly down eddies of snow. Carefully, the owl and the plover followed, descending through sleeting showers.
Nearer, the caer gleamed. Frozen in loops and hollows, its red wool hung with icicles. Snow swirled through its openwork tunnels. It seemed deserted.
When Chloe woke, the duvet was far too heavy and yet the room was as cold as ice. Sitting up, she felt a weight of snow slide off her and slump wetly to the floor. Shivering, she stared around.
A blizzard was howling outside. Here the dark-timbered bed had filled up with snow; it crusted the wardrobe and her dressing table, dusted the picture frame, filled the slippers that poked out from under the stool. She breathed out a cloud of dismay.
How long had she been asleep?
She had to hurry! Leaping out, she heaved the warped door of the wardrobe open and tugged out clothes. They weren’t hers. A white dress trimmed with fur, a great coat of ermine, boots. There was a muff too, and a fur hat; giggling, she pulled them on, feeling like some Cossack or the Snow Queen.
Then she hurried Callie back out into the latticework of tunnels.
They were clogged with snow. Furious, she stamped her foot and soft powder dusted her new clothes. Vetch was wrong! She wasn’t doing this. She wanted to get on, to the last caer, but it was as if something else was always holding her back. She’d ride hard now, and not stop till she reached it. She’d sort out this mess.
“No more snow!”
She said it firmly, commanding. Still flakes fell, tiny and deadly.
“I said, no more. That’s it. STOP.”
But it didn’t stop. It fell with a gentle insolence, and the realization turned her cold. The weather was not obeying her. She was losing control.