Richard shouted his frustration with the big man. “And maybe she won’t! If you even have a few days with her, then have them, Arnauld. Sarin is very moved by you. She feels strongly for you. Tell her what you’ve told me. Maybe the two of you, maybe together you’ll find the strength to survive. How can you tell until you try it?”
Lacan glanced at Richard, frowning, his eyes filled with sadness. “There is more to it,” he whispered, looking away. “But perhaps only things that should be forgotten. Ryhope Wood, the wood in France: they are the same wood, they share a common time, a common space, a dimension we cannot really see, the same shadows, the same dreams. We have no way of defining it, this imaginary time, this sylvan time. It’s beyond our language.” He was in despair again, sighing deeply. “What do I do? I couldn’t bear to see her die through grief and fear, like Matilde…”
Remembering the encounter of a few days before, Richard said, “Sarin nearly died when I switched on the defences, but she survived. She’s strong, Arnauld. One of Jason’s argonauts only lasted seconds. Don’t underestimate her. Love the shadow while you can…”
And suddenly, perhaps because she’d been listening, Sarin was there, standing a short way away, her wiry body wrapped firmly in a thick wool cloak, her face dark with anguish and curiosity, and perhaps a touch of longing. Her gaze was fixed on Lacan. The Frenchman watched her, then smiled, extending his arm, hand outstretched to her. As Richard took his leave, the girl came over to the marble pillar and entered Lacan’s deep embrace.
Curious, which is to say nosy, Richard watched them from the shadows. The two of them cried for a while, then laughed. Lacan began to speak and they walked away from the Sanctuary, deeper into the wood. Their movement disturbed birds, but soon there was silence. An hour later, crows erupted from the canopy a half-mile or so distant. As the sun began to set a nest of herons set up a clattering of bills, a vile objection to movement below.
At dawn, Richard was woken by the strident sound of bagpipes playing a jig, just outside the palisade, where two people were washing in the crisp water of the river.
He and Helen went out to join in the icy fun, and it was then that they saw the first signs of the world dying around them.
The Triumph of Time
Winter, like a branching white scar, had begun to streak the greenwood, patches and lines of frost in the verdure that slowly spread, ice killing the summer leaf and the hardwood trunks, stone turning into the same soft, crumbling decay that had infested the cast-off cathedral.
Sarin scampered naked from the river, grabbing for her cloak. Lacan, rotund and hairy, crawled out after her, using his hand self-consciously to protect his groin. Around them, leaves fell like ash. The air was winter crisp, and their breath steamed.
From outside the longhouse Lytton shouted excitedly, “This is Alex’s work! He’s calling to us!”
Helen looked at the encroaching winter, frowned, then whispered to Richard, “How the hell can he always be so sure?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not about to argue. Are you?”
“To what end? Lytton knows what Lytton knows; Huxley’s shade whispers to him…”
She turned and ran to the longhouse, to find warm clothes and food supplies. Richard thought of Old Stone Hollow and curiosity took him through the ice-glazed elderwood.
Below the cliff, the paintings on the overhang had faded, the rock flaking away and taking the colours and the shapes with it. The flow of water had dried. The cavern was a barren place. Lytton entered the overhang and stared around him, taking his weight on his staff, his grey locks iridescent with frost. “I suspected as much: this place was from Alex’s imagination, and like the rest, he’s killed it now. What else I wonder? He’ll be killing all his creations.”
Anxiously, Richard thought of Sarin, but the woman, bulky in her new furs, was following Lacan towards the Hollow. She looked vibrantly alive.
“What’s happening?” the Frenchman asked.
“We need to return to the Mask Tree,” Lytton murmured, his face to the sky as he sniffed and tasted the winter air. “Alex is close to us again. I can feel it. He’s calling to us. He’s coming to us.”
“He’s coming here?” Richard asked.
Narrow eyes in a bone-white face glanced briefly, irritably at him. “No. Not here. He’s trapped in the cathedral. But I think he must be breaking from the moment of frozen time … He’ll come to the Mask Tree. I’m sure of it!”
“We’ll have to risk the hollowing,” Helen said. “Through the cave.”
“Too dangerous. Besides, Richard only got through because he was bosky, and his son was able to guide him. Perhaps he did the same for you, when you went through the pipe. But we can’t risk the cave, now. Too many outflows…”
“But it’s a four-day trek along the land route,” Richard said, appalled at the thought of the return journey to the Tree.
Lytton smiled at him, a gesture of dry amusement. “Then let’s waste no time. If we miss him, Alex may have no choice but to stay hidden forever. And what he’s shed to the wood will stay in the wood, and I simply can’t have that.”
While the rest made their brief preparations, Richard scoured the area around the Station. The Sanctuary was intact, although the white and frozen corpses of a man and a woman were crouched nearby. In the summer wood beyond he found the icy mass of a boar, the broken spear with which it had run for most of its life still embedded in its flank. From the lakeside, where Jason had landed, he watched the Viking longship become engulfed in frost and slowly crack. Warm, summer air gusted, followed by the frozen blast of deep winter. The clouds, the water, all seemed to be divided between the seasons, and Richard marvelled at the way his son was drawing back his creations, sucking the magic forests, lands, and creatures of childhood back toward the cathedral, and the giant elm, with its shallow faces, the place, Lytton now believed, that had been Alex’s first entry into the world of Ryhope Wood.
The last thing he saw, before Helen came up behind him putting her arms around his chest and whispering, “Stop brooding. It’s time to go and find the boy,” was the frozen body of the serpent. It surfaced suddenly, a coiled iceberg, the head twisted up and away from the rest of its body, the haunting eye glazed-over and lifeless now. The creature floated there, melting slowly, disintegrating. As it decayed so it turned, seeming to watch the shore, then subsiding, taking the last memory of a terrible encounter, the last memory of Taaj, as it condensed back into the lake above the stone castle.
It was such an odd feeling: the realisation that Alex had created both the courageous boy, a powerful reflection of himself, and the monster that had consumed him.
Richard’s thoughts turned briefly to the Argo, on the lake bed, but if that vessel too had been Alex’s creation, now consumed by frost, it held its secret in the depths.
“Come on,” Helen urged. She had Richard’s pack, his new cloak of crudely cured skins, a hood against the rain.
He followed her, followed the others, round the wide lake shore, to the valley between high, crumbling cliffs, which led back to the dell and the carved tree.
* * *
To avoid freezing, they followed, as far as possible, the pockets and zones of spring and summer. Inevitably there were times, lasting for hours, when they were forced to trek through winter woods, deep with snow and silent, or ice-locked and dangerous. A new life had begun to generate in these landscapes, to replace the vast creatures that now lay or stood like ice-carvings: mastodon, cave bears, elks, shaggy bison, and snarling wolves. Darker, livelier forms of these beasts of the frozen world now emerged, including dire-wolves, which dogged their tracks with obvious intent and wilful abandon of strategy. Lytton confidently declared that these new creatures were “condensing from our own minds, appropriate to the land around us.”
As ever, he seemed in his element, trudging through snowdrifts, cloak swirling, staff bearing his slight weight, white-haired head always turned to the far horizons as he absorbed the world a
round him, a magus leading his doubting followers.
In the summer wood they had to use force to avoid the dire-wolves, which attacked in groups of three, acting without caution, easily driven back. Helen shot game birds, but they avoided heavier meat since they were travelling fast and light. And they indulged in wary, careful exchange with the mythagos that emerged, usually at dawn or dusk, to share their food and fire, or chatter in strange tongues. There was usually time for Sarin to comprehend the languages of their guests; when she failed, she proved to be adept, as indeed was Richard, at interpreting meaning from sound and gesture.
Their most successful encounter was with a mailed knight, a young man on foot, a blue-eyed and blond warrior from the early Age of Chivalry who entranced Helen with his smile and his descriptions of the river-barge he sought, where his lady’s heart was hidden in the body of the black dog Cunhaval. The hound slept on the afterdeck. A ghost steered the barge. Its destination was a fabled castle.
The knight was named Culloch. He was Durham-born, but had squired at the court at Caer Navon, before taking his oath and shipping out to fight for the liberation of the Holy City in the Crusade.
“How big is this dog?” Helen asked.
The knight licked his fingers as he finished eating and pointed to the tree tops. “As tall as the Cross, lady. It has eaten a king’s ransom in gold from our new minster, and swallowed the purest heart that ever beat within the court and summer-tower of Caer Navon. I shall cut my way with iron into the body of the black dog and release that heart. The Cross will be my strength.”
“Sounds messy,” Helen murmured dryly. “But good luck. God’s speed.”
Culloch lowered his gaze. “You give me courage with your smile and your faith in the Cross. God’s speed yourselves.”
Helen watched him go, a glittering shape in his iron mail, swallowed by shadows within moments.
“In his situation, I think I’d prefer a large lump of poisoned meat.”
* * *
Sarin had begun to feel the cold; her exuberance faded, her energy sapped, and Richard and Lacan took it in turns to carry her through the worst of the frozen wastes. Her loss of defiance in the teeth of winter disturbed Lacan, depressed him. He showed a side of his character that Richard found hard to accommodate, a too-easy resignation, a fatalism that perhaps was protecting him against the anticipated grief of the girl’s death.
When he could, Richard bullied the man into exercising a more cheerful and optimistic attitude, at least in front of Sarin herself, and Lacan said, “Damn! You’re right!” hugged Richard, but continued to behave in exactly the same gloomy way.
Helen whispered, “The man’s tired. Deep down, he’s exhausted. To the core. He’s been too many years in his own company, too many years hoping. Give him time.”
“Of course I will,” Richard said irritably. “I understand Lacan well enough. It’s Sarin I’m concerned for. If she needs his strength to extend her life, right now she’s dying faster than she need.”
In the summer woods Sarin cheered up, found fresh heart, fresh strength. And at these times it was she who teased the big man, and over the days Richard saw the relationship between the two of them deepen and intensify.
Four days after they had begun their journey inward, they emerged in a downpour from the saturated forest into the heavy ground-haze of a clearing below wide canopy. The robust and serpentine roots that flowed across the ground marked the place as the Mask Tree, and the huge, dark trunk ahead of them was the place where Alex’s imagination was embedded.
Already Richard had seen what Lytton had been shocked to notice: there were no marks now, no masks, no faces on the trunk, nothing but ridged bark, stained with white lichen, infested with black and orange fungal growth, rotting.
Lytton cried out in frustration. “I knew we should have stayed!” But a moment later, as he moved towards the tree, he changed his tone. “No! There is something here.”
He began to trace his finger round a shallow oval scratching, throwing his staff to one side, spreading himself against the trunk. “Yes! There’s something … Richard. Quickly! Come here…”
He had found a single design. It was Moondream. Richard recognised it at once, from the bark mask that James Keeton had been clutching on his return from the Otherworld, so many years ago, now: a half-crescent, sharply focused eyes, a half-smile, the same outline. It was Keeton’s daughter’s mask, his only memento of the lost girl.
Richard stared at the crudely carved face, touched its eyes, its mouth.
This has nothing to do with Alex.
He wondered aloud what had happened to the rest of the faces and masks. Had they been re-absorbed, as all of Alex’s creations in the wood had been sucked back? Then why had this particular image survived?
Lytton tapped at the bark, curious for a moment, then enlightened, and he confirmed Richard’s intuitive thought. “This design was not from your son.” He looked back at the face, spread his hands over the shallow tracing. “But if not from Alex—then who? Who could have carved this face? You can see that it’s old. But it’s not ancient.”
The answer was not so much obvious as suggested by memory. If Richard recollected his son’s account correctly, Moondream had been Tallis Keeton’s favourite mask. And it was Moondream that she had dropped for her father to find at the entrance to Ryhope Wood, at the hollowing where Hunter’s Brook entered the forest. Had Tallis herself, then, carved the face that was now etched across the growing and gigantic tree?
* * *
A few hours later, with the rain easing off, Sarin came running into the half-light below the spreading branches. Lacan was noisily cracking wood, constructing a temporary shelter along the lines of Helen’s bower. He heard Sarin’s loud call of, “Someone coming!” and pulled into deeper cover. Richard and Lytton followed him, slipping on the wet underfoot and sliding onto their bellies in the cruel embrace of thorn and briar. Sarin pointed to where the undergrowth was moving, and a man stepped out to face the Mask Tree. He seemed dazed: his hair was dishevelled, his face streaked with dirt and blood.
He was wearing a red dressing gown, tied at the front. He was barefoot.
“My God,” Richard whispered, “it’s James Keeton. That’s exactly how I found him, years ago. He ran in front of my car. James Keeton…”
The figure of the man walked unsteadily into the clear space below the high, wide canopy. He was clutching a piece of wood in his hands, holding the object close to his stomach. He stepped up to the trunk of the tree and stared at the face, silent for a long while, shivering with cold, his right hand occasionally reaching out to stroke the heavy bark.
And suddenly he called out Tallis’s name. He repeated the cry, and the name extended into a howl of pain, a wail of despair. Again and again he called for his daughter, dropping the mask, leaning against the tree, hitting his forehead against the wood. His agony reduced Sarin to tears, and Lacan, who was crouched beside her, folded her into his cloak. Richard felt moved to tears himself. He wanted to go to the man, began to do so, and almost struck Lytton when the grey-faced Scot forced him back.
“Don’t interfere. This is not his moment. It’s Alex’s. If you want your son, you’ll have to let him come. I know he’ll come…”
Lytton quickly scanned the surrounding forest, listening hard for a second approach. Helen held her head in her hands, half watching the screaming, sobbing man at the tree, wincing as the wailing grew louder, shaking her head helplessly. When Richard put a hand on her shoulder she leaned towards him, but still tried to block her ears against Keeton’s appalling sadness.
The ground below them trembled. By the tree, James Keeton had stopped crying. He took a nervous step back, then reached quickly to pick up the Moondream mask, clutching it to his chest as he stepped away from the elm. At the same time the air turned chill and dry, and the noises of the world around them receded, as if the atmosphere had suddenly rarefied.
The tree shimmered with light.
 
; The face of Moondream stood out against the black bark, a thin trace of silver light. No sooner had it been defined, clearly enough for Richard to see the details of the eyes and mouth, than it was lost below other lines and slashes that seemed to burn out of the wood, one face after another, then a proliferation of features, haunting, frightening attributions, male, female, animal, some from the dreamworld. The montage of masks spread rapidly to cover the whole tree. Silver light spilled like a fine spray up into the canopy, down to the distended root-mass where James Keeton still stood, half-hunched, in shock and wonderment, his pale skin reflecting the rich colours of the emerging faces.
Suddenly Keeton again screamed out Tallis’s name, a raw and primal cry of such need, such anguish, that the whole wood seemed shocked and silent for a moment.
And then the trunk of the tree exploded soundlessly, enveloping Keeton in elemental shapes!
Figures streamed through from the dark trunk, ethereal and huge, some running, some riding, some gleaming with armour, others in a swirl of cloaks or skins, colours bright. The ghostly forms flowed around the shattered form of James Keeton, but as each figure reached the edge of the clearing and entered the wood, so it became solid. Around Richard the forest was suddenly alive with movement.
Lytton hissed, “Great God, I didn’t think of this—he’s coming from inside!”
A purple-painted man ran towards Richard, a round shield held in one hand, a short sword in the other, hair flying, lips drawn back to expose brilliant white teeth. The figure leapt across the crouching man, crashed into the underbrush, and with an ululation of triumph raced away into the gloom, leaving Richard with an image of faces and whorls and swirls decorating the body from head to feet.
“What are we witnessing?” he asked loudly.
“Witnessing?” Lytton repeated. “Alex’s death! The moment his history was sucked from him. You were in the room at the time. Remember? Look at it! This is an encyclopaedia of what we have all inherited. Everything is here! And I can never remember it all. There’s just too much! We must watch for the boy! Watch for the shadow.”