There was a new vibrancy in the glade, now, a tension in every leaf, a murmur in every branch. He knew he was being watched, and he sensed the hair on his neck prickling as his adrenalin surged. He was anxious, reacting instinctively to an unseen threat. He crept into the A-frame and curled up, staring out into the clearing, mouth dry in anticipation. When he closed his eyes there was peace of vision, the clutter of figures and the sensation of movement fading. But birdsong became intrusive, and as he listened so he realised that the cries and calls from the canopy were wrong, that they mocked him, or taunted him. Sudden crashings and cries from the deep of the wood were startling and frightening. Towards dusk he removed one of the strong poles that formed the side of his shelter and used a knife to sharpen the point. He stoked up the fire. Glowing embers streamed skyward, seeming to illuminate elemental creatures that hovered, staring down at him, just out of true sight.
He began to hear incomprehensible sounds, recognising them as voices, the murmuring of languages, the laughter and shouting of strangers, but the words were incoherent, a blur of sound, surging and ebbing, like the babble of noise on a foreign beach.
What was happening? Lacan had talked of furthering his sight. What exactly had he said? To learn to see the light …
What were these living dreams, these edge visions? What had Lacan fed him, or set him up for?
At dusk a wolf glowered at him from the far side of the glade. Richard watched it silently, despite the panic he felt. He held the sharpened stake forwards and prayed that the fire would keep the beast at bay. After twenty minutes of silent contemplation, the wolf rose onto its hindlegs, a massive, grey shape. It used its forelegs to break off a small branch and examined the implement carefully, hefting it and testing the broken edge. To Richard’s astonishment it then stalked around the edge of the glade, upright and slightly hunched, murmuring and growling before abruptly disappearing from sight. It had seemed to be saying his name.
Richard had no difficulty staying awake and alert for the rest of the night, although in the morning he was frozen, his shoulders aching. He realised he was drifting in and out of a restless half-sleep in which an odd, disturbing dream of Alex running along a woodland path pursued by a hollybush haunted him. The boy, in his dream, had hovered at the edge of the clearing, watching him excitedly, before the hollybush had absorbed him and dragged him into the undergrowth.
He had wept whilst in this semi-conscious state and the moisture was now cold on his cheeks. With first light he felt more depressed and despairing than he had for years. An incapacitating loneliness smothered him. He thought of Alice, of their first years together, and succumbed to bitter regret that he had let their relationship drift into such remoteness. He thought of his small flat in North London, and the piles of newspapers and magazines that were never tidied, the TV that was always on, the phone that rarely rang. He became conscious, again, of the silence of the place, two large rooms which were never used to entertain his acquaintances. What had happened to him? He had slipped away, he realised, not for the first time. He had become isolated in his life. He had ceased to have direction, to make initiatives. Like a bear in the longest of winters, he had hibernated for the last six years, living off the decreasing supplies of mind fat, of old memory.
With a sudden, angry shout he snapped himself out of the mood of incriminatory self-pity, crawled from the shelter, and beat the fire with a length of wood, making grey ash swirl up in the new light.
A sudden movement in his peripheral vision startled him. He swung round, but of course there was nothing. And yet, there had been something eerily familiar about the human shape that had suddenly walked towards him then darted away. Something in the way it moved … He couldn’t summon the image back, and the distortion had been too great to resolve the features clearly, and yet, again he felt that Alex had been watching him.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he muttered.
The wood was restless, Richard was unnerved. Determinedly he began to retrace his steps to the edge, pack slung over one shoulder, crude spear held tightly in his hand. There would be no turning back this time, no disorientation. He’d had enough. If Lacan, if Helen, had anything more to say to him they would have to come to Shadoxhurst.
“Enough is enough!” he declared, ducking below low branches, keeping his attention firmly on the narrow but beaten track.
Oak Lodge was just ahead. He could see the clearing in front of it, a place where the light was intense.
He stepped into the horse-shrine, faced the grey stone and screamed his frustration. “How? Why? Where did I turn?”
A figure darted in panic from the A-frame, the sudden movement shocking Richard. It was a young man, his skin stippled and whorled with blue tattoos, his face quite black to the mouth line and lined with red below. His clothing consisted of a short, hide kilt, leather shoes, and crossed bands of green fabric over his patterned chest. A long braid of black hair, gleaming with bits of bronze, hung from his right temple. He grabbed at a pack and a long knife before whirling round twice, shouting loudly, defiantly at Richard, then streaking away into the undergrowth.
Someone blew in Richard’s ear. He turned in panic, bringing up the sharpened spear.
Lacan stood there grinning, a brace of red-furred hares slung over one shoulder, a tied bunch of wild garlic on the other.
“Been for a little walk?”
“Take me home,” Richard said, shaking.
Lacan ignored him and held up the hares. “Look at these. Aren’t they magnificent? Look at the nervous elegance of their sweet faces, the perfect and refined shape of the forepaws, the exquisite colour of the fur. Mountain hares, my friend, of the finest breeding. Which makes them French, of course. I shall make a meal fit for Vercingetorix himself!”
“Lacan, get me out of here! For God’s sake take me home.”
“Why? Because a tattooed Prince from your Wessex of five thousand years ago has called you by the ghost name pukk katha ’nja—” he laughed. “Condemning you, incidentally, to spew up demons in the shape of rocks every time you wish to speak! Great for hangovers! Shout back at him, my friend. Don’t be afraid. It’s good for the soul.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just know I’m scared. I’m claustrophobic. Lacan—I want to get out of this place! I’m hallucinating. I can’t sleep. I need a drink.”
“A drink! Now he talks some sense. I need a drink too. Don’t worry, I know where we can find one.”
Furious, Richard hauled the Frenchman back. “Lacan. Take me home! I don’t know what’s happening to me!”
Frowning, but reassuring, the big man placed a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “It has happened to you fast. Faster than usual. Perhaps it is because Alex is in the wood. Lytton said you should stay here for two days, to acclimatise, but I think I must take you deeper right now. If we walk fast, if we encounter nothing more sinister than that wild, ghost-singing youth, we can be at Old Stone Hollow in four or five hours.”
“I want to go home,” Richard said, hardly finding the breath to speak, feeling his despair rise as tears.
Lacan shook him gently, then squeezed the lobe of his left ear. “I know you do, my friend. But by this evening, fed, well-wined, and surrounded by good company, you will feel very differently. If you don’t, then I will take you home personally. That is a promise. But trust me for the moment, Richard. There is nothing to be afraid of. Truly. You’ll soon get used to what is happening. Will you trust me?”
Helpless, Richard nodded. “I’ll trust you,” he said dully.
Lacan laughed in his falsely enlarged fashion and walked to the A-frame, Richard following. “What a foolish man you are, then! But I still can’t help liking you. I must be going bosky. Come on, we must hurry, or those other drunkards will consume all the Burgundy.”
The Green Chapel: 3
The hollyjack was fat with birds, crows by the sound they made as they shifted inside her. She had extended her nest until now it was a mass
ive structure of dead wood, yellow grasses, and thick briar, covering the whole of the double doors below the broken window where the knight challenged the half-glimpsed monster. She shrieked now, rather than chattered. Her activities were directed solely to expanding the fat sphere of the nest. Alex watched her curiously, usually from the high window where a rain gutter, stretching out over the graveyard, gave him a position to swing from. Whenever she looked up at him and bristled her smile, he called down his name.
“Alex! It’s come home to me. Alex! My name. It’s come home. I’m Alex!”
Chatter-shriek-chirrup. (That’s a good name. Has it brought good dreams with it?)
“Yes. I dreamed I was playing in fields. I ran through long grass, full of thistles. I flew kites. I caught fish in the pond near the fallen stones. I lived in a small house, which was very dark, but it had a big fire. My mother was always writing letters. My father walked up and down a lot, and watched cricket. He seemed very sad. I made things with wood. I’m Alex. I’m going home.”
Flutter-shriek-chatterchatter-rustle. (Your father is looking for you. He’s in danger. The daurog are calm now, but the seasons are changing quickly again. Call to him to be careful.)
“He can’t hear me. I’m going home, though. He’s coming to me. My name is Alex. Alex has come home. The giggler won’t get me now.”
He swung down the ivy ladder and ran past the fat hollyjack, tugging at her leaves mischievously, to stand and stare at the figure in the window.
A name was close here, too, a certain recognition. He was waking from a long sleep. He felt his eyes open and his head expand. At first it was strange, but soon he began to grasp that a form of memory was returning. His name had come home, a bright bird that had flown through the wildwood and entered him, like an old friend. And now he knew the knight in the window, and the creature that he was killing, but the name still eluded him, even now he had become conscious of searching for it. And the faces at the edgewood were familiar too, all save the giggler, which changed so much that he could never be sure if the creature was there or not.
But the other inhabitants tickled his imagination now, suggested stories to him. They brought thoughts of sea voyages and great monsters, sword-fights and silver armour, wild rides in the night, with baying hounds, and great castles encased in rose briar and blackthorn.
He began to name things, feeling the words and the identity flow into him from the air as if they were a fine rain, drizzling through his hair and eyes and ears, into his mind. He screeched with pleasure as each name returned, “Gargoyle! Crucifix! Gravestone!” And as he remembered the faces at the edgewood, “Robin Hood … Lancelot … Jason…”
Some of these names frightened him because when they had appeared to him they had horrified him—they had been death’s heads, or wolf’s heads, on the bodies of men, and although the names should have been comforting, the men were not.
Nevertheless, as dawn crept through his head he alarmed the hollyjack as he scampered past her through the sanctuary trees, sending one of the uplifted pews crashing to the ground from the thin branches that supported it, shattering the small face at its end.
The dancer.
The whole bench was rotten. Alex picked up the pieces of the face. They were soft, like fungus, crumbling at his touch. He joined them together and placed them safely at the side of the wooded nave. He thought of taking the shattered dancer down to the bones and stone vaults below the floor, but he had heard something moving about down there, occasionally thumping at the marble slabs as if trying to get through to him, like the trees, and he kept the heavy door closed and barred with a branch.
The hollyjack shrieked suddenly. He turned quickly, staring at her from the altar, close to the golden cross that gleamed from its protective thicket of thorn. She seemed rooted. Her arms were over her leafy body and her branch tusks clattered. She was watching him in earnest, but a moment later she turned away and scurried awkwardly to her nest from which, for a long time, came the sound of her chattering, a sound of pain.
Helpless, Alex left her in the nest, leaving her sanctuary through the window, by the stone falcon, and dropping to the wet grass of the graveyard. Everything was still. He went to the well and drew water, drinking and staring at the wood a few feet away. Someone was standing in the cover, hardly breathing. He could feel the gaze on him, detect the shallow intake of breath, the betraying thump of the heart. When he moved slightly, as he lapped water from his cupped hands, he glimpsed dull grey fabric, a shawl and long dress, and red hair in a wild tumble. The glitter of watching eyes eventually resolved from the sparkling points of light that were wet leaves. These eyes were fierce, yet the hesitancy suggested fear. And a name came to him, drawn from the figure, finding a roost in his head.
Guinevere …
At once, as if the name on leaving her had released her from a spell, she screamed and ran. And at once the wood a few paces away erupted into a second flurry of movement. Alex backed towards the cathedral as the giggler broke through the tangled wood, a giant, stooping form whose stench emanated suddenly from the undergrowth, and whose voice rose from a growl to the braying laugh that haunted Alex’s waking dreams. The woman stepped out into the open for a second and Alex grimaced at the face below the flowing hair, the twisted features, the vile mouth. This was not the beauty of his story-dreams. Her clothes were the rags of shrouds. She seemed to stare at him with pity, or perhaps uncertainty, but a moment later she had vanished into the wood and for a long time the sounds of the hunt told of her speed, and the giggler’s determination.
Alex withdrew to the porch roof, below the ascent to his sanctuary. Rain came and went, and there was further furtive movement: a boy, then a figure in red uniform, then a hooded man. All of them glanced out from the wood, then retired: but not before he had named each of them, a whisper of recognition, a second’s delight.
Suddenly the giggler grinned at him, fresh blood on its white face and teeth, the briefest of apparitions in the undergrowth, so quick that Alex could hardly grasp it. It chuckled as it withdrew, moving heavily away to the right.
A touch on his hair made Alex jump with fright. The hollyjack had eased herself down the ivy rope so carefully, because of her size, that he had not heard her approach. She crouched on the porch now, shaking like an aspen in the wind. There was something very final about her. In as much as Alex could tell her expression from the oddly shaped eyes, deep in the twisted wood of her skull, he perceived anxiety. She wanted to show him something.
She led the way to the ground and reached around in the grass until she found a place in the earth where she could root. Alex curled into her, and flowed with her on the Big Dream …
It was the height and the depth of summer and the daurog moved through the stifling wood like shadows in the green. It was thick with heat. Where the forest thinned they passed through the deep wells of light, raising faces to the sky so that the sun shone on their polished tusks, emerging now from full, thick leaf on their fat bodies. Oak and Ash led the slow journey to the cathedral. Hazel and Holly kept to the fringes of any clearing. Beech, Birch, and Willow walked slowly, using tall staffs to keep touch with the ground. Behind them, moving carefully, always watching, always listening, always feeling for the eyes and ears that came to him through the rootweb, the shaman was a sinister presence, never quite visible, taking deep root quite often so that he trailed behind the family, catching up with them by moonlight, as the others of the group formed into a spinney to rest.
The shaman had carved a face on his thick staff. Sometimes when he pushed the gnarly wood into the earth, Alex was drawn up to the face, and the shaman watched him, silently and closely, scratching the face with thorny nails, then clattering his tusks before walking on.
They were in summer, then, and safe. They were closer than before, and searching for the stone place, for Alex. But there was something wrong with them, an emptiness that could not be conveyed, only touched. They sought something more than Alex, and they we
re in great pain.
Now he reached again, journeying on the Little Dream, feeling for his father, and touching the man, expecting to find sadness but finding a new joy. He was close and he was with a woman, not his mother. They were dancing by a fire. There was contentment and excitement in the air. The boy edged closer, came closer, and slipped back into the earth, draining towards the dancing man, expanding through the giant roots, curling around the deep stones, the hollow tombs, the bones of the dying-down and the being-born that littered the vast wood. When he could hear the sound of song and pipes, feel the drum of the dancers in the earth, he rose from the rootweb, and called for the man he loved …
Old Stone Hollow
(i) The Bone Yard
Five hours later, Lacan led the way out of the tangle of dark wildwood into clearer, lighter forest. Tall columns of stone rose among the trees, ivy-covered, weathered, some carved with the shapes of armoured men, others inscribed with glyphs and symbols reminiscent of those to be found in the Minoan remains of the Aegean. Further on, they passed below four corroding bronze pillars, each decorated with the faces of lions, one fallen at an angle and resting against an oak.
Lacan led the way carefully, taking a winding path through these majestic ruins. A huge wooden building, steeply thatched, had slipped to one side, folding into itself. Elm saplings had begun to penetrate the roof. Fallen idols, crudely hacked from stumps and sarsens, littered the ground before it, and Lacan ducked below the cracked, oakwood lintel to snatch a photograph of the interior.