Advent (52 page)

 
It pointed a long arm-branch towards him, the cluster of leaves at its end straightening.

 
‘Princeling!’ it called out, clear and loud. ‘I’m sent to fetch you. Come out. Follow!’

 
Desperate instinct made him think
fire
. Fire, the primal defence against the dark, the weapon against the wildwood. Gawain spun away from the window, seized the thinnest and longest log he could find from the basket by the fireplace and shoved its end into the ash.

 
The voice, outside: ‘Where have you hid yourself, youngling? Come out to the cold.’

 
He bit his lip and stared into the dead hearth. ‘Come on,’ he whispered through gritted teeth. ‘Come on, come on.’ The window behind him scraped. Spike-leaved fingers caressed the panes. He couldn’t stop himself looking over his shoulder. It was watching him, huge in the frame of the window, taller than any man. It stared for a moment and then stepped out of sight, towards the door.

 
‘Come. On.’ Fire, his last hope. The abomination outside could crush him like an insect. His shaking hands stirred futile clouds in the ash. Crows screeched and gargled outside, their racket echoing his nightmares, the plagues of dark wings shot through with seams of flame.

 
He took one deep breath to silence his panic and held it.

 
‘Burn,’ he whispered.

 
The end of the log flared. He felt the blast of warmth on his face even before his eyes opened to see it. He sprang up, clutching it tight in both hands. Sparks fell from it as he lunged towards the door.

 
There was an almighty crack. The door exploded inwards as if it had been hit by a battering ram. There under the porch stood the tree-creature, its huge arm swinging back. Gawain thrust the burning brand out in front of him.

 
With a hollow roar of wind the blizzard struck.

Part VI

Snow

Twenty-four

In front of
Horace’s eyes a white fury danced. It was coming towards him, or he was falling into it. His first groggy thought was that he must be dead. His body felt detached. He couldn’t place himself. He was nowhere.

 
A face appeared in the white. This was unexpected. Some sort of angel, maybe? He strained to make his eyes focus and found that he could actually lift his head a little. He was cold to his bones, and the skin of his face felt brittle as the crust of ice on a winter puddle.

 
If he wasn’t dead, maybe he was as good as. That might explain the angel. It appeared to float above him –
above
, yes, he was (things began to arrange themselves) lying on his back on the ground – indifferent to the white chaos. It was shrouded, ominously. Dark hair fell across its face. He watched the way the whiteness twisted around it and realised that the white was snow, heavy snow, the same snow that was steadily burying him.

 
Hands appeared and reached to the angel’s neck. Horace saw the shroud unfurl from its body. It bent down closer to him, coming into focus. The face became female.

 
‘The right length for you,’ she said. ‘And I have no more use for it.’

 
She covered him with the shroud. It was like a thick blanket, slightly warm. She tucked the edges around his hands and legs. The lessening of the cold roused his nerves, making them tingle, then blaze. He gasped with pain.

 
She turned her head and met his eyes.

 
An unmistakable sadness filled her face.

 
‘Oh,’ she said. She reached a hand towards him, hesitated, then rested it on his shoulder. ‘You have a long journey ahead.’ She seemed to be about to add something, but thought better of it. Horace was still trying to work out whether what she’d said meant that he was about to die or that he wasn’t – he felt hazily detached from either alternative, as if it really didn’t make much difference – when she stood up again.

 
‘Keep my cloak. It will do you some good, on your way.’

 
It was doing him good right now. His muscles were thawing, though they throbbed in protest when he tried to wiggle fingers and toes. He managed to twitch his head enough to shake away the film of snow from his hair and eyebrows. The scene became a little clearer. He’d always imagined angels (when he’d imagined them at all, which come to think of it was basically never) as being better dressed than this. They were supposed to be radiant, weren’t they? Or at least tidy. Also a bit more cheerful. Still, with him being more or less dead and all, an angel she obviously was, since she stood barefoot and bareheaded in the snowstorm without a flicker of discomfort, looking down at him with a face like one of those old paintings on Christmas cards.

 
There was something about her voice too. It came untouched through the wind and snow like a bird’s wing cutting the air. She had walked away a little, but when she looked back to speak again he heard the words perfectly clearly.

 
‘Of all the men and women and their children, you are the last to see me alive. I’m glad I came across you, to leave my cloak.’

 
Then she vanished into the snow, and Horace began fighting to stir his sinking body back to life.

The monster swung one barbed arm in through the shattered doorway, swishing through the narrow space as if the storm had entered the house. Gawain jumped back, nearly tripping on the bottom stair behind him. The burning branch swayed crazily. Popping sparks smouldered against the walls.

 
‘I’m to fetch you, fugitive,’ it half sang, half said. The air between them rippled with heat, making its green face look like it was melting. ‘I am the snare that catches boys. My barbs hook man-fry.’ The arm stretched forward again, beckoning. ‘Come close.’

 
‘L-leave,’ he croaked. He tried to think of the way the dog had stalled, constricted by his words. His throat was choked tight. He had to shout to clear it. ‘Go away!’ The shout became a scream. ‘Get out!’

 
It slid one of the gnarled and splayed protrusions that served it for feet over the threshold. Where the woody tendrils touched, the earth beneath the floor buckled upwards. Cracks shivered through the slate tiles, adding their sharp
tchak
to the fizzing of the log and the deep rush of the wind outside. It bent its flower-crowned head to duck through the doorway.

 
‘No!’ Gawain yelled.

 
But it kept coming. The frame of the door warped and split as the tree-thing stepped across it, as if its wood was being sucked into the advancing roots. Gav stumbled back, sick with panic, retreating through the green curtain into the living room.

 
‘Wrong boy, right boy.’ It was inside the house, inside Auntie Gwen’s house. The last barrier was down; the nightmares had come indoors. ‘Right boy, wrong boy. You’re the one I’m commanded to catch.’ Here he was, in the midst of all the stuff, the piles of paper, the mounds of books, the everyday mess, and in among it the huge green thing strode, tearing the curtain aside with a ripple of one long limb. ‘No good saying no, princeling. We both must as we must.’

 
There was no escape, but Gawain kept going back anyway, deeper into the room. His hands shook uncontrollably. As he backed round the sofa the end of the branch dipped too close to a blanket. There was a sudden bitter smell of burning. The room was too small, and, he realised, it was full of paper, scraps scattered everywhere. He couldn’t swing his firebrand, or drop it, or anything. And still the thing pursued him. It watched the smoking branch, swaying away from its tip, but on it came as he retreated, with ghastly hypnotic grace.

 
‘Fear me, flee me, follow me in the end.’ Its lips were the black of wet bark, and a black tongue moved in its mouth. ‘Find the right child and Holly will be free. And the right is you.’ It slid closer, marking each step with a singsong word. ‘And. The. End.’ He was backed in a corner. ‘Is. Here.’

 
His heels prodded behind him and met the wall. He gripped the log tighter and tried one last time to drive this thing out. He was near tears. Abject terror had turned his limbs to wax. His lips quivered as badly as his hands. ‘Go,’ he tried to shout, but it came out more like a sob. ‘Go.’

 
It closed its mouth, paused its advance for a moment and then smiled and slowly shook its head.

 
‘No. Don’t.’ Its next steps would bring him in range of the bristled limbs. ‘I’ll . . .’ He held the fire out towards it.

 
It sang:

The holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

One limb whipped upwards, swift as an uncoiling spring, and struck Gawain’s hands. The burning branch spun away across the room as he cried out. The blow felt like it must have shattered bones. He slumped to the floor, hugging his fingers under his arms, defenceless, watching through a film of tears as the grotesque feet slid closer, the carpet ripping open and the floor heaving under them. The long body bent as if bowing to the wind. He looked up into opaque vermilion eyes.

 
‘Greenwood fears fire,’ it murmured, voice warm as a caress, ‘but, I fear, you fear me more.’

 
With a roar the room erupted in heat and smoke.

 
The blazing log had fallen at the entrance, beneath the green curtain, which had abruptly caught fire. The monstrosity sprang straight, twisting round. Its arms thrashed, throwing a picture off the wall, knocking over the fire irons, smashing the glass front of a cabinet, sending a high shelf of books raining down on Gawain’s head. A foul-smelling layer of grey-black smoke began drowning the room from the top, filled with scattered sparks. Gawain crawled away from the cascade of books and saw that the tree-thing had fled. Smoke already stung his eyes, but he made out its huge shape rushing past the burning curtain, furniture scattering like shipwreck behind it. Its flight unbuckled the appalling fear that had paralysed him. His brain was suddenly racing. There was paper everywhere and it would all burn, in moments, and him with it. It happened that he’d crawled beside the very stack of paper he’d rested his tea on, that other morning which now seemed unthinkably long ago: right in front of his face he saw
GAVIN
, doubly underlined, the tea stain circling it. The envelope was already spotting with heat.

 
Smoke trickled into his lungs. He flattened himself on the floor, coughing. He felt the fire like a solid thing, an embrace. He recognised it from somewhere: its patient hunger. His thoughts flashed back again to the other morning, when he’d stirred the ashes and woken embers. The fire had answered him then. It had known him.

 
Now he knew it.

 
When roused, it ate; he understood that, all at once, as though it was obvious, a thing he’d always known. He couldn’t make it stop. That wasn’t in its nature. But, outside, he also knew the snow, stilling, light-fingered, inexorable.

 
Flares of brilliant yellow surrounded him in the smoke. Scraps of paper rose on the boiling air and went tumbling around the room. Even as the backs of his hands began to scorch, Gawain slowed his breath, closed his eyes and curled into a ball on the floor.

 
He reached past the fire, out into the open air. There he felt the snow falling, blanketing everything it touched. Its vast silence was something he understood. He found where that knowledge was in him. Hush, he told the fire.

 
Hush, hush.

 
Hussshh
, came a sound in his ears, a deafening hiss that faded into a long whisper.
Shhhhhhh.

 
He opened his eyes.

 
Smoke drifted in a glistening grey cloud above a glistening grey room. The glister above came from beads of steam. Below, it was ice.