Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (34 page)

You will have to offer her Steven. You fool! Don’t you see? You will have to offer her the boy. And then trust her. Can you trust her? Can WE trust her? She will not perform her magic without the gift she seeks. Fool!

He left the journal open on his desk and went through the house to begin to collect his supplies and equipment for the trek. At some point during the next ten minutes he was aware of the wafting smell of undergrowth in the house, and the sound of movement from his office. The visit was brief, and he caught sight of the shadow as it ran with uncanny speed back across the field to the woodland edge.

A brief response, then, and without much interest Huxley returned to read what had been written.

‘Damnation!’

He ran to the garden, dropping the journal as he went. ‘Come back!’ he shouted. ‘You’re wrong. I’m sure! Damn!’

Now he was frightened. He swept up the journal, turned again to the scrawled line:
Steven is not safe from Ash. She must be destroyed
, and then flung the book into its hiding place.

Now there was no time to lose. He roughly packed his sack, crammed whatever food lay to hand – bread, cheese, a piece of cold mutton – and almost demolished Jennifer as he ran to the garden.

‘Wait until dawn at least …’ she said, recovering
from the impact and helping him gather the spilled items from his sack.

‘I can’t.’

‘You’re in a lather, George …’

Furious, eyes blazing with panic, he hissed, ‘He’s going to kill her! That will undo everything. Wynne-Jones, gone forever. Maybe …’ He hesitated, and bit back the words, ‘Steven too—

‘I have to follow him,’ he went on, ‘and fast. God, he’s so fast …’

Jennifer sighed, seemed sad, then kissed her husband.

‘Off you go then. Be careful. For the boys’ sake, and for mine.’

He made a feeble attempt at humour. ‘I’ll return
with
Wynne-Jones, or on him …’

‘But lose his pipe, if you can,’ she added, then turned quickly away as her voice began to break.

16

It took Huxley over four hours to locate the Horse Shrine, the longest search ever. He had been confident of the route, but became distracted by the sudden change in the wood from a stifling, chirruping zoo of green light and intense shade, to a silent, gloomy dell, where the overpowering smell of decay set his heart racing and his senses pounding. By moving too fast through this deadly glade he disorientated himself, and
took hours to find some part of Ryhope Wood that prompted memory.

At one point a blur of movement swept past him, noisily disappearing into the deep wood. At first he thought that it might be the grey-green man, overtaking him on his passage inwards, but then remembered that his shadow was far ahead of him. More likely, then, the movement was one of the various forms of the Green Jack. As such he took precautionary manoeuvres and measures against attack, keeping his leather flying jacket firmly buttoned to the throat, despite the humidity, and holding a small wooden shield on the side of his face nearest the disturbance.

It was maddening to be so lost, and to be so desperate to find a shrine that, over the years, he had found with no difficulty.

By a stream he washed his face and cleaned his boots, which were heavy with clay from a tree-crowded mire into which he had stumbled. His lungs were tight with pollen and the damp, heavy air. His mouth was foul. His eyes stung with dust, tiny seeds, and the endless slanting, slashing light from above the dense foliage cover.

The stream was a blessing. He didn’t recognise it, although the ruins of a building on its far bank, a building in Norman style, high earth defences, compact and economic use of stone, reminded him of a place he had seen three years before. He knew from experience that the mythagoscapes changed subtly, and that they could be brought into existence by different minds and therefore with slightly different features. If this building were a corrupting form of the river station – from a
story-cycle told in the courts of William Rufus – which he had recorded before, then the Horse Shrine lay behind him.

He had come too far.

There was no use in using a compass in this wood. All magnetic poles shifted and changed, and north could be seen to turn a full three hundred and sixty degrees in the stepping of four paces in a straight line. Nor was there any guarantee that the perspective of the wood had not changed; hour by hour the primal landscape altered its relationship with its own internal architecture. It was as if the whole forest were turning, a whirlpool, a spinning galaxy, turning around the voyager, confusing senses, direction and time. And the further inwards one journeyed, the more that place laughed, played tricks, like old Drummer Fox, casting a glamour upon the eyes of the naive beholder.

No. There was no guarantee of anything, here. All Huxley knew was that he was lost. And being lost, yet being comforted by this encounter with the river-station of the piratical
Gylla
, from the eleventh-century story, he felt suddenly confident. He had nothing to use but his judgement. And he had something of great value to lose: his friend of many years standing …

So he summoned his courage and returned along the trail.

He finished writing and packed the book away in his rucksack. With a nervous glance around he entered the dense woodland again, and ducked below the branches, hesitating as he orientated himself, then striking away from the glade by measured paces, constantly stopping and listening.

He had intended to walk a wide circle, but after a few minutes the abrupt and noisy flight of dark birds, behind him, caught his attention and induced in him a state of frozen silence. He hugged the dark trunk of a tree, peering through the light-shattered gloom for any substantial movement.

When, after a minute or so, he had seen nothing, he began a hesitant return to the glade.

The sound of a scream, a woman’s angry, fearful cry, shocked him, then set him running.

A small fire was burning, close to the stone walls of the shrine. The intensity of the flame, the sharp crackle of wood, told Huxley instantly that the fire was new. He was tantalised by the thought that Ash had been near the clearing all the time, watching him, waiting for him to leave.

He approached, now, crouched low in the cover. Ash was a running shape, a twisting, struggling form, caught darkly in the light from her own fire. Something was grappling with her, hitting at her. He could hear the blows. Her cries of anger became groans of pain, but she fought back with vigour, rough skirts swirling, arms swinging.

Huxley dropped his pack and stepped quickly into the clearing. The process of murder was interrupted and Ash looked at him angrily, then with puzzlement. Behind her, the wood shimmered and the grey-green shape of a man moved swiftly to the right. He still had hold of Ash and the startled woman stumbled as her head was wrenched back, dragging her over.

‘Let her go! Let go of her at once!’

Huxley snatched a piece of burning wood from the small fire. He dropped it at once and yelled as flame curled round his fingers, singeing the hair on his skin. More carefully he selected a fragment of branch that was burning only at the end—

And grimaced as he realised that the whole of the wood was at what felt like red heat!

—And charged at the shadow of his alter ego.

Ash was being throttled. Her body had pitched back, her naked legs thrashing. Her head and upper torso were hidden by the brush. Her cries were stifled, choking.

Huxley leapt through the undergrowth and thrust the burning brand at the shadow.

‘Get away from her! I won’t have this, do you understand me? Stop at once!’

The fire at the end of the brand went out. He shook the wood vigorously, hoping to restart the flame, but the life had gone from it.

Then his face erupted with pain and he felt himself flung back into the clearing. He moaned with genuine discomfort and struggled to stand, but all strength had evaporated from his legs, and he fell back, onto one elbow, reached to hold his face, now numbed and oddly loose around the jaw.

Distantly he heard a sharp crack, a half cry, fading quickly, a woman’s cry, dying.

‘Oh Dear God, he’s killed her … I’ve killed her …’

Fire burned into his eyes and he shrieked and struck against the brand. A foot crushed down upon his belly, and when he doubled so he felt a further blow, by foot or hand it was hard to tell, against his eyes, striking him
flat again. The fire waved down, the flames took on his shirt, and he patted a hand at them, before again fingers closed around his wrist and wrenched him up, to a sitting position, half blinded by flickering yellow fire, and—

Rope around his neck!

Tightening!

He snatched and scrabbled at the thong, managed to cry out. ‘Stop this! You have no right! Stop this at once … !’

He was lifted, turned, swung. He struggled to retain a degree of dignity, but felt his feet leave the ground and his stomach turn over as he was dragged around by the creature, swinging him with astonishing strength, finally flinging him against the stone of the shrine.

He looked up, then felt burning and realised he was half in the fire. He scrabbled away from the heat, but had the presence of mind to fling gleaming shards and hot ashes against the blurry shadow that had come to tower over him. Where they impacted he caught the grim outline of a naked man, leaning down, and he could tell the smile, and the glitter of menace in the eyes that watched.

A voice like bubbling water hissed, ‘Let her die …’

‘Animal!’ Huxley spat. ‘You sicken me. To think that you are a part of
me
. Dear God, I hope I never live to see the day that—’

‘Steee-vaaaan …’

It was an animal howl. It shattered Huxley’s concentration. It rattled his nerves. There was such desperation in the cry, such need, such fury. The grey-green
shadow bent to its task of killing, but on its lips, on the green-shadow gates of hell that were the exit from its heart, on that invisible, yet tangible mouth was his son’s name, and love for his son,
love
, and compassion too, a misguided, misdirected shadow that fought and killed to save the life of

‘Steee-vaaaan …’

Again the howl of anguish, and then the creature went to work; and with what energy, what power it began to rend the prone and failing body of the man, the human creature that lay before it!

Huxley experienced the scientific process of his death with abstract, disconnected ease …

He had no strength left. There was nothing he could do.

That he witnessed the leather thong that suddenly appeared around the shadow’s neck was more a testimony to the strength of the scientific curiosity that inhabited the man than any strength of will, or need to survive. He had documented the punishment to his body, and thought only of how this grey-green shadow, this dissection of his mind, his personality, loose in an alien world, could summon the forces of nature such that it could be tangible, whole, and sexual …

It was a beast at large, a creature formed from mind, myth and manhood, substance crowning the power of its thoughts, its needs, its desires, its baser hungers. And within that hunger lurked the higher mind that Huxley was proud to call his own, the awareness of love, the curiosity that formed the exploring nature of a man like
Wynne-Jones, or young Christian Huxley, or George himself. Poor George. Poor old George.

On the strangling leather, two pieces of wood and a sharp shard of bone showed up clearly by the scattered light of the scattered fire, and the grey-green man shrieked and drew back, swung on his own noose, caught by his own animalistic arrogance as Ash, one arm hanging quite limp, the other wrapped around the thong, dragged the shadow backwards. The eerie sound of his cry was suddenly drowned by the violent flight of birds from all around, a massive flight that filled the glade of the Horse Shrine with leaves and feathers, and the darkening sky with a streaming blur of circling shapes.

There were horses in the wood. They snorted, stamped and shook their manes, with a rustling of woodland and a rattle and clatter of crude stone and bone trappings, slung on hair twine and stretched and softened leather … They were everywhere, all around, and Huxley groped his way to his knees, watching the dark woods.

Movement everywhere. And sound, like chanting: and the rapid beating of drums, the rhythmic rattle of bone and shell … It was all so familiar. He could hear the cries of tortured men, and the shrieking laughter that had so unnerved him in a recent encounter. All of this was taking place deeper in the wood, almost out of sight.