Mythago Wood - 1 (23 page)
Authors: Robert Holdstock
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Contemporary, #Fantasy, #Fantasy Fiction, #Great Britain, #Forests and Forestry
The shamiga are the traveller's friend. They hold many keys
...
I
have no sense of the time shift. . .
The girl affects me totally. J has seen this, but what can I do? It is the
nature of the mythago itself. . .
How comforting the incomplete and obsessive journal became in the days after
that painful and heartbreaking night. The
shamiga
held the keys to many
things. The sticklebrook was the way in to the deeper woods. And since Christian
was from the outside I found it comforting to think that he, too, was bound to
the 'routeways', and I would be able to follow him.
I read the diary as if my life depended upon it; perhaps there
was
value
in the obsession. I intended to follow my brother as soon as my strength was
back, and Keeton felt up to journeying. There was no way of telling what simple
observations or comments of my father's might have been of crucial value at some
later stage.
Harry Keeton received medical attention at the airforce base from which he
operated. The wound was not dangerous, but was certainly severe. He came back to
Oak Lodge three days after the attack, his arm in a sling, his body weak, but
his spirit strong and vital. He was
willing
himself better. He knew what
was on my mind, and he wanted to come with me; and the thought of his
companionship was agreeable.
For my part, there were two wounds to heal. I couldn't speak for three days,
and could only manage to swallow liquids. I felt weak and distraught. The
strength returned to my limbs, but distress came in the persistent image of
Guiwenneth, slung crudely across the back of a horse and dragged from my sight.
I couldn't sleep for thinking of her. I wept more tears than I would have
believed
possible. For a while, three days or so after the
abduction, my anger peaked, and became irrationally expressed in a series of
hysterical fits, one of which was witnessed by the airman, who braved my abusive
assault upon him and helped to calm me down.
I
had
to get her back. Legendary role or no, Guiwenneth from the
greenwood was the woman I loved, and my life could not continue until she was
safe again. I wanted to smash and crush my brother's skull in the same way that
I smashed vases and chairs in that sequence of physically powerful tantrums.
But I had to wait a week. I just couldn't see myself heading through tangled
woodland without becoming completely exhausted. My voice came back, my strength
returned, and I made my preparations and plans.
The day of departure would be the 7th of September.
An hour before dawn Harry Keeton arrived at the Lodge. I listened to the
sound of his motorcycle for some minutes before the bright beam of his headlight
swept through the darkened hallways, and the noisy engine was cut. I was in the
oak cage, curled up in the tree hollow where I had spent so much time with
Guiwenneth. I was thinking of her, of course, and impatient with Keeton for
being late. I was also irritated with the man for arriving and breaking through
my melancholy.
'I'm ready,' he said as he stepped in through the front door. He was wet with
condensation and smelled of leather and petrol. We went into the dining-room.
'We'll leave at first light,' I said. 'That is, if you can move.'
Keeton had prepared himself well, and taken the prospective journey very
seriously. He was wearing his motorcycle leathers, with heavy boots and a
leather pilot's cap. His rucksack was bulging. He carried two knives at his
waist, one a wide-bladed object, which he presumably
intended
to use as a machete as we forced through the underwood. Pots and pans rattled as
he moved.
As he eased the immense pack from his shoulder he said, 'Thought it would be
wise to be prepared.'
'Prepared for what?' I asked with a smile. 'Sunday roast? A forest waltz?
You've brought your life-style with you. You're not going to need it. And you're
certainly not going to be able to carry it.'
He stripped off the tight pilot's helmet and scratched his tawny hair. The
burn-mark on the lower part of his face was flushed brightly; his eyes twinkled,
partly with excitement, partly with embarrassment.
'You think I've overdone it?'
'How's the shoulder?'
He stretched his arm, made a tentative swinging motion. 'Healing well.
Intact. Two or three days and it'll be good as new.'
'Then you've certainly overdone it. You'll never carry that pack on one
shoulder.'
He looked slightly worried. 'How about this?'
As he spoke he shrugged off the Lee-Enfield rifle which had been slung behind
his back. It was a heavy rifle, as I knew from experience, and smelled of oil
where he had cleaned and waterproofed it. From his leather coat pocket he
produced boxes of ammunition. From his breast pocket he produced his pistol,
with ammunition for
that
from the zip pocket of his leggings. By the time
this process of unloading had been completed his volume had withered by half. He
suddenly seemed far more the slender airman of days before.
'Thought they might come in useful,' he said.
In a way he was right, but I shook my head. One of us would have to carry
them, and a trek through dense wildwood did not lend itself to carrying
unreasonably heavy loads. Keeton's shoulder had healed quickly, but he would
clearly begin to suffer if the wound was subjected to
too
much abrasion and pressure. My own wounds had healed as well, and I felt strong,
but not so strong that I could add twenty pounds of rifle to my neck.
And yet, there would be rifles in the woodland. I had already encountered a
matchlock. I had no idea whether or not heroic figures from more recent years
were present in the forest, and what weaponry they might possess.
'Perhaps the pistol,' I said. 'But Harry ... the man we're going in to find
is primitive. He has opted for sword and spear and I intend to challenge him in
the same fashion.'
'I can understand that,' said Keeton softly. He reached out for the pistol
and returned it to its shoulder holster.
We unpacked his rucksack, removing a plethora of items that we agreed would
be more of an encumbrance than a comfort. We carried food enough for a week, in
the form of bread, cheese, fruit and salt beef. A ground sheet and lightweight
tent seemed a good idea. Water flasks in case we found only poisoned water.
Brandy, medicinal alcohol, plasters, antiseptic cream, antifungal ointment,
bandages: all of these seemed of the highest importance. A plate each to eat
off, enamel mugs, matches and a small supply of very dry straw. The rest of our
packs consisted of clothing, one complete change each. The heaviest item was the
oilskin which I had obtained from the manor. Keeton's leather outfit, likewise,
would be a burden to carry, but for warmth and waterproofing seemed a good idea.
All this for a journey through a stand of trees around which I could run in
little more than an hour! How quickly we had both come to accept the occult
nature of Ryhope Wood.
Christian had taken the original map. I spread out the copy I had made from
memory and showed Keeton the route I proposed to take, along the rivulet, to the
place marked 'stone falls'. This meant crossing two zones, one
of
which I could remember as having been labelled 'oscillating traverse zone'.
Christian was a week or so ahead of us, but I felt confident that we could
still find traces of his passage inwards.
At first light I picked up my stone-bladed spear, and buckled on the Celtic
sword that Magidion had given me. Then, ceremonially, I closed and locked the
back door of Oak Lodge. Keeton made some feeble joke about notes for milkmen,
but went quiet as I turned towards the oak orchard and began to walk. Images of
Guiwenneth were everywhere. My heart raced when I remembered the Hawks leaping
through the burning trees, which had rapidly regenerated and were in full summer
leaf. The day was going to be hot and still. The oak orchard seemed unnaturally
silent. We walked through its thin underbrush and emerged on to the
dew-glistening open land beyond, trekking down the slope to the sticklebrook,
and the mossy fence that seemed to guard the ghostwood from the mortal land
outside.
I
have discovered a fourth pathway into the
deeper zones of the wood. The brook itself. So obvious, now, a water track! I
believe it could be used to enter the heartwoods themselves. But time, always
time!
Keeton helped me wrench the old gate from where it had been nailed to a tree.
It was half-buried in the bank of the stream. It came away from its attachments,
trailing weed, rot, moss and briar rose. Beyond the gate the stream widened and
deepened to form a dangerous pool, bordered by tangled hawthorns. Barefoot, and
with trousers rolled up, I stepped into that pool and waded around its edge,
carefully holding on to the roots and branches of that first, quite natural
defensive zone. The pool's bottom was at first slippery, then soft. The water
swirled about my legs, cold and scummy. The moment we entered the dank
woodland
in this way, a chill came over us, the sensation of being cut off from the
brightening day outside.
Keeton slipped and slid his way after, and I helped him from the pool on to
the muddy bank. We had to stoop and force our way through the tangle of snagging
thorn and briar, easing our way along the stream's edge. There were bits and
pieces of fencing here, decades old, so rotten that they crumbled at the touch.
The dawn chorus was subdued, I thought, although there was much bird motion
above us in the high, dark foliage.
The gloom lifted suddenly and we came to a more open patch of bank, and here
sat down to dry our feet and put boots back on.
"That wasn't so hard,' Keeton said, wiping blood from a thorn scratch on
his cheek.
'We've barely started,' I said, and he laughed.
'Just trying to keep the spirits high.' He looked about him. 'One thing's for
sure. Your brother and his troop didn't come this way.'
'They'll be heading for the river, though. We'll pick up the trail soon
enough.'
I am going to keep this diary as a record of what happens to me. There are
several reasons. I have left a letter explaining them. I hope the diary will be
read. My name is Harry Keeton, of 27 Middleton Gardens, Buxford. I am 34 years
of age. Today is the 7th September 1948. The date, though, no longer matters. It
is DAY ONE.
We are spending our first night in the ghostwood. We have walked for twelve
hours. No sign of Christian, or horses, or G. We are in the place that Steven's
father discovered and named Little Stone Glade. We reached the glade before last
light, and it is a perfect site to recoup from the exertions of the walk, and to
eat. The so-called 'little stone' is a massive sandstone block, fourteen feet
high (we estimate) and twenty paces round. Much chipped, eroded, weathered etc.
Steven has found faint markings upon it, including his father's initials GH. If
this is the
little
stone, what I wonder . . .?
Totally exhausted. Shoulder very troublesome, but have opted
for
'hero's' way out, and shall not mention it unless S. notices. I can carry my
pack quite adequately, but there is far more scrambling and physical effort than
I had anticipated. Tent is pitched. A warm evening. The woodland seems very
normal. The sound of the stream is clear, although it is less a stream, more a
small river. We have been forced away from its bank by the density of the
underbrush. Already there is a quality about the woodland that defies
experience, the size of certain trees, gigantic, natural, no sign of having been
trimmed or coppiced. They seem to enfold whole areas of underwood, and feel very
protective. When the leaf cover is so complete, the underwood is thin, and
walking is easy. But of course, it is very dark. We rest below these giant trees
quite naturally, though. The whole wood breathes and sighs. Many
horse-chestnuts, so the wood is not 'primal', but a great abundance of oak and
hazel, with whole stands of ash and beech. A hundred forests in one.
Keeton began to keep his diary from that first night, but maintained the
journal for only a few days. It was intended to be a secret, I believe, his last
testament to the world should anything happen to him. The skirmish in the
garden, the arrow wound that nearly killed him, my account of how close he had
come to being cooked liver, all this inspired him with a sense of foreboding,
whose deeper nature I failed to grasp until much later.
Sneaking a look at the diary each night as he slept, I discovered I was glad
of this little focus of normality. I knew, for example, that his shoulder was
causing him trouble, and made sure he put no undue exertion upon it. He was also
quite flattering to me:
Steven a fine walker, determined. His purpose,
whether consciously or unconsciously guides him inwards with accuracy. He is a
great comfort, despite the anger and grief that seethe just below the surface.
Thank you, Harry. In those first few days of the journey you were a great
comfort too.
If the first day had been a long, but straightforward journey, the second was
not. Although we were following
the 'water track', the
woodland defences were still a great nuisance.
First, there was disorientation. We found ourselves walking
back
the
way we had come. At times it was almost possible to experience the switch in
perception. We felt dizzy; the underwood became pretematurally dark; the sound
of the river changed from our left to our right. It frightened Keeton. It
disturbed me. The closer we hugged the riverside, the less pronounced the
effect. But the river itself was defended from us by a screen of thorns which
was quite impenetrable.
Somehow we passed that first defensive zone. The wood began to haunt us.
Trees seemed to move. Branches fell upon us ... in our mind's eyes only, but not
before we had reacted with exhausting shock. The ground seemed to writhe at
times, and split open. We smelled fumes, fire, a stench like decay. If we
persisted, the illusions passed.
And Keeton wrote in his diary,
The same haunting that I experienced
before. And just as frightening. But does it mean I'm close? I must not begin to
expect too much.
A wind blew at us, then, and this storm was certainly no illusion. It howled
through the forest; leaves were stripped from the trees; twigs, brambles, earth,
stones, all came surging towards us, so that we had to shelter, clinging on to
trees for dear life, threatened with being blown back the way we had come. To
escape that incredible gale we had to hack through the thorn on the riverside.
It took us a full day to move no more than half a mile or so, and we were
bruised, cut and exhausted when we finally camped for the night. . .
