The Bone Forest (8 page)

Somewhere in the woods, the creature lives. It must have formed many times. But it is deep. It is in the heart. How to find it? How to find? I must devise a way of calling it to the edge…

He was still thinking about his quest when he heard the sound of movement downstairs. It startled him at first, but then he lay quietly, listening hard.

Yes. It was in the study. There was a long time of silence, then again the sound of furniture being moved, drawers opened, cabinets opened as perhaps his souvenirs were examined.

Then a sudden sound on the stairs, someone coming up the stairs at great speed.

Again, silence.

It was on the landing. It moved along the landing to the door of the bedroom and again stopped; then the door was opened and something sped into the room, a fleet shadow crossing the floor to the window in an instant, and closing the curtains. A deeper darkness descended, but in the moment of dim light Huxley had seen the man shape, the deep shadow shape that was unquestionably a naked human male. The shoulders were broad, the body hard and lean, and the creature's member was distended and almost vertical. A strong odor filled the room, something of undergrowth, something of the sharp smell of an unwashed man.

Slowly Huxley sat up in bed. He sensed the movement of the figure, short darting movements that carried it from one side of the room to the other, then back again.

It was waiting for him to go!

In its last journal entry it had written "Protect Jennifer against me. Protect her against the ghost…"

"Go away," Huxley breathed. "I won't let you come near her. You told me not to…"

It raced up to him in the darkness and hovered there, its eyes dimly reflecting, showing how wide they were, how intense. It was hard to define shape; he sensed shadows shifting, a depthlessness to the figure, but yet it was solid. The heat and the smell that came off it were overpowering.

In a voice that sounded like the restless stirring of a breeze, it whispered "journal."

It had written in the journal!

It towered over him, and Jennifer suddenly stirred. "George… ?"

She tossed her head slightly, and her arm extended toward him, but before the hand could touch him it was intercepted. The creature had her, and Huxley felt willed to leave the bed.

"Journal," breathed the gray-green man, and there was the hint of a laugh, of a smile as the word was said for the second time.

"George?" Jennifer murmured, coming more awake.

His heart pounding, the sense of the gray-green man's mocking laughter teasing at his conscience, Huxley swung out of bed and left the room.

Halfway down the stairs he heard Jennifer's cry of surprise as she woke fully. Then her sudden, splendid laugh.

He blocked his ears against the sounds that came next, and went into his study, tears streaming down his face as he fumbled behind the books for his private journal.

Will try to speak. But you move slowly, ghostly. Perhaps I am the same to you. I observe the house and Jenny, the boys, and they are real, although they seem to be a dream. But you are slow, the me part, the me factor, too ghostly, and it is hard to speak.

Steven is in the wood, Chris too. Something huge in the wood, some event, some rebirth or regeneration. I sense it. I hear it from mouths, from tales. I have been here so long, and the world of the mythago is my world.

This is puzzling. Why have you not been in the wood, in the same way, in the same wood? Confused. My mind does not focus. But I have had encounters. You have not had the same encounters.

I can't answer about Steven. As a man, he will come here. Or as a boy and grow to a man. Somehow. It has to do with the Urscumaga. Pursuit. Quest. I cannot say more. I know NO more! Be gentle with Steven. Be careful of him. Be watchful. Love him. LOVE HIM!

Wynne-Jones was in the horse temple. You saw him. You MUST have seen. I think he was killed. He was trapped.

You should know this. Why not? Why do you not?

Perhaps you have forgotten. Perhaps some memory is stripped from you and exists in me. Memory in you is denied me. No. Not true. Your account of Ash is my account. Almost. You describe the amulet as dull. The amulet was bright. You say a green stone. Yes. You say a leather thong. No. Horse hair. Twined horse hair. Can you have made such a mistake?

I see now that you make no mention of Ash previously. Not my journal then, though so many entries are the same. Yes. Snow Woman, Steven's word, was the same as Ash. I remember her visit, that winter. But Wynne-Jones made contact in February. No mention in the journal of that. But I wrote an account. He understood the basic nature of Ash. But no mention in either journal. Yet it was written.

Are
we the same
?

Ash: She carries the memory of wood. She is the guardian of ancient forest and can summon
from
them and send
to
them. She uses the techniques of the
shaman
to do this. By casting her charms of wood and bone she can create—and destroy, too, if she wishes
—
forests of lime and spruce, or oak and ash, or alder and beech. She can send hunters to find pigs, or stags, or bears, or horses
. Other things!
Forgotten creatures
.

Forgotten woods. Her skills are legion. She can send the curious to find curiosities. She can even send a
stealer of talismans
to find… well, what can I say to you? To find a little
humility,
perhaps. I am certain that she was telling me to leave alone things I did not understand
.

The hunters of the land have always believed in her, knowing that she can control all the woods of the world. In her mind, and in her skills, forests are waiting to be born, ancient forests are waiting for the return of the hunters. Through Ash there is a strange continuity. No matter what has been destroyed, it lives in
her,
and one day can be summoned back
.

She sent us to the horse sacrifice for a reason.

We must ask: what reason?

I was
riding
the horse when it collided with the hooded man. I remember nearly falling. The horse was bolting. It had two bodies on its back. One alive (me) beginning to burn badly. One dead. The hooded man was struck. I fell, the horse ran on. Then I came home. But I am a ghost
.

Find Ash! Return us to the horses! Something happened!

He had walked quietly to the landing, tiptoeing up the stairs, shaking badly, but with a rage, now, and not with fear. He stripped off his pajamas and felt the cool touch of night air on his naked skin. Then he banged loudly on the banister.

As he expected, the door to his bedroom opened and something moved, with blurring speed, into the darkness.

Gray-green man stood at the far end of the landing, and Huxley sensed the way it watched, the way it suddenly grinned.

Jennifer was hissing, "What
is
it?"

Huxley moved along the landing. Gray-green came at him and there was static in the air where they almost touched.

"Go to the study," Huxley hissed stiffly. "Wait for me…"

There was hesitation in the ghost, then that mocking smile again, and yet… it acceded to the instruction. It passed Huxley, and went downstairs, lurking in the grim darkness.

Jennifer ran out onto the landing, dragging her housecoat around her. There was no sound of disturbance from the boys' room, and Huxley was glad.

She sounded anxious.

"Is there someone in the house?"

"I don't know," he said. "I'd better look around."

Her hand touched his bare back as she peered over the banister into the gloom below. She seemed slightly startled. "You're so cool, now."

And a lot flabbier
, he thought to himself.

And Jennifer added, "You smell fresher."

"Fresher?"

"You needed a good bath. But you smell… cleaner, suddenly…"

"I'm sorry if I smelled strong before."

"I quite liked it," she said quietly, and Huxley closed his eyes for a moment.

"But perhaps it's the sheets," Jennifer said. "FU change them first thing in the morning."

"I'll investigate downstairs."

The french windows were open, the study light off. Huxley switched on the desk lamp and peered down at the open page of the journal.

Gray-green man had scrawled the words:
then how do I get back? Must think. Will go to Horse Shrine and stay there. But the blood is hot. You must understand. I am not in control
.

This entry occurred below the response that Huxley had penned to his alter ego's earlier, substantial account of Ash, and his questions about the nature of their dual existence.

Huxley had written:

We are clearly not the same, but only similar. We are aspects of two versions of George Huxley. If I am incomplete then it is in a way that is different from the incompleteness of you. You seem to be the most isolated. Perhaps your existence in this world, my world, is wrong for you. Perhaps there is a part of me that is running, fearful and dying, in a world that is more familiar to you.

If I had no other reason for concluding these things it is this: I have never called Jennifer "Jenny." Not ever. It is not possible for me to even contemplate writing that nickname. She is J. in my journals, or Jennifer. Never the shorter form.

Your Jennifer is not my Jennifer. I have let you loose upon the woman I love, and you have taught me one thing, about how callous I have become, and I accept that lesson. But you will not enter this house again, not beyond the study. If you do, I shall endeavor to destroy you, rather than help you. Even if it means losing Wynne-Jones forever, I shall certainly find a way to disseminate the bestial spirit that you are.

I should prefer to return you to the body from which you have gone missing:
my
body, albeit in another location, another time, some other space and time that has somehow become confused with my own world.

Yes, other things give away the fact that we are living parallel lives, closely linked, yet subtly different. I refer to the "Urscumug," not "Urscumaga." You know more about Ash than I do. Wynne-Jones, in your world, has raced ahead of my own, pipe-reeking friend. The talisman most definitely was hung with leather, not horse hair. Clearly
I
am the hooded man over whom you ran, in your mad canter from the forest glade. My oilskin hood was torn, quite beyond repair!

And so you must propose a way for us to meet, to engage, to communicate.

But I repeat, you are not to enter my house beyond this desk.

If you doubt that I have the skill to destroy you, then look into your own bestial heart: remember what I/you have achieved in the past. Remember what happened to you/I in the Wolf Glen, when we discovered a certain magic of our own, destructive to mythagos!

And below this entry, Gray-green man had scrawled
then how do I get back
?

Huxley closed and concealed the journal. He walked out into the garden, and stepped carefully across the lawn to the bushes. The ground was wet with dew, the air scented with raw, rich night perfume of soil and leaf. Everything was very still.

Huxley stepped among the moist bushes of rhododendron and fuchsia. He pressed the wet leaves and flowers against his torso, and found, to his mild surprise, that he was excited by the touch of nature upon his dry, cool body. He rubbed leaves between his fingers, crushed fuchsia flowers, reached down and rubbed his hands over the dewy soil. He drew breath in through his nostrils, filling his lungs, and as he stood so he smeared his hands over his shoulders and belly…

A blur of night-lit movement, the earth vibrating, the undergrowth shaking, and Gray-green man was there, shimmering and shadowy, watching him.

They stood in silence, man and ghost, and then Huxley laughed. "You frightened me once, but no longer. And yet, I feel sympathy for you, and will try to send you back. By doing that I believe I can release Wynne-Jones."

Gray-green man took a slow step forward, reaching to Huxley.

Huxley stepped forward too, but ripped up a branch of bush, and swept it at the ghost.

"Go to the Horse Shrine! I'll meet you there tomorrow."

Gray-green man didn't cower, but there was something about it, something less triumphant than before. It hovered, then withdrew, then turned (or so Huxley thought) to stare again at its alter ego. It seemed to be questioning.

Huxley squeezed sap from the torn branch and rubbed it on his face.

"She liked the smell," he said, and laughed as he tossed the branch aside, before turning and entering the house.

Locking the french windows behind him.

Jennifer was sitting up in bed, the covers round her knees. -She stared at Huxley by lamplight, her face puzzled, anguished.

"I want you to tell me what's going on," she said quietly, firmly. She was looking at him, staring at him, taking in his nakedness. He imagined he knew what she was thinking: he did not look like the body she had so recently felt against her. He was broader, chubbier, less fit.

"It will take some time."

"Then take time."

He climbed into bed beside her and on a new and strong impulse turned toward her, putting his arm across her to turn out the lamp.

"I would like to kiss you first," he said. "And then I'll tell you everything."

"One kiss, then. But I'm angry, George. And I want to know what's happening…"

The boys were at school. Huxley entered their room and stood, for a moment, surveying the truly appalling mess that the lads had left after a weekend of playing, pillow fighting, and reading. They had been making a model boat, and against their father's instructions had brought the model up to their bedroom. The floor, the surfaces, the bed itself, were covered with bits of reed.

He reached down and picked up several sheets of white paper with pencil drawings. They were the blueprints for the model: crude, but skillful, and he recognized Christian's imagination at work here. He was impressed. Plan view, side view, rear elevation, cross section…