The Beginning Woods

by Malcolm McNeill

  But as Max grew up the Mulgans came to realize his dreams were of the wrong sort. They were dreams about his birth parents. He kept these dreams close about him. He held them tightly in his fist like a bunch of balloons he would not share.

  Before long, they were looking up at a boy who was high in the sky, floating through the blue, while they remained below, drowning in the ocean.

  4

  SOMEONE PORTERHOLSE PORTERHOLSE SOMEONE

  “What’s that you’re writing?” Alice asked.

  Max curled his arm round the paper. “Just a story,” he said, without looking up.

  They were in the back garden. Alice was sitting in a deckchair, eating tinned peaches. Max was lying on the picnic blanket with his tongue in the corner of his mouth.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Dragons.”

  “Ooh. I love Dragons.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You love pretend Dragons. These are real actual Dragons.”

  “Oh.” Alice sucked some of the syrup from her fork. “I didn’t realize there were real actual Dragons.”

  “That’s because nobody writes stories about them. They’re all about these weird Dragons that talk and are clever and live in mountains and things. How could a Dragon talk?”

  “Well, why don’t you read me your story so I’ll know about them.”

  Max put down his pencil. He didn’t need to read the story. It was all in his head. He was only writing it down because the Dark Man had asked him to.

  There’s a loose stone at the bottom of your garden. It’s been there for years. Put the stories under it.

  Why do you want to read my stories?

  I think your stories would be different to everyone else’s.

  And it was funny the Dark Man had said that. Because the stories were different.

  “At the start there’s a bunny rabbit,” he said. “The bunny is hopping through the forest, looking for a home. And he goes into a hole. And the hole is really warm and comfy. He thinks he’ll be happy there, so he starts to dig around, to make a bit of extra room. Then the whole place begins to shake. A great big blast of Wind comes down the tunnel and he whizzes out into the air. Splat! The bunny hits a tree and he’s dead.”

  “Yikes.”

  “It’s sad, but it happens a lot. Bunny rabbits can’t tell the difference between tunnels and the nostril of a Dragon. They get confused.”

  “The nostril of a Dragon?”

  “Yes. The Dragon is underground, see—”

  “Wait—what’s it doing underground?”

  “It’s sleeping. That’s all they do most of the time. They’re very lazy.”

  “Dragons don’t sleep underground.”

  “Real ones do. Then they wake up and go crashing about looking for trees.”

  “Trees?”

  “That’s what they eat. Not any tree. Just special ones.”

  “No… no Max. Dragons eat people and… horses and things.”

  “Those are pretend Dragons. They’re just make-believe. These are real Dragons.”

  “Oh yes. I forgot.”

  “Real Dragons are herbivores. They’re stupid and slow. And definitely can’t talk.”

  “What about fire? They don’t breathe fire then?”

  “Sometimes. But only because of the hunters. Usually the fire is just inside them, in their stomachs, to burn up the trees they eat.”

  “That doesn’t sound very likely.”

  “That’s what Mr Chandra said. But we have acid in our stomachs. Why shouldn’t Dragons have fire?”

  “That’s true I suppose. Who are the hunters?”

  “I’m getting to them,” said Max. “So after he’s had a good sneeze the Dragon goes back to sleep, and the forest goes quiet, and after a bit along comes a hunter. And when he sees the dead rabbit all covered in gooey snot he knows there’s a Dragon nearby. So he starts jabbing this long pole into the ground.”

  “He wants to wake up the Dragon?”

  “Right.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “The hunters know what they’re doing. He jabs his stick into a hummock, which is really the Dragon’s eyelid, and the ground breaks apart and this Dragon roars up. Earth and stones and bugs and things are raining down, but the hunter is ready, and he sticks the pole into the Dragon’s mouth, right into its gums.”

  “Ouch! Why the gums?”

  “It’s the only soft part of the Dragon. He wants to really hurt the Dragon. To make the Dragon angry.”

  “That doesn’t sound very nice.”

  “It’s the whole point. See, when the Dragon gets angry it breathes fire.”

  “It doesn’t sound very clever either!”

  “It’s what the hunter wants. Because there’s a story in the Dragon Fire. That’s what he’s been after all along.”

  “There’s a story in the Dragon Fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like that idea. What does he do with the story?”

  “I… haven’t got that far yet.”

  “So why aren’t you writing it in your homework jotter?”

  “My jotter?”

  “It’s for school, isn’t it?”

  “No. It’s just.” Max bit his lip. “Just because.”

  “Because…?”

  “For fun.” He was writing for the Dark Man as well, of course. But it was fun.

  “Where did you get the paper from?”

  “Mr Chandra let me have it.” And that was true.

  “I thought you didn’t like Mr Chandra?”

  “He said I could write as many stories as I wanted,” Max said. “He said he’d be interested to read them.” That was true as well, just so long as he meant the Dark Man, not Mr Chandra.

  “That reminds me,” Alice said. She took a crumpled flyer out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Someone stuck it through our front door this morning. Interested?”

  It was printed on an ordinary piece of paper—but Max stared at it in surprise. There right in front of him, in big letters, were the very questions the Dark Man wanted answered:

  “Why our front door?” he asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Why did they put it through our front door?”

  “Oh, not just ours, silly. Everyone’s. So they’ll know about it and come and see.”

  “Know about what?”

  “Read the other side,” Alice said. She returned to her peaches. “It all sounds a bit weird to me.”

  Max flipped it over:

  “Where is it?” Max asked.

  “Only across the park,” Alice said. “Like to go?”

  He nodded happily. Maybe he could get the answers the Dark Man was looking for. Besides, if everyone had got the leaflet, that meant his Forever Parents had too. They were sure to come.

  For now, though, he had to finish the story, so he took it inside where he could finish it in secret, up in his bedroom.

  Later that afternoon he put the story in an envelope and left it under the loose stone on the garden path, just as the Dark Man had instructed.

  The following morning, it was gone.

  He spent the next week dreaming about his Forever Parents and their reunion.

  He would enter a room lined with bookshelves and decorated with stuffed animals—weasels, Canada geese and armadillos. His Father would be at a workbench, gutting a salamander, and behind his glinting spectacles there would be a sad look in his eyes. His Mother would be kneeling before the fire, tossing coals one by one into the flames, on the carpet beside her a book face-down and a cat belly-up, purring beneath her hand.

  She would be the first to see him, and the sharp turn of her head would alert his Father. He would lift the salamander guts onto a tray, and his glasses would clink down beside them. The cat would flop over and for a moment they would all simply look at him, not daring to believe—because he might disappear, their long-lost child, he might fade into noth
ing: they’d seen such apparitions before. But he wouldn’t disappear, not this time, and then… then they would say it, they would say a name, and it would be his name, the name they had given him, not Max, that was only a pretend name… they would say something else… his real name… his Forever name… who he really was…

  When the day of the grand opening finally arrived, he dragged Alice out of the house, along the road, into the park, past the swings, round the pond and all the way to that distant land he had often glimpsed from the hilltop, the Newton Fields Road mentioned in the flyer. The park’s resident Wind surged at their backs to hurry them along, and the poplar trees swayed with happy abandon, as though they had been waiting for his arrival.

  Why haven’t you come sooner?

  This way…

  This way…

  Number eight was easy to spot. A banner hung flapping from the garden wall and bunches of balloons jiggled against each other, tied to gateposts. With a final WHOOSH the Wind deposited them outside the house, then left them, snatching up a bunch of balloons and making off into the sky.

  The banner turned out to be a bed sheet, and the letters were a patchwork of cut-up Argyle socks:

  The house, though, seemed in two minds about guests. The windows on the top floor were hidden behind heavy shutters, but those on the ground floor had been flung open. Guests had already begun to arrive, and people could be seen moving about in the high-ceilinged rooms.

  Max pulled away from Alice and ran towards the front door, which had been propped open by an umbrella stand. He’d recognize his Forever Parents at once, he was sure of it, and they would recognize him, so he rushed from room to room, checking only the faces, seeing nothing of the house itself.

  But there must have been a delay.

  They weren’t here yet.

  There wasn’t a hint of auburn hair. And of course there were spectacles, but none glinted in that special way.

  Disappointed, he returned to the hallway to check upstairs, but found his way blocked by a group talking in hushed tones. Alice was there too, and he squirmed his way in to stand next to her.

  Nobody had come to meet them either.

  Where was this Porterholse person?

  Nobody knew.

  Nobody had ever met him. Or seen him. Or heard of him. The man was a mystery.

  And was he a man?

  What kind of name was Porterholse anyway? Was it Someone Porterholse, or Porterholse Someone?

  The house, according to neighbours, had been empty until about eight years ago, when it had been bought by an old woman, an eccentric, stand-off-ish sort called Suffrenia Jeffers who spent most of her time away (on Caribbean cruises, she’d told them). She had been spotted on occasion by late-night joggers and dog walkers moving about the park with a golf umbrella and an antique lantern, as if she had once buried treasure there, only forgotten the spot. Several of those lanterns were on display in the house—tall, glass-funnelled brass relics that showed signs of recent and regular use. The woman herself had been seen preparing the house in the morning, but now she was nowhere to be found.

  Unless she was upstairs…

  The whole upper floor was barricaded behind a door at the top of the only staircase. There was even an obscure warning on the door:

  Max understood: the Wind lived up there, and if anyone opened the door there would be a gigantic gust that would send all these people flying out of the front door and spinning up into the clouds. But nobody else seemed to think like that. They even stood about watching while a man walked up the stairs, tried to open the door (it was locked), knocked and called: “Hello! Is anyone home?” For a few seconds there was no response, then there was an exasperated huffing and puffing, followed by a stomping and thudding, as of a large animal moving back and forth.

  Huff!

  Puff!

  THUD THUD THUD!

  Everyone apart from Max looked astonished. Perhaps it was simply a Someone Another or Another Someone, they decided, who rented the upper floor as a separate flat, was angry with the intrusion, and wished to be left alone.

  At any rate, the front door had been found wide open and welcoming. The banner and balloons had been put out. There was even a cast-iron piggy bank stationed on a low table inside the front door, its flanks divided by etched lines into butchery regions such as hock, jowl and loin. If you take what you like and pay what you can, the pig will not object said a sign round the pig’s neck. Deciding the place was meant to operate on a self-service basis, the guests began to explore—turning their attention, at last, to the books.

  Max had never seen so many. Apart from the kitchen, three large rooms were entirely given over to shelves, stacked floor to ceiling and wall to wall, the books pressed together without a wafer of space between them. A single extra syllable in a single book, Max reckoned, would have brought the whole structure crashing down. Selecting one at random, he pulled it free from the tight embrace of its neighbours, which instantly snapped together, as if another book, further along the shelf, had appeared out of nowhere to take its place. The television cabinet was minus a television and plus a hundred or so hardbacks. The fireplace was stuffed with a pile of books that disappeared up the chimney and overflowed, perhaps, onto the roof. A book had even found its way into an aquarium in the hallway—the goldfish, solitary beside its underwater castle, floated over the sodden pages, seeking a way to turn them with its gently flapping fins. Footstools and stepladders had been provided so the upper reaches of the shelves could be explored, and the whole place was chock-a-block with armchairs, sofas and beanbags.

  The infinity of books was equalled only by the riches found in the kitchen at the back of the house. As promised, the cupboards were crammed with boxes of tea, jars of coffee and varieties of biscuit, some of the common sort—fruit shortbreads, chocolate chips, jammy dodgers, Viennese swirls, digestives, teacakes, macaroons, bourbons, ginger nuts, custard creams, Abernethies, Rocky Roads, party rings and Garibaldis—as well as rarities such as Cornish fairings, paprenjaks, oat crisps, Bath Olivers, koulourakia, snickerdoodles, Russian tea cakes, stroopwafels and vanillekipferls. The biscuit eternity was in turn matched by the sandwiches and cakes stashed away in the cold, white forever of the fridge—the tuna and cucumber triangles, prawn salad baguettes, chicken and mayonnaise baps, bacon and egg butties, porchetta tramezzinos, roast beef grinders and Philadelphia zeps, all individually wrapped in tinfoil, while the cakes were folded in greaseproof paper and stacked in patisserie boxes—Black Forest gateau, ginger and treacle tart, Bakewell tart, carrot cake, strawberry flan, Bundt cake, crumb cake, Dundee cake, angel cake, madeira cake, Boston cream pie, punschkrapfen, tarte tatin, tiramisu, Christmas cake, date and walnut loaf, Battenberg, galettes, fat rascals, lamingtons, cannoli, chocolate fudge cake, pineapple upside-down cake, croquignoles and Prinzregententorte, with jugs of whipped cream, double cream, clotted cream, vanilla cream, cherry sauce, chocolate sauce, maple syrup, caramel syrup, treacle and brandy butter, all chilled and ready to be spooned or spread or tested with a guilty suck on a dipped pinkie.

  These riches provided the guests with definitive proof of welcome, and banished the last traces of uneasiness. Tea was brewed, biscuits chosen, cakes sliced, cream poured, books selected and armchairs settled into. Before long the only sounds to be heard were the whispers of turning pages, the clink of cutlery, the occasional delicate, embarrassed nibble and the huffing and thudding from upstairs, which repeated itself throughout the afternoon.

  Only Max settled down without a book.

  He’d come for parents, not stories, and there wasn’t a single Mother or Father to be found. Slipping away from Alice, he hoisted himself onto the windowsill in the front room and pulled the curtain across to create a shell of glass and cloth. If his Forever Parents came up the garden path they’d see him there, unhappy and alone. They’d understand how much he’d missed them, and they’d never abandon him again.

  It began to rain.

  The Wind upstairs huffed
and puffed.

  The poplar trees swayed with pleasure.

  His forehead dunked sadly against the glass.

  Maybe they had died.

  Maybe the sharks ate them after all.

  The curtain rasped and Alice was there.

  “What are you hiding here for?” she asked.

  Max shrugged and stared out at the rain. “I couldn’t find anything.”

  “You can’t have looked very far,” she said, holding up a book. “There’s a whole series of these. It’s called—” she glanced at the cover “—A Pocket of Ghosts & Goblins. See?”

  Max breathed on the window and drew an outline of a Balloon in the mist. He didn’t want Alice around when his Forever Parents showed up. That would be… awkward.

  “Reading’s boring,” he said, without looking round. That’d make her go.

  And it did. She placed the book beside him, and in the window’s reflection he saw her leave. As if he’d been waiting just for this moment, a man sitting in an armchair got to his feet. Max watched as the man crossed the room and came to stand directly behind him—so close he could see the man’s eyes in the window, staring right at him.

  He turned round.

  The man was standing with a cup of tea raised high against his chest, holding the saucer and the cup very precisely in delicate hands. He had thin, fair hair and a long, frizzly beard. Tiny muscles all over his pale, sickly face were twitching and trembling. His brown eyes, though, were alive with a spark that was fierce and kind at the same time.

  “Reading’s boring?” he said, peering at Max. “Is that really what you think?”

  Max shrugged, but somehow he couldn’t look away from the man’s eyes, which seemed to see straight through him.

  “Personally I think reading is the most important thing there is,” the man continued. “Or one of them—we mustn’t get carried away. There are diamonds, but there are flowers too!”