Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (Mythago Wood)

by Robert Holdstock

  Elidyr pointed to the right. A stone tomb, made from roughly hewn rocks, rose among the trees, whose roots were entangled with the stones, as if drawing it closer to their gloom. A small red pennant hung above the low entrance, and simple dolls had been fixed to the lintel, though from here it was difficult to see what sort of dolls they were.

  This was a magic place, a luxurious garden in the vibrant forest, and everything but that crumbling mausoleum was alive with brightness.

  Elidyr sighed and the breeze he caused flowed through the fern and passed away. The woman looked up, looked towards us, then returned to her pots, beginning her song again.

  ‘Can she see us?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Not looking for us,’ Elidyr muttered. ‘I must show you.’

  He walked into the clearing by the pool and I followed. We crossed the rocks to the tomb and Elidyr ducked down and crawled inside. I glanced at the woman again, but she was quite unaware of me.

  Inside the tomb, a man lay on a marble plinth. He was garbed with chain mail over heavy shirt and trousers, and clutched a bunch of flowers to his chest. His sword, which was broken in half, was by his side. A doll lay below his feet, which were crossed at the ankles.

  I touched the white face. It was as cold as the stone on which he lay. His hair had been combed. He smelled of flowers, not decay.

  After a while, the woman came into the tomb. She walked straight past us, carrying fresh flowers for his hands and a pot of water, with which she washed the dead man’s face. When this was done she kissed his lips, knelt down and prayed to an icon of a woman in white, then left the mausoleum.

  Elidyr, in his green disguise, rustled over to the corpse and blew on its mouth.

  The knight stirred and opened his eyes. The flowers dropped from his hands and he started to breathe, a ghastly sound as he returned from the dead. One hand reached for the handle of his sword, found it and gripped it as a child grips a finger. But he lay there, on his back, his unfocused gaze upon the corbelled ceiling of his resting place.

  A sudden stench made me look down at my body. Everything was rotting where it grew. Elidyr’s luxuriant growth of fern and briar had browned and shrivelled; insects burst from the fungal swellings. The flowers the knight had dropped wilted then putrefied.

  I ran outside, ducking to avoid the lintel, brushing the small cloth dolls, which I swear made sounds like children waking. Elidyr followed me. The woman was on her feet, looking up at the waterfall, where the trees had begun to die, the leaves shedding in a rain of russet, autumn fall. Winter curled through the forest and this pool with a malevolence and a speed that shocked me. Ice grew on the pond and spread along the branches of the wood. The cold was so intense I thought the woman had frozen where she stood, but she slowly looked down, then at the tomb, a crease of confusion forming on her brow.

  At once, Elidyr was furious with himself. He went back into the chamber. The winter faded, life returned to the pool, flowers bloomed and the dolls swung in the breeze that came from the big man’s breathing. The woman ran to the tomb – I followed – and knelt by her dead lover, but he had gone again, as cold as the marble on which he lay. She cried silently, her hands clasped in prayer across his chest.

  Elidyr walked quickly from the place and into the woods, and when he was a long way back towards the region where the forest changed, he howled with anger and with sadness. I had chased after him, shedding my summer’s growth, and found him huddled against a mossy rock, tears streaming from his eyes, his great brow furrowed, his fists clenched in his lap.

  ‘Had to show you. Bad to do.’ He muttered fiercely to himself. ‘Poor woman. Sad enough.’

  ‘You brought life back to him.’

  ‘Yes. Not again. Poor woman. Sad enough!’ He looked up at me, grey eyes misting, his mouth grim below the straggling hair of his moustache. ‘You must think about it. Christian. I live with it. Waking to sleeping. You must think about it.’

  ‘Who are you, Elidyr? Who are you?’

  ‘Elidyr,’ he said unnecessarily, frowning and touching his lips. ‘I take boats down rivers. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, I know. The wounded and the dead. You carry the wounded and the dead. You guide them to where they must go in the next phases of their life. I understand. And you brought Gwyr back. Back from his pyre. You gave him life.’

  Elidyr stared at me for a moment, then said softly, ‘You will need the gureer. He will need you. Care for him.’

  ‘I will. I surely will …’

  He had said, I had to show you. Why? Why had he been under such an obligation?

  And what significance had there been in that strange fluctuation from summer to winter? The answer eluded me, and perhaps this was because another thought was on my mind, and this I mentioned to the anguished man, trying to be as tactful as I could.

  ‘Elidyr … did you once take a boat with a woman who had hanged herself … killed herself after Kylhuk had assaulted her? A woman called Jennifer …?’

  ‘Guinevere?’

  ‘Jennifer!’

  He stared at me, the tears drying in his eyes, the furrow in his brow deepening. He put a big hand on my face and I flinched, wondering if he was going to do me harm, but his fingers brushed my eyes, his thumb my mouth—

  And suddenly I was walking in the river, waist deep and hauling back on long ropes attached to the boats that floated ahead of me! I had become Elidyr.

  The vision was startling. The bright sun glinted through the canopy. The narrow river was icy. My feet were slipping as I walked with the flow. The ropes cut into my shoulders, rubbing and bruising me. I ached with the effort of this walk, tugging back against a current that was trying to drag me faster. I was hungry. I longed for rest. But there was so far to go, such a huge river to find, so many small boats to tether carefully, in hidden places, ready for that final pull, that massive guiding of all these floating coffins towards their final destination, beyond the twin gates … And I could rest …

  But I leaned forward, now, and through Elidyr’s eyes looked at the sleepers in their boats.

  Fair faces and old faces, and strange faces and masked faces …

  And suddenly I saw my mother! Her hands were crossed on her chest! Her suit was still stained with the juice of tomatoes. Her hair was still combed and pinned for the Sunday service. She was resting on cushions, and though her face was white, and her chest didn’t rise or fall, I could see no sign of the strangling rope with which she had taken her own life. I was twelve years old again. At any moment my mother would sit up, yawn, rub her eyes and see me; and she would smile and tease me. And she and I and Steven would walk around the edge of Ryhope Wood as far as Shadoxhurst or Grimley, and sit on the village green …

  ‘Elidyr,’ I begged, breaking the trance. ‘That’s my mother! Bring her back. Take her back to Oak Lodge! Don’t let the twin gates take her! She still had so much life to live.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Elidyr.

  ‘Why not?’ I cried.

  ‘She has already passed the two gates. Besides … her death was not as you think.’

  ‘Not as I think? What do you mean by that?’

  I had seen her death. I had been there! And I had experienced Elidyr’s memory of taking her along the river.

  And I had seen Gwyr brought back from the pyre, and a dead knight briefly raised, though what message I was supposed to take from that I couldn’t quite imagine.

  ‘If you know so much,’ I yelled at him, ‘answer my question! What do you mean: her death was not as I think?’

  ‘I cannot bring her back,’ the big man said, staring at me stonily. ‘Only you can. After all, that is partly why you’re here!’

  I could bring her back?

  He rose and stalked away, leaving me crying and staring after him, shouting, ‘And what does that mean? Partly why I’m here! How do I bring her back?’

  ‘Ask your father …’

  Huxley?

  ‘Where is my father in all of this?’ I screamed at
him.

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  ‘Waiting where?’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ Elidyr called back gruffly. ‘I’m bored with you. Until Kylhuk finds the Long Person – nothing you can do!’

  I followed him for a while, but I became lost and confused, blinded by the silver-bright reflection from the trees, a lost soul in a winter’s nightmare. I seemed to see my mother’s face in every patch of shadow, every shimmering, moonlit fern. She called to me and I cried for her, cried for the life with her that had been taken from me by Strong Against the Storm. How much I longed for her quiet counsel, her gentle reassurance. I had been too young when she died, too young to know what Steve and I were losing. Now, having glimpsed her through the boatman’s eyes, a sense both of acute loss and hope snatched at my breath. For some reason the awful words of a hymn came to mind: she is not dead, but sleeping …

  And I laughed, because the words were associated with a memory of my father singing them, during the funeral of his sister, his mind elsewhere, his eyes focused elsewhere …

  And then I panicked, not seeing Elidyr ahead of me any more. I ran after him in this moon-gleaming wood, shouting for him, but I could no longer even hear his long, steady stride.

  I finally accepted the truth – that Elidyr had gone – and curled into the hollow of a rock to sleep, only to discover that the rock was Guiwenneth’s back, and I had returned to the dead fire, the crude camp, and the slumbering forms of the Forlorn Hope.

  Elidyr had gone.

  Eight

  Kylhuk, thinking my companions dead, had formed a new ‘point’ to his legion, a new Forlorn Hope which had been probing steadily towards us, attracted by the signals that Issabeau and the jarag in particular had been emitting, the calls and summonings of the enchanted parts of their lives.

  We were running in single file along a thistle-strewn stone road that had been laid between the edges of the wood. It ran in a winding fashion. Overgrown monuments, probably tombs, lined it on both sides. Gwyr ran behind the rest of us, leading the two horses. He had muffled their hooves and muzzled their jaws, but they still made a loud noise as they trotted, though the rest of us padded through the wood in silence.

  Abruptly, Issabeau raised her arm, waved us back. I could see nothing ahead of us save the bend in the road and the dense wall of greenery, but I didn’t doubt for a moment the truth of Issabeau’s urgent shout that: ‘Eelzond ici! Ontond! Payrill ezbroje …’

  They are here. Listen. Danger is close.

  Almost at once, a part of the forest shimmered and changed, becoming silver and white, resolving into the form of a mounted knight, a grim-raced man in gleaming mail. He was riding with thundering speed towards us, lance-arm raised. A javelin sped towards Someone son of Somebody, who stepped aside and almost disdainfully plucked the weapon from the air. The white charger reared, the knight turned, fair hair flowing as he reached for a second spear then rode at us again, this time stabbing low, going for Issabeau, who turned her back and bowed her head. Her red bird flew at the knight, who raised his weapon and stabbed at the screeching creature, sending it to the ground in a storm of feathers. Then he wheeled around and flung the spear at the Saracen, who stooped to avoid the blow.

  After that the knight returned to the edge of the wood and sat there motionless, side-on, stretching up in the stirrups to peer at us more curiously.

  ‘Peril!’ Issabeau urged again, her dead protector held to her chest, her eyes glazed with tears. But this time she was looking behind us.

  Out of nowhere, it seemed, two sleek male figures came running towards us, hawk-faced, green skin gleaming. Someone intercepted them, fighting furiously. His sword struck a face and I realised that the men were wearing tarnished masks of bronze. Even as one reeled back, so the other ducked and the air about him shimmered. Someone became wreathed in fire, his face grimacing as he held his hands outside the consuming flame. I ran towards him, but Issabeau growled, ‘Stay back!’

  A second later, the fire gathered around the warrior’s shoulders, formed into something like an animal and jumped into the trees, where it flowed amorphously, hovering in the lower branches. Quite suddenly, it resolved into a white-robed woman, silk clad and with white, silken hair.

  There was much shouting. The hawks drew back. The knight kicked cautiously towards us, then sheathed his sword.

  Our friend Someone was standing with his arms raised, a gesture of welcome and peaceful intention; indeed, of surrender. Issabeau adopted the same posture. Jarag growled but grinned, mocking us for a weakness that only he could understand.

  Gwyr said to me, ‘It could have been worse than that. It was an easier encounter than many. They recognised us for what we are despite you, and now Kylhuk will hear of it and soon you will meet him.’

  ‘Again,’ I added.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I met him when I was a child. He marked me. As slathan. I told you before.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Interpreter. ‘The strange word. Slathan. Indeed, you have met Kylhuk before, so he will be expecting you. I’ll stay close to you when you meet him for the first time, if you wish. If he marked you, he may be intending to kill you. He often does this.’

  ‘He often does this?’

  ‘He’s an unpredictable man. But I am in your debt, so you have only to ask if you wish me to stay close to you.’

  ‘Stay close,’ I said, my whole impression of Kylhuk shifting into a new and darker form. ‘Your absence made me uneasy, that time before, when you went back to the river to look for Guiwenneth. Now, even the thought of it, the absence of your understanding tongue and wise counsel, makes my head spin.’

  He seemed pleased with my comments, patting his breast above the heart, and tugging at the horses with greater enthusiasm.

  We followed the knight and the woman along the road. The woman walked in an ethereal way, as if floating, her robes drifting in the light breeze. The knight slouched in his high-backed saddle, his attention on the woodland around him, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. The horse dropped dung at regular intervals and the small file that followed this imperious chevalier wove one way or the other to avoid it, though during the early part of the march, both Issabeau and Jarag stooped to inspect the remains, Jarag flicking pieces of the spoor into the bushes that crowded the boundaries of this ancient road. They showed no sign of alarm or concern at whatever they might have detected.

  Someone watched the performance with appalled dismay, however, but when he stared at Issabeau she simply taunted him by shape-changing into a grimacing animal. The two walked next to each other after a while, but in disdainful silence. When the proud Celt offered to take the dead bird from Issabeau and carry it in a small, cloth bag, she reluctantly agreed. It was an odd moment.

  Though the two of them were still not talking, they kept glancing at each other curiously.

  The two hawks ran beside us, out of sight in the woodland, but not out of hearing. They called to each other, a regular series of screeches and shrill whistles, imitating the birds of prey whose features they had adopted in paint and mask. Listening to them, still remembering their lithe figures running and somersaulting towards us, metal hammers raised for the attack, I wondered from which culture they had arisen as heroes. They seemed unlikely for any role in legend that I could imagine.

  But then, by the sound of it, Kylhuk himself – who as Culhwch, in love with the fair Olwen, was recorded with great affection in the mediaeval Welsh romances – was not quite the youthful and proud arrival at King Arthur’s court, the determined suitor needing only Arthur’s assistance to achieve his conquest, with which my own generation was familiar.

  And as I walked in the file, alert to every sound and every sight, I began to appreciate one of the earliest comments in Huxley’s journal (it wasn’t dated, but must have been written some time in the mid-1920s; he could scarcely have been older than I am now. I certainly hadn’t been born at the time):

  Curiouser and curiouser. I
must repress my expectations and beliefs. I must forget everything I knew and thought I knew. I am in an unknown region, walking unknown paths.

  In the words of the poet, all is a blank before me. There are no maps, no paths to follow. This is the wilderness.

  And yet no society of primitives inhabits this wonderful WILDNESS of unshorn hill and rough-banked river I penetrate day by day, adventure by adventure. But rather, a mixture of forms and figures, and strangely familiar images from my studies, that seems to suggest ALL of myth, something timeless yet ever-changing, fragmented, and at any time, in whatever place I occupy, somehow ever-present. I am so curious … I must not too quickly interpret what I see …

  ‘Then why did they attack me?’ I wanted to ask my father from this distance in time, and yet – perhaps – from no distance in space that might be counted as significant on any map. After all, Ryhope Wood was not the broadest or deepest stand of ancient wildwood in the country.

  But these thoughts were rattling drums, no more than that, a reflection of confusion, fear and curiosity – how often I thought of that jibe in Huxley’s journal! (Neither boy seems curious.) How often I wonder whether he was tempting me, Satan to my Eve, taunting my intellect with an encouragement to question what I could see around me. And I wonder: why did he not take me into his confidence? Why taunt me when I would have been such a willing student?

  ‘Why did they attack me? If these people are the memory of heroism, why are they so brutal?’

  All is a blank before me. There are no maps, no paths to follow …

  ‘Yes, yes. The easy answer …’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ Gwyr asked, startling me from my reverie.

  ‘A ghost,’ I answered, adding in Gwyr’s way of speaking, ‘truthfully! If I was talking out loud it is because a man walks beside me whom I never understood, and who wishes me harm when I wish only that he would talk to me without secrets. And I don’t mean you!’