Mythago Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  I left her browsing in the gloomy study and topped up the bath from the freshly boiled pans. Even so, the water was only just lukewarm. No matter. Anything to scrub away the revolting residue of algal growth and slime. I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the tub, and became aware that Guiwenneth was standing in the doorway, smirking as she stared at my grimy, but essentially pallid and weedy torso.

  ‘This is 1948,’ I said to her, with as much dignity as possible, ‘not the barbarian centuries just after Christ.’

  Surely, I said to myself, she couldn’t expect me to bristle with muscle, not a civilized man like me.

  I washed quickly and Guiwenneth dropped to a crouch, thoughtfully silent. Then she said, ‘Ibri c’thaan k’thirig?’

  ‘I think you’re beautiful too.’

  ‘K’thirig?’

  ‘Only on weekends. It’s the English way.’

  ‘C’thaan perin avon? Avon!’

  Avon! Stratford-upon-Avon? Shakespeare? ‘My favourite is Romeo and Juliet. I’m glad you have some culture at least.’

  She shook her head, that beautiful hair drifting about her features like silk. Dirty though it was, lank – I could see – and greasy, it still shone and moved with a rich life of its own. Her hair fascinated me. I realized that I was staring at it, the long-handled scrubbing brush poised halfway to a position where I could get to my back. She said something that sounded like an instruction to stop staring, then she rose from her haunches, tugging down her brown tunic – still scratching! – and folded her arms as she leaned against the tiled wall, staring out through the small bathroom window.

  Clean again, and revolted by the appearance of the bath-water, I took my courage into my hands and stood in the bath, reaching for my towel, but not before she had glanced at me … and sniggered again! She stopped herself laughing, the twinkle in her eye quite infuriatingly attractive, and regarded me, staring up and down at the white flesh she could see. There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I said, towelling myself vigorously, slightly self-conscious but determined not to be transparently coy. ‘I’m a perfect specimen of English manhood.’

  ‘Chuin atenor!’ she said, contradicting me totally.

  I wrapped the towel around my waist, and prodded a finger towards her, then at the bath. She got the message, and answered me with one of her own, her right fist irritably struck twice towards, but not against, her own right shoulder.

  She went back into the study and I watched her for a moment as she flipped through the pages of several books, looking at the colour plates. I dressed then, and went to the kitchen to prepare a pot of soup.

  After a while I heard water being run into the bath. There was the briefest period of splashing, coupled with sounds of confusion and amusement as an unfamiliarly slippery bar of soap proved more elusive than functional. Overwhelmed by curiosity – and perhaps sexual interest – I walked quietly to the cold room and peered round the door at her. She was already out of the tub, tugging her tunic into place. She smiled thinly at me, shaking back her hair. Water dripped from her legs and arms, and she gave herself an elaborate sniff, then shrugged as if to say, ‘So what’s the difference?’

  When I offered her a bowl of the thin vegetable soup, half an hour later, she refused, seeming almost suspicious. She sniffed the pot, and dipped a finger into the broth, tasting it without much appreciation as she watched me eat. Try as I might, I could not get her to share this modest fare. But she was hungry, that much was clear, and she did eventually tear off a piece of bread and swirl it in the soup pot. She watched me all the time, examining me, examining my eyes in particular, I thought.

  At length she said quietly, ‘C’cayal cualada … Christian?’

  ‘Christian?’ I repeated, saying the name as it should be pronounced. She had made it sound like Kreesatan, but I had recognized the name with something of a thrill of shock.

  ‘Christian!’ she said, and spat on the floor angrily. Her eyes took on a wild expression and she reached for her spear but used the haft to prod me on the chest. ‘Steven.’ A thoughtful pause. ‘Christian.’ She shook her head as she came to some conclusion. ‘C’cayal cualada? Im clathyr!’

  Was she asking if we were brothers? I nodded. ‘I’ve lost him. He went wild. He went to the woods. Inwards. Do you know him?’ I pointed at her, at her eyes, and said, ‘Christian?’

  Pale though she was, she went a touch paler. She was frightened, that much was clear. ‘Christian!’ she snapped, and flung the spear expertly and effortlessly across the kitchen. It thudded into the back door and hung there, quivering.

  I got up and wrenched the weapon from the wood, somewhat annoyed that she had effectively split through the grain, leaving a fair-sized hole to the outside world. She tensed slightly as I pulled the spear out and examined the dull, but razor-edged blade. It was crenulated, but not like a leaf; the teeth were recurved hooks, running right around each edge. The Irish Celts had used a fearsome weapon called the gae bolga, a spear that was supposed never to be used in honour, for its recurved teeth would wrench the innards out of a man it struck. Perhaps in England, or whatever part of the Celtic world that had birthed Guiwenneth, no such considerations of honour were important in the use of weapons.

  The haft was inscribed with little lines at different angles; Ogham, of course. I had heard of it, but had no idea how it worked. I ran my fingers along the incisions, and queried: ‘Guiwenneth?’

  She said, ‘Guiwenneth mech Penn Ev.’ She said it with pride. Penn Ev would have been her father’s name, I supposed. Guiwenneth, daughter of Penn Ev?

  I passed her the spear, and reached cautiously for the blade in its scabbard. She moved away from the table, watching me carefully. The sheath was hard leather with strips of very thin metal almost stitched into the fabric. Bronze studs decorated it, but a heavy leather thread had been used to bind the two sides together. The sword itself was totally functional: a handle of bone, wrapped round with well-chewed animal skin. More bronze studs gave an effective finger grip. The pommel was almost non-existent. The blade was of bright iron, perhaps eighteen inches long. It was narrow at the pommel, but flared out to a width of four or five inches, before tapering to a precise point. It was a beautiful, curvaceous weapon. And there were traces of dried blood upon it that testified to its frequent use.

  I sheathed the sword again, then reached into the broom cupboard for my own weapon, the spear I had made from a stripped and crudely shaped branch, with a large, sharp chipping of flint for the point. She took one look at it and burst out laughing, shaking her head, apparently in disbelief.

  ‘I’m very proud of this, I’ll have you know,’ I said, with mock indignation. I fingered the sharp stone point. Her laughter was bright and easy, a genuine amusement at my paltry efforts. She seemed slightly humbled, then, covering her mouth with her hand, even though she still shivered with amusement. ‘It took me a long time to make. I was quite impressed with myself.’

  ‘Peth’n plantyn!’ she said, and giggled.

  ‘How dare you,’ I retorted, and then did something very foolish.

  I should have known better, but the mood of humour, of peace, was too conducive to complacency. I made a pretend attack upon the girl, lowering the spear, jabbing it easily towards her as if to say, ‘I’ll show you …’

  She reacted in a split second. The mirth vanished from her eyes and mouth and an expression of feline fury appeared there. She made a throaty sound, an attack sound, and in the brief time it had taken me to thrust my pathetic child’s toy in her general direction she had swept her own spear down twice, savagely, and with astonishing strength.

  The first blow fetched off the spear head, and nearly knocked the haft from my hand; the second strike snagged the wood, and the whole decapitated weapon was wrenched from my grip and flung across the kitchen. It knocked pots from the wall, and clattered down among the china storage vessels.

  It had all happened so fast that I could hardly react. She seemed as shocked as me, and we stood
there, staring at each other, our faces flushed, our mouths open.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly, and tried to lighten the mood. Guiwenneth smiled uncertainly. ‘Guirinyn,’ she murmured by way of her own apology, and picked up the severed spear head and handed it to me. I took the stone, which was still attached to a fragment of wood, peered at it, made a sad face, and we both burst into spontaneous, light laughter.

  Abruptly she gathered together her belongings, buckled on her belt and walked to the back door.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I said, and she seemed to intuit the meaning of my words, hesitating and saying, ‘Michag ovnarrana!’ (I have to go?) Then, head low, body tensed for rapid flight, she trotted back towards the woodland. As she vanished into the gloom she waved once and emitted a cry like a dove.

  Five

  That evening I went to the study and drew out the torn and tattered journal that my father had kept. I opened it at random, but the words defied my efforts to read them, partly, I think, because of a sudden mood of melancholy that had surfaced at around the dusk hour. The house was oppressively quiet, yet echoed with Guiwenneth’s laughter. She seemed to be everywhere, yet nowhere. And she stepped out of time, out of the years gone by, out of the previous life that had occupied this silent room.

  For a while I stood and stared out into the night, more conscious of my own reflection in the dirty glass of the French windows, illuminated by the desk lamp. I half expected that Guiwenneth would appear before me, emerging through the shape of the lean, tousle-haired man who gazed back at me so forlornly.

  But perhaps she had sensed the need – the need in me, that is – to establish something I had come to know as a fact … in all but the reading.

  It was something I had known, I suppose, since I had first skimmed the journal. The pages in which the bitter details had once been recorded had long since been torn from the diary, destroyed no doubt, or hidden too cleverly for me to discover. But there were hints, insinuations, enough for the sadness to have suddenly registered upon me.

  At last I went back to the desk and sat down, slowly leafing through the leather bound book, checking dates, edging closer to that first encounter between my father and Guiwenneth, and the second, the third …

  The girl again. From the woodland, close to the brook, she ran the short distance to the coops, and crouched there for a full ten minutes. I watched from the kitchen, then moved through to the study as she prowled the grounds. J aware of her, following me silently, watching. She does not understand, and I cannot explain. I am desperate. The girl affects me totally. J has seen this, but what can I do? It is the nature of the mythago itself. I am not immune, any more than were the cultured men of the Roman settlements against whom she acted. She is truly the idealized vision of the Celtic Princess, lustrous red hair, pale skin, a body at once childlike yet strong. She is a warrior. But carries her weapons with awkwardness, as if unfamiliar.

  J is unaware of these things, only the girl, and my attraction. The boys have not seen her, though Steven has talked twice, now, of visions of the antlered ‘shaman’ form that is also active at this time. The girl is more vital than the earlier mythago forms, which seem mechanical, quite lost. She is hardly recent, but behaves with an awareness that is uncanny. She watches me. I watch her. There is more than a season between each visitation, but her confidence appears to be growing. I wish I knew her story. My surmise must be close, but the details remain elusive since we cannot communicate.

  And a few pages later, written some two weeks after the previous event, but not dated:

  Returned in less than a month. Indeed, she must be powerfully generated. I have decided to tell Wynne-Jones about her. She came at dusk, and entered the study. I remained motionless, watching her. The weapons she carries are violent looking. She was curious. She spoke words, but my mind is no longer fast enough to remember the alien sounds of lost cultures. Curiosity! She explored books, objects, cupboards. Her eyes are unbelievable. I am fixed to my chair whenever she looks at me. I tried to establish contact with her, speaking simple words, but the mythago is generated with all its embedded language, and perception. Nevertheless, WJ believes that the mythago mind will be receptive to education, language also, because of its link with the mind that created it. I am confused. This record is confused. J arrived in the study and was distraught. The boys have begun to be upset by J’s decline. She is very ill. When the girl laughed at her, J almost hysterical, but left the study rather than confront the woman she thinks I am betraying her for. I must not lose the interest of the girl. The only mythago to emerge from the woodland. This is an opportunity to be grasped.

  Pages are missing thereafter, pages of immense relevance since they certainly deal with my father’s efforts to follow the girl back into the woodland, documenting the passages and pathways that he used. (There is, for example, a cryptic line in an otherwise routine account of the use of the equipment that he and Wynne-Jones had devised: ‘Entered through hog path, segment seven, and moved more than four hundred paces. There is a possibility here, but the real way in, if not the obvious way, remains elusive. Defences too powerful, and I am too old. A younger man? There are other pathways to try.’ And there it breaks.)

  The final reference to Guiwenneth of the Green is brief and confused, yet contains the clue to the tragedy that I had only just come to recognize.

  September 15th, 42. Where is the girl? Years! Two years! Where? Is it possible for one mythago to have decayed, another to have replaced it? J sees her. J! She has declined, she is close to death, I know she is close. What can I do? She is haunted. The girl haunts her. Images? Imagination? J more often hysterical than not, and when S and C around, she remains coldly silent, functioning as a mother but no longer as a wife. We have not exchanged … (this latter is crossed out, though not illegibly). J fading. Nothing in me hurts at the thought of this.

  Whatever illness had afflicted my mother, the condition had been exacerbated by anger, jealousy, and ultimately, perhaps, by grief at the way a younger and astonishingly beautiful woman had stolen my father’s heart. ‘It is the nature of the mythago itself ….’

  The words were like siren calls, warning me, frightening me, and yet I was helpless to heed them. First my father had been consumed, and after, what tragedy had ensued when Christian had come home from the war, and the girl (by then, perhaps, well established in the house) had changed her affections to the man who was closer to her own age? No wonder the Urscumug was so violent! What fights, I wondered, what pursuits, what anger had been expressed in the months before my father’s death in the woodland? The journal contained no reference to this period in time, no reference to Guiwenneth at all after those cold, almost desperate words: J fading. Nothing in me hurts at the thought of this.

  Whose mythago was she?

  Something like panic had affected me, and early the next morning I ran around the woodland, until I was breathless and saturated with sweat. The day was bright, not too cold. I had found a pair of heavy walking boots, and carrying my ‘sawn off’ spear, I had patrolled the oakwoods at the double. I called for Guiwenneth repeatedly.

  Whose mythago was she?

  The question haunted me as I ran, a dark bird darting about my head. Was she mine? Or was she Christian’s? Christian had gone into the woods to find her again, to find the Guiwenneth of the Green that his own mind had generated as it interacted with oak and ash, hawthorn and scrub, the whole complex lifeform that was ancient Ryhope. But whose mythago was my Guiwenneth? Was she Christian’s? Had he found her, pursued her, and forced her to the woodland edge, a girl who was afraid of him, contemptuous of him? Was it from Christian that she hid?

  Or was she mine? Perhaps my own mind had birthed her, and she had come to her creator as once before she had gone to my father, child drawn to adult, like to like. Christian, perhaps, had found the girl of his dreams, and even now was ensconced in the heartwoods, living a life as bizarre as it was fulfilling.

  But the doubt nagged at me, and the q
uestion of Guiwenneth’s ‘identity’ began to become an obsession.

  I rested by the sticklebrook, a long way from the house, at the place where Chris and I had waited for the tiny ship to emerge from its forest journey, all those years before. The field was treacherous with cow-pats, although it was only sheep who grazed here now, clustered along the overgrown stream bank, watching me sideways, and with suspicion. The wood was a dark wall stretching away towards Oak Lodge. On impulse I began to follow the sticklebrook back along its course, clambering over the fallen trunk of a lightning-struck tree, forcing my way through the tangle of rose briar, bramble and knee-high nettles. Early summer growth was well advanced, even though the sheep penetrated as deep as this to graze the clearings.

  I walked for some minutes, against the flow of the water, the light dimming as the canopy grew denser. The stream widened, the banks became more severe. Abruptly it turned in its course, flowing from the deeper wood, and as I began to follow it so I became disorientated; a vast oak barred my way, and the ground dropped away in a steep, dangerous decline, which I circuited as best I could. Moss-slick grey rock thrust stubby fingers from the ground; gnarled young oak-trunks grew through and around those stony barriers. By the time I had found my way through, I had lost the stream, although its distant sound was haunting.

  Within minutes I realized I was seeing through the thinner wood at the edge to open land beyond. I had come in a circle. Again.

  I heard, then, the call of a dove, and turned back into the silent gloom. I called for Guiwenneth, but was answered only by the sound of a bird, high above, flapping its wings as if to make a mockery of me.