Mythago Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  Through chattering teeth Harry Keeton stammered, ‘What the devil is it?’

  ‘A friend,’ I said, and reached out reassuringly.

  The freya had come to me after all.

  Keeton glanced at me through frosted lids, wiping a hand across his face. Around us the whole landscape was white with ice and snow. Tall, flowing shapes ran silently through the air, some coming towards us, peering at us with sharp faces and narrow eyes full of mischief. Others were simply swirls of size and sombre shape that caused the air to thud and bang as they passed, like some weird implosion.

  The Hawks ran screaming. I saw one lifted from his feet and crushed double, then twisted and crushed further until a sticky exudate dripped from his suspended corpse … a corpse that hovered in the air, held by invisible hands. The ragged, splintered remains were tossed into the river and vanished below the crystal surface. Another Hawk was sent squirming and struggling to his doom on the far side of the water, impaled on a jagged stump of branch. What happened to the others I couldn’t tell, but the screaming went on for some minutes, and the poltergeist activity remained as intense as ever.

  Eventually there was silence. The air warmed, the sheen of white vanished, and Keeton and I rubbed our frozen hands vigorously. Several tall, wraithlike forms approached us, tenuous mist-shapes, vaguely human. They hovered above us, peering down, hair flowing in eerie slow motion. Their hands trembled, long tapered fingers pointing, grasping. The glow of their eyes was focused upon us, gleaming wells of awareness above wide, grinning mouths. Keeton watched these ghosts, aghast and terrified. One of them reached down and pinched his nose, and he whimpered with fear, causing the elementals to laugh in a cackling way. It sounded wrong, a sound of malice, a woodland echo that did not issue from their lips, but seemed to bray from all around us.

  The light came then, the golden, diffuse light which marked the solemn arrival of the boat. The elementals surrounding us shivered and quavered, still making sounds of laughter. Those that were naked seemed to dissolve into smoke, others drifted away from us, hugging the shadowy places, the nooks and crevices of branch and root, bright eyes still fixed upon us.

  Keeton gasped as he saw the boat. I watched, feeling greatly relieved. For the first time since the beginning of this journey I thought of the silver oak leaf amulet, and reached into my saturated shirt to draw the medallion out, and hold it towards the man who watched us from the vessel.

  The boat seemed far more at home on this wide stretch of water than on the impossibly narrow sticklebrook near to the Lodge. Its sail was slack. It drifted out of the gloom and the tall, cloaked man leapt ashore, tying a mooring rope to a stump of root. The light came from a glowing torch on the boat’s prow. It had been an illusion that he himself shone. He no longer wore the elaborately crested helmet, and as Keeton and I watched he flung off his cloak, reached for the bright Firebrand and drove the shaft into the river bank, stepping past it so that its aura radiated around his massive frame.

  He came over to us and leaned down to lift us to our feet.

  ‘Sorthalan!’ he said loudly, and repeated the word, this time striking his chest with his fist. ‘Sorthalan!’

  He reached to the amulet around my neck, touched it and smiled through his thick beard. What he said then, in a flowing tongue reminiscent of Kushar’s language, meant nothing to me. And yet I felt again that what was being said was: I have been waiting for you.

  An hour after dusk the Urscumug came down from the high cliff, to cross the water in pursuit of Christian. Stealthy movement in the woodland was the first sign of its approach, and Sorthalan extinguished the torch. There was a half-full moon, high above the river, and the clear night allowed the first stars to show through. It must have been about nine o’clock, the dusk made darker by the canopy.

  The Urscumug appeared through the trees, walking slowly, making a strange snuffling sound in the still evening. We watched from cover as the great boar-shape stopped at the water’s edge and stooped to pick up the limp, crushed body of one of the Hawks. It used its tusks to rend open the body and crouched, in a startlingly human way, as it sucked the soft innards of the dead mythago. The cadaver was flung into the river, and the Urscumug, growling deeply, looked along the shore. For a long moment its gleaming gaze rested upon us, but it surely could have seen nothing in the gloom.

  Yet the white mask of the human face seemed to glow in the moonlight, and I swear the lips were parting in an unheard communication, as if the spirit of my father were speaking silently, and smiling as he spoke.

  Then the beast rose from its haunches and waded into the water, raising its huge arms to shoulder level, holding the gnarled spear slightly above its head. The thorn antlers it wore snagged in the trees on the far side, but apart from a grumble or two there was no further sound from the Urscumug, save that an hour or so later rocks clattered down through the woodland, and splashed gently into the river.

  On the river the boat bobbed noisily, caught by the current and straining at its tethering rope. I peered into its hull. It was of simple, yet elegant design; it had a narrow draught, but with space enough for perhaps twenty people to huddle beneath the skin coverings which could be slung to weatherproof the craft. A single sail, simply rigged, could let it take the wind, but there were rowlocks of crude design, and four oars for calmer waters.

  It was the figurines that caught my attention again, the gargoyles carved at stern and prow. They sent shivers of recognition and horror through me, touching a part of my racial memory that I had long since suppressed. Wide-faced, narrow-eyed, bulbous-lipped, the features were an art form of their own, unrecognizable yet haunting.

  Sorthalan dug a fire pit and struck flame into dry wood from a flint apparatus of his own making. He wood-roasted two pigeons and a woodcock, yet there was scarcely enough meat upon the fowl to satisfy my own hunger, let alone the appetites of the three of us.

  For once we did not begin the pointless ritual of communication and misunderstanding. Sorthalan ate in silence, watching me, but more intent upon his own thoughts. It was I who tried to communicate. I pointed in the direction of the primary mythago and said, ‘Urscumug.’

  Sorthalan shrugged. ‘Urshucum.’

  Almost the same name that Kushar had used.

  I tried something else. Using my fingers to indicate movement I said, ‘I’m following uth guerig. Do you know of him?’

  Sorthalan chewed and watched me, then licked the bird grease from two fingers. He reached over and used the same two sticky digits to press my lips together.

  Whatever it was he said, it meant, ‘Be quiet and eat,’ and I did just that.

  I estimated Sorthalan to be a man in his fifties, heavily lined, yet still quite dark of hair. His clothing was simple, a cloth shirt with a ribbed leather corselet that seemed quite effective. His trousers were long and bound with cloth strips. For shoes he had stitched leather. He seemed, it must be said, a colourless man, since all these fabrics were the same monotonous brown hue. All, that is, except the necklet of coloured bones that he wore. He had left the intricately patterned helmet in the boat, but didn’t object when Keeton fetched it to the fireside and ran his fingers over the beautifully depicted scenes of hunting and war.

  Indeed, it soon occurred to Keeton that the pattern of silver on bronze on the helmet depicted Sorthalan’s life itself. It began above the left eyebrow ridge and ran in a subtly continuous scene around the crest to the panel above the elaborate cheek guard. There was room, still, for a scene or two to be etched.

  The pattern showed boats on a stormy sea; a forested river estuary; a settlement; tall, sinister figures; wraiths and fire; and, finally, a single boat with the shape of a man at the prow.

  Keeton said nothing, but was clearly impressed and moved by the exquisite artistry involved in the etching.

  Sorthalan wrapped his cloak around his body and appeared to drift into a light sleep. Keeton poked the fire and put a new piece of wood on to the bright embers. It must have been
close to midnight and we both tried to sleep.

  But I could only doze fitfully, and at some time in the dead part of the night I became conscious of Sorthalan’s voice whispering softly. I opened my eyes and sat up, and saw him seated next to the deeply sleeping Keeton, one hand resting on the airman’s head. The words were like a ritual chant. The fire was very low and I again made it up. By its renewed light I saw the sweat that was saturating Sorthalan’s face. Keeton shifted, but stayed asleep. Sorthalan raised his free hand to his lips as he glanced at me, and I trusted him.

  After a while the softly chanted words ended. Sorthalan rose to his feet, shrugged off his cloak and walked to the water, stooping to wash his hands and splash his face. Then he crouched on his haunches, staring into the night sky, and his voice grew louder, the sibilant, hesitant sounds of his language echoing into the darkness. Keeton woke and sat up, rubbing his eyes. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  We watched for a few minutes, our puzzlement increasing I told Harry Keeton what Sorthalan had been doing to him, but he showed neither fear nor concern.

  ‘What is he?’ Keeton said.

  ‘A shaman. A magic man. A necromancer.’

  ‘The Saxon called him Freya. I thought that was a Viking god or something.’

  ‘God grew out of the memories of powerful men,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps an early form of Freya was a witch.’

  ‘Too complicated too early,’ Keeton said with a yawn, and then we both reacted with startled surprise at a movement in the underwood behind us. Sorthalan remained where he was, still stooped by the water, but silent now.

  Keeton and I rose to our feet and stared into the darkness. An increasing amount of rustling heralded the approach of a vaguely human shape. It hesitated, swaying slightly in the gloom, its outline only just picked out by the fire.

  ‘Hello!’ came a man’s voice, not cultured, very uncertain. The word had sounded more like ‘’Allo!’

  Following the hailing cry, the figure stepped closer, and soon a young man came into view. He hovered in the zone of elementals, surrounded by the wraiths and ghostly forms of Sorthalan’s entourage, which seemed to urge him forward, though he was reluctant to come. All I recognized at this time was his uniform. He was ragged, certainly and without equipment, neither pack nor rifle. His khaki jacket was open at the neck. His breeches were loose at the thigh and bound tight to his calves with cloth puttees. On the sleeves of his jacket he wore a single stripe.

  He was so obviously a soldier from the British Army of the First World War that at first I refused to trust my senses. Used to a visual diet of primitive, iron-wielding forms, so familiar and comprehensible a sight did not ring true.

  Then he spoke again, still hesitant, his voice rich with cockney vowels.

  ‘Can I approach? Come on, mates, it’s bleedin’ cold out here.’

  ‘Come on in,’ Keeton said.

  ‘At last!’ said our night guest cheerfully, and took several paces towards us. And I saw his face …

  And so did Keeton!

  I think Harry Keeton gasped. I just looked from one to the other of the men and said, ‘Oh God.’

  Keeton backed away from his alter-image. The infantryman didn’t appear to notice anything. He came into the camp and rubbed his arms vigorously. When he smiled at me I tried to smile back, but confronted with the spitting image of my travelling companion my uncertainty must have shown.

  ‘I thought I could smell chicken.’

  ‘Pigeon,’ I said. ‘But all gone.’

  The cockney infantryman shrugged. ‘Can’t be ’elped. Bleedin’ starvin’ though. I ain’t got the equipment to hunt properly.’ He looked from one to the other of us. ‘Any chance of a fag?’

  ‘Sorry,’ we said in unison. He shrugged.

  ‘Can’t be ’elped,’ he repeated, then brightened. ‘Name’s Billy Frampton. You get lost from your unit?’

  We introduced ourselves. Frampton crouched by the fire, which burned brightly, now. I noticed Sorthalan approach us, and circle round to come behind the new arrival. Frampton appeared to be unaware of the shaman. His fresh face, sparkling eyes, and flop of fair hair were a vision of a younger Harry Keeton – and without the burn mark.

  ‘Meself, I’m heading back to the lines,’ said Frampton. ‘Got this sixth sense, y’see? Always did, even in London as a sprog. Got lost in Soho once, about four years old. Found me way back to Mile End, though. Good sense of direction. So you’ll be okay, mates. Stick with me. You’ll be right as rain.’

  Even as he spoke he was frowning, looking anxiously at the river. A moment later he glanced at me, and there was a wild sort of expression in his eyes, an almost panicked uncertainty.

  ‘Thanks, Billy,’ I said. ‘We’re heading inwards. Up the far cliff.’

  ‘Call me Spud. All me mates call me Spud.’

  Keeton exhaled loudly and shivered. The two men exchanged a long stare, and Keeton whispered, ‘Spud Frampton. I was at school with him. But this isn’t him. He was fat, and dark …’

  ‘Spud Frampton, that’s me,’ said our guest, and smiled. ‘Stick with me, mates. We’ll get back to the lines. Getting to know these woods like the inside of the old Cockney Pride.’

  He was another mythago, of course. I watched him as he talked. He continually glanced around: he seemed to be in a deep and growing state of distress. Something was wrong, and he knew it. His existence was wrong. Inasmuch as any mythago could be called a natural woodland presence, Spud Frampton was unnatural. I intuited why, and murmured my theory to Keeton, while Spud stared at the fire and kept repeating, in an increasingly pointless tone, ‘Stick with me, mates.’

  ‘Sorthalan created him out of your mind.’

  ‘While I was sleeping …’

  Indeed. Sorthalan did not have the same talent as little Kushar, and so he had reached into Harry Keeton’s stored race memory and found the most recent mythago-form secured there. By magic, or by a psychic power of his own possession, the necromancer had formed the mythago in an hour or so, and had brought it to the camp. He had given him Keeton’s features, and named him from a schoolboy memory. Through Spud Frampton, the Bronze Age magician would speak to us.

  Keeton said, ‘I know him, then. Yes. My father spoke of him. Or of them. Shellhole Sam was one. And he told me several stories of a cockney corporal – Hellfire Harry, he called him. They were all about “getting home”. Hellfire Harry was the corporal who’d slip down into your shell hole, in the mist, where you were crouched, utterly buggered, utterly lost, and would somehow get you home. Hellfire Harry used to do things in style, though. He got one group of lost soldiers from the Somme in France right back to their croft in the Scottish Isles. “Well bugger me, mates, I thought me feet was sore ….”’ Keeton grinned. ‘That sort of thing.’

  ‘Mythago forms as recently as that,’ I said quietly. I was astonished. But I could well imagine how the horrors and disorientation of the Flanders trenches could cause the anguished generation of a ‘hope’ form, a figure that could confidently lead, give new inspiration, reinvest the lost and terrified soldiers with courage.

  Yet looking at our acquaintance, this rapidly created heroic figure, I could see only disorientation and confusion. He had been created for a purpose, and the purpose was language, not myth.

  Sorthalan approached and eased his bulky form into a crouch, resting a hand lightly on the soldier’s shoulder. Frampton jumped slightly, then looked up at me. ‘He’s glad you found the courage to come.’

  ‘Who is?’ I asked, frowning, and then realized what was happening. Sorthalan’s lips moved, though no sound came. As he spoke silently, so Frampton addressed me, his cockney tones sounding strange against the legend he spoke. He reiterated in words the picture story on Sorthalan’s helmet.

  ‘His name is Sorthalan, which means “the first boatman”. In the land of Sorthalan’s people a great storm was coming. That land is far away from this. The storm was of a new magic, and new Gods. The
land itself was rejecting Sorthalan’s people. At that time, Sorthalan was still a ghost in the loins of the old priest, Mithan. Mithan could see the dark cloud in the future, but there were none to lead the tribes across the land, and the sea, to the forested isles beyond. Mithan was too old for his ghosts to form infants in the bellies of women.

  ‘He found a large boulder with a water-worn furrow in its surface. He placed his ghost in the stone, and the stone on a high pinnacle. The stone grew for two seasons, then Mithan pushed it from the pinnacle. It broke open and an infant was curled up inside. That was how Sorthalan was born.

  ‘Mithan nourished the child on secret herbs from the grasslands and the woodlands. When he had reached manhood Sorthalan returned from the wild lands to the tribes, and gathered families from each. Every family built a boat, and carried the boats by cart to the grey sea.

  ‘The first boatman led them across the sea and along the coast of the isle, searching the cliffs and the dark woods, and the river estuaries, for a safe place of landing. He found reed-choked marshlands, where wild geese and moorhens swam. They slipped into the land through a hundred channels, and soon found a deeper riverway, leading inwards, cutting between wooded hills and steep gorges.

  ‘One by one the boats moored on the bank, and the families trekked away from the river to form their tribes. Some survived, some did not. It was a journey into the dark ghost places of the world, a journey more terrifying than any that had ever been contemplated. The land was inhabited, and these hidden folk came against the intruders with their stones and spears. They summoned the earth forces, and the river forces, and the spirits that united all of nature, and sent them against the intruders. But Sorthalan had been well taught by the old priest. He absorbed the malevolent spirits into his body, and controlled them.

  ‘Soon only the first boatman remained upon the river, and he sailed north, the land’s ghosts with him. He sails the rivers always, waiting for the call from his tribes, and he is always there to help, with his entourage of these ancient forces.’