Lavondyss

by Robert Holdstock

  The pit was filled with charred bone. She kicked at the fire’s remains and a fine ash floated into the dancing light.

  Nervously she called out. The heavy trunks of oak absorbed her words, deadening the sound, and replied only with the rustle of bird life in their branches. Tallis patrolled the small garden area, observing everything: here the remains of a wire fence, there, impaled by roots, several slats of wood which might have come from a chicken coop, or kennel.

  With a start she suddenly saw the crawling carcass of a sheep; it had been thrown into the undergrowth and its bloody face, stripped of flesh, seemed to be watching her. Now, as she listened, she heard the buzz of flies; and when she leaned close she caught the first smells of the process of decay.

  Who had been here?

  She crouched by the warm ash and picked out five or six fragments of bone. They were small, from some small animal … a rabbit perhaps, or a small pig. When she closed her fingers around them no images came into her mind and she smiled to herself, remembering her own story of the Bone Forest.

  ‘No talent for prophecy,’ she murmured aloud.

  She gathered more of the bone and filled one of her pockets. She searched the ground for footprints, but found only traces of a horse. Following these she found the track which led into the deeper wood, through the dry fern and nettle that constantly grew to block such paths.

  And she thought of the young man wearing the skin of a stag, the sun making his pale body seem smooth, his movements lithe, like an animal’s, his actions, by the stream, so swift, so savage …

  ‘So this is where you’ve been hiding –’

  Was he watching her? Was he here now? She looked slowly round, but sensed no danger.

  And she was here for a different purpose, in any case. She walked through the saplings that crushed against the house, stepped carefully through their guarding ranks and pushed at the broken windows of the study, moving them in, then tugging them out again to make a gap through which she could squeeze her body. It was quite bright in the room, the roof being open in several places to the elements.

  Broken-backed and rotted books lay everywhere. Tallis walked among them, kicking them aside, and stepped round the central feature of the study, a great oak, forked at his base to form an awkward seat. Its double trunk reached through the crumbling ceiling, into the light. Like everything else in the room it was laced with ivy.

  Some of the display cases still had their glass fronts intact, but they were upturned and their contents scattered. Tallis picked through a pile of broken pottery, touching the shards and moving them aside almost gently to expose metal spearheads, flint artefacts and all manner of strange coinage and bone statuary.

  But it was not for these mementoes of history that she had come and she moved back around the central tree to the ivy-covered desk which she had seen on her previous visit.

  As she began to strip the ivy from the drawers she realized with a shock that someone else had been here recently; the ivy was already torn, though replaced to cover the desk like a leafy tablecloth. When she pulled at the top drawer it slid out easily, and the sodden, rotting mass that was contained within was revealed in all its stinking glory: sheets of paper and envelopes compacted into a single, yellow mass; photographs and exercise books; a bible and a dictionary; a pair of woollen gloves; a seething mass of beetle larvae.

  Tallis closed the drawer and drew in a deep breath, wrinkling her nose at the terrible odour. But in the second drawer she found what she wanted, the journal she had known was here; her grandfather’s letter had referred to it and she had dreamed of an old man writing at this very desk, an image of the man who had studied Ryhope Wood’s ‘mythagos’.

  The journal, too, was water-sodden and mouldy, despite its thick leather binding and the oilskin sheet which was wrapped around it. Over the years just too much water had poured from the gaping hole above the desk, and seeped into the precious pages.

  But again she saw … someone else had already opened the journal. When she eased the pages apart they opened naturally towards the end, and a green leaf had been placed between two sheets. She turned the pages carefully and could make out words, though much of the ink had run, and in places an orange mould had eaten through the paper. When she came to a page where the precise, rounded handwriting could be easily interpreted she bent forward and began to read.

  … The forms of the mythagos cluster in my peripheral vision, still. Why never in fore-vision? These unreal images are mere reflections, after all. The form of Hood was subtly different – more brown than green, the face less friendly, more haunted, drawn …

  Tallis was confused. Hood? Robin Hood? She turned to the front cover of the journal, easing it open. She found that her hands were shaking. She was trying not to damage the book any more than years of rain and rot had done. There were words written on the frontispiece and she stared at them long and hard:

  George Huxley. Account and Observations of Woodland Phenomena, 1923–1945.

  After a minute of silent contemplation, Tallis flipped carefully back into the body of the journal:

  … mythagos grow from the power of hate, and fear, and form in the natural woodlands from which they can either emerge – such as the Arthur, or Artorius form, the bear-like man with his charismatic leadership – or remain in the natural landscape, establishing a hidden focus of hope – the Robin Hood form, perhaps Hereward, and of course the hero-form I call the Twigling …

  … Wynne-Jones suggests we go back into the woods and call the Twigling deep, perhaps to the hogback glade where he might remain in the strong oak-vortex and eventually fade. But I know that penetrating into deep woodland will involve more than a week’s absence, and poor Jennifer is already deeply depressed by my behavior …

  Tallis continued to turn the pages, and at last came back to the page marked out by a leaf. The writing was blurred, the ink smeared, and almost at once she came upon a word that made no sense to her at all. But as her gaze drifted down the lines one passage sprang out at her:

  … As he recovered he repeated the phrase ‘forbidden places’ as if this were some desperate secret, needing communication. Later I learned this: that he has been further into the wood than …’

  After that, in an infuriating parallel with her grandfather’s letter to her, the words became obscure.

  She stared at the page and came to a decision. She would have to ask her father to help her understand the words. So she wrapped the journal in its oilskin, tucked it under her arm, and eased the desk drawer shut. She felt as if she was disturbing the dead, but she knew she would bring the document back.

  She turned to the French windows, intending to leave the lodge and return to her own house, but a sound outside made her start with fright. It was a rustling movement in the undergrowth. Almost immediately she thought ‘Broken Boy’!

  She ran quickly to the windows, and started to push them open, hoping to see the stag waiting for her in the clearing … but she froze, then took two quick steps back into the room, as she saw, coming towards her through the saplings the tallest, strangest-looking man she had ever seen. He was encased in fur, from the hood around his head to the thick boots on his feet. The fur was black and silver and seemed wet; it was tied around his arms and waist and legs with wide strips of leather, from which hung gleaming shards of white bone and stone and the shrivelled carcasses of tiny birds, still in their dark feathers. From beneath the hood the face that peered so intently at the house seemed very dark, but whether with dirt or a beard Tallis was not at first sure.

  A second after Tallis had reached her hiding place – behind the V-shaped bole of the oak in the room – the light from the French windows was blocked by the man’s shape. He was so tall that he had to stoop to enter the study. Strangely, on this hot summer’s day, there was a smell of snow about him, and of wet. Tallis, her heart thundering, crouched low against the cool, hard wood, clutching Huxley’s journal to her chest. As the man picked his way carefully through t
he rubble, kicking at the shards of wood and glass, Tallis edged around to keep the tree between herself and the stranger.

  His breathing was slow and he was whispering to himself, the words sometimes emerging as a growl.

  Then from elsewhere in the house came the noise of wood cracking. A voice shouted, the words incomprehensible, the tones clearly female. The man in the study shouted back. Tallis risked a glance from behind the oak and saw that he had pushed back his hood and was tugging at the door from study to hall. His hair was thick and black and tied into a topknot, with two long pigtails on each temple. It looked greasy. Two stripes of red had been painted above each pigtail. The leather binding of the topknot was slung with the skull of a blackbird, the yellow beak tucked into the tight hair at the back of the man’s head.

  When the door shattered before his strength, the man stepped through. Tallis immediately darted for the outside, holding on grimly to the heavy journal. She heard a cry from behind her and the fur-clad figure came crashing through the study. Tallis yelled and slammed shut the French windows. She raced through the saplings and reached the track which led to safety. But she hesitated, catching sight of something from the corner of her eye.

  A boy was watching her from the undergrowth. He stepped out into full view. He was almost as tall as her and swathed in the same black and silver fur as the man. His hair, too, was tied into a spiky bunch on the top of his head, but it was short; he wore a white strap around his hair from which hung several tiny mammals’ feet. His cheeks were smeared with green and white paint. He watched through wide, coal-black eyes. Tallis noticed that in one hand he held a small wooden figure.

  This was all she observed before the boy began to screech at the top of his voice, pointing at her. What he yelled was one word, and Tallis remembered it as she ran from the lumbering man who now pursued her.

  ‘Rajathuk! Rajathuk!’

  She fled through the dark wood, veering into the undergrowth as again she sensed a man standing close to her, although when she looked back she could see nothing. She could hear the tall figure from the study grunting and battling with the thorns that had snared him. Tallis reached daylight and climbed the wire fence.

  Outside, looking in: she backed away from the trees, stepping through the long grass carefully. The breeze shifted the wire, rustled the leaves. A face slowly formed in the gloom, a man’s face, shrouded in green. It peered at her, then frowned. She stood quite still, wondering whether the man would leave the wood and give chase, but after a while the face withdrew.

  It had not been painted. It had not been bearded.

  As she walked home she had the uncanny feeling that someone was keeping pace with her, just out of sight among the underbrush.

  She read all afternoon and into the early evening, and began to make a little sense of the sprawling journal entries, although most of what was legible was beyond her comprehension. When her eyes began to water with the strain of deciphering she closed the book and carried it downstairs. Her father was in the sitting room, working at the round table, a cigarette smoking between his fingers. He looked up as Tallis quietly entered the room and stubbed the cigarette into a glass ashtray.

  From the music room came the sound of scales as Margaret Keeton loosened up her fingers for an hour or so of practice. As Tallis placed the journal on the table so the sound of a sonata replaced the scales and Tallis felt relaxed, enjoying the familiarity and delicacy of her mother’s playing.

  Her father sniffed the air, then peered hard at the damp book. ‘What have you got there? It stinks. Where did you dig it up?’

  ‘In Ryhope Wood,’ Tallis said. Her father glanced at her, a touch of exasperation in his expression. His grey hair was damp from being washed – the Keetons were going to a dinner that evening – and he smelled faintly of after-shave.

  ‘More fantasies?’ he murmured, closing the file on which he had been working.

  ‘No,’ Tallis stated flatly. ‘It was in a desk in the ruined house at the edge of the wood. Oak Lodge. I went exploring.’

  Her father stared at her, then smiled. ‘Did you see any ghosts? Any sign of Harry?’

  With a shake of her head, Tallis said, ‘No ghosts. No Harry. But I saw a mythago.’

  ‘A mythago?’ A brief moment’s thought. ‘That’s one of your grandfather’s gobbledegook words. What is it, anyway? What does it mean?’

  Tallis brought the journal round to where her father sat. She opened the book at one of the easier pages, where the water had not stained the sheet with ink; where Huxley’s writing was less cryptic than so often during his frantic entries. She said, ‘I’ve tried to read bits of the writing, but I can’t manage very much. This page is obvious, though …’

  Keeton stared at the words, then read softly: ‘Have detected clear mythopoetic energy flows in the cortex: the mythago form comes from the right brain and its reality from the left hemisphere. But where is the pre-mythago genesis zone? WJ believes deep in the brain stem, the most primitive part of the neuromythogenetic structure. But there is activity in the cerebellum whenever he is inducing mythogenesis in the wood. Our equipment is too crude. We may be measuring the wrong psychic energy … This is all nonsense. It doesn’t make any sense. It sounds scientific, but it’s just gobbledegook …’ He turned a page. ‘The Hood form is back, in a very aggressive form. No merry men for this particular Robin, just prehistoric wood-demon …’

  He looked up, frowning at his daughter. ‘Robin Hood? The Robin Hood?’

  Tallis nodded vigorously. ‘And Green Jack. And Arthur. And Sir Galahad the noble knight. And the Twigling …’

  ‘The Twigling? What in Heaven’s name is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a hero of some sort. From before the Romans. There are heroines too, some of them very strange. All in the wood …’

  James Keeton frowned deeply again, struggling to understand. ‘What are you saying? That these people still live in the wood? But that’s silly …’

  ‘They’re there! Daddy, I’ve seen some of them. Hooded women. Granddad knew about them too. They come out of the wood sometimes and whisper to me.’

  ‘Whisper to you? What do they whisper?’

  Violent chords sounded from the music room and Tallis glanced at the intervening wall, then turned back to her father. ‘How to make things. Like dolls, and masks. How to name things. How to remember things, the stories … how to see things … the hollowings …’

  Keeton shook his head. He reached for another cigarette but toyed with it in his fingers rather than lighting it. ‘You’ve lost me. This is one of your games, isn’t it? One of your fantasies?’

  That made Tallis angry. She pushed back her hair and gave her father a grim, cold stare. ‘I knew you’d say that. It’s your answer for everything …’

  ‘Steady on,’ the man warned, wagging a finger briefly. ‘Remember the pecking order in this house …’

  Unabashed, Tallis tried again. ‘I’ve seen them. I really have. The stag. My Broken Boy. Everybody knows he should have died years ago. But he’s still out there –’

  ‘I’ve never seen him.’

  ‘But you have! You saw him when I was born, and you know that he has been seen near the wood since you were a boy yourself. Everybody knows about it. He’s a legend. He’s real, but he came from here!’ Tallis tapped her head as she said this. ‘And here …’ Tapping her father’s skull. ‘It’s all in the book.’

  Keeton touched the open page, fingered it, then turned it; he was silent for a long time. The cigarette broke in his fingers and he let it drop. Perhaps he was torn between the two conflicting beliefs: that his daughter was slightly crazy; and that he had before him the journal of a scientific man, and that journal contained statements as strange as his daughter’s visions …

  And he had seen Broken Boy, and could not deny that the stag was an oddity.

  He leaned forward again and flipped the dank pages of the book. ‘Mythogenetic zones,’ he read, scanning down the writing. Wh
en he spoke his tone was disbelieving, then incredulous; he articulated the words as if to say: this is astonishing, this is simply unbelievable. ‘Oak vortices! Ash-oak zones … reticular memory … pre-mythago vortices of generative power … ley matrices for God’s sake. Elemental image forms …’

  He slammed the book shut. ‘What does it all mean?’ He stared at Tallis darkly, but was a confused rather than an angry man. ‘What does it mean? It’s all just so much –’

  ‘Gobbledegook!’ she finished for him, knowing the word he would use, using it sneeringly. ‘But it isn’t gobbledegook. You have dreams. Everybody has dreams. People have always dreamed. It’s as if those dreams were becoming real. All the heroes and heroines from the story-books, all the exciting things that we remember from being young –’

  ‘Hark at the girl. Hark at the way she speaks. She’s possessed …’

  Ignoring his astonishment, Tallis said, ‘All of those things, they somehow come real in Ryhope Wood. It’s a dream place …’

  She sighed and shook her fair head. ‘Granddad must have understood it better than me. He talked to the man who wrote this journal. Then he wrote to me in my folklore book.’

  “I read the letter,’ Keeton murmured. ‘Rambling. Silly. An old man going senile.’ Wistfully, he added. ‘An old man dying.’

  Tallis grimaced, then bit her lip. ‘I know he was dying, but he wasn’t losing his mind. He just didn’t understand everything. Same as you. Same as me. But he said something in the letter that I am beginning to understand now. And in this journal –’ she quickly turned to the leaf-marked page, where the ink had run so much – ‘this page is important, but I can’t read it. I thought – I thought you might read it to me. You see? Here, where it says “Forbidden places …” I can read that sentence all right, but nothing else.’

  Her father stared at the blurred page for a long while, nibbling at his lower lip, then rubbing his lined forehead, then sighing, then bending closer to scrutinize the writing. And at last he straightened up.