Lavondyss

by Robert Holdstock

  The dreamer came and crouched before her. His hair was reddish below the hood, which he swept back despite the freezing of ice on his lashes and brows. He was handsome, with dark eyes. He had survival in him. He contemplated death, but was thinking of life. He called on Grandmother Asha through the oak statue that was Tallis.

  ‘You are a part of the first forest. You have seen all things. You have lived through all times. You are bone and wood, Grandmother, so you must know how to save us. Please send us food. There are no birds here. Please send them back to us. Please show us the path to the warm place, and the warm forest, show us the path to the light which is green, and the leaf that hides the bird. I have a song for you, Grandmother …’

  He sang in a child’s voice that was beginning to break, so that it was tuneless, the register awkward, the pitch uncertain. It sounded like the song of a shaman. He sang, ‘A fire burns in the warm forest where the woodcock flies. My bones are burning with the thought of that warm forest. Help me journey there, to that bird-filled land. I will always sing of this winter, and your laughter, and of my journey to that land in the warm forest, away from this cold place of bird spirits.’

  He drew a stone blade and carved a sliver of wood from Tallis’s arm. The shard was sharp. Watching her, staring into her eyes, he opened his furs to the breast and cut four lines with the wood, marking himself. A pale, feeble line of blood seeped from his starving flesh.

  ‘With this mark I take your spirit with me. With this mark I promise to remember your life, so that your life will always be remembered, Grandmother. With this mark I will find the wings to fly to the warm place. With this mark I will tell the life of our family, and our hunts, and this life will always be spoken of.’

  He went away. Fierce Eyes came and pushed her aside. An icy wind howled and a great wall of snow bore down upon them. He scrabbled in the snow for the rotten corpse. He tore flesh from his grandmother, but tossed it aside.

  ‘We should have gone with the others. My father was wrong. Now we are alone and the next blizzard will kill us. There is nothing left in this land. Grandmother, you knew the great winter was coming, but you said nothing. When you died I was glad. But now I wish you were alive. So that I could kill you and suck the warm blood from your neck. You knew the great winter was coming from the north. You said nothing to my father. We hunted. We journeyed. We should have been running south!’

  He struck Tallis a hard blow with his fist. She leaned further.

  This eldest boy seemed remorseful for a moment. ‘You taught me many things. You showed me what to look for in the tracks and trails, to know where to hunt and where to follow. You prepared me to lead a family on a long journey. You prepared me for triumph. Now the great winter is drowning us. You should have prepared me better.’

  The snow struck and drove him back to shelter. The wind tore at the land. The ice struck with glittering fists. The land seemed to howl with pain for days. Something gigantic waded past during that long night. By the time the family had become aware of it, it had travelled too far south. The mother keened her anger while Fierce Eyes danced his fury. Game had passed and they had slept, huddled, more aware of cold than of the hunt.

  Another time of darkness. A wolf skulked past, sniffed at the totem, scrabbled in the hard snow for the corpse of the grandmother and dragged out one of her arms, limping into the night with this meagre feast, to find some place where it could chew its way to the frozen marrow.

  At dawn the father came out of the ragged tent among the trees. His body was wasted. His arms were wrapped around him, his body’s breath so cold that it hardly frosted. He stepped through the deep snow towards the grave where Tallis stood her silent guard. He came down on his knees before her and hung his head. He said only, ‘It has to be done. Forgive me, Asha. It is not the way of our clan, but it must be done. Forgive me.’

  He stayed there for a long time.

  Soon the youngest son emerged into the grey light of the winter land and came silently towards the totem. His eyes had dulled. He was almost dead. There was precious little flesh on his bones now. He carried his bright bone knife and seemed to become more cheerful as he came closer to his art.

  He was aware of his father, glancing at the frozen man whose darkly bearded head still hung as if with shame, his body hunched, the cold seeping through the bear and wolf skins. They boy ignored him, though, and came up to the wood.

  ‘I must open your mouth. Then you might speak to us. It came to my brother last night, in a dream. He told me I must open your mouth.’

  He raised the bone knife to the wooden lips and she felt the first gentle cut.

  Behind the boy the stiff figure of the man suddenly rose to its feet. Grey light glanced off polished and sharpened antler. The movement was swift, soundless. Soundless except for the dull crack of the axe against bone. The boy’s eyes glazed. His hood was tugged back and the axe struck again. The brains and blood splashed across Tallis. The axe was used again. The head of the boy came away. The axe struck. The arm of the boy came away. The man worked furiously. The snow absorbed the blood and the sound. Clothing was discarded. Animal entrails drawn. The man buried his face in the steaming soft mass of an animal’s liver. He gorged. There were tears in his eyes as he turned his face to Tallis. His black beard was stained red. His lips were slack, his mouth still full of food. He swallowed quickly, then like a jackal went back to the carcase, gulping down the soft tissue, sucking air and blood through his nostrils, choking with the violence of his ingestion.

  When he was full he leaned back on his haunches and looked at the mess of blood and flesh. A moment later he turned to his right and was violently sick. He wept as he released his son, and choked, then rubbed snow on to his face and in his beard. Somehow the sound was deadened.

  Though wind disturbed the tent, no one emerged.

  After a while the man stood up. He was shaking. He looked at the stains on his hands, then at the murder beside the totem. Quickly, glancing back to the tent, he gathered up the limbs and torso, wrapped them in the discarded skins, tied them crudely and gathered them into his arms. There was scant eating in the meat, but it would sustain him for some days, assuming he could keep the scent away from wolves.

  He staggered upright and carried his youngest son into oblivion, journeying towards the south, lost in the bleak and frozen wilderness.

  The lame wolf returned. It sniffed the air. It could not believe its fortune. It nosed against Tallis, then turned and ejected a tiny, stinking drop of liquid from its shrivelled glans. It chewed the bloody snow, gulped the entrails and the gore, growled in its throat as it worked at the tough tissues. When the flap of the tent was disturbed it began to shudder, but hunger was now so powerful a force in its life that it could not bring itself to leave the stench of the kill. It shovelled snow and food into its maw, turning to confront Fierce Eyes and Dreamer, too torn between the delight of meat and the fear of attack to make a move.

  Fierce Eyes’ spear took it in the shoulder. It howled and leapt, but was knocked aside. It leapt again, at Dreamer, raked the young man’s face with its claws. Dreamer fell, clutching at his left cheek. The wolf was struck again. The knife cut its throat. The axe bludgeoned its life out through the holes in its skull. Its skin was stripped and rolled. Fierce Eyes chanted with triumph as he dismembered the scrawny animal, ignoring the gore-marks of his youngest brother.

  The woman came from the tent. She fell to her knees by the head of her youngest son, cradled it, yet did not lift it from the snow. She cried loudly, a sound that lingered. She forced the sad and crushed skull below the snow and piled the ice above it. She reached out and ran her hands through the blood-snow, dragging it towards her, lifting the stained ice to her chest, to her face, smelling and licking the discarded life of her youngest born. Fierce Eyes watched her, chewing on the meat of the wolf.

  He said, There’s meat here. Eat it. Get strong.

  Dreamer went to crouch by his mother.

  Fierce Eyes kick
ed snow at him and laughed, then backed away, to guard his meat. Dreamer watched him. Fierce Eyes taunted him. There’s meat here, but not for dreamers. We have a long journey to make to the south. Take your dreams to the ice in the north.

  I don’t need your meat, Dreamer said.

  You’ll die, said Fierce Eyes, and chewed at the freezing wolf-flesh. He threw back his head – he was a boy – no more than ten – a boy – he threw back his head – he laughed like a man – he chewed the ice flesh.

  Tastes good, he said. It will sustain me. It will sustain our mother. Fight me for the flesh.

  I will eat snow.

  Eat snow then.

  Dreamer crouched above the place where his father had lost his youngest son. The red mush had frozen in the snow. Dreamer used his knife to cut the red snow into blocks. He held the blocks and stared at them, small, cube-shards of his dead kin, like coloured stone, yet not stone. His mother crouched beside him. He gave her a son’s kiss, than ate a piece of his brother. She picked a block of the red ice and watched her dreaming son. She gave him a mother’s kiss and ate her son. The act was done. Fierce Eyes was subdued. He chewed the wolf, then backed away, running into the tent, to shelter from the driving cold.

  Dreamer and his mother ate the wolf until they too were sick. They chewed small slivers of the rancid meat and cried, and Tallis watched all of this from the oak-wood, and in the oak mind, through the brain sap that flushed through her body, she remembered a time of childhood, and a question from an old man.

  What is a mother’s kiss?

  The kiss of acceptance. The kiss of knowing. The kiss of grief. The kiss of love. There was no such thing as a mother’s kiss. It was a kiss for all things. A son’s kiss, too. It signalled the rightness of a deed. It signalled acceptance. It signalled love that goes beyond the love of a kiss. Yes. She knew it now.

  The two boys stayed in the tent. A fierce blizzard raged for days, but through it Tallis saw the mother slip away to the south, carrying weapons and a bag. She was like some bulky animal, bent low against the storm, layered in furs. She had been sustained by the stray wolf. Tallis knew where she was going.

  Later the woman returned. She carried a bundle in her arms. She was exhausted. She flopped through the snow, stumbling, picking herself up again and walking on. She almost walked right past the tent, then saw the statue of her mother and brought the sad remains of her son to lay them at Tallis’s feet.

  There was blood on the front of her fur.

  ‘Mother’, the woman whispered, her eyes screwed tightly shut. ‘The man is dead. I killed him with this …’ She cast the broken antler-axe to the snow by Tallis. ‘I found the green sapling strength of my youth to do it. The green child in me slipped from the old woman. I have killed the man who was your husband and my father. I have killed the man who was my husband and the father of my sons. I have brought back his heart, because before this great winter his heart was strong for me.’ She took the greying mass from the furs and held it out. She placed it down again and sank a little into herself. ‘And I have brought back Arak, my youngest-born. It was my dreaming son who told me how to do this. There is a spirit in the boy which is wiser than I am. There is a spirit in the boy which can see further than I can. There is a spirit in the boy that has smelled the forests. He will remember what has happened here. The memory of this snow will grow old with the people. Nothing will be forgotten.’

  * * *

  Later, through the snow, Dreamer returned to Tallis and watched her with more knowing than before. Again he sang the song: A fire burns in the forest where the woodcock flies. How my bones smoulder to join that fire. How I long to fly free …

  Tallis felt a surging flow of sap; her bark ached for this young man. Her wooden lips longed to cry her recognition, to call to Harry’s spirit inside the boy who had been marked.

  Harry!

  Dreamer said, ‘I long to fly south, Old Silent Tree. But there are no birds to carry me. I long to fly south. But there is no birdsong to inspire me.’

  ‘Old Silent Tree, once you gave birth to birds from your branches. Bring a winged dreamer to me now. Help me journey to the south, to see the way. Arak is dead. He had knowledge of the land. He was close to the silent trees. He could read the air and the stars. My brother is a hunter. He can see tracks. He can trap and kill animals. But we need birds to show us the flight to the south. Where are the birds? Without them I cannot release the restless spirit in my bones. My bones smoulder to join the fires of the warm forest.’

  He was quiet for a long while, and the snow blew against his huddled body, piling up. At length, he lifted his face again.

  ‘Old Silent Tree, there is a spirit in me that is restless. There is a ghost in my bones that struggles for wings. I shall make great magic in my life. I shall remember this snow. But the ghost asks for freedom. It is a bird spirit that longs for freedom. I dream about it. I see it high in the air. Its wings are huge. It is above the cloud. It gleams. It roars as it flies. It is a strange bird spirit. Old Silent Tree? My mother tells a strange story. When I was born two voices cried from my mouth. One cried with the voice of a bird. When my youngest brother was born, all the birds went away. We journeyed through a land without wings. No birds to show us hope. No birds to eat. No birds to follow.’

  ‘Old Silent Tree … do you remember? When this happened you said that I should call on the spirit of the wood. That I should summon the spirit of the oak. You are here. I am here. Our spirits are together. But you must show me what to do next.’

  He came close to Tallis, his red hair curling from below the fur hood, his eyes wide and searching. The scars on his left cheek seeped a pale blood. He kissed Tallis on the lips, then watched her eyes.

  He said, ‘My brother carved you well. You are more than a grandmother. You are the spirit of my dead sister. You are the spirit of woman in this frozen land. My brother carved you well. If only you could speak. I am marked by the wolf. How can I be both wolf and bird? You could tell me. You would have understood …’

  He returned to the tent. Later, the woman came through the driving snow, staggering before the howling wind, huddled in upon herself. Her sons came after her. The three of them fell to their knees before Tallis.

  ‘Mother …’ the woman greeted.

  ‘Old Silent Tree,’ murmured Dreamer, knowingly.

  ‘Old dead woman,’ sneered Fierce Eyes.

  The woman said, ‘My youngest son made you. Your spirit is in the wood. Now my dead son’s spirit cries to join with you. Together you can return to us from the frozen forbidden place. My dreaming son had found the way.’

  Dreamer came up to Tallis. ‘You will be the fire burning in Bird Spirit Land. Your flame will break the spell.’

  Fierce Eyes scowled. ‘Get this over with. If we follow south fast we can survive. Then you can tell this story until you die, brother. But if we don’t go soon we will go nowhere but into ice.’

  Dreamer came up to Tallis and tugged and twisted her from the frozen ground. He carried her in his arms, through the raging storm, into the freezing place within the tent. Somehow they had kept a fire smouldering here. They lay Tallis across the dull flame. Fierce Eyes blew upon the embers until they flared. Tallis felt the nip of warmth. The fire drove the water from her. She sizzled and singed, then the fire began to take a hold and flames leapt across her skin. The three of the family warmed their hands. It seemed to Tallis that she had smouldered for a long time before finally the fire had taken hold.

  The woman took her dead son’s bone knife and held it in front of Tallis. On her side, Tallis watched the sadness in the woman’s face. She drew the antler necklace from her neck, unslung three fragments of tine. She picked up the sheet-white leg of her murdered boy and warmed it by the fire. Then she flayed the white skin from the flesh, drawing it carefully back, a silky, glistening sheet of human rag. As it came away from the cold flesh, so she cut it into strips, and she wrapped each strip of skin around a piece of bone. When the horn was robed
she threaded back the leather of the necklace and gave it to Dreamer, who put it round his neck and tucked this frail memory of the broken boy into his furs.

  The woman gave the knife to Fierce Eyes, who held it up, a grin of delight on his gaunt, ageing features. The polished bone caught the light. He held it like a sword, perhaps imagining the gutting and the killing he could perform with this weapon which had once been used to carve the image of a woman in the land.

  His mother said, ‘It was fashioned from the bone of a drowned beast in the water. When you are old, it must be returned to the water. It belongs to the realm of beasts.’

  ‘I will do it,’ Fierce Eyes said.

  Dreamer watched him, smiling through the pain of hunger and cold. He held a hand to his chest where he carried his brother’s memory. The fire ate deeper into Tallis.

  The woman used long needles of bone to stitch the parts of her son together again. The brothers dropped their gaze as the gruesome task was done. The body was incomplete. White bone through grey flesh made a lifeless puppet. The mother cradled it in her arms. Then she placed it on the flames.

  Fierce Eyes went out into the storm and returned with the grandmother’s grizzled skull, the hair frozen into spikes which he broke off and cast on to the fire, where they sizzled, cooled, then flared. The skull was placed among the bones of Arak, and through the heat and the smoke Tallis watched the watching eyes, three cold people from an ancient day, remembering and honouring the dead.

  Soon she was aware that the snow had stopped. The crude hides of the tent ceased to billow and bulge. The fire below her ceased to gust and roar. Fierce Eyes went outside and came back excited. He found a lure, tested its strength, then went outside. Dreamer went too. The woman pulled back the flap of the tent and Tallis, dying, saw a pale sun in the fields of snow. Fierce Eyes was whirling the lure around his head. It made a rhythmic sound, a pulse in the still air. Soon it began to create the steady whine that she had come to associate with this strange instrument. Dreamer stood beside his brother, watching the heavens. There were specks of black, coming closer.