Avilion

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘Yssi?’

  The hand clawed at the image of her grandfather. Auburn hair shook as she rocked from side to side. ‘I’d like to be alone for a while.’

  ‘Don’t do anything rash. Promise me?’

  Yssobel sat up, tearful eyes glaring, mouth hard, as if she were about to shout some fierce rebuke to her father. But she softened her look, frowned, then nodded agreement.

  ‘I won’t do anything rash. I just have to think. This is my doing. This is my own doing.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The falling-out. The anger. Her unhappiness.’

  ‘Guiwenneth had been unhappy for several years. She’s a mythago. She’s all from the green side. That’s the side that calls the strongest; and when it calls, you have no resistance to it. What has happened is simply a part of the cycle of her story. We have to understand that.’

  ‘Simply? Simply? How easy to accept that. Aren’t you sad she’s gone?’

  Steven could hardly speak for a moment. The words choked in his chest as he tried to suppress his own emotion. ‘Of course I am,’ he managed to say. ‘But I understand it. I don’t like it. I wouldn’t have wanted it. I would do anything to have her back. I love her. But I understand why it must happen.’

  ‘You waited so long for her to come back to you. How can you let her go now?’

  He had no answer except to say, feebly, ‘I waited once, and I was rewarded with a great deal of hardship and joy. I couldn’t wait again, Yssi. I’d rather follow her.’

  Yssobel stood and came round to her father, looked him in the eye, then put her arms around him. ‘What if I could get her back?’ she whispered.

  ‘Don’t! Don’t even think about it!’

  ‘But what if I could?’ she asked, stepping back.

  ‘Then I’d lose you too. Yssi, winter’s coming to an end. Can you smell it?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow, the day after, the snow will be gone. Cold makes us think only of the cold. Soon we can think of the future.’

  ‘I understand.’

  She kissed him gently, looked at him gently. Steven read that look - he knew it from years of experience with her. She would agree at first, before disobeying.

  He sighed. ‘I’d better go and comfort Hurthig.’

  Yssobel wiped her eyes with her hands, agreeing. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  The young Saxon had arranged the bodies of his parents so that Egwearda lay curled up, facing Ealdwulf. The old man’s arms held the strange relic that they carried with them, but the ring had been removed from the hand, and Steven saw that Hurthig now wore it.

  Hurthig rose from kneeling and turned towards Yssobel. ‘I hope you find your Odysseus, no matter where you travel.’

  These were the first words he had ever spoken. In English, with an odd accent, but comprehensible. He repeated them in his own language. His voice was mellow and deep, soft, unlike his father’s.

  ‘You’ve been silent since we knew you,’ Yssobel said. ‘What brings the voice now?’

  ‘These deaths.’

  He didn’t elaborate. Steven asked, ‘Then you’ll be leaving us?’ But Hurthig shook his head. ‘This is the place we came searching for. We found many like it, but this is where they belong. And where I belong as well. I would like to build a funeral pyre, in the field.’

  ‘The field is yours, Hurthig. It doesn’t belong to the villa. It belongs to the Iaelven.’

  Hurthig nodded his understanding, then turned away. Steven left him to his contemplation, though Yssobel remained, watching the man at his ritual. Steven heard her ask, ‘Who are you? Who are you really?’

  He answered in his own language, guttural and resonant. Then he said, ‘They were the last of the old kingdom. I am the first of the new. I don’t know any more than that. Like you, like Jack, I dream of myself in future times. But there is never a name.’

  All night the pyre had burned and it was still glowing when dawn came. The snowfield was alive with the colours of fire and Hurthig was still in the saddle, slumped forward in sleep.

  This was two days after the deaths, two days after Guiwenneth had disappeared.

  Several tall armed Amurngoth had appeared during the night funeral and watched curiously, but they had not interfered. The silvery ghost of a woman had also been seen, standing at the edge of the wood, staring down at the pyre, but for moments only.

  Jack came back early the following day. He had been trying to ride up Serpent Pass to the museum, to bring back more easy metal for the forge. The Haunter side of him had detected the heavy beat of the summoning drum. He had been about to turn back anyway. For ages, Serpent Pass had been in winter.

  He found Steven in his mother’s room, in distress, confused, almost unable to speak. The room was coated in a strange ash, which did not feel or smell as if it had come from burning. ‘She’s gone,’ was all his father would say.

  Jack stalked the grounds, searching for any sight or sign of Guiwenneth, or of what might have happened. His face was flushed with the effort of the ride, and with anxiety. Another fire had been lit on the field behind the villa; and the field was in ruins. What was going on?

  The human side was not coping. Haunter whispered to him, and the sound of summer streams and stillness calmed Jack down.

  He went to find his father again. Now he was in the room where they took their meals, sitting at the table.

  ‘What happened here? What happened to Gwin?’

  Steven looked up, shaking his head. ‘Egwearda and Ealdwulf are both dead. Hurthig is alive. Rianna says Gwin was swallowed by the earth. Riders came past. Night riders. She went with them. But, according to Rianna, willingly.’

  ‘Willingly? I don’t believe it. That’s nonsense. She’s been taken.’ Calm! Jack took a few deep breaths, his heart still racing. ‘Where’s Yssobel?’

  ‘Still in her quarters, I expect.’ Steven looked suddenly alarmed. ‘How long is it after dawn?’

  There was no need to answer the question. They ran through the villa’s corridors, to the rooms where Yssobel’s gallery was still intact, exactly as she would have left it. But of Yssobel herself there was no sign.

  On her table, spread so that they could be seen from the door, were the portrait of Peredur; next to it a sketch of Guiwenneth herself; and the shallow porcelain dish that Odysseus had painted, the image of the girl, which she had taken from his cave.

  As his father started to bend forward, his breathing becoming desperate, Jack took his arm. ‘You go to the stables - see if her horse is still there and I’ll look for tracks.’

  ‘Yes,’ Steven said, and walked quickly from the room.

  Jack went out into the wide courtyard and asked Haunter for help. The green side of him scanned the snow, as far as the gates, and then beyond, where the track wound towards the beginning of the valley.

  Hounds had been here, and men, five of them, judging by the impressions in the frozen ground. The men had sat in a semicircle. Something hot had been placed on front of them; a cauldron, no doubt. Another figure had crouched on the other side. His mother, he imagined. Why had they sat in the snow? Why not in the villa? He didn’t understand; but he was careful to remember that pattern, and the numbers of men, and the numbers of hounds.

  There were tracks, too, of the riders who had come home: Yssobel herself; Steven; Jack and Hurthig. But all tracks led inwards from the gate. There were none - and he searched the snow carefully - that suggested any departure.

  His father called to him. ‘Jack? Rona is gone. Yssobel’s horse is gone. All the other packhorses are here.’

  They met at the rear wall and looked at the field, and across the field at the hill. Haunter whispered: Nothing to see. But in this mess of tracks and chaos, I can’t be sure. If she went this way, she went towards the hill, or Serpent Pass. But I can’t be sure.

  Had she gone to the valley?

  Jack walked through the main gates, out into the cruel day, and stared at the far hi
lls, the winter woods, the place from where his mother had struggled to return. He saw there the same hound tracks and the man tracks; they led in, then out. The outward traces suggested they had turned into the pass. There was no sign of any horse or horses going anywhere but into the villa.

  Jack stood there for a long time, feeling the ice wind, listening to the silence, searching the distance for movement, seeing only the movement of cloud and the swirl of gusting snow, picked up by an elemental wind. This winter had lasted too long. Too many winters, too much wasteland. Distantly, he could hear a woman softly crying, and recognised the mourning keen of Rianna, who perhaps was sensing the end of the home.

  And then his father’s voice: ‘I’m going to lose you too! I know it. Everything about you tells me that’s what’s going to happen.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Your anger.’

  Jack turned from the gate, walked to his father and took him in his arms. Steven Huxley was a shade of himself - dark-rimmed eyes, deep frown, shivering with cold and something more: fear, perhaps.

  He was taller than his son, but now Jack felt taller. ‘We should go into the warm.’

  In the villa, in Jack’s room, surrounded by his son’s models of the edge of the world, Steven started to smile. He looked at the model of Oak Lodge; at the landscape of the fields and woodland; at the small wooden buildings that represented Shadoxhurst - the church far too prominent, the spire too high. It was such a small town in the land, even though it called to all the villages around. Shadox Wood. And what had Shadox meant? Not even his father had been able to understand the meaning behind the name.

  It sounded like shadow.

  Steven said, ‘The edge of the world is shadow, Jack. To me it’s memory. To you, a place to find. I’ve always known that.’

  He exchanged a long and silent look with the young man whom he loved. ‘But do you really need to go there now?’

  ‘Yes. And for a second reason.’

  Rianna appeared at the door. At Steven’s signal she came in and sat at the table. ‘I didn’t see her go. I didn’t hear her go. But the horse was mine, my gift to her. And the horse was charmed. I can believe that in riding out, before dawn, she would have left no signs.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where she might have gone?’

  But the High Woman shook her head. ‘If I’d known what was in her heart I could have followed, but it’s too late now.’

  ‘My thinking exactly,’ Jack said. He looked at the gaunt woman. ‘Will you look after this man in my absence?’

  She seemed surprised and insulted. ‘Where else can I go? Of course. This is my home.’

  ‘This is my home too,’ Jack replied. ‘And Yssobel’s. To find where she’s gone I need to find my grandfather.’

  Steven shook his head. ‘That makes no sense.’

  We can find him. We can summon him. We can explore what he has seen. He has been close to us for years, and might have the clue to where she has gone. This may be instinct, but instinct that should be obeyed. Go to the edge, Jack. Your Haunter will get you there.

  ‘I think . . .’ Jack began, but paused. He corrected the word: ‘I’m certain that I can find Grandfather George.’

  ‘You’ll find no more than a mythago. He’ll be an impression, an echo of your own needs, your own passion. What is the point? Raising a man who is not the true man?’

  ‘But dad: Guiwenneth came to you with memories of her past. They weren’t yours, they were hers. You’ve always told me this. You brought her to life. You brought my mother to life. She came with life! A memory of life. So can George. If I can call him.’

  ‘Why do you think my father would ever venture near the edge of the wood?’

  ‘Because that’s where the Lodge is. Because that’s where he began. Because for him, that’s the place where he can cross between worlds. All he needs is the call. I’m guessing, of course. But I’ll try. If I can bring him back, I can ask him about my mother and Yssi.’

  ‘And see the world you’ve dreamed of so obsessively at the same time.’

  ‘But I’ll come back. I promise.’

  ‘What would bring you back? What reason would you have to come back if you find the world you’ve dreamed of?’

  ‘You. This place. This life. It’s so intriguing. But, that said, I will leave again, eventually. But not before I’ve said a proper goodbye to you.’

  Rianna interrupted. ‘Would you like me to prepare food for your journey? Hurthig can saddle the horse. You’ll need a pack animal too. Are you leaving now?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow. I smell spring. I want the snow to go away. I’d like to be alone with my father now.’

  Rianna rose and smiled, vanished like a ghost.

  Jack said: ‘Well: now we can talk for a while longer. And I’ll call to you when I return.’

  This was the end of the villa. Rebuilt from ruins, now it was ruined again, by the loss of so much of the warmth of the life that it had contained.

  Return

  Steven stood in the middle of the field. It was night, and a brisk early-autumn wind was blowing. The field had healed itself; no sign now of the passing of Legion those many seasons ago, that confused passage of time. Silver gleamed on the hill, between the trees. The silver was woman-shaped.

  He watched, aware that he should go no closer.

  A darker form appeared, masking the silver; man-shaped, weary. The glow of the woman made a halo around his body. Steven heard her words:

  ‘A friend has returned.’

  And then the call of his son: ‘I’m home. And I know where Yssobel has gone.’

  Silver faded, that enigmatic glow he had witnessed before, not understanding it, but gone now. His son came down the hill, a gaunt man, stinking of travel and the wild. None of that mattered. Afraid though he was of walking too far into the ground belonging to the Iaelven, Steven approached his son and held him.

  ‘Where has she gone?’ he asked.

  ‘Beyond the fire.’

  ‘And my father? Did you find him?’

  ‘I did. Not a good encounter, but good enough.’

  ‘Did he remember me?’

  ‘He remembered you. And your brother. And for a while he confused me with you, but he soon understood who I was. And he knew of Yssobel.’

  Steven smiled. ‘You were right. There was a good reason for going to the edge.’

  ‘And I’ve brought you your book. The Time Machine. I’ve read some of it. It’s so strange! I like it, though I don’t understand the world in which it’s set. Such a strange future. And I’ve also brought a chess game. From Christian’s room. It’s all I could think to bring.’

  ‘Chris liked chess. Thank you.’

  ‘And I don’t propose to leave again for several weeks.’

  His father smiled now. ‘I’m glad to hear that. But food is scarce.’

  ‘Food can be obtained.’

  ‘Not much warmth in the villa.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘This was a hard trip, I think. For you.’

  Shrugging off his leather packs, pushing them into his father’s arms, Jack said, ‘Not hard at all. There’s a part of me that can pursue trails through anything that’s hard. I’m pleased to see you.’

  Fading eyes brightened at the words, then the frown in the gaunt face again. ‘Who was the silver woman?’

  They looked back towards the hill. Jack said, ‘Someone from the past. When I’ve found our Yssobel - should she need finding - I’ll come back for the silver woman. And someone else.’ He shivered with the cold. ‘Why are you asking me so much? Out here. In the field! I need to sleep and see you in the light.’

  The hill was dark now, but Rianna had lit a torch and was waving it, a fire of welcome by the outer wall. Exhausted, but with his arm around his father, Jack went back to the comfort of his first home.

  The Crossing Place: Moonsilver

  Jack stayed with his father for several days, enjoying both the
comfort of the villa and the awareness that Steven Huxley was transformed by his son’s return. It was quite clear that Steven had not been looking after himself. He was dishevelled and ragged, his eyes rimmed with dark through lack of proper sleep, and he had developed a substantial belly.

  But now he was a fury of activity and chatter. And laughter.

  Hurthig had maintained the villa as well as he could, though there were distinct signs of change, and Rianna had kept it clean, though she had failed to persuade Steven to wash more often and trim his hair. It was as if he had wanted an excuse to clean himself up. And that excuse had come back into his life. Apart from the paunch, he was a new man.

  On the second day of Jack’s reappearance, Jack told of everything he had found at Oak Lodge.

  ‘You found my father? You found old Huxley?’

  ‘He was just the ghost of the man, I’m sure of that,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t know from whose mind he was resurrected. And it was the ghost of a journal. But he wrote about Yssobel when I whispered in his ear.’

  ‘And you know where she’s gone?’

  ‘Where she’s gone, and how she got there. But if I’m right,’ Jack had been thinking hard about what Huxley had written, about his sister’s transit to Avilion, ‘that way is not open to me.’

  To the extent that he could, he recounted the scrawled contents of the notebook. Steven was fascinated and perplexed in equal measure.

  Jack described the Amurngoth, and his failed attempts to walk beyond Shadoxhurst.

  His father was not surprised. ‘It’s true; we would find mythagos dead on the land. They would come to the edge of the wood and peer at us, but those that tried to move outwards always perished. I didn’t know this until I read my own father’s journals, long after he had disappeared.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘At least one mythago made it to the outside and survived.’

  Steven was surprised. ‘Oh? What was it?’

  ‘Who was it! His name is Caylen Reeve; he’s been with the Shadoxhurst church for generations.’