Avilion

by Robert Holdstock

Silver screamed. Jack reached for his silver arrowheads, flinging one at the Amurngoth that was strangling the churchman. The metal strike caused the creature to pause. Then bony, frighteningly strong hands had caught Jack by the neck, pushing him down. He was surrounded by the Iaelven, one of whom crouched and stared at him, raising a burned, pointed spear towards his throat.

  Click-whistle!

  Silver shouted. ‘They want the Change! Give them the Change and you can go free. Otherwise this will end badly.’

  ‘The Change is dead!’ Jack shouted. ‘Tell them that. And tell them that unless they return to the wood, it will end badly for them!’

  The spear point came into Jack’s flesh, but he pushed at it. ‘The Change is dead!’ he shouted at the Amurngoth.

  He twisted the wooden weapon from the creature’s hands, threw it in its face. Fierce eyes studied him. Hard hands still held him.

  And then a voice from nowhere, or so it seemed to Jack.

  ‘Tell them that they have their Change. Tell them that the Change will go with Silver. Tell them that they must never ever come back to this part of their world. Tell them to stay in the Under Realm.’

  As Silver click-whistled this statement, Won’t Tell pushed his way through the aggressive circle of the Iaelven, reached for Jack’s hand and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jack asked.

  The youth smiled. ‘Silver!’ he called, and the girl came to him. She reached around his waist and he took her hands in his. ‘I’m going back,’ Won’t Tell said. ‘I will find a way to be free of Iaelven rule.’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  Won’t Tell sighed as his gaze dropped. ‘I don’t know. They live in another world now.’ He looked up and into the distance, towards his old home. ‘I just know that I’ve found . . . what? How can I describe it?’ His eyes as he turned to Jack were almost imploring. ‘I’ve found a change that has changed my life.’

  ‘And you are prepared to stay for the rest of your life in the wildwood? It’s a rough and winter life, and you will bring life forms into existence that might well be dangerous. Especially with your temper.’

  The young man thought about this. ‘Yes, I am. Prepared to stay inside. And I promise: these creatures will never come back. Does my decision surprise you?’

  Jack had no answer. His father was watching, listening; the old man shrugged as if to say: why not?

  ‘We’re at the edge,’ Jack said. ‘I stay, you go. I will explain everything to your parents. You are all red. You are the Hawkings’ boy. You can come home at any time.’

  ‘I know. Just as long as you never ask me for my name.’

  ‘I never will.’

  Silver Dreams

  I have found love in the form of the boy. Caylen Reeve found me when I was a child, abandoned by my parents, dropped like a rotten log on the highway. He found me, he fed me, he found a mother for me, and a place that I could call home. I was not liked, but people were kind. I was well fed. I crept into the church sometimes and slept below the seats, and Caylen would find me and give me water, and meat and bread, and he educated me. And I accepted his name, as if he were my true father.

  I knew from the moment I became aware of men that he was not a man like other men. He was wild. He was ageless. There was nature’s compassion in him. He treated me as a flower, nurtured me and supported me and gave me the space to grow.

  The Iaelven took me on that night, that dreadful night. There were six of us stolen. We had been hiding in the church. Armed men were stalking the streets of the village, shooting at random, crying out that they were for the people and not for the king. It was a confusing and terrifying time.

  They broke down the doors to the church. The discharge of their muskets shattered the statues and the glass of the windows. The priest ran towards them, his arms stretched out. He was crying tears of fear, screaming words of distress. Not this place! Not this place! A musket struck him, and two of the steel-helmed men crouched over him and cut the sound from his throat, cut the blood from his heart. They ransacked the church and left, and when the sound of their horses had died away, Caylen Reeve rose from where they had seemed to kill him, but he was weak and dying.

  We watched him with astonishment as the dead man blossomed, his flesh growing green, his hair briefly shaping itself into leaves. He rose, strong like an oak, but then sank to his knees and whispered, ‘I have lost my strength.’

  Evening came, and the edge of the wood was ablaze with light. The soldiers had gone but, as if they sensed the weakening of the edge, the elves came. They stalked up the hill and brought the small changes that would be left as dolls for the grieving women. They found us in the church. We were brutalised and stripped, then taken like livestock, slung over their shoulders, carried back to the forest.

  The last I heard was Caylen Reeve screaming as he pursued them. He shot arrow after arrow, and the creature that carried me stumbled and died, the silver point embedded in its back. Another picked me up, slapped me into silence. But I took the silver from the other monster, concealed it carefully, and have held it with me ever since.

  That silver point, fashioned by Caylen Reeve, is all that helped me survive the abduction.

  Silver took the fire-burned spear from the Iaelven and broke it with astonishing strength across her knee, throwing the two shards to the ground. She spoke to the Iaelven and her voice ended in a screech of agonised anger. They stepped back. Sap flowed from their faces. Won’t Tell walked towards them, then through them.

  The Change was returned.

  Caylen Reeve called out, shouting the boy’s true name, adding, ‘You don’t have to do this!’

  ‘Now that you’ve revealed my name,’ the Hawkings’ boy called back, ‘I think I do. Silver!’

  She ran to him, took his hand. The Hawkings’ boy smiled. ‘Thank you for everything, Jack: I’m sorry for what I said about you when you first came to my home town. You are a good man. And I hope you find love in this world. Thank you for helping me find love in the strangest place I can imagine.’

  He embraced Silver and kissed her, and she laughed and glanced at the open sky, a last glimpse, and a moment later the two of them had stepped into the sticklebrook and disappeared into the gloom and wonder of the wood.

  The Amurngoth backed away from Caylen Reeve. Soon, they too were no more than shadows. The late-afternoon sun died away; the forest fell silent. Reeve checked his wounds, inspected Jack, found all was well. They went, with Steven Huxley, into the ruin that was Oak Lodge, and by dawn the garden at its rear was bright again.

  Overnight, the sentience that governed Ryhope had withdrawn enough to allow new planting, not just of seeds and tubers, beans and the flesh of fowl, but of life again.

  Steven sat quietly at his father’s desk.

  Julie came down from the town with exercise books. She came into the Lodge and, with a smile and a tear, greeted Jack.

  ‘Caylen told me you were home again. I’ve brought you some cans of food.’

  None of them were labelled. Jack couldn’t help smiling. ‘So again,’ he said, ‘I guess at the contents.’

  ‘Aren’t we all always guessing?’ Julie said.

  After a moment she reached up and kissed his cheek. It was a nervous gesture, and Jack took her by the arm. He noticed how she went still; the stillness of indecision.

  ‘Thank you for everything,’ he said.

  ‘More to come. Of everything.’ How shining her eyes, how curious and wanting. ‘Have you had a hard journey?’

  ‘Very hard,’ he said, slightly taken aback by her first comment. ‘My sister had it harder. The Hawkings’ boy, well: he’ll find a strange life, but I think he’ll be happy.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a sister. Is she in the wood?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘I hope she fares well.’

  ‘So do I,’ Jack said.

  And Steven shouted from the study, ‘It’s time to start again! Come on, Jack.
This house needs work. The garden needs work. We have to leave what’s left behind. It’s time to start again!’

  ‘I’m coming, dad. I’ll be with you shortly.’ To Julie he said, ‘Oak Lodge is not that young that it can’t wait for a few minutes more.’

  ‘Oak Lodge is made of brick,’ came his father’s reply. He had heard the comment ‘It lasts longer than flesh. I have work to do! Get the romance settled and come and talk to me.’

  I miss Haunter. I miss the feel of him. I miss the scent of the ancient of days. And I miss you, Yssi. But now I can walk into the town without the wood strangling me. Caylen is a good man, though of course mythago is in his bone and blood. I had not realised how easy it is to find new love where old love is dying, and yes, this relates to Julie. A very human affair.

  My father works, my father explores. Sometimes he goes back into the wood for weeks at a time. Searching for Gwin. He returns dishevelled and unhappy. But he is convinced that he can bring her home, even though by now she must be old and frightened and staring at the brilliance that is twilight. But my father has found new hope and new life, and though he misses you, Yssobel, with all his heart, he is glad to be home.

  The everyday contact with the people from the villages is stimulating him. The common language is his own.

  And he has started to keep a journal, just as his father before him did.

  He longs for Gwin, though. I hope he finds her.

  Yssi, this is for you. I have no other way of sending it except that the young-old priest, my close friend Caylen, cuts his limbs and cuts the bark of the willows by the sticklebrook, and we sit there and he enters the wood, and he cries and dreams and screams and sings, and attempts a return to the place from which he emerged more than a thousand years ago. He is a change-hunter. He truly is a man between worlds. And he is the postman to my sister, and to the Villa.

  Yssi: I miss you! And I always loved your teasing songs, though I pretended not to. And though I can only speak for myself and Steven, I hope that your life is vibrant; and that after the winter shedding, there is the green of Spring in you. And that a tide of change will always be the way.

  I have love here. And I have life. And that young man - you remember? - who would not tell us his name: he is now seeding the wood with his own dreams. And he has brought new life to a girl who once lived in an ordinary world, and who now has an extraordinary love. They are coming back to you.

  Yssi: dream me well. I promise you, every night I dream of you, and always hope you will find those challenges you mentioned: in your journey along Serpent Pass.

  Yssobel’s Last Song: The Crossing Place

  The crossing place is where we meet, and where we part.

  The crossing place is where we test our heart.

  The crossing place is where we turn and turn:

  It is the moment’s pause;

  The road where we make selection.

  Yes, this is the Shaping Place!

  Yearning comes strong here.

  At the crossing place we find our next direction.

  The wind from the valley was strong. Yssobel stood in her furs on the rock where, as a child, she had stood when her father had told her of the legend of her mother, Guiwenneth.

  Rianna was long in her grave. The Villa was intact and fully weatherproofed. Over the long span of years, since Jack and her father had left, many travellers had passed by, and Yssobel had known affection and friendship, and some had stayed and helped to build and maintain the fragile structure that Steven had drawn and shaped from his dream.

  She was old now, and Serpent Pass was no longer accessible, though it had revealed many of its secrets in her years of exploration.

  There was no sense of loneliness in her. No longing for lost time. No passion for lost love. The valley blew through her, and its changing breezes were sustenance enough. On the wind came memory and joy. There was no sadness in her.

  Today, though, something was different. There was a shadow in the distance, a small movement where the dawn sun was illuminating the edge of the river. There was brightness, shifting as the sun rose. And a small shape approaching through that gleam of light.

  It suddenly seemed to see her, as she stood on the rock.

  Across a great distance, an arm was raised in greeting. From where she stood, Yssobel raised both her arms, and indicated that the woman should hurry home.

  EPILOGUE

  The Crossing Place

  (Verses and memories that are embedded in Avilion)

  The Field of Tartan

  (For my grandfather. Who walked across this field on the Somme: July 1916.)

  I walked for my life, across a field of tartan.

  The Scots went first. They had it worst.

  The First, the Twenty-First.

  Highlanders.

  They sowed the seeds, the soft touch

  Of fabric-woven earth, over which we walked.

  They had been mown down to a man.

  They made a field of tartan.

  Before they went, they sang.

  The songs were haunted.

  We joked about their skirts; they took it in good part.

  There was a sense of peace,

  Resignation!

  That touch of Spartan in each heart.

  (He walks for his life, across a field of tartan.)

  No mud when the top was crossed,

  When the iron wind blasted and counter-crossed,

  Seeking the marrowbone, the head, the heart,

  Taking us down into that field of tartan.

  It was so strange, so savage.

  Astonishing to find no earth, just fallen flesh;

  To briefly meet a dying gaze,

  A last remembered highland day.

  To walk over limbs clad in scarlet tartan.

  And we slipped and slid upon the patterned cloth, but made the

  other line.

  There was killing, then.

  No charms, just arms, the sinking down, the frightened frown,

  Flesh suddenly shaped into dirt, life dearth,

  Blood silt,

  Nothing to hearten us

  Except our unwanted luck at walking over hand-weaved kilt.

  Not sinking into earth.

  Walking across a field of tartan.

  Robert Holdstock, March 2008 (revised September 2008).

  He regrets that his dreams are not fulfilled, yet dreams

  And in the stars, in the silence of that silent world,

  Sky-stretched above me as I stretch in sleep,

  Earth pillowed,

  The small, much dazzling gleam of eternity, the infinity

  That embraces the wide-eyed wonderer,

  The wanderer in the void of thought;

  There, yes there! There is the moment; there the dream.

  I lie on earth. Soon earth will lie on me.

  Will I see through chalk, clay; through the finger’s dusting

  On the wood;

  Through the small whisper of parting; the salt drop?

  Will I see the trip I need, I wonder,

  Find it among those rusting

  Fire-rustling echoes of eternity?

  Some so old. And some so new. New words.

  New worlds of stars,

  Where thoughts, like and unlike ours, perhaps begin to queue,

  And radiate,

  Hoping to be heard!

  Night sky, wrap me round

  Hold me in your fire, your future, the memory of fire.

  I do not need the sound of fury to be in your embrace,

  Only the transport to your echoing, soundless space.

  Memory

  I am not closed down by lost love.

  There is a passion in me, once expressed,

  That flew with laughter, ecstasy,

  Not so much

  The gentle cooing of a dove,

  But the ringing sound of singing, emblazed, inflamed;

  Bleeding beneath a loving touch.

  I
do not like this flesh-old distance,

  This hollow heart, emptied of dreams

  Harsh-beating with old-year’s rage.

  Come fire, come flame: torch me—

  I’ll play the game, shed the skin of age!

  Yes, I’ve changed my mind:

  Bone strong, blood strong,

  Lost love is lost; we hold

  To that which now is precious.

  Into each other’s arms we fold.

  The Crossing Place

  The crossing place is where we meet, and where we part.

  The crossing place is where we test our heart.

  The crossing place is where we turn and turn:

  It is the moment’s pause; the road where we make selection.

  Yes, this is the Shaping Place!

  Yearning comes strong here.

  At the crossing place we find our next direction.

  Acknowledgements

  My special thanks to Jo Fletcher, Howard Morhaim, Abner Stein, Gillian Redfearn, Maura McHugh, Alison Eldred (I made it!), and Sarah - as ever - for listening and supporting the ups and downs; and Garry Kilworth for his frankness about the non-prose parts of the book, and for letting me draw on his poem ‘The Bull’; and to OMNIA, for PaganFolk musical influence that set more than my mind dancing: (www.worldofomnia.com).

  And in fond memory of Leena Peltonen, long-time friend and translator, who I think would have liked this tale. And with much love for my father, Robert Frank (1924-2008), who would have liked to have listened to it too. (Sorry I took so long, old boy.)