Winter

by William Horwood

  ‘Erich, I am dying, I am dying, dying . . .’ she screamed, unable to pull him the way she wanted as she was pulled southward towards darkness, towards enveloping stone and he unable to pull her back but wanting to go with her, as if together they were bound to the wrong way, which was sinister, too sinister, all sinister now.

  ‘Ingrid, let go of my hand, you’re drowning me in stone.’

  ‘Let go of mine, we’re falling too fast towards the grey, the hard hard grey, we’re falling and my feet can’t get a grip to hold us back.’

  Slowly, as it seemed, the marine a hundred yards in front of Jack raised his weapon to take aim, the madness of the landscape and the wind and the blizzard ice made incarnate by his killing act.

  Jack rose at once and grabbed Katherine and she Stort, bound together in a certainty what would happen if they did not do what now they must.

  ‘They . . .’

  ‘Are . . .’

  ‘Losing their way,’ they said, beginning to run.

  Jack raised his bow and shot the shooter in the shoulder, sending him spinning with the wind.

  He heaved Katherine past him, she being the most adept and needing to lead, and Stort second, turning back towards one of the men near them who was now raising his weapon. Jack kicked him hard instead of using a weapon, sending him tumbling after the other, eyes wide in surprise. Then, catching a glimpse in his peripheral vision that one of the others was also levelling his weapon, Jack aimed at him without hesitation, watching the bolt slide away slow and slower still, flexing and turning slightly as it flew through the ice-filled air, just right, turning and flexing just, just so . . .

  The bolt glanced across the turning head, cutting a flap of skin that flew down, the blood flowing, and the marine falling against his companion, down. Both down as well.

  ‘Here!’ screamed Katherine at Ingrid across the shards that cut through them with sound, ‘take my hand!’

  Oh and they caught each other in a breaking, whirling circle of dance, pulling back from the realm of death, choosing the light, forcing the turn to dexter once again.

  ‘This way,’ she said in that voice Jack loved, strong and purposeful, good as her cool hands upon his old burns, ‘this way now . . .’

  The portal opened and the henge took them, the dance continued on its meandering way, an echo of the Avon’s death-flow faded and they were up and away and safe.

  ‘Not down,’ she said, ‘up, follow, hold out hands, feel the flow, come on through . . .’

  And Ingrid Hansen laughed and laughed, and Erich Bohr grinned as if he was young again, before the world of men began to eat his flesh and suck his mind, young as the day he first met Arthur Foale.

  Then Stort next to last and Jack last of all, his stave enlivened more than ever it had been by the spirit of the ancient staves that once rose where it now flew, turning its glints and shimmers back on the ice wind’s flow, as shots flew in, bullets as slow as armadillos, turning like the bolt had, slow and slower, as Jack’s stave played ancient cricket with them all and sent them out across the sky, thudding through the thick, shady air, straight as arrows to land thud, thud, thud and harmless now, flattened, useless and spent, the frost on the ground steaming briefly where they lay in the distant shadows of Stonehenge.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Jack later.

  ‘Where we need to be, I expect,’ said Stort, feeling more relieved than he cared to say.

  ‘Safe, I’m sure,’ said Katherine.

  Erich Bohr and Ingrid Hansen, still holding each other’s hand, said not a word as they slowly opened their eyes to gaze for the first time upon the Hyddenworld.

  33

  BILGESNIPE

  The portal out of Woodhenge brought Jack and his party into nearly pitch-black night in what smelt and sounded like a wood. He used a lantern to check that the two humans were alive and well and in no way threatening, which they were not. In fact they were tired and subdued, which was hardly surprising considering what they had been through. He left Katherine in charge and briefly explored the location.

  ‘It’s a yew wood, and an old one,’ he told them on his return from a reconnaissance. ‘We’re on a hill top with no obvious sign of life nearby at all.’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Katherine, ‘I’m not so sure about that! I could have sworn I heard a snatch of singing and the high fluting sound of a bulpipe. But it stopped, suddenly.’

  ‘Bilgesnipe,’ said Jack. ‘If they see or hear us they’ll not harm us.’

  He brightened his lantern to take a closer look at the strangers.

  They were a male and female, eyes wide, and they sat with their backs against huge roots, looking both vulnerable and embarrassed. They also looked very cold, which was unsurprising considering they were capless, their shoulders bare, as were their legs, which protruded from beneath the voluminous wrappings which were all they appeared to have for garb.

  Katherine grinned, opened her ’sac and offered the female a jerkin, underwear and trews.

  ‘Jack . . .’ she prompted, ‘do the same for this gentleman. Their clothes have not shrunk with them.’

  It was one of the mysteries of portal travel, about which Arthur had often warned, that while the mortal form may shrink or grow depending on which world it is arriving in, garb is not always so obliging. For newcomers especially.

  Stort knew that because on the one occasion he had inadvertently travelled to the human world his clothes had torn and fallen in tatters about him, leaving him naked. As for Arthur, it had been his habit to take a suitable change of clothing with him for he liked his comforts and the Hyddenworld had not discovered the pleasures of corduroy trousers and shirts with breast pockets. Jack grinned and gave the man some of his clothes.

  ‘You can have use of this plaid,’ cried Stort in a friendly way for the two looked intelligent and he was intrigued to find out how they had first thought to dance the henge and then actually nearly succeeded in doing so. ‘I am much impressed that you have found a way to dance the portal into the Hyddenworld. Though I fear you very nearly killed yourselves!’

  ‘Are you . . . um . . . a hydden?’ asked the female.

  ‘I am, she isn’t, and he’s what’s called a giant-born,’ replied Stort.

  ‘I’m Ingrid,’ she said cheerfully, as if they were meeting at a tea party.

  Jack scowled, preferring to leave the small talk until they were safe and set fair, but Stort persisted.

  ‘A fine name of Nordic origin, I believe. For myself, please call me Stort. This is Jack and this Katherine.’

  ‘Um, hello,’ she said.

  ‘And your friend?’

  ‘He is Doctor Erich Bohr.’

  Stort looked startled. Jack’s eyes glistened and grew cold.

  ‘The Erich Bohr who attempted to abduct Arthur Foale?’ he said, grasping his stave and loosening his dirk in a threatening kind of way.

  Bohr gulped. His throat went dry. It was bad enough that his head was still spinning and he felt sick but this hulk of a person talking with him – no, interrogating him – seemed to actually know who he was and not like the fact. Anything could happen!

  ‘I wouldn’t say we were trying to abduct him . . .’

  ‘But you forced my adoptive father to flee an airbase and cut his way through the perimeter fence, which could easily have given him a heart attack, did you not?’ said Katherine.

  Bohr began to sweat, for this female was formidable and she talked of fathers and fences and . . . and she too had a dirk and crossbow. They had fallen among thieves and murderers.

  ‘He was there of his own free will and we . . .’

  Jack and Katherine exchanged a glance. Arthur had talked of Bohr and, if they remembered aright, rather admired him. That he should appear as he had at Woodhenge was not quite so surprising as it might at first seem, given the wyrd of the times. Bohr might be – no, probably was – unwittingly following in Arthur’s footsteps to complete the work he had begun.

  It was unfor
tunate that Jack and Katherine, lost in such musing, were holding their dirks and frowning.

  ‘My dear friends,’ cried Stort, misinterpreting what he saw, ‘do not hurt or maim them! Or if you do, let me extract what information I can first. But really I see no need for violence or, at any rate, not unpleasant violence.’

  ‘Stort,’ said Jack, ‘kindly stop talking.’

  Bohr was now unsure whether to run in his unrobed state, taking Ingrid with him, like two nymphs in the wood, or remain silent, or talk more.

  Not Ingrid. She felt suddenly enraged by what she imagined to be this attack upon them both. But she kept her temper.

  ‘We come in the name of world peace and reconciliation,’ she began, ‘and I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that . . .’

  ‘I would very strongly advise you to say no more,’ said Katherine. ‘Jack can get irritable and, trust me, he is getting so now. The introductions and suchlike can wait until later. Stay silent, follow orders and all will be well. Now, get that garb on!’

  As she closed the shutter of the lantern to give Bohr and Ingrid a modicum of privacy, the sound of music and song she had heard earlier came up to them from the wood below. Its scales were exotic and the voices that accompanied them sensuous and not entirely female, for they bore within them a thread of the tenor and a touch of the treble.

  ‘Bilgesnipe, indeed!’ cried Katherine with delight.

  ‘The last time I heard such a thing,’ declared Stort, rising and peering in the direction from which the sound came, ‘was with Mister Barklice on that famous occasion when we were wending our way towards Woolstone.’

  He turned to the newcomers.

  ‘You, sir, and you, madam, are lucky indeed to have stumbled into the Hyddenworld at such a time and in such a place. That, without question, is the sound of revelry of the kind usually only heard at Paley’s Creek!’

  ‘Which means,’ said Jack, ‘that they’re not going very far very fast, so let’s eat and join them later.’

  They lit a fire and got hot refreshments sorted in no time at all, making sure their guests were fed first and respecting their now rather nervous silence.

  ‘Which is understandable, considering,’ whispered Katherine to Jack. Both remembered their first worrying journey into the Hyddenworld and how disconcerting it had been. ‘Maybe it’s as well it’s dark! They can’t actually see very much.’

  But everyone was so hungry that soon all they wanted to do was eat – and to the sound of the music from below the hill, which was companionable and soothing.

  ‘I hope they don’t ask what Paley’s Creek is,’ Katherine whispered back. ‘If they do, Stort can explain!’

  The truth was that no one, not even the Bilgesnipe, knew exactly what Paley’s Creek was, or where it was. It was a kind of happening and for decades, until only a few months before, most hydden had imagined it was a real place. That Bilgesnipe met ‘there’ was certainly true. That things went on there – things sensuous and strange, things magical, things transformative – was true too.

  It had been at Paley’s Creek, or an event that had that name, that Mister Barklice had fathered Bratfire by a bilgygirl, his one and only experience of carnal delight. Only years later, and with Stort’s help, had he had the opportunity to return to Paley’s Creek to accept responsibility for the son he had fathered, an event which raised respect for him very high among the Bilgesnipe and brought to Brum his excellent son and heir, Bratfire, who had all the natural hyddening skills of his father, though still so young.

  Then again it was at Paley’s Creek, on that same occasion, that the Modor or Wise Woman had appeared to Stort, putting him in the way of wisdoms and grief which deepened his character and made his later quests for the gems possible.

  Now, once more, it seemed that Paley’s Creek was about and abroad, sending out its siren call, luring the hydden into its strange, heady and otherworldly embrace.

  ‘I swear,’ said Stort dreamily when his supper was finished, ‘that I am catching an alluring scent from what is going on below us! But, of course, we cannot, we dare not, go there. Dare we?’

  ‘No!’ cried Katherine rather hysterically, ‘we must not and will not, but oh, how wonderful that drifting scent of the Bilgesnipe female is!’

  Jack frowned in the dark.

  ‘Don’t listen to ’em,’ he told the newcomers, ‘or you’ll get into all kinds of trouble.’

  To which Ingrid replied breathlessly, a touch eagerly, unable to stop herself thrusting her hand through the crook of Bohr’s arm, ‘No . . . I won’t . . . we mustn’t . . . Um . . . what is it these Bilgesnipe do at Paley’s Creek? Is it quite harmless?’

  The music swelled as she said this, as if it heard her and wished to lure her in its direction.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ said Jack very firmly, ‘and it . . .’

  He stilled, for there was movement in the wood behind him, a dancing green and red light, soft laughter and the run of feet as of several does across the forest floor. And the scent grew stronger, exotic and as richly spicy as a souk in Araby, or like incense of the sort sold by traders along the Silk Road of Samarkand.

  Jack stilled even more when a hand, soft and gentle, touched his shoulder and a voice – was it real? was it in his mind? – whispered, ‘Jack, it bain’t complexiting but it be befuddling, that’s true enough, so come along fro’ this dull place and join us where we be . . .’

  Unable to help himself, he stood up and turned round, hoping for . . . for what? He knew not. He only heard more feet running, all around them, and the lights among the yews, round and soft as a fruit, dancing and playing where they hung, like the laughter that they heard.

  ‘I think . . .’ he said, giving his hand to Katherine.

  ‘I think,’ said she, helping Stort to his feet.

  ‘Um, I think,’ said Ingrid . . .

  ‘I think we should,’ said Bohr, his head lighter than it had been in years, his body dancing like it never had, her hand in his as if it truly, always, should have been and now would always be . . . no no no . . . needed to be.

  ‘They seem all right,’ murmured Jack, as they danced all together down the hill into the night that was Paley’s Creek.

  ‘They do,’ said Katherine, ‘eh, Stort?’

  ‘Indeed!’

  Then, because the mood took her and the moment seemed right, Katherine said to Bohr, ‘If you’ve come in search of Arthur I am very sorry to tell you . . . he has returned to the Mirror.’

  ‘You mean he is . . . ?’

  ‘I mean he has died.’

  ‘But how . . . ?’

  She told him then, as they danced along, in a kind of way she did, so he visioned the pyre on which Arthur’s body was burnt and how his ashes were blown up to the stars.

  Later Bohr’s grip on Ingrid’s hand tightened, and hers on his, and he was silent.

  ‘I feel . . . very . . . sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied, or was it Katherine or Jack or maybe Stort who spoke, or the trees all about?

  ‘No need to feel sorrow, my newly hyddeny one,’ said a passing male. ‘Sorrow be less useful than good intent!’

  ‘And he’m not sorry for hisseln, is Arthur,’ called out another, ‘he’m only glad you’m come here now to help his friends.’

  ‘I . . .’ began Bohr, a firelight rising before them, dancers all about, ‘I don’t know what to think . . . I don’t know why I’m here . . .’

  ‘Your wyrd brought you here and now ’tis your own task to find out why and do what you must,’ the female suddenly dancing with him said.

  ‘Bain’t so hard if you set your course in the right direction,’ said the next.

  ‘I . . . don’t . . . think I understand,’ said Bohr, battered by these voices from among the revellers, who seemed to see better into his heart than he did.

  ‘Why do you think you’m here, my love?’ said another, holding him tight.

  ‘I was here to find Arthur but he’
s . . . passed . . . away.’

  ‘You mean he’s gone Mirror-ward. So you’ll have to do what he would have in his stead, that’s what they’m a-sayin’, that be all. That’s why you’m come.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Who’m be this whose hand you hold?’ another asked him. ‘Be she thine?’

  ‘Um . . . I . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ingrid, ‘she be.’

  ‘Well, then, you’d best ask her about this and about that, she looks like she might know the answers!’

  It was only much later, when the dancing had ceased and the Bilgesnipe sat down to eat by two great fires, that they were able to really see their hosts and get to know them. The wyfkin and kinder were plump and cheerful, dressed in colourful, many-layered silk dresses and petticoats, beribboned and bedecked with dry flowers, it being winter.

  The males were large and well girthed and, being mariners and hardened by long hours of watery labour, strong, their forearms muscled, their necks thick, their calves solid. Most wore a kerchief around their necks, some had rings in their ears, a few dressed their hair in pigtails, shiny with a tincture of camomile and lint.

  The teeth of all were white and big, their smiles enormous, their eyes crinkled in the firelight with good humour and the long-suffering patience of those who put the welfare of their kinder first and last and in the middle too and themselves a good way behind.

  It was some hours before they learnt from the elusive Bilgesnipe where they were and where they were bound; and that the festivities of which they were now part were not in fact, or not exactly, Paley’s Creek at all, but on the way to being.

  ‘That be Wychbury Hill wher’m you were took and now ’tis Clent, this dried-up place! But why’m you askin’? A hydden who don’t know where he is has got his navigation wrong!’

  ‘We’re portlers,’ said Jack, remembering from before that this was a word used of folk who travelled by the henge.

  ‘That be an ancient art and fearful. It bain’t summat Bilgesnipe like to do. You’m clever folk then?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Katherine.

  But a ripple of interest had gone through the crowd and candle lights were lofted near to appraise their faces.