Avilion (Mythago Wood 7) (42 page)

—Stay safe, Yssi.

Oh, yes. I intend to. Go on. Moon-set is past and the Iaelven are waiting for you on the hill. They are impatient for your company. Go away. Go home!

—If she ever comes back . . .

Daddy, she WILL come back. Everything turns. Everything returns. That is the pure beauty of the crossing place. We meet, we part; at the crossing place we test the heart. We go away. One day we’ll find ourselves back where we began. And that’s where you’re going. Go on! Go on, now. Those ugly elves won’t wait for ever.

—Find a way.

If I can, I will. Daddy, I’m of the wood. I belong here. Jack is you. He belongs with you. This is how it has always been. Just because we lose each other does not mean we lose love. What have you done here? Nothing except raise two children. What can you do at the edge? Wonderful things. Now go. Please go.

—I’ll listen for you. I’ll look in legend.

Go! I’m sorry to cry but, daddy, the crossing place does not exist for ever. And I need to be in my new life.

—Bye, Yssi.

Bye.

 

‘When the Time Traveller sent himself millions of years into the future, he found a world that was not just different from his own but reflected the divide in the nature of men. The animal and the intellect. But he fell in love with a woman who gave him a flower.’

‘And he went back,’ Jack said. They were in the Under Realm, and the Iaelven were stalking through the dank caverns, ahead of them. Behind Jack and his father, Won’t Tell and Silver were following and laughing. They were arm in arm. There was the sweet scent of passion in the grim stink of the cave.

‘The Time Traveller went back because he thought he could rescue a brief beauty from the world in which she was nothing, in one sense, but a flower. In the story - you said you’d read it?’

‘I read it.’

‘He brings the flower back, an unknown species. But the flower is a dying thing, and he has no hope. He follows the flower back to the future in the hope of finding a love that can’t exist. How can it? There is nothing human in the future world he travels to. That is why I love this book. It implies that there is hope. In fact, it creates a fiction of ultimate destruction; an ending of all that we had hoped for. The Iaelven believe they created us. We believe we created the Iaelven.’

‘Losing me. You’re losing me,’ Jack said quickly. ‘I just want to get to somewhere to put my feet up and smell fresh grass, not this Iaelven stink.’

Steven put his arm around his son. ‘You’re right. Enough thinking. I’m so glad you’re back. Although you know I only ever related to the “red” side of you. The Haunter bit was denied me. Jack, you have a wonderful life ahead of you. And it will be boring and difficult, and somehow we will have to make money. Money! We’ve traded in livestock, crops and Egwearda’s brain-blinding ale. At the edge, everything will be different. Hard times ahead.’

‘But anew vision.’

‘Yes. Oh yes. I can’t deny that to you.’

‘How did the Time Traveller survive in his long-distant future?’

‘I have no idea. All I know is that when the Time Traveller went into a strange world he found an absence of life. He brought back a flower and a dream. All my life, since Guiwenneth was taken from me, and since she returned as a shade of herself still shadowed by the cruelty of my brother, I have held on to the dream; and the flower. The flower was remembered love. The dream? Simply that something might come true. Real life in an unreal world. It didn’t happen.’

‘Returning to Oak Lodge isn’t a dream come true? It must be. I don’t understand.’

Steven was silent for a long while. When he spoke it was with a dark and sad tone to his voice. ‘A dream without Gwin? Do you have any idea how much I loved her? Are you not aware that she came into being not by birth by a mother, but by me? She emerged from my mind!’

‘I know. I do know. I’ve lived with that knowledge since you first told me,’ Jack said.

‘She was my child, my wife, my life,’ his father raged, suddenly and unexpectedly angry, though the fury was no more than frustrated memory. ‘Oak Lodge will be brick and garden! For me, Jack, there will be only shallow life. It’s for you that I hope the home will come alive. It will never come alive for me again.’

‘You’ve just said it will,’ Jack said gently, putting his arm around Steven’s shoulder as they walked. His father was breathing and perspiring heavily.

The Iaelven were disturbed by this sudden burst of emotion. Jack calmed his father. Won’t Tell came up and assisted. Steven was not in a good state of mind, and it occurred to Jack that the claustrophobic conditions of this long walk home were part of the problem.

The youth, Won’t Tell, was wonderful. ‘I’m going home to my family in Shadoxhurst. I’d like you to come with me. I’ll find it difficult to get back with them. I hope you’ll help me.’

Steven shook his head. ‘Don’t count on me. If I can, I will. But don’t count on me.’

In the long years that Steven had waited at the head of the valley, for the return of Guiwenneth, the earth had entered him. Just as Jack had found it difficult to move too far from the edge of the wood, when Haunter had been tied to the ancient realm, so now Steven found himself struggling against the journey outwards.

When Jack realised this, he asked the Iaelven to slow their pace. The Iaelven troop was twelve strong, all young and heavily armed. They were not happy with the delay, but because they had been told to be tolerant they allowed a brief pause in the journey.

‘It isn’t easy,’ Won’t Tell said to Steven, his hand on the older man’s shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose that anything will come easy from now on. But you can make it. Just hold on to me.’

‘Thank you.’

Won’t Tell took Steven under his arm and walked with him through the Iaelven underworld, and stayed with him until there was the glimmer of daylight ahead of them, and the scent of new forest, new land. And Silver had walked behind Won’t Tell.

Jack had noticed how their hands touched, how they whispered. There was love in the air, even if that love was a little uncertain; love separated by centuries; love combined across an age of difference. But passion in the look. The glance, the quick kiss that youth always assumes cannot be seen.

Won’t Tell was a man now, and he carried Steven with a man’s strength, and walked towards the light of the outer world with a confidence that had not been demonstrated by the small boy, angry and protective when Jack had first met him, by the sticklebrook, so long ago.

When they came into the light, Won’t Tell eased Steven to the ground, scooped water from the brook and moistened his mouth and face.

‘Welcome home.’

The Amurngoth hugged the tree line. Silver stayed with them.

Silver

Yes, this was the land in which she had been born. She walked quickly into the green. This was the air she knew, the hill she knew, the old oak, standing proud on the skyline, the tree that had been called Strong Against the Storm. This was the land of her childhood.

The Iaelven were restless behind her. She turned and click-whistled reassurance, even though the language she spoke was a language of lies. She had no intention of returning with them.

Where was the man who had protected her?

Caylen! Caylen! Caylen Reeve.

She sang the old song, standing away from the wood, away from the Iaelven.

Soon, summoned by the song, Caylen came towards her. He was dressed in his long black cloak and his wide-brimmed hunter’s hat. He recognised her at once, but also saw the danger. He was circumspect in his approach. He hid the silver weaponry he carried. Recognising Jack, he made a sign for Jack to do the same thing.

At the edge of the wood a man was reunited with the girl that he had lost.

Silver stepped into his embrace.

‘Little Bethany. Little Beth. How beautiful you are.’

‘You’ve spoken my name. What happens to me now?’

Caylen Reeve looked around at the armed band of Iaelven. The stink in the air was overpowering. Won’t Tell was searching the skyline, listening for the sounds of the town from which he had been abducted. He was suddenly as a child again, rosy-cheeked and with wild unkempt ginger hair. Caylen Reeve, watching him, suddenly recognised him.

‘The Hawkings’ boy.’

But Won’t Tell held up two hands in a defensive posture. ‘Stay away from me. Stay away. I know who you are. I know what you are. Let go of the girl.’

Silver turned to him. The day was bright, her face darkened by the sunshine. ‘My name is Bethany Reeve. This man is my foster father. I was taken by the Amurngoth. I am not like you, Won’t Tell, not completely. But neither am I half and half, blood and green. My mother and true father have been dead for many years. My other father is . . .’ She smiled at Caylen. ‘Old Oak.’

Jack said, ‘There is a small touch of the Green in you.’

Silver glanced at him. ‘A small part only. An inheritance of nature. The Iaelven took me without understanding me. They took this handsome man here, this nameless boy, without understanding him.’ She gave the Hawkings’ boy a knowing look. ‘The Iaelven are past their time. It’s only the Iaelven who don’t know this.’

Caylen Reeve said quietly but very deliberately, ‘The Iaelven will kill us all. Look at the flush on their skin. That flush means they are now in killing and taking mood.’

‘They want the Change,’ Jack said.

Caylen could not restrain his bitter laugh. ‘The pigs were fattened long ago on that piece of sour meat.’

One of the Amurngoth, a young and supple creature, half again as tall as Jack himself, strode forward and picked up Silver by the waist. A second Amurngoth darted at Caylen Reeve and took him by the neck, twisting him back over its knee, whistling in a triumphant and terrifying way. The priest abandoned himself to death.

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.