Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (32 page)

‘I see,’ she breathed with resignation, and went to bed.

How could he feel like this? He noticed that his hands were shaking. The intimacy that had characterised their first years together more by its regularity than its passion, had certainly, in recent years, changed to a self-conscious routine of tentative suggestion, almost unknowing touch, and brief encounter by darkness. And yet he had accepted this change for the worse – it always occurred to him that Jennifer might have been accepting the status with far less complacency – without really conscious thought. It had taken the sound of her pleasure to remind him of their early years, and to make him aware, now, of the avoidance that he had been practising.

He nearly cried as he thought of how much he had denied the closeness of their life that Jennifer so needed.

He stared hard at the ceiling, thinking of her in bed, thinking of holding her. And gradually he forced himself to his feet, and walked upstairs, and entered the bedroom where she slept softly, half exposed from below the summer sheet, her body faintly illuminated by moonlight from the bright summer night.

She was naked, he realised, and the shock made him
catch his breath. He was almost embarrassed to look at her, at the leg that lay outside the covers, the soft breast that was crushed in the bend of her arm, as she slept, her head turned half towards him.

He undressed and pulled on pyjamas. In bed beside her he watched her for a long time, long enough to bite all skin from the inside of his lower lip, so that he tasted blood, and his lip was sore.

He almost woke her once, his hand out to her, the fingers hovering just above her tousled hair.

But he didn’t. He closed his eyes, sank a little lower, and thought of the primal mythological form of humankind, his great quest: The Urscumug …

Somewhere in the woods, the creature lives. It must have formed many times. But it is deep. It is in the heart. How to find it? How to find? I must devise a way of calling it to the edge …

He was still thinking about his quest when he heard the sound of movement downstairs. It startled him at first, but then he lay quietly, listening hard.

Yes. It was in the study. There was a long time of silence, then again the sound of furniture being moved, drawers opened, cabinets opened as perhaps his souvenirs were examined.

Then a sudden sound on the stairs, someone coming up the stairs at great speed.

Again, silence.

It was on the landing. It moved along the landing to the door of the bedroom and again stopped; then the door was opened and something sped into the room, a fleet shadow crossing the floor to the window in an instant,
and closing the curtains. A deeper darkness descended, but in the moment of dim light Huxley had seen the man shape, the deep shadow shape that was unquestionably a naked human male. The shoulders were broad, the body hard and lean, and the creature’s member was distended and almost vertical. A strong odour filled the room, something of undergrowth, something of the sharp smell of an unwashed man.

Slowly Huxley sat up in bed. He sensed the movement of the figure, short darting movements that carried it from one side of the room to the other, then back again.

It was waiting for him to go!

In its last journal entry it had written ‘protect Jennifer against me. Protect her against the ghost …’

‘Go away,’ Huxley breathed. ‘I won’t let you come near her. You told me not to …’

It raced up to him in the darkness and hovered there, its eyes dimly reflecting, showing how wide they were, how intense. It was hard to define shape; he sensed shadows shifting, a depthlessness to the figure, but yet it was solid. The heat and the smell that came off it were overpowering.

In a voice that sounded like the restless stirring of a breeze, it whispered ‘journal’.

It had written in the journal!

It towered over him, and Jennifer suddenly stirred. ‘George …?’

She tossed her head slightly, and her arm extended towards him, but before the hand could touch him it
was intercepted. The creature had her, and Huxley felt willed to leave the bed.

‘Journal,’ breathed the grey-green man, and there was the hint of a laugh, of a smile as the word was said for the second time.

‘George?’ Jennifer murmured, coming more awake.

His heart pounding, the sense of the grey-green man’s mocking laughter teasing at his conscience, Huxley swung out of bed and left the room.

Half way down the stairs he heard Jennifer’s cry of surprise as she woke fully. Then her sudden, splendid laugh.

He blocked his ears against the sounds that came next, and went into his study, tears streaming down his face as he fumbled behind the books for his private journal.

13

Will try to speak. But you move slowly, ghostly. Perhaps I am the same to you. I observe the house and Jenny, the boys, and they are real, although they seem to be a dream. But you are slow, the me part, the me factor, too ghostly, and it is hard to speak
.

Steven is in the wood, Chris too. Something huge in the wood, some event, some rebirth or regeneration. I sense it. I hear it from mouths, from tales. I have been here so long, and the world of the mythago is my world
.

This is puzzling. Why have you not been in the wood
,
in the some way, in the same wood? Confused. My mind does not focus. But I have had encounters. You have not had the same encounters
.

I can’t answer about Steven. As a man, he will come here. Or as a boy and grow to a man. Somehow. It has to do with the Urscumaga. Pursuit. Quest. I cannot say more. I know NO more! Be gentle with Steven. Be careful of him. Be watchful. Love him. LOVE HIM!

Wynne-Jones was in the horse temple. You saw him. You MUST have seen. I think he was killed. He was trapped
.

You should know this. Why not? Why do you not?

Perhaps you have forgotten. Perhaps some memory is stripped from you and exists in me. Memory in you is denied me. No. Not true. Your account of Ash is my account. Almost. You describe the amulet as dull. The amulet was bright. You say a green stone. Yes. You say a leather thong. No. Horse hair. Twined horse hair. Can you have made such a mistake?

I see now that you make no mention of Ash previously. Not my journal then, though so many entries are the same. Yes. Snow Woman, Steven’s word, was the same as Ash. I remember her visit, that winter. But Wynne-Jones made contact in February. No mention in the journal of that. But I wrote an account. He understood the basic nature of Ash. But no mention in either journal. Yet it was written
.

Are
we the same?

Ash; She carries the memory of wood. She is the guardian of ancient forest and can summon
from
them and send
to
them. She uses the techniques of the
shaman
to do this. By casting her charms of wood and bone she can create – and destroy, too, if she wishes – forests of lime and spruce, or oak and ash, or alder and beech. She can send hunters to find pigs, or stags, or bears, or horses
. Other things!
Forgotten creatures. Forgotten woods. Her skills are legion. She can send the curious to find curiosities. She can even send a
stealer of talismans
to find … well, what can I say to you? To find a little
humility,
perhaps. I am certain that she was telling me to leave alone things I did not understand
.

The hunters of the land have always believed in her, knowing that she can control all the woods of the world. In her mind, and in her skills, forests are waiting to be born, ancient forests are waiting for the return of the hunters. Through Ash there is a strange continuity. No matter what has been destroyed, it lives in
her,
and one day can be summoned back
.

She sent us to the horse sacrifice for a reason
.

We must ask: what reason?

I was
riding
the horse when it collided with the hooded man. I remember nearly falling. The horse was bolting. It had two bodies on its back. One alive (me) beginning to burn badly. One dead. The hooded man was struck. I fell, the horse ran on. Then I came home. But I am a ghost
.

Find Ash! Return us to the horses! Something happened!

He had walked quietly to the landing, tiptoeing up the stairs, shaking badly, but with a rage, now, and not with
fear. He stripped off his pyjamas and felt the cool touch of night air on his naked skin. Then he banged loudly on the banister.

As he expected, the door to his bedroom opened and something moved, with blurring speed, into the darkness.

Grey-green man stood at the far end of the landing, and Huxley sensed the way it watched, the way it suddenly grinned.

Jennifer was hissing, ‘What
is
it?’

Huxley moved along the landing. Grey-green came at him and there was static in the air where they almost touched.

‘Go to the study,’ Huxley hissed stiffly. ‘Wait for me …’

There was hesitation in the ghost, then that mocking smile again, and yet … it acceded to the instruction. It passed Huxley, and went downstairs, lurking in the grim darkness.

Jennifer ran out onto the landing, dragging her housecoat around her. There was no sound of disturbance from the boys’ room, and Huxley was glad.

She sounded anxious.

‘Is there someone in the house?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’d better look around.’

Her hand touched his bare back as she peered over the banister into the gloom below. She seemed slightly startled. ‘You’re so cool, now.’

And a lot flabbier
, he thought to himself.

And Jennifer added, ‘You smell fresher.’

‘Fresher?’

‘You needed a good bath. But you smell … cleaner, suddenly …’

‘I’m sorry if I smelled strong before.’

‘I quite liked it,’ she said quietly, and Huxley closed his eyes for a moment.

‘But perhaps it’s the sheets,’ Jennifer said. ‘I’ll change them first thing in the morning.’

‘I’ll investigate downstairs.’

The French windows were open, the study light off. Huxley switched on the desk lamp and peered down at the open page of the journal.

Grey-green man had scrawled the words:
then how do I get back? Must think. Will go to Horse Shrine and stay there. But the blood is hot. You must understand. I am not in control
.

This entry occurred below the response that Huxley had penned to his alter ego’s earlier, substantial account of Ash, and his questions about the nature of their dual existence.

Huxley had written:

And below this entry, grey-green man had scrawled
then how do I get back?

Huxley closed and concealed the journal. He walked out into the garden, and stepped carefully across the lawn to the bushes. The ground was wet with dew, the air scented with raw, rich night perfume of soil and leaf. Everything was very still.

Huxley stepped among the moist bushes of rhododendron and fuchsia. He pressed the wet leaves and flowers against his torso, and found, to his mild surprise, that he was excited by the touch of nature upon his dry, cool body. He rubbed leaves between his fingers, crushed fuchsia flowers, reached down and rubbed his hands over the dewy soil. He drew breath in through his nostrils, filling his lungs, and as he stood so he smeared his hands over his shoulders and belly …

A blur of night-lit movement, the earth vibrating, the undergrowth shaking, and grey-green man was there, shimmering and shadowy, watching him.

They stood in silence, man and ghost, and then Huxley laughed. ‘You frightened me once, but no longer. And yet, I feel sympathy for you, and will try to send you back. By doing that I believe I can release Wynne-Jones.’

Grey-green man took a slow step forward, reaching to Huxley.

Huxley stepped forward too, but ripped up a branch of bush, and swept it at the ghost.