Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (33 page)

‘Go to the Horse Shrine! I’ll meet you there tomorrow.’

Grey-green man didn’t cower, but there was something about it, something less triumphant than before. It hovered, then withdrew, then turned (or so Huxley thought) to stare again at its alter ego. It seemed to be questioning.

Huxley squeezed sap from the torn branch and rubbed it on his face.

‘She liked the smell,’ he said, and laughed as he tossed the branch aside, before turning and entering the house.

Locking the French windows behind him.

Jennifer was sitting up in bed, the covers round her knees. She stared at Huxley by lamplight, her face puzzled, anguished.

‘I want you to tell me what’s going on,’ she said quietly, firmly. She was looking at him, staring at him, taking in his nakedness. He imagined he knew what she was thinking: he did not look like the body she had so recently felt against her. He was broader, chubbier, less fit.

‘It will take some time.’

‘Then take time.’

He climbed into bed beside her and on a new and strong impulse turned towards her, putting his arm across her to turn out the lamp.

‘I would like to kiss you first,’ he said. ‘And then I’ll tell you everything.’

‘One kiss, then. But I’m angry, George. And I want to know what’s happening …’

14

The boys were at school. Huxley entered their room and stood, for a moment, surveying the truly appalling mess that the lads had left after a weekend of playing, pillow fighting, and reading. They had been making a model boat, and against their father’s instructions had brought the model up to their bedroom. The floor, the surfaces, the bed itself, were covered with bits of reed.

He reached down and picked up several sheets of white paper with pencil drawings. They were the blueprints for the model: crude, but skilful, and he recognised Christian’s imagination at work here. He was impressed. Plan view, side view, rear elevation, cross section …

Of the ship itself there was no sign. It was an ambitious project. They usually contented themselves with smaller, wooden models.

The room was quiet and he closed his eyes for a moment, summoning the imaginations at work here. He banished from his mind the smell of unwashed socks that instantly struck his consciousness. What he wanted was to feel the
fantasies
of the boys, their dreams, and in this room he might be able to touch the edge of those dreams.

It was an odd thought, and yet: he was convinced that one of the boys had created the Ash mythago.

He went through their drawers, where clothes were crushed and crumpled, apple-cores rotted, penny dreadfuls were concealed, and rock hard ends of sandwiches – made for midnight feasts – nestled side by side with pictures torn from magazines.

Eventually he found the fragments of wood and bone that Ash had left. They were still in their leather container. Huxley placed them on the desk, rolled them over the surface, remembered the time last winter when Snow Woman had left these items at the gate.

Then he went over to the bed and sat down, staring at the magic from across the room.

Why did you leave these pieces? Why? Why did you come to Oak Lodge? Why did you destroy the chickens? Why did you ensure that Steven would see you?

Why?

Steven and his passion for presents, his need for gifts. Had he created a mythago that was designed to fulfil that need in him?

Give me something. Bring me something. Bring me a gift. Give me something that makes me feel … wanted …

Was she Steven’s mythago, then? Gift-bringing Ash. But what sort of gift was implied in two fragments of thorn, and a piece of wild cat?

Perhaps Steven was intended to wear them. Perhaps then he would journey, in the same way that Huxley had journeyed. These bits of wood represented a different forest, though.

Why did you come out of the wood? Why did you leave these fragments? Why the chickens? What did you hope to achieve?

He thought back to the time in the Horse Shrine. Ash had watched him closely and carefully for a long while, and perhaps there
had
been disappointment in her face? Was she expecting someone else?

She had been waiting for someone. She had been at the Horse Shrine since the winter, if the evidence of the waste spoils was to be believed. She had been trying to make contact with the Huxleys, and yet all she had done was send George Huxley on a nightmarish trip to a freezing wood, long in the past …

If she had wanted Steven, what had she wanted to do with him?

And if Wynne-Jones
had
been present in the same ancient mythago-realm – and the grey-green man suggested that perhaps he had – what had Ash wanted with
him?

How had he come to play a part in the same ancient sequence?

Why had he played any part at all, if Ash had wanted
Steven …?

Huxley prowled the room, drinking in the disorder, tapping the imagination that reverberated here.

Steven and Ash … a shocking visitation to the henhouse … a bed of dead hens …
just like in the story …

He went quickly to the window, staring down at the yard, the spring sunshine. He tried to replay the whole of that snow-deadened encounter, after Christmas.

What had Steven said to his mother? ‘Got them all … just like in the story …’

What story?

Steven hadn’t seen inside the shed, but Huxley had told him that all the hens had been killed. A fox had done it, he said, and Steven had seemed to accept that statement, despite the fact that Ash had clearly been to the henhouse herself.

What story?

Steven had said, ‘That old drummer fox …’

Huxley had taken no notice, and Jennifer had simply responded to the shock of losing all their hens.

Who was that ‘old drummer fox’?

He looked at the scattered books, searched among them, but found nothing. He called for Jennifer and she came into the room, frowning at the mess. She looked as tired as she felt. It had been a long night, and a long talk, and Huxley had told her much that she should have known before, and explained about the supernatural event that was occurring.

Not unsurprisingly, Jennifer was shocked, and was still shocked, and had spent an hour on her own, fighting a feeling of nausea. He had left her alone. It had seemed inappropriate to try to explain that in a way she had slept only with her husband, that no man from this, the real world, had touched her apart from Huxley. But that was not how she saw it, and there were other considerations too, no doubt.

‘Drummer Fox and Boy Ralph? That was Steven’s favourite story for years, when he was much younger. He was – obsessed with it …’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Of course,’ she said acidly. ‘You never read
anything
to the boys. I did all the reading.’

‘Rebuke accepted,’ Huxley said quickly. ‘Can you find the book? I must see that story.’

She searched the shelves, and the scatter of books on the floor, opened the wardrobe where albums, school books, and magazines were stored, but couldn’t find the volume of tales that included Drummer Fox.

Huxley felt impatient and anxious. ‘I must know the story.’

‘Why?’

‘I think it may be the key to what is happening. What can you remember of it? You said you’d read it to him—’

‘Hundreds of times. But a long time ago.’

‘Tell me the story.’

She leaned back against one of the desks and gathered her thoughts. ‘Oh Lord, George. It’s so long ago. And I read so many stories to them, Christian especially …’

‘Try. Please try.’

‘He was a sort of gypsy fox. Very old, older than any human alive. He’d been wandering Europe for centuries, with a drum, which he beat every dawn and dusk, and a sack of tricks. He either played tricks on people to escape from them, or entertained them for his supper. He also had a charge, an infant boy.’

‘Boy Ralph.’

‘That’s right. Boy Ralph was the son of a Chief, a warrior of the olden days. But the boy was born on a highly auspicious day and his father was jealous and decided to kill the infant by smothering him. He was
planning to use the carcase of a chicken for the vile deed.

‘Drummer Fox lived at the edge of the village, entertaining people with his tricks and sometimes giving them prophecies. He liked the boy and seeing him in danger stole him and ran away with him. The King sent a giant of a warrior after the fox, with instructions to hunt him down and kill them both. So Drummer Fox found himself running for his life.

‘Wherever Drummer Fox went he found that humans were tricky and destructive. He didn’t trust them. Some were kind and he left them alone. He always paid a small price for whatever he had taken from them. But others were hunters and tried to kill him. At night he would make his bed in their chicken sheds, making mattresses and blankets from the dead chicks—’

Huxley slapped his knees as he heard this. ‘Go on …’

‘He used to say [and here, Jennifer put on a silly country voice], “Nothing against the chicks but their clucking. They’d give me away. Give me away. So better a feather bed than a nice egg in the morning. Sorry chicks …”’

‘And then he’d silently kill the lot of them.’

‘Of course. This
is
a story for children.’ Huxley shared Jennifer’s smile. ‘Anyway, that isn’t all. Drummer Fox made the infant Ralph a plaything of the heads of the chickens, threaded on a piece of string.’

Huxley was astonished and delighted. ‘Good God! That’s exactly what had happened in the chicken house. And Steven never saw inside! He didn’t know
about that particularly gruesome piece of Ash’s game. Go on. Go on!’

‘That’s more or less it, really. The fox is on the run. He gets what he can from the human folk he meets, but if in danger he tricks the humans into the forest where they invariably get crushed under the hooves of the Hunter who’s following the fox. It’s quite murderous stuff. The boys lapped it up.’

‘And how is it resolved? Is it resolved?’

Jennifer had to think for a moment, then she remembered. ‘Drummer Fox gets cornered in a deep, wooded valley. The Hunter is almost on him. So the fox makes a mask and puts it on and goes up to greet the giant warrior.’

‘What mask?’

‘That’s the clever part. For a child, at least. He puts on a
fox
mask. He tells the Hunter that he’s a local man who has tricked Drummer Fox by pretending to be a renegade fox as well. Drummer Fox has revealed his weakness to him. To destroy the fox all the Hunter needs to do is to disguise himself on horseback with dry rushes and reeds.’

‘Aha. The ending loometh.’

‘The Hunter duly ties reeds all over his body and—’

‘Drummer Fox sets light to him!’

‘And away he gallops, trailing flame and cursing the Fox. The nice or nasty little coda is that one day Drummer Fox and Boy Ralph are making their way back through a dark wood when they hear a hunting horn and the smell of burning.’

‘The stuff of nightmares,’ Huxley said, pacing about
the room, thinking hard. ‘No wonder the boy is afraid of horses. Good God, we’ve probably traumatised him for life.’

‘It’s only a story. The stories the boys tell each other are far more gruesome. But then they’ve leafed extensively through the copy of
Gray’s Anatomy
on your shelf.’

‘Have they! Have they indeed! Then at least their stories will be colourful.’

‘Does it help? Drummer Fox, I mean?’

Huxley swung round and walked up to Jennifer, gathering her into his arms and hugging her. ‘Yes. Oh yes. Very much indeed.’ She seemed startled, then drew back, smiling.

‘Thank you for letting me know about your madness,’ she said quietly. ‘Whatever I can do …’

‘I know. I don’t know
what
you can do for the moment. But I feel deeply relieved to have told you what is happening. The grey-green figure frightens me, even though I know it is an aspect of
me
.’

Jennifer went pale and looked away. ‘I don’t wish to think about that any more. I just want you to be safe. And to be near me more often …’ The look in her eye as she glanced at him made Huxley smile. They touched hands, and then went downstairs.

15