Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) (7 page)

Rebecca used the remote control to switch off the television. She hefted Daniel in her arms and stood up, then sat the murmuring boy on his home-made
‘stimulus truck’, a wheeled cart with dangling objects, some soft, some hard, some noisy. At once Daniel started to use his feet to move around the wide kitchen, batting at the shapes and making incoherent howling sounds. He never laughed.

‘Lady Macbeths are both the destroyers and builders of the songlines, at least in the remote tribes that Flynn is studying, and which I visited for a while. There’s a lot below the surface in any culture, and sometimes you just get hints about how the rituals are governed. It’s not that they’re secret – they sometimes are – just that they’re obscure. You can think of a songline as a barrier, or as a marker for a moment in the dreamtime, or as a place perceptible only to a particular form of consciousness. If you take the example of a wall, you need to maintain the fabric of the wall, or it rots and falls away. If the wall is made by song, and the songs define both the land and the totemic spirits of that land, then that wall still needs to be sustained and maintained by new song.

‘Where does that song come from? It’s born, of course, born in certain children of the tribes. The Lady Macbeths scour the tribes for those songs, and they literally
sing
them out of the child, then take them to the line, and sing them out, sing them back, make the songline strong again.’

Martin considered this as he drank his way through a full pitcher of cider.

‘Is Flynn suggesting that Daniel is stealing your songs?’

‘He’s afraid of that. I can’t think why. The songlines work differently here …’

‘Sing to me,’ Martin said, and after a moment, perhaps recognising the concern in his face, Rebecca leaned forward on the pine table and sang.

Her words filled the warm space. The tune made Martin shiver with recognition until he, too, was joining in, two voices gently singing in the kitchen of the farmhouse, while Daniel was silent, his arms relaxed, his gaze fixed on nowhere, as if he, too, were listening to the melody.

3

But Flynn’s intuition, from half the world away, had been right.

Martin had been up to Paris for the day to meet a small orchestra company interested in employing him to redesign their logo. He had taken the opportunity to buy artist’s materials, then went to the Place D’léna, to the Oriental collection of the Musée Guimet, seeking inspiration if not for the new commission, at least for future work.

It was after ten at night before he arrived back at Broceliande. He was surprised to find Jacques sitting, half-dozing by the wood stove, the television tuned to a riotously unfunny gameshow.

Daniel was awake but silent, curled up on the sofa,
thumb firmly in mouth, apparently oblivious even to the sudden draught from the door.

Martin woke the old man, and Jacques stood up, walking stiffly to the lad and stroking fingers on the pale face. He smelled of brandy.

‘I must have dozed off. He seems fine, though. Good as gold. He’s even been humming a tune. You’re making progress, obviously.’

‘Where’s Rebecca?’

‘I’m not sure. She was upset about something. Asked me to come and look after Daniel. I’ll be off, now, if you don’t mind. It’s been longer than I expected. That’s not a complaint,’ he added hastily. ‘Any time. You know that. It’s just that my joints, these days, do seem to like bed by about nine o’clock. Goodnight, Martin.’

‘Goodnight. And thanks.’

Jacques walked awkwardly to the door, closing it behind him. Daniel stirred and made sounds, reaching into the void. Martin lifted him and hugged him and the boy relaxed again.

After a moment or two, as Martin rocked him, holding the long-legged child to his chest, Daniel started to hum. It was not tuneful, but it was familiar. Martin felt a dual reaction: of delight, and of apprehension. It was the song Rebecca had hummed and voiced those few nights before, after Flynn’s second letter.

‘Enough, now. Enough,’ he said suddenly, putting a finger on the boy’s lips. Daniel squirmed, frowning, watery eyes unfocused. But he did not object when he was laid down on the sofa and covered with a blanket.

Rebecca came home at midnight. She was dishevelled
and distressed, the hem of her skirt filthy, her boots caked with mud. There was moisture on her greying hair, and apple blossom, which Martin picked away.

‘What’s happened?’

‘How was Paris?’

‘Paris was fine. I have some work, not much, but something. What’s happened?’

She went round to Daniel and kissed him. The boy shifted restlessly. She was whispering something to him and Martin stepped closer. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

Her look was one of fear and anger, a challenge to him to stay back.

‘I’m telling him that I don’t begrudge him anything, that he can take what he needs. What else can I do? He’ll take it anyway.’

‘Song?’

‘He’s taken it, Martin. It isn’t there any more. Flynn was right …’

‘One letter from the outback and you succumb to the suggestive power of it? How can he possibly steal a song? Maybe he’s learned it—’

‘He’s stone
deaf
!’

‘We assume that. But we don’t know that he doesn’t have some other way of receiving information! You can’t have lost the song!’

‘Well I have.’

‘This is nonsense.’

‘It’s not nonsense to
me
, damn you.’

She began to cry, sitting by her son, her head in her hands. When she looked up, through moist eyes, she was grim. ‘I’m frightened. For three years I’ve been
willing life into this boy. It never occurred to me that he might take part of
me
. I offered it, but now that it’s happening, I’m afraid of it.’

‘He’s not taking your life, Beck. Every child copies, learns by imitation.’ He looked at the peaceful boy. He thought,
every normal child, that is
. How could Daniel absorb the experience of his parents, when he was so blocked off from normal sensory experience?

‘Sing the song, Beck. Sing “The Unquiet Grave”.’

‘I would, Martin. If I could I would. But it isn’t there any more.’

Martin sang it. At once, as if aware of the sound, Daniel started to hum the tune, tunelessly, a ragged accompaniment. ‘Join in, Beck.’

And she tried. She opened her mouth, she watched Martin’s mouth, she struggled to find the song, but the song was gone.

Later she sang ‘Frère Jacques’, demonstrated that it was not something affecting her language, she had not had a stroke …

But almost at once, little Daniel began to hum the same old French tune, the music behind the roundelay. Rebecca kept singing, and Martin joined in, but after a few minutes – and it was now very late – Rebecca fell silent.

When she picked up the boy, she was crying. She started to carry him to his room, he was dozing now, but turned at the door from the kitchen. Grimly, yet with some humour, she said, ‘I never did like that song. So it’s no loss. But it’s gone, Martin. It’s gone like “The Unquiet Grave” …’

*

There was
life
in the boy. In his dark world, with all tests suggesting that he had no sight at all, and no language ability, he began to flourish. He began to sing, and in a matter of weeks his thin voice was in tune, the sounds crisp and haunting, even though no words accompanied the melodies he vocalised.

Rebecca declined. After a period of fear she became unnervingly complacent about the theft she believed was occurring. ‘He’s my son. What’s mine is his. What’s a song to me if it helps him break down his own walls?’

Next to go were the songs she had sung as a child, the Christmas carols, the simple hymns, the nonsense rhymes, the folk songs that Eveline and Albert had taught them.

The words remained Rebecca’s. It was strange for Martin to see the doting mother and the languorous, lean child draped across her lap, the child intoning ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, while Rebecca spoke the words in rhythm with the infant’s humming.

Where once Rebecca’s head had been filled with music, now it was a wasteland. She could imagine Mozart, but not articulate it. She could give voice to a note, to a meaningless sequence of notes, even to a scale, but when it came to singing, she was lost. Her appreciation of music remained the same, in fact became a source of solace. In a state of melancholy she would lock herself away in the bedroom and play CDs,
increasingly loudly, of Fauré, Mozart and Mahler, composers whose work could create in her heart a feeling of great strength. But she could no longer sing with the recorded sound, she could only hear it, gaining and maintaining a spiritual strength that allowed her to caress and adore her growing son. What truly concerned her was that she seemed to be suffering a sort of tinnitus – her ears rang, her voice echoed in her head when she spoke and her hearing was slightly dulled.

Daniel was more active than ever. At night, he would bang on the window, most particularly when there were people on the path. Martin took him out, one black, cold morning, leading the lad, well-wrapped against the chill, in a quick pursuit of the local children who were dancing through some spectre of their own envisioning. Daniel gave no sign of seeing that ghost, but he reached out to the source of activity, and babbled meaninglessly in his childish tongue.

The specialist in Rennes could well understand Martin’s anxiety, when Daniel was presented for examination. ‘Whatever is at fault with his sight, I’m afraid you’ll have to live with it, short of a miracle. But the acquisition of language is a complex process, and it comes as a surprise, but not a shock to me, to discover that your son is approaching language through song. I’m quite certain that he’ll begin to talk within a very short time.’

‘The boy is deaf! He can’t hear. How can he start to speak?’

‘I know! This is what is so beguiling. As far as our
tests are concerned he has no response to auditory stimulation at all. Nevertheless: he
hears
. And everything suggests he’ll soon start to talk coherently.’

Indeed, the day before the boy’s fourth birthday, Martin entered his room in the early hours to find again that his son was pressed against the window.

‘Come on, Daniel. Back to bed, now.’

He lifted the boy down, then felt the tug of a fist on his shirt collar. Dead eyes stared vaguely nowhere in the half-light, but from the boy’s mouth hissed the words, ‘Put me back!’

‘Daniel …’ Martin breathed, shocked by the sound, instantly suspecting that he had simply dreamed the words.

‘Put me
back
,’ Daniel said determinedly.

‘Can you understand what I’m saying? Can you hear me speaking?’

‘
Back
!’ hissed the boy.

‘Back on the window? What are you doing there?’

‘Put me
back
.’

Martin lifted the lad back to the sill. Daniel flung himself against the glass, his breath misting, his nose flattening, his fingers spread out like the suckered pads of a frog. He stood there, trembling, breathing gently, and every so often his head jerked, as if he were listening.

As far as Jacques and Suzanne were concerned, this was a miracle and to be celebrated as such. Father Gualzator came round and listened to the boy’s sharp, staccato speech. Daniel sat back in the chair, his legs drawn up against his chest, his eyes unfocused; he
shouted words, random phrases, each uttered in a tone of delight: ‘Eat! The woods! Bright water! Bubbling. The well. Keep him in. Here they are! Food, please. Falling, always falling. Hah hah!’

‘This is quite remarkable,’ the priest whispered. ‘I’ve watched a hundred children start to talk – signals first, then grammar, slowly becoming coherent. Daniel seems to be using scattershot. His pronunciation is excellent. The words clearly have meaning for him, but no meaning to the rest of us.’

‘Kill bird! Stone sinking. Into the sea! Storm coming. Keep him down. Shadows!’

‘It’s as if he’s creating his vocabulary from scratch. There can be no meaning to these shouted words; it has a curious feeling of Tourette Syndrome, but he communicates a sense of understanding, which I find powerful and alarming …’

‘The dell! The shaft! Drowning! Bread on the table. Cold home down. Getting free! Sing song, sing song. Hah hah …’ a curiously knowing laugh and a body posture that suggested listening. ‘Oh yes! The shadows! Dancing on the path! Almost out. Cheese!’

Daniel stumbled from his seated position and reached the table, scrabbling among the plates for the ripe brie, gouging it with his fingers until Martin eased his small hand away, led him to a chair and guided his touch to a slice of the food, with a soft piece of bread. Daniel ate and laughed, bobbing on the chair, dark hair flopping about his pale face, as if sharing some secret joke.

He had also discovered the TV, now that he had
acquired a rudimentary degree of hearing, and he laughed furiously at some of the programmes, even when the subject matter was serious or completely inane.

These were the weeks leading to Christmas, and it seemed that each day something new that was also odd occurred. The children who occasionally ran the path, dancing with the spirits, now took to screaming with terror, disturbing the early hours of morning with their fear as they scattered and ran. None of them would talk to their parents about the cause of the panic, but it was clear that the apparitions, once so benign, now seemed nightmarish.

This change for the worse didn’t last very long. Soon there was just the drifting, dreamy dancing, again, and the sound of laughter and excitement.

Conrad became very ill. He would come to the house, wheezing badly, and beg food and medicines, but any attempt to take him in, to nourish and nurture him through these bouts of illness, was met by his instant departure. A pale man, his eyes hollowing out, his lips drawing back to expose the cold, blank skull behind his kindly, canny face, he would accept expectorants, aspirins, and vitamin pills, but not hospitality.

Elsewhere, near Broceliande, he treated himself with infusions of various herbs, bringing the petals and leaves to Yvette, who created the potions for him.