Avilion (Mythago Wood 7) (6 page)

‘Go home. You’ve come very far.’

Jack suddenly became aware of her, turning sharply, his face so close to hers that she pulled back slightly, then smiled, leaning forward again. He said, ‘I pushed further. But I can’t push much further than this. Perhaps it’s enough. I feel cold here.’

She listened to him in silence; stayed silent; then said, ‘I can’t be sure of what you’re feeling. But when I tried to come to the old Lodge yesterday, I was terrified. You forced your way here against your fears. I’d like to try again: for the house. Tomorrow. If you’ll help me.’

‘Of course.’

‘Help me overcome the terror.’

‘I understood what you meant.’

‘And we can talk?’

‘Yes. Of course. You might even meet my grandfather.’

He noticed the way Julie’s breathing changed, how her whole body tensed, her heart racing for a moment, her sweat changing odour suddenly, exuding excitement.

Whatever it was he had eaten, Jack was suddenly wretched again, and crawled to the huge stone bowl where he had earlier emptied his stomach. He retched for a second time, clinging to the carved edge of the basin, then pressed the metal button with its little cross for a flow of water to swirl away the mess. And after that, without looking back, he picked up his pack and ran, cumbersomely but with increasing strength, out of the town and towards the wood.

Back in the tranquillity of the study, he wondered if Huxley had been there during the day.

It was clear that his grandfather had returned to Oak Lodge, however briefly, since the notebook had gone, and Jack doubted that anyone else would have removed it.

Iaelven

Shortly before dawn Jack had visitors. He had been expecting them.

The flickering light of torches appeared at each window of the study, the flame burning a strange green. At the same time the soft trilling of pipes began again, their rising and falling tunes entrancing and distracting. It was the sound of pipes that had alerted Jack earlier to the arrival of a band of Muurngoth.

He had seen the signs of them along the river, close to where he’d been forced to hide his boat. It didn’t surprise him that they had now come to the edge. It was what they did: seeking to steal from the outside world, to abduct and remove, to pillage life to take back to their own enclosed realms, where time was ruled by a set of whims different to those of Ryhope Wood itself.

Jack was prepared for the visit and had armed himself with iron and arrows. He had found a bow among Huxley’s museum artefacts that could still pull efficiently, although he wouldn’t risk using the willow to its full capacity. There was something about everything that Huxley had collected that suggested life, but brittle life; newness, but a certain fragility due to age.

He knew how to handle Muurngoth in small numbers, though they were dangerous. If the pipes began to shrill and the Muurngoth began to sing in their distant, echoing voices, the human part of him would be as susceptible as any other human to their summoning charms. They had been called by many names, he knew from his education at the villa.

He tried to assess the size of the group, first by listening to the bone pipes - he heard four - and then by counting torches: two at the windows, but a further four on the woodland side of the lodge. When the torch at the outer window vanished, he darted there and scanned the darkness, noticing three altogether. Eight, then, which probably meant ten or twelve, since some would be hugging the darkness, unlit, waiting.

Jack strung the bow, found an iron-tipped arrow - silver would have been better - and strode to the flame at the double doors to the garden. As he came to the glass panels, reflection confusing him for a moment, he saw the eyes of the creature that was searching the interior. They were looking down at him!

He took an involuntary step back, startled to realise the height of this investigating Iaelven. Not Muurngoth, not the small, teasing creatures he had often come across during his youthful years in the wood: these were Amurngoth! They were a far more dangerous species of Iaelven. He had seen them only once before.

He thought back to the signs, the traces he had seen on the river. Yes, now he remembered that the fire-pits had been large, the temporary wooden enclosures too wide for the less robust form of this life.

But they would still respond to his defences. Jack stepped forward again and unlatched the French windows, pulling them in with his bow hand as he thrust the iron-tipped arrow forward with the other.

The Amurngoth looked at him through the narrowed vertical slits of its eyes. The stink that came from it was overwhelming. Its pursed mouth stretched into a parody of a human smile and it shook its head slowly, the long frill of its hair flowing like weed in water.

It made a whispering noise, then sang briefly, a sound that set Jack’s skin crawling and which made him falter, almost dropping the pointed and drawn arrow.

But his shadow stepped forward, screeching loudly, drew back the bowstring and pressed the iron point of the arrow against the Amurngoth’s bare-boned chest.

It retreated, dropping the torch. Shrilling sounds, and a chatter like magpies, signalled the sudden and rapid departure of the raiding band, though Jack noticed, with human eyes and Haunter instinct, that they moved along the edge, rather than retreating inwards.

They were out for prey, and they clearly had Shadoxhurst in their sights.

 

The Amurngoth were the true ‘stealers’. Change-hunters. They stole the new and left their own behind. They carried a supply of shards, unshaped pieces of wood, usually rowan or willow, and when they found the opportunity to steal, they were adept at shaping the shard to reflect the stolen life, usually that of an infant child, sometimes an older child, though that involved a great deal of effort. In Jack’s father’s time, the Amurngoth had all but disappeared, though, in the generations before, the Amurngoth had become a considerable and tangible presence in the outer world. It was akin to a slow invasion. It had worked well for many generations; but the Amurngoth had been frustrated by the one thing they could not control: change.

They never changed, and they lived by different rules of time. The world they coveted changed and was steady in the passing of days.

The days, eventually, had passed the Amurngoth by. On the outside world, at least.

But they were here again now, and Jack couldn’t help but think that they had been following him. This was more of his Haunter’s instinct. Having seen the traces of them by the river, mistaking them for the smaller kind, he’d assumed they existed at that location. But perhaps they had merely overtaken him.

His journey from the Villa to the edge had been an opening of a channel, perhaps. He felt alarmed at the thought, since it meant he might have put the small town over the rise in danger, all because of his curiosity.

Could they move that far from the edge of Ryhope Wood? It was a consoling thought that if a half-human could only just make it, a non-human would be drawn back far more quickly. Nevertheless, he would have to find a way of warning the priest without alarming him, and suggest he find a way to quietly spread the word: there is danger at the edge.

The torch that the Amurngoth scout had dropped had ceased to flare, but it would still be useful. It burned again as Jack picked it up, but the flame died as he placed it in the kitchen sink. The chaotic chorus of birds was signalling first light and he made a rapid inspection of the dew-frosted land, walking rapidly as far as the silent outskirts of Shadoxhurst itself, inspecting the pasture and the rough tracks for signs of the Iaelven, but he saw nothing but animal traces.

Returning to the sticklebrook, he stood at the place where twin alders crossed and let the Haunter look for signs of the band.

They had been here. This was where they had found the open land. But they had not progressed further than this, returning instead to the deeper wood, and moving towards the Lodge on one side, and . . . yes . . . they had divided into two groups, the other exploring away from the house.

Everything was silent now. There would be no piping, no singing, no enchanting summons. Not now, not in the day. But the Haunter was uncertain. It sensed that the Amurngoth were still close, folded up in their nests, awake and canny, listening and learning.

 

Tired and hungry, Jack returned to Oak Lodge and savaged open another of the cans from the larder. The contents were soft and smooth, tasting of very little that he recognised, and he ate it with the chewy but sweet bread that Julie had brought him the day before. Once again, he tried to remember the joy of his mother Guiwenneth’s sharp-flavoured cooking, the solid, fatty meats, the belly-satisfying grain cakes, the scalding and soothing broths.

He finished the can and the bread and made a quiet decision to go hunting later - but beyond the edge, not within it. There might well be new game to find in the hinterland around Shadoxhurst.

As the empty can clattered into the sink, so a sound came from above, as if an animal had been suddenly startled.

It surprised Jack as well, and he reached at once for his bow and arrows, wiping the blade of his iron knife clean and sheathing it.

The sound had come from the room where - he tried to remember the way this house was constructed - yes, where his uncle Christian had stored his belongings, slept, and prepared for the day.

Jack went upstairs; there was little point in being quiet since the wooden boards creaked loudly, several of them threatening to give way beneath his hesitant step, so much so that he almost ran to the landing and then walked purposefully to the open door of Christian’s room.

He saw a bed that was now dishevelled, a scatter of books, an open wardrobe, the clothes scattered.

A voice whispered, ‘Chris?’

Turning, he saw his grandfather standing at the top of the stairs. Huxley was staring at him, yet through him. The old man held shirts and trousers in his arms; in his right hand he held the school notebook in which he had begun to keep his latest record. He had a vacant look and was wildly unkempt, his trousers creased, his feet bare. He had shaved his beard roughly, and there was dried blood on his neck and cheek. His hair was sticking out in spikes, perhaps the result of a restless sleep.

He had been here all night. While the Amurngoth had probed the edges of the Lodge, Huxley had been upstairs all the time!

‘Hello, George. Hello, Grandfather. Can you see me?’

‘Chris?’

‘Jack. It’s Jack.’

‘Steven?’

‘No. Not Steven. Jack.’

Jack approached the man cautiously. The rank odour from the man’s body was suddenly overwhelming, no doubt the same smell of sweat and travel, of distraction and the wild that would have greeted the two boys on Jack’s first appearance at the edge of Ryhope.

‘You need a bath, old man. A good wash.’

‘Chris?’

Huxley was staring into a different time; whether into a truly remembered time, or a time created out of the mythago’s dreams, Jack had no way of knowing. Was this the real man, returned after many years’ absence? Or a mythago drawn from Jack’s human side? Haunter, the wildwood aspect of Jack, whispered: not real.

And yet this Huxley, this risen presence, knew what he had had, knew what had been in his life, knew his sons, and knew that he had given his life to documenting the apparitions and the phenomena, even the nature, of Ryhope Wood.

In his right hand he clutched the simple journal in which he - a mythago - was accounting for his new existence in the home from which he had vanished in 1946, a disappearance that had not resulted in a reappearance until now.

Jack stared hungrily at the tattered notebook. Had his grandfather been writing during the night? He had obviously been curled up on Christian’s narrow bed; he had raided the wardrobe for clothes; he had surrounded himself with the tangible memories of one of his two sons.

But had he written in the journal? And had he proceeded beyond that question mark after the letter Y?

Was there anything, yet, about Yssobel?

George Huxley seemed to wake from a daydream. He became aware of the clothing he was clutching and let it drop. His gaze still vacant, still not aware of his grandson, he stumbled awkwardly down the stairs and into his study, sitting down heavily at the desk, smoothing out the pages, staring for a moment at the garden windows. Then he plucked a pencil from the holder and started to write.

 

Jack found a cushion, tossed it to the floor in front of the cabinet of flint and bronze artefacts, and sat down, folded his arms and watched Huxley. They were face to face across the room, and occasionally Huxley looked up, looked directly at Jack, but in a distracted way, as if thinking rather than seeing, returning quickly to the rapid scrawl of words.

There was something of a fever in the older man. His breathing was loud, with long pauses, gasps of understanding, little sighs of satisfaction, and the occasional groan of frustration. And he talked constantly, though the words were uttered so sibilantly, and in so low a voice, that Jack could make out very little.