The Hollowing (39 page)

Richard’s thoughts turned briefly to the
Argo,
on the lake bed, but if that vessel too had been Alex’s creation, now consumed by frost, it held its secret in the depths.

“Come
on,
” Helen urged. She had Richard’s pack, his new cloak of crudely cured skins, a hood against the rain.

He followed her, followed the others, round the wide lake shore, to the valley between high, crumbling cliffs, which led back to the dell and the carved tree.

*   *   *

To avoid freezing, they followed, as far as possible, the pockets and zones of spring and summer. Inevitably there were times, lasting for hours, when they were forced to trek through winter woods, deep with snow and silent, or ice-locked and dangerous. A new life had begun to generate in these landscapes, to replace the vast creatures that now lay or stood like ice-carvings: mastodon, cave bears, elks, shaggy bison, and snarling wolves. Darker, livelier forms of these beasts of the frozen world now emerged, including dire-wolves, which dogged their tracks with obvious intent and wilful abandon of strategy. Lytton confidently declared that these new creatures were “condensing from our own minds, appropriate to the land around us.”

As ever, he seemed in his element, trudging through snowdrifts, cloak swirling, staff bearing his slight weight, white-haired head always turned to the far horizons as he absorbed the world around him, a magus leading his doubting followers.

In the summer wood they had to use force to avoid the dire-wolves, which attacked in groups of three, acting without caution, easily driven back. Helen shot game birds, but they avoided heavier meat since they were travelling fast and light. And they indulged in wary, careful exchange with the mythagos that emerged, usually at dawn or dusk, to share their food and fire, or chatter in strange tongues. There was usually time for Sarin to comprehend the languages of their guests; when she failed, she proved to be adept, as indeed was Richard, at interpreting meaning from sound and gesture.

Their most successful encounter was with a mailed knight, a young man on foot, a blue-eyed and blond warrior from the early Age of Chivalry who entranced Helen with his smile and his descriptions of the river-barge he sought, where his lady’s heart was hidden in the body of the black dog Cunhaval. The hound slept on the afterdeck. A ghost steered the barge. Its destination was a fabled castle.

The knight was named Culloch. He was Durham-born, but had squired at the court at Caer Navon, before taking his oath and shipping out to fight for the liberation of the Holy City in the Crusade.

“How big is this dog?” Helen asked.

The knight licked his fingers as he finished eating and pointed to the tree tops. “As tall as the Cross, lady. It has eaten a king’s ransom in gold from our new minster, and swallowed the purest heart that ever beat within the court and summer-tower of Caer Navon. I shall cut my way with iron into the body of the black dog and release that heart. The Cross will be my strength.”

“Sounds messy,” Helen murmured dryly. “But good luck. God’s speed.”

Culloch lowered his gaze. “You give me courage with your smile and your faith in the Cross. God’s speed yourselves.”

Helen watched him go, a glittering shape in his iron mail, swallowed by shadows within moments.

“In his situation, I think I’d prefer a large lump of poisoned meat.”

*   *   *

Sarin had begun to feel the cold; her exuberance faded, her energy sapped, and Richard and Lacan took it in turns to carry her through the worst of the frozen wastes. Her loss of defiance in the teeth of winter disturbed Lacan, depressed him. He showed a side of his character that Richard found hard to accommodate, a too-easy resignation, a fatalism that perhaps was protecting him against the anticipated grief of the girl’s death.

When he could, Richard bullied the man into exercising a more cheerful and optimistic attitude, at least in front of Sarin herself, and Lacan said, “Damn! You’re right!” hugged Richard, but continued to behave in exactly the same gloomy way.

Helen whispered, “The man’s tired. Deep down, he’s exhausted. To the core. He’s been too many years in his own company, too many years hoping. Give him time.”

“Of course I will,” Richard said irritably. “I understand Lacan well enough. It’s Sarin I’m concerned for. If she needs
his
strength to extend her life, right now she’s dying faster than she need.”

In the summer woods Sarin cheered up, found fresh heart, fresh strength. And at these times it was she who teased the big man, and over the days Richard saw the relationship between the two of them deepen and intensify.

Four days after they had begun their journey inward, they emerged in a downpour from the saturated forest into the heavy ground-haze of a clearing below wide canopy. The robust and serpentine roots that flowed across the ground marked the place as the Mask Tree, and the huge, dark trunk ahead of them was the place where Alex’s imagination was embedded.

Already Richard had seen what Lytton had been shocked to notice: there were no marks now, no masks, no faces on the trunk, nothing but ridged bark, stained with white lichen, infested with black and orange fungal growth, rotting.

Lytton cried out in frustration. “I knew we should have stayed!” But a moment later, as he moved towards the tree, he changed his tone. “No! There
is
something here.”

He began to trace his finger round a shallow oval scratching, throwing his staff to one side, spreading himself against the trunk. “Yes! There’s something … Richard. Quickly! Come here…”

He had found a single design. It was Moondream. Richard recognised it at once, from the bark mask that James Keeton had been clutching on his return from the Otherworld, so many years ago, now: a half-crescent, sharply focused eyes, a half-smile, the same outline. It was Keeton’s daughter’s mask, his only memento of the lost girl.

Richard stared at the crudely carved face, touched its eyes, its mouth.

This has nothing to do with Alex.

He wondered aloud what had happened to the rest of the faces and masks. Had they been re-absorbed, as all of Alex’s creations in the wood had been sucked back? Then why had this particular image survived?

Lytton tapped at the bark, curious for a moment, then enlightened, and he confirmed Richard’s intuitive thought. “This design was not from your son.” He looked back at the face, spread his hands over the shallow tracing. “But if not from Alex—then who? Who could have carved this face? You can see that it’s old. But it’s not ancient.”

The answer was not so much obvious as suggested by memory. If Richard recollected his son’s account correctly, Moondream had been Tallis Keeton’s favourite mask. And it was Moondream that she had dropped for her father to find at the entrance to Ryhope Wood, at the hollowing where Hunter’s Brook entered the forest. Had Tallis herself, then, carved the face that was now etched across the growing and gigantic tree?

*   *   *

A few hours later, with the rain easing off, Sarin came running into the half-light below the spreading branches. Lacan was noisily cracking wood, constructing a temporary shelter along the lines of Helen’s bower. He heard Sarin’s loud call of, “Someone coming!” and pulled into deeper cover. Richard and Lytton followed him, slipping on the wet underfoot and sliding onto their bellies in the cruel embrace of thorn and briar. Sarin pointed to where the undergrowth was moving, and a man stepped out to face the Mask Tree. He seemed dazed: his hair was dishevelled, his face streaked with dirt and blood.

He was wearing a red dressing gown, tied at the front. He was barefoot.

“My God,” Richard whispered, “it’s James Keeton. That’s exactly how I found him, years ago. He ran in front of my car. James Keeton…”

The figure of the man walked unsteadily into the clear space below the high, wide canopy. He was clutching a piece of wood in his hands, holding the object close to his stomach. He stepped up to the trunk of the tree and stared at the face, silent for a long while, shivering with cold, his right hand occasionally reaching out to stroke the heavy bark.

And suddenly he called out Tallis’s name. He repeated the cry, and the name extended into a howl of pain, a wail of despair. Again and again he called for his daughter, dropping the mask, leaning against the tree, hitting his forehead against the wood. His agony reduced Sarin to tears, and Lacan, who was crouched beside her, folded her into his cloak. Richard felt moved to tears himself. He wanted to go to the man, began to do so, and almost struck Lytton when the grey-faced Scot forced him back.

“Don’t interfere. This is not his moment. It’s
Alex’s.
If you want your son, you’ll have to let him come. I
know
he’ll come…”

Lytton quickly scanned the surrounding forest, listening hard for a second approach. Helen held her head in her hands, half watching the screaming, sobbing man at the tree, wincing as the wailing grew louder, shaking her head helplessly. When Richard put a hand on her shoulder she leaned towards him, but still tried to block her ears against Keeton’s appalling sadness.

The ground below them trembled. By the tree, James Keeton had stopped crying. He took a nervous step back, then reached quickly to pick up the Moondream mask, clutching it to his chest as he stepped away from the elm. At the same time the air turned chill and dry, and the noises of the world around them receded, as if the atmosphere had suddenly rarefied.

The tree shimmered with light.

The face of Moondream stood out against the black bark, a thin trace of silver light. No sooner had it been defined, clearly enough for Richard to see the details of the eyes and mouth, than it was lost below other lines and slashes that seemed to burn out of the wood, one face after another, then a proliferation of features, haunting, frightening attributions, male, female, animal, some from the dreamworld. The montage of masks spread rapidly to cover the whole tree. Silver light spilled like a fine spray up into the canopy, down to the distended root-mass where James Keeton still stood, half-hunched, in shock and wonderment, his pale skin reflecting the rich colours of the emerging faces.

Suddenly Keeton again screamed out Tallis’s name, a raw and primal cry of such need, such anguish, that the whole wood seemed shocked and silent for a moment.

And then the trunk of the tree exploded soundlessly, enveloping Keeton in elemental shapes!

Figures streamed through from the dark trunk, ethereal and huge, some running, some riding, some gleaming with armour, others in a swirl of cloaks or skins, colours bright. The ghostly forms flowed around the shattered form of James Keeton, but as each figure reached the edge of the clearing and entered the wood, so it became solid. Around Richard the forest was suddenly alive with movement.

Lytton hissed, “Great God, I didn’t think of this—he’s coming from
inside!
”

A purple-painted man ran towards Richard, a round shield held in one hand, a short sword in the other, hair flying, lips drawn back to expose brilliant white teeth. The figure leapt across the crouching man, crashed into the underbrush, and with an ululation of triumph raced away into the gloom, leaving Richard with an image of faces and whorls and swirls decorating the body from head to feet.

“What are we witnessing?” he asked loudly.

“Witnessing?” Lytton repeated. “Alex’s death! The moment his history was sucked from him. You were in the room at the time. Remember? Look at it! This is an encyclopaedia of what we have
all
inherited. Everything is here! And I can never remember it all. There’s just too much! We must watch for the boy! Watch for the shadow.”

He turned to Lacan and Helen, repeating the instruction. “It will be small, no more than the
shadow
of a boy. When you see it, follow it. Don’t lose it!”

The procession of forgotten heroes continued for a few seconds more and Richard recognised what Helen had called the “Hood” form, and Jacks, and an axe-wielding Viking, and a woman with hair like flowing fire, dressed in chequered leather trousers and jerkin, leading two grey mastiffs on long leashes. This might have been Queen Boudicca, a particular favourite of Alex’s. A wagon and horses came through, driven by hunched, shrouded figures. Warriors walked out of the tree, some of them Greek, some Roman, some painted, some with helmets of striking horror. Women flowed from the tree, green girls, cloaked matrons, women with the look of magic about them, or of the fight for freedom.

Alexander Lytton, his face shining with delight and colour, was uttering a catalogue of recognition as each hunter, warrior, crusader, wizard or wild man passed: “Peredur … Tom Hickathrift. And that’s Hereward the Wake! Fergus, from the Cattle Raid of Cooley. Where’s Cu Chullain? Morgana! Jack the Hound Killer there! Guinevere. And Kei, from Arthur’s court. That’s the Henge Builder of Avebury! A crane hunter … Dick Turpin! The Woman of the Mist. That’s Llewelyn!”

To Richard, they were an army of blindly running ghosts, streaming silently from the tree and vanishing noisily into the woods.

The explosion of life ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

At some point in the procession, James Keeton turned and walked away. Richard was half-aware of his departure, but no one had followed the man. He had stepped away, into the oblivion of memory, into an encounter that was now years in Richard’s past.

Still stunned by what he had seen, Richard watched as the Mask Tree darkened; the carved faces once again had vanished. He imagined they would not return. Whatever their function, that function was now fulfilled.

And yet—a movement in the darkness told of a struggle. A moment later a small shadow burst into the empty clearing and scampered to the left. It was so fleet, so undefined, that for a moment even Lytton hesitated, his gaze on the great creature that was stretching from the trunk, striving to free itself from the tree.

Then he was on his feet and running after the shadow. Richard delayed for an instant only, astonished at the writhing tree-man, its face and body a mass of leaves, glistening branches like tusks twisting from its gaping mouth. Behind it, other twigling limbs were reaching for the cold air of the clearing. A shrill clattering began to sound from them.