Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (18 page)

Owl grabbed her, flung her to Feather. Iron stepped between them, grim face grey, iron blade flashing in the torchlight.

His hand lashed out, a stinging blow to her face, sending her reeling. Another hand, another blow. She was in a dream. The dancing circle had become shadows, dark against the bright wall of fire, torches burning too hard, too high, too fiercely for them to be real.

The birds taunted her. The slapping blows, wing blows finger blows, blinded her with tears.

‘Help me!’ she shrieked. ‘Let me go!’

Bird heads pecked at her. The white robed man was taller, somehow. His face stretched into a beak, his eyes glittered brightly. There were more of them now – all birds, their bodies cloaked in feathers, hair bristling and on end, their dancing movements the short, jerky movements of crows.

Among them stalked a tall thing, horrible to see, terrifying to hear as it opened its long bill and uttered its cry of anger. It was like a creature on tall stilts, a thin body, thin legs, impossibly high, twice the height of a tall man. Its beak was an arm’s length from face to point.
The long-feathered crown tumbled about its neck as it stalked around the circle, watching Tallis all the time. It suddenly flung itself at the girl, bending low, jabbing its beak towards her but pulling short as Tallis screamed. The glittering eyes that watched her were human, though the rest of the features were those of a heron.

It went up, then, up into the night, graceful, motionless, wings extended and carried out of sight into the darkness by some wind that Tallis could not feel. The music blared, the dancers laughed, people collapsed exhausted on to the grass, the jig finished.

Tallis stood there, shaking, watching the Shadoxmen, seeing how the Owl and the Feather were just ordinary men, laughing with the others, undoing their tight shoulder harnesses to give some relief to the tired muscles below. Tallis stared above her head, where a few stars gleamed. There was nothing flying there.

A dream? A vision? Had she alone seen the stalking bird? Had no one seen Feather striking her round the face?

A vision. A crude after-echo of the hollowing of a few days ago. That was the only explanation.

She saw the piece of antler lying on the ground, where it had been dropped during the frenzy. She bent to take it but a hand snatched at it first. She looked up to see the green-painted girl holding the bone to her chest and backing away, a silly smile on her face. The girl turned and ran, vanishing among the departing crowds.

Tallis walked home in a very grim mood indeed.

For most of the following morning a summer rainstorm kept Tallis sitting miserably in her room, watching the sweeping darkness on the land. But in that time she saw two horsemen canter across a distant field and up the slope to Morndun Ridge. She could see no further detail. Also, her mind was active. She relived the frightening event of the evening before and suddenly understood what had happened. She had created a hollowing albeit unwittingly. Through it, the vengeful spirits of birds had come and briefly possessed the dancing. Tallis felt at once both relieved and regretful. She longed to return to the green in Shadoxhurst.

When the rain stopped she pulled on her coat and told her parents what she was doing. Normally she would have entered Shadoxhurst along the bridleway that crossed the Keetons’ farm; such a journey would have been her own business. But the bridleway was a rough track and would be filthy with mud, now. She would have to walk along
the road. James Keeton had insisted that she always tell them when she was going to walk on the country roads.

She was at the village ten minutes later. She went straight up to the split oak and stood on its most prominently exposed root.

‘You’re an old tree, I know that,’ she said to it. ‘But you’re
oak
. I thought all oaks were my friends. Like Strong against the Storm, who helped me see Scathach. I thought all oaks were on my side. So I was angry last night, when I thought you had helped the bird spirits.’ She leaned forward and ran her fingers over the ridged bark, pressing her hand flat against the tree so that her heat could penetrate its wood. ‘But it wasn’t your fault! I understand that. I learned it this morning. They used you, that’s all. It wasn’t your fault. You’re part of the wood. Even so far away, you’re still part of the wood. I know your name, now. You’re the One Alone. They used you and I shouldn’t have been angry with you …’

From the corner of her eye she noticed the priest, in his shirtsleeves, standing at the open door to the church, watching her suspiciously. She waved to him, stepped away from the tree and walked along the massive, exposed root that pointed towards her own farm, and Ryhope Wood beyond.

She was almost certainly right. The life of the tree reached all the way to the old, dark forest. She could imagine the root as it probed across the mile or so of land to link with the edgewoods of the estate; perhaps it had always been there, the tenuous contact between a solitary adventurer into the brick and tarmac realm of the world and the moist and gloomy world of its birth.

A car pulled up by the roadside and sounded its horn twice, breaking Tallis’s contemplative mood. Mr Williams stepped out from the back of the car, on to the green. Tallis slapped a hand to her mouth, feeling at once very
guilty and very embarrassed. He smiled at her briefly, then plodded over, buttoning up his jacket against the cool summer’s afternoon.

‘It’s just as well that I forgot,’ he said as he came up to her. There was an edge to his voice, Tallis thought.

‘You forgot?’ she said.

‘That we were supposed to meet.’

‘I forgot too. But at least we didn’t get soaked.’

A flash of irritation touched the man’s features. He seemed about to say something, but then changed his mind, smiled and said, ‘No. We didn’t get soaked, did we? Ah well.’ And brightening: ‘Did you enjoy the dancing?’

‘Not much.’

‘You seemed to be having a good time, being whirled around by those burly youngsters. I felt tired; I wanted to think about your strange song; so I went back to the Manor.’ He looked around at the green with its churned up turf and the scatter of litter. Then he looked at the tree, and at Tallis.

‘You’ve got a certain look in your eyes,’ he said, frowning. ‘One of
those
looks. Something’s up. Something has happened. Can you tell me about it?’

‘Old Forbidden Place,’ Tallis said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Old Forbidden Place,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know its true name yet. It’s a place in another world. My brother Harry is lost there, I’m certain of that. I’ve had glimpses of it. And someone – not Harry – has come from that forbidden place to the edge of the wood. Last night I worked out some more of the story, but I still don’t understand the whole thing. And I still don’t know where Harry fits in …’

Mr Williams smiled and shook his head. ‘I can’t understand a word of what you say,’ he said after a moment.
‘But I like the
sound
of what you say: Old Forbidden Place. Yes, it has a ring about it. It sounds mysterious. Unknown.’

‘It is. Very unknown.’

He leaned towards her and spoke quite softly. ‘Darest thou now O soul, walk out with me toward the unknown region. All is a blank before us, all waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.’

‘Yes,’ Tallis said, shivering. ‘Yes. I do.’

Mr Williams seemed taken aback for a moment. Then he chuckled. ‘It’s part of a poem. By Walt Whitman. Your strange name reminded me of it.’

‘Oh.’

‘Your place, your forbidden place … it must have existed long ago. A very long time go.’

‘Longer ago than memory,’ Tallis said. But you mustn’t say the name again. Not until we know its
true
name. I’ve already said it twice, you once.’

Mr Williams nodded amused agreement, then looked at the oak tree, the One Alone. ‘This is a fine old specimen. Three hundred years if it’s a day. Do you think it reaches right down into the earth? Even as far as your forbidden, secret place?’

Tallis said, ‘This is the One Alone. Its name has just come to me and I’ve realized what it is. It’s not a lonely tree at all. It’s part of the wood.’

‘Part of the wood? Which wood?’

‘Ryhope Wood,’ the girl said, and added, ‘where you were walking yesterday.’

‘That’s a mile or more away –’

‘But this tree is a part of it, and probably always has been. Its root tells you that …’

Mr Williams followed her fleeting gesture across the common to the road where the root could be seen to rise above the level of the turf. Tallis went on, ‘If I stand
round here –’ she went round to the far side of the tree – ‘I’m outside the wood. But when I come round … like this … I’m coming into it. The edge of the wood is the
farthest
tree, no matter how far it is from the main forest. That’s how the bird spirits came to me, last night.’

‘Bird spirits?’ Mr Williams asked weakly.

‘Mythagos. They attacked me. I created the gate they came through. I don’t know if I created
them
or not. But they’re definitely mythagos.’

‘Mythagos?’

‘They attacked me. I thought the tree was my enemy, but trees can’t help the way they’re used and mythagos always come from the trees. The birds came to punish me for driving them off from Scathach. Like I told you yesterday. I made the field, where he lay wounded, into a magic place, a secret place. No birds could get into it except as spirits. Bird spirits. For some reason that has caused
anger
. They’re very angry with me.’

After a time of contemplative silence, the old man laughed. ‘This is a game, is it?’

‘No,’ Tallis said, amazed. ‘No. It’s not.’

Frowning: ‘Then you can really work magic?’

‘Simple magic. Simple enough to drive the birds off.’

‘Will you tell me more about it? About Old Forbidden Place?’

She raised a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t say the name again. It’s unlucky.’

‘But will you?’

‘I don’t know the whole story. I can only tell you part of it.’

‘That will do.’

Tallis thought hard. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. She looked up at the One Alone. ‘I’m still learning about it. Tomorrow I might know a little more.’

‘Tomorrow …’ Mr Williams repeated. He came to a
decision, then, and returned to the car, speaking briefly with the driver. The car drove off. When he returned to Tallis he was smiling. ‘I’ve decided to stay. Your story is something that I would very much like to hear. I am about to begin final work on a piece of music and I need some inspiration. If I can’t find original songs –’ he beamed down at the fair-haired girl – ‘perhaps I will hear an original story.’

‘I know lots of stories,’ Tallis said. ‘Would you like to hear the whole story of Bird Spirit Land?’

The old man nodded thoughtfully. ‘But I’d rather hear about you, first. Tell me as we walk. And then we’ll find somewhere to have a cup of tea …’

A while later they were in Stretley Stones meadow, wading through the damp grass to the fallen stones. The sun was out, it was warm again. Tallis showed Mr Williams the ogham markings and explained what she believed them to say; she let him stand beneath the oak where Scathach had lain so helplessly; he closed his eyes and tried to imagine the scene.

When they sat on Scathach’s stone Tallis felt sad for a while and Mr Williams, seeing this, remained thoughtfully, respectfully quiet. When the sadness had passed Tallis told him the story. He sat rapt and silent throughout, and when she had finished he remained staring at her, his head slowly shaking.

‘That’s a good story.’

‘It’s a real story,’ Tallis said. ‘It happened here. It happened to me.’

‘What a dark and gloomy world you paint. Bird Spirit Land sounds like a frightening place; do you believe it really existed?’

‘It exists now,’ Tallis said. ‘I made it. Or at least, I
saw
it. This is it. We’re sitting in it. This meadow. Wherever Scathach is, it exists there too.’

‘In the “long ago”, perhaps? The long past.’

‘In the long past,’ Tallis agreed. ‘I was shown a vision of the place, but I interfered with what I saw. I opened the
hollowing
to Scathach’s world; I used my own mind to do that; but then I attacked the carrion birds, drove them off. That’s why the bird spirits attacked me yesterday. They came to the edge of the wood to try and kill me, but I danced too fast for them …’

It wasn’t true. She shuddered as she caught herself in the lie. She had been helpless in their grip, thrown between them like a rag doll. For whatever reason, they had let her live, leaving her to stumble in the mud and reach for the antler … only to see it snatched away by the green girl, the spirit of the earth from the Shadow Dance.

She realized that her friend was speaking to her. He was saying, ‘Is this the only strange world that you’ve created? The only place of visions? You said something about Old Forbidden Place.’

‘Old Forbidden Place is everywhere,’ Tallis said quietly, staring at the oak tree ahead of her. ‘All the hollowings are just a part of it.’