Mythago Wood - 1 (16 page)

She was not mine at all. It was not
me
she wanted. It was my elder
kinsman, the man whose mind had fashioned her.

Breaking through that moment's angry reflection came the image of Guiwenneth
spitting on the floor, and speaking Christian's name with utter contempt. Was it
the contempt of one whose affection has been spurned? A contempt now mellowed by
time?

Somehow, I thought not. My panic passed away. She had been afraid of Chris,
and it was not love that had motivated her earlier violent reference to him.

Back in the house, we sat at the table and Guiwenneth talked to me, staring
at me intently, touching her breast, moving her hands in a way that was designed
to illustrate the thoughts behind her alien words. She scattered English through
her dialogue with amazing frequency, but I still failed to understand the story
she was telling. Soon, tiredness, a touch of frustration, shadowed her face, and
though she smiled a little grimly, she had grasped that words were useless. With
sign language she indicated that / should speak to her.

For an hour I told her about my childhood, the family that had once occupied
Oak Lodge, the war, my first love. All of these things I illustrated with signs,
making exaggerated hugging motions, firing imaginary pistols, walking my fingers
along the table, chasing my left hand, finally catching it and illustrating a
tentative first kiss. It was pure Chaplin, and Guiwenneth giggled and laughed
loudly, made comments and sounds of approval, amazement, disbelief, and in this
way we communicated on a level beyond words. I do believe she had understood
everything I had told her, and now had gained a strong picture of my early life.
She seemed intrigued when I talked of Christian as a child, but fell solemn when
I told her how he had disappeared into the woodland.

Finally I said to her, 'Can you understand my words?'

She smiled and shrugged. 'Understand speaking. A little. You speaking. I
speaking. A little.' Again she shrugged. 'In woodland. Speaking . . .' She
flexed her fingers, struggling to explain the concept. Many? Many languages?
'Yes,' she said. 'Many languages. Some understanding. Some . . .' shaking her
head and crossing her opened hands, a clear gesture of negation.

My father's diary had referred to the way a mythago would develop the
language of its creator faster than the reverse process. It was uncanny to watch
and listen as Guiwenneth acquired English, acquired concepts, acquired
understanding almost with every sentence that I spoke to her.

The rosewood clock chimed eleven. We watched the mantelpiece in silence and
when the delicate sound had faded I counted aloud from one to eleven. Guiwenneth
answered in her own language. We stared at each other. It had been a long
evening and I was tired; my throat was dry with talking, my eyes stinging with
dust or ash from the fire. I needed sleep but was reluctant to move from the
contact with the girl. I dreaded her walking back into the woodland and not
reappearing. As it was, I spent the morning restlessly pacing, waiting for her
to return. My need was growing.

I tapped the table. 'Table,' I said, and she said a word which sounded like
'board'.

'Tired,' I said, and let my head drop to one side, making exaggerated snoring
motions. She smiled and nodded, rubbing her hands over her brown eyes and
blinking rapidly. 'Chusug,' she said, and added, in English, 'Guiwenneth tired.'

'I'm going to sleep. Will you stay?'

I went upstairs to my cold bed, and lay awake for more than an hour,
disappointed in one way, yet triumphant: for the first time ever she had stayed
the night in my house.

Progress was being made!

That night, nature advanced upon Oak Lodge in a frightening and dramatic way.

I had slept fitfully, my mind filled with images of the girl asleep by the
fire downstairs, and of her walking through the unnatural growth of saplings
that surrounded the house, her shirt billowing, her hands touching the flexible
stems of the man-high trees. It seemed to me that the whole house creaked and
shifted as the soil" below was pierced and penetrated by the spreading
roots. And in this way, perhaps, I was anticipating the event that occurred at
two in the morning, the dead part of the night.

I awoke to a strange sound, the splintering noise of wood splitting, the
groaning of great beams bending and warping. For a second, as I came to my
senses, I thought it was a nightmare. Then I realized that the whole house was
shaking, that the beech outside my window was being whipped about as if in a
hurricane. I could hear Guiwen-neth's cry from below, and I grabbed my
dressing-gown and raced down the stairs.

A strange, cold wind blew from the direction of the study. Guiwenneth was
standing in the dark doorway to that room, a frail shape in her creased
clothing. The noise began to abate. A powerful and pungent smell of mud and
earth assailed my nostrils as I approached cautiously through the junk-filled
lounge, turning on the light.

The oakwood had come to the study, bursting up through the floors, and
winding and twisting across the walls and ceiling. The desk was shattered,
cabinets broken and pierced by the gnarled fingers of the new growth. Whether it
was one tree or more I couldn't tell; perhaps it was no normal tree at all, but,
an extension of the forest designed to engulf those flimsy structures that had
been made by man.

The room was rank with the smell of dirt and wood. The branches that framed
the ceiling trembled; earth fell in small lumps from the dark, scarred trunks
that had pierced the flooring at eight points.

Guiwenneth walked into this shadowy cage of wood, reaching out to touch one
of the quivering limbs. The whole room seemed to shudder at her touch, but a
sensation of calm had enveloped the house, now. It was as if... as if once the
woodland had grasped the Lodge, had made it a part of its aura, the tension, the
need to possess, had gone.

The light in the study no longer worked. Still astonished by what had
happened, I followed Guiwenneth into the shadowy, eerie chamber, to rescue my
father's journal and diaries from the crumbling desk. A twig of oak twisted, I
swear, to stroke my fingers as I tugged the books from the drawer. I was watched
as I worked, assessed. The room was cold. Earth fell upon my hair, broke in
small lumps on the floor, and where my bare feet touched it, it seemed to burn.

The whole room
rustled;
it whispered. Outside the French windows,
which were still intact, the oak saplings crowded closer, taller than me, now,
growing towards the house in greater abundance.

The following morning I staggered down from a last few hours of fitful, jumpy
sleep, to realize that it was close on ten o'clock, a blustery day outside, with
a sky that threatened rain. The tablecloth was crumpled on the floor by the fire, but
noise from the kitchen informed me that my guest had not yet departed.

Guiwenneth greeted me with a cheery smile, and words in her Brythonic
language that she briefly translated as, 'Good. Eating.' She had discovered a
box of Quaker Oats, and had made a thick porridge with water and honey. This she
was scooping into her mouth with two fingers, and smacking her lips with loud
appreciation. She picked up the box and stared at the dark-robed Quaker who
featured on the front, and laughed. 'Meivoroth!' she said, pointing to the thick
broth, and nodded vigorously. 'Good.'

She had found something that reminded her of home. When I picked up the box I
discovered it was almost empty.

Then something outside caught her attention, and she moved quickly to the
back door, opening it and stepping out into the windy day. I followed her, aware
of the sound of a horse cantering across the nearer meadow.

It was no mythago who rode up to the fence and leaned down to unlatch the
gate, kicking her small mare through into the gardens. Guiwenneth watched the
younger girl with interest and half amusement.

She was the eldest daughter of the Ryhopes, an unpleasant girl who conformed
to all the worst caricatures of the English upper classes: weak-jawed,
dull-eyed, over-opinionated and under-informed; she was horse-obsessed, and
hunt-mad, something that I found personally offensive.

She gave Guiwenneth a long, arrogant look, more jealous than curious. Fiona
Ryhope was blonde, freckled, and exceedingly plain. Wearing jodhpurs and a black
riding jacket, she was - to my eyes - quite indistinguishable from any of the
saddle-crazy debutantes who regularly jumped old barrels and fences in the local
gymkhana.

'Letter for you. Sent to the house.'

It was from Anne Hayden. The letter was simple and short:

Dear Mr. Huxley,

I believe the enclosed are the sheets you were looking for when you came to
Oxford. They are certainly in your father's handwriting. They were tucked inside
an issue of the
Journal of Archaeology.
I believe he had hidden them
there, and read-dressed his own copy of the journal to my father. In one way you
discovered them yourself, since I would not have bothered to send the pile of
journals to the university if you hadn't visited. A kind librarian found the
sheets and sent them back. I have also enclosed some correspondence that may be
of interest to you.

Yours sincerely, Anne Hayden

Attached to the letter were six folded pages from the journal, six pages that
my father had not wanted Christian to discover, six pages that concerned
themselves with Guiwenneth, and with the way to penetrate the outer defences of
the primal woodland . . .

Encounters with the river tribe, the
Shamiga,
with a primitive form of
Arthur, and a Knight, straight out of Malory. This latter quite risky. Observed
a tournament in the older sense, a crazed battle in a woodland clearing, ten
Knights, all fighting in total silence, except for crash of weapons. The Knight
who triumphed rode around the glade, as the others departed on horseback. A
magnificent looking man in bright armour and a purple cloak. His horse wore a
mantle and trappings of silk. I could not identify him in terms of legend, but
he talked to me briefly, in a language I could just recognize: Middle French.

These I list, but it was the fortified village of Cumbarath that was most
significant. Here, staying in a roundhouse for forty days or more (and yet I was
away only two weeks!) I learned of the legend of Guiwenneth. The village is the
legendary palisaded village, hidden in a valley, or across a remote mountain,
where the pure folk live, the old inhabitants of the land who have never been
found by the conqueror. A strong and persisting myth through many centuries, and
startling to me since I lived
within
a mythago . . . the village itself,
and all its inhabitants, are created from the racial unconscious. This, so far,
is the most powerful myth
landscape
in the wood, that I have discovered.

This, then, is part of the dark story of the girl Guiwenneth as told to me:

They were the first days when the legions from the east were in the land.

Two sisters lived in the fort at Dun Emrys, the daughters of the warlord,
Morthid, who was old, weak, and had given in to peace. Each daughter was as fair
as the other. Each had been born on the same day, the day before the feast of
the sun god, Lug. To tell them apart was almost impossible, save that Dierdrath
wore a bloom of heather on her right breast, and Rhiathan the flower of a wild
rose on her left. Rhiathan fell in love with a Roman commander at the nearby
fort Caerwent. She went to the fort to live, and there was a time of harmony
between the invader and the tribe at Dun Emrys. But Rhiathan was barren and her
jealousy and hate grew, until her face was like iron.

Dierdrath loved the son of a fierce warrior who had been slain in battle
against the Romans. The son's name was Peredur, and he had been outcast from the
tribe because he had opposed Dierdrath's father. Now he lived, with nine
warriors, in the wildwoods, in a stony gorge where not even a hare would dare to
run. At night he came to the wildwood edge and called to Dierdrath like a dove.
Dierdrath went to him, and in time she carried his child.