The Hollowing (15 page)

*   *   *

Richard followed Helen to the lodge. She was eating a sandwich and writing notes in a thick pad. A mug of tea was cooling beside her. “Elizabeth’s just crossed the bridge. She seems very upset.”

Glancing up, Helen nodded, swallowed her food and motioned Richard to sit. “She’ll be OK. Ben was her lover. He’s long dead and she knows it. We found his body a year ago. But his ghost pursues her in more ways than one. He and his partner must have passed through a timeslow, so he’s still alive in the wood, just for a while. Sometimes the echoes come through.”

“Did the same thing happen to Dan?”

Helen watched Richard, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Lacan told you about Dan, did he?”

Richard nodded.

She took a huge bite from the sandwich, staring into the middle distance, then scrawled a few more words on the pad. “He knew the risks,” she muttered eventually. “We take risks just by living here. But Dan’ll be alive, still. I’ll get him back. Lacan is wrong. McCarthy is wrong. They say there’s no shadow of him in the forest, but I don’t think that can be right. Dan knew the risks—he’ll have been on his guard. Don’t talk about him any more. Please?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to distress you.”

Helen laughed. “How English. There’s no need to be sorry. I’ll tell you about Dan later. I just don’t want to think about him now, OK?”

“OK.”

“Now. Have you made your hollowsticks? You’ll need to make four or five. You’ll find wood behind the longhouse. You need hair, blood and…” she smiled awkwardly, “semen? If you’ve got any to spare. It’s a good spirit link.”

“Witchcraft,” Richard murmured and she raised her eyebrows, nodding enthusiastically.

“It also works!”

Richard hesitated to point out that three hollowsticks by the cave entrance did not seem to have been effective, indeed, that Dan’s token up in the Sanctuary ruins was growing fungal with age, but Helen saw his reservation and intuited his doubts. “They work more than they don’t. And sometimes it takes time to call the traveller back. We use the hollowsticks to mark our passage through the hollowings, to know who has gone. In this world, Richard, time is strange, so patience takes on a new meaning.”

Richard fetched twigs and twine from the small pile behind the research lodge and shaped five little effigies, ready for the incorporation of his “body relics” later.

“Do you need any help?” she asked, mischievously.

“I can manage, thanks.”

“I’m sure you can.”

When Helen had finished her notes she cracked a beer—Richard took a second—and relaxed more, recounting her trip out to Hergest Ridge. She soon grew tired and went to the river’s edge, splashing her face with water and singing softly to the night-dark across the flow. Richard was entranced with her voice and went over to crouch behind her. The song had an eerie tune, and the words were in the language of the Lakota. When she had finished singing she told Richard to look away and quickly used the river.

As they walked back to the tents, Richard said, “Was that a folksong?”

“A charm,” she said, and smiled. “A trick. It’s the only way to catch a trickster. And catch him I will! Mark my words.”

And with that she ducked into the tent where she kept her pack, to sleep.

Genesis

The hares had hung for two nights and a day. At
reveille
Lacan, dressed only in torn-down denim shorts and his magic tooth-necklace, began to prepare the feast for the evening, skinning the creatures, talking to them, loudly celebrating their elegance, and issuing instructions to everyone, as they woke and emerged from the tents to wash, as to what they should each do for him.

“This meal is
Lièvre à la Royale
and only a Frenchman with an intense Celtic ancestry can do it justice. Ah, Helen—good morning—when you’ve finished your womanly ablutions, your job is to make a rich sauce of the congealed blood—brandy will thin it out—”

“I’ll make a rich sauce of
your
blood if you give me
that
job…”

Irritably, Lacan hacked the head off one of the hares. “Then sacrifice some carrots and cloves of garlic, finely, very very finely.”

“Much better.”

“I wish them to be
practically molecular!
”

“No problem.”

Richard was told to build a fire in the pit where meat was barbecued. McCarthy accepted the task of thinning the jugged blood. Lytton and Haylock gathered wild herbs and edible mushrooms before settling to a study of artefacts and a further hour’s conversation with Richard about his son’s last years in Shadoxhurst. Lacan fussed and sang, bellowed and criticised, but the morning passed and the “first operation” was declared a success: the hares were slowly braising.

Richard made only one mistake. Watching Lacan from outside the blue ribbon cordoning off the cooker area from the “uncivilised” part of the Station (Lacan’s little joke) he said, “Of course, the
true
Celts would never have eaten hare. It would have been sacrilege. Did you know that?”

Lacan looked up sharply, his eyes wide with surprise, then scowling. He leapt the “cordon bleu” and grabbed Richard by his shirt lapels, glowering down at him.

“Which
madman
told you that?”

“It’s a know fact,” Richard said evenly, trying not to smile. “The hare was a sacred animal … to the
true
Celts. They worshipped it.”

Lacan breathed slowly, gaze meeting gaze, then he released Richard and smoothed his shirt. “Well, of
course!
” he said loudly. “Of course we worshipped it. We worshipped it alive. We worshipped it dead. Best of all, we worshipped it when
cooked!
” He shook his head despairingly as he returned to the cooking area, muttering, “Foolish man … he knows
nothing
about worship … he must be going bosky … it happens … perhaps I’ll ignore him … maybe he’ll go away…”

*   *   *

Richard had slept late, his dreams disturbed by thoughts of Alex. After talking to Lytton again, he looked for Helen, and found her at the lake, swimming. “It’s freezing!” she called. “But wonderful. Come on in.”

He stripped naked and shuddered and shivered into the cold water, finally diving head-first to get the shock over and done with. The lake was crystal clear. Helen trod water, her limbs an unnatural pale hue, but slender and shapely as she slowly cycled. When he surfaced in front of her she was smiling. “You need to lose some weight.”

“In water this cold I’m glad of the blubber.”

“Swim with me…”

She somersaulted in the lake, legs kicking as she dived deep, then surfaced, yards away, striking powerfully toward Wide Water Hollowing and its warning markers. Richard’s best stroke was the crawl and he followed in her wake, soon warm enough to enjoy the cold. When they stopped, bobbing vertically in the deep water, Helen peered downwards. “There’s a castle below us. Can you see?”

Richard dived, descending as far as he could before the pressure-pain in his ears was intolerable. He saw the walls and weed-covered structure of a stone building a long way down. A mass of sinuous movement in one place resolved itself as eels. Two vaguely human figures seemed to be crouching by one of the ramparts. He was astonished at the clarity of the ruins, at how much light reached them. But they were too far down to explore without proper equipment.

Breathless, he surfaced again, to see Helen on her back, stroking lazily to the shore.

When they were dry they sat by the water and pitched stones across the shimmering surface at the haze that marked the hollowing. Richard asked, “What’s come through in your time?”

Helen shrugged. “Boats, mostly. A selkie, a serpent, but mostly boats. They usually end up on the far shore—I guess they don’t like the look of this one. The most dramatic was a Viking longship, wonderful sail, bizarre creature carved on its prow. It had only two men crewing it, one dressed in white skins and helmeted in gold, the other holding the ends of the sail in his hands, guiding the vessel. We didn’t recognise the legend, and the mythagos vanished into the deepwood as soon as they’d beached.” She pointed further round the lake shore. “The vessel is over there, somewhere. Lytton uses it when he sails round the lake calling for Huxley, which is something he does frequently.” She glanced at Richard, jade-green eyes curious. “What do you make of Lytton?”

“Scots—obsessive—bad breath—romantic—probably brilliant…” He thought of the uneasiness in the conversation above Old Stone Hollow, the evening before. “He’s angry with Alex. He seems to think the boy is a
malignancy,
destroying some unseen and subtle structure in the wood. I’m sure he doesn’t mean it.”

Helen’s laugh was sour. She took her jacket from around her shoulders and shrugged into it, looking hard at Richard. “He
does
mean it. He’s frightened of what Alex is doing. He
does
mean it, and you should never let that thought leave you. Don’t trust him. Listen to him, yes. He understands Ryhope Wood better than any of us. He’s the one who called us together in the first place. He knows Huxley, and mythagos, inside out. Yes. But Richard—be careful of him. Watch him.”

“He wants to get Alex out of the wood. He wants to help him.”

“He wants Alex out of
Huxley
—he’ll do anything to achieve that.”

Richard stared across the blue water. Everything was so quiet, so peaceful, so remote. He had just thought this when, distantly, Arnauld Lacan’s voice roared faintly, another demand, another irritation during the preparing of his brace of hares.

Helen frowned as she listened. “Something about ‘the first removal of the fat being completed’?” She shared Richard’s grimace. “Thank God all I had to do was cut vegetables.”

“He’s a good man, is Lacan.”

“Yes he is. And a good friend.” She was suddenly wistful. “He’ll never find what he’s looking for. There are times when I feel very sad for him.”

“What
is
he looking for?”

Helen looked down, shook her head. “If he didn’t tell you, I shouldn’t talk about it. Sorry. It’s a sort of rule, here. A part of the ritual.”

“That’s OK. How about you? What are you seeking?”

“Me? Trickster. As I told you last night. That Ol’ Trickster Coyote. Old Man Fox himself! The haunter of conscience. The first deceiver. The laughing friend, the gloating foe. Trickster. He’s here, I’ll find him. And when I do, I’ll…”

She smiled, breaking off her flow and tugging at the silver lock of hair that grew from her temple. “I’ll find him,” she repeated. “He and I have something to say to each other.”

“Everybody’s looking. Everybody’s seeking. Everybody’s dreaming.”

“That’s why we’re here. You too. Except that, unlike us, your goal is not a mythago.”

“Yes, I know. I was astonished when you found out about the cricket bat so fast—”

Again, Helen laughed. “It took a week! McCarthy encountered the shadow of Alex on one of the castles.” Richard remembered Lytton talking about this and said, “Sciamachy?”

“Something like that. Alex is in difficulties, but he
can
move through the rootweb. He’s got help. Someone’s helping him. When he appears, it’s literally as a shadow, but someone like McCarthy—and sometimes me—can communicate with him. We ask a question, we get a dreamlike reply. Like talking to someone who’s in a lucid dream? When McCarthy asked the shadow about the fire-dance, it unleashed a storm of emotion. A lot of memories, almost overload. That night was important to your son. More important than perhaps you realise.”

Richard whispered, “I let him down. I wouldn’t dance. I was embarrassed. And he was so desperate for me to dance.”

“You wouldn’t dance? Why you old
square.
” She smiled. “It was more than that. It was the moment when he linked with the heartwood. We all do it, we all get trapped. If there’s a significance in that evening, it’s to do with the dancing figures, the fire, not your cricket bat! We’ll find out eventually. For the moment, only one thing is important.”

He glanced at Helen, then looked more deeply, drawn to her looks, her eyes, and the warmth and strength she offered him. Beads of lake water had formed on the braided locks of dark and silver hair. She breathed softly, watching him, then said, “Do you believe Alex is here? In your heart? Do you believe us? We won’t find him unless you do.”

“I so much want to. The cricket bat—how else could you have known? Unless you can read my mind.”

“We can’t read minds. Talk to ghosts, yes, but not read minds.”

“I do so much want to believe he’s alive. I gave him up so easily after the accident. I gave so
much
up so easily … But I saw him dead and I buried him. Something came for him, struck him through a mask, took him away from us. When he finally died—oh God, I’ll say it. I’ll say it. When he died I was
glad.
It was such a relief. Like a depression lifting. I felt free again. I felt there was something to live for again. But that didn’t happen.”

“Alice drifted away…”

“And I drifted on. I stopped living. I just started to get old.”

Helen’s hand was a gentle touch on his shoulder, then she shuffled closer and put her arm around him, surprising him. “Is this OK? Does it bother you?”

“No. Not at all.”

She squeezed him harder, grinning at his discomfiture, his reserve, looking hard at his profile, teasing. “Then why are you so stiff?”

“You can tell
that?
Without looking? Amazing.”

“Why are you so
tense?
” she corrected with a laugh. “Don’t you do this in England? Get close to a friend when you know they’re sad?”

“Maybe I’ve been thinking of more than friendship—” His face burned as he said the words, wondering where in the name of heaven he’d found the nerve to blurt out such an obvious truth.

Helen hesitated, then glanced away, thoughtful for a moment, but her arm held him tightly. “That’s OK,” she said suddenly. “Why not? I’m attracted to you too. I was attracted to you the first moment we met, all those weeks ago.”

“Three days ago, if you don’t mind.”