Merlin's Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘I suppose you could call it singing …’ he added.

  She came over and brushed fingers lightly over the silent boy’s brow.

  ‘I was dreaming of him,’ she said. ‘We were sitting together below bright stars, in a wide, cool desert. It was a dream of Australia. Together we were singing up a path, rocking side to side, but aware of each other. He was an older boy in the dream, Daniel as a grown lad, with good sight and a vibrant life. We sang together …’

  With a shiver of recognition, Martin said, ‘You were singing together just now. You in your sleep, Daniel by the window. A single note, not very musical.’

  Rebecca smiled sadly. ‘There you are then. Mother and son on the same wavelength, the same line. What was he doing at the window?’

  ‘Kids on the path. The Breques children. He was tapping the window as they passed with one of Eveline’s thimbles, but he couldn’t have been aware of them. Could he?’

  ‘I’m sure he could,’ Rebecca murmured. ‘Christ, he’s got to be aware of something …’

  Exhausted, they took Daniel into their room, and as always the boy fell into peaceful sleep between them, even though his eyes were open.

  The two years since his birth had been terrible, more for the failure to make a decision on Daniel’s future than for the fact of his disabilities. Should he be sent to a home, nursed by professionals, where his blindness and deafness could be addressed at every hour of every day? Or should he stay with parents who loved him, but who could do nothing practical to improve his physical condition? Daniel was not difficult. He loved being outside. He walked with Martin, hand in hand, and seemed, oddly, aware of that which was surely beyond his senses: the forest, the rolling sky, the passing storms, the animals in the fields.

  The boy never complained. His worst moments were at night, when sometimes he would howl ferally, or scream in an hysterical way, always becoming silent after a few moments in either of his parent’s arms.

  Father Gualzator had blessed him and prayed for him. Yvette Valence, the local herbalist who lived above the local post office, had prepared all manner of rubs and potions, from camomile to dogwort, from belladonna in honey to the crushed skull of an owl, whose night sight was the most perfect in the animal world. No amount of sympathy had allowed this sympathetic healing to have effect.

  Yvette, like the priest, was from Basque country. After feeling ‘called away’ from the high passes and airy forests of her native land, she had followed the path that wound north, through the painted caves of the Perigord and the dense oakwoods of the Dordogne, to where Broceliande straddled the way to the coast, cutting across the ancient route. The place had felt right to her, and she had settled. She had been a close friend of Eveline’s, and was a doting friend and helper for Rebecca and Martin now, but she became frustrated with Daniel, perhaps confused and distressed by the failure of even the simplest of her healing cures. It was as if, she said, Daniel were aware of the charm she used and was blocking it.

  Even the wart on his left thumb – which ought to have vanished within two days – remained obstinately in place, until one day he dipped his hand into the well water, by the hazels, and the crusty excrescence disappeared within an hour.

  Yvette’s time with Daniel ceased abruptly when Martin forbade her to come back to the house. She had arrived in a lather of fury and fear, holding fresh herbs in black, cloth packets, and a cross made from the branches of a yew.

  ‘The boy is dead,’ she said in hushed tones. She would not cross the threshold into the house. ‘I realised it suddenly. The boy is dead. A traveller is inside him. I can’t help you any more.’

  To Martin and Rebecca’s fury, she didn’t keep this information to herself, but spread it through the villages.

  *

  Daniel, however, was far from dead. Senseless, literally, he showed otherwise every sign of vibrant life. And he had started to sing, single notes but different notes, singing them until he was breathless and exhausted, singing them with gusto. Where the conception for such sound came from was not readily answerable, but Rebecca, who was giving classes in song at the local school, sang to Daniel at every opportunity. Perhaps he was aware of the melodies through some other sense, a synaesthetic appreciation of the creation songs of the Australian aborigines, and the corrupt creation songs – the folk songs – of old France and England, with which Rebecca was now very familiar. So the house was a musical place, although at times the double act of tuneful and single-note singing, an eerie sound that lasted for hours, was too much for Martin, and he was glad of his job, at a small design studio in a town an hour’s drive away.

  A second letter arrived for Rebecca from Flynn. The first had been a short note, transparently sad, yet filled with best wishes, received shortly after Daniel’s birth. As ever, with Flynn, it was not so much a question of knowing more-or-less where he was as of waiting for him to come to the small town and check the post office for any mail. He wrote sparingly, using an old fountain pen that spilled more ink randomly than it dispensed in the tight lines and folds of the words he expressed. Rebecca savoured the two letters, as if they were fragments of a lost shroud. Martin saw this but did not interfere. He was never in any doubt as to her love for him, nor her loyalty, and try as he did, on one occasion, he simply could not arouse in himself any sense of jealousy for the outback-traveller, reaching through space and time for his once-love, the Live Alone Lady as he called Rebecca.

  Rebecca had written to Flynn, describing the odd way in which Daniel sang despite profound deafness and the way in which he seemed aware despite his blindness. Perhaps she had been seeking some intuition or insight that she remembered from her outback-travelling days.

  She was rewarded with a letter, certainly helpful, but far from what she expected.

  Jesus, Beck, your letter frightens the fucking life out of me. God knows how long since you wrote it. Time never meant a great deal here, but I guess you’re in the summer when this is happening, as you describe it, and that’s a solid strand of time or so ago, so I guess you’ve walked the line a good way since then.

  But don’t you remember anything that happened around you on the songlines here?

  Jesus! If this boy, your Daniel, is singing, then he’s taking! So the first thing to do, Beck, is stop singing. Christ, I wish our times were crossing, but we’re adrift by months, and that makes me concerned.

  Beck, stop singing. Remember the Three Lady Macbeths, as you nicknamed them? Well, there’s a lot to remember in what those three ladies were all about. I can’t get to you, Beck, or else I would, and you know I would. I’m hurt inside, and I miss you, but you wouldn’t be my old Live Alone Lady if you weren’t sure that what you were doing was the right thing, and I guess you’ve found a new line or two to travel, maybe those old teeth-from-the-earth stones you always told me about, and the dreamtime songs of the Celts, or whoever the hell it was that lived there at the time.

  Beck, when a Man Walking reaches a songline, he sits down for a rub or two, and chews some sweet wood, and listens to the wind, then listens to the song, and maybe sings up a little of the old line. But the song is big in the air, and it’s too big to take away, so he maybe sings a bit of it, and chews off a bit before he crosses, but there’s plenty left to get inside the next Man Walking.

  But a Lady Macbeth is out to take the song that was born. She’ll walk around a puddle, walk through a hut, walk around a sit-down place, and when she sings the song, someone loses the song. Because that’s what she’s all about, a gatherer, a collector. What she does with the song only the Dream knows, but I’ve seen children stripped of music, and a young man lose the song that he’d been born with, and an old lady, in rags and with sticks, walking out across the dry places, full, fed and bloated on what she’d taken and making patterns on the land that only the tribe could see. So you beware, Beck. I don’t like the sound of this Deaf Son Singing of yours and this Other guy or no, song is soul, and where the soul is lacking, the taking game is strong. />
  I send my love to you, Beck. God knows I miss you, and for more than just the jumping up and down, although, Jesus! those were good nights in the old hut, you truly are magnificent, and never to be forgotten, especially for your spirit. But I know you’ll come back if the lines turn right for us again. In the meantime, God Bless and keep you, and that lucky bastard who sleeps next to you. And keep writing. I need to know you’re OK.

  Martin folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. Rebecca had Daniel in her lap, and was rocking slightly as she watched the news on the TV. The boy waved his hands in the air, sightless eyes on the ceiling, a glistening of liquid on his chin. He seemed to be reaching for something, but it was simply a reflex action. Rebecca glanced across the kitchen to where Martin was tapping the letter against the table.

  ‘I don’t mind talking about it, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘The letter?’

  ‘Are you upset by it?’

  ‘Upset by it! Not at all. You know me better than that. It’s these “Lady Macbeths”. I don’t understand the references to “Lady Macbeths” …’

  Rebecca used the remote control to switch off the television. She hefted Daniel in her arms and stood up, then sat the murmuring boy on his home-made ‘stimulus truck’, a wheeled cart with dangling objects, some soft, some hard, some noisy. At once Daniel started to use his feet to move around the wide kitchen, batting at the shapes and making incoherent howling sounds. He never laughed.

  ‘Lady Macbeths are both the destroyers and builders of the songlines, at least in the remote tribes that Flynn is studying, and which I visited for a while. There’s a lot below the surface in any culture, and sometimes you just get hints about how the rituals are governed. It’s not that they’re secret – they sometimes are – just that they’re obscure. You can think of a songline as a barrier, or as a marker for a moment in the dreamtime, or as a place perceptible only to a particular form of consciousness. If you take the example of a wall, you need to maintain the fabric of the wall, or it rots and falls away. If the wall is made by song, and the songs define both the land and the totemic spirits of that land, then that wall still needs to be sustained and maintained by new song.

  ‘Where does that song come from? It’s born, of course, born in certain children of the tribes. The Lady Macbeths scour the tribes for those songs, and they literally sing them out of the child, then take them to the line, and sing them out, sing them back, make the songline strong again.’

  Martin considered this as he drank his way through a full pitcher of cider.

  ‘Is Flynn suggesting that Daniel is stealing your songs?’

  ‘He’s afraid of that. I can’t think why. The songlines work differently here …’

  ‘Sing to me,’ Martin said, and after a moment, perhaps recognising the concern in his face, Rebecca leaned forward on the pine table and sang.

  Her words filled the warm space. The tune made Martin shiver with recognition until he, too, was joining in, two voices gently singing in the kitchen of the farmhouse, while Daniel was silent, his arms relaxed, his gaze fixed on nowhere, as if he, too, were listening to the melody.

  3

  But Flynn’s intuition, from half the world away, had been right.

  Martin had been up to Paris for the day to meet a small orchestra company interested in employing him to redesign their logo. He had taken the opportunity to buy artist’s materials, then went to the Place D’léna, to the Oriental collection of the Musée Guimet, seeking inspiration if not for the new commission, at least for future work.

  It was after ten at night before he arrived back at Broceliande. He was surprised to find Jacques sitting, half-dozing by the wood stove, the television tuned to a riotously unfunny gameshow.

  Daniel was awake but silent, curled up on the sofa, thumb firmly in mouth, apparently oblivious even to the sudden draught from the door.

  Martin woke the old man, and Jacques stood up, walking stiffly to the lad and stroking fingers on the pale face. He smelled of brandy.

  ‘I must have dozed off. He seems fine, though. Good as gold. He’s even been humming a tune. You’re making progress, obviously.’

  ‘Where’s Rebecca?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She was upset about something. Asked me to come and look after Daniel. I’ll be off, now, if you don’t mind. It’s been longer than I expected. That’s not a complaint,’ he added hastily. ‘Any time. You know that. It’s just that my joints, these days, do seem to like bed by about nine o’clock. Goodnight, Martin.’

  ‘Goodnight. And thanks.’

  Jacques walked awkwardly to the door, closing it behind him. Daniel stirred and made sounds, reaching into the void. Martin lifted him and hugged him and the boy relaxed again.

  After a moment or two, as Martin rocked him, holding the long-legged child to his chest, Daniel started to hum. It was not tuneful, but it was familiar. Martin felt a dual reaction: of delight, and of apprehension. It was the song Rebecca had hummed and voiced those few nights before, after Flynn’s second letter.

  ‘Enough, now. Enough,’ he said suddenly, putting a finger on the boy’s lips. Daniel squirmed, frowning, watery eyes unfocused. But he did not object when he was laid down on the sofa and covered with a blanket.

  Rebecca came home at midnight. She was dishevelled and distressed, the hem of her skirt filthy, her boots caked with mud. There was moisture on her greying hair, and apple blossom, which Martin picked away.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘How was Paris?’

  ‘Paris was fine. I have some work, not much, but something. What’s happened?’

  She went round to Daniel and kissed him. The boy shifted restlessly. She was whispering something to him and Martin stepped closer. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Her look was one of fear and anger, a challenge to him to stay back.

  ‘I’m telling him that I don’t begrudge him anything, that he can take what he needs. What else can I do? He’ll take it anyway.’

  ‘Song?’

  ‘He’s taken it, Martin. It isn’t there any more. Flynn was right …’

  ‘One letter from the outback and you succumb to the suggestive power of it? How can he possibly steal a song? Maybe he’s learned it—’

  ‘He’s stone deaf!’

  ‘We assume that. But we don’t know that he doesn’t have some other way of receiving information! You can’t have lost the song!’

  ‘Well I have.’

  ‘This is nonsense.’

  ‘It’s not nonsense to me, damn you.’

  She began to cry, sitting by her son, her head in her hands. When she looked up, through moist eyes, she was grim. ‘I’m frightened. For three years I’ve been willing life into this boy. It never occurred to me that he might take part of me. I offered it, but now that it’s happening, I’m afraid of it.’

  ‘He’s not taking your life, Beck. Every child copies, learns by imitation.’ He looked at the peaceful boy. He thought, every normal child, that is. How could Daniel absorb the experience of his parents, when he was so blocked off from normal sensory experience?

  ‘Sing the song, Beck. Sing “The Unquiet Grave”.’

  ‘I would, Martin. If I could I would. But it isn’t there any more.’

  Martin sang it. At once, as if aware of the sound, Daniel started to hum the tune, tunelessly, a ragged accompaniment. ‘Join in, Beck.’

  And she tried. She opened her mouth, she watched Martin’s mouth, she struggled to find the song, but the song was gone.

  Later she sang ‘Frère Jacques’, demonstrated that it was not something affecting her language, she had not had a stroke …

  But almost at once, little Daniel began to hum the same old French tune, the music behind the roundelay. Rebecca kept singing, and Martin joined in, but after a few minutes – and it was now very late – Rebecca fell silent.

  When she picked up the boy, she was crying. She started to carry him to his room, he was dozing
now, but turned at the door from the kitchen. Grimly, yet with some humour, she said, ‘I never did like that song. So it’s no loss. But it’s gone, Martin. It’s gone like “The Unquiet Grave” …’

  *

  There was life in the boy. In his dark world, with all tests suggesting that he had no sight at all, and no language ability, he began to flourish. He began to sing, and in a matter of weeks his thin voice was in tune, the sounds crisp and haunting, even though no words accompanied the melodies he vocalised.

  Rebecca declined. After a period of fear she became unnervingly complacent about the theft she believed was occurring. ‘He’s my son. What’s mine is his. What’s a song to me if it helps him break down his own walls?’

  Next to go were the songs she had sung as a child, the Christmas carols, the simple hymns, the nonsense rhymes, the folk songs that Eveline and Albert had taught them.

  The words remained Rebecca’s. It was strange for Martin to see the doting mother and the languorous, lean child draped across her lap, the child intoning ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, while Rebecca spoke the words in rhythm with the infant’s humming.

  Where once Rebecca’s head had been filled with music, now it was a wasteland. She could imagine Mozart, but not articulate it. She could give voice to a note, to a meaningless sequence of notes, even to a scale, but when it came to singing, she was lost. Her appreciation of music remained the same, in fact became a source of solace. In a state of melancholy she would lock herself away in the bedroom and play CDs, increasingly loudly, of Fauré, Mozart and Mahler, composers whose work could create in her heart a feeling of great strength. But she could no longer sing with the recorded sound, she could only hear it, gaining and maintaining a spiritual strength that allowed her to caress and adore her growing son. What truly concerned her was that she seemed to be suffering a sort of tinnitus – her ears rang, her voice echoed in her head when she spoke and her hearing was slightly dulled.

  Daniel was more active than ever. At night, he would bang on the window, most particularly when there were people on the path. Martin took him out, one black, cold morning, leading the lad, well-wrapped against the chill, in a quick pursuit of the local children who were dancing through some spectre of their own envisioning. Daniel gave no sign of seeing that ghost, but he reached out to the source of activity, and babbled meaninglessly in his childish tongue.