Merlin's Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  As dusk grew close, the body in the cowl sat up, and without a word beckoned Martin to the fire. ‘And so …’

  With Vivien at the helm, the sail in my hands, we crossed by boat to the coast of Gaul, gaining the beach at Uxorum, north and west of here. I picked up the path to the south without much difficulty.

  Within a few days we had reached Broceliande and Vivien became anxious. The forest was then as deep and entangled as it is now, and she felt herself cut off from some of her magic. Nevertheless, she hugged me close and followed in. She could tell, I imagine, that my own powers were closer to the surface, sustained by the wildwood. She imagined they would now be easier to draw out.

  When we came to the waterfall we bathed in the deep pool, cleaned our clothes and built a shelter below the overhang. Vivien hunted in the deeper glades for a few hours, quite successfully as it turned out, and I found enough clay to make the vessels and pots in which to cook, consume and store our sparse supplies.

  I had always liked this place, with its misting air, the strong, relentless fall of crystal, icy water, the crowding oaks. I had been here twice before, although no trace remained of those much earlier visits apart, perhaps, from a mark or two on stones, but the grey lichen was so thick it was hard to tell. Everything, otherwise, was the same, these sons-of-the-trees that had previously sheltered me being no less immense, no less embracing.

  I was relaxed enough, secure enough in this place, to instruct Vivien in the essential nature of the magic that I carried. This is not to say I told her how to work that magic, but if she had talent (and I knew she did) then in due course – the passage of many generations – she could work it out for herself.

  I quickly created a garden for her, a joyous place, full of song and wonder, fixed at its centre by proud ruins of hard-packed earth and heavy wood, in which she played and danced, delighted with the labyrinth of cold passages and high, rotting turrets. She was aware that I had drawn on memories of a city from antiquity, burned and sacked on the southern shore, a place of wonder that had long ago fallen to a siege by many hundreds of single-sailed ships. She was fascinated by the story.

  ‘I want those ships!’ she cried, standing in the ruins, green-daubed, slim and nude, feathered arms outstretched, eyes closed. ‘Send them for me! Send them to fetch me. A sea full of ships, all for the love of me!’

  And always, as she indulged in such fantasy, she ended with laughter and a wild dance in the wildwood.

  Now I talked to her about the seven things that I could control, to a degree at least. All magic, you should understand, is developed from seven essential powers, call them talents. Different minds approach them in different ways, so there are no fixed rules. The first and oldest is the power of song, which is inborn in all of us, but only shaped by exceptional minds. You already know something about this talent, you’ve heard of its most dangerous usage. Song can create life and landscape. But there is a terrible price to pay. Vivien hungered for this knowledge, but I dazzled her away from it.

  Secondly, there is the moving of stones by the power of the flow of hidden water. This did not interest Vivien at all. She could not see how such talent gives control over the shape of the land.

  She was entranced, however by the third power, that of flying to and from the hinterlands of the Otherworld. It is impossible to enter the Otherworld completely, but the hinterlands are many, varied, and often quite accommodating.

  The fourth power is connecting the parts of beasts, both hard and soft.

  The fifth is an understanding of the human spirit as sustenance for mind and body. There are four guardians associated with this power, but they are too complex to describe, let alone explain.

  Sixthly, the movement of awareness between the hard and soft forms of life; a dog to a stone, for example; a tree to a fawn. This is a very useful talent.

  The greatest talent of all is this: to control, to contain and to employ the vision, hearing and dreams of children.

  When a child is born it moves through the seasons at the same rate as everyone around it. But to the child, time is slow. Only in adulthood does the time inside catch up with time outside. To harness the time of children is to control time as much as it can ever be controlled. It is a form of imaginative time. If there are forces beyond our understanding governing time, and I feel there must be, they are less in control when exercising their reach through a child.

  Vivien, ageing steadily, slowly, still beautiful, still childlike, was using that very talent to stay as fresh, as keen, as quick as the lamb. She knew, however, that she must learn how to carve the knowledge of the child onto her bones if she was to step fully aside from time, and only I could supply her with that knowledge. Since I refused to give the knowledge to her she resorted to seduction, playing upon my need to rest, drawing out those shadows within me that are least circumspect, most guileless, despite their talents.

  *

  She addressed each shadow with a display, a vision, that enraptured me, enchanted me.

  A song caused the water in the fall to pour in the opposite direction, exposing channels and passages in the rock from which odd, slow melodies cooed and wailed. This was a simple illusion – her talents were largely confined to illusion – but it suggested things to me that I had not thought of. In this way she entranced me. I have always been nervous of song, its power is deep, and yet is common; I have never been fully comfortable with the song in magic, but for a year or so after this illusion I played with melody, and harmony, and effected change upon nature. I came closer to the first song, although that is well guarded. It would take a greater mind than mine to go so far, so deep into the first songs.

  She teased me and tickled me by bringing stones which cracked open, egg-like, to release lifeforms that are not bound by parents or offspring. Things that spring unbidden from the dark are fated only to amuse and die, since reproduction, as you or I would understand it, is not part of the life that exists within them.

  She came to me in animal forms. She was especially exquisite as a vixen, dancing for me, leaping high to snatch bright birds in her crushing jaws. Somehow she could entwine herself with the language of animals – no illusion there! – and our conversations were fascinating. Animals have no greater sense of themselves, they run and live by certain stinks, by sight and by the deeper urges. But they have memory – although it is short lived – and with Vivien, as fox or fawn, as stoat or boar, I was able to hear those echoes of the animal mind, and gained a sense of how close they are to the Otherworlds. They occupy hinterlands that are denied to men. The animal realm is greater than instinct, but confusing. Vivien brought that confusion to vivid life, and for a while, through her illusions, through her visions of magic, I ran with creatures, as creatures, that until then had been denied to me.

  She used charm to transform herself into the strangest, wildest, most alluring of creatures. She showed me, by illusion, how it would seem to live in fast time, then in slow time. She fashioned the earth into dolls and made them dance. I had seen nothing like this. It was pointless, in its way, but it was so amusing. I had taken magic seriously. I had long since forgotten how to enjoy the gift.

  Eventually she took me home, a vision in the night of the remote past.

  The man who danced wore the skin of a chamois around his shoulders and the broken horns upon his head. His face was painted and pierced with the features and feathers of an owl. The water-filled member of a horse, tied with leather about his hips, slapped at his legs like an obscene growth. His tail, stiff below the short cloak, was horse-hair. Clattering stones were tied around his ankles. His body was a swirl of painted blue and red as he danced before me by the water, half visible in the mist and spray, illuminated by a fire that cast his shadow on the trees. Sometimes he was upright, sometimes on all four legs, like the creature that possessed him.

  His song was simple. He called to me to remember him from my birth in the deep caves, the animal caves. He called to me to paint again, as once before I had pa
inted the smooth surfaces of the hidden stone, deep below the mountain. He called to me to dip my fingers in the cold, coloured pastes, to daub, to design, to reflect the life of creatures on the sensuous curves of the cold, moist rock, in the caverns, among the hands of my ancestors.

  Vivien had seen my earliest memory! I was shocked, surprised; yet still entranced. She had drawn from me my first sights as a child, the Ghost Animal, come to greet me, and in so doing she had managed to go deep into my bones.

  I think I knew then, as the sorcerer danced, as he had danced at my birth, I think then that I knew she would have me, she would kill me. She would tease me apart as a weaver teases apart the coarse wool fibres of a fleece.

  To know that you are lost, yet to know that you have time to hide yourself, is a time of great pain. Around you, everything is normal, everything a joy. The anticipation of the moment of death is a voice that laughs from behind your head.

  Vivien was laughing at me, even as she hunted for me, cooked the game, ate with gusto, ravished me with her body, and whispered in a way that meant: I need you.

  She plotted the culling of my magic.

  I planned its safe dissemination.

  It was the final Vision of Magic that taught me the lesson I should have learned long before.

  At the edge of Broceliande, in the west, is a wide clearing, ringed by twelve great oaks, tall trees on which have always been hung the trophies from the combats fought within its space. For as long as I can remember, warriors and champions have come to ring o’trees field to fight for honour, or for kings. Such a tournament was occurring there now.

  Vivien came running through the forest. She had heard the squeal of horses and the rattle of wicker chariots. She came to fetch me and we returned to the forest’s edge, coming to the clearing between the broad oaks, and standing back, behind the crouching forms of the defeated knights.

  In the bright sun, seven chariots remained. They were circling the field, light wicker with small wheels, each pulled by two breathless horses, some grey, some black, one magnificent pair of whites. A charioteer in each, breech-clouted and grey-cloaked, spattered with blood, tugged and turned the restless team. The knight behind each of them was naked but for leather shoes and a sparkling torque around the neck. These grim-faced men, their hair spiked with white clay, their beards stiffened like quills, carried spears and small, curved swords. Each chariot had its shield, tall and thin, decorated with the clan totem, but these were not for protection. They were the trophy.

  In the trees around hung battered shields, and broken spears. Two heads, still dripping, were slung in dishonour from one bough. The smell of the dead was upsetting the horses.

  They attacked, each chariot facing left, picking its prey, then charging. It was chaos and terrifying, for they were all enemies, and there was no strategy, no sides taken. It was bloody mayhem.

  A chariot turned over, and the shield was taken, a naked man limping from the field, crying with disappointment.

  ‘I’ve seen this before,’ I said to Vivien. ‘Many times.’

  ‘Watch,’ she whispered, then ran a short way forward, glancing back with a mischievous smile, crouching low, staring out across the field.

  The light suddenly changed, the sound of horses changed, the earth at the edge of the field began to shake with a different hoofbeat.

  As the chariots withdrew to the edge of the field, to circle again, so, to my astonishment, they transformed. No chariots, now, nor small ponies, but horses of gigantic stature, draped in coloured cloth, their faces bright with metal. Armoured men rode them, turning and charging these huge stallions, tugging on leather reins that were draped with flags. Long, loose hair flowed around hard, beardless faces; metal rattled, and the swords that caught the daylight were long and straight. With much snorting from the steeds and screaming from the warriors, a savage attack occurred across the field, but this time in two armies, each of about eight. Metal balls, hideously spiked, clanged off long shields painted in bright colours, striking designs in gold, red and green.

  When a man fell or was struck from the saddle he threw away his sword and stood quite still as his vanquisher plucked the shield from his horse or from his arms, then tossed it below the trees. Here, as in the time of the chariots, a boy scampered with the trophy into the branches to tie it, hanging it, triumphantly.

  Where had these warriors come from? What transformation had occurred? Tall tents were pitched between the great oaks. Fires burned. Spears of great length, and plumed, iron helmets, hideously featured, were propped on poles.

  As fast as the transformation had occurred it had gone, and once again the chariots rattled, small ponies whinnied. Naked warriors, gleaming with sweat and blood, slashed, stabbed and struck in chaos.

  Vivien was watching me hungrily.

  And I realised with a moment of shock that I had opened my mind to her as easily as the minds of those knights whom I had surprised in the wilder woods of the north!

  She had tricked me! She was breathless with the effort of her charm, but she was delighted too. Did she think I couldn’t see what she had done? She asked me, ‘What did you think of that?’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘I saw it in a dream,’ she said. ‘I made the dream come back from then to now. It was to amuse you, nothing more. The next time you pass by this field, the next time you walk round the path, those horsemen will be here too.’

  The long-to-come! She had touched the long-to-come. Not just the long-gone, then. Her fledgling power could reach through time in both directions.

  But more importantly, she had crept into me through the gaping mouth of my mask. I had been as vulnerable in that moment of astonishing vision as was a charioteer to a stray blow intended for the knight he carried.

  I was lost. Instinct told me that. When the Ghost Animal, my life-guide, had danced for me, stepping out of my first mind, stepping out of the long-gone, I had known I was lost. What needed to be saved was the magic I contained. Vivien must not have it.

  I spent a season thinking. I defined Broceliande by my restless pacing. I hid the lake to stop her drawing power from it. It was a risky thing to do, because of course it drew attention to the fact that I was making changes.

  I blamed age and confusion for the act: too many water sources were interfering with my own vision, and quite soon, within a hundred years or so, I would have to start the next phase of my journey round the path.

  Did she believe me? It’s hard to tell. Her own mask was now firmly set. Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes and seen not the loving heart but ice? Like the great ice that controls the land in the far north, that ice in the eye is a wall, a barrier, too cold to live beyond, too cold to cross, too slippery even to try to climb.

  I had to get rid of my magic. I needed to hide it, to detach it from me. But I needed to hide it in such a way that I could gather it in later. The only answer was to turn it into shadow and send it on the path. I decided to send it south, travelling down the right side of the long trail, keeping its right side outermost to the ring. My intention was that I would then return north, retracing my journey – my life lived backwards – to meet the entities at some point along the way.

  Vivien, I knew, would be looking for some escape to the north. She would be watching for me to turn in my tracks. She saw me as an animal, and knew the ways of clever beasts.

  I knew that she would suspect the creation of shadows. I counted on her not expecting the creation of children.

  It takes time and a great deal of concentration to fabricate even a single infantasm. I drew on the long-gone and that part of the long-to-come that I could reach. My difficulty was that Vivien’s business, concerned mainly with providing for us, seeking the herbs, earths and waters that would enhance her own powers, did not take her away from the waterfall for very long. Even though I fashioned a Castle of enchanting visions for her, a place to explore, to stimulate her intellect, I was lucky if I had a full day to myself. I therefore c
hose my moments carefully.

  I created seven children to carry my seven powers. I shall not concern you with the process of drawing the bones from the wood, the flesh from the wormy soil, the skin from leaves, the bloom from flowers, the blood from water, the bowels and other internals from killed animals – hares for the essence and spirit, of course, polecats for durability, boars for aggression, birds for most other things.

  Finding flowers that were not illusion-born was the hardest task, since flowers are a rare presence in the season, whereas leaves only shrink from us in the time of Deep, or winter. But my time in the northern wastelands, where Jack Frost has been created to serve the needs of the reindeer people, had taught me how to control frost and ice to maintain the bloom of life, like those crushed insects in amber shards, which when released sing briefly yet exquisitely about a time in the long-gone that not even I can comprehend. To decipher those fleeting songs will take a greater power than mine.

  Flowers could be kept vibrant as long as ice could be kept hard, and I found a way of keeping ice even in the sun. It was a simple trick, but Vivien did not know it.

  And in this way I hid my magic.

  Song went into the first of the infantasms, who was a boy from the beginning of the world, because song, as you know, came before words. He chattered from the bough of an old oak for the first few hours following his creation, but at last I drew him to my breast, and soothed him. He would have been about five years old. The flowers and leaves that formed his skin were hard to smooth down, but after a while they blended with the earth. He looked a little patchy; he was an odd mixture of colours. His fragrance was confusing, but then so is song. It comes from very deep. I sent him into the forest, protected by a simple charm. He would hide for a while, then walk south, and in due course, after many generations, we would meet on the path again, and I would take him back.