Merlin's Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  His name was John Farrel. He was nearly thirty years old and in this time of earth and stone he expected to be able to live another ten years.

  As he came through the transmission field he turned his horse and peered into the blur that was the future. It started to fade and the last air of another time leaked five thousand years into its past, bringing with it a sour smell – the smell of machines, of artificial scent, of synthetic clothes; the odour, the stench, of successful adaptation.

  Cold winds, the winter’s last voice before the sudden warmth of spring, carried the smell of the future away, dispersed it across a land wider than Farrel had ever known. Machine, perfume, plastic, drained into the earth, were sucked down and away, lost from the grassy crispness of this age of rock and blood.

  Farrel rode up the small hillock that lay immediately in front of the transmission field, turned again as he reached the summit, and peered down into the valley. The river Boyne wound across the landscape, a silver thread meandering eccentrically between the low hills until it passed out of view. Farrel’s mind’s eye felt, for a moment, the lack of the sprawl of red brick dwellings that would one day supersede those ragged forestlands of the wider curve. For a moment he thought he saw a car flashing along a main road: sunlight on speeding chrome. The illusion was just the gleam of fragmentary sunlight on the spread wings of a gull, riding the winds above the river, back to the sea.

  Where the transmission field was slowly dissolving, the river was a blur, the land a green haze that came more and more into focus. Wind caught Farrel’s hair, cooled the sweat on his cheeks and made him blink. The grass beneath him seemed to whisper; the wind itself talked in an incoherent murmur. It droned, distantly. Grey clouds swept across the pale sun and shadows fled across the valley, were chased away by brightness. The transmission field finally faded and was gone.

  For a moment, then, Farrel imagined he saw a woman’s face, round and ageing; blonde hair perfectly styled, but eye-shadow blurred and smeared with tears and bitter, bitter anger. Why you? Why you? Why you?

  Her remembered words were only the gusting winds and the animal sounds of his horse, restless and anxious to be given free rein across this wild land.

  How loud the silence after hysteria, he thought. He had not known how haunting another’s heartbreak could be. You’ll never come back! Don’t lie to me, you’ll never come back. I know you too well, John. This is your way out, your means of escape. My God, you must really hate me. You must really hate us all!

  Last words, lost in the roar of street traffic. The stairs had trembled beneath him. The outer door had slammed, an explosion finishing them forever.

  I’m here now. I’m here. I got away from them, from all of them, and they think – most of them think – that I’m going back when my job is done. But I’m not! I’m not going back! I’m here and I got away from everything, and I’m not going back!

  The ghosts of the future faded, then, following the transmission field forward across the centuries. The land about Farrel came sharply into focus. His mind cleared. He breathed deeply, and though for a second he felt the urge to cry, he stifled that urge and looked around him, staring at the unadulterated landscape.

  Small mounds were scattered in clusters down the hillside and concentrated along the river itself (thus being nearer to the river goddess, or so Burton had implied in his last transmission). The oldest tumulus was possibly no more than two hundred years of age. The youngest? Farrel searched among them: four hundred yards away there was a mound, perhaps twice his height, perhaps fifty feet in diameter. It had a kerb of grey stones which separated the dull greenness of the hillside from the dark earth mound, not yet fully covered with its own field of grass. A grave, perhaps no more than half a year old; new, with the cremated remains inside it still heavy with the smell of burning.

  He felt dizzy with excitement as he associated this new tomb with the low grassy bump that it would become during the next five thousand years, a tomb so crumbled and weathered that only the discovery of its fractured kerb-stones would identify it. A handful of carbon fragments, preserved in a natural cist between two of the chamber stones and identified as human remains, would raise a thousand questions in the minds of those who were fascinated by this enigmatic neolithic culture. And a year ago those splinters of charred bone might have been alive, walking this very countryside.

  A flight of starlings wheeled above his head, spiralling at the mercy of the winds. A lone magpie darted among them until the starlings turned on it, and then the bigger bird dropped away down the hill to vanish against the sheen of the river. The shrill bird song was a brief symphony of panic and Farrel reined his horse around so that he could look towards the distant forest and the rolling downs of what would one day be his home county.

  From behind a low, rain- and wind-smoothed boulder, a boy was watching him.

  FIRST TRANSMISSION – SECOND DAY

  I have arrived in early spring, and as far as I can determine, seven months later than anticipated rather than five months early. I don’t blame Burton for not being here to meet me. He must have rapidly become tired of hanging about, especially with something ‘fantastic’ in the offing. Whatever was about to happen that so excited him, there is no sign, now, of either him or the Tuthanach themselves. Correction: a single Tuthanach … a boy. This is the strange boy that Burton mentioned in his last transmission, and he is the only human life I have seen in these first few hours, apart from some invisible activity (in the form of smoke) from the direction of the hill of Tara. The boy was not overly curious about the horse, and has shown no interest in its disappearance. He ate some of its meat today and never commented on what must surely have been an unusual flavour. I’m very grateful to everyone who made me bring the horse, by the way. I’d never have caught any of the wild life, and I had to travel a good two miles to find a satisfactory hiding place. The village – I suppose I should say crog Tutha – is deserted and shows distinct signs of weathering. I confess that I am somewhat puzzled. The burial mound of Coffey’s site K, by the way, is very new, something that Burton failed to report. I had a frightening thought earlier: could Burton be buried there? There is no sign yet of tombs on sites L or B, but there are so many others that are not detectable at all by the twenty-first century that I don’t know where to begin. Burton hinted as much, didn’t he? I wonder why he didn’t go into specifics? The tumulus at site J is already well weathered, which suggests our dating was a little out – say by four hundred years? And as Burton reported, the site of the giant Newgrange mound is still barren. I actually came out of the transmission field on the very spot the great tumulus will occupy. I didn’t realise it for quite a while, and then it made me feel very strange. Further details will follow in my second transmission. For the moment, since my fingers are aching: signing off.

  For the first two nights Farrel and the boy slept in the spacious shelter afforded by a deep rock overhang and the entwined branches and roots of several stubby elms that surrounded the cave. By the third day Farrel’s interest in the unexpectedly deserted crog began to outweigh his reluctance actually to camp in the decaying village. He remained uneasy. What if the Tuthanach returned during the night and took exception to a stranger setting himself down in their tents? Burton’s report had not indicated that this particular Boyne people was in any way warlike or violent, but this period of the neolithic was a time of great movement, populations succeeding populations, and axe and spear-head used for drastic and final ends. The megalithic tomb-builders of Brittany, especially, were familiar with this part of the Irish coast. In their massive coracles they hugged the south coast of England until the confused currents around Land’s End swept them round the Scillies and up into the warm flow of the Irish Sea. From there they up-oared and the shallow seas carried them automatically to the Irish coast north of Dublin, along just those picturesque beaches that had seen the original settlers putting into shore, seven or eight hundred years before.

  In one of his transmissio
ns, Burton had given a single, brief account of a small ‘rock-stealing’ party that had raided a crog further south, near Fourknocks (crog-Ceinarc). The raiders had killed and been killed, not by the Ceinarc, but by wolves.

  Wolves were what Farrel feared most. In his own time wolf packs were quite timid and easily scared. In this age, however, their behaviour was altogether different – they were fierce, persistent and deadly. Better, he thought, to believe in the non-hostility of the Tuthanach than risk the teeth of such wolf packs. Provided he kept clear of the rocks and stones in the territory of crog-Tutha, and in no way ‘stole’ them by carving his own soul spirit upon them, he imagined he would be safe.

  He explained his plan to the boy, whose name was Ennik-tig-en’cruig (Tig-never touch woman-never touch earth). The boy put a hand to his testicles and inclined his head to the right. Uncertainty? Yes, Farrel realised – a shrug, but a shrug overlain with anxiety.

  ‘Would this Tig’s people kill us if they returned?’ he asked, hoping he had said what he meant to say … (Man-woman this Tig and this Farrel on the wind – tomorrow, more tomorrow man-woman close to this Tig this Farrel?)

  Tig darted to the entrance of the overhang, peered out across the windy downs, looked up to where the branches of the elms waved and weaved across the drifting clouds. He spat violently upwards, came back to Farrel grinning.

  ‘Death (– wind –) has no room for this Tig. If this Farrel stranger will be my friend (– lover? – earth-turner? –) death will spit at this Farrel too.’

  ‘Did death make room for that Burton?’

  Tig sat upright and stared deeply into Farrel’s eyes. For two days the boy had declined any knowledge of Burton, pretending (obviously pretending) not to understand. Now Farrel pushed his advantage home.

  ‘Does this Tig want this Farrel stranger as a friend? Then this Tig must tell this Farrel where that Burton lives or dies.’

  Tig curled up into a ball, burying his head beneath his arms. He wailed loudly. Farrel was about to ask again when Tig spoke:

  ‘That man-stranger Burton is touching earth. All Tuthanach are touching earth. Not this Tig. Not this Tig. Not this Tig.’

  Farrel considered this carefully, not wishing to distress Tig to the point where the boy would leave. He knew that ‘touching earth’ was something immensely important to the Tuthanach, and he knew that Tig was forbidden his birthright of touching. He could not touch women, he could not touch earth. No love, no involvement with the land. No children for Tig, and no spring harvest as the result of his love for the earth. Poor Tig, denied the two most wonderful consummations of this early agricultural age. But why?

  ‘Where does that Burton touch earth?’ he asked.

  The boy looked blank.

  ‘Where?’ pressed Farrel.

  Tig again crawled to the cave entrance and spat into the wind. ‘This Tig is just a beast!’ he yelled. ‘That man-stranger Burton said this Tig is just a beast!’

  And with a loud and painful shriek he vanished, running across the downs, a small skin-clad figure, clay-dyed hair sticking stiffly outwards, fat-greased body shimmering in the weak sunlight.

  THIRD TRANSMISSION – FIFTH DAY

  Still no sign of the boy who ran off three days ago when I questioned him about Burton. I suspect Burton upset him in some way, possibly as simply as calling him names. Burton is ‘touching earth’ apparently, but I have a suspicion that he is dead and touching it from a few feet under. I hope I’m wrong. But Tig – the boy – has said that all his people are touching earth. What can it mean? I see few of the expected signs of agriculture in the area. My hunch is that they are either farming at some distance from the crog, or raiding other neolithic settlements. Time will tell. I confess that I am worried, however. There is no sign of any equipment or any message or record discs of Burton’s. I shall continue to search for such things and also for Burton, whether or not he is alive.

  I am now encamped in the crog itself. A pack of dogs terrorises me, but they are sufficiently diffident at times that I suspect they belong to the village. They have one useful function – they help keep the wolves at bay. I have seen wolves prowling through the cemetery, near the river. They seem to scent something and occasionally excavate a shallow trench in the earth, but always they leave in apparent panic. They also prowl around the skin wall of the crog, but the bones and shrivelled carcases of their own kind that hang suspended from tree limbs have some effect of discouraging their entry. The dogs chase them off which concludes the process, but they always return. I am not myself safe from the obviously starving mongrels that are sometimes my guardians. If only Tig were here, he might be able to control them.

  My HQ is the largest hut, possibly the headman’s house. The inner walls are daubed with eccentric symbols that are identical to the rock carvings in and around the many tumuli. These paintings are absent from other huts, and I may well be in the local shaman’s hide-out.

  I keep saying ‘hut’. I should say tents. The material is deer skin, sewn together with leather thongs. No evidence of weaving, though mats, door edges and light-holes through the tents have been made out of leather threads interlinked in suspiciously familiar ways. Wigwam style, four or five shaped wooden poles hold the tent upright. Each tent has a fence of carved bone points standing around it, and in the centre of the crog is a group of four low tents, skin stretched over bowed wooden frames making four rooms not high enough to stand in. These have been separated from the rest of the community by a deep ditch. Carved boulders, showing circle patterns, stand both sides of a single earth bridge across the ditch. Is it a sacred enclosure? An empty grain store? I don’t know. I’ve explored the tents thoroughly and there is nothing in them save for a few polished stone beads, some maul-shaped pendants, spirally carved, and a skin cloth containing five amphibolite pestle-hammers, unused I think. Maybe you can work it out? (Ironic, isn’t it … I’d normally jump to all sorts of conclusions!)

  Imagination is the worst enemy still – I’d thought that particular frustration would have stayed behind when I left the future. Ah well. Incidentally – the ditch is probably that small enclosure between the trees at strip-site 20. We’re in that sort of area, as I said in my second transmission. Other features along that strip are not in evidence, and may well not be neolithic. I am fairly convinced that this is the Newgrange settlement. There are no other communities in the area, and this one settlement will probably be responsible for all three major tumuli, even though several miles separate them. There’s nothing but small burials on the Newgrange site as yet. I wonder when building will begin?

  Artefacts? Thousands of drilled stones, pendants; axe and arrow heads; several bows, very short, very limited range; slings, leather of course – two tents used for pottery and some marvellous Carrow-keel pots all lined up ready for firing in small clay and stone kilns. Most of the weapons and stones are clustered inside the skin wall – ready for action? The skin wall itself is two layers of hide, suspended from wooden poles. Human heads have been sewn between the two layers and the outer skins have been drilled with holes so that the dead eyes look out. Although some of the heads are fairly recently severed (both sexes) I can’t see Burton’s. Hope still flickers.

  Head hunting seems to have started even earlier than the pre-Celts, unless these are sacrifices. But no carvings of heads, so perhaps it’s just a small part of the culture at the moment.

  God, where are they all?

  It’s a marvellous spring. I’ve never seen so many birds in my life, and the insects!

  At dawn of the day following his third transmission, sudden activity among the already noisy lark population of the deserted tents on the western side of the crog brought Farrel running. He recognised the darting grey shape as Tig and called to him. The boy furtively crept out from his hiding place and stared at Farrel, lips slack, eyes dull.

  ‘Glad to see you,’ called the man. Tig smiled and slapped his hands together.

  ‘This Tig hungry.’

  �
��This Farrel hungry too. Can this Tig use a sling?’ He waved a leather sling he had been practising with. The boy rushed forward, lips wet, eyes wide, snatched the weapon and lovingly caressed the leather. He stared up at Farrel.

  ‘Lark or hare?’

  ‘Which is the tastiest?’

  Tig grinned, slapped his stomach, then dropped to his knees and kissed the soil. Jumping to his feet again he ran off out of sight behind the wall of skins, and ultimately out of earshot down a tree-capped slope. He returned after half an hour, blood on his knees, dirt on his face, but carrying two fat white-chested hares. Farrel started a fire in the small outside hearth that seemed to serve as a fire-pit to all the tents in the vicinity. As the wood fire crackled and browned the pungent flesh, Tig threw tiny chips of stone onto the embers. Retrieving one of the fragments Farrel saw it had been scratched with zigzag lines. The patterning, which he recognised as a standard rock-carving of the Boyne Valley area, suggested flame and Tig confirmed this. We take fire from the earth, he explained, so we must make the earth complete again with a small soul-carving.

  ‘But this Farrel didn’t carve this. Nor did this Tig. Is that the way it is done?’

  Tig immediately became worried. He crawled away from the fire and sat distantly, staring at the smoke. Farrel drew out his mock bone knife, scratched a zigzagging line on the same piece of stone, and cast it onto the flames. Tig grinned and came back to the pit.

  ‘This Tig can’t carve. This Tig can’t touch earth, or carve soul. But this Farrel is a good soul-carver.’ He pointed up into the air and Farrel noticed the smoke rising straight up since the wind had suddenly dropped. He didn’t understand the significance, but soon forgot to question it as the meat cooked through. The fats sizzled loudly as they fell on the flame and rich odours brought both man and boy crowding to the tiny spit, eyes aglow with anticipation.