The Hollowing

by Robert Holdstock

  The pressure in the glade changed and the sap-scented air freshened. Helen came up to Richard and took his arm. “What did you see?”

  “I saw Alex. His ghost. His face.”

  “Are you sure it was Alex?”

  “He called to me,” Richard said. “I think he recognised me. And he did sound frightened.”

  Before he could say more, before he could allow the sudden sadness to arise and express itself, Lytton called out in a low voice, “Let’s get out of here. He’ll have seeded the glade, and this is a primary genesis zone. Did anyone see where he came through?”

  Lacan said, “The arch. It must be a hollowing.”

  “Good! Then we’ve got him!”

  Helen tugged at Richard, an urgent gesture. “Don’t wait around.”

  “A seed?” he asked as he followed.

  “Genesis,” she murmured stiffly. “Alex has come to have a look at you, but he’s generating mythagos and we don’t like what he generates. It’s how we’ll follow him, though … McCarthy will have seen shadows of the land between us and the cathedral. We should be able to follow Alex home…”

  The team moved back through the darkness. Richard listened to the glade behind them, but heard nothing.

  In the night, though, the silence was broken by an almost human cry of pain and frustration, coming from a distance, lasting moments only.

  The Green Chapel: 4

  The hollyjack was in pain. She was certainly close to death. She had returned to her nest and lay there, emitting sounds that made Alex sad. He kept whispering, “Don’t die. Not yet. Don’t die…”

  It was dark, the sky laden with storm clouds, a cold wind blowing through the roofless sanctuary, this huge cathedral. Alex moved restlessly below the trees, waiting for the rain. He watched the dark maw of the nest, calling to his friend, but she was beyond his help now. He didn’t fully understand.

  She had told him that what was happening to her was merely part of her life and death, even though she had escaped from her own troop, and had not been with a male for several seasons. He knew only that there would soon be carrion birds. They would not harm him, they would simply fly to occupy the high nests of the wildwood. But the hollyjack was so weak she feared for her sapwood. She was already dry to the point of cracking.

  Alex was so confused. He had left the Little Dream abruptly, dramatically affected by the sight of his father, who had looked so old, so different to the man of his recent dreams. He had surfaced in a place where there were traps—he had felt a pulse of hostility, like a raw wound, a savage threat to him from among the men around him. The anger had not come from his father. From his father there had just been desperation and longing, and the man had called to him, and Alex had answered, calling that he wanted to go home, that he longed to go back to the house with its shadows and its warm smells of food and the pictures and models on the walls and shelves.

  He could see the house as if at the edge of his vision, not quite clearly yet, but it was welcoming, an old friend struggling to be remembered. He belonged there. Something terrible had happened to him, though. His father had seen it, and on one of his journeys to the Little Dream, Alex had glimpsed the terror through his father’s eyes, a boy blown across a room, a dead boy, a vacant boy, a boy buried in the rain. Something bad had happened, and that something was out in the wood, waiting for him. The giggler had struck once and it could strike again, if it could just break through the defences of the sanctuary.

  The giggler had followed him through the wood just now. It had flowed behind him as he’d surfaced to see his father, and had run amok, dispersing the men and women who had set the traps. It had laughed and screamed, then skulked back through the rootweb to the cathedral again, to hover in the leaf shadow, waiting its chance. Or perhaps just waiting …

  The hollyjack was silent. Alex walked up to the nest, conscious of the powerful smell of rot and decomposition that flowed from the round entrance. The hollyjack stirred in the darkness. Alex could hear the distant sound of cawing crows, muffled, painful. The hollyjack gasped, and her tusks clattered. Above the nest, stray light from the storm sky struck the shattered knight …

  “Gawain…”

  The name came to him just as thunder rolled and a sudden, freezing wind gusted through the cathedral. The light shifted on the coloured glass. The green legs of the monster shone briefly. Behind the headless figures, the green chapel beckoned, its dark doorway in the fresh green mound like a gate to peace. Alex smiled. “Green Knight,” he said. “I remember…”

  The glass shook as a second peal of thunder rolled across the sky, followed by a strike of lightning and a further crash of sound.

  The hollyjack screeched. Birds erupted from the nest, a hundred of them, flowing like a black cloud from the bower. White-billed and black-winged, they struggled to the entrance and filled the air, brushing Alex back as they streamed into the thunder, swirling, crying, circling above him as they found birth and freedom.

  When the nest was silent, Alex crawled into the soft interior, reaching to feel for his friend. She was still alive. Thorn-tipped fingers brushed his skin and she rustled. Alex wanted to fetch her something, anything that would help her recover. “Water? Shall I get water?”

  She emitted a feeble chatter, and he left the sanctuary, racing through the storm to the well. Lightning broke the dark cover and he watched the wood anxiously as he raised the bucket, then carried a scoop of cold liquid in a leaf pouch back to the nest. When he got there, the hollyjack had crawled out onto the marble floor, and was partially entwined with an oak root. She looked like a small bush, but raised her head and opened her arms to embrace the boy, who curled into her empty belly-space, aware of the gnarled backbone and the black feathers that were scattered between her browning leaves.

  She sipped the water messily. She was very weak. When he dreamed the Big Dream with her, it was faint, a hazy view of the greenjacks as they made their way through the wide woodland, and the shifting seasons.

  The shaman led them, his summer growth now browning with an encroaching winter, the flowers and grasses that decorated his body withering and losing colour. He stood in a rain-swept dell, watching the watcher, while around him Oak and Ash, Hazel and Willow, moved through the thickets, making slow progress towards the cathedral. They were agitated. Soon they would start to shed their leaves, grow monstrous and transform. Winter Wolves.

  How far from the cathedral were they? Alex had no way of telling. But he felt his soul touched as the shaman scratched the face on his staff, and sensed a new direction, a new path through the forest.

  What do they want with me?

  To touch you. To enter the sanctuary. To pass through the chapel.

  Why?

  They are incomplete. They are searching for full creation. They are drawn to the source of creation. This place is at its heart.

  Her chattering, whistling words were so soft in his mind that Alex could hardly experience them. He knew, though, that his friend needed to rest, and to grow in strength. She was an evergreen, and he was aware that she did not go through the shedding and renewal of strength of others of her species. But there was no nourishment in the marble slabs above the crypt. Alex rose and helped the daurog into his arms, but she was too leafy, and the leaves pricked and drew blood whichever way he tried to carry her. So he used ivy to make a sling, and hauled her to the window, lowering her to the porch, and then the ground, She found a soft-earth place, behind a slanting stone, and put down deep roots, folding into herself, quivering violently for a while, before becoming still.

  Alex watched the thundery skies and felt the cold wind, but he sat beside her, watching the wood, protecting her as she struggled for life.

  At some time during the night her arm reached out, and fingers touched him gently, and he heard his father’s voice, and the sound of running and horses.

  “We’ll soon be safe,” he said. “My father is close, and coming closer. We’ll soon be safe…”

 
; Jack

  Very early the following morning, Richard was woken by Lacan shaking him roughly. It was dark, damp, and cold in the tent and Richard’s sparse beard was wet with dew.

  “I’ve come to say au revoir,” the Frenchman said. “I’m getting an early start.”

  Surprised, Richard could only repeat, “Au revoir?”

  The big man was a heavy, featureless shape crouched over him. “You’ll go inwards in an hour or so, with Helen and Lytton, maybe McCarthy. For myself, I like to take the Otherworld by surprise.”

  Dazed with tiredness, distressed by what Lacan had just said, Richard propped himself up on the bunk. “I don’t understand. I thought you were coming with us…”

  “Alas, no. There is something else that calls me.”

  Richard shook his head firmly. “I’m sorry, but that’s just not possible. Quite out of the question! Consider yourself under tent arrest, Lacan.”

  “Alas…”

  “You’re upset because I didn’t eat bear for breakfast…”

  “You want some bear? I have plenty…”

  As Richard’s eyes adjusted to waking, he saw that Lacan was suited-up, his backpack in place, lucky charms dangling from neck and jacket flaps below his heavy bearskin cloak. He had tied his hair into a ponytail and his high forehead was streaked with green and brown camouflage. “You’re still tired, eh?” Lacan said. “Still the visions?” He indicated the side of his eye.

  “I feel exhausted. I wake wearier than going to bed.”

  “Bad dreams?”

  “Indescribable.” He swung his legs from the crude frame, rubbed his eyes vigorously, then stared at the big man. “Where are you heading? I’m sorry to see you go—”

  “A big journey,” Lacan whispered. “I’ve been planning it for some time. I’ll be gone maybe six months, maybe less. I’m going in through the cave. I’ll be OK. I have a nose for returning to where there’s good, French wine!”

  Perhaps Lacan saw the sudden concern that shocked Richard as he realised that his friend was about to enter the most dangerous of Ryhope Wood’s hollowings. Lacan’s hand was a firm and friendly grip upon the tired man’s shoulder.

  “It will be a great adventure! There are so many underworlds where Old Stone Hollow can emerge. I feel very lucky. Please don’t worry about me. This sort of exploration, my friend, is what life in Ryhope is all about.”

  He hugged Richard, kissed his cheeks three times, grinning all the while. “The dreams will get easier. Write about it. It’s good catharsis! And when you find your son, everything will be easier still. For all of us! Trust Helen. She’s a fine heartwooder. She has an eye for you, too. Trust me! And McCarthy has seen much of the trail that Alex left when he came last night to visit—”

  He stood and turned to go, but Richard reached out and grabbed his sleeve. “Arnauld?”

  As if sensing what was coming, the Frenchman stood quite still, quite silent, staring out into the new day.

  “What is it?” he asked eventually.

  Richard’s voice was a mere whisper. “What are you looking for? Can you tell me?”

  Lacan glanced back, his features dark behind bushy hair, flowing beard, and heavy fur hood. His eyes sparkled, though, and not with excitement. His breathing was slow as he said, quite simply, very softly, “The moment of my death.”

  Embarrassed, uncomfortable with himself both for this potentially offensive show of curiosity and for the curiousness of the answer it had elicited, Richard said, “I don’t understand—but I hope you find it…”

  “Thank you. Me too. It would be good to live again.”

  He paced out of the tent into the pale dawn. A moment later Richard called after him, “If you ever need help, just whistle! Do you hear me? You do know how to whistle, don’t you, Lacan?”

  The Frenchman’s raucous laugh sent birds panicking through the trees.

  * * *

  They left within the hour, Lytton leading Helen and Richard the way over the bridge and up the wooded slope to the Sanctuary. McCarthy paced along behind, dreamy and distracted.

  Once at the Sanctuary they quickly assessed the damage that Alex’s “seeded” mythago had caused: four deep slashes in the trunk of an ash, oak branches broken savagely, one showing the unmistakable pattern of a bite, long, pointed teeth, wide-jawed.

  “We are beginning to reconstruct your son’s childhood pleasures,” Lytton said with a smile. “His imagination is loose. It affects everything he creates. This was a reptile of some sort.” He cast a thoughtful look at Richard. “Did Alex, maybe, have a passion for dinosaurs?”

  “Show me the child that doesn’t.”

  “Indeed,” Lytton agreed with a vigorous nod. “This one was small, though. It has left traces of itself. Can you see?”

  Richard looked to the upper branches of the battered oak and saw strands of greenish hair. There was a torn fragment of clothing, thick linen, also green. “Two creatures?”

  “I think not. Alex is creating oddities, combinations of passion and myth. What did you say was his favorite Arthur story?”

  “Arthur? You mean King Arthur? All of them. He went through a phase of wanting to be Sir Lancelot. There was a series on the TV. That and Robin Hood were great inspirations.”

  “But those serials were very shallow. He must have read more in the genre.”

  “As I’ve told you, Gawain and the Green Knight always intrigued him. He performed one of the parts the same evening we found Jim Keeton running along the road.”

  He looked up at the trailing green hair in the tree. Suddenly the idea of the monstrous form that had ravished this glade changed into something almost comical. And yet, its power was manifest. “Half reptile, half green-bearded giant?”

  “Why not?” Lytton said pointedly. “There are odder things in Ryhope Wood than that.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later, and with an awkward formality, Richard placed the first of his hollowsticks at the base of the Greek arch where the hollowing opened, adding his own crude figure to the three others. Lytton said, “Don’t hang about, now. We’ve got a long trek ahead of us. Come on…” and stepped between the stone pillars, somehow melding with the background, then fading.

  The moment he had begun to blur, McCarthy followed through, then Helen. Richard hesitated, watching as space seemed to swallow her bulky shape. For a few seconds, his heart racing, he stood nervously in a fragment of Ancient Mycenae, below dancing figures in marble and lush creeper, and then he, too, summoned his courage and took a few steps forward—

  The light changed. It was still deep forest, but this was high summer, and the light was brilliant, blinding, the heat suffocating. A high earth bank rose to the left, and somewhere ahead a river broke over rocks. There was no sign of the others and Richard called for them, suddenly concerned. A moment after his second cry, Helen stepped naked into the light, from the direction of the flooding water. She was gleaming wet, her hair saturated, her face a solemn signal of her irritation. Silently she reached for her shirt, which was piled with her other clothes against the roots of an oak.

  “I’m glad you finally decided to come!” she said angrily, wringing out her long hair as she watched the man across this dazzling glade.

  Astonished, Richard could only protest: “But I only waited a few seconds.”

  “Don’t!” she said sharply, tugging on her trousers. “Didn’t you hear what Lytton said? Don’t ever do that again! Do you understand? I’ve been waiting a day and a half for you. The others have gone on ahead. McCarthy saw three colossi which might mark the edge of Alex’s defence zone. Lytton thinks they can get that far without your help.”

  “A day and a half…” Richard repeated.

  Helen sighed, running fingers through her drying hair. “I didn’t know it would happen. Some hollowings are more time-friendly than others. Richard, don’t make assumptions about this place. Please? I want to get on. I want to get moving. We had no idea whether you’d chickened out or were ju
st getting up courage. Do you see?”

  Richard did see, and apologised. But he added, “If you were getting worried, why didn’t you just step back?”

  She looked grim as she hefted on her backpack. “I tried.”

  “And failed?”

  “And failed. This is a way in only. And that’s bad news.”

  “But Lacan—”

  Richard was confused. Lacan had told him that hollowings were two-way gates. Why should the rules have changed?

  As Helen led the way to the river, all she would say was, “This is a fragile, tentative land. It’s in a state of flux. It’s changing all the time with the minds around it. The rules are flexible and that’s that. I don’t know what the hell happened here. But this hollowing is different and there’s no way back through the Sanctuary. And that’s bad news. And I’m worried! And so is Lytton. Apart from that, and your abysmal time-keeping…” She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Everything so far is going well.”

  * * *

  Richard had lost her again, and floundered in the cold and the darkness, uncomfortable with the constant sheen of wet on his beard, his legs aching with the effort enforced upon muscles from constantly keeping balance on the rough and slippery terrain of a wildwood. He was sitting on the moss-slick and softening trunk of a dead and fallen tree, enjoying dappled sunlight in an otherwise stifling gloom, when Helen’s distant cry eased faintly through the heavy silence—

  “Where are you? Richard! Come over here! Come this way!”

  He found her crouching below a grey, overhanging rock. Whorled patterns were faintly visible through the lichen, which grew in rosettes across the towering face of the monolith. The remains of a tall man were crushed below the stone. Helen was turning the shrivelled head in her hands, peering at it matter-of-factly.

  “It’s a Hood,” she said, then added, “Robin of the Greenwood? We call them Hoods. This one has very obvious attributions, almost certainly a child’s. Probably Alex’s. Interesting bow, though.” She nudged the longbow with her toe. Richard noted only the dark stained shaft, the red fabric tied around its ends, the small white feathers that radiated from its center. “Did Alex know a lot about archery?” Helen asked.