The Bone Forest (Ryhope Wood)

by Robert Holdstock

  I no longer feel so cold.

  As the day advances, the tundra dries slightly. Its slick shine fades and I imagine that the air is filled with the buzz and hum of insects. The lake, though, remains full. I have abandoned my game of emptying the pool. The water is rich and ripe. If I could see clearly enough I imagine it would be scum-laden, dense green growth feeding on the stagnancy and the dead life that falls into its murky depths. But as further evidence of the coming of the spring, there are rushes at its borders. Again, seeing in any detail is hard, but the tiny growth is evident, and the wind from the caves in the north takes the tall rush-heads and blows them wildly.

  I suspect that a migrating bird-life has already settled at the shores of the lake. To see this would be too much to ask. One thing, though: I have sensed a darker movement on the swathes of tundra, in the shallow valley between the Pectoralis hills. Since this is closer to my point of observation, and my lens is more effective, I can say with certainty that the shadow is separate from the land. It may be nothing more than that: the shadow of cloud. But I think I may have witnessed the first migrating herds of some cervine species, perhaps reindeer. My dreams are often filled with the eerie cries of the wild.

  The Birch Accession

  The first forests are beginning to appear, and with their growth they bring with them a strange sense of pain, and a new sense of time. I realise how much I have been living by the time of the empty plains; those centuries of silence, save for wind and water. How slow that time has been, following the retreat of the ice from the north of the land. Time has been as stagnant as the standing water on the peat. Time has been in suspension. Sunrise to moonrise, the land has whispered and shivered, and dried and become wet, but there has been no change. The bursting life of the forests had remained asleep below the skin of the land, the cells as quiescent as the marshes.

  Suddenly that life has begun to erupt, and now at last I begin to live by the time of the tree. Now there is vibrancy. There is a swaying feel to time, a wind-whipped and vital sense to time, as if time is being stretched. It hurts. It brings a strange discomfort to the land, and to the perception of the land. The forests strain to grow. The trunks thicken and reach out and up. They spread, they expand, they quiver at their tips, and in their roots. They suck the memory of the forest from the cells below the land, draining the genetic code, feeding hungrily upon the mass of silent chromosomes.

  Silent? Silent no longer. The tree in the man, that forgotten part of history, that unacknowledged presence of the primordial plant, has taken root upon the man himself, and the swathes of birch begin to spread. They are in the Pelvic Valleys; they cover the slanting length of the Man-Hill. They reach across the Thigh-Ridge Mountains, down almost as far as the sharp Bone-Ridge of the Calf-Plain. They reach across the Pelvic Plain as far as the lake in the navel itself. Omphalos.

  The water gleams with a new and enticing light. It is silver, now. The smell has gone. When I dip my finger into its depths, the taste on my tongue is sweet. All foulness flees before the surging spread of birch and spruce.

  I am living by the time of the tree, yet I have no conception of how that time compares with the time of the world outside the land. For me—observing from the north—a day in the passage of the world seems to be … how many years, I wonder, in the time of the forest? Two hundred? Three?

  Each day the winter woodland stretches north, surrounding the lake, covering the hollow of the Solar Plexan Plain, spreading up the Sternal Valley and over the Pectoral Hills, even surmounting the flattened mounds (like the barrows of some forgotten civilization) which top the knolls. Hard to see, these winter trees, yet their roots are like spikes into the flesh. They are like thorns. It is a thin forest, this, struggling for life in the cold air, consuming and taming the acid land that for so many centuries has covered the skin.

  It is a long time since the ice retreated. Sharing time between that of the tree and that of the land, I begin to forget the accident that precipitated the glacial movement. The Ice Age is fading from memory, just as is the event that started all of this. I struggle sometimes to hold these unreal images in my mind: the “cold room” at my University; the high-tech lab where I worked on Primordial-DNA, those sequences of genes that retain memories of the primaeval environment, codons that contain bizarre echoes of a world long since lost; the sudden alarm in the cold room; my own surprise, then slip; the slamming of the door across my body; the sensation of ice building up across my face and shoulders.

  I know I was dragged from the freezer room, but I have no memory of that rescue. I know that ice had coated me from head to chest, a millimetre of ice, which slowly melted, a glacial advance that was thwarted but which somehow activated the hidden memory in the land below …

  This is how the forest came into being. It is unbelievable to contemplate. Now, though, all that matters is how it will develop!

  The Coming of the Wildwood

  A milder climate envelops the microcosm of the land. Outside my room, it is cool and raining, a typical early summer’s day. Inside, a dry, pleasant heat occupies that volume of space that has become the woodland micro-environment. The birch forest still occupies the high land to the north, but there is much pine, now, and its scent is wonderful.

  The bristles cover me completely. They itch where they enter the softer skin below my chin. When the hairs of the human land dropped away they left me sensitive. I wonder, sometimes, if the trees have grown from the follicles of the hairs themselves. The tree-line ceases below my lips, but spreads slightly to cover my cheeks. My crown is quite bald, and is cold to touch, as if winter still holds sway there. When I brush my cheeks I wonder what damage I might be doing, but through the lens and in the mirror I can see the proud stands of pine, still extant after the brutalising touch of the Giant, on whose corpse this world is starting to evolve.

  The tallest tree rises from the skin by no more than a fraction of a millimeter. In profusion, though, they make my body shimmer green; the canopy is dense. But around the lake of Omphalos, and below, across the Pelvic Valleys and the stump of the Man-Hill, down across the ridges of the thigh, the forest has become softer; it gleams like velvet, and is gentle on the fingers. The wildwood, the deciduous forests, have replaced the scrawny evergreens. Now the trees crowd and fight for light. The elms and the oaks can be clearly seen. Around the Omphalos great stands of alder crush together. Over the flank of the land a stand of hazel has a touch like emery paper. The Scar of the Appendix is covered by a coarse thornwood, painful to the touch despite the minuteness of its size. Where the land grows colder, above the Line of the Eleventh Rib, a battle for supremacy occurs between the pine and the gleaming ranks of hornbeam and ash. But the wildwood is spreading north, and in the lower valleys it is dense and rich, the trees tall, some of them giants, rising higher than the canopy, the great standard oaks and elms that grow where destruction has occurred around them.

  Sometimes I pass my hands above the land, letting darkness fall. I pour water over my skin; great floods. I moisten myself for comfort: showers of rain, sometimes storms. I wonder how the forest perceives these actions. I have ceased to sweat. My skin exudes the scent of sap, of undergrowth. I am in no discomfort. The creases in my body flow with water, small streams, rivulets, supplying the root needs of the body forest. I eat from cans. It is sometimes painful to walk. There is no growth upon my back, which remains a pristine, unconquered realm. When I lie, I lie supine, legs apart, arms to the sides, and in this position, like some slumbering god, there is a wonderful sense of peace.

  Below my chin, below the relaxed face of the world, a terrible struggle for the light ensues. The sounds of the wildwood occupy my mind, the cries, the screams, the creaking, twisting growth of trees. These are the first sounds of the world. Among them I can hear the shrieks of birds, the howls of wolves, furtive movement in the dense, dank undergrowth.

  At dawn all is silent; from Glottal Mound to the Phalangeal Rocks in the far south, the land is a rich and vib
rant green, catching the light. The land rises and falls with peaceful steadiness, a gentle wind blowing across the virgin swathes of forest, catching the branches of the giant elms that reach so high above the canopy; watchtowers; guardians of the hidden world below.

  The Elm Decline

  There is a smell of woodsmoke in the air, just a hint, penetrating the pungency of the rotting food and unwashed bedding of my room. I am used to the smells of my own decay, and so this new odour is sharp to my nostrils. In the slanting sunlight from the world outside I can see the tiny drifting coils of smoke.

  Pain! Sharp pain, that takes me by surprise. It comes from the area around the lake. Through the lens I can see that it is from here that smoke is unfurling. The pain is a tiny focus, like a pinprick, a prick of fire.

  There can be only one explanation … The forest is being cleared!

  It is hard to make out detail. The clearing is being made on the shores of the lake, which is brim full and brilliant in the dawn sun. Now I have a decision to make: do I extinguish the fires? But that might risk destroying whatever or whoever is burning the forest. If I leave them, however, they may bring barrenness to the land.

  There are other fires. As the day in the real world advances, so coils of smoke drift up from my right groin, from an area in the dense mass of wildwood over my belly, and from two locations on my right leg. The pricks of pain are tolerable. I wonder if the communities are related?

  They have begun to fell the great elms. Through the lens I see one of them topple, a tiny shard, no bigger than a trimmed whisker, yet majestic for all of that. I suppose that whoever is clearing the wildwood is also building the first settlement lodges.

  The First Totems

  In my dreams I can hear the ululations and strange chanting of the forest clearers. At night, they sing and dance around the smouldering fires of the day’s clearing. They are dressed in the raw, red hides and heads of beasts. The people by the lake are the Clan of the Spiny Boar. Their youngest and fittest male wears the carcase of an immense wild pig; his body is impaled with sharpened tusks, and he dances and screams his invocation to this ancestral creature. They are called Ka-lokki. In my dreams I feel the presence of forty or more individuals. They shelter in lodges made of bone and wood, whose roofs are branches sealed with lake mud. They hunt at dawn. They are building crude boats and I sense that the mist-covered lake is a place of worship to them. They drift across the lake and throw huge wooden carvings into the water. It is here, when they are on the surface of Omphalos itself, that the sound of their voices is loudest.

  All sensation of hunger seems to have gone from me. The forest itself sustains me, drawing nutrients from the air, from the light. A fine mist fills my room. The sounds of the outside world have faded. There is no light, no heat, save that which streams through the window.

  Creatures move on the floor of the room, among the debris. Sometimes I hear thunder, but it passes: people at the door, friends perhaps, or colleagues, but I cannot move to answer them. Time is too precious. The body forest is too fragile.

  The dwellers by the lake fight for survival. A Wolf Clan has attacked them. I dreamt the pain. They burned a lodge, then were driven away. But the Wolf Clan is hungry and restless and hovers in the wildwood, watching the clearing on the lake shore, biding its time.

  All of this is in the form of glimpses, half seen, half felt scenes in my restless sleep. During the night the land heaves. No doubt it disturbs the Kalokki.

  If only I could communicate with them. If only their words could be heard …

  I pass my hand over the lake. I hold the lens towards them, peering through its rounded glass. Perhaps they see my face. What manner of heavens do they witness, I wonder.

  The Temple Builders

  Over the weeks, dust and dirt, the grime of my room, has settled on the cleared land, and fallen in and among the dense wildwood.

  I have been sensing the deliberate movement of these great stones for some time now. The Clans are organised. They drag the monolithic particles of dust from the forest edges and shape them, working by day, by night, chanting to the instruction of the priests. They are erecting the massive sarsens into a great circle, on the very edge of the lake itself. A mightier stone circle has never been created. By fire they dance within its ring. Travellers have come south, from the cold woods of the Sternal Valley, to witness this great construction. They have journeyed north, from the now-desert land below the Plain of the Patella. Even in those dark communities, where the forest flanks the edge of the world itself, even there they have heard of the Great Stone Ring of Omphalos. And in my dreams I hear the crying and the singing of votive dedication. They are singing up the gods. They are dancing up the powers of the forest, and the lake. And they are planning a sacrifice …

  Ritual Sacrifice

  Her scream of fear alerts me. In a half dreaming, half waking state, I feel the pounding of her heart. It is dawn in their world, and a heavy, cold mist hangs above the clearing and the lake. Bone horns are being sounded, and bone rattles, and skin drums, beaten with a ferocity that makes the whole lakeside shiver with anticipation of the murder to come.

  She is very young. They bind her with willow wood, arms behind her back, legs crooked behind her, tied to staffs of wood. Her neck is bent back. Creeper and ivy entwine her body. She is trussed and helpless, laid in a boat on a bed of leaves. They strike out into the water. A young male voice calls for her. The drums thunder, the bone horns blast eerily through the dawn fog. Water laps at rushes against the shores of Omphalos.

  Soon I sense the stillness in the centre of the waters. Something is whirled around a head, and it creates a strange humming sound. Voices drone. The girl struggles, but is held so tightly that she cannot even flex a finger. A thong is tied around her neck. It tightens and her heart screams for help. The blood thunders in her head. A blow by oakwood to her skull and the water is reddened and enriched. She is placed, face down in the lake, and sinks by weight of stone to its bottom.

  I feel her enter me. She is sublime in her dying. She trails her life vertically in a coil of warmth to the surface of the lake where the small boats bob and the priests watch for signs of acceptance of their sacrifice. When she settles in the debris of the navel, her eyes are closed. Something slips into my mind.

  She seems to have risen from the corpse and is running …

  Journey to the Underworld

  Where is she running?

  She seems to be in a moondream wood. The trees gleam white. They grow from the roof and sides of a great winding passage. Where is she?

  The moonforest is all around her. She expands to drift among the moonbright branches. Moonlakes glimmer. She floats above them. She travels through the caverns of the underworld, round the spiral tracks, into and out of dark caves, where the land heaves and shifts, like the pulsing body of some great creature.

  And in this way she spreads to the north, to the place where the ice had once lain so heavily upon the rock, scouring the soil, feeding upon the seeds below. Here is a place where the trees hum and fire burns, great streaks and flashes of fire, running through the roots and branches. Here is a fire-forest where the voices of the ancestors sing loudly, where faces peer, bodies shift, and a whole world of image echoes through the crowded wood.

  She is in the fire. She spreads herself to sink into the fire-trees. She spreads through the forest, stretched thin, touching the coils of the seeds, where the forest coexists with the creatures of the past, where the codes snap and fold, twist and replicate.

  Our Lady of the Chromosomes

  The Boar is threatened by the Wolf.

  She means that war between the Clans is killing her people. She drifts there, in the seed-codes of the forest, enveloped by nucleotides, fed by ribosomes, arrows of RNA winging from her spectral presence. What do I say to her?

  MAKE A FIRE THAT IS HOTTER THAN YOU KNOW. MELT ROCK. SOME ROCKS FLOW. WHEN THE ROCK FLOWS IT WILL HARDEN INTO BRIGHTNESS AND CAN BE SHAPED INTO A BETTER KNIF
E THAN BONE OR FLINT.

  I must return to the lodges of the Boar. I must return from the wasteland. I must take this vision back to them.

  How do I help her? She is a ghost in the man-forest-machine that lies upon its bed in a rancid, rotting room. The forest above has disposed of her, thinking her dead. The forest within is a place of spectres and she is a ghost.

  FLOW INTO THE RIVERS OF THE WORLD. FLOW INTO THE SAP. I WILL GUIDE YOU BACK THROUGH THE CAVERNS. I WILL GUIDE YOU THROUGH THE CAVERN IN THE MAN-HILL. YOU WILL RETURN TO YOUR PEOPLE IN A GREAT FLOOD FROM THE OTHERWORLD.

  She dissolves from the roots of the fire-forest, flows into the blood, and drifts into the channels that drain sap from the tissues and the organs of the land. I feel the building of the flood, and the rising of the Man-Hill. By the lake, the Kalokki watch the skies in awe. An immense shadow is across the land. The cave that opens at the head of the mountain gushes. The lake is filled. The Kalokki escape the flood by climbing the giant trees. The naked goddess returns to them, ghostly white, floating above the waves, bringing her vision from the dark and fiery wastes of Hell.

  Anger of the Gods

  I have slept for too long. Much time has passed, and I wake to great pangs of hunger. And yet hunger had been banished from me, and thirst too. The forest had sustained me, as all forests sustain the land. Why, then, hunger now?