The Beginning Woods

by Malcolm McNeill

  “So I discovered it was all true. Or at least, things began to happen just as if it was true, but for a long time I did not accept any of it. Some part of my brain knew and understood right from the start, of course—the part that dealt with facts and figures and calculations. But the rest of me did not know, wanted nothing to do with it, and went on for a long time as if nothing had happened. That part of me still expected to see Mama at any moment, to be embraced by her, to feel her fingers on my neck as she straightened my collar, to hear her tuning her guitar in the evening. Even on days long afterwards when Papa was kneeling before me, holding both my hands, saying things he’d said a thousand times before, I still felt it couldn’t be true, he meant something else, somewhere a mistake had been made. Then one night I heard him crying through the walls, he was trying to do it quietly—and then I realized with my whole being it was true, and I felt so sorry for Papa. I rushed into his room and we lay in bed together crying and hugging each other.”

  Boris paused a moment—his cigarette had gone out. He lit another before continuing.

  “She dropped dead on the underground, ‘as if someone had clicked their fingers’—I overheard a guest say that at the funeral. One minute she’d been talking to Papa, she’d been living, breathing. The next, she was lying on the platform and her life was over.

  “Up until that moment my world had been a happy one. The worst that could happen had been a bad mark in an exam, a cut knee or a fight with another boy. But now I understood what kind of things the world had to offer.

  “For the first time, the Accursed Questions appeared in my mind.

  “Why had this happened?

  “Was there a reason?

  “Who was responsible?

  “I kept the Questions secret, at first. But the Accursed Questions don’t like that. They want to spread about. And over the months I began to ask other people. I soon noticed something strange.

  “Those who had been close to Mama could not answer the Accursed Questions and admitted they could not. They treated me kindly. They poured tea and listened to what I had to say, and they shared stories of their own. They gave no answers, but I always left them feeling a little better. Only those people who had nothing to do with Mama thought they knew why she had died. Their answers were of two sorts: I divided them into Doctors and Priests.

  “The Doctors repeated what Andreyev had told me. Mama had been born with a thinness in the wall of an artery in her brain. The thinness had become tired and had given way. This could have happened at any time, they said, so she was lucky to have lived so long. When I asked why she had been born with this thinness when other people hadn’t, the Doctors told me there was an anomaly in her genes that had caused the thinness. So I asked why she had to have this anomaly. They told me they could not be sure. Either it was because of a mutation, or it was passed on through her parents. This meant they did not understand the question. They kept telling me how the thinness had appeared. I wanted to know why. I was full of emotion, and I expected the answer to be the same. I needed an idea bigger than my Mother’s death. Something that would dwarf the question, an answer of greater mass.

  “So I turned to the Priests. With their cathedrals and sacred music, their cupolas and icons, they seemed to have hold of something eternal and unstoppable. But I was soon disappointed. They told me something so strange I could not understand it no matter how hard I tried. Everything that happened was God’s will, they said. And because it was God’s will, it was good.

  “As far as I could see, this meant God had killed Mama, and I was meant to be glad. No, they told me. That wasn’t the right way to think about it. God had a secret plan only He could understand, and because of this plan everything that happened was wonderful. We had to trust God.

  “This seemed very difficult to me. Because there was not only my Mother. There was the blind girl on the corner outside our school who never had enough to eat and had to sit on a bucket all winter in forty degrees of frost and try to sell fish that her brother brought her in a washing tub. People would steal the fish from her and when her brother came back he would beat her. I couldn’t understand how this was good, no matter what God had in store to make up for it. And there was a lot more besides—you only had to pick up a newspaper or a history book. But the Priests kept saying if we understood God’s plan we would realize how wonderful the world was and how much He loved us.

  “‘So it’s wonderful that Mama died?’ I asked them.

  “‘She is with God,’ they said, ‘and that is wonderful.’

  “But she isn’t with me, I thought. And that wasn’t wonderful at all. And what about the blind girl? She wasn’t with God either, and in the meantime the boys run up to her and pinch her cheeks. Why did there have to be a meantime? I couldn’t understand the Priests at all. Their answer just produced new questions. An answer had to perform the duties of an answer. It had to dispel the question, so the question could be forgotten.

  “The Doctors and Priests, I realized, were nothing more than ambassadors of larger schemes of belief. Science and churches were like model boats inside bottles. They’d been constructed outside of life, then brought in and expanded to make it look as if that was where they had always been—inside the bottle, inside life. When in fact neither science nor churches have anything to do with life, anything at all. Their answers had nothing to do with my Mother or me or my Why.

  “Two years after Mama’s funeral Papa moved us to Berlin, where his Father taught at Humboldt University. We stayed in my grandfather’s house near the Tiergarten, a park in the centre of Berlin. One night Father woke me and told me to get dressed. We were going on a journey, he said. I had not seen him so animated for a long time. His eyes had a strange gleam that frightened me, but I got up and followed his instructions. Now I think it was the first spark of Wildness in his eyes, reaching into him all the way from the Woods. He took a lantern, and we went through the streets to the park. There, among the trees, he guided me for the first time into the Beginning Woods. He’d been coming for years, he told me. And it was time I learnt about it too.

  “My Father did not want answers. What he wanted was forgetfulness, to get gotten by the Wildness. We spent many weeks exploring the Woods. One day we came to a junction in the Path. He told me he was unsure of the direction and instructed me to follow the western fork, while he took the other. I did so and soon came to a village, so I went back to let him know. When I reached the Northmark, I found his clothes lying there by the stone: he’d walked naked into the trees.

  “I left the Path at once. Without clothes, I knew, the Wildness would get him more swiftly. And it must have done. Because I could not find him. I became lost and frantic. The Wildness was beginning to send its fingers into me too, to pull me apart. I began to see shapes in the trees. Shadows in the form of Wolves. I ran from them. And then… it was like the development of a dream. I was a boy running from Wolves in the Woods. How can I hide? How can I hide? The only way was to become a Wolf myself, and run with them. But it was all a trick of the Wildness. The Wolves pursuing me were the Accursed Questions that had taken up residence deep in my own being. I thought I was running from Wolves—I was running from my own Selves.”

  “But you learnt to control it?” Max asked.

  “Not at first. For some time I must have been a fully-fledged Wild One. Of course I remember none of it. Only how it ended.”

  “What happened?”

  “One day I came out of the Deep Woods into a graveyard that had long been abandoned, all of its ghosts forgotten. I saw something there that reminded me of who I was, and where I came from. A message from a Mother, written on one of the gravestones:

  I

  CARRIED

  YOU

  UNDER

  MY

  HEART

  “Those six words drove the Wildness from me, and I became, once more, a boy. But the Accursed Questions are still part of my being. I have never escaped them. They pursue me through life. Wolf o
r Man, they break me apart when I summon them. But I only need to remember that inscription, that reminder of my Mother’s love, to become whole.

  “After I escaped the Wildness, there was only one place I could go—back to my grandfather in Berlin. He knew nothing of the Woods and had been unsurprised by our disappearance after my Mother’s funeral, assuming my Father had returned to his travels. All I had to do was add a conclusion to the story he had made up for himself: Papa had decided it was time I settled down, I told him, in a home, with friends and family, and he’d sent me back to Berlin. My grandfather had never approved of my itinerant life and welcomed me back into his household.

  “As for me, I needed to keep the Wildness at bay. I feared the Woods now, and feared their lure. I moved in the opposite direction and took up mathematics and science. Grandfather, not knowing my innermost thoughts, helped me with pleasure. He was an engineer, and it was he who instructed me in the principles of algebra, geometry, calculus, the laws of motion and thermodynamics. The more I studied, the more the world of science fascinated me. Engineering I could understand. In engineering there are no thin artery walls or secret plans, and the answers always dispel the questions. I built up strong barriers against the Wildness and buried all memory of the Woods deep within me. When the Vanishings started I moved to Paris to join the Symposium. I became one of the chief Seekers under Courtz. But our opinions differed. I did not believe the Vanishings were a question of How. To me, they were one of the Why questions, dreadful, accursed, unanswerable perhaps. I think I knew it all along: the Vanishings were the work of the Woods.”

  Max looked away from Boris. During the story, night had fallen. Even the moon and the stars seemed to be listening.

  “Why do people Vanish?” he asked. “Is it really because they’re dreamers?”

  Boris regarded him seriously. “I don’t believe so. But I don’t think the Vanishings are random either. Certain people Vanish. Others do not. There must be a reason.”

  “So why then?” Max asked, putting his head on a cushion and watching the Dark Man closely. For a long time Boris was silent, and only gazed out at the glittering constellations.

  “At the core of life,” he said in a whisper, “is an unknown region that nobody can penetrate except in momentary glimpses. This region decides the fate of every man, woman and child. The Vanishings are an illness of that region.”

  Max felt his eyelids growing heavy. “What kind of illness, though?”

  The Dark Man gestured out at the stars. “All cosmic bodies in the universe are drifting apart. The galaxies are separating and growing more distant from each other. Maybe in some kind of sympathy with the expansion of the cosmos people themselves are drifting further and further apart. The forces that hold them together are getting weaker and the forces that drive them apart are growing stronger.”

  “So what do we do?” Max asked.

  “We have to hold on,” said Boris. “To each other. More tightly than ever.”

  He stood up and covered the window, then looked down at Max. “Now get some sleep,” he said quietly. “You’ll need it.”

  “OK,” said Max. “Goodnight Boris.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Max lay there, rocked in the gentle swaying of the Balloon, the orbs of Old Light rolling slowly across the floor, the Dark Man’s words rolling slowly across his mind, back and forth, back and forth…

  People were drifting further apart…

  Like we did…

  Like what happened… to the Mulgans and me…

  FIRE

  When he woke Boris was back at the window, smoking another cigarette. Flexing his aching neck, Max joined him and looked out.

  They seemed not to have moved—the Woods slid below just as it had the evening before. The only difference was a building rising out of the trees, a tall structure like a lighthouse with a balcony running round the top. A naked figure was there facing them—another of the Wind Giants. The distant clanging of a bell rang out and the Giant began to swell.

  WHOOSH!

  A Wind came about them, moving the Balloon in a new direction. Slowly the trees rotated and a city edged into view.

  “The Eiffel Tower…” Max murmured. “It’s here too.”

  “It wouldn’t be Paris without it,” said Boris. “In the Woods it’s the main Wind Control Tower for the region.”

  The loops of the Seine sparkled in the morning light as they drew nearer. Soon they were drifting over the rooftops, sinking lower. Like London, the streets were bustling with people. None of them paid much attention to the gigantic Balloon sweeping down upon them.

  “Paris is a headquarters for various factions in the Beginning Woods,” Boris said. He leant out of the window and pointed down. “The Trocadéro, what we know as the ISPCV, is occupied in the Woods by Witches and Wizards—the Coven. That’s where they keep the Patents for all their inventions, in the Archives.”

  Max had seen the ISPCV many times on the news, but this building was different. It looked less modern, more like a cathedral with two tall towers on either side.

  “It’s not the same as the one in the World.”

  “The Trocadéro in the World was demolished and rebuilt in 1937,” Boris explained. “The one you can see here is the original.”

  “How come the World and the Woods are so similar?”

  “Nobody knows,” said Boris. “It’s always been like this. They are like reflections of each other.”

  “What’s that building there?” Max pointed to one of the many grand old buildings below. They seemed to be headed right for it.

  “That’s where we’re landing, the courtyard of the Louvre. The palace you can see on the western edge is the Palais des Tuileries. It was burnt to the ground in the World by the Paris Commune in the nineteenth century.”

  “But it’s OK here?”

  “Oh yes. In fact, it’s the headquarters of the Dragon Hunters. They’ll all be there now getting ready for Eisteddfod with the Chief Dragon Hunter, Roland Danann. It’s the only time in the year when they gather in one place. Otherwise they roam the Woods alone.”

  The Balloon sank towards the courtyard, guided by the gentle nudges of the Wind. Sandbags lowered on long ropes were caught by a group of workers. They attached the ropes to a cart, then whipped at teams of horses, which slowly dragged the Balloon towards its docking station.

  Once the Balloon was secured and the ramp lowered, the passengers disembarked. Max and Boris rejoined Mrs Jeffers outside. The old Wizard was in a foul mood, and had been since the news about the electricity at Gilead.

  “Sleep well?” she asked curtly. “Let’s get some breakfast. I know a café that does excellent crêpes. It’s a bit of a walk, but I like to stretch my legs after a Balloon!”

  They came out of the courtyard into a wide boulevard teeming with activity. A tremendous thundering rose around them as cartwheels and hooves rattled over the frozen ground—but the noise from the throngs of people crowding the pavement was even greater.

  “They’re on their way to the Eisteddfod opening ceremony,” Mrs Jeffers said. “I have no idea why, as it’s a terrific bore. There’s a tedious procession and some interminable speeches from the city guilds. We’ll go along later for the important bit—when the Dragon Hunters register the entrants. But that’s not until this afternoon.”

  Elbows raised, she forged a way through the crowd, and after a tight squeeze they popped out onto the road. Without stopping for a moment she dodged round the wagons, carts and horses. On the other side the going was easier, the streets almost deserted. After a short walk, they reached a steep hill that rose from the north bank of the river.

  The café was on a pleasant corner about halfway up. The solitary waiter, glad of the business, bustled them inside with sweeping movements of his arms and proudly seated them by tall windows that gave a grand view of Paris. In moments he had brought coffee and hot chocolate, lemons and sugar, and then he set about producing a rapid succession of crêpes
from a tableside stove on wheels, sliding them straight from the pan, hot and crisp, onto their plates.

  As they ate, Boris and Mrs Jeffers argued about the electricity at Gilead and what that meant. Only half-listening, Max stared out of the windows at the cityscape. The Eiffel Tower stood in the middle of it all like a strange metal plant. Near its base he could just make out the crowds moving up to the headquarters of the Dragon Hunters. In the distance, a Hot Air Balloon floated towards the horizon, peaceful and still. Even further off, but coming steadily nearer, there was a kind of black cloud, something like a dense flock of birds.

  Geese maybe, Max thought. How funny—just like my dream…

  He sipped his hot chocolate and waited for the cloud to collide with the Balloon, which it really looked like doing at any moment. But soon he saw they couldn’t be geese, or any kind of bird. They were much too large. And now they were spreading out in a kind of fan. One of the dark shapes split off from the others and glided nearer the Hot Air Balloon. A speck of red engulfed the Balloon, and it disappeared, leaving a tiny curl of black smoke in the bright blue sky.

  Max stood up.

  Boris and Mrs Jeffers stared at him in surprise, and followed his gaze. Then they stood up too.

  The waiter left the café and stood on the pavement, looking out over the city, shielding his eyes with a menu.

  Now the black dots were swooping low over the city. Red blobs appeared on the rooftops behind them. Columns of smoke began trickling into the air. There was not a sound and the dots seemed to be moving very slowly.

  Outside, a sudden rush of air swept down the street. The waiter staggered sideways, trying to keep his balance. The menu was snatched out of his hand and went spinning away.

  A shadow settled over everything, like a cloud was blocking the sun.

  The waiter spun round, looking up at the rooftops.