The Beginning Woods

by Malcolm McNeill

  And then it was snowing—great big black flakes of snow.

  One slapped against the glass.

  Rotting leaves…

  A rattling hail of pebbles and stones…

  Boris flung the table against the window and yanked Mrs Jeffers and Max down behind it.

  Everything exploded.

  Max blinked and moaned.

  He was lying face-down on the floor.

  Something heavy was squashing him flat, pressing down on him, making it hard to breathe. He couldn’t see anything except a cloudy kind of whiteness. It was a tablecloth, he realized. Covering his head.

  “Get off…” he mumbled.

  He pressed his palms into the floor and pushed up against the weight. A table crashed to one side, and he woozily got to his feet, fighting free of the tablecloth, then coughing as his lungs filled with smoke.

  The café looked as if someone had tipped a bonfire in through the window. Tables and chairs were toppled at crazy angles. Napkins lay smouldering and burning. Red-hot embers were scattered across the floor. He pressed his sleeve against his mouth, and cast about, his eyes watering.

  There!

  Boris was slumped on his side against a wall, his clothes spotted with glowing splinters. He’d been knocked out. Max staggered over. Swiped away the embers. Tried to wake him.

  The Dark Man did not respond.

  Max glanced around. The fires inside the café were spreading. He had to get Boris outside.

  He grabbed him under the arms and tried to haul him towards the door. He managed only a few feet, then collapsed. He remembered Mrs Jeffers and called out for her. His voice rasped painfully, barely more than a hoarse whisper. There was too much smoke to see.

  He tried moving the Dark Man again, dragging him across the floor, kicking chairs out of the way. He got almost as far as the door.

  Just then, an ear-splitting roar shook the building.

  It’s still outside.

  I know.

  Are you going to do it?

  Do what?

  You know what.

  I have to make sure Boris is OK.

  Gasping with effort, he hauled Boris through the doorway and onto the steps. Smoke was curling out the top part of the door, but low down the air was clean.

  He’ll be fine here. What about Mrs Jeffers?

  I couldn’t see her.

  Maybe she got out.

  Max didn’t see her outside either.

  All he saw was a street scorched black with soot, and drifts of burning embers piled up in doorways. Shop awnings hung in charred skeletons, and fires were blazing in every window.

  And above them…

  On the rooftops…

  It looked like a forest at first, like it had all just grown there among the chimneypots.

  Then the Dragon moved.

  Its long body was still encrusted in its earthen mantle. As it crawled along the roof a deluge of mud, leaves, bricks and tiles rained down. Only the head had shaken free of its crust. Its eyes were mad with fury, and glowing splinters were tumbling from its crocodile jaws.

  Max, you can do it now! This is your chance!

  But you’re still inside. What if it doesn’t work?

  Don’t worry about me. Just go!

  He hesitated in the doorway. The Dragon hadn’t seen him. But… she was right. He could find out everything he wanted. He could find out the truth. He just had to run into the middle of the street—the Dragon would do the rest. Four steps. That would be enough.

  Four steps and it would all be over.

  He stepped back.

  Max, I know you’re scared. But I know you really want to do this too! And I’m sure Porterholse was right! I’m sure you can stand in the Dragon Fire!

  It isn’t possible! Look at the street! Look at what it did! Nobody could survive that!

  You can, Max. YOU can.

  Then order me to.

  What?

  Order me. Let’s… play the game. Like it’s a game. Like it’s just pretend.

  I order you to, brave Knight!

  Yes… my Queen.

  You have nothing to fear!

  I have nothing to fear…

  Knights always win against Dragons!

  That was true! They did!

  He took one step out from the doorway.

  Then another.

  When he took the third, the Dragon saw him.

  Down it came off the rooftops, moving headfirst like a lizard on a wall.

  The Dragon comes, my Knight!

  I will keep you safe, my Queen.

  Then charge!

  He held his breath, and mounted his horse, and lowered his lance, and rode out into the street.

  The Dragon roared and threw back its head.

  Its mouth fell open, fire dripping from its jaws.

  Goodbye, Max!

  Goodbye! Wait—what? What do you mean goodbye?

  You know. Just in case.

  JUST IN CASE?? You weren’t very “just in case” a second ago!

  BONK!

  A cobblestone bounced off the Dragon’s head.

  “HEY!”

  Another stone hit the Dragon, hard. Its mouth snapped shut. It swung sharply to one side.

  The Dark Man was there, standing right in the middle of the street.

  What’s he DOING?

  I don’t know!

  Is he crazy? He’s going to get himself killed!

  Now Boris was pulling off his jacket. He began sweeping it over his head, back and forth, with big movements.

  He’s trying to distract it!

  What from? From you?

  No—look!

  Mrs Jeffers!

  The tiny, shrunken old Wizard was creeping through the broken window of the café. As the Dragon surged past her, she reached up and drew the long silver bodkin from her hair.

  What’s she going to do with that thing?

  But whatever it was, the old woman was too slow.

  There was a deep groaning sound.

  The Dragon’s body gave a great convulsion all along its length.

  The Dark Man turned his back and flung his jacket over his head—then disappeared in a blast of black smoke and red sparks.

  “BORIS!” Max screamed. “NO!”

  The smoke billowed outwards, filling the street with its choking fumes. Max ran at once straight into it, but the ferocious heat drove him back.

  Then Mrs Jeffers was moving.

  Leaping in front of the Dragon, she sent her bodkin spinning upwards with a snap of her wrist. Up it went, up into the sky, where it met the cold brightness of a winter sunbeam, and threw off a glancing scythe of Old Light that turned and flashed down in a shimmering bolt.

  CRUNCH!

  With shocking suddenness the Dragon’s head was pinned to the road. Its long body spasmed and thrashed, slamming into buildings. Its claws gouged furrows in the cobbles. Then the creature shuddered and went still.

  Silence.

  And then Boris was there, staggering out of the smoke, his clothes scorched from top to bottom, and his face black with soot.

  “WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?” he roared, spinning towards Mrs Jeffers.

  “Revenge for the chandelier, Doctor Peshkov,” she shot back. “Besides, I saw the Dragon had used up all its fire. You were never in any real danger.”

  She broke off suddenly and glanced sharply at the Dragon, her eyes narrowing. Boris turned towards it as well.

  It was definitely dead, there was no doubt about it.

  So… why was it making that strange noise?

  click click click click click click

  whirrrrrrrrrrr

  click click click

  It sounded like some sort of machine.

  Boris moved closer to the creature’s enormous head and bent down to listen.

  “It’s coming from its mouth,” he said. “Max, help me here!”

  Boris squatted down, and got his shoulder under the heavy fold of the Dragon’s uppe
r lip. Max took hold of it too. Together they forced the slimy flap upwards.

  click click click click click click

  whirrrrrrrrrrr

  click click click

  “What in the Woods!” Mrs Jeffers exclaimed, her face turning white with outrage.

  A metal scaffolding covered the Dragon’s gums. Razor-sharp needles were darting in and out of the pink flesh, pricking it over and over again.

  click click click click click click

  whirrrrrrrrrrr

  click click click

  “Boris,” Max said faintly. “Mrs Jeffers.”

  “What is it?” the Dark Man asked.

  He pointed.

  In the distance, a flight of Dragons circled a roiling cloud of smoke near the Eiffel Tower. Now and again one swooped into the black cloud, which glowed red from within as the Dragon unleashed its fiery deluge.

  “That’s impossible!” whispered Boris. “They’re working together. They’re intelligent. But the smoke… I can’t see which…”

  “It’s the Palais des Tuileries,” Mrs Jeffers muttered darkly. “The Dragons are going after the Dragon Hunters!”

  6

  CORPORATION COOPERATION

  The dissecting table in the main lecture hall of the Coven was a slab of granite that had long ago lost its original colouring and was stained iodine-brown and acid-white. Trickles of blood and other ichorous liquids were draining from the many arteries and tubes that dangled loosely from the Dragon’s severed head, which lay like a hunting trophy on the table. The precious fluids ran along chiselled indentations in the table surface, dripping into dangling copper pots that were periodically unhooked and carried away by attendants, for study in the Coven laboratories. Still, some managed to get onto the tiled floor and were washed towards a drain by a sullen man operating a hand-pump.

  The Dragon’s mouth was held open to its fullest extent by a series of hooks and cranes. Its eyes glared vengefully at the audience of Witches and Wizards, as though it might at any moment disgorge the blazing rubble of its stomach, even though they had all just come from viewing the body, which was in the adjacent chamber undergoing a simultaneous dissection. This effect of the Dragon still being alive was enhanced by the machine in its mouth, which was still clicking and whirring a full day after the attack on the Tuileries.

  Boris and the Chief Patent Officer of the Coven were in the process of detaching the apparatus from the Dragon’s jaw. They soon located two large pins at the back of the Dragon’s mouth, drilled into sockets made vacant by the removal of a molar from each side. Once these pins were removed, the mechanism came free in one piece. Grunting slightly, Boris placed it on the floor in front of the audience. A murmur of fascination rippled through the auditorium, as all the Witches and Wizards craned their necks to get a better look.

  “Never seen anything like it!”

  “It’s from the World, it has to be.”

  “It’s not electrical though?”

  “Some kind of clockwork by the looks of it.”

  Boris slid his hands into the machine and tweaked something—the clicking stopped. A sigh of relief went round the chamber, as though a bomb had just been defused. Several hands were raised, and there was a request for Boris to give his opinion.

  “It’s not good,” he said. “Not good at all. As you’ve probably guessed, the material is some kind of lightweight steel alloy not found in the Woods. The terraces of pins are driven continuously into the Dragon’s gums, putting it into a permanent state of rage. It should be obvious that this mechanism is designed to closely mimic the gum torture of the Dragon Hunters, and it seems beyond doubt all the Dragons involved in yesterday’s attacks were fitted with identical machines. This hardly accounts for their behaviour, which was co-ordinated and deliberate—most un-Dragon-like. My first reaction was that they had acquired intelligence. This seems unlikely—the first act of an intelligent Dragon might be vengeance, but would not be self-torture. In any case, they could certainly not have constructed these machines, and I now believe they were under the control of the agency who did. Let me be clear: this was a deliberate attack, planned and carried out by an intelligence that has not yet presented itself.”

  There was a shocked silence. Then, up and down the chamber, from floor to ceiling, everyone stood up and began talking at once.

  It had been confirmed that morning: the Dragon Hunters had been wiped out. Trapped inside the Palais des Tuileries, they had died not in the Dragon Fire but in the inferno of the building itself. Only the Chief Dragon Hunter, Roland Danann, had survived, and few expected him to live long.

  It was up to the Coven to determine a course of action.

  The Chief Wizard, Professor Theodore Mommsen, hammered on the arm of his chair to quieten the excited voices, and when this had been achieved, he stood up and moved forward. He was a hunched, skinny old fellow. His face and hands were pitted and stained with chemical burns, with the drip of alkali and acid, and his long fingernails were cracked and brown as his teeth, which showed easily behind his thin lips. He looked as though he’d spent every year of his long existence flinging chemicals into jars, overseeing detonations, and greedily inhaling noxious fumes through his nose.

  Max had learnt all about the careers of the main Witches and Wizards from Mrs Jeffers. Mommsen had invented many things to do with Water, and though it had been years since his last Patent he was still revered for altering Water to expand when it froze, thereby floating on its own liquid, sparing the lives of the fish that had hitherto been crushed under descending ceilings of ice each winter, and altering at a stroke the occupation of fishermen, whose original job had been to rescue as many fish as possible and store them in great tanks until warmer days returned.

  He was joined by the High Witch, Doctor Ulla Andromeda, a small, clever-looking woman in scruffy World clothes—jeans, a cardigan and trainers—which signified, Mrs Jeffers had whispered to Max, her contempt for those afraid of the World. She did not look much older than a teenager, and she fiddled constantly with the hem of her cardigan, which reached almost down to her knees. Her narrow, pinched face watched the Chief Wizard with a slightly mocking expression.

  “In the Great History of All That Is,” Mommsen began, “there have been times when the difference between the Woods and the World was hard to make out. In those Mingling Days, men and women from the World made their way happily through the Woods, thinking they were in the World, and those of us in the Woods could now and again find ourselves in the World, without noticing much change.

  “Since the Rise of Science those days have ended. The World and the Woods have drifted apart. How can we forget the nineteenth century and the minds that completed the long process of separation? Those mighty Tinkers—Tesla, Edison, Faraday and a hundred others, our great counterparts—banished the Forest Folk and the Woods for ever to the outer regions of thought, and set the World off along its own Path, with New Light in their lanterns. I must confess, dear colleagues, I long wondered if it was all up with the Woods and the World. We in the Woods would be forgotten, I told myself, needed no more nor wanted, become nothing more than the dreams that children have, while the World went on, ever more practical, ever more industrial, ever more technological, ever more World-ish than ever. Happily ever after. Electronically ever after. Robotically ever after. Scientifically ever after. Without stories, without whimsy or dream, only Knowledge and Reason and click click whirr! So I thought it would be. But then, dear colleagues, just when I thought the last tiny threads linking the Woods and the World had been severed: BANG!”

  He brought his hand down on the surface of the dissecting table with a crash, and everyone jumped.

  “BANG!” he said again. “The Vanishings! Whimsical, paradoxical and poetical—scientifically IMPOSSIBLE! Here, I thought, is something that does not click and whirr. Here, I thought, is something of the Woods—in the World. And now we find a mystery from the World—in the Woods. A mechanical mystery that clicks and whirrs, while
in Gilead Forest Folk meddle with electrical light without fear of Bio-Photonic Disintegration.

  “There can be no doubt about it: the Woods and the World have drifted close again. Not in the proper fashion, which is gradually, over the centuries, allowing us to grow accustomed to the change, and indeed, barely notice it. No—this time the Woods and the World came together in an instant. In a single moment. And it happened, esteemed colleagues, in a place where the Woods still had one last outpost.” His voice sank to a whisper. “It happened in a bookshop.”

  Max found himself at the end of Mommsen’s finger.

  “This boy Appeared out of nowhere. And from that day on, the Woods and the World have been thrown together with disastrous consequences. Thrown together, so that instead of influencing each other, instead of communicating in the unconscious manner of twins, they are becoming confused, they are intermingling and corrupting, they are struggling, perhaps, for supremacy. The Woods and the World are tangled and must be pulled apart. But how? That is the challenge now facing us.”

  He left his audience with that question unresolved, and returned to his chair. Looking up and around, Max saw many troubled faces. This news that the Woods and the World had suddenly crashed together with such violence had clearly shaken the Coven.

  It was the High Witch’s turn to speak. According to Mrs Jeffers she’d been responsible for introducing Bad Habits to the Woods. She’d started with Nose Picking, and gone on to Knuckle Cracking, Neck Snapping, Nail Biting, Scab Nibbling, Throat Clearing, Bogey Rolling, Leg Jiggling, Pimple Popping, Toe Clicking, Mouth Breathing and Teeth Clenching. Despite being in the grip of all these habits himself, Mommsen touched her elbow fondly and whispered something in her ear as she took the stage.

  “What, then, to be done?” she began in a quiet voice, standing still and thoughtful, speaking in a plain tone just as if she were thinking aloud.

  “To answer this question we must first be clear about Who We Are. For humans that has always been a vexed question. For Witches and Wizards there is no such difficulty. We had no childhood and no parents. We came into being complete and fully developed. We do not change over the years. We are the inert gases of the Woods that do not alter in the presence of other elements. We are fixed, because our job is fixed. And what is our job?