The Beginning Woods

by Malcolm McNeill

  Forbes had been watching the programme too, and he’d found this hilarious, that the man had been saying how much he missed his Vanished brother and all the while he’d been wanting to get at the rest of his Victoria sponge.

  But Max hadn’t found it funny.

  Maybe everyone was like that man, he’d thought. They were all talking about how much they missed the Vanished people, but actually they didn’t miss them that much, not really. They still ate Victoria sponge and changed the channel and went out for milk and got angry if someone was being slow in the queue at the supermarket, and nothing changed, not really. Everything just continued. And he’d thought that was awful, that you could Vanish and everything would just continue like that. Maybe people cared at first, sure. But there would always come a time when Vanished brothers were less important than half-eaten slices of Victoria sponge. Because at the end of the day, if the Victoria sponge was there and the brother was not there, then the Victoria sponge would win every time.

  But at least the man hadn’t been glad his brother had Vanished.

  Being glad that someone had Vanished was a hundred times more awful than just eventually preferring the Victoria sponge.

  And he was very glad the Mulgans had Vanished. Even now, if there was a button he could press that would bring the Mulgans back—he wouldn’t press it.

  When he thought about it like that he could see that something was wrong somewhere. He should press the button. But he was one hundred per cent sure he wouldn’t.

  I think you probably would.

  I’m not sure…

  You would. You’d probably press it then run away very quickly. But you’d press it.

  What makes you so sure?

  Well, mostly it’s dark down here in the pond. I mean, there’s light from the Merry-Go-Round. But mostly it’s dark. Just now and again, this sunbeam comes down. I can hold out my hand, and the water is warmer there.

  Where does it come from?

  You. There’s lots of daylight in you. Except it’s in boxes. Sooner or later you’re going to get tired of holding them shut.

  “He’s HERE? In the WOODS?”

  It was Mrs Jeffers, her voice snapping out in surprise.

  He peeped out from the alcove. She was on her feet, and Boris was talking urgently, one hand on her elbow. Before he was able to finish, she pulled free and strode back towards the entrance. Max drew back into the shadows.

  “What about that light?” Mrs Jeffers asked as they went past. “The one in the window.”

  “It was just a ruse,” said Boris. “He was never up there.”

  “The fiend!”

  They disappeared into the building.

  Perfect.

  The way was clear.

  He stepped out from the alcove and headed for the street.

  He took only a few steps, and then stopped dead.

  Mrs Jeffers was coming up the steps towards him.

  Twice.

  There were two of her. Walking side by side. Coming right for him. The one on the left even smiled and waved.

  He took an uncertain step backwards.

  Are you doing something to my brain?

  Trust me, if I could take control of you I’d have done it a long time ago. Maybe Boris taught her his separating trick.

  I don’t think it’s something you can teach…

  He looked from Mrs Jeffers to Mrs Jeffers, expecting one to vanish, to be a trick of the light, a momentary hallucination. But they both persisted through that instant of astonishment and came out the other end intact. And then they were standing in front of him, smiling as if there was nothing impossible about their complete impossibility.

  “Good evening,” said one.

  “Good evening,” said the other.

  The tower of silver hair, the embroidered gown—it was all exactly the same as the Mrs Jeffers he had seen a moment ago. The only difference was a canvas sack held by the Mrs Jeffers on the left. “O’LEARY IRISH POTATOES—Spuds You Can Trust”, read the logo. She was lifting and opening it at the same time, as if she was about to pull it down over someone’s head.

  “We’re very sorry,” said one Mrs Jeffers.

  “We don’t mean to do it,” said the other Mrs Jeffers.

  “Mother told us to.”

  “Angry Mummies, upset tummies.”

  “Wha—” Max managed to get out, but no sooner had he opened his mouth than an O’Leary Irish Potato was placed between his teeth. A second later the world disappeared. His head went down, his feet went up and he tumbled to the bottom of a hot, scratchy, airless hole. With his face pressed up against the sack’s crudely-woven fabric, he saw the pavement flashing past as his captors made off with their prize.

  “You said I could do the potato!”

  “You were too slow.”

  “You’re the slow one! Get a move on!”

  “It keeps banging my ankles!”

  “You’re not lifting!”

  “I am!”

  “Then turn! You go first!”

  “What?”

  “Backwards! Carry it backwards!”

  “How’s that going to help?”

  “Someone’s seen us! RUN!”

  “They haven’t!”

  “Why are you stopping?”

  “I can’t remember where we parked.”

  “Over there! The corner! Not THAT one the OTHER—”

  “Calm down we’re nearly there.”

  “Get him up! Higher!”

  “Open the door first!”

  “Ready?”

  “Ready!”

  “One-two-three-HEAVE!”

  Max was dumped on a hard surface and given a shove.

  “About time, you chumps!” a woman’s voice barked. “Now DRIVE!”

  A door slammed. With a whoop of breath, he expelled the O’Leary and roared with all his might: Kidnap! Murder! Mayday! SOS!

  The darkness promptly opened.

  THWACK!

  A hand crashed into the side of his head, stunning him into abrupt silence. He found himself staring down the finger of a grim-faced woman.

  “That’s for being a tell-tale-tit! Now get up off the floor. It’s covered in germs.”

  He was in the cabin of a Cowboys and Indians-style carriage. His head ringing, he slid up onto the cushioned bench opposite the woman—but immediately fell forwards as the carriage leapt into motion.

  THWACK!

  “Stop jumping around and sit still!”

  Scowling furiously, he jammed himself into the corner, bracing himself as the carriage pitched from side to side. He couldn’t see out—both windows were covered in curtains fastened top and bottom on brass rails.

  Door?

  He grabbed the handle and shook it.

  “Locked,” the woman said. “Can you pick locks, Mr Clever Clogs?” She parted the curtains a crack and peeked out, looking behind.

  And then… he began to stare at her.

  To really look at her closely.

  There was something familiar about her. Though she wasn’t very old she gave the impression of always having been old, exactly as old as she was now. Definitely she’d never been young, not for a second, not for a single game of conkers or an afternoon’s bike ride. Her black hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it stretched out the skin on her forehead, and her head was spherical but slightly squished, like a bluebottle’s, giving a slight bulge to her eyes. She wore a polo-neck jumper with the sleeves rolled up, trousers, and shoes with chunky heels—all of them black. For a coat she had on one of those green fisherman’s jerkins with many pockets and compartments for hooks and flies and spinners and line.

  “I suppose you could always unlatch the windows,” she speculated. “But at this speed… if you jumped you’d break your neck. SNAP!”

  As she spoke she took a short length of wire from one of her pockets and began twisting it into some kind of miniature structure with Origami Master precision. Mostly she used her long, clever fingers and
teeth, but at one point she took a tiny pair of pliers out of a pocket and gave the wire an extra-sharp twist.

  When it was finished she raised a fist to her mouth, cleared her throat and hocked a fat, green bullet of phlegm into her palm. She rolled the gooey slime between her fingers until it hardened into a rubbery pellet, which she used as a kind of bogey-clay to flesh out the skeleton. Then she began going through her pockets. From one she took a Dandelion Head, from another a Black Bead, from another an Inch of Black Wool, from another a Nettle Leaf. All these components she worked onto the skeleton. Finally, she popped the whole thing into her mouth, rolled it about like a gobstopper and spat. A thing a little larger than a Wasp buzzed out into the air.

  “Go on! Shoo!” she instructed. “See if we’re being followed!”

  She opened a window and the newly manufactured insect flew off.

  Max squeezed himself deeper into the corner.

  He knew who it was all right.

  It was the Wasp Witch. He’d fallen into her clutches.

  The Wasp Witch? You mean she made Wasps?

  And lots of other things…

  She’s the one that killed me!

  “See what you’ve stirred up, snooping around Gilead?” the Witch said. “Someone ought to slice your nose off before it gets too long, Mr Nosey-Parker. I’ll do it when we get to my workshop if you like—hey! Quit staring! What’s the matter with you?”

  “The Woodcutter chopped you up…” Max whispered. “Into little bits…”

  The Witch scowled. “Tittle-tattle! You’d think the Winds had better things to talk about!” She leant across and jabbed his knee. “You think you can do away with a Witch just by chopping her up? Some Apprentice you are! We’re not alive like Parakeets or Hogweed. We’re not dead like the Dragon Hunters. We’re non-living, like Rubies and Iron and Hailstones. We exist. And then we stop existing. We don’t have to put up with all that Being Born and Dying hogwash.”

  “Into little bits though…” Max muttered, still hypnotized by this figure from the Storybooks.

  The Witch scoffed. “Little bits, big bits, who cares? You keep saying that like it means something. It doesn’t mean diddlysquat. If you really want to know, my children, my darlings Kaspar and Hauser, got all my ‘little bits’, all my fleshy chunks, slopped them into a tray and left the tray in the cellar away from the light, where it was nice and warm and mouldy… and that was all it took! Haha! A bit of warmth and a bit of darkness works wonders on fleshy chunks, you should see what grows!” She burst into a loud guffaw. “And you know what I did to that Woodcutter? You know what I went and did, naughty old me? Bet you don’t, Mr Know-It-All, Mr Smart-Alec Big-Brain Hot-Shot Nosy-Parker.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Yes you do, all that’s nasty and horrid about you wants to know. So I’ll tell you. I sent a Weevil to his house. Just one, nothing wrong with that! Weevils have to live too! And when he was asleep, when his fat old head was lying on the pillow, that Weevil wriggled in through his ear and started nibbling. By morning he was deaf as a post, and boy oh boy, you should’ve seen his face when he couldn’t hear that Bluebird sing. I was peering in at the window—you should have seen his features drop. And the Weevil didn’t stop. It kept right on going, until it got to the good stuff, the juiciness. It’s there to this day, plump and happy, nibbling away deeper and deeper and further and further and round and round and round. Haha! Nibble nibble nibble! HA HA HA! How’s THAT for revenge? Haha!”

  The carriage took a corner so fast it tilted dangerously. Max braced himself like the Witch by putting his feet up on the opposite seat.

  “That’s what gave the World One his idea,” she went on. “He heard about my Weevil In The Brain trick and tracked me down. ‘I want to control a Dragon,’ he said. ‘Can it be done?’ ‘Impossible,’ I told him straight off. ‘They’re too stupid. They’re just a bundle of reflexes and instincts.’ ‘But what if you built something that went in its brain?’ he said. ‘The Coven wouldn’t license it,’ I said. ‘They don’t need to know,’ he said. ‘It’d be risky,’ I said. ‘Name your price,’ he said. And I did, and he didn’t like it, not one little bit did he like it. But he came round in the end. So I went to the market, bought myself the biggest cow I could find, and commenced my experiments. Haha!”

  It was her? She sent the Dragons to attack the Dragon Hunters?

  She’s working for someone. Let me listen!

  “These Dragons, he told me, would be spitting full of madness and anger. That was the hardest thing. You try saying to a docile Dragon, ‘Go left!’ and see what happens. It’s not so dramatic! Telling an angry Dragon what to do is like giving directions to a thunderstorm. I had to come up with a whole new class of invertebrates: Arachnids! I went through hundreds before I hit gold. Trigonotarbida? Forget it! Phalangiotarbida? Almost! Phalangium opilio? Perfect! The breakthrough was Barleycorn Bristles for legs. Only Barleycorn Bristles were long enough to slide into the Dragon’s brain. I put a hook from a Burdock Seed on each leg, so it can give a good, hard yank on the brainy softness at the right moment. Clever, eh? Dragon or no Dragon, angry or not, a good hard YANK on the brain won’t go unnoticed! Even then there were a few runaways, a few that got a little bit, eh, out of control.”

  She must mean that Dragon near Marylebone.

  I told you they never come out of the Deep Woods!

  “Just as well the World One didn’t need many! But it was worth it in the end. The Dragon Hunters—wiped out, or soon to be! Eisteddfod—cancelled! Only YOU weren’t put off,” she said, slapping Max on the knee in a friendly way. “You’re a brave one, I must say. And you’re clever, you must be if you started the Vanishings. I was at the Coven, I heard it all. How’d you do it, eh? You can tell me, haha!”

  Max said nothing and only stared at her. She wasn’t going to get a word out of him. Not a single word.

  “Ah!” the Witch went on. “It’s a secret! Hoo-hoo! Children always have dirty little secrets. Well, the World One’s going to be very interested in you. He’ll be happier than a Maggot in an eyeball I snatched you away so quickly.”

  Who’s this World One she keeps going on about?

  She must mean the Tinker.

  Suddenly the Witch jumped up and whipped back a communication hatch. Cold air blasted in and Max caught a glimpse of the Mrs Jefferses, high up on a driver’s bench.

  “Hey there! Lazybones!” the Witch shouted through. “What’s the big delay?”

  One of them turned.

  “We needed to get a straight piece of road!”

  “Get GOING! Full speed ahead! We’ve got to be in Gilead by morning.”

  Gilead? She’ll never get there in this old thing.

  How long will it take?

  Four, maybe five days.

  But then the Witch sat back and gripped a leather strap hanging down from just above the door.

  “HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS!” she roared.

  The carriage lurched upwards. Bounced. Lurched again. Max seized the strap above the other door.

  His stomach dropped.

  A force pressed him back into his seat.

  His body felt lighter.

  That’s… gravity!

  The rattling of wheels and the clattering of hooves—it all stopped and everything went still. The carriage swayed from side to side, creaking quietly.

  “Go on, take a look!” the Witch said. “Jump if you like!”

  Glancing at the Witch mistrustfully, Max pulled back the curtain.

  Sure enough, they were flying.

  The road was already far beneath them, the outskirts of Paris dropping away as they whooshed up into the sky. Pressing his face against the glass, he could just make out the front of the carriage, and the long curl of the whip as it flickered out over the backs of the horses.

  Or what used to be horses.

  Their legs hanging motionless, they buzzed upwards on gigantic insect wings.

  “I call it a Horsefly,” the Witch
drawled complacently. “The elytra were the trickiest parts. I had to get the amount of calcium carbonate just right…”

  Max hardly listened as she boasted about her biomechanical skills. Soon they were high above the trees, heading north once more.

  He leant his head against the window and closed his eyes.

  He’d thought, when he got to the Woods, it would be simple to catch hold of his dreams. But it was the same as before. They were just out of reach, beyond his fingertips.

  Only one thing was different.

  Now, there was a Dragon in the way.

  MATHS

  The flight ended with a jerk that sent him crashing into the other side of the carriage.

  “HeeHAW,” brayed the Witch as they rocked wildly from side to side. “Brace yourself, we’re coming in for landing! Oh, too late! I was going to wake you, but you looked so ANGELIC!”

  Max struggled back to his window. It was morning on an overcast and chilly day. Isolated flakes of snow were drifting down from the sky. They were driving through open fields: that meant a village or town was nearby.

  Is this…?

  It’s Gilead. We’re close.

  Sure enough they trundled by a street lamp, a man bent beside it. Work had progressed. Now the bulbs were flickering with a faint pink light.

  The Witch whipped the curtain across. “Nothing you haven’t seen already, Mr Stick-Your-Nose-In-Where-It’s-Going-To-Get-Chopped-Off.”

  The carriage rattled to a halt soon afterwards. The door opened and the Witch leapt out, locking the door behind her, but not before Max caught a glimpse of a crowd of villagers gathered at the millpond. Some kind of meeting was about to take place.

  He waited a moment, then carefully opened the hatch and peeped out. The Witch was clambering onto the driver’s bench to deliver a speech to the villagers, who shuffled closer to listen. From his position he could only make out a few faces. If Martha’s parents were there, he couldn’t see them.

  Are you OK being back here?

  No. But thanks for asking.

  “Stage One is complete!” the Witch bellowed, thrusting a finger into the air. “The attack was a rip-roaring success! The Dragon Hunters have been wiped out! Their leader is near-as-damnit a goner! In a few days he’ll pop his clogs without a replacement and that’ll be the sorry end of the whole sorry lot of them! A distinguished line extinguished. Haha! Best of all: they’re onto us, thanks to that snooping snitcher you let escape. The Coven will be on their way in due course.”