And he was—too warm.
The fingers crackled and snapped and he moaned at them to stop, because it was the fingers making him hot. He tossed and turned, trying to escape the heat, and discovered his legs were bound together and he couldn’t separate them.
So he sank.
Back down into darkness, where the girl was waiting.
She took his hand and he understood. Together they swam through the murk. Their passage disturbed toads that slipped up from the muddy silt and propelled themselves in bursts towards the dingy light above. Tiny beetles floated past attached to sacs of air, swallowed now and again by the gulping mouths of sticklebacks.
In the deepest, coldest part of the pond the girl stopped and began sifting through a Boggy Clump of decaying junk. There were beheaded dolls, castles with shattered walls and bent magician’s wands, but she didn’t want them, she was looking for something else. A cloud of silt grew around her and he paddled close at her side, digging too, digging through the mud and the slime until they uncovered what she was looking for in the pile of sunken toys.
It was a Merry-Go-Round.
It’s yours.
How do I make it turn?
It only turns when you’re Cold.
But I’m Warm.
You were Warm once. Now you’re Cold, like me.
They pulled it out, heaving together, causing the slow collapse of the Boggy Clump. And then the pond drained away from them and they were sitting in a darkness so deep he thought he’d be able to reach out and stroke it.
In front of them he sensed the Merry-Go-Round, massive now, massive and dark and unlit.
Then the lights blazed out.
And the Merry-Go-Round turned.
And there were Centipedes.
And Scorpions.
And Worms.
CLUNK CLUNK
Shuddering, he opened his eyes.
He was lying on his back.
Above him, a red glow flickered against a craggy ceiling that glistened with moisture.
CLUNK CLUNK
He turned his head weakly from side to side. He was in a cave, and someone was here with him. He pushed himself up and looked towards the sound.
A fire was burning at the mouth of the cave. Next to it stood an old man. A weather-beaten face. A shaggy beard. A mouth set in a hard, straight line. He had a long pair of tongs in his hands. He was using them to turn large stones resting above the fire on a griddle.
The iron tongs clacked.
The stones clunked.
The effort of sitting up was too much. He collapsed back, noticing for the first time that a circle of the charred stones surrounded him, giving off a deep, throbbing heat. His bed was some kind of pallet that raised him off the ground. Animal fur bristled under his fingers, and he discovered why he hadn’t been able to move his legs—he was encased in a fluorescent-yellow sleeping bag. As soon as he spotted its HiTECH Iso-pore™ label, he knew this person, this cave-dweller, was a World One.
The Witch’s World One?
The Tinker?
He saw a familiar sheepskin coat folded over the end of the bed. His fingers plucked at his shirt.
They were his clothes.
The Witch must have brought them.
There was an odd feeling in his ear—the Dragon Hunter’s tooth, he realized. He’d forgotten all about that.
Are you still there too?
Yes.
Where am I? What happened?
He rescued you. He brought you here, to his cave. You nearly died and he saved your life. You’ve been in a fever.
How long?
Two days I think.
Do you know where we are?
I’m not sure. I think it’s Mount Gilead, near the top. He must have been near Rosethorn for the Dragon attack. The Witch brought us here in the carriage. Don’t you remember? You were talking a lot. I thought you were awake.
I don’t remember… I just remember the Dragon Fire…
You saved them, Max. The villagers.
I don’t care.
Max…
Leave me alone.
He closed his eyes.
No. He didn’t care about the villagers.
He didn’t care the Appearance was still a mystery.
He didn’t care about the Vanishings.
Or the Woods and the World.
He couldn’t think about any of that.
All he could think about was Alice at the kitchen table. “Don’t look round until we tell you.” That was the last thing she’d said, and now he could not get those words out of his head. They were carved into his mind, like messages left by the Cold Ones.
DON’T
LOOK ROUND
UNTIL WE
TELL YOU
What she’d wanted, more than anything else, was for him to look at her. To see her. To be with her properly. Every day she’d wanted that. And that was all. Maybe, watching from the kitchen when he came and went, she’d just been waiting for a turn of the head, a smile, something small.
He hadn’t given her a single one.
How must that have made her feel?
Even at the last moment, when she had her last chance, she didn’t ask him to look. She chose to protect him instead. “Don’t look round until we tell you.”
She didn’t want him to see it happen.
And maybe if he had looked round, if he had turned round and looked at them both properly, like he was meant to… if he’d held onto them like he was supposed to… tightly… then he would have stopped the Vanishing.
He hadn’t even realized that, until now.
CLUNK CLUNK
The Tinker lifted a stone off the griddle and brought it over. The moist ground sizzled as he placed the hot rock in the circle.
Seeing him up close, Max stared, then looked away quickly.
One of the Tinker’s eyes was completely transparent, like a glass orb.
The other shone with a blue light, like the glowing, robotic eye of a machine.
Saying nothing, the Tinker removed a glove, held a hand over each of the stones in turn, selected one and returned to the fire, where he placed it on the griddle above the flames.
Max watched every movement. It looked as if the Tinker had been living here for months, maybe years. His clothes—expensive survival gear from the World—were old and faded. Many storage chests and boxes of all sizes were stacked neatly against the walls, and shelving had been put up for tools and equipment.
The Tinker hung the tongs from a hook on the wall, tended briefly to the fire, then turned and stood gazing out of the cave.
He was looking at something, out there in the darkness.
Max unzipped his sleeping bag and got up, his legs shaking with weakness. He found his shoes, hung his coat round his shoulders and made his way to the mouth of the cave.
Standing beside the old man, he looked out over the Woods.
The Woods below them had been hacked back from the cave—the shadowy form of tree stumps were dotted about in the darkness. Further down still, in the basin of the valley, the sodium-orange lamps of Gilead glowed like a patch of radiation, a meteorite crater, its brightness foreign to the landscape.
“Let there be light!” the Tinker said, almost to himself, and he looked down at Max, his seeing eye glowing with that electric blueness that almost beamed out of his skull. “Were you ever, when you were small, afraid of the dark?” he asked then.
Max shook his head, and the Tinker looked back at the New Light of Gilead.
“I was afraid of the dark,” he admitted quietly. “I had good reason. If I did badly at school my Father locked me in the cellar and turned off the lights. One day, my Mother tried to comfort me by whispering fairy tales through the keyhole. She didn’t understand how terrifying it was, to hear those stories, down there in the dark. In the dark you can’t see there’s no Goblin in the corner. You can’t be sure. There’s always a tiny doubt in your mind, but that doubt always has the loudest voice. What if t
he Goblin really is there? What if he’s watching me? What is he thinking about, there in his corner? Are those his eyes I can see, or some little part of light? Yes, I was scared of the dark when I was a child.” He nodded to himself for a good while. “But not any more. No, not any more.”
“Why did you bring me here?” Max asked. “Are you going to let me go?”
The question seemed to surprise the Tinker. “I brought you here because you were cold. You are free to leave, at any time.” He smiled ironically. “But perhaps you should remain for the night at least.”
“Yes,” Max said. Then he added: “Thank you for saving me.”
“You’re welcome!” The Tinker looked at him, considering something. “So. You wished to become a Dragon Hunter?”
Max shook his head. “I don’t care about that.”
“Hm,” the Tinker said, nodding. Then: “I know something about you, I admit.”
“What do you know?”
“I will tell you,” said the Tinker. “And then you should say what you know about me. Do you agree?”
“I agree,” Max said after a moment.
“You Appeared out of nowhere in a bookshop,” the Tinker said. “And you remember nothing of where you came from. You were to find out from the Dragon Fire.”
Max kept quiet. But there was something gentle about the questions, and the Tinker’s voice.
“Even though you do not know where you come from,” the Tinker went on, “you have always felt that you… came from somewhere else. Is that right?”
Max gave a small nod.
The Tinker closed his eyes and lifted his head back, like he was trying to sense something invisible. “And all your life, you have been plagued by strange dreams. Dreams you cannot explain. That seem… more than real.”
“Yes,” Max said quietly.
“And when you ran away from home,” the Tinker went on, “you ran away to get to the Woods.”
Max glanced at him. “How do you know I ran away from home?”
“Oh, all the Apprentices run away from home,” the Tinker said. “All the Dragon Hunters are from the World. They run away and come to the Woods. They’re dreamers, all of them. Or used to be,” he added in a low voice. His forehead creased slightly. “So. Why did you run away from home?”
Max felt the Dragon Fire stir inside him, reminding him.
“My parents didn’t know who I was,” he whispered. “They couldn’t tell me. I had to find out.”
“Why did you expect them to know?”
“Because they were my parents.”
The Tinker shook his head. “It’s precisely because they were your parents that they didn’t know, and could never know.”
“Parents know their children.”
“Your own experience tells you otherwise.”
“They should. They’re meant to.”
“Should and Meant To are simply descriptions of What Is Not. They are dreams. Parents see only the hopes they have for their children, or the fears. You cannot expect such people to see you clearly.”
The Tinker’s voice was hypnotic, his speech measured and slow. Max felt the dim stirring of a memory. Hadn’t he heard this voice before?
“We see each other through lenses of our own devising,” the Tinker went on. “You look at me now, and you think you see me. But you do not. You only see an idea you have of me. Perhaps, a bad idea. You see a person you have created, that has nothing to do with me, nothing at all. You see a story. Just as your parents, looking at you, saw a story.”
“I didn’t see them either,” Max whispered. “When I looked at them… I saw something else.”
“You are not to blame,” said the Tinker. “It is our habit. It is the way we function, the way we have always functioned. The World is all around us, waiting to be seen, but all we see is the Woods. Why? Because we prefer it.”
The old man’s voice rose and fell in persuasive cadences, and Max suddenly remembered where he’d heard it before.
“Now,” said the Tinker. “Tell me what you know about me.”
“You’re Professor Courtz,” Max said. “You’re the Chief Seeker.”
“True. What else?”
“You changed the Dragons.”
“Some of them. What else?”
“You started the Censorship.”
“Good. But why?”
“You want to bring science to the Woods.”
“No,” said Courtz. “No. I want to bring it to the World.”
“The World?” Max stared at him, confused. “But… it’s already there.”
“It is there. This is true. But we have never taken it absolutely into our hearts. We use it. We employ it. We buy it and sell it. It is a tool. But it does not define who we are. Instead, we are defined by our dreams. To this very day, we prefer not to see, and until there are no dreams, this will never change. Now,” he said. “What else do you know about me?”
“You don’t like dreams.”
Courtz laughed, a rich, welcoming sound. “And what do you think I’m going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I will show you. It has already begun. When I am finished, there will be no more dreams. Ever again.” He pointed out over the Woods. “Watch the trees now. These are the Deep Woods you see. They are coming.”
The sky was turning grey with the first light of dawn. From horizon to horizon, tiny curls of green lifted up from the trees, like buds of new life sprouting from soil.
It was the Dragons.
The migration to Ethiopia was beginning.
“I will not keep you here,” Courtz went on. “You can return to Paris to become the last of the Dragon Hunters. You can hunt for stories and poison the World with fantasies. Or you can stay here, with me. You can be my Apprentice. Together we can free the World from the influence of the Woods. It is your choice. But before you decide, ask yourself: what have dreams done for you? Are your dreams with you, giving you strength and life? Or have they left you empty? Have they deceived you? What have they brought you? Something? Or nothing?”
With that, he turned and walked back into the cave, leaving Max where he was, paralysed, unable to move.
He had no defence against Courtz’s arguments.
Not after the Dragon Fire.
So he stood there and watched. Flying low over the trees, the Dragons came closer, calling to each other with sonorous booms like whale song. Soon the first were passing overhead, scattering a rainfall of seeds, trailing a dispersal of new life. These Dragons were pure, untouched by Witch’s spiders or Tinker’s tools—it was like the last Denizens of the Woods were departing, fleeing from the influence of the New Light at Gilead. Watching them go, he felt a wrench, as if something was leaving him too, some belief he had long lived under, a hope of something magical.
“For too long the World has been misguided and tricked by fantasy,” Courtz spoke behind him. “The Age of Dreams has run its course. And now the Age of Science will truly begin.”
There was a loud, metallic CLICK-CLACK—then an almighty crash split the air.
Max jerked and ducked, covering his ears.
Courtz was standing with one foot on a rock, his blue eye gazing along a rifle at the sky. He waited a moment, then lowered it with a nod of satisfaction. One of the Dragons peeled away from the flock and fell, spiralling slowly, into the forest.
The other Dragons continued on their way, unaware of what had happened—unaware of what awaited them on their return.
SNAP
White polystyrene balls cascaded onto the floor of the cave as Courtz heaved out a clanking piece of metal from one of the crates. Grunting, he set it down on a canvas tarpaulin and began inspecting every coil and pin of its workings.
Max watched as he stirred their porridge over the fire. The scientist was assembling a set of mechanical jaws like the one Boris had cut out of the Dragon’s head at the Coven. It had many separate parts, taken from different crates. All the equipment. All th
e gear and tools and boxes. Courtz couldn’t have got it here on his own. The Symposium had to be helping him. There had to be other Seekers who shared his beliefs. Maybe they’d even driven Boris out. They’d wanted him gone.
Boris.
He wondered what the Dark Man would have said to Courtz. He’d have disagreed. He’d have had arguments.
But what were those arguments?
He couldn’t think of any.
Not a single one.
Everything that Courtz had said seemed true.
The Dragon Hunter’s tooth was still in his ear. Courtz had his back turned. He could easily drop it into his bowl. Put the Tinker to sleep and get back to Paris. He could complete the mission. There was still time before the seventh day.
He could do it.
He really could.
There was just one thing stopping him.
He didn’t want to.
This man had created the Censorship. He’d told the World that dreams were dangerous, that it was better to focus on what was real. Max had thought that was wrong.
The Dragon Fire had told him it was true.
It was stories that had taken away what he wanted. If it hadn’t been for dreams about his Forever Parents, his life with the Mulgans could have been better. They wouldn’t have drifted so far apart. Things would have just worked.
So maybe Courtz was right about science. Maybe it was time to stop dreaming and see the World clearly.
By DESTROYING the Woods?
He doesn’t mean DESTROY as in literally. He means make the Woods the same as the World. With science. He just needs to clear out all the story-ish stuff. There’s no point having a Censorship if people are still going around dreaming their heads off.
Look. I know you need time to think. But I’m NOT going to sit here quietly and let you THINK if it means you AGREE with him! He’s killed people. He’s a murderer.
Yes. He has. And that is terrible. But remember what the Witch said?
The WITCH??
The Woods has killed more, Martha. What about Little Noah? He got gotten by the Wildness. And he got torn apart by dogs! Dogs!
That doesn’t make this right. What he’s doing is wrong.
I think it’s wrong too, Martha. I feel it’s wrong. But I can’t figure out why. Maybe the Dark Man would be able to tell me, if he was here. But he isn’t.
The Beginning Woods Page 28