Mythago Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  He was looking back towards the glade. ‘You’ve got to get out of here,’ he said, and before I could respond he had wrenched me into a run, and was practically dragging me back to the tent.

  In the clearing he hesitated and looked at me. There was no smile from behind the mask of mud and browning leaves. His eyes shone, but they were narrowed and lined. His hair was slick and spiky. He was naked but for a breechclout and a ragged skin jacket that could not have supplied much warmth. He carried three viciously pointed spears. Gone was the skeletal thinness of summer. He was muscular and hard, deep-chested and heavy-limbed. He was a man made for fighting.

  ‘You’ve got to get out of the wood, Steve; and for God’s sake don’t come back.’

  ‘What’s happened to you, Chris … ?’ I stuttered, but he shook his head and pulled me across the clearing and into the woods again, towards the south track.

  Immediately he stopped, staring into gloom, holding me back. ‘What is it, Chris?’

  And then I heard it too, a heavy crashing sound, something picking its way through the bracken and the trees towards us. Following Christian’s gaze I saw a monstrous shape, twice as high as a man, but man-shaped and stooped, black as night save for the great white splash of its face, still indistinct in the distance and greyness.

  ‘God, it’s broken out!’ said Christian. ‘It’s got between us and the edge.’

  ‘What is it? A mythago?’

  ‘The mythago,’ said Christian quickly, and turned and fled back across the clearing. I followed, all tiredness suddenly gone from my body.

  ‘The Urscumug? That’s it? But it’s not human … it’s animal. No human was ever that tall.’

  Looking back as I ran, I saw it enter the glade and move across the open space so fast I thought I was watching a speeded-up film. It plunged into the wood behind us and was lost in darkness again, but it was running now, weaving between trees as it pursued us, closing the distance with incredible speed.

  Quite suddenly the ground went out from under me. I fell heavily into a depression in the ground, to be steadied, as I tumbled, by Christian, who moved a bramble covering across us and put a finger to his lips. I could barely make him out in this dark hidey hole, but I heard the sound of the Urscumug die away, and queried what was happening.

  ‘Has it moved off?’

  ‘Almost certainly not,’ said Christian. ‘It’s waiting, listening. It’s been pursuing me for two days, out of the deep zones of the forest. It won’t let up until I’m gone.’

  ‘But why, Chris? Why is it trying to kill you?’

  ‘It’s the old man’s mythago,’ he said. ‘He brought it into being in the heartwoods, but it was weak and trapped until I came along and gave it more power to draw on. But it was the old man’s mythago, and he shaped it slightly from his own mind, his own ego. Oh God, Steve, how he must have hated, and hated us, to have imposed such terror on to the thing.’

  ‘And Guiwenneth … ’ I said.

  ‘Yes … Guiwenneth … ’ Christian echoed, speaking softly now. ‘He’ll revenge himself on me for that. If I give him half a chance.’

  He stretched up to peer through the bramble covering. I could hear a distant, restless movement, and thought I caught the sound of some animal grumbling deep in its throat.

  ‘I thought he’d failed to create the primary mythago.’

  Christian said, ‘He died believing that. What would he have done, I wonder, if he’d seen how successful he’d been.’ He crouched back down in the ditch. ‘It’s like a boar. Part boar, part man, elements of other beasts from the wildwood. It walks upright, but can run like the wind. It paints its face white in the semblance of a human face. Whatever age it lived in, one thing’s for sure, it lived a long time before man as we understand “man” existed; this thing comes from a time when man and nature were so close that they were indistinguishable.’

  He touched me, then, on the arm; a hesitant touch, as if he were half afraid to make this contact with one from whom he had grown so distant.

  ‘When you run,’ he said, ‘run for the edge. Don’t stop. And when you get out of the wood, don’t come back. There is no way out for me, now. I’m trapped in this wood by something in my own mind as surely as if I were a mythago myself. Don’t come back here, Steve. Not for a long, long time.’

  ‘Chris –’ I began, but too late. He had thrown back the covering of the hole and was running from me. Moments later the most enormous shape passed overhead, one huge, black foot landing just inches from my frozen body. It passed by in a split second. But as I scrambled from the hole and began to run I glanced back and the creature, hearing me, glanced back too; and for that instant of mutual contemplation, as we both moved apart in the forest, I saw the face that had been painted across the blackened features of the boar.

  The Urscumug opened its mouth to roar, and my father seemed to leer at me.

  PART TWO

  The Wild Hunters

  One

  One morning, in early spring, I found a brace of hare hanging from one of the pothooks in the kitchen; below them, scratched in the yellow paintwork on the wall, was the letter ‘C’. The gift was repeated about two weeks later, but then nothing, and the months passed.

  I had not been back to the wood.

  Over the long winter I had read my father’s diary ten times if I had read it once, steeping myself in the mystery of his life as much as he had steeped himself in the mystery of his own unconscious links with the primeval woodland. I found, in his erratic recordings, much that told of his sense of danger, of what – just once – he called ‘ego’s mythological ideal’, the involvement of the creator’s mind which he feared would influence the shape and behaviour of the mythago forms. He had known of the danger, then, but I wonder if Christian had fully comprehended this most subtle of the occult processes occurring in the forest. From the darkness and pain of my father’s mind a single thread had emerged in the fashioning of a girl in a green tunic, dooming her to a helplessness in the forest that was contrary to her natural form. But if she were to emerge again, it would be with Christian’s mind controlling her, and Christian had no such preconceived ideas about a woman’s strength or weakness.

  It would not be the same encounter.

  The notebook itself both perplexed and saddened me. There were so many entries that referred to the years before the war, to our family, to Chris and myself particularly; it was as if my father had watched us all the time, and in that way had been relating to us, had been close to us. And yet all the time he watched, he was detached, cold. I had thought him unaware of me; I had imagined myself a mere irritation in his life, a nagging insect that he waved aside brusquely, hardly noticing. And yet he had been totally aware of me, recording each game I played, each walk to, and around, the woodland, recording the effects upon me.

  One incident, written briefly and in great haste, brought back a memory of a long, summer’s day when I had been nine or ten years old. It involved a wooden ship, which Chris had fashioned from a piece of fallen beech, and which I had painted. The ship, the stream we called the sticklebrook, and a raging passage through the woodland below the garden. Innocent, childish fun, and all the time my father had been a sombre, dark shape, observing us from the window of his study.

  The day had begun well, a bright, fresh dawn, and I had awoken to the sight of Chris, crouched in the branches of the beech tree outside my room. I crawled through the window in my pyjamas, and we sat there, in our secret camp, and watched the distant activity of the farmer who managed the land hereabouts. Somewhere else in the house there was movement, and I imagined that the cleaning lady had arrived early, to benefit from this fine summer’s day.

  Chris had the piece of wood, already shaped into the hull of a small boat. We discussed our plans for the epic journey by river, then scampered back into the house, dressed, snatched breakfast from the hands of the sleepy figure of our mother, and went out into the workshed. A mast was soon shaped and drilled into the hull.
I layered red paint on to the planking, and daubed our initials, one set on either side of the mast. A paper sail, some token rigging, and the great vessel was ready.

  We ran from the yard, skirting the dense, silent woodland, until we found the stream where the launching of the vessel would take place.

  It was late July, I remember, hot and still. The brook was low, the banks steep and dry, and littered with sheep droppings. The water was slightly green where algal life was growing from the stones and mud below. But the flow was strong, still, and the brook wound across the fields, between lightning-blasted trees, into denser undergrowth, and finally below a ruined gate. This gate was much overgrown with weed, bramble and shrubby tree life. It had been placed across the stream by the farmer Alphonse Jeffries to stop ‘urchins’ such as Chris and myself from floundering into the deeper waters of the pool beyond, where the brook widened and became more aggressive.

  But the gate was rotten, and there was a clear gap below it, where the ship of our dreams would pass quite easily.

  With great ceremony, Chris placed the model on the waters. ‘God speed to all who sail in her!’ he said solemnly, and I added, ‘May you come through your great adventure safely. God speed the HMS Voyager!’ (Our name, suitably dramatic, was pinched from our favourite boy’s comic of the day.)

  Chris let the vessel go. It bobbed, spun and whirled away from us, looking uncomfortable on the water. I felt disappointed that the boat didn’t sail like the real thing, leaning slightly to the side, rising and falling on the swell. But it was exciting to watch the tiny ship go spinning towards the woodland. And at last, before vanishing beyond the gate, it did sit true upon the ocean, and the mast seemed to duck as it passed the barrier and was swept from our sight.

  Now began the fun. We raced breathlessly round the edge of the wood. It was a long trek across a private field, high and ripe with corn, then along the disused railway track, across a cow field. (There was a bull, grazing the corner. He looked up at us, and snorted, but was well content.)

  Beyond this farmland we came to the northern edge of the oakwood, and there the sticklebrook emerged, a wider shallower stream.

  We sat down to await our ship, to welcome it home.

  In my imagination, during that long afternoon as we played in the sun and earnestly scanned the darkness of the woods for some sign of our vessel, the tiny ship encountered all manner of strange beasts, rapids, and whirlpools. I could see it fighting valiantly against stormy seas, outrunning otters and water rats that loomed high above its gunwales. The mind’s journey was what that voyage was all about, the images of drama that the simple boat-trip inspired.

  How I would have loved to see it come bobbing out along the sticklebrook. What discussions we might have had about its course, its journey, its narrow escapes!

  But the ship did not appear. We had to face the hard reality that somewhere in the dark, dense woodland, the model had snagged on a branch and become stuck, there to remain, rotting into the earth again.

  Disappointed, we made our way home at dusk. The school holidays had begun with a disaster, but the ship was soon forgotten.

  Then, six weeks later, shortly before the long car and train journey back to school, Christian and I returned to the northern spread of the woods, this time walking our Aunt’s two Springer spaniels. Aunt Edie was such a trial that we would welcome any excuse to leave the house, even when the day was as overcast and damp as that Friday in September.

  We passed the sticklebrook and there, to our amazed delight, was the HMS Voyager, spinning and racing along in the current; the brook was high after the rains of late August. The ship rode the swell nobly, continually straightening and forging rapidly into the distance.

  We raced along the bank of the stream, the dogs yapping ferociously, delighted with this sudden sprint. At last Christian gained on the spinning vessel and reached out across the water, snaring our tiny model.

  He shook off the water and held it high, his face bright with pleasure. Panting, I arrived beside him and took the model from him. The sail was intact, the initials still there. The little object of our dreams looked exactly as when we had launched it.

  ‘Stuck, I guess, and released when the waters rose,’ said Chris, and what other explanation could there have been?

  And yet, that very night, my father had written this in his diary:

  Even in the more peripheral zones of the forest, time is distorted to a degree. It is as I suspected. The aura produced by the primal woodland has a pronounced effect upon the nature of dimensions. In a way, the boys have conducted an experiment for me, by releasing their model ship on to the brook that flows – or so I believe – around the edge of the woodland. It has taken six weeks to traverse the outer zones, a distance, in real terms, of no more than a mile. Six weeks! Deeper in the wood, if the expansion of time and space increases – which Wynne-Jones suspects – who can tell what bizarre landscapes are to be found?

  During the rest of the long wet winter, following Christian’s disappearance, I increasingly frequented the dark, musty room at the back of the house: my father’s study. I found a strange solace among the books and specimens. I would sit at his desk for hours, not reading, nor even thinking, merely staring into the near distance, as if waiting. I could visualize my peculiar behaviour quite clearly, snapping out of the mindless reverie almost irritably. There were always letters to be done, mostly of a financial nature, since the money on which I was living was rapidly dwindling to a sum insufficient to guarantee more than a few months’ idle seclusion. But it was hard to focus the mind upon such humdrum affairs when the weeks passed, and Christian remained vanished, and the wind and rain blew, like living creatures, against the smeared panes of the French windows, almost calling me to follow my brother.

  I was too terrified. Though I knew that the beast – having rejected me yet again – would have followed Christian deeper into Ryhope Wood, I could not face the thought of a repeat of that encounter. I had staggered home once, distraught and anguished, and now all I could do was walk around the forest edge, calling for Christian, hoping, always hoping, that he would suddenly appear again.

  How long did I spend just standing, watching that part of the woodland which could be seen from the French windows? Hours? Days? Perhaps it was weeks. Children, villagers, the farm lads, all were occasionally to be seen, figures scurrying across the fields, or skirting the trees, making for the right of way across the estate. On each occasion that I sighted a human form my spirits leapt, only to subside again in disappointment.

  Oak Lodge was damp, and smelled so, but it was in no sorrier a state than its restless occupant.

  I searched the study, every inch of it. Soon I had accumulated a bizarre collection of objects which – years before – had been of no interest to me. Arrow and spear heads, both of stone and bronze, I found literally crammed into a drawer, there were so many of them. Beads, shaped and polished stones, and necklaces too, some made from large teeth. Two bone objects – long thin shafts, much inscribed with patterning – I discovered to be spear throwers. The most beautiful object was a small ivory horse, much stylized, its body strangely fat, its legs thin but exquisitely carved. A hole through its neck showed that it was meant to be worn as a pendant. Scratched within the contours of the horse was the unmistakable representation of two humans in copulo.

  This object made me check again a short reference in the journal:

  The Horse Shrine is still deserted, I think now for good. The shaman has returned to the heartlands, beyond the fire that he has talked about. Left me a gift. The fire puzzles me. Why was he so afraid of it? What lies beyond?

  I finally discovered the ‘frontal bridge’ equipment that my father had used. Christian had destroyed it as much as he could, breaking the curious mask and bending the various electric gadgetry out of shape. It was a strangely malicious thing for my brother to have done, and yet I felt I understood why. Christian was jealous of entry into the realm in which he sought Guiwenneth
, and wanted no further experimentation with mythago generation.

  I closed the cupboard on the wreckage.

  To cheer myself up, to break the self-obsession, I reestablished contact with the Ryhopes, up at the manor house. They were pleased enough with my company – all, that is, except the two teenage daughters, who were aloof and affected, and found me distinctly below their class. But Captain Ryhope – whose family had occupied this land for many generations – gave me chickens with which to repopulate my own coops, butter from his own farm supplies, and best of all, several bottles of wine.

  I felt it was his way of expressing his sympathy for what must have seemed to him to be a most tragic few years of my life.

  Concerning the woodland he knew nothing, not even that it was, for the most part, unmanaged. The southern extent was coppiced, to supply farm poles, and firewood. But the latest reference he could find in his family’s accounts to any sort of woodland management was 1722. It was a brief allusion:

  The wood is not safe. That part which lies between Lower Grubbings and the Pollards, as far as Dykely Field, is marsh-ridden and peopled by strange common-folk, who are wise to woodland ways. To remove them would be too costly, so I have issued orders to fence off this place and clear trees to the south and southwest, and to coppice those woods. Traps have been set.

  For over two hundred years the family had continued to ignore that immense acreage of wild-grown wood. It was a fact I found hard to believe and to understand, but even today, Captain Ryhope had hardly given a second thought to the area between those strangely named fields.

  It was just ‘the wood’, and people skirted it, or used the tracks round the edge, but never thought about its interior. It was ‘the wood’. It had always been there. It was a fact of life. Life went on around it.