Mythago Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  We circled the airfield twice, and at last I risked opening my eyes. It was an initially disorientating feeling, as I suddenly became aware that the view from the side window was not a distant horizon, but farmland. My mind caught up with my inner ear, and I adjusted to the idea of being several hundred feet above the ground, hardly conscious of the confusion of my body in relationship to gravity. Then Keeton banked sharply to the right – and there was no disorientation then, merely panic! – and the plane slipped quickly away to the north; bright sun obscured all vision to the west, but by peering hard through the cold, rather misty side window, I could see the shadowy field structure below, with the bright scattered clusters of white buildings that were hamlets and towns.

  ‘If you feel sick,’ Keeton called back, his voice a grating rasp in my ears, ‘use the leather bag beside you, would you mind?’

  ‘I feel fine,’ I said back, and felt for the reassuring container. The plane was buffeted by a cross wind and part of me seemed to rise within my chest cavity before catching up with its companion organs. I clutched the bag more tightly, felt the sting of sharp saliva in my mouth, that awful cold feeling that precedes nausea. And as quietly, and as quickly, as possible – and humiliated totally – I gave in to the violent need to empty my stomach.

  Keeton laughed loudly. ‘Waste of rations,’ he said.

  ‘I feel better for being rid of them.’

  At once I did feel better. Perhaps anger at my weakness, perhaps the simple fact of being empty, allowed me a more cheerful approach to the terrifying act of flying hundreds of feet above the ground. Keeton was checking the cameras, his mind on them, not on our passage through the sky. The semi-circular steering wheel moved of its own volition, and though the plane seemed struck by giant fingers, flipping it to right and left, then pushing it down with alarming speed, we seemed to maintain a straight course. Below us, farmland blended with dense green woodland; a tributary of the Avon was a muddy band winding aimlessly into the distance. Cloud shadow chased like smoke across the patchwork pattern of the fields, and all in all everything below seemed lazy, placid, peaceful.

  And then Keeton said, ‘Good God, what’s that?’

  I looked forward, over his shoulder, and saw the dark beginnings of Ryhope Wood on the horizon. A great cloud seemed to hang above that part of the land, an eerie darkness as if a storm were raging above the forest. And yet the skies were quite clear, cloud could be seen, as sparse and summery as that above the whole of the west of England. The sombre pall seemed to ebb upwards from the wildwoods themselves, and as we approached the vast expanse of the forest, that darkness nagged at our own moods, darkening us, filling us with something approaching dread. Keeton voiced it, banking the tiny plane to the right, to skirt the edge of the wood. I looked down and saw Oak Lodge, a grey-roofed, miserable huddle of a building, its entire grounds looking black, morose, the sapling growth spread thickly towards the house’s extension where the study was located.

  The forest itself looked tangled, dense and hostile; I could see away across the foliage tops, and they were unbroken, a sea of grey green, rippling in the wind, looking almost organic, a single entity, breathing and shifting restlessly beneath the unwelcome aerial gaze.

  Keeton flew at a distance from Ryhope Wood, around the perimeter and it seemed to me that the expanse of primal woodland was not as vast as it had first appeared. I observed the trickle of the sticklebrook, a winding, quite erratic flow of grey-brown water, occasionally sparkling in the sun. It was possible to see the stream’s journey into the wood for some way, before the tree tops closed over it.

  ‘I’m going to make an overpass from east to west,’ Keeton announced suddenly, and the aircraft banked, the forest tilted before my fascinated eyes, and suddenly seemed to lurch drunkenly towards me, flowing below me, and spreading out widely, silently before me.

  At once the plane was taken by a storm-wind of appalling strength. It was flung upwards, almost tilting nose over tail as Keeton struggled at the controls trying to right the vehicle. Strange golden light streamed from wingtip and propellor blur, as if we flew through a rainbow. The plane was struck from the right, and pushed hard towards the edge of the forest, back towards open land. Around the cabin a ghostly, banshee-like wailing began. It was so deafeningly loud that Keeton’s cries of rage and fear, coming to me through the radio headphones, were almost inaudible.

  As we left the confines of the woodland, so a relative calm reappeared, the plane straightened, dropped slightly, then banked as Harry Keeton turned back for a second attempt to fly over the forest.

  He was quite silent. I wanted to speak, but found my tongue tied as I fixed my gaze on the wall of gloom ahead of us.

  Again, that wind!

  The plane lurched and looped over the first few hundred yards of woodland, and the light that began to enshroud us grew more intense, crawling along the wings and playing, like tiny shreds of lightning, over the cabin itself. The screaming reached an intensity that made me cry out, and the plane was buffeted so hard that I felt sure it would be broken, shredded like a child’s model.

  Looking down through the eerie light, I saw clearings, glades, a river flowing … it was the briefest of visions of a woodland almost totally obscured by the supernatural forces that guarded it.

  Suddenly the plane was turned over. I’m sure I screamed as I slipped heavily in my seat, only the heavy leather belt stopping me from being crushed against the ceiling. Over and over the plane rolled, while Keeton struggled to right it, his voice a desperate rasping sound of anger and confusion. The howling from outside became a sort of mocking laughter, and abruptly the tiny aerial vessel was flung back across the open land, righting itself, looping twice, and coming perilously close to impacting with the ground below.

  It zipped up, bouncing across copses, farmhouses; running scared almost, away from Ryhope Wood.

  When at last Keeton was calm, he took the plane up to a thousand feet and stared thoughtfully into the far distance, where the woodland was on the horizon, a gloom-covered place which had defeated his best efforts to explore it.

  ‘I don’t know what the devil caused that,’ he said to me, his voice a whisper. ‘But right now I’d prefer not to think about it. We’re losing fuel. There must be a tank rupture. Hang on to your seat …’

  And the plane skipped and darted southwards, to the landing field, where Keeton unloaded the cameras and left me to my own devices; he was badly shaken and seemed quite keen to be away from me.

  Four

  My love affair with Guiwenneth of the Greenwood began the following day, unexpectedly, dramatically …

  I had not returned home from the airfield at Mucklestone until mid-evening, and I was tired, shaken, and very ready for bed. I slept through the alarm, waking abruptly at eleven-thirty in the morning. It was a bright, if overcast day, and after a snatched breakfast I walked out across the fields, and turned to regard the woodland from a vantage point some half mile distant.

  It was the first time I had seen, from the ground, the mysterious darkness associated with Ryhope Wood. I wondered whether or not that appearance had developed recently, or if I had been so embroiled, so enveloped by the aura of the woodland that I had merely failed to notice its enigmatic state. I walked back towards the house, slightly cold in just my sweater and slacks, but not uncomfortable in these late spring, early summer days. On impulse I took a stroll to the mill-pond, the site at which I had met Christian for the first time in years, those scant months before.

  The place had an attraction for me, even in winter, when the surface of the pool froze around the reeds and rushes of its muddy extremities. It was scummy now, but still quite clear in the middle. The algal growth that would soon transform the pond into a cesspool had not yet shaken off its winter hibernation. I noticed, though, that the rotten-hulled rowing boat which had been tethered close to the decaying boathouse for as long as I could remember, was no longer in evidence. The frayed rope that had held it moored – against
what fierce tides, I wondered? – reached below the water’s level and I imagined that at some time during the rainy winter the corrupted vessel had simply sunk to the muddy bottom.

  On the far side of the pool, the dense woodland began: a wall of bracken, rush and bramble, strung between thin, gnarled oak-trunks like a fence. There was no way through, for the oaks themselves had grown from ground too marshy for human transit.

  I walked to the beginning of the marsh, leaning against a sloping trunk, staring into the musty gloom of the edge wood.

  And a man stepped out towards me!

  He was one of the two raiders from a few nights before, the long haired man wearing wide pantaloons. I saw now that his appearance was that of a Royalist from the time of Cromwell, the mid-seventeenth century; he was naked to the waist, save for two leather harnesses crossed on his chest, attached to which were a powder horn, a leather pouch of lead balls, and a dagger. His hair was richly curled, the curls extending even to his beard and moustaches.

  The words he spoke to me sounded curt, almost angry, and yet he smiled as he spoke them. They seemed foreign to me, and yet afterwards I was able to realize that they were English, spoken with an accent akin to broad country. He had said, ‘You’re the outsider’s kin, that’s all that matters … ’ but at the time his words had been alien sounds.

  Sound, accent, words … what mattered more at the time was that he raised a bright-barrelled flintlock, wrenching back the lock itself with considerable effort, and discharged the piece towards me from a position halfway between his waist and his shoulder. If it had been a warning shot, he was a marksman whose skill would earn the greatest admiration. If he had intended to kill me, then I count myself truly lucky. The ball struck the side of my head. I was moving backwards, raising my hands in a defensive gesture, crying out, ‘No! For God’s sake – !’

  The noise of the discharge was deafening, but all was swiftly lost in the pain and confusion of the ball striking my head. I remember being thrust backwards as if thrown, and the ice-cold waters of the pond gripping me and sucking me down. For a moment, then, there was blackness, and when I came to my senses again I was swallowing the foul mill-pond waters. I splashed and struggled against the clinging mud, and the weeds and rushes which seemed to wind about me. Somehow I surfaced and gulped air and water, choking violently.

  Then I saw the gleaming haft of a decorated stick, and realized that I was being offered a spear to grasp. A girl’s voice called something incomprehensible in all but sentiment, and I clung on to the cold wood gratefully, still more drowned than alive.

  I felt my body dragged from the clutches of the weeds, Strong hands gripped my shoulders and hauled me all the way out, and as I blinked water and mud from my eyes I focused upon two bare knees, and the slim shape of my rescuer, leaning towards me and forcing me down on to my stomach.

  ‘I’m all right!’ I spluttered.

  ‘B’th towethoch!’ she insisted, and the hands strongly massaged my back. I felt water surfacing from my guts. I choked and vomited the mixture of chyme and pond water, but at last felt able to sit upright, and I pushed her hands aside.

  She backed off, still crouching, and as I rubbed the muck from my eyes I saw her clearly for the first time. She was staring at me and grinning, almost chuckling at my filth-ridden state.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ I said, glancing anxiously beyond her at the forest, but my assailant had gone. Thoughts of him faded quickly as I stared at Guiwenneth.

  Her face was quite startling, pale-skinned, slightly freckled. Her hair was brilliant auburn, and tumbled in unkempt, wind-swept masses about her shoulders. I would have expected her eyes to be bright green, but they were a depthless brown, and as she regarded me with amusement, I felt drawn to that gaze, fascinated by every tiny line on her face, the perfect shape of her mouth, the strands of wild red hair that lay across her forehead. Her tunic was short and of cotton, dyed brown. Her arms and legs were thin, but the muscles were wiry; a fine blonde down covered her calves and I noticed that her knees were badly scarred. She wore open sandals of crude design.

  The hands that had forced me down, and pumped water from my lungs so powerfully, were small and delicate, the nails broken short. She wore black leather wrist bands, and on the narrow, iron-studded belt around her waist she carried a short sword in a dull grey sheath.

  So this was the girl with whom Christian had become so helplessly, hopelessly enamoured. Looking at her, experiencing a rapport with her that I had never before encountered, the sense of her sexuality, of her humour, of her power, I could well understand why.

  She helped me to my feet. She was tall, almost as tall as me. She glanced round, then patted me on the arm and led the way into the undergrowth, heading in the direction of Oak Lodge. I pulled back, shaking my head, and she turned and said something angrily.

  I said, ‘I’m sopping wet, and very uncomfortable … ’ I brushed hands against my mud and weed-saturated clothes, and smiled. There’s not a chance that I’m going home through the woodland. I’ll go the easy way … ’ And I started to trot back round the path. Guiwenneth shouted at me, then slapped her thigh in exasperation. She followed me closely, keeping within the tree line. She was certainly expert, since she made practically no sound, and only when I stopped and peered hard through the scrub could I occasionally glimpse her. When I stopped, so she stopped, and her hair caught the daylight in a way that must surely have betrayed her presence endlessly. She seemed to be swathed in fire. She was a beacon in the dark woods, and must have found survival hard.

  When I reached the garden gate I turned to look for her. She came scampering out of the forest, head low, spear held firmly in her right hand while her left clutched the scabbard of her sword, stopping it from bouncing about on her belt. She raced past me, ran across the garden and into the lee of the house, turning against the wall, looking anxiously back towards the trees.

  I sauntered after her and opened the back door. With a wild look, she slipped inside.

  I closed the door behind me and followed Guiwenneth as she strolled through the house, curious and commanding. She tossed her spear on to the kitchen table and unbuckled her sword belt, scratching through her tunic at her taut flesh below. ‘Ysuth’k,’ she said with a chuckle.

  ‘Itchy too, no doubt,’ I agreed, watching as she picked up my carving knife, snickered, shook her head and dropped the implement back on the table. I was beginning to shiver, thinking of a nice hot bath; but there would only be a lukewarm one, the water heating in Oak Lodge being primitive in the extreme. I filled three pans with water and put them on to the stove. Guiwenneth watched, fascinated, as the blue flame sprang to life. ‘R’vannith,’ she said with a tone of weary cynicism.

  As the water began to heat I followed her through the sitting-room, where she looked at pictures, rubbed the fabric covers of the chairs, smelled the wax fruit and made an astonished, slightly admiring sound, then giggled and tossed the artificial apple to me. I caught it and she made a gesture as in eating, questioning, ‘Cliosga muga?’ And laughed.

  ‘Not usually,’ I said. Her eyes were so bright, her smile so youthful, so mischievous … so beautiful.

  She kept scratching the belt sores around her waist as she explored further, entering the bathroom and shivering slightly. I wasn’t surprised. The bathroom was a slightly modified section of the original outhouse, grimly painted in now fading yellow; cobwebs festooned every corner; old tins of Vim scouring powder, and filth-laden rags, were clustered below the cracked porcelain basin. It amazed me, as I looked at the cold, unwelcoming place, that all through childhood I had washed here quite contentedly – well, contented, that is, with everything except the gigantic spiders that scuttled across the floor, or emerged from the plug-hole of the bath with alarming frequency. The bath was deep, of white enamel, with tall stainless steel taps that attracted Guiwenneth’s attention more than anything. She ran her fingers across the cold enamel and said that word again: ‘R’vannith.’ And laughed. A
nd I suddenly realized that she was saying Roman. She was associating the cold, marble-like surfaces, and the special heating techniques, with the most advanced technology of society as she – in her time – had known it. If it was cold, hard, ease-making, decadent, then of course it was Roman, and she, a Celt, despised it.

  Mind you, she could have done with a bath herself. Her odour was quite overwhelming and I was not yet used to experiencing so powerfully that particular animal part of a human. In France, in the last days of the occupation, the smell had been of fear, of garlic, of stale wine, too often of stale blood, and of damp, fungus-infested uniforms. All of those smells had somehow been a natural part of the war, part of technology. Guiwenneth had a woodland, animal aroma that was startlingly unpleasant, yet strangely erotic.

  I ran the tepid water into the bathtub and followed her on her perambulations towards the study. Here again she shivered, walking around the edge of the room, looking almost anguished. She kept glancing at the ceiling. She walked to the French windows and stared out, then stomped around on the floor in her open sandals before touching the desk, the books, and some of my father’s woodland artefacts. Books did not interest her in the least, although she peered at the page structure of one volume for several seconds, perhaps trying to puzzle out exactly what it was. She was certainly pleased to see pictures of men – in uniform, it happened, in a book on nineteenth-century army uniforms – and showed me the plates as if I had never seen them before. Her smile proclaimed the innocent pleasure of a child, but I was not distracted by anything other than the adult power of her body. She was no naive youth, this.