These last words had a profound effect upon the girl. A few days before her seventh birthday, while she was sitting in her camp by the clear water of Wyndbrook, she began to imagine she could hear whispering. It startled her. It was like a woman’s voice, but the words were meaningless. It might have been wind in the branches, or the bracken, but it had a disturbing human quality; a voice for sure.
She turned round, where she sat, and peered into the bushes. She saw a shape moving quickly away and rose to her feet to follow it, trying to discern some form. She was half aware that the figure was small and seemed to have a hood over its head. It was walking swiftly towards the denser wood that led to Ryhope itself; it moved among the trees like a shadow, like cloud shadow, distinct, then indistinct, finally gone completely.
Tallis abandoned the chase, but not before she had noticed with satisfaction that the ferns close to the river bank were trampled down. It could have been the spoor of a deer, but she knew with certainty that she had been pursuing no animal.
By returning along the Wyndbrook, to her stepping stones, she could make her way across Knowe Field up to her camp on Barrow Hill. But as she reached the crossing place of the wide beck she hesitated, feeling cold and frightened. The trees were thinner here. Ahead of her was the rise of land, reaching up to a bare ridge, sharp against the blue sky; to the right, marked by a thin track, was the knoll of Barrow Hill, its summit thrown up into irregular grassy humps.
She had crossed Wyndbrook many times; she had walked that tract, that field, many times. But now she hesitated. The windvoice was gusting in her consciousness, that eerie whispering. She stared at Barrow Hill. It was its common name; it had been known as Barrow Hill for centuries. But it was not the right name, and Tallis felt a strong sense of dread that if she stepped on to that familiar turf she would be stepping somewhere that was now forbidden to her.
Clutching her book beneath her arm she crouched down and brushed her hand through the cold water of the brook.
The name came to her as suddenly as the dread she had earlier felt. It was Morndun Ridge. The name thrilled her; it had a dark sound to it, a storm-wind sound. With the name a fleeting sequence of other images: the sound of wind gusting through hides, stretched on wooden frames; the creak of a heavy cart; the swirl of smoke from a high fire; the smell of fresh earth being thrown up from a long trench; a figure, tall and dark, standing, dwarfed by a tree whose branches had been cut from the trunk.
Morndun. The word sounded like Mourendoon. It was an old place, and an old name, and a dark memory.
Tallis rose to her feet again and began to step forward, out on to the stepping stones. But the water seemed to mock her and she drew back. She knew at once what was the cause of her concern. Although she knew the secret name of Barrow Hill, she hadn’t yet named the stream. And she couldn’t cross the stream without naming it or she would be trapped.
She ran back to her house, confused and frightened by the game she had started to play. She would have to learn everything about the land around the house. She had not known, until now, that every field, every tree, every stream had a secret name, and that such names would only come with time. Before she had found those names she would be a prisoner; and to defy the land, to cross a field without knowing its true name, would be to trap her on the other side.
Her parents, not unnaturally, considered the game to be ‘more silly nonsense’, but after all, if the game stopped her going too far from home, who were they to complain?
During the course of that year, Tallis managed to transform the land around her house, pushing back the borders week by week. Each season she was able to go a little further from the house, further into her childish, dreamlike realm.
She soon found a route back to Morndun Ridge – Wyndbrook’s secret name was Hunter’s Brook – and the animal enclosure which was her favoured hide-out.
Now only a single field remained between her own realm and the dense tangle of dangerous woodland on the Ryhope estate which had so fascinated her brother, Harry. The field’s name defied her. She stood at the edge of Hunter’s Brook, beyond the thick cluster of alders that formed her camp, and stared up that ramp of verdant land at the dimly seen darkness of the far wood.
The name would not come. She could not cross the pasture.
Each day, after school, she walked about the ramparts on Morndun Ridge, weaving between the thorns and hornbeam which grew there, each tree tapping the deep soil of the high banks. And it was here that she felt most at peace, now. The shadowy figure which she had seen those several months ago still prowled behind her, and her head reeled with strange thoughts: sights and sounds, smells and the touch of wind; she was never far from the borders of another land as she came up on to the breezy knoll and spent time in the enclosure built by ancient hands for a forgotten purpose.
It was here, too, that she first saw White Mask, although she didn’t apply this name to the mythago until later. Glimpsed from the corner of her eye, the figure was taller than the first, and quicker, moving more rapidly through the trees, stopping then running on in an almost ghostly way. The white mask caught the sun; the eyes were elfin, the mouth, a straight gash, sinister.
But when this figure came close to her, one Sunday afternoon, Tallis dreamed of a castle, and of a cloaked figure on horseback, and of a hunt that took this knightly man deep into a dank and marshy forest …
It was the beginning of a tale that would build in her mind over the weeks, until it almost lived within her.
The field by Ryhope Wood continued to defy her. Day after day she stood by Hunter’s Brook, eight years old and drawn to the dark forest by something deeper than reason, struggling to find the name for the swathe of land that prevented her from crossing to the trees.
Then, one August evening, a tall, dark stag broke cover in the far distance. Tallis gasped with delight, stretched on her toes for a better view. She hadn’t seen the beast for two years and she shouted at it. Trailing rags of velvet from the great cross of its antlers, the proud creature raced over a rise of land and out of sight, but not before it had hesitated once and glanced her way.
(iii)
‘I’ve seen Broken Boy,’ Tallis said that evening, as the family sat at the table and played a game of ludo.
Her father glanced at her, frowning. Her mother rattled dice in the cup and threw on to the board.
‘I doubt if you did that,’ James Keeton said quietly. ‘That old boy was killed years ago.’
‘He came to my christening,’ Tallis reminded him.
‘But he was wounded. He couldn’t have survived the winter.’
‘Mr Gaunt told me that the stag has been seen in the area for over a hundred years.’
‘Gaunt is an old rogue. He likes to tell stories to impress children like you. How could a stag live so long?’
‘Mr Gaunt says that it never sheds its antlers.’
Margaret Keeton passed Tallis the cup of dice, shaking her head impatiently. She said, ‘We know full well what silly nonsense Gaunt spreads around. Now come on. It’s your go.’
Tallis just watched her father, though. He was looking better, these days, not so pale, although his hair was almost totally grey now, and his eyes had a watery sadness about them. ‘I’m sure it was Broken Boy. It was limping as it ran. And its antlers were covered with rags. Death shrouds …’
‘Will you play, girl?’ her mother said irritably. Tallis picked up the cup and shook out the dice, moving her counter around the board. She looked back at her father. ‘Couldn’t it have been him?’
‘Broken Boy was wounded the last time we saw him. Arrow shot.’
Arrow shot. Yes. Tallis remembered the story. And she remembered something else.
‘Like Harry,’ she whispered. ‘Arrow shot, like Harry.’
James Keeton stared at her sharply and for a moment Tallis thought that he was going to start shouting. He remained calm, however. He suddenly sat back heavily in his chair, hands resting on the table. He looked int
o the middle distance. Margaret Keeton sighed and cleared the board away. ‘It’s no fun playing with you two.’ She glared at Tallis. ‘Why did you bring the subject of Harry up? You know how it upsets your father …’
‘I’m not upset,’ the man said quietly. ‘I was just thinking … it’s really time we went to find the house. I’ve been putting it off, but maybe we’ll learn something …’
‘If you think it will help …’ Tallis’s mother said.
Tallis asked, ‘What house?’
Her father glanced at her, then smiled. He ignored the question. He said, ‘How would you like a picnic tomorrow?’
‘I’d like a picnic tomorrow,’ Tallis agreed matter-of-factly. ‘What house?’
He winked at her and raised a finger to his lips.
‘Where are we going?’ Tallis insisted.
All he said was, ‘Across the fields and far away.’
The next day, being Sunday, began with the early morning service at the church in Shadoxhurst. At ten o’clock the Keetons returned home and packed a picnic hamper. Shortly before noon the three of them set off across Windy Cave Meadow, towards Fox Water and beyond. They followed a dry track along the dense hedgerows between adjacent farms, and very soon Tallis realized, with a combined sense of fear and excitement, that they were walking towards Ryhope Wood.
Because she was in company she realized that she could enter the Nameless Field between Hunter’s Brook and the wood itself, and she stepped on to the forbidden grass with a sense of great triumph. Half-way across she started to run, leaving her parents behind. As she came closer to the dense and formidable wall of thorn and briar that was the wood’s scrub, the ground became marshy. The grass here was tall and straw-like, almost as high as her shoulders in places. It rustled in the summer breeze. She moved steadily and carefully through this silent undergrowth, almost lost in it, until the high wall of oaks loomed over her. She stood and listened to the sounds in the darkness beyond the trees. Although she could hear bird-song there were other noises that were more enigmatic.
Her father called to her. As she turned she glimpsed something from the corner of her eye, a human shape, watching her. But when she looked more closely it had gone.
She felt an instant thrill of fear. Her mother often lectured her about the ‘gypsies’ who inhabited the woods, and how dangerous it was to talk to strangers, or walk alone after dusk. But the only gypsies Tallis had seen had been Romanies, in colourful wagons and colourful clothes, dancing on the village green.
That shadow, that briefly glimpsed shape, had not been colourful … it had been dun coloured and tall … odd in every respect.
She waded back through the long grass, took off her canvas shoes and squeezed the water out. Then she followed her parents further round the wood.
Soon they came to a narrow, bumpy road, bordered by high hedges and banks and flanked by two wind-blasted beeches where it came over the horizon. At some point, distantly, it must have connected with the main road between Shadoxhurst and Grimley. But here, where it entered Ryhope Wood, it was cracked and overgrown, as if it had been suddenly torn apart by a violent earth movement.
‘Good God,’ James Keeton said, and added, ‘This must be the old road, then. Gaunt’s “rough track”.’
At the woodland edge a thin fencing of barbed wire had been erected. The KEEP OUT notice was prominent but weathered.
Tallis was aware that her father was concerned. Margaret said to him, ‘You must have made a mistake. Perhaps it’s further on …’
‘I can’t have made a mistake,’ her father said, exasperated. He stood by the barbed wire holding on to it, looking up at the trees, staring into the darkness. Finally he drew away and looked around at the farmland.
‘There was a house here, once. I’m sure of it. A lodge of sorts, called Oak Lodge. Gaunt assured me that there was. At the end of the rough track, he said.’
He paced along the weathered road, then turned back to look at the thick woodland. ‘It’s where Harry came. It’s where my father came before the war. To visit those historians … Huxley. And the other one … Wynne-Jones.’
‘Before my time,’ Margaret said.
They stared at the broken road, where it vanished into the dense growth. Tall oaks, crowding together, cast an unwelcoming darkness on the tangle of haw and blackthorn and rose briar below. The high grass growing among the edgewood waved in a gentle breeze. The notice rattled on its perch and the rusting wire shook.
A strange expression touched James Keeton’s face and Tallis realized that her father had suddenly become very frightened. He was pale, his eyes wide. And his breathing was quick, nervous.
Tallis stepped right up to the wire and stood there, staring through the gloom. As she watched that earthy darkness so she began to see a gleam of light, sunlight in a clearing a long way beyond the outer line of trees.
‘There’s a glade in there,’ she said, but her father chose to ignore her. He was walking away from the wood. He stood on the earth bank lining the road and stared into the distance. Her mother had spread out the picnic cloth below a solitary elm and was unpacking the hamper.
‘There’s a glade in there,’ Tallis repeated loudly. ‘The house might be in the glade.’
Her father watched her for a moment, then stepped off the bank, ignoring his daughter. He walked towards the elm, saying ‘Gaunt must have been mistaken. You’re right. But I can’t believe it …’
‘Daddy! There’s a glade in the wood,’ Tallis called.
‘Don’t go too far away,’ he called back, and Tallis, her body tense with excitement, sagged a little.
He was not listening to her. He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts, his own concerns, that the fact that the house might be abandoned in the wood was refusing to register.
There had been a house here, and now it was gone. Tallis stared at the road, at the way its rough concrete surface was sheared off, as if by a knife, as if it had been consumed by the wood, eaten whole. Perhaps that same bite had swallowed the lodge, an entire house overwhelmed by trees.
Where this strange thought came from she didn’t know, but the image was there, as clear in her mind as the images from the fairy-tales she had read all her life.
Dark forests, and remote castles … and in the yellow, sunlit glades, there were always strange treasures to be found.
She trod on the lower wire and cautiously lifted the barbs above it, ducking through as best she could. She looked back at her parents, who were sitting on the rug, sipping tea and talking.
Turning, she started to walk through the undergrowth towards the patch of brightness ahead of her.
She could still feel the cracked and fragmented road, hard beneath her thin shoes. Roots sprawled across the concrete and low branches had to be brushed aside as she stepped cautiously forward in the gloom. She came closer to the glade and was able to see that it was a small clearing, enclosed by enormous, dark-trunked oaks. Dead branches, cracked and twisted by winter winds, rose starkly above the foliage.
She could also see the sheer rise of a brick wall. There were two windows on that wall, the glass in them long since gone. Branches of the overwhelming wood hung from them, like dead limbs.
She took another step, pushing aside a sprawling web of red-berried thorn. Now she could see that in the centre of the clearing, in front of the house, was a tall, wooden pillar. Its top was carved in the vague semblance of a human face, simple slanted eyes, a gaping mouth, the slash of a nose. The wood looked rain-blackened and rotten, split vertically and crumbling. Tallis felt deeply uncomfortable as she stared at it …
Edging her way around this hideous totem pole, she stepped into the garden of what had once been the house called Oak Lodge. The first thing she saw was a shallow fire-pit, cut into the wild turf that was all that remained of the lawn. Animal bones were scattered around and she saw the burned remains of sticks which had been used in the fire.
She called out nervously. She had the strongest sense of b
eing watched, but could see no betraying detail or movement. Her voice, when she called, was almost dead in the confined space; the heavy trunks of the besieging oaks absorbed her words and replied only with the quiver of bird life in their branches. Tallis patrolled the small garden space, observing everything: here, the remains of the wire fence; there, impaled by roots, several slats of wood which might have come from a chicken coop, or kennel.
And dominating all, casting its sombre shadow over the small clearing: the carved trunk, the totem. Tallis touched the blackened wood and it broke away in handfuls, exposing seething insect life beneath. She stared up at the angry features, the evil eyes, the leering mouth. She could see how the shape of legs and arms had been added to the column, now corroded almost into obscurity.
This ancient effigy watched the house; perhaps it was keeping guard on it.
The house itself had become a part of the forest. The floors had burst open under the pressure of trees growing up from the cold earth below. The windows were framed by leafy branches. The roof had been punched through in the same way and only the high chimney stacks rose above the tree tops.
Tallis looked into two rooms; first, a study, its French windows hanging loose, its desk covered with ivy, its space dominated by an immense V-shaped oak trunk. Then, the kitchen. There were the mossy remains of a pine table in this small room, and an old cooker. Branches stretched like vines across the ceiling. The pantry was completely empty. When she picked up a cast-iron saucepan from the hook on the wall she nearly jumped out of her skin as the twig that had burrowed through the brick beneath it sprang out, released from its confined space.
When she peered into the parlour she was daunted by the tree growth that occupied every foot of the room, crushing furniture, embracing walls, penetrating the faded, framed pictures.
Tallis returned to the garden. The sun, high overhead, made it difficult for her to look up at the grinning totemic figure carved on the immense trunk of wood. She wondered idly who had erected the statue, and for what purpose …
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