Lavondyss

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘They mean nothing. They are bits of dulled ivory. How can you tell which is which?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Not until they are thrown.’

  So she closed her eyes and cast the twigs and the bones. Eyes still shut she reached into the pile of wood and drew out two of the sticks. She placed them in a cross before her. Still blind she took a piece of bone and placed it on the top of the twigs. When she finally looked at them she hesitated, then said, ‘In a forest of oak and hazel, a giant pig is running on a northward track.’

  Cuwyn needed no second prompting. He gathered up his spears, nets and snares and ran twelve miles around the forest until he saw a place where oak and hazel crowded to the light. As he entered the wood the sky changed and everything became silent. He was unnerved at first, but his vision had changed too and he seemed to see right through the trees. He noticed how a giant pig, its back raised into lethal spines, was running on a northward track. He hunted it and caught it, and although the tussle was a long one, he cut off its life and dragged its carcase home, cutting off a slice of meat and leaving it with Ash.

  The second week he visited her he felt stronger. He carried two spears and two knives, but he had dispensed with the net and the snares. He crouched before Ash and she shook the bags out on to the ground, blindly selecting the two twigs and the gleaming piece of bone.

  ‘There is a forest where hornbeam grows in tangles with thorn. In it you will find a deer taller at the shoulder than a tall man.’

  Cuwyn stared at her. ‘In all of this land there is no forest of hornbeam and thorn.’

  ‘Call to it and it will come,’ Ash said. ‘It is there to be found. I did not say that you were hunting in this land alone.’

  Puzzled by that, Cuwyn began to run around the edge of the forest. After a while he grew tired and entered the dense wood to find shade and a few nuts. He scratched his hand on a thorn and followed deeper into the wood, and soon the silvery trunks of hornbeam began to gleam and beckon. He battled though the thorny tangle, listening to the silence and watching the eerie sky, for it had grown dark, but not in the way of night. It was cold, too, as if there was ice on the land around. There was a deer caught in a thicket and he struck it quickly in the neck, warming himself on the paunched carcase before dragging it back to his own land.

  ‘Did you find your forest of hornbeam and thorn?’ Ash asked on his return.

  ‘Yes,’ the young man said, giving her a cut of the meat. ‘But I swear it was not there a year ago.’

  ‘It is not there now,’ the woman said. ‘But it existed once, when the land was younger.’

  ‘Cook your flesh,’ Cuwyn said. ‘Your words frighten me.’

  And so it went on:

  In a forest of alder and willow two wild horses were lapping at a pool.

  In a wood of oak and lime, hares as fat as hogs were bounding on a southward track.

  In a woody scrub of beech and juniper, game birds, too heavy with feeding, were ripe for the kill.

  For nine weeks Cuwyn ran the forest edge and found these strange woods, and in each he found the hunting that could sustain the village. His confidence grew. The wound in his leg troubled him less. He became fleet-footed. The village no longer laughed at him. He laughed at them. He felt great courage.

  On the tenth visit to Ash he carried only a single spear, and one gutting knife.

  She cast the twigs and picked the bone, placing it on top of the cross and opening her eyes. But she said nothing. Beneath the grime on her face her skin went white. As she made to cover the charm, Cuwyn reached out and stopped her.

  ‘The village is hungry. Tell me where the hunting is.’

  ‘It is in a forest of birchwood and thorn,’ Ash said.

  ‘But what is there to hunt?’

  ‘No beast known to mortal man,’ she said softly. ‘I do not recognize this piece of bone at all.’

  ‘Then I must take the chance that it will be good to eat.’

  ‘You will take more of a chance than that. What is stalking in the wood is more ferocious than anything you have ever hunted. And it is not running, it is looking for you. It is, itself, a hunter. Wait a week, Cuwyn, and I will throw again for you.’

  ‘I cannot wait. The village cannot wait. I am the only hunter now.’

  Ash stared at the bone forest. ‘This wood is an evil place. Even the land rejects it.’ She broke the pattern of twig and bone. ‘What walks there is a mad thing, made from a mad mind. It has stepped out of darkness to stop you. You have taken too much. You have repaid nothing. It is my fault too. My charms, and your good hunting, have summoned an older force into being.’

  ‘It will have to reckon with me,’ Cuwyn said. ‘I will bring you a cut of its meat before duskfall.’

  ‘You will be dead before noon.’

  ‘I will survive longer than that.’

  ‘I believe that you will,’ Ash said, ‘but not in this world.’

  He went, then, running along the forest edge.

  Ash thought about his words. At noon she cast the twigs and the bone, but they said nothing to her. She smiled and was pleased.

  He had been right, then, right in that one thing.

  But an hour later she cast the twigs and the bone and shook her head sadly as she looked at the forest of birch and thorn, and the splinter of human ivory that lay upon it.

  In a forest of birch and thorn, a man is running from a shadow …

  When she picked up the bone she could feel the scream and the warmth of the blood.

  A few minutes later her body was racked with pain, and the stone became cold in her grip.

  Ash gathered up her things and prepared to leave the outskirts of the village. She picked up the broken ash twig and a handful of ash from the fire, stared at them and smiled to herself.

  ‘That was a good name,’ she said aloud. ‘You almost understood. I have been named so many things, but this name came closest. When I am named so am I called, and when I am called I must serve in the way of the name. But this name came closest to what I truly am. You have almost understood my nature, and that part of me which is unnatural. Cuwyn, you were both hunter and hunted; the shadow of your thoughts was the beast which killed you. But for the kindness of my name, you shall ride the wide land without pain.’

  In the woodland the beast was coming. It had left the old place, after being summoned by Ash, and was coming to the village, to feed upon the flesh of those who lived there. Her job was done here. The Hunter would finish the work. Times, for the village, would now change. And now she faced a long journey, before finding the time and place next to call her master into the world.

  But before she left she scattered the ash on to a small mound of fresh earth and chalk, and wrote Cuwyn’s name on the broken twig, burying it there with the fragment of her dead son’s bone.

  When she had finished the story Mr Williams thought hard about what he had heard. ‘I don’t understand,’ he confessed at last.

  The colour had returned to Tallis’s skin. She brushed a hand through her hair and took a deep breath, as if recovering from a great exertion. Curiously, she watched him. ‘What don’t you understand?’

  ‘Did the woman – Ash – summon the devil deliberately?’

  ‘It wasn’t the devil. It was the Hunter.’

  ‘But she called it to destroy the village, and young Cuwyn as well. Why kill the young man?’

  Tallis shrugged. ‘I don’t think she wanted him dead. It was her job. Her function. She called the Hunter to the land.’

  ‘But why?’

  Frustrated at the questions Tallis said, ‘I don’t know. Ask her! Because she had no real power of her own, I suppose. Her power of prophecy came from the Hunter, and so whatever good she could do she would do willingly, but always she would end by summoning the storm.’

  Mr Williams watched her. ‘Bringing him into the land. To destroy.’

  Tallis raised her hands, palms upwards. ‘I suppose so. The village had had nine suc
cessful hunts. But they gave nothing back.’

  ‘But your story seemed to suggest that Cuwyn and the Hunter were one and the same.’

  ‘Of course,’ Tallis said. ‘Cuwyn had taken from the wood. The wood took from him, it took a dark side, it made the Hunter from him. That is what Ash had said she would do. Her words were ambiguous.’

  ‘I’m still confused,’ Mr Williams admitted. ‘At the end, whose bone was it? Was Cuwyn her son?’

  ‘It’s just a story,’ Tallis sighed. ‘It really happened, once, a long time ago, but this is a very recent version.’

  ‘How recent?’ Mr Williams asked curiously. Her answer clearly astonished him.

  ‘A few hundred years, perhaps. A little longer …’

  ‘A few hundred years. How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘I’m inspired,’ Tallis said mischievously.

  ‘You certainly are. But if I were you, I’d work out a better ending.’

  Tallis shook her head, confused at the suggestion. ‘If I did that then I’d change the story.’

  ‘Indeed you would. For the better.’

  ‘But you can’t change something that is,’ she said in exasperation. ‘The story exists. It’s the way it is. It’s real. If I change it, if I invent something, then it becomes unreal.’

  ‘Or improved.’

  ‘But that’s not the point. It’s not a fairy story. It’s not Enid Blyton! It’s real. Why can’t you understand that? If you think of a tune, and it’s beautiful, you write it down as it is …’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You don’t change it later.’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  She was taken aback. ‘Then the original vision is weakened, isn’t it?’

  ‘Original vision,’ Mr Williams shook his head in silent amazement. ‘From the mouth of a thirteen year old …’

  Tallis looked annoyed, sitting straight up on the stone and turning away from him. ‘Don’t tease,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Sorry. But the point remains. A story, or a tune, comes as a piece of magic – ’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘But they belong to you. You can do what you like with them. Change what you like. Make it personal.’

  ‘Make it unreal. Things change in life when you change them in stories.’

  ‘I assure you that they don’t.’

  ‘I assure you that they do,’ she retorted sharply.

  ‘So are you telling me …’ he composed his thoughts. ‘Are you telling me that if you told the last story again, and changed the young woman to a young man, then somewhere in history that same young woman would suddenly grow a beard?’

  Tallis laughed at the image. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Ridiculous.’

  ‘But stories are fragile. Like people’s lives. It only takes a word out of place to change them for ever. If you hear a lovely tune, and then you change it, the new tune might be lovely too, but you’ve lost the first one.’

  ‘But if I stick to the first tune, then I’ve lost the second.’

  ‘But someone else might discover it. It’s still there to be born.’

  ‘And the first tune isn’t?’

  ‘No,’ Tallis insisted, although she was confused now. ‘It has already come into your mind. It’s lost for ever.’

  ‘Nothing is lost for ever,’ Mr Williams said quietly. ‘Everything I’ve known I still know, only sometimes I don’t know that I know it.’

  All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them.

  ‘My grandfather said something like that to me,’ Tallis whispered.

  ‘Well there you are. Wise Old Men, one and all …’

  ‘But you’ve lost your childhood,’ Tallis said. ‘That can never come back.’

  Mr Williams stood and walked around the fallen stones, using his foot to push aside the grass and expose the ogham script. ‘I don’t believe that,’ he said. ‘That it’s lost, I mean. It’s hard to remember the events of childhood, sometimes. Certainly it is. But the child still lives in the man, even when you’re as old as me.’ He winked at Tallis. ‘It’s always there, walking and running in the shadows of taller, newer spirits. Wiser spirits.’

  ‘Can you feel it?’

  ‘Certainly I can feel it.’

  Tallis stared up into the sky, thinking of one of her masks: Sinisalo, to see the child in the land. She had wondered about that mask when she had made it. What child would she be seeing?

  She began to understand. The land was old; the land remembered; the land had been young once, and that innocence was still there to be seen. Yes: Sinisalo would help her see the shadow of the child, and that meant the shadow of herself as she grew older.

  All too quickly the day began to fade and the church at Shadoxhurst began to toll its bell, calling for evensong. Tallis returned home and Mr Williams began the long walk to the Manor House.

  His last words to the girl were, ‘Tomorrow I want to hear the real story. You’ve made me a promise, now. So don’t forget.’

  Tallis stared fondly after the big man. Tomorrow, I’ll do more than tell you the story. I’ll show you where Harry is adventuring. You’ll understand. I know you will.

  As good as her silent promise, the following day Tallis led Mr Williams into the narrow alley between the machine sheds. He edged warily through the nettles, his body turned slightly, his eyes showing the slight alarm he was experiencing at this odd journey. At the cleared space by the greenhouse window he crouched down among the dolls and coloured chalk marks, feasting his gaze on the weird symbols and hideous idols.

  ‘All your own work?’ he asked Tallis. The girl nodded, eyes sparkling.

  They sat there for about half an hour. Mr Williams grew slightly edgy and Tallis, too, began to wonder if perhaps it was just her solitary presence that summoned the gateway to the winter world.

  Just as she was about to abandon the vigil, however, a snowflake touched her cheek and the air around her frosted and grew bitter.

  ‘It’s here,’ she said quietly and wriggled round, on to her knees, facing the grimy glass.

  Soon she began to hear the wind in Old Forbidden Place. There was a storm there, and the chill air gusted along the mountain path. She could hear the usual clatter of stones as something or someone moved, and the flap and crack of canvas, the tents of the people who were visiting that particular part of the hidden world.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ she called. More icy touches came on to her skin and she brushed at them, rubbing the wetness between her fingers. Mr Williams watched her, frowning. She leaned closer to the slit between the worlds, peered through at the grey, swirling snow beyond. A horse whinnied and struggled against its tether, its saddle harness rattling. A woman was chanting in an unknown language and something knocked regularly against wood, a high-pitched drum beat.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Tallis called again.

  And she remembered Harry calling to her. I’ve lost you. Now I’ve lost everything …

  ‘Harry!’ she shouted, startling Mr Williams. But her call was a vain hope, and she had not really expected to hear Harry’s voice again.

  Someone slithered to the gap, however, and came close to where Tallis was peering into the grey storm. She saw movement, smelled sweat. A dark shadow. The person on the other side peered closely into Tallis’s summer world. ‘Who are you?’ Tallis whispered.

  The voice rattled off words. Tallis realized it was a child. A moment later the shadow vanished, the sound of its wailing cry muffled by the snow.

  Tallis leaned back on her haunches, then turned to Mr Williams and smiled.

  The man looked at her, then at the greenhouse. ‘Who were you talking to?’

  Tallis was alarmed. She realized that he was not sharing her experience. ‘Didn’t you hear the child?’

  He frowned, then shook his head. Tallis pointed to the fading split in the air. ‘Can’t you see that? Can’t you see the way throug
h?’

  Mr Williams followed the girl’s finger, but confessed that he saw nothing but glass. Tallis felt something like panic. Gaunt had smelled the woodsmoke on that day, many years go, so the experience wasn’t completely solitary. Could it simply be that Mr Williams, unlike Gaunt, was not of this part of the land? There were no ashes of the Williamses joining with the ashes of the Gaunts below the greensward?

  A snowflake touched her hand. She held it up to the old man. ‘Snow,’ she said, and Mr Williams touched the damp spot with a finger and looked surprised. ‘Good Lord. I thought I felt a touch of winter in the air.’

  ‘That was it!’ Tallis said, pleased. ‘You did feel it … you felt the underworld. That’s where Harry is, trapped there. He called to me once. I’m going after him, to help him.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’

  ‘Through Ryhope Wood. There’s something about that wood which isn’t natural. Just as soon as I can find the right way to enter it, to explore it …’

  Tallis led the way from the alley. They entered the fields and walked slowly towards Hunter’s Brook, in the distance.

  ‘Snowflakes,’ Mr Williams whispered and Tallis stared at her hand, still cold from that silent touch.

  ‘From a terrible place …’ she said, and the man glanced at her.

  ‘So you still don’t know its secret name?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Tallis said. ‘And perhaps not ever. Secret names are very hard to find out.’

  They crossed the stile, walked on across bright meadows. ‘And you don’t even know the common name of the place.’

  ‘Not even that,’ Tallis repeated. ‘Common names can be difficult too. I need to find someone who has been there, or heard of it.’

  ‘So …’ said the old man, ‘If I understand correctly … what you are left with to describe the strange world is only your own name for it.’

  ‘Only my private name,’ Tallis agreed.

  ‘Old Forbidden Place,’ Mr Williams murmured, and Tallis rounded on him, silencing him.

  * * *

  It was bad luck (he learned) to say such a name more than three times in a day, and in their conversation in the alley they had used up the quota. Mr Williams was certainly confused by the ‘naming rules’. Some things had three names, some only two. Sometimes Tallis’s own names were the common ones, very repeatable. Sometimes they were more private and subjected to voice-taboo. All in all, the man reflected ironically, the rules of the name-game don’t seem very well worked out.