Swimmer of Lakes. An odd name for a horse. Morthen clearly knew more about the land than Tallis had imagined.
She made her final agreement with the black mare. ‘You swim one lake for me, I’ll swim one lake for you. This is Tallis’s Promise.’
So she blanketed the beast, and made a harness that didn’t cut. She led it to the open land around the Tuthanach enclosure and protected it from dogs.
In the meantime, Morthen delighted in showing Tallis what she and her father had discovered in the woods around the river: stones carved deeply with the images of blind, dead human faces; a tower, its slate tiles fallen but the ornate and gilded furniture of its prisoner still recognizable in the ruin, though its occupant, and its meaning, had long since fled into the storm skies. What Morthen called ‘the end of the wood’ turned out to be the high wall of a Roman fort, overgrown but still impressive. Tallis used the latrine. It was a simple stone seat above a deep, dry sewer, but it was a marvellous change from squatting over maggots. There were grain stores here, and barracks, and graffiti that seemed as fresh as if they had been daubed that day. Morthen found a sword, then a pennant wrapped in leather. It showed an eagle and a helmet, but tore as Tallis tried to hang it out to read the inscription.
In one of the grain stores there was a pack of rats, each the size of a wild cat. Tallis was the last of the two to flee.
There were tombs, too: from ornate black marble mausolea, still impressive as they rose above the choking wood, to earth mounds and narrow entrances, lined by chiselled stone and leading deep into the natural realm below the roots of the forest. The oddest piece of flotsam in that land was a horn, forty feet long and wide enough at its trumpet end for Tallis to stand inside and shout. It was carved from real horn and there was no sign of it being more than a single piece. Morthen tried to blow its narrow end. Tallis heard the breath, then realized that the girl’s voice had been transformed into haunting words, not English, not Tuthanach …
They left the horn behind them but noticed, for a day or more, that the woods in that region seemed active, as if something had come to disturb the peace.
Wynne-Jones was flying as a bird. Tallis had been in the settlement for five days. ‘Is he leaving us or coming home?’ she asked. Morthen laughed, but Scathach slumped forward by the sweat-soaked palliasse. The vigil had sucked away his vitality. He was flesh and blood but his spirit was beating against the gate to the unknown region. His father was there, but he could not himself enter and lend his strength to the old man’s journey home.
Finally, Morthen took Tallis up the river to the mist-shrouded lake, with its marsh creatures and giant willows. Swimmer of Lakes was strong and bore the double weight with ease, but when Tallis urged the beast into the muddy shallows among the rushes the horse drew back. Tallis dismounted and returned to dry land. She would not force her new-found friend to cross this place just yet.
But it was to the marsh that all the travellers came, and all of them would have to cross its still, grey waters. Beyond the lake was the land which called to ghosts – and Harry was there too!
So Tallis spread her masks around her and placed the Hollower on her face. Morthen stood behind her watching apprehensively as the woman undertook a ritual which she did not comprehend. Her apprehension turned to outright fear when the sky darkened suddenly and the waters of the lake were lashed into a fury. Dark roots coiled like snakes into the air and formed a sinister tunnel. The willows around the lake leaned and creaked, shedding birds from their branches like a myriad swirling flecks of black ash. A storm wind flattened the rushes and a great gushing swirl of snow poured from the hollowing, sending Morthen screaming back to the shelter of trees.
Through the arch of roots Tallis saw a steep-sided winter valley. Oaks and thorns clung to the rocks, their branches shedding snow. Dark fingers of stone poked against the pale, dead sky, a ragged palisade. The river thundered over boulders and the woman who watched could see the sharp angles and straight lines of stones that had fallen from whatever ruin had once guarded this narrow way.
The hollowing collapsed into the swirling water of the lake. Like animals, the trees withdrew their sinuous fingers from the shallows. Where the wind had dispersed the fog, Tallis could see the distant wall of forest and the broken cliffs behind it, where the river flowed out into the flats to become so still, so silent. Then mist closed in again and the rushes stirred with a life of their own, straightening up and quivering, although there was now no breeze.
Tallis gathered up her masks, found Morthen’s ashen shape huddled in the protecting limbs of a thorn, and led her back to home.
Perhaps because she had been frightened by what had occurred, Morthen drew suddenly away from Tallis and began to spend more time in Scathach’s presence, sitting for hours in the long-house, close to the hearth, staring at the grim-faced man who was her half-brother. Whatever he wanted she was always the first to fetch it. She took every opportunity to reach out to him, touching his arms, his hands, his calves, brushing her fingertips along the light beard on his cheeks. She acknowledged Tallis but lowered her eyes when they met. Tallis felt very sad about this.
Two days after the incident at the lake Tallis saw her lean forward and lick Scathach’s cheek, below the eyes. She said, ‘You are a real brother. Your skin tastes of flesh.’ She licked him again. ‘Tig is not real. Tig tastes of dry leaves. You are my real brother from the wood …’
Tallis was shocked by this, although she had no reason to be upset. But it came home to her almost as a painful blow just how deep was the affinity between the two half-woodland creatures. She had simply not noticed it before. There was an attraction that was strong and utterly exclusive. His affection for his sister showed quite clearly in the comfort he felt in her presence, in the look he gave her, in the way the two of them murmured together as they nursed the dying man, effortlessly complementing each other’s actions. For the first time in all the long and painful eight years she had been with the young warrior, Tallis felt isolated from him. The feeling in her body was distressing, but she was torn between her own need to come closer to Scathach again and her understanding that something important was occurring in the long-house … perhaps something in the way of a legend’s detail …
She picked up her bundle, her precious bundle of wolfskin, and left the house, returning to the protecting rocks by the river, to pass another night alone.
She was certain, now, that Wynne-Jones would not recover consciousness. In her life in the wood she had known death on many occasions – the loss of Gyonval being the most awful – and the ferocity of that neck wound, and the terrible hammer blow to his skull, could surely mean nothing more than a slow, sleeping descent into the embrace of the underworld. But she would do nothing until the man had truly gone. In the meantime she had whispered her brother Harry’s name to him; she had described Harry; and she had told the man all the stories, and especially the story of Old Forbidden Place.
And she asked him the question: ‘What does it mean? How do I get to Lavondyss? If you are high on the wing, can you look ahead and see the way?’
At dawn she glanced in at the long-house, on her way back from the river. She had come to a decision during the night, a decision that was very painful for her. She left her masks in Wynne-Jones’s small shaman’s lodge, but still carried her relic bag.
The enclosure was stirring with life, mostly of an animal nature. The wind was chill, that ever-present scent of snow that followed her from summer to summer. A fire was being rekindled, probably in the small house where the children slept. The smoke smelled sharp on the clean air, and mixed strangely with the sweet odour of the new hides, stretched on their frames and lining the way to the elder’s lodge. The sound of the woman who blew life into the embers was interrupted by snatches of her song.
Crouching at the entrance Tallis peered into the gloom, to the far end where Wynne-Jones lay. For a second she watched the unconscious man, then with a great pang of anger and hurt she saw Scathac
h emerge from below his bearskin blanket and feel for his father’s pulse; a second body remained below the blanket and Tallis caught a glimpse of clay-white, ringleted hair.
Without a sound she withdrew from the house. Clutching her bundle she made her way through the forest and emerged among the dense blackthorn on the low mortuary hill. Her mind was very clear, but she felt cold; cold like death. She closed her eyes and tried to will away the great clawing sense of finality that gripped her heart and made her stomach feel like lead.
It’s over. It has to be done. I know it has to be done. It’s over. This is the right time. This is the end. I can’t go on unless I do it now …
She stumbled up the hill, the emptiness in her heart drying the tears before they formed. She followed the rough track to the summit and scrambled over the collapsed earth wall, between the rotting pillars of the gate. Then she turned and stared out across the forest.
Somewhere in that immense and ancient land, Harry was a solitary voyager, but Tallis felt closer to him now than she had in eight years, even from the time when he had called to her through the first of her hollowings.
‘I have to get rid of him before I can come to you …’ she whispered to the distance, to the far peaks, to the unknown region. ‘Because you are the same. You are the same. I always knew you were …’
She stared across the wood. It had swallowed Harry, then breathed out Scathach. It had filled her head with legend, then sucked her in, a fish sucking in a fly. And somewhere beyond that land was her home. On occasion, on a certain type of night, she could almost imagine that the lights which shone among the trees were the lights from her house, and if she walked through the undergrowth for just a few yards the garden would be there, and the woodshed, and her mother, and Gaunt, and her father in his dressing gown …
Don’t go child. Don’t leave us! Tallis … don’t go …
‘I won’t be gone long. Just one week …’
One week!
She had never stopped her self-recrimination for having been so naïve, so stupid. One week, she had said. That’s all I’ll be away.
But the wood had closed behind her; then Broken Boy had left her, a bizarre and terrifying end to their relationship; and Scathach, for all his promises, had become lost too. They had been following the river for years. They had no conception of what lay at the end. Only occasionally could Tallis open a gate and though they had passed through them they had always ended up at the river again.
I have to get rid of him. I have to get rid of my tie to him. I have to make myself free.
Tallis stood outside the mortuary house for a moment, uncertain, concerned. Then she ducked below the stone lintel and entered the dark, narrow corridor. When she came among the bones she was confused. By the faint light from the gaps in the turf roof she could see that an animal had been here. A half-decomposed corpse was scattered and shredded over the floor. There were small burial urns, piles of skulls, and piles of limbs. They were all set into niches below the roof. Tallis stepped among them, peering into the darkness, trying to let the thin shafts of sunlight paint a picture of the mortuary chaos. Birds shifted restlessly in the roof. Dirt dribbled on to the stone floor. Tallis straightened up, then looked behind her and up into the gloom. And cried out with shock as a dark shape swung down from a cross beam, appearing suddenly and frighteningly and hanging in front of her, inches away.
Tig’s strange eyes watched her hungrily.
Then he dropped to the floor, walked around her and crouched in the exit tunnel.
Tallis waited until her heart had stopped racing with the sudden fear. Then she looked round, saw a part of the house where a stone cist was dimly illuminated. She went there, placed her bundle on the ground and unfurled the wolfskin. The bones of her son lay exposed at last, the sad wood which they had become crushed and broken after many years of being dragged through the forest and buried beneath her other goods.
Tig was curious. After a while he edged towards her, still on his haunches; an animal, approaching warily. He gasped as he saw the tiny bones. He reached forward, then hesitated, glancing at Tallis who remained expressionless and still. For years she had carried the death of her firstborn with her. Now she tried to think of these relics as nothing more than wood, a broken statue, crumbling memory. The child had lived only five months … he had not been real. Had he?
It was impossible to forget his cries. To forget the look in his infant’s eyes. To forget his sudden quiet when the birds of the wood began to agitate the trees at dusk. It was impossible to forget the feeling that the child had been aware of its own fate …
Tig picked up a fragment of the broken skull. It crumbled between his fingers, into dust, into splinters, yellowing shards of the stuff of oak. He reached for one of the long bones, raised it quickly to his lips, sucked gently, then shook his head. He looked very concerned as he watched Tallis. He shook his head again, then reverently placed the bone among the others.
‘Ah well,’ Tallis said. ‘His dreams are still my dreams.’
She wrapped up the bundle and gave it to the boy. Tig took the burial package, looked around, then carried it into darkness. Tallis heard a stone being shifted, scraping as it was moved aside; then the sound as it was returned to its proper place.
A moment later Tig crept back. Tallis was puzzled to see that he was still holding the bundle. He looked confused, perhaps distracted. He fiddled with the shafts of sharp bone that penetrated his rough clothing and young flesh. He was inducing pain and it showed in his eyes. He stood and walked to the exit from the mortuary house. Tallis heard him sniffing at the air, a violent sound. He too was crying. When he came back he was holding some dry grass and two flints. He sat down again and made a small fire.
He picked up the dry wood bones, one by one, and placed them on the kindling. Soon the flames made shadows fidget among the dead. Brightness gleamed in the boy’s eyes as it must have shone with unsteady radiance upon the tears that moistened Tallis’s cheeks. They sat in silence as the dead wood cracked and gasped its way to the ash-grey light of another realm.
Towards the end, Tig drew a piece of dry fish from a small pouch at his belt, impaled it on a bone and singed it in the flame. It gave off a sudden and pleasant smell. When it was burned Tig licked it, sniffed it, then passed it to Tallis, who accepted the gift and ate it, choking with grief more than with the heat of the food.
She had thought it a part of the ritual of the dead in Tig’s new world – consuming the life-fire of her dead child on the fired flesh of a swimmer to the unknown region – but Tig skewered two pieces for himself and licked his lips eagerly as the fish grilled over the flames.
Tallis became drowsy. In the fading firelight Tig’s eyes watched her through bright lenses. For a while she felt the need to keep awake, in case he should become violent. But a more reasoning voice began to whisper to her, and she let herself drift into sleep. She felt the boy’s gentle touch on her face, the small fingers pressing against the bone of cheek and skull. Images and memories began to flutter nervously, as if being called reluctantly … a mask slipping from her hands … a man stooping to the water of a stream his red dressing gown soaked … her name, cried in despair and grief …
A voice shouting ‘Faster! Through the hollowing now! Come on, Tallis!’
Her own voice crying, ‘I can’t ride this fast. I’ve only ridden ponies …’ and the sense of unbalancing as she turned in the crude saddle and saw her father’s face, hung in her vision, the mask clutched to his chest …
Then a sudden closing of the wood around him, like the shutting of foliage gates, the cutting off of summer.
Biting wind … Autumn on the wind …
A canter, then a fall, Scathach laughing, then guiltily remorseful, helping her to her feet, fussing at the cut on her leg, helping her back on to the horse. He swung up into the saddle with her, gave her a quick kiss, his arm around her shoulder. ‘I’ll keep you safe until your legs grow longer. You’ll be back before your fathe
r has time to dry his tears.’
But she hadn’t expected him to see her go. That was so unfair. That was so cruel. Now he had seen her she should go back. She should explain. The horses cantered forwards. She cried bitter tears, angry tears.
‘Go back. Take me back …’
Scathach and his friends, though, were riding as if caught on a wave, following the current, drawn deeper into the wood, the broken, limping stag running before them, antlers clattering against the low branches. Sometimes it rose up the ridges of hills; sometimes it moved cautiously through shallow waters, disappearing into the heavy fog that often gathered above the river. They were compelled to move inwards, inwards away from the fields of the Keetons’ farm.
Tallis followed because she had no other option.
How dense the forest became, how silent. A stifling stillness settled over all the green and yellow land below the canopy. Water whispered; trees protested at some unfelt breeze, short snaps and cracks of movement. Sharp light danced on the moist surfaces of fern frond and mossy rock. Even the stag became silent, leading the way through the gloom of the undergrowth, across rivers, stumbling on slippery crags of grey stone, ducking and twisting its great body as it weaved a path into the heart of the forest.
It became cold. Flights of birds disturbed the silence. Their movement let strands of brightness fall into the green half-light of the glades and dells below, clearings which led one upon the other, a trackway through the ancient realm.
Stretley field … street field … this secret path had been known for thousands of years … but did it ever turn back upon itself, did it ever lead to home?
Days and nights: Tallis lost touch with the passage of time.
She had not been here as much as a week, she thought, but she was dizzy with tiredness, with riding, with claustrophobia and with anxiety. Was he still standing there? Was he waiting for the woods to part again and for his daughter to come splashing triumphantly home along Hunter’s Brook?
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