Lavondyss

by Robert Holdstock

  She looked up. She dismounted, then climbed the tree, tugging and hauling herself high into the branches.

  Go into Lavondyss as a child …

  This was not the tree as she remembered it. Had she positioned herself here? Or over here? Which of the various branches had been the branch along which she had lain, and watched the dying Scathach? The tree was not the same in this world. She could only approximate the position.

  So she found a place in the old tree which gave her a familiar view of the land. There she lay, cold and wounded, clutching the branch and staring at the corpse of Scathach, limp over the black horse.

  There was no romance here, only the sickening remnants of battle, the dead looted, some still lying, waiting for the carrion eaters.

  Night came close.

  Scathach had lain just so … and she had been here … and had seen there …

  And so if she twisted round, perhaps she could see back to her own world, to the meadow … what was it called? And the stream … it had had a name once, but she couldn’t remember it. And that wide field. Windy Field? And the house, and her home …

  Perhaps she should fetch her masks. Perhaps one of them would allow her to see more clearly: the ghost in the land, or the child that she had been, or the old dog, or the rooks in the tall trees, or the woman …

  She twisted on the branch, the wound in her leg hurting very much, still bleeding. She ignored the pain. She stared at the winter world through every aspect of this old tree. Somewhere below, only a few minutes away but in another world completely, she was running back to the house, Simon in hot pursuit.

  What did you see? Tallis! Tell me. What did you see?

  Somewhere close, somewhere – yes! just minutes away! – somewhere she was a child again, and Gaunt was pottering, and her father was getting angry with her antics …

  And it was summer, late summer. Mr Williams was walking in the countryside, listening for odd songs, looking for that magic to be found in a new song. The festival would soon be under way. The dancers would dance, the mannequin would shiver and give birth to the green girl. The antler and noose would be used in the mock execution of the Morrisman, and the wild jig would bring everyone on to the green, laughing and screaming in the hot, summer night …

  But there was only winter. And the field of the mythical battle of Bavduin, or Badon, or the Teutoburgian Wood, any of the names which had characterized this mythical confrontation to end an era, to end hope … This was the centre of the field, and a tree marked that place, and to this centre one hero among heroes always came …

  She had seen Scathach.

  She might have seen … who? Any of a thousand princes who had crawled away from the fire to shed their blood and start a legend …

  If I jump from the tree I will be home again. I can start again. If I jump …

  Temptation seduced her. Her horse reared as she fell and Scathach’s naked corpse slipped from its insufficient bindings, falling awkwardly, an ungainly mass of pale flesh and bone, head turned up, eyes dull. She had not passed into another world.

  Tallis tugged the body back on to the animal, then climbed into the saddle behind it. There was nothing for her, now, nothing apart from Harry. She did not believe that she could bring Scathach back to life, but he could at least be with her in the fortress as she made her journey into the first forest, as she went in search of whatever it was that had ensnared Harry, made him a prisoner in Old Forbidden Place.

  She returned through the black woods, past the shrines, to the narrow defile which marked the nearer barrier to the castle. She rode down the steep path, then up through the collapsed gate and into the area of the pinnacle of land on which the fortress had been constructed. On the way she placed her masks in the shrine cave by the tents, where the fire burned.

  And after giving the horse its freedom – perhaps a cruel act in this severe winter – she dragged Scathach’s body through the empty corridors to the room where Harry’s pistol marked the place of his final departure.

  She propped Scathach against the ledge of the wide window, then made a nest in the middle of the room, furs, clothing, rags and tatters of standards. Exhausted, Morthen’s wounding cuts hurting her, she remained seated here, watching the cleft in the cliff over the gaunt and grimacing features of the man she had once loved.

  She waited for Harry to beckon to her. After a while she fell asleep.

  An eerie light woke her. The room was warm. She rose and walked through corridors, noticing how the stone walls seeped moisture. When she touched the stone she found it to be sticky. She ran her fingers over the tracery of pattern, following the curls and rings …

  The light changed. Sometimes as she moved through the rooms and hollows of the ruin the light was yellow; sometimes green, sometimes tinged with orange. It grew warmer. A heavy and pervasive smell began to fill the place, choking her. The walls of the fortress seemed to close around her, stifling her.

  When she returned to the top room, where Scathach lay, she found that the wall had almost completely absorbed Harry’s corroded pistol. Tendrils of stone had wrapped over the metal and the butt; there was a fine hair on the stone, like a plant’s roots. When she touched them they quivered. The stickiness remained on her fingers. Tasting it, she discovered it to be sap.

  For only the first time, now, did she comprehend the nature of the stone from which the fortress had been constructed. As she returned to her nest, looking around her, she could see it so clearly that it made her laugh.

  Petrified wood.

  Looking carefully she could see the fragments of the great trees whose fossilized trunks had been carved to make the blocks. One great stone, spanning the nearer wall, was crossed with hundreds of lines, rings, marking the enormous age at which the forest giant had died.

  The sap oozed and ran, pooling on the floor, slowly flowing along the incline. The room was warm, cosy. Green light flowed like the liquid, coming through the stone itself, although outside the night was dark, the winter harsh.

  She closed her eyes for a moment only. When she opened them, Scathach’s sad body had corrupted to bone. The walls were alive with branches, running over the stone like veins.

  She closed her eyes. Images moved inside her. Seasons flew. Birds came and nested, then went to the south. Herds roamed, snows came. She opened her eyes. A holly tree grew from the place where Scathach had lain. Entangled with its branches were shards of human bone, crushed now, gleaming in the glistening green. The holly shivered. Around Tallis the room moved, tendrils of tree spreading along the floor, the ceiling, up the walls, reaching into the air. She became caged in wood. A gentle touch on her cheek, then her arm. Fingers ran through her hair, stroked her throat, gently probed her mouth. She closed her eyes and raised her arms, and the old fingers, gnarled yet soft, stroked her skin, then gripped her gently.

  She was lifted. She hung in the room, strong arms around her waist, strong fingers around her legs. Leaves protected her, their broad faces covering her like skin. Berries trembled against her lips and she licked them, swallowed. The fortress grew around her, stone into wood, rooms into glades, fortress into forest. Her body was squeezed as if between great trees. The pressure began to hurt her and she cried out and the sound set bright birds to flight in the canopy around her.

  She was lifted, turned, twisted and absorbed. In the preternatural green light she watched oak and elm slide into vision, growing at a fantastic pace, their branches reaching, entwining. Hornbeam moved as smoothly as a snake, creeper twisted, ivy writhed about the mossy bark, reaching towards her, its soft and furry touch tickling as it wound about her skin.

  Then a harder, rougher feel, her legs forced open, rough bark serrating the flesh, butting against her, harder, bruising. She squirmed with pain, but was helpless in the grip of the renewing forest, and she felt her body entered, a single motion that never stopped, just filled her, swelled out, tearing her apart inside, fingers of pain, shards of agony, curling snakes of pressure that rea
ched inside to the tips of her toes, her fingers, up her spine and round her ribs, rising higher, filling her stomach, then her lungs, then her throat.

  Stretching her eyes open to see the light, bulging with the strain, Tallis helplessly experienced her rising gorge. She was going to be sick. Her stomach churned. The feeling of movement in her throat was torture. It crept towards her mouth, inch by inch. She retched and failed, squeezed, tried again, tried desperately to choke out the stodge that blocked her.

  It came suddenly. She stretched open her mouth, screamed, then spewed out the great twisting branch. It came like a hard, brown snake. It flowed from her. It divided into two, then curled back on each side of her head, bursting into bud, then leaf, to wrap around her skull. Her lips split, her jaw cracked as the branch thickened, then was still.

  Something fluttered inside her, like the tremor of a heart. It was still, then moved again. The forest was silent. She was in its heart. The light was an intense green and she could tell the passage of sun and seasons above her. Sometimes a fine and fluid mist filled the forest. Sometimes a breeze blew and everything shifted, trembled, then was still. The light faded, leaves fell, and a fine snow drifted through the air, vanishing below her. Then green again.

  Inside her, the movement became restless, almost urgent. Sometimes it fluttered high, towards her throat; at other times it seemed confined to her stomach. Tallis was idly aware that she had none of these organs left. The bones of her skull rotted around the branch. Her flesh fell away and only the impression of her face was left upon the wood. The sap flowed easily through her veins. Insects crawled beneath her skin, burrowed into her and were pecked out by flitting birds, which crossed her forest vision in a fleeting moment, came to her, and were gone, their beaks a brief sting upon her bark.

  A tree fell. She watched its slow collapse with sadness. Its branches caught in the arms of its neighbours. Seasons passed and the tree slipped lower. A dense moss grew across its trunk and it sagged, then cracked. A high wind disturbed the primal landscape, and the tree had gone. Bright flowers bloomed, were drowned with snow, then shoots of oak twisted into the new light, grew serenely upwards, fought each other like beasts, tentacles entwined, one overpowering its companions, crushing them, then looming large in Tallis’s view. Its leaf tips touched hers and she soaked its energy, communed with the giant.

  She grew older. Her bark split, her branches fell. Lines of painful rot began to rise along her legs. The movement inside her filled her completely, an endless fluttering of wings, intense and urgent pecking of beaks.

  One day she felt her stomach rupture. The oak trunk opened, cracked by the forces of the earth. The pain was unbearable and she screeched in the voice of the forest. She was forced back as the bark opened and the hardwood below parted like a wound. The black birds struggled out, a thousand of them, bright-beaked, anxious to find carrion. The sudden birth of birds left her exhausted, watching as they fled and fidgeted through the canopy, upwards, to the brighter light. When they had gone she felt fulfilled, emptied, at peace.

  Great creatures roamed the forest, some like bears, others like cattle, reaching up on hind legs that were as thick as oaks to chew leaves and berries from the tops of the trees. Tallis had seen nothing like them in all her life, their hides so thick, their fur patterned in blacks and browns and whites, infested with parasites. Odd horns and protrusions covered their faces. Tongues licked leaves into mouths where teeth grew at all angles. There was other movement, slighter, quicker. Bands of monkeys roamed through the canopy, sharp eyes glancing at her, small hands picking at the bark of her face. A stag butted against her legs, far below. Then a great elk passed by, trapped in the tangles of the wood. In its panic it broke its antlers, shard by shard, tine by tine. Its cries of distress saddened her for years. Its corpse lay at her feet, slowly sinking into the moss and mud.

  It grew cold. The green light became grey. Screens of holly and ivy sheltered her from the deepening winter, but now the forest became a black and frozen place. Wolves prowled below her, fought each other and consumed the dead. The wind became relentless. Ice formed in her branches, seeped into the wounds in her body, expanded and cracked her.

  She felt the strength in her body go. She began to lean. She broke suddenly, crashed into the arms of her neighbour and lay there, sinking into his branches. Here she remained for what seemed an eternity. But the winds became so fierce that the whole forest shook. She slipped further and the lover-giant’s grip upon her gave. She struck the ground. He shed his leaves to cover her. They fell through the light for years. Snow covered her, finally. Small animals used her as a shelter, burrowing into her rotting bowels.

  There was a sudden movement. A grey shape passed across her vision, came back, peered down. She sensed human sweat. Saw elk-hide and wolf-fur.

  Bright eyes in a pinched, cold face caressed her with their look. The boy’s hands ran over her face, his head cocking this way, that. He touched her eyes, her mouth, her nose, and Tallis understood that he had seen the hints of the face within the wood.

  He smiled; his broken teeth stung in the icy wind and he clapped a hand to his mouth in pain, his eyes watering.

  He drew a stone axe from the belt at his waist and made tentative cuts around her neck. He shivered with cold. He was hungry. There was frost on his hair, on the fur of his hood, but soon, as he hacked at the tree, his skin began to glow and a fine, warm moisture gleamed on his face. Tallis felt the warmth from him and loved it. He cut and chopped and she felt herself detached from the rotten wood. He heaved her upright. She was taller than him. He caressed her body, peered at her face, used his axe to snick off bits of twig, loose bark, the bulging scars of old wounds.

  Small though he was, he carried her over his shoulder, passing back through the frozen forest to the snow field beyond.

  He had come from a miserable place.

  He lay Tallis down in the shelter of tents. They were slung between trees, closed over, roofed in, with a mean fire burning inside.

  There were other grey shapes. They spoke softly. They drank thin soup and shivered. The snow drove at them fiercely. From where she lay Tallis could see the skulls and bones in them, the faces of death creeping close to the surface. The tallest of the grey people, a man, came back with frozen roots. They were in despair. There was no hunting. The winter had caught them by surprise.

  The wind reached into the tent, blew the fire, blew ash. They struggled to keep the winter out. The trees rocked. The sounds of animals were distant, great roars of dying elks, the barking of wolves. Each time this sound came the man ran from the tent with his knives and spears, but he came back, huddled and weeping.

  His skull poked into the day. His lips drew back. He was so near to death that even his eyes were like caves into the underworld.

  The boy came over to Tallis and began to work on her with a knife. She felt her eyes opened wider; he parted her lips. Through nostrils she smelled the fear and the death in this wretched band more powerfully.

  She could see the family clearly, now. A father and a mother. It was the youngest child who hacked at the wood. There were two older children, both boys. One had a wild look in his eyes. The other was a dreamer. He kept his mother happy by telling her little tales. He made her laugh. The father, black beard full of snow shards, watched the youngest son, watched him work. Tallis could hear the way his belly rumbled.

  The boy had finished. Tallis was raised up and five faces stared at her, some smiling, some too dead to show emotion. The boy carried her out into the snow and pushed her into the ground, turning her so that she faced the tent and the cluster of trees that formed their crude and failing shelter. The land glittered with white. The sky was utterly grey. There were no features, save mounds below the snow, and the black of trunks. No animals moved on this forbidding land. Nothing grew. This family was doomed.

  Below her was the corpse of a woman. Tallis had seen the grimacing features as she was carried to the grave. Now, as she impacted with the b
ody, she felt the bones stir. A sap rose in her, human warmth in the veins of the wood. The dull, meaningless sounds of the family became clearer to her. The family kissed the wooden image of their grandmother. The woman cried, then rubbed her tears into Tallis’s eyes. The man scowled at her. The youngest son looked proud. His touch was the touch of an artist, inspecting his work, his craft, rather than honouring the dead woman. The dreamer smiled at her. Fierce Eyes watched her coldly, then nodded, then stared beyond her, at the denser wood. Then sniffed the air. He was behaving as the hunter he would soon become.

  The storm came and drove them into their flimsy shelter. Tallis watched the winter with awe. She had never seen anything like this. The snow drove across the land for days. Trees cracked and fell. Through the blizzard she could see the constant effort of the family to keep their crude tent intact. Snow piled against it, threatening to destroy it, but this helped to protect it eventually as the snow wall hardened and compacted.

  The blizzard eased. A greyish light to the north told of ice. Nothing moved on the land.

  The youngest son came to the totem, to Tallis, and straightened her after the blizzard had made her lean to the left.

  ‘Grandmother Asha, send us food. Please send us food. Where are you? Are you in the warm woods in the south? I made you from oak. I used the bone knife you gave me. You told me it was a special spirit. The deer was drowned in a lake. Its bone made my knife. My knife carved your oak. This storm has killed the oaks, but you are in a warm place, where the leaves are green. Grandmother Asha, send us food from that warm place?’

  The woman came to Tallis and embraced her frozen bark. Death grinned through the woman’s skin. She fingered her necklace of shards of antler. She rattled the bone to draw the old woman’s spirit from the wood.

  ‘Mother … mother … I lost the child. It would have been a girl. It came out of me without blood. I have no blood left. Tell me what to do. The rest of the clan are too far from us. Most of them are frozen to death. We have been too slow. This winter will never go away. My sons will never see themselves as fathers of the tribe. What do I do?’