Advent

  Course, there was the shortcut.

  Horace stopped in the deserted road. He took his cap off again to run fingers through his hair.

  No one knew their way around like he did. He hadn’t been through the hole in the hedge for a while but he still remembered exactly where it was. All he had to do was jump off the road onto the footpath that ran past the farm, carry on till he got to the gap and then duck through and he’d be in the woods right near Miss Clifton’s house. Cake. And he’d definitely get there before the other kid if he hurried.

  His feet knew the way. He didn’t have to think about where he was going at all. As he hurried along he fantasised about how impressed Marina would be. He rehearsed their conversation under his breath as he trotted past the farm with its ridiculous barking dogs and came up to the edge of the trees. When he reached the place, it was a simple matter to check quickly that no one was coming – no one ever was – and then slip between the sagging barbed wire in the spot where the undergrowth was thin, and into the bushes beyond, onto Pendurra land.

  He’d been thinking about sneaking up through the woods to keep an eye on the gate so he could catch the kid coming in. But now he realised he wanted to see Marina straight away. He liked the way she always smiled to see him. She never saw any other boys, or not that she ever said anything about. Nobody ever seemed to come and go. There was something special about the place, there really was, or how come there weren’t any cars or farm machines, and there were no wires leading to the house, like it was lost in time or something, and even though it was really really old and there was all that land around it nobody worked there except Caleb and Miss Clifton? There was something special about Marina too, not just her bright smile and being friendly and pretty. She was so different from the girls at school. It was like she wasn’t even the same species, she was . . . she was so . . .

  Sadly, Horace Jia was only twelve and hadn’t yet learned a language to describe how Marina was unlike all the other children he knew, or why he liked thinking about her so much. He remembered how she hadn’t listened to him properly last time they spoke, hadn’t seemed to care about how worried he was, and then she’d gone off with that other boy. The liar. The fake.

  He worked his way through the dense stands of wild rhododendron with the automatic deftness of a gymnast practising a routine. So perfectly did he know his trackless route, in any season of the year, that as he approached the place where the undergrowth thinned out near the driveway, he would surely have noticed the strangely shaped trunk that had never been there any other day, if it hadn’t been for the turbulence of resentment and fantasy whirling through his head.

  As it was, the first he knew of it was when, quite suddenly, it moved, its true shape becoming clear. By then he was too close, and it was too late.

  Being a boy of twelve, and the only child of a fiercely strict mother, the very idea of naked femaleness was a thing of paralysing fascination and terror. It was the first thing he noticed and it stopped him in his tracks.

  He didn’t take in the rest of it, because he couldn’t. It was impossible. It couldn’t be there.

  He saw a woman’s form, a woman’s face and breasts and hips, but all a dark shining green, except for the eyes and nipples which were blood-red. From the shoulders outwards and the thighs downwards the form became something else, no longer even the image of a person. Its legs and arms grew darker and rougher, streaked and mottled like bark. At the long arms’ ends burst clusters of spiked leaves that could not possibly be hands, though they flexed and stretched, finger-like. The feet were knots of wood, rooting down into the litter of dead leaves. On its smooth head, a crown of tiny white flowers seemed to grow right out of its skull.

  The feet lifted, lithe and pliant, trailing earth, and as they stepped towards Horace, the mouth opened and sang in a warm, clear alto:

  The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown

  Of all the trees that are in the wood the holly bears the crown

  One of the branch-arms extended and the leafy twigs at its tip rustled and crooked, beckoning.

  ‘Come, mouse,’ said the voice, a deliciously musical hum. ‘Come, squirrel.’ The root-feet slid closer. ‘Come, little owl. Come and rest in my branches. Warm yourself in my thorny arms.’

  Some self-preservation instinct triggered itself. Horace spun round and began to sprint. There was a commotion behind him as if a gale had struck the wood. He was tripped hard, and fell, scrambling onto his back as he dropped. He saw the green face, the ruby irises in the black eyes, bending towards him. More in dumb shock than terror, he fainted, and never felt the limb scoop him up, scores of prickles tearing at his clothes.

  At that same moment Gawain was hurrying up the old green lane, where for centuries the people of the village by the river had walked to reach the church among the fields above. Its grey tower rose above the brow of the hill as he climbed out of the woods. The sky behind it had turned solid, a wall of cloud. He pulled the map out of his back pocket without stopping and crossed a rutted field to the lane at the top of the ridge. There was a village nearby, a few roofs poking over the hedges. He scrambled away from it, up towards the crossroads. Checking over his shoulder in case anyone was around on the road, he was halted by the view opening behind.

  Down to the west and south the landscape had vanished completely into the colourless storm. The horizon had drawn in so close he felt like he could touch it. It looked like the end of the world. He pulled his jacket tighter around him and climbed on.

  At the crossroads the sky opened out around him, the wind stinging. An old mud-crusted car was parked at an odd angle on the strip of grass beside the junction, nestled front first into the hedge. Gawain wondered who’d have left their car like that, and where they were now. Then he saw the crumples and dents behind the front bumper, and the marks of skidding tyres like fat brown brushstrokes in the grass. Another wreck.

  He hurried on the eastward road towards the gate, feeling unpleasantly exposed here in the high lane, though the only things watching him were occasional crows. He tried not to think about Corbo’s warning. Something more fearsome than itself didn’t bear thinking about. All he had to do was get in, under cover somehow. Then he’d work out what to do next. Find Marina. She’d know. Or at least she’d know more than he did. The thought that he had become more helpless and ignorant than Marina was almost as dreadful as the crow-beast’s threats.

  He slowed down as he neared the dense laurel hedge and the two stone gateposts. The crows cawed at him from the pines, echoing the monstrosity’s warning. Go. Go. But the advancing clouds had taken away any choice he might still have had. He didn’t want to be out in the open when whatever it was that had eaten the middle distance caught up with him.

  He peered surreptitiously round the near gatepost and watched the house for as long as he could hold still. Auntie Gwen’s car was still parked beyond it. There were no signs of life.

  Cautiously, he went up to the door and listened. Until that moment he hadn’t realised that he was far, far more frightened that Auntie Gwen might be inside than that she might not be. But the house was as deserted as when he’d first arrived. The door was still unlocked, and when he cracked it open the silence behind it was blanket-thick.

  He looked down at his feet, scratched, stained, soil between his toes. They told him how far he had come in a day, since he’d last stood here. He’d returned a different person. Rechristened.

  He was squatting on the floor by his bag, changed into warmer clothes, when he heard a new sound outside. His head snapped up.

  At first it was no more than a change in the timbre of the wind, its hollowness filling in, a moan becoming a murmur. As he scrambled to his feet, heart thudding, and held his breath to listen again, he realised that it was music.

  A voice sang outside, the words becoming clear as it approached the house: a woman’s voice.

  O the rising of the sun and the running of the deer

  The playing of
the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir

  In the next room, the clock began to chime.

  The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn

  And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ on Christmas Day in the morn

  Gawain crossed to the window. Snowflakes had begun to fall. He looked out into the winter.

  O the rising of the sun . . .

  Through the window its berry-red eyes met his. His knees gave way. He slumped backwards, a rabbit in an eagle’s glare. There was no light in the eyes, no depth, no watery softness: they seemed blind. Yet the song stopped, and as its dark-lipped mouth curved into a smile, Gawain knew it had found what it was looking for.

  It pointed a long arm-branch towards him, the cluster of leaves at its end straightening.

  ‘Princeling!’ it called out, clear and loud. ‘I’m sent to fetch you. Come out. Follow!’

  Desperate instinct made him think fire. Fire, the primal defence against the dark, the weapon against the wildwood. Gawain spun away from the window, seized the thinnest and longest log he could find from the basket by the fireplace and shoved its end into the ash.

  The voice, outside: ‘Where have you hid yourself, youngling? Come out to the cold.’

  He bit his lip and stared into the dead hearth. ‘Come on,’ he whispered through gritted teeth. ‘Come on, come on.’ The window behind him scraped. Spike-leaved fingers caressed the panes. He couldn’t stop himself looking over his shoulder. It was watching him, huge in the frame of the window, taller than any man. It stared for a moment and then stepped out of sight, towards the door.

  ‘Come. On.’ Fire, his last hope. The abomination outside could crush him like an insect. His shaking hands stirred futile clouds in the ash. Crows screeched and gargled outside, their racket echoing his nightmares, the plagues of dark wings shot through with seams of flame.

  He took one deep breath to silence his panic and held it.

  ‘Burn,’ he whispered.

  The end of the log flared. He felt the blast of warmth on his face even before his eyes opened to see it. He sprang up, clutching it tight in both hands. Sparks fell from it as he lunged towards the door.

  There was an almighty crack. The door exploded inwards as if it had been hit by a battering ram. There under the porch stood the tree-creature, its huge arm swinging back. Gawain thrust the burning brand out in front of him.

  With a hollow roar of wind the blizzard struck.

  Part VI

  Snow

  Twenty-four

  In front of Horace’s eyes a white fury danced. It was coming towards him, or he was falling into it. His first groggy thought was that he must be dead. His body felt detached. He couldn’t place himself. He was nowhere.

  A face appeared in the white. This was unexpected. Some sort of angel, maybe? He strained to make his eyes focus and found that he could actually lift his head a little. He was cold to his bones, and the skin of his face felt brittle as the crust of ice on a winter puddle.

  If he wasn’t dead, maybe he was as good as. That might explain the angel. It appeared to float above him – above, yes, he was (things began to arrange themselves) lying on his back on the ground – indifferent to the white chaos. It was shrouded, ominously. Dark hair fell across its face. He watched the way the whiteness twisted around it and realised that the white was snow, heavy snow, the same snow that was steadily burying him.

  Hands appeared and reached to the angel’s neck. Horace saw the shroud unfurl from its body. It bent down closer to him, coming into focus. The face became female.

  ‘The right length for you,’ she said. ‘And I have no more use for it.’

  She covered him with the shroud. It was like a thick blanket, slightly warm. She tucked the edges around his hands and legs. The lessening of the cold roused his nerves, making them tingle, then blaze. He gasped with pain.

  She turned her head and met his eyes.

  An unmistakable sadness filled her face.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She reached a hand towards him, hesitated, then rested it on his shoulder. ‘You have a long journey ahead.’ She seemed to be about to add something, but thought better of it. Horace was still trying to work out whether what she’d said meant that he was about to die or that he wasn’t – he felt hazily detached from either alternative, as if it really didn’t make much difference – when she stood up again.

  ‘Keep my cloak. It will do you some good, on your way.’

  It was doing him good right now. His muscles were thawing, though they throbbed in protest when he tried to wiggle fingers and toes. He managed to twitch his head enough to shake away the film of snow from his hair and eyebrows. The scene became a little clearer. He’d always imagined angels (when he’d imagined them at all, which come to think of it was basically never) as being better dressed than this. They were supposed to be radiant, weren’t they? Or at least tidy. Also a bit more cheerful. Still, with him being more or less dead and all, an angel she obviously was, since she stood barefoot and bareheaded in the snowstorm without a flicker of discomfort, looking down at him with a face like one of those old paintings on Christmas cards.

  There was something about her voice too. It came untouched through the wind and snow like a bird’s wing cutting the air. She had walked away a little, but when she looked back to speak again he heard the words perfectly clearly.

  ‘Of all the men and women and their children, you are the last to see me alive. I’m glad I came across you, to leave my cloak.’

  Then she vanished into the snow, and Horace began fighting to stir his sinking body back to life.

  The monster swung one barbed arm in through the shattered doorway, swishing through the narrow space as if the storm had entered the house. Gawain jumped back, nearly tripping on the bottom stair behind him. The burning branch swayed crazily. Popping sparks smouldered against the walls.

  ‘I’m to fetch you, fugitive,’ it half sang, half said. The air between them rippled with heat, making its green face look like it was melting. ‘I am the snare that catches boys. My barbs hook man-fry.’ The arm stretched forward again, beckoning. ‘Come close.’

  ‘L-leave,’ he croaked. He tried to think of the way the dog had stalled, constricted by his words. His throat was choked tight. He had to shout to clear it. ‘Go away!’ The shout became a scream. ‘Get out!’

  It slid one of the gnarled and splayed protrusions that served it for feet over the threshold. Where the woody tendrils touched, the earth beneath the floor buckled upwards. Cracks shivered through the slate tiles, adding their sharp tchak to the fizzing of the log and the deep rush of the wind outside. It bent its flower-crowned head to duck through the doorway.

  ‘No!’ Gawain yelled.

  But it kept coming. The frame of the door warped and split as the tree-thing stepped across it, as if its wood was being sucked into the advancing roots. Gav stumbled back, sick with panic, retreating through the green curtain into the living room.

  ‘Wrong boy, right boy.’ It was inside the house, inside Auntie Gwen’s house. The last barrier was down; the nightmares had come indoors. ‘Right boy, wrong boy. You’re the one I’m commanded to catch.’ Here he was, in the midst of all the stuff, the piles of paper, the mounds of books, the everyday mess, and in among it the huge green thing strode, tearing the curtain aside with a ripple of one long limb. ‘No good saying no, princeling. We both must as we must.’

  There was no escape, but Gawain kept going back anyway, deeper into the room. His hands shook uncontrollably. As he backed round the sofa the end of the branch dipped too close to a blanket. There was a sudden bitter smell of burning. The room was too small, and, he realised, it was full of paper, scraps scattered everywhere. He couldn’t swing his firebrand, or drop it, or anything. And still the thing pursued him. It watched the smoking branch, swaying away from its tip, but on it came as he retreated, with ghastly hypnotic grace.

  ‘Fear me, flee me, follow me in the end.’ Its lips were the black of wet bark, and a
black tongue moved in its mouth. ‘Find the right child and Holly will be free. And the right is you.’ It slid closer, marking each step with a singsong word. ‘And. The. End.’ He was backed in a corner. ‘Is. Here.’

  His heels prodded behind him and met the wall. He gripped the log tighter and tried one last time to drive this thing out. He was near tears. Abject terror had turned his limbs to wax. His lips quivered as badly as his hands. ‘Go,’ he tried to shout, but it came out more like a sob. ‘Go.’

  It closed its mouth, paused its advance for a moment and then smiled and slowly shook its head.

  ‘No. Don’t.’ Its next steps would bring him in range of the bristled limbs. ‘I’ll . . .’ He held the fire out towards it.

  It sang:

  The holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall

  And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

  One limb whipped upwards, swift as an uncoiling spring, and struck Gawain’s hands. The burning branch spun away across the room as he cried out. The blow felt like it must have shattered bones. He slumped to the floor, hugging his fingers under his arms, defenceless, watching through a film of tears as the grotesque feet slid closer, the carpet ripping open and the floor heaving under them. The long body bent as if bowing to the wind. He looked up into opaque vermilion eyes.

  ‘Greenwood fears fire,’ it murmured, voice warm as a caress, ‘but, I fear, you fear me more.’