by Ali Shaw
There had been three press photographs of the site of her mother’s murder. She and Zach had seen them only many years later, for their father wanted the two of them to be older before he showed them his copies. When he did so he confessed that he had looked at them far too often in the intervening years, out of a failed hope that to do so could help confront what had happened. Grainy and monochrome, they were not at all gory. The bodies of Hannah’s mother and her two colleagues had been removed and all you could see was the aid truck parked at an angle across the dusty road. In the first and second photographs, if you leaned in close, you could just make out the bullet holes in the truck’s doors and windshield. In the third you could not, but that picture had always seemed to Hannah the most violent. It showed the open back of the vehicle, to demonstrate what had been stolen, but unintentionally the photographer had captured a lizard as it basked on a roadside rock. It was a tiny animal, hardly in focus, but that it could be so relaxed in that place as to sunbathe had filled Hannah with an unexpected fury.
After showing them those pictures, her father found it impossible to discuss them, but she and Zach had done so often. Over the course of years, and many conversations, her brother had convinced her to see that third photo in a new light. ‘Who knows what a lizard thinks?’ he’d said once. ‘But when I look at it I’m glad it’s there.’
‘Not me,’ Hannah had replied. ‘How can it just carry on as if nothing has happened?’
‘Carrying on is what nature does,’ said Zach. ‘And that, I find, is about the only thing I have any faith in.’
Something brushed Hannah’s hair, and she looked up with a startle. The moon was retreating behind the clouds and the woods were again too shadowy to see details, but when she heard a whirr of wings stop suddenly on her shoulder, there was no question that the moth had returned. It took off once more, and looped away down the same route it had taken before. The last of the moonlight traced the forest floor in that direction, and Hannah fancied that it lit up a trail, perhaps made by badgers or deer. She stood up and followed.
She saw no further signs of the moth as she went, but soon heard running water. Then the trees parted wide enough to see a hurrying brook, and the moon came out again and its waters took glittering leaps over pebbles and dead branches. The closed heads of white flowers lined the far bank, and dotted the undergrowth as far as Hannah could see.
She froze.
There was a gigantic animal on the other side of the water.
Asleep under the gloom cast by a willow, it was an enormous beast the like of which she had never before seen. Even though the leaves drooped around it and their shade concealed much of its body, Hannah could tell from the steady rise and fall of the animal’s ribs that it was no boulder or misshapen log. It had the bulk of a rhinoceros, and at first Hannah tried to persuade herself that it must be one, escaped from a zoo. Yet instead of leathery skin it was covered in a long pelt of fur like that of Highland cattle, and instead of the armoured neck of a rhino it had something longer and more elegant like a horse’s. Its face was hidden in the grass, but Hannah could hear the rhythmic growl of its breathing and a grinding rumble from its stomach. A breeze rippled the willow leaves and white moonlight dappled the beast’s coat. Only then did Hannah see its horn. More like a dorsal fin than a tusk, it grew from the animal’s nose jagged and slender. At the sight of it Hannah could not help but clasp her hands to her head, not out of fear but out of wonder. If she had ever seen anything like this, it was in some picture book of giant animals extinct since the Ice Age.
To her own great surprise, Hannah felt oddly at ease in the company of this beast. Perhaps that was due to how deeply it slumbered, as if it had been dreaming beneath that willow for millennia. Forgetting all else, she let herself admire it, and as the minutes passed she did not move or think, only beheld. When at last a thought came, it was a clear one and untangled. Bestial things and beautiful things could be as one, she thought. Indeed, until they had found Diane she had always believed that wolves were beautiful creatures. Now, looking at the massive animal snoring on the other side of the stream, she knew she still did. She hoped the ghost of Diane would forgive her, but she could accept that the wolves had only done what the world had made them to do.
Hannah settled down on the bank. The waters of the brook sang to her. For an hour or more she sat there, gazing at the horned animal. Then, too gradually to notice, she drifted off to sleep.
Next morning the animal was gone, but Hannah’s spirits were restored. They packed down the tent and followed the compass through woodland just like that of the previous day, with no buildings and no fellow travellers in it. Hannah said nothing of what she had seen, suspecting that the boys would think it only something new to be afraid of, but that didn’t stop her from smiling whenever she recalled it.
Many trees they passed that morning were heavy with fruit, so Hannah stopped to shake their branches and gather up everything that dropped. Other trees looked as if they had burst from the ground in deep autumn, dank pillars of bark that bulged all over with fungi and lumpen mushrooms. These too Hannah harvested, breaking off slabs of mould the colour of crusts. ‘Wonderful,’ she whispered to herself, and wrapped them up in a spare T-shirt.
At noon they came upon a road, and Adrien looked so grateful that Hannah half expected him to kneel and kiss the tarmac. For her own part she gave a quiet sigh, as if a cloud had covered the sun. ‘I never want to let this out of my sight,’ Adrien said, raising his finger with a flourish, ‘Never, ever, ever.’
Seb seemed inclined to agree to that, but Hannah thought again of the horned animal she had seen, and wished they had chanced upon that instead of yet more crushed cars and tarmac.
Soon they met a large group of walkers following the road in the opposite direction. Hannah stopped to make conversation with some of them, trying to ascertain where they’d come from and what lay ahead. Most said they’d only set out a few hours before, having abandoned a nearby town. ‘Everybody’s leaving,’ explained one woman. ‘Everyone who can, at least.’
Upon finding out the name of the place, Hannah reopened the road atlas that had been so useless in the deep forest, and after a minute of searching found their coordinates.
‘Wow,’ said Seb, once they had taken it in. ‘That doesn’t make any sense at all.’
‘And yet here we are,’ marvelled Hannah.
Adrien said nothing, only looked ill.
Their position was some fifteen miles west of where they had begun their journey. That in itself was of no great surprise, but according to the map they had crossed both a motorway and a gushing river. They had seen neither.
A few hours later, they reached the town that everybody was departing. It didn’t take long to understand why. ‘Our town will probably be the same by now,’ explained Hannah. ‘This one just looks a lot worse because we’ve already spent two days in the woods.’
In every street, sinkholes had opened in the ground. These were places where so many roots had stuffed the soil that it had collapsed, and into such pits the trees had tossed the remnants of the buildings. Sewage had risen to mush the earth and stinking pools of it lay everywhere, as did lampposts bent like jewellery wire and spaghetti piles of cables tugged out of the ground. A tall statue of some famous son of the town lay face-down in the dirt, and here and there were less monumental bodies. Some of them had been draped by a conscientious curtain or sheet. Others had not.
Hannah led them at a brisk pace, and they covered their noses to avoid breathing the rot and faeces. What townspeople they saw were packing their things, but many buildings already seemed deserted, save by rats and droning flies. On the main road out of the town, a steady exodus trudged west. The road was an avenue of tacky soil trodden deep by so many passing footsteps, and among the obstacles the worst were the people themselves. They sweated and struggled to push wheelbarrows and shopping carts full of their possessions across tall roots and through mud that sucked at wheels, while others ca
rried as much in their packs as Adrien had when first he’d set out. Everybody delayed everybody else, and at times they moved so slowly that they might have been queuing.
‘None of them know what’s coming to them,’ whispered Adrien. ‘They think it’s going to be so goddamned easy to get where they’re going. And then – poooff! – the forest will vanish the path out from under them!’
‘You needn’t be so pessimistic,’ said Hannah. ‘We’ve still made good progress west, haven’t we? I hadn’t begun even to work out how we’d cross that river, and now the woods have arranged things so we never have to.’
Adrien’s mouth opened and closed in disbelief, but Seb was the one to respond. ‘We won’t find Zach’s lodge this way, Mum.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because the compass can only get us close. After that we’ll need the landmarks on our maps to actually exist.’
‘Let’s just try to have a little faith,’ said Hannah. ‘And, for now, why don’t we take a shortcut? This is like being in a traffic jam.’
They headed down a side street, then took another after that, choosing in accordance with the compass. Along the way their feet found, always with a telltale crunch, everyday objects half-buried in the leaves. A toothbrush with dirty bristles, a phone charger still plugged into its phone, the front half of a kettle with its spout raised like the tail of a cat, a tin of black shoe polish, a candle. Upon the trees’ arrival all things had been divided between junk and treasure, and the candle Seb grabbed and showed them like a trophy. Adrien pulled a disgusted face when he saw it, and turned away as if it were a lump of gristle.
‘Thank God that’s over,’ said Hannah, when they finally left the town behind them. At once the air freshened, and they could look around without fear of the dead.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ said Seb, who was trying to make sense of where they were on the road atlas. ‘There’s another town not far from here, and slap bang on our route.’
‘Cross your fingers, then,’ Hannah grinned, ‘that we never see it, just like we never saw that motorway or river.’
Neither Seb nor Adrien laughed along with her, so she sighed and led the way along a quiet route that had once been a country road, high-banked and meandering beneath beech trees. They followed it for an hour until, without warning, it terminated. Hannah only noticed when she’d taken a few steps on softer footing, but when she looked back Adrien and Seb were stationary on the last foot of tarmac, both staring at the soil beyond as if it were hot coals. ‘There was a junction not ten minutes ago,’ Adrien said. ‘Why don’t we go back there and take the other path?’
‘That junction led north,’ said Hannah.
‘The last time we left the road we were swallowed up by these bloody woods. I say we were lucky to get out again. Let’s just go back and follow the paths we know. So what if it heads north? There’ll be another after that. One of them will go west, eventually. Roads join up. That’s what roads do.’
Hannah sighed and looked into the woods. ‘It just doesn’t feel like we have a choice.’
‘Of course we have a choice,’ huffed Adrien.
‘But if the trees want to take the road away, I don’t see—’
‘The trees don’t want anything,’ snapped Adrien. ‘They can’t, because they’re trees.’
‘I didn’t really mean the plants themselves,’ said Hannah, trying to keep her voice even. ‘I meant the forest.’
Adrien held up one shaking forefinger. ‘The forest doesn’t want anything, either! The forest . . . the forest is just a bloody plural!’
Seb stepped between them with his hands raised. ‘I’d rather not leave the road, either,’ he said, ‘but I’m starting to think Mum’s right about us having no choice. Why don’t we just vote on what to do? There are three of us, so we can’t fail to get a majority. All those in favour of leaving the road . . . ?’
Hannah raised her hand victoriously, assuming she had Seb’s support.
‘All those for staying on it . . .’ said Seb, and raised his hand alongside Adrien’s.
‘That settles it, then,’ said Adrien gleefully, and spun on his heels to march back the way they’d come.
Hannah crossed her arms and glared at Seb, whispering, ‘Why did you just trick me? Can’t you ever try to see things my way?’
Seb looked back at her with an expression of such weary impatience that Hannah felt as if she was the child being reprimanded. ‘Give me a chance, Mum. This is the best way to see if you’re right.’
‘But now we’re going to have to go all the way back to—’
‘Give me a chance,’ he repeated, and with that set off after Adrien.
They had only been retracing their path for a few minutes before the road vanished again. Adrien drew to a sudden halt at the end of it, then took a few backward steps. ‘Wait . . .’ he began. ‘This can’t be happening. We just walked this way.’
Seb laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s because of the forest,’ he said.
Adrien stared at the earth as if willing a road to materialise out of it. Then, after a minute of looking close to tears, he gripped tight the straps of his rucksack and said, in a tiny voice, ‘Oh bloody hell. I wish I was braver.’
‘You already are,’ said Seb, turning him around. ‘Now come on. Back the way the compass shows.’
They headed west again. Hannah shot a smile at Seb when Adrien wasn’t looking, but her son looked no happier than Adrien. She didn’t know what to make of it. During the last year especially, she’d got used to Seb changing at an almost daily rate, be it in his height, his voice or shoe size. This was a different kind of maturity. She couldn’t decide whether she thought it was a good thing.
Unlike the last time they had lost the road, this time they saw occasional reminders of civilisation. When they came upon a lattice of steel bars that filled a glade from root to treetop, they didn’t at first understand what they were seeing. The branches had grown in and out of the laddered metal, sometimes wrapping themselves around it like hands around rungs. Then Seb spotted a yellow sign with a picture of a zigzag striking a man in the chest, and Hannah said at once, ‘It’s a pylon.’
‘And it still goes up,’ said Adrien, as if that were some sort of victory.
After that they saw only forest for several hours, but come evening they arrived at a country cottage abandoned by its owners. Two muscular trees had demolished the place, although they grew on either side of the building. Where their boughs had met they had done so like the punches of boxers, and remained outstretched in jabs and hooks. The cottage’s centremost rooms had been bludgeoned the hardest, but there was shelter to be had in half a sitting room, secure on the leftmost side of the house. Agreeing to stay for the night, they made themselves comfortable on the sofa and two armchairs. From the moment they did so they felt exhausted from walking, and as a breeze blew and the glassy remains of a ceiling lamp tinkled, one by one they fell asleep on the furniture.
9
Whisperers
The moon rose gradually into the night sky, and after some hours had climbed high enough to peek its light into the cottage where the three travellers slept. Many leaves stroked against the ruins, sometimes coming loose and drifting lazily downwards, until they came to rest on the sitting room floor. Neither Adrien, Hannah nor Seb noticed. Theirs was a deep sleep, and they did not even stir when some prey animal screeched in its death throes, somewhere not too far from the cottage.
A tree trunk groaned. A slug bunched and stretched across the floor. Then paws came padding, and a hedgehog snuffled along the trail of the slug. It grabbed hold of it and ate it like a slice of watermelon, taking its time to slurp up all the good slime and now and then push the slug back straight when it tried to curl up and protect itself. It ate until a badger grunted outside, upon which it immediately abandoned its meal and fled in the opposite direction.
Time passed. The slug died. The night conducted its affairs with growls, hisses and
cool silence. Then, from one of the cottage’s shadowy recesses, there came a sound as of paper being scrunched into a ball. Another sound followed, this time something like fingernails scraping over a board. The leaves held their breath. Onto the moonlit sitting room floor came a far stranger creature than a hedgehog or a badger. It stood no taller than a foot, but moved with the bent difficulty of the very old, its footsteps tapping like walking canes. Its head was a lump of broken bark, its eyes and mouth were woodworm holes. For hair it had spider silk, and indeed a spider tensed on its brow like a brooch. Stick-thin arms hung from its shoulders, and they were mismatched in length and one of them had three consecutive elbows.
The little figure paused in the centre of the room and slowly turned its head, as if it was studying each of the three sleeping travellers in turn. Then, ever so quietly, it whispered.
For a full minute nothing happened. The figure stayed still as a statue. Then, after a minute more, its whisper was returned from somewhere in the rafters. Another figure crept down from the ceiling, coming head-first like a lizard descending a rock.
This second creature was much like the first, except it had a hooked nose that filled up its entire face and left no room for nostrils beneath or eyes above. For ears it had only two lank leaves, wilting where they stuck to its shoulders. It swung itself off the wall and touched down on a bookcase. From there it headed to the floor, its claws tiptoeing over the books’ spines. Hannah drew a sharp breath but did not wake. Neither Adrien nor Seb moved. And now a third and similar creature, an ungainly thing with twiggy quills poking out of its back, crept in through the door and approached the armchair where Seb was sleeping. It took hold of the boy’s trouser leg and began to climb, even as its hook-nosed companion crossed the floor and clambered up the side of the sofa where Hannah lay. The first crept to the foot of Adrien’s armchair and made its way up the leg, and the spider on its head wriggled excitedly.
The quilled figure had by now reached Seb’s lap, and used the folds of his hoodie to clamber all the way up to his shoulder. When one of its spines prickled Seb’s chin and he startled, the figure twitched and lost its shape, and at once became like nothing but a clump of dead twigs. Seb mumbled something, blew one of sleep’s raspberries and relaxed. A minute passed, and another. Then, with a scrape and a hinging whine, the twigs reassembled and were the little monster again. The other two had likewise disassembled, but now they too came back together. The first made its way up Adrien’s shirt, until it reached his collar. From there it used his parted lips and then his nostrils for handholds, to raise itself onto his face. Adrien slept on oblivious, while the thing made some silent, motionless assessment. Then it crawled on, up over Adrien’s forehead and scalp onto the top of the armchair, and from there onto a branch and into the treetops. The others followed suit and, once they had climbed out through the roof of the cottage, began again to whisper.