Huxley felt impatient and anxious. ‘I must know the story.’
‘Why?’
‘I think it may be the key to what is happening. What can you remember of it? You said you’d read it to him—’
‘Hundreds of times. But a long time ago.’
‘Tell me the story.’
She leaned back against one of the desks and gathered her thoughts. ‘Oh Lord, George. It’s so long ago. And I read so many stories to them, Christian especially …’
‘Try. Please try.’
‘He was a sort of gypsy fox. Very old, older than any human alive. He’d been wandering Europe for centuries, with a drum, which he beat every dawn and dusk, and a sack of tricks. He either played tricks on people to escape from them, or entertained them for his supper. He also had a charge, an infant boy.’
‘Boy Ralph.’
‘That’s right. Boy Ralph was the son of a Chief, a warrior of the olden days. But the boy was born on a highly auspicious day and his father was jealous and decided to kill the infant by smothering him. He was planning to use the carcase of a chicken for the vile deed.
‘Drummer Fox lived at the edge of the village, entertaining people with his tricks and sometimes giving them prophecies. He liked the boy and seeing him in danger stole him and ran away with him. The King sent a giant of a warrior after the fox, with instructions to hunt him down and kill them both. So Drummer Fox found himself running for his life.
‘Wherever Drummer Fox went he found that humans were tricky and destructive. He didn’t trust them. Some were kind and he left them alone. He always paid a small price for whatever he had taken from them. But others were hunters and tried to kill him. At night he would make his bed in their chicken sheds, making mattresses and blankets from the dead chicks—’
Huxley slapped his knees as he heard this. ‘Go on …’
‘He used to say [and here, Jennifer put on a silly country voice], “Nothing against the chicks but their clucking. They’d give me away. Give me away. So better a feather bed than a nice egg in the morning. Sorry chicks …”’
‘And then he’d silently kill the lot of them.’
‘Of course. This is a story for children.’ Huxley shared Jennifer’s smile. ‘Anyway, that isn’t all. Drummer Fox made the infant Ralph a plaything of the heads of the chickens, threaded on a piece of string.’
Huxley was astonished and delighted. ‘Good God! That’s exactly what had happened in the chicken house. And Steven never saw inside! He didn’t know about that particularly gruesome piece of Ash’s game. Go on. Go on!’
‘That’s more or less it, really. The fox is on the run. He gets what he can from the human folk he meets, but if in danger he tricks the humans into the forest where they invariably get crushed under the hooves of the Hunter who’s following the fox. It’s quite murderous stuff. The boys lapped it up.’
‘And how is it resolved? Is it resolved?’
Jennifer had to think for a moment, then she remembered. ‘Drummer Fox gets cornered in a deep, wooded valley. The Hunter is almost on him. So the fox makes a mask and puts it on and goes up to greet the giant warrior.’
‘What mask?’
‘That’s the clever part. For a child, at least. He puts on a fox mask. He tells the Hunter that he’s a local man who has tricked Drummer Fox by pretending to be a renegade fox as well. Drummer Fox has revealed his weakness to him. To destroy the fox all the Hunter needs to do is to disguise himself on horseback with dry rushes and reeds.’
‘Aha. The ending loometh.’
‘The Hunter duly ties reeds all over his body and—’
‘Drummer Fox sets light to him!’
‘And away he gallops, trailing flame and cursing the Fox. The nice or nasty little coda is that one day Drummer Fox and Boy Ralph are making their way back through a dark wood when they hear a hunting horn and the smell of burning.’
‘The stuff of nightmares,’ Huxley said, pacing about the room, thinking hard. ‘No wonder the boy is afraid of horses. Good God, we’ve probably traumatised him for life.’
‘It’s only a story. The stories the boys tell each other are far more gruesome. But then they’ve leafed extensively through the copy of Gray’s Anatomy on your shelf.’
‘Have they! Have they indeed! Then at least their stories will be colourful.’
‘Does it help? Drummer Fox, I mean?’
Huxley swung round and walked up to Jennifer, gathering her into his arms and hugging her. ‘Yes. Oh yes. Very much indeed.’ She seemed startled, then drew back, smiling.
‘Thank you for letting me know about your madness,’ she said quietly. ‘Whatever I can do …’
‘I know. I don’t know what you can do for the moment. But I feel deeply relieved to have told you what is happening. The grey-green figure frightens me, even though I know it is an aspect of me.’
Jennifer went pale and looked away. ‘I don’t wish to think about that any more. I just want you to be safe. And to be near me more often …’ The look in her eye as she glanced at him made Huxley smile. They touched hands, and then went downstairs.
15
A wonderful example of convergence, or perhaps merging: Steven’s imagination is inculcated with the legend and image of the fox: but Drummer Fox is just a corruption of a more powerful mythological cycle concerning Ash. Ash herself is a ‘story’ reflecting an ancient event, perhaps an incident from the first migrations and movements of a warrior elite of Indo-Europeans, from central Europe.
Ash, the inherited memory, is present in Steven’s mind, and the corrupted form of the folk-tale/fable is also strongly present. So Ash – created by Steven – emerges from the wood with associations of Drummer Fox: hence the killing of chickens, the necklace of hen heads.
But this Ash has no child!
Drummer Fox: shaman? The drum, the classic instrument of shamanic trance. And Fox’s bag of tricks. The same as Ash’s bone and wood bag, her magic.
And Ash carries a tiny wrist-drum!
The story of Ash, then, has been shaped by a time nearer to her own origination as a legendary tale. Later, as the tale corrupts further into Drummer Fox and other tales of that ilk, so certain shaman trappings return.
Steven summoned Ash. Ash came, half myth, half folklore, and called to Steven. Her gift at the gate – the bone and wood pieces – is part attraction to Steven, part the price she pays for her night’s stay on the carcases of the hens.
She wants Steven, then. But why? To replace the lost child? Drummer Fox protects Infant Ralph. In one story – the Ash story – has she, I wonder, lost the child? Does she then seek to replace the lost child with another, perhaps so that she can pretend that the true ‘prince’ is still alive?
How I wish I knew more of the Ash legend.
Wynne-Jones and I are seen as ‘intruders, not to be trusted’ and sent to the ‘hooves of the horses’ by Ash. But she selects a key moment, a primary event in mythological time, when images occur that will last into the corrupted form: the burning man, the horses riding wild, the crushing of men below hooves.
So is it Steven who has directed this aspect of Ash? Or is it Ash conforming to the older ritual?
And how do I convince Ash to return me to that moment? And once there, how do I return Wynne Jones safely?
And how did my alter ego slip into this world from his own?
A primary moment, a focus, may be the meeting point of many worlds simply because of its importance …
I must return to that moment. Something happened there, something was there, that will explain the complication!
You will have to offer her Steven. You fool! Don’t you see? You will have to offer her the boy. And then trust her. Can you trust her? Can WE trust her? She will not perform her magic without the gift she seeks. Fool!
But I came back. She cast me away, into a landscape both remote in time and place, but it was not a permanent dislocation. She is Steven’s mythago. This has tempered the fury that might otherwise b
e present within her. I still have the necklet of wood and bones with which she dispatched me before; now I will hope to reason with her.
He left the journal open on his desk and went through the house to begin to collect his supplies and equipment for the trek. At some point during the next ten minutes he was aware of the wafting smell of undergrowth in the house, and the sound of movement from his office. The visit was brief, and he caught sight of the shadow as it ran with uncanny speed back across the field to the woodland edge.
A brief response, then, and without much interest Huxley returned to read what had been written.
‘Damnation!’
He ran to the garden, dropping the journal as he went. ‘Come back!’ he shouted. ‘You’re wrong. I’m sure! Damn!’
Now he was frightened. He swept up the journal, turned again to the scrawled line: Steven is not safe from Ash. She must be destroyed, and then flung the book into its hiding place.
Now there was no time to lose. He roughly packed his sack, crammed whatever food lay to hand – bread, cheese, a piece of cold mutton – and almost demolished Jennifer as he ran to the garden.
‘Wait until dawn at least …’ she said, recovering from the impact and helping him gather the spilled items from his sack.
‘I can’t.’
‘You’re in a lather, George …’
Furious, eyes blazing with panic, he hissed, ‘He’s going to kill her! That will undo everything. Wynne-Jones, gone forever. Maybe …’ He hesitated, and bit back the words, ‘Steven too—
‘I have to follow him,’ he went on, ‘and fast. God, he’s so fast …’
Jennifer sighed, seemed sad, then kissed her husband.
‘Off you go then. Be careful. For the boys’ sake, and for mine.’
He made a feeble attempt at humour. ‘I’ll return with Wynne-Jones, or on him …’
‘But lose his pipe, if you can,’ she added, then turned quickly away as her voice began to break.
16
It took Huxley over four hours to locate the Horse Shrine, the longest search ever. He had been confident of the route, but became distracted by the sudden change in the wood from a stifling, chirruping zoo of green light and intense shade, to a silent, gloomy dell, where the overpowering smell of decay set his heart racing and his senses pounding. By moving too fast through this deadly glade he disorientated himself, and took hours to find some part of Ryhope Wood that prompted memory.
At one point a blur of movement swept past him, noisily disappearing into the deep wood. At first he thought that it might be the grey-green man, overtaking him on his passage inwards, but then remembered that his shadow was far ahead of him. More likely, then, the movement was one of the various forms of the Green Jack. As such he took precautionary manoeuvres and measures against attack, keeping his leather flying jacket firmly buttoned to the throat, despite the humidity, and holding a small wooden shield on the side of his face nearest the disturbance.
It was maddening to be so lost, and to be so desperate to find a shrine that, over the years, he had found with no difficulty.
By a stream he washed his face and cleaned his boots, which were heavy with clay from a tree-crowded mire into which he had stumbled. His lungs were tight with pollen and the damp, heavy air. His mouth was foul. His eyes stung with dust, tiny seeds, and the endless slanting, slashing light from above the dense foliage cover.
The stream was a blessing. He didn’t recognise it, although the ruins of a building on its far bank, a building in Norman style, high earth defences, compact and economic use of stone, reminded him of a place he had seen three years before. He knew from experience that the mythagoscapes changed subtly, and that they could be brought into existence by different minds and therefore with slightly different features. If this building were a corrupting form of the river station – from a story-cycle told in the courts of William Rufus – which he had recorded before, then the Horse Shrine lay behind him.
He had come too far.
There was no use in using a compass in this wood. All magnetic poles shifted and changed, and north could be seen to turn a full three hundred and sixty degrees in the stepping of four paces in a straight line. Nor was there any guarantee that the perspective of the wood had not changed; hour by hour the primal landscape altered its relationship with its own internal architecture. It was as if the whole forest were turning, a whirlpool, a spinning galaxy, turning around the voyager, confusing senses, direction and time. And the further inwards one journeyed, the more that place laughed, played tricks, like old Drummer Fox, casting a glamour upon the eyes of the naive beholder.
No. There was no guarantee of anything, here. All Huxley knew was that he was lost. And being lost, yet being comforted by this encounter with the river-station of the piratical Gylla, from the eleventh-century story, he felt suddenly confident. He had nothing to use but his judgement. And he had something of great value to lose: his friend of many years standing …
So he summoned his courage and returned along the trail.
The sound of a horse screaming finally allowed me to locate the shrine, but on arrival at the wide glade I found only desertion and shambles. Something has been here and almost utterly destroyed the place. The monstrous bone effigy of a horse, with its attendant skeletal drivers, is shattered, the bone parts spread throughout the glade and the wood around. They are overgrown, some even moss-covered, as if they have lain like this for many years. Yet I know this place was intact just a few days ago.
The stone temple remains. There are withered leather sacks inside it, some decayed form of food offering, fragments of clay, two wristlets of carved, yellowing ivory pieces resembling crude equines, and carved, I imagine, from horses’ teeth. There is also a fresh painting on the grey stone of the outside of the place, a mark, like no animal or hieroglyph that I have encountered. It is complex, of course symbolic, and utterly meaningless. Depicted in a mixture of charcoal and orange ochre, it is tantalising. My sketch, over the page, does not do it justice.
No sign of the horse that screamed.
Light going, night coming. No sign of Ash, and no movement around. This place is dead. Eerie. I shall make a single foray in a wide circle, then return here for the night.
He finished writing and packed the book away in his rucksack. With a nervous glance around he entered the dense woodland again, and ducked below the branches, hesitating as he orientated himself, then striking away from the glade by measured paces, constantly stopping and listening.
He had intended to walk a wide circle, but after a few minutes the abrupt and noisy flight of dark birds, behind him, caught his attention and induced in him a state of frozen silence. He hugged the dark trunk of a tree, peering through the light-shattered gloom for any substantial movement.
When, after a minute or so, he had seen nothing, he began a hesitant return to the glade.
The sound of a scream, a woman’s angry, fearful cry, shocked him, then set him running.
A small fire was burning, close to the stone walls of the shrine. The intensity of the flame, the sharp crackle of wood, told Huxley instantly that the fire was new. He was tantalised by the thought that Ash had been near the clearing all the time, watching him, waiting for him to leave.
He approached, now, crouched low in the cover. Ash was a running shape, a twisting, struggling form, caught darkly in the light from her own fire. Something was grappling with her, hitting at her. He could hear the blows. Her cries of anger became groans of pain, but she fought back with vigour, rough skirts swirling, arms swinging.
Huxley dropped his pack and stepped quickly into the clearing. The process of murder was interrupted and Ash looked at him angrily, then with puzzlement. Behind her, the wood shimmered and the grey-green shape of a man moved swiftly to the right. He still had hold of Ash and the startled woman stumbled as her head was wrenched back, dragging her over.
‘Let her go! Let go of her at once!’
Huxley snatched a piece of burning wood
from the small fire. He dropped it at once and yelled as flame curled round his fingers, singeing the hair on his skin. More carefully he selected a fragment of branch that was burning only at the end—
And grimaced as he realised that the whole of the wood was at what felt like red heat!
—And charged at the shadow of his alter ego.
Ash was being throttled. Her body had pitched back, her naked legs thrashing. Her head and upper torso were hidden by the brush. Her cries were stifled, choking.
Huxley leapt through the undergrowth and thrust the burning brand at the shadow.
‘Get away from her! I won’t have this, do you understand me? Stop at once!’
The fire at the end of the brand went out. He shook the wood vigorously, hoping to restart the flame, but the life had gone from it.
Then his face erupted with pain and he felt himself flung back into the clearing. He moaned with genuine discomfort and struggled to stand, but all strength had evaporated from his legs, and he fell back, onto one elbow, reached to hold his face, now numbed and oddly loose around the jaw.
Distantly he heard a sharp crack, a half cry, fading quickly, a woman’s cry, dying.
‘Oh Dear God, he’s killed her … I’ve killed her …’
Fire burned into his eyes and he shrieked and struck against the brand. A foot crushed down upon his belly, and when he doubled so he felt a further blow, by foot or hand it was hard to tell, against his eyes, striking him flat again. The fire waved down, the flames took on his shirt, and he patted a hand at them, before again fingers closed around his wrist and wrenched him up, to a sitting position, half blinded by flickering yellow fire, and—
Rope around his neck!
Tightening!
He snatched and scrabbled at the thong, managed to cry out. ‘Stop this! You have no right! Stop this at once … !’
He was lifted, turned, swung. He struggled to retain a degree of dignity, but felt his feet leave the ground and his stomach turn over as he was dragged around by the creature, swinging him with astonishing strength, finally flinging him against the stone of the shrine.
Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) Page 32