Avilion

by Robert Holdstock

  He sat down and read the entry again and again, until his eyes closed and he drifted into dreaming sleep.

  Elf-shot

  During the night, the wood around the house was restless. The floor beneath Jack’s feet trembled and grumbled on occasion, then went quiet. The moon was a strange colour, ruddy; he had never seen such a moon. The wind was strong, coming from the west, but it didn’t hold the scent of a storm.

  Despite his intentions to rise at first light and try and make his way to Shadoxhurst, exhaustion must have caught up with him. He fell into a deep sleep and woke from a vivid dream well into the morning. He washed, gathered his pack, and briskly left the house into what he expected to be a tangle of undergrowth.

  Instead, he found himself staring out into open space, across the remains of a collapsed stone wall towards the fields that led to the ridge and the road to the town. The whole area contained within the wall was scattered with shards of terracotta pottery and coloured ceramics, almost certainly the remains of decorative pots.

  And Julie was standing there, just beyond the wall, silent and absorbed in looking at the newly revealed façade of Oak Lodge.

  In the night hours, the wood had pulled back from the old house as far as its front wall. The ivy-covered grey brick peered from the undergrowth, face-like and haunting. The windows were dark; the tall chimney stacks could be seen through the branches. For a while Jack took in the sight, comparing it with the model he had made when he’d been a child, noticing the details he had got correct, the details both correct and missed, all based on his father’s description.

  What had it been like, he wondered, when the house stood tall, square, alone in its grounds, reached by the single track from the main road that ran beyond the hill, between the villages and the bigger cities, and people had come here in their cars or on horseback, and sat in the grounds, in the sun, talking and discussing mysteries? It struck him that the building must have been remote and isolated, silent in the landscape, almost a lonely place.

  And he remembered what his father had told him: the house had been a silent place except, towards the end, for the shouting and the anger. Its visitors were mostly stiff and surly men of science, who shut themselves away behind the study door and conversed in low voices with his father. ‘It was not a house where laughter was a commonplace, unlike our own home, Jack.’

  Though, sadly, neither had there been much laughter in the villa, in the wildwood, in the years before Jack had left.

  ‘This is so weird,’ said Julie from behind him. ‘If I wasn’t seeing it, I wouldn’t believe it.’

  He walked up to her, then glanced back again. ‘When my father lived here, many years ago, when he was alone here, one night the house was swallowed. You can still see the traces of it inside. There’s a room where a tree grew right through the house. But that’s gone now.’

  ‘What a strange place. Much stranger than I’d realised. It’s really quite frightening. And I let my son come fishing here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that for a while,’ Jack cautioned, but didn’t feel this was the moment to go into detail about the Iaelven.

  ‘So weird,’ Julie repeated. Then, looking at Jack, ‘I think you can expect some sightseers. People will be curious.’

  ‘Don’t tell them for a while. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  She was carrying a bag, and suddenly remembered why she’d come. ‘I brought you some books. I thought you might be interested to see what the world out here looks like. They’re . . . picture books.’ She seemed uncomfortable. ‘I expect there are a lot of books in the house.’

  ‘Very many. Very leathery, and full of words. Not many pictures. I’d like to see yours.’

  She had brought a book showing famous sites in Britain and Europe, and another with views of the Americas. There was also a book of planets and stars, which astonished Jack as he leafed through it. Saturn? Jupiter? And that’s Mars? This is what they look like close up?

  Julie explained how the pictures had been taken and his mind reeled.

  ‘And more milk and bread, and some meat in tins that are easier to open. You don’t have to stab them with a knife,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘Thank you. Again.’ Jack caught her eye, that slightly intense and interested stare that made him slightly nervous. ‘Is everyone in this world as generous?’

  ‘No. They’re not. By no means.’

  ‘Neither in mine.’

  ‘But this is not generosity, this is just a little help for an interesting - if weird - woodland man.’

  ‘Some of the help tastes good,’ he said. ‘Some is - weird.’ He smiled as he repeated her word.

  He realised that Julie was shaking. He’d noticed it when she passed him the books. She was also very pale. Perhaps she saw his question before he could ask it, and she said, ‘I’m quite frightened of what’s happening. There is such a strange feeling about this place. Everyone talks about Ryhope Wood as being dangerous; lots of old mine shafts and boggy patches where you can sink down into the mud. And the kids talk of “wood haunters”, but are they real or not? Probably just itinerants.’

  He frowned at the word.

  ‘Travellers. People who roam the country, no fixed home.’

  ‘That’s certainly me,’ Jack said. ‘Though I have a fixed home a year’s struggle away.’ He was guessing at the time he’d taken to get here - it had certainly been long.

  ‘I should be going mad with what I’m seeing,’ Julie added. ‘But I’m not. There is something very otherworldly about you, but something very calm. It’s as if . . .’ She struggled to find the way to put her confused thought. ‘As if you’re a gate, a safe gate, into the . . .’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘Yes. Into the weird.’

  ‘Perhaps I am. Thank you again, Julie, Now to try and find the churchman.’

  ‘Caylen? I can bring him here, if you like.’

  Jack thought about the proposition, then decided against it. He was half thinking: one more try to break the hold of Ryhope. Just one more try.

  They walked along the edge of the wood, to the stream which flowed from the heart. It was wider now, and by listening carefully Jack could hear how it dropped steeply and became faster. All the rules of nature were subjected to the whim of the unnatural.

  He made it as far as the edge of the village before his heart began to race and his chest tightened. Another step, with Julie watching him anxiously, and he was dragging himself forward against ropes. Then the sound of roaring in his head, the scream of a storm, the raucous cries of carrion birds, urging him back, back to the green.

  He’d managed further than this the second time he’d tried.

  Julie’s hands were on his face, her eyes wide with anxiety. ‘It wants you back, doesn’t it? It doesn’t want you here. You don’t belong here.’

  Jack managed to nod in agreement.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve seen a little of it,’ he muttered.

  ‘You’ll have to make that little go a long way.’

  He sat on the bench by the water trough, and calmed down a little, closing his eyes. A while later, he realised that Caylen Reeve was sitting next to him, holding out a mug of hot drink. Jack accepted it. It was sweet and strange, and Caylen told him it was ‘tea’.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ the churchman said. He was wearing ordinary clothes, not his vestments; thick leather trousers and a hunting jacket. His wide-brimmed hat was hooked on his knee.

  ‘Something very dangerous is in the area,’ Jack told him.

  ‘What sort of dangerous?’ The man was very calm, steely-eyed as he watched Jack with an intensity that was quite disturbing.

  How to explain? ‘Have children ever gone missing from the town?’

  ‘Runaways?’

  ‘Just missing.’

  The churchman didn’t break his hard gaze. He watched Jack as if he was curious about the younger man’s words. ‘Not
for many years. But yes, there are reports of children disappearing, families broken apart by it. It goes back a long way, too. The church has a small stone plaque in it. Come and see.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘This is as far as I can get.’

  ‘Not with me, it isn’t. Come on.’

  Caylen hauled Jack to his feet, put his hat on his head. There was a shotgun leaning against the bench, and he grabbed this too. Jack recognised it for the sort of weapon it was and was puzzled.

  The draw to the wood was strong, the sense of disorientation the same as before, but weaker. Caylen Reeve took his arm and the two men walked slowly to the church and entered its cool, silent confines. ‘There. See? With me, the evil gets shouted away.’ Caylen was smiling. Jack was confused. How did this man manage to weaken the bond with the wood?

  ‘This is the plaque.’

  It was a small rectangular piece of grey stone, with shallow inscriptions and the date 1643, though that meant nothing to Jack himself. Caylen read it out: ‘On This Day of Our Lord, our children Betheny, Crispin, Oliver, Samuel and Joseph were lost to us, taken by an unnameable evil. May God protect them from harm.’ He looked at Jack, half smiling. ‘It’s an unusual sort of thing to find in a church, I’m told. Lists of war dead, yes; memorials to knights and bishops, yes. But this has been carved by amateur hands; each name has a different signature to it. This was carved by the parents of the lost children.’

  ‘An unnameable evil,’ Jack repeated. ‘And what do you think that was?’

  Caylen hesitated for a moment, before saying, ‘I suppose in 1643 they’d have called them “faery folk”. But I call them Amurngoth.’

  Older and younger man stared at each other in silence. Jack’s mind was a whirl of thoughts, not just the effect of being so far from his home. The churchman was smiling slightly, his grey eyes twinkling.

  ‘What are you?’ Jack asked.

  ‘More green than you,’ replied the other.

  Mythago! Now Jack understood what the man had meant by ‘I’m something of the wild myself. Though not as wild as you.’

  Caylen was nodding gently. ‘Let’s get out into the air.’

  ‘I don’t remember coming here. I just remember opening my eyes and I was in this church, and there were people fussing over me. I was just a boy. But I stayed here, grew, learned the church ways, and the real priest, who lives in a grand house behind the church itself, made me his ward. And then warden. I’m no reverend, though people call me that sometimes and maintain the illusion. I’ve been a part of the community for so long that nobody takes any notice any more.

  ‘I knew the Iaelven were close. I have a gift for smelling them. Or perhaps sensing them would be better. I think that’s why I was born. To protect the people against dealers in changelings. Have you seen them?’

  ‘Yes. Last night. I used iron elf-shot. That’s what my father calls it. It drives them back, or at least away to somewhere else. Scares them, anyway.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. Meanwhile, I’ve quietly told all parents to make sure they know where their kids are at all times. That is what you came to see me about, isn’t it?’

  Jack agreed.

  The priest looked all at once uncomfortable. ‘Strange feeling: to know suddenly what you’re facing, without having encountered it before, and without having seen it this time. But knowing it’s there.’

  ‘When you come to the Lodge, I’ll give you elf-shot. Or show you how to make it.’

  ‘I think I already do. But thanks, any way.’

  They were strolling along the road out of Shadoxhurst, Caylen with his hat tipped back and the shotgun, broken, across his shoulder. Jack, with his ill-fitting clothes and leather sack, was no less incongruous a figure. It was a gloomy, cold day.

  ‘Your grandfather is quite a legend here, around this place as well as other villages or small towns. But only among the elderly. People who lived here when he lived here. They always talk about the house in the wood, but no one younger takes them seriously.’

  Jack thought about that. ‘The wood is vast. I know it doesn’t seem it, but it is. It has an awareness all of its own. And it feeds on people. On their unconscious minds, as I understand it.’

  ‘You’re well educated for a wood-haunter,’ Caylen said, a curious note in his voice.

  ‘My father is an educated man. He taught me a great deal. My sister too. Poor Yssobel.’

  ‘Poor Yssobel?’

  ‘Like those children in the church, she disappeared one night. But of her own will, we think. We’re not sure. Broke my father’s heart.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was probably broken again when I decided to come to find the outside world.’

  ‘Twice sorry. Jack: how can it be that when we come alive we are not just the legend, but we know what we are as well? Is that unusual?’

  ‘No. Not unusual at all. I live in a Roman villa, surrounded by caves, fortresses, other places, and the mythagos that inhabit them believe they’re in the real world. But I don’t have an answer for you on the “how” of it, reverend.’

  ‘I’m not a reverend, remember? I’m mythago. Settled at the edge.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Caylen added with a shake of his head and a grin, ‘Brings a whole new meaning to a village-bound life.’

  Jack turned and gripped the older man’s arm. ‘Watch out for faeries.’

  ‘Born to the task! I know they can’t return to their hill without something to show.’

  Jack strode off ahead, breaking into a run as he returned to Ryhope. He had only gone a few paces when Caylen called out to him and he turned round.

  The man was standing there, gun over shoulder, hat now held next to his leg. ‘What do you think brought the Iaelven to the edge this time?’

  It was an uncomfortable question, but one that Jack had considered before, ‘I don’t know,’ he called back. ‘But it occurs to me: they were following me.’

  Armour of a King

  Jack approached the house, fascinated by the brick face it presented against the shroud of green and shadow. He mimed opening the gate (now gone) and admiring the wild rose and fruit bushes that probably had once adorned this approach to the front door. He plucked an imaginary plum from an imaginary plum tree - he could see the pit and root marks where a small tree had once stood - then shook hands with an imaginary grandfather, who greeted him at the door.

  The door was open. Had he left it that way? Probably. He went inside into the hall, then walked through to the back of the house. There was a strange light there. No, not strange: just brighter than when he’d arrived. And there were animal sounds which he instantly recognised as the noise of chickens. Chickens? There were two ways to the back: a main door to the lawns and garden; and through the kitchen to where the chicken runs had been, and the vegetable garden had been planted. He went through the kitchen. The coops, fallen and rotting, were exposed, but five chickens were pecking around them. There was a fence at the bottom of this garden, and a rusted iron gate. The wood abutted that gate, and spread around the property, but the gardens were exposed again.

  I must be doing this, Jack thought. Like I drove back the Iaelven, I’m driving back the forest. Or is it welcoming me home?

  Back in the house, he noticed that the kitchen had been disturbed. It had been untidy when he’d found it, and had become worse while he’d been here. Jack was not a tidy man. An animal, perhaps, had been in. On the floor were cans which he had left on the work surface. For a long moment he stood in silence, listening, but there was only the sound of the hens clucking as they pecked at the ground, and of the rustling breeze.

  He went to the study. His bedroll and blanket were as he’d left them, in the corner, but the exercise-book journal was gone. And there was a rank smell in the room. And the sound of soft breathing.

  He turned and nearly fell backwards across the desk as his face almost touched the face of George Huxley. The man was standing an inch away from him, and staring so d
eeply into his eyes that Jack felt overwhelmed, almost paralysed by that gaze.

  ‘Who are you?’ Huxley whispered. ‘Are you the ghost-lit boy?’

  Gently, Jack pushed the old man back a little. ‘I believe I am.’

  Huxley looked scared. He was clutching the exercise book to his chest with both hands. The fabric of his tweed jacket was crumbling. His beard had grown coarse, his hair longer and wilder, hanging around his shoulders.

  ‘Who are you?’ he whispered again, then looked around the study as if seeing it for the first time. His gaze back on Jack’s, he said, very softly and uncertainly, ‘You’ve been here before. I could tell you were here. I couldn’t see you. But now I see you. I have a son. Steven. You look very much like him.’

  ‘I’m Steven’s son. Your grandson.’

  Huxley mouthed the word silently. Aloud he said, ‘Ysso bel ...’

  ‘Your granddaughter. She takes after her mother. Guiwenneth.’

  Again, the silently mouthed name, repeated several times, eyes distant as if summoning memory. ‘So beautiful. So beautiful. I remember when she watched me from the garden, curious and lost. So beautiful. She went away again, back into the wood. I followed her and found her, but she ran from me. So beautiful. Out of a dream.’

  His speech had been dreamy too. Now he frowned. ‘Yssobel. Who has been whispering to me about Yssobel?’

  ‘I have. My sister is lost. Something has taken her; or she has gone to destroy something that was trying to take her.’

  Huxley was thoughtful, cocking his head as if listening to a distant voice, brow furrowed, eyes questioning. Then, in his ghostly, distant voice, he repeated what he had perhaps remembered, the bare bones of a tale. ‘Yssobel stole the armour of a king. She fought in the armour of that king. And she died in the armour of that king.’ He paused, searching. ‘She followed the shadow of the king’s stone - and came to the night-black lake. She crossed to the underworld in the king’s boat. There she exacted vengeance. There she healed a wound that had cut deeply. Yssobel . . .’