Avilion

by Robert Holdstock

  And a brother loved a brother,

  Though this wouldn’t stay the same ...

  It went on like this for some time, dogged, doggerel, sometimes amusing - to everyone but Jack, though he played up his irritation. But it had become a tradition. Each year, on Jack’s birthday when she played and sang it, she added a verse, ignoring the eye-rolling from Jack, who seemed to be saying: yes, yes, I know, I know that I go on about it, but the joke’s wearing thin.

  The verses were teasing, but pleasing - especially for Steven as he could detect shadows of the poems that he had related to Yssobel as a child. And some of the songs he knew.

  She eventually took a bow, to cheers and applause.

  Yssobel had written the first verse when Jack was eight and she had been six. By then he was only mildly curious about the outside world. By eleven he was obsessed by it. By thirteen he was demented at the thought of it, at the thought of never seeing it.

  Once in a while he saw his Huxley grandfather, and it was these encounters, brief but clearly profoundly affecting, that shaped his life. Unlike Yssobel, it was the human side of Jack that was challenged in the villa, in the wood, at the head of the valley imarn uklyss. What he called his ‘haunter’ surfaced only occasionally, usually when he had become lost, or needed to survive in extremely hard deep-wood situations, where elemental forces could play all kinds of havoc.

  ‘Do you speak to him? Does he speak to you?’ Steven had asked him some years before.

  ‘No. He just watches for a while from the shadows. He seems to be thinking. It’s not as if he knows me, just as if he’s curious. I think he’s trying to find out where he is. Or perhaps why he’s here.’

  ‘Has your sister seen him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. But once I saw him sitting by her when she was painting. She didn’t notice him. He wasn’t there for long. He went back into the wood.’

  ‘I’ve never seen him, Jack. And I’m his son. Can you describe him?’

  ‘Ragged. Gaunt. His eyes are strong. He’s wearing strange clothes. He hasn’t much hair, though it’s long at the back. There’s a scar on his chin, but not much of one. Not like yours.’

  Steven was quiet. His own scars were not on his face but on his body, from his time during a war he had almost forgotten, when he had been shot in the chest, surviving because of the luck of the wound, not the power of the shot. The older Huxley, his father, had been struck by a sword in a skirmish in a war that Steven could not remember. A shallow cut, usually masked by the man’s beard. But the beard had turned grey along the line of the strike, and it had been exactly where Jack was able to describe it.

  So if his father was here, was it the real man? The man Steven believed had died many years ago. Or just an image of him? If so, who was summoning him?

  It had to be his son.

  Whenever Jack claimed to have seen George Huxley, Steven went to the location and scoured the underbrush or the river’s edge, often searching for a whole day before giving up. There was a feeling of agony in the act: he was half afraid to encounter the mythago, and yet he longed to touch at least something from his childhood. Although his father had been a difficult and remote man, there had been times of great happiness, at Christmas and in the school holidays especially.

  But Steven was never rewarded with a glimpse.

  Jack began to ask questions about his grandfather. He pressed his father to repeat, time and again, what he remembered from his journals. Steven had read only parts, but they came to him clearly. And he still carried a fragment of a journal that he had torn out when he’d been called up to army service in one of the wars, a memento of his father, taken in anger from a man who had become, by then, distant and unfriendly.

  Steven eventually gave this sheet to his son, who framed it and placed it above his bed, not understanding it but fascinated by its reference to ‘the woodland aura reaching as far as the house’, and his grandfather’s assertion: ‘Am distinctly losing my sense of time’.

  Time and the seasons were all askew in Ryhope Wood. But the family was able to live day by day, except when they left the confines of the villa. While Yssobel’s rooms became shrines to her imagined Lavondyss, Jack’s sprawling chamber became a museum to the outside world, aided by his father and by his own imagination.

  Ealdwulf helped him to build a model in wood of Oak Lodge, complete with gardens, hen runs and workshops. Jack made fields out of painted cloth, criss-crossed with the tracks and roads that led between the villages. He modelled the church at the town of Shadoxhurst and the railway station at the oddly named Grimley. His floor became a map of where his father had been born, and in his mind’s eye he walked those fields, danced on the village green, sipped beer in the public house and rode the train to Oxford.

  The place called to him strongly. He felt he belonged there, and soon he began to feel claustrophobic and confined in the villa and its surrounding landscape. His heart ached for adventure, for the journey outwards.

  From his father’s own stories Jack was certain that the river in which he fished, and from which they obtained their water, would lead him out if he followed it against the flow.

  He determined that one day he would make that journey. But not yet.

  Jack’s fifteenth birthday occurred, that year, in crisp winter. There was no snow as yet, and the air smelled November-fresh, the sky was clear, the stars brilliant. A bonfire had been built in Hazel Field, the name given to the field behind the villa, a patch of land scattered with stunted hazel and rowan. The pigs were penned up for the evening, the bonfire struck, skewers of meat roasted as the flames died down, but not until after the Saxons, the Highwoman, the family themselves, and two others had danced around the fire, holding hands and teasingly singing a reprise of Yssobel’s ‘Song of Jack’.

  The two outsiders were a Hood-form, who called herself Morwen, and who brought gifts of game and straight arrows on her irregular visits, and Odysseus, who had been enticed to the party by Yssobel herself. He was taller than Jack, the same age, and as moody as the Huxley boy.

  He lived in a deep cave, high on the slopes of Serpent Pass, making icons and wood carvings of gods, goddesses and strange creatures, all from his imagination. Steven had discovered him some years ago, and he was a regular visitor, and Yssobel had always been fascinated by him.

  Whatever had kept him in the cave for eight years, how he had come to be in such a remote place, this particular time in his legendary life was ending. He was dreaming of Ithaca, his island home in Achaea, by a great ocean, which he remembered as a young boy.

  Steven had never let Odysseus know that, as a man, he would have a scant few years with his wife on the island before his name would become associated with the greatest siege of all time, held before the walls of Troy.

  There was certainly romance in the air between daughter and Greek, but Guiwenneth, maternal and tough, made sure that her daughter did no more than dance with the young man, though their dancing - which made him smile at last - was certainly a swirl of passion and an embracing of arms.

  Ealdwulf drank heavily. Egwearda was a very fine brewer of a liquor that tasted very like beer. Its strength was not reliable. This barrel was clearly potent. The old Saxon chanted a long poem in his own language. From his movements - striking, holding, demonstrating fear, then ferocity, acting out a great amount of laughing and cheering - this was a mead-hall tale. And no familiar name was detectable, save for Ealdwulf’s own.

  He was singing a tale celebrating himself!

  Guiwenneth had learned to play Yssobel’s harp, and now sang a soft song about her father, not one she had composed herself but a song that she remembered from her own childhood in the fortress.

  As the fire died down and the mound of wood fell to a sprawling glow, with everyone sitting around it, Jack stood and told the tale of Jack his Father, a story that had come to him one day while he was working in the fruit orchard. He had hardly begun the tale when he stopped, staring into the darkn
ess.

  Standing in a line, not far away, were twenty of the tall, lank-haired, cat-eyed creatures that were occasionally seen near the villa, but always - until now - in solitary form. They were carrying short bows and bone knives. All were clad in what looked like clothing of leaves, though there were furs around their shoulders. Their eyes seemed to glow with anger, but it was probably the fire.

  One of them spoke, if the term speaking could describe the whistling and clicking that came from its thin-lipped mouth. It kept repeating the sounds; with increasing irritation, it seemed.

  ‘What are they?’ Odysseus asked. The hooded woman, Morwen, rose from where she was crouching and motioned everyone to be quiet. She picked up her own bow and reached into her pouch for what looked to be a silver arrowhead. ‘Silver best. Iron will work.’

  Again she motioned stillness. ‘Iaelven. Amurngoth,’ she said. ‘Danger.’

  Amurngoth? The name sounded close to that of the Muurngoth who inhabited parts of the surrounding valleys, and had nests in the forest from which they raided. But the Muurngoth were more nuisance than danger, and were easily handled. This band looked sinister.

  Morwen walked away from the fire, towards the group, flinging her cape back to expose her shoulders. The creatures watched her as she approached, then one signalled to her to stop.

  They spoke, she spoke back. The whistling conversation lasted a long time.

  Abruptly, the Iaelven turned, strode up the hill and into the dark wood. Morwen returned to the fire and crouched again. In her awkward English, she said, ‘Amurngoth, like elves. Many different ones. They are asking what are we doing so close to their hill. This is their land and their hill. They have been away hunting for a long time. Now returned. They don’t like fire so close.’

  ‘What did you say to them?’ Jack asked. He was still staring at the place where they had disappeared. He was sure they had been swallowed by the earth and not by the woods.

  ‘That this fire is for a celebration and will be extinguished. Next fire, further away. They also want to know what the building is doing here. It was not here when they left for the last hunt.’

  ‘And what did you say to that?’ Steven asked.

  Morwen shrugged. ‘It came from the valley. Many things come from the valley. They agree to you staying. Do not climb the hill, do not enter the wood. Do not harm any Iaelven you see in or near the building. They will do you no harm. But there are entrances close to you.

  ‘They also said: they will keep watch on you. Be careful.’

  After the unexpected interlude, and after a pause for reflection, Jack clapped his hands together to draw attention and concluded his party piece. He was determined that the night should be long and enjoyable, though Ealdwulf was now sleeping gently.

  But it was not the only encounter of the night, though the festivities were almost at an end. Yssobel and lithe-limbed Odysseus were dancing gently to the music of the harp, though they were scrutinised intensely by Guiwenneth as she played. Steven was fast asleep and the others had all gone back to the villa.

  Jack was lying on his side, staring at the hill and the ragged edge of the tree line. He sat up suddenly.

  A pale face, faintly illuminated by moonlight, was watching them from the darkness of the wood. At first he thought it was one of the creatures, but the figure that emerged was not Iaelven. It was human. And it shambled halfway down the hill before stopping.

  Jack recognised him at once. ‘There he is!’ he said in a low voice. The others hadn’t noticed. They seemed lost in their own world.

  Jack stood and ran across the field. As he arrived, so the man withdrew, lowering his head. He was clutching a book. He looked more dishevelled than ever.

  But he whispered, ‘I’m going home. Have found a way. It will take me time.’

  ‘Wait!’ Jack pleaded. ‘Please stay and talk. Your son is here. Look at the fire. The woman playing the harp. Don’t you recognise her?’

  George Huxley lifted his head, but he only had eyes for Jack.

  ‘Have found a way,’ he repeated, then turned and walked more briskly back along the route he had come. Jack tried to follow but a voice hailed him and he turned to see Steven running towards him. Looking back at Huxley, he called, ‘What way?’ but received no answer.

  The moon had long since set, and the sky was dark with cloud. For the second time that night, the earth rather than the wood seemed to swallow a life. Huxley had gone.

  Steven arrived behind him, breathless from his sprint on a full stomach and heady drink. ‘Was it him? My father?’

  ‘Yes,’ the youth said morosely. ‘I don’t think I’ll see him again. He said he was going home. Something has changed.’

  ‘You’re not to follow him.’

  Jack glanced round angrily, eyes like fire. ‘Not now. Of course not now. But I can’t stay here for ever. I feel trapped. Sometimes I feel dizzy with the sameness of everything.’

  Steven was hurt. ‘I’m sorry you feel that. But I can understand it. It’s not easy for me either. I’ve settled here, I risk encounters from the valley, I try to find new places to explore. Best of all, you and Yssobel, bringing you up and teaching you what I know has been a pleasure. It’s kept me going.’

  Jack shook his head, puzzled. ‘Then why don’t you leave yourself? There’s the river,’ he pointed into the distance. ‘Isn’t that how you came in?’

  ‘There are too many rivers to know the answer to that. I’m rooted here now. I don’t think I could leave even if I wanted to. When your mother was returned to us, I became a part of the valley just as much as she is. This is our place now. If you and Yssi aren’t bound to it, then you must go. Of course you must go. If that’s what you want. But not yet.’

  ‘I said that, didn’t I? Not yet. But one day certainly.’

  Jack softened his tone and smiled at his father. With a rueful glance back into the forest, he returned to the fire, kissed Guiwenneth and his sister, and with a courteous bow to Odysseus, who was watching him curiously, walked away from them, back to the house and his own quarters.

  Painting the Past

  The winter that followed was extremely harsh, one of the worst they had encountered. The wind blew from the valley, hard and cold as frozen steel. Guiwenneth had sensed it coming and they had filled a whole room in the villa with firewood.

  With the snowfall, the women who lived in their huts along the river came into the villa and found winter quarters, joining Rianna. Steven and Ealdwulf, and their sons, had made the rooms as winter-tight as possible, but most of the villa was still in a state of disrepair, and though much of it now had the hypo caust in place, this was inefficient and dangerous. Hearths were constructed, and every animal skin and fur available was hung across the walls and doors.

  The arrival of Odysseus was anxiously awaited. He always came down from the pass when the weather turned cold, usually with two or three companions, young men unknown to Steven from his understanding of the past, but no doubt once of importance in their countries’ legends.

  Yssobel found her father in his own room. ‘I’m going to find him,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Odysseus. I’m worried about him.’

  She was already wearing her heavy furs, thick boots and tight cloak. Steven watched her, then sighed. It did no good to argue with the young woman these days, despite her youthful years. And she knew the pass as well as she knew the villa. She was an expert at arms, thanks to the training of the young man she was going to visit.

  ‘Take Hurthig with you. And spare furs. And dry food.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He watched her ride out through the gate, his heart heavy with anxiety. Hurthig led a packhorse and leaned down to kiss his mother goodbye. She stood there, arms crossed over her chest, probably as anxious about her son as was Steven about his daughter.

  The gates were closed after them, against the storm.

  Serpent Pass was becoming difficult, more difficult than Yssobel h
ad expected. The track was treacherous with ice, and there was a heavy, patchy fog that made progress slow. Rocks tumbled from the slopes, and already trees were down and had to be moved or circumvented. Then, after two days, Hurthig pointed ahead of them and Yssobel saw, through the gloom, the white marble columns and high stone wall of the Greek temple that guarded the winding track to the cave.

  They spurred forward, found the path and called for the young Ithacan, but there was no answer.

  The mouth of the cave was still covered with skins. Yssobel dismounted, lit a torch and, still calling, went inside. The cave was deep. It was a clutter of pots and weapons, rough-hewn furniture, clay statues, coarse-woven rugs and discarded clothing. A mess. She went to the back of the cave, to the small shrine to Athene. Two Roman-style candle lamps were alight there, and in a bowl before the goddess were the remains of a burnt offering.

  Heavy-hearted, Yssobel accepted what was clear: that her friend had departed. He was on his way to begin his adventure, though what he had been doing in the hills, in a rough cave, was a mystery to her, as indeed it was to Steven.

  Sadly, she went back to where the Saxon was waiting for her.

  ‘Gone?’ he asked by gesture.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Not long, I think. I hope he makes it.’

  Yssobel took a last look around. And then saw it; the small round clay plate, painted with the face of a smiling auburn-haired girl. She had never noticed it before when she had come to play games, or ride and talk as best she could with the young man who made her laugh. She took the plate and tucked it carefully into her saddlebag.

  The wind suddenly picked up and the horses whinnied nervously. Hurthig looked down the pass. ‘Storm coming. I think we should overnight here.’

  Yssobel agreed and they made themselves comfortable in the cave, though it took some effort to persuade the horses inside.

  Sitting by torchlight, listening to the howling wind, silent and reflective, Yssobel suddenly felt a rising of her spirit. For a moment she couldn’t identify it, and then she began to remember the face she had once dreamed of, and for some time had forgotten.