Her thoughts were never far from Caitlin. What worried Mary the most were the marks of subtle machinations and sinister manipulation on everything that had happened since the plague had appeared.
For the first few days, she grew increasingly hungry and even the herbs and edible plants she foraged from the bursting spring countryside did little to assuage her pangs. While Arthur Lee foraged for himself, catching shrews and birds, Mary experimented with a discarded piece of netting and some sticks, and one night managed to catch a rabbit, which kept her going for a couple of days. Over time she perfected her technique and even managed to net a few of the game birds now thriving along the south coast since the Fall.
Most astonishingly, each morning that she woke - secure in an abandoned ruin or camouflaged in the depths of a ditch - she felt as if another year or two had fallen from her. She had anticipated that the travails of the journey would make her feel old and weak, but her limbs were stronger than they had been in a long time and her mind was clear. The breathtaking views from the Downs across to the sea made her feel even more alive. Every aspect of the countryside exhilarated her, from the overgrown fields to the leafing trees, from the morning mist and the glorious spring sunshine to the afternoon drizzle, the birds and rabbits and squirrels.
Part of that sense of wonder was her realisation that she walked in the footprints of history. She was following the South Downs Way, an age-old track that ran from Winchester to Eastbourne, and in more ancient times was linked to other paths that ran to Stonehenge. She felt herself to be a part of something great, and strange, and wonderful.
And on the second week she realised something had started to follow her.
At first she only glimpsed it from the corner of her eye, a flicker that could have been a dust mote on an eyelash, but the more she saw it, the more real it became, as if the act of noticing it had given it substance. In those early times it kept its distance, tracking her along the lowlands but holding back a mile or two, sometimes lost in the greenery and ruined buildings.
Gradually it became more solid, though still too distant for her to define its form. Yet it scared her, as if she was sensing something on another level that spoke darkly of its true nature, and so she hurried her step, afraid to pause even to sleep. The pace began to take its toll; sooner or later she would have to lose it, or face up to it.
At the close of the third day after she had noticed her pursuer, with exhaustion threatening to overwhelm her, she came to a large village. It was in the early stages of the plague. As night fell she watched sobbing relatives gathering in the flickering light of candles, saw village elders struggling to make sense of what was happening, anticipating what lay ahead, but never for a minute grasping the true horror.
It was as good a place as any to make a stand. Her knowledge of the Craft, while not as deep or wide-ranging as some, was still enough to afford her use of some simple trickery that she hoped would be enough to throw her pursuer off the scent.
Wearily, she made her way along the dark high street, a plan slowly taking shape in her mind. The charnel house was a large four-bedroom executive property. Its new occupants were laid out with respect in the lounge, old bed-sheets thrown over them, the hint of body shapes in the fold-shadows somehow worse than if what was covered had been laid bare.
But it didn't scare her - death never had, and that was one of the things that had convinced her to accept the Craft, where the dead are as much a part of Existence as the living. Old friends, fondly remembered family; sometimes, a little more worryingly, old enemies.
Mary remembered the first time she had seen a dead body. It was in the clinical care wing of the hospital where she had just started her career as a psychiatric nurse. Some poor girl, arms like bones, disproportionately large head giving her the distended doll-form of the bulimic, had gone missing. They found her in the grounds, on a hard winter's night, frozen like a fallen bird amongst the chiaroscuro trees. Her eyes were wide, staring at the spray of stars visible through the branches, her expression oddly optimistic. Mary found it sad, but not scary. Worse things were out there, and she'd come across a few of them in her life.
She made her way up the stairs and chose one of the smaller bedrooms; bare boards, Winnie the Pooh wallpaper, the smell of abandonment, not yet tainted by the corruption rising from the lounge. Moonshadows fell across the floor; the house was silent. In her pack, Arthur Lee lay still, remarkably calm.
After half an hour, she wondered if her pursuer would come, but then she heard the click of the front door opening with secretive care and she knew her instincts had been correct.
With the wind rustling around the outside of the house, she closed her eyes and instantly slipped into her practised trance state. The sigil she required formed against the velvet of her imagination; the words came to her lips without any conscious thought. When she stood up, she knew she was a ghost, no longer visible to any prying eyes. Whoever was there would hear the whisper of her breath, feel a breeze at her passing, but that was all.
She had left the bedroom door ajar so she could slip out easily. If she had timed it right, her pursuer would still be exploring the lower level. She moved to the top of the stairs and waited. No sound came from below. He was good, she thought; a ghost, like her.
Arthur Lee's warning hiss came just as movement flickered at the corner of her eye. It came straight out of the master bedroom, moving faster than she had ever anticipated. A blur of speed, then a few seconds of eerie, awkward slow motion, then another burst of movement.
It had the shape of a man, but it looked as if it had been built from discarded pieces randomly stitched together. The pelvis was twisted so one side pointed forward, while the legs were almost in one line, one in front of the other, mystifying her further at its incredible speed. The arms appeared deformed because the joints had been attached irregularly. It was naked, its distended penis permanently erect. Yet the most disturbing thing was the head, which was on backwards. There was something in that image - human yet not human, living but should-be-dead - that horrified her much more than if it had been alien in appearance. A Jigsaw Man.
Mary was rooted in shock for just a second too long. Even though its eyes faced away, it knew exactly where she was and within an instant was upon her. Her misdirection spell worked just well enough to prevent it from killing her outright. Hands that appeared weak and flailing gripped with preternatural strength, broken, dirty nails puncturing her flesh easily.
Mary yelled in fear, lashing out with the knife she had been carrying for defence, but the thing's powerful hold prevented her from striking home. 'Get off me, you ugly bastard!' She brought up her knee towards its groin, forgetting its deformed shape. Her knee crashed against the twisted pelvis and made her yelp in pain.
The Jigsaw Man forced her down with increasing pressure until she felt sure her bones would break. She was too weak, too scared. Rough hands worked their way inexorably up her arms towards her throat.
Finally she collapsed to the floor at the top of the steps, the full weight of the creature crushing against her chest. She felt the erect penis dig into her leg and somehow that gave her the impetus to move when she saw her opening.
As the Jigsaw Man shifted its balance, Mary brought her knee up into a position of leverage. The creature teetered. With one jerk that brought stabbing pains up from the small of her back, she launched it towards her head.
The action was enough to break its grip and send it over, though it tore flesh from her arms in passing. With its limbs flapping awkwardly, it crashed down the stairs, hitting the bottom with a sound like dry wood snapping.
With tears in her eyes, Mary hauled herself upright using the banister. Her back was in agony, and the pain from her muscles and ligaments, aged and never used to such a degree, made her feel sick.
'You bastard!' she said with a stifled sob that contained all her anger and fear.
It was still writhing at the foot of the stairs, and as it forced itself up on its twi
sted arms, Mary could see that its neck was broken. The lolling head scared her even more, and for the first time she wondered if it was even possible to kill it.
She hobbled down the stairs as quickly as her back would allow, and just as the Jigsaw Man was pulling itself up from its knees she kicked out sharply at the base of the skull. The bone shattered under the force.
Mary scrambled by it and out of the front door. She was already muttering under her breath and painting the sigils in the air with her hands as it hauled itself up and launched itself at her. The barrier came up just in time. The Jigsaw Man bounced back impotently, still lurching, still grasping.
Mary allowed herself a moment's satisfaction. She'd done better than she had anticipated; perhaps she wasn't as weak and ineffective as she had thought. 'You see, you bastard, you can't get me. That should hold you there for...' Her mood deflated a little. '... five minutes.' It wasn't long; but that wasn't the end of her plan.
She stepped back, closed her eyes; more mutterings, more sigils. When she looked again, she had a sudden spurt of fear that it wasn't going to work. Finally the flames flickered across the floor of the hall, just a glow of light at first, but within seconds an inferno raged within. There was a noise like metal being twisted and broken, and Mary realised queasily that it was the Jigsaw Man's cries; of pain, fear or anger, she didn't know. Though the conflagration engulfed it, the thing still tried to get through the door, still fought wildly, wouldn't lie down and die as she'd hoped.
With a sinking feeling, Mary realised she couldn't wait any longer. She turned and hurried back along the main street, glancing behind only once with a quiet, desperate hope that she had done enough.
chapter eight Wildwood
'Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?' Charlotte Bronte
The dark wood loomed before them, vast and low, breathing the slow, measured breath of the predatory animal. Beneath the thick canopy, only shadows lay; sometimes they moved of their own accord. Nettles, brambles and emerald ferns clustered around the forest's edge, the only easy access along the thin path that wound into the heart of it.
Midges danced in the uncomfortably hot morning sun while birds fluttered here and there, but never appeared to enter the trees.
Caitlin wiped a thin slick of sweat from her forehead and thought of the book she had been reading to Liam. The echoes still reverberated through her mind and she mulled over Crowther's suggestion that the impression of this world was created by the people who viewed it. Was she plucking this wood from her memory? Was she remaking the entire place as fractured and desperate as her own deep subconscious? If that was the case, what chance did they have?
'This place has haunted us since we crawled out of caves.' Crowther was at her side, drawn and weary, but at least he was finally talking to her again. Unsettlingly, he appeared to be reading her mind, or perhaps the troubled expression she wore whenever she glanced at the deep dark forest. 'It's the Wildwood,' he continued, 'the primeval forest of our deepest, darkest memory, where all the real terrors lay. This Otherworld is a land of archetypes, and the wood is one of the most affecting. Do you feel it?'
She nodded, thinking oddly of The Wind in the Willows, of Robin Hood and his green men, of the place where Laurence Talbot loped amongst the trees. 'Have you forgiven me?'
There was a long pause before he replied, 'No. I'm simply good at making accommodations with life - always have been.'
Matt came up, swatting away the flies that buzzed around him. 'Better get a move on,' he said cheerily. 'With the Whisperers on our trail, we can't be sitting around.'
'Has anyone told you that your continually perky and upbeat attitude is monumentally irritating?' Crowther said sourly before stalking away.
'You'd think he'd take off his hat and overcoat in this heat,' Caitlin said.
'He thinks it makes him look like Gandalf,' Matt replied caustically, 'when actually it makes him look like a fat old git in a hat and an overcoat.'
She laughed. 'You can be very unkind.'
Caitlin was aware of Matt standing so close that their shoulders almost brushed. It gave her a strange flush of excitement, and that made her unconscionably guilty; how could she even begin to have such thoughts so soon after Grant's death?
'I'm sorry we haven't had time to search for your daughter,' she said, bringing the conversation firmly back to family.
'There'll be time. I didn't bring it up because I didn't want you clubbing me round the head and dragging me off.'
'The professor was different—' she began to protest until she saw that he was joking. His teasing grin brought another unnecessary flush of something.
'I think about Rosetta all the time,' he said, 'but I understand our responsibilities to the people back home. If we don't find a cure for the plague, there won't be any human race left for me to take Rosetta back to.'
'I promise you, once we've delivered the cure, I'll come back here to help you search ... however long it takes.'
'I appreciate that.'
A moment of mutual support and tenderness swelled between them. Matt saw her dismayed confusion and moved to ease it. 'This place looks like it might be dangerous. We need to have somebody at the front and back on guard, and I think weapons should be drawn until we're sure of how it's going to play out.'
Her mood changed as she turned to practical matters. She organised the others into a group at the entrance to the wood, despite disruption from Mahalia, who had plainly taken it on herself to challenge Caitlin's authority at every turn.
'Keep Carlton at the centre of the group,' Caitlin said. 'We have to protect him at all costs.'
Though she undoubtedly agreed with the sentiment, this comment appeared to annoy Mahalia immensely, for her knuckles grew white around the Fomorii sword.
After the blazing heat of the day, the air was cool and sweet beneath the thick canopy of leaves that cast the world in emerald and grey. Where the branches were at their thickest, the forest floor was almost bare, but in the areas where the sun came through in gleaming shards, thick vegetation rising high above them reduced the path to a ribbon so narrow that they could only walk single file. At those points where visibility was limited, they most feared an attack. Constant movement in the undergrowth kept them permanently on edge.
They broke for food after a couple of hours' hard trekking. Matt had brought some of the food regularly left for them in their chambers at the Court of Soul's Ease - fruit, dry bread, cured meat. They refreshed themselves with rainwater collected in the cups of exotic blooms that occasionally spread across their way; it tasted sweeter than any water they had drunk before, and its effect was potent: weariness was flushed from their limbs.
'Look at this,' Jack said curiously. He cupped in his pale palm the head of one of the flowers. The petals were black and withered, dripping the liquid of rot.
Mahalia made a disgusted face. 'You're getting it all over you. Put it down!'
He tossed it away, flashed her a smile. Her response, blunt and challenging but secretly teasing, was lost beneath a low rumble that rose to a high-pitched shriek, somewhere deep in the woods. It was clearly a large animal, though it was impossible to tell if it was hunting or in pain.
They all jumped to their feet. The cry affected them on some primeval level, where the race memories of prehistory were fossilised.
'What the hell was that?' Matt said.
Crowther remained rigid. 'What would be here, in the Forest of the Night?' he mused to himself. 'That wasn't the Wild Hunt. What other dark myths, what other archetypes . .. ?' His words turned to muttering and retreated inside him.
'Let's move,' Caitlin said.
They set off quickly, the animal call still echoing in their heads.
'Could any of you estimate the size of the forest from the view we had when we were wrapped up in the mask?' Matt called.
'Vast.' Crowther wheezed as he levered himself along on his staff. 'But that doesn't matter in a p
lace where time and space are meaningless. We might be through it this afternoon or a hundred years hence.'
'Thanks for the boost,' Matt said.
'We'll be all right as long as we don't stray from the path.'
Mahalia tried to read Crowther's face, saw his subtle mischief and couldn't resist a smile. He was surprised how warm the connection made him feel, and he responded with a smile of his own. Strangely, she didn't scowl or glare, but held his expression briefly.
Not even the jagged rocks could keep out the brutal winds of the Ice-Field. Caitlin huddled in a nook, watching the others. Brigid sat cross-legged, cackling to herself like some caricature of a witch from a child's fairy story, while Briony paced back and forth, chain-smoking and bitching to herself. Amy hugged her arms around her, scared as she always seemed to be. Occasionally, though, the little girl would wander over to Caitlin to check that her other self was all right.
The figure in the shadows at the back of their feeble shelter, the one who scared them all, had moved forward enough that Caitlin could just make out her shape against the deeper darkness. She was angular and predatory, her hair wild, and at times she resembled a giant bird more than a woman. Her influence was growing stronger. Sometimes she would call to Caitlin with an insidious whisper, luring, cajoling; at other times she would bellow with a terrifying rage, and on those occasions the others would back away to the very edge of the shelter where the glacial sheets encroached. Although she didn't know why, Caitlin dreaded what would happen when the woman finally emerged into the light.
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