Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘First hounds, now forests,’ sneers the child with a coarse laugh. Oak leaves sprout from his ears and a hound’s muzzle from his mouth. ‘This world into which I have come through your gate confuses me.’

  ‘Hounds or forests, there is always One who can run further and faster than the rest, or reach higher and wider.’

  His face that of a babe again, Mabon says, ‘Mother, listen to me. I am content to run in circles with the pack and grow in tangles with the thicket.’

  ‘You are not content with that and I will make you aware of it.’

  ‘You are welcome to try, Mother, but you will not succeed.’

  ‘I will succeed, because I have already dreamed of what will happen to you!’

  The babe laughs. ‘That dream is for tomorrow and the days after, Mother. I have time to turn your dream to dust!’

  ‘You are welcome to try, Mabon. But by the power of the gate that passed you into this world, you will not succeed.’

  Guiwenneth was stroking my face, looking at me earnestly. ‘What is it, Chris? You’ve gone as pale as the dead.’

  ‘Something you said – nothing more than that …’

  ‘Something I said? In the story?’

  ‘Brought back a bad memory.’

  She seemed to understand, fussing at me, but I assured her that I was well, just a little shaken.

  I have already dreamed of what will happen to you!

  When Guiwenneth had used those words as she had sketched out the story of Mabon, I had shivered with the awful recollection of my own mother, holding herself alive against the branch, watching me with eyes that expressed nothing but contempt.

  What did that old woman say to you? I had wailed, thinking of the unkempt old woman I now thought of as the ‘dolorous voice’.

  Nothing I hadn’t dreamed of already. Nothing that wasn’t already pain.

  My mother’s words; the admission that had left me desperate.

  What have I done?

  Nothing … yet, she had said.

  Please don’t die, I had implored her.

  And she had whispered, My son is gone …

  And dropped.

  And snapped.

  And left me alone.

  Mabon’s tale was strange and frustratingly incomplete, like everything, all stories in this realm, from Someone with his unfinished name and Kylhuk with his unfinished tasks, to Issabeau with her unfinished passion, and Gwyr in his own form of Limbo, a man in a waiting place, both dead and alive.

  ‘When did this happen to Mabon?’ I asked Guiwenneth and she replied, ‘When he was an infant.’

  I’d realised that.

  ‘I meant, how long ago?’

  ‘That I can’t answer. Not recently, I think. My grandmother knew the story, so it must be very old.’

  It seemed that shortly after his bitter row with his mother, Mabon had disappeared.

  Talking among the travellers with Legion, I heard various accounts of what might have happened:

  That he had been sent for fostering for seven years to a neighbouring clan (a common practice among the early Celtic aristocracy); that his father had hired hunters to take him away from the stifling and sinister attentions of his mother; that he had crawled to the animal huts and suckled on a cow, but the bull that guarded its herd had hooked the child by its woollen wrap and carried it into the forest, passing it to one of the Oldest Animals for protection.

  Mabon now became a hunter. He flew like a bird of prey, pounced as a cat, stalked as a wolf, lurked in the deepest of lakes as a pike, swam fiercely like a salmon and watched the world cannily and dangerously as an owl. The spirit and features of all these creatures he wore as a mask for his face and a cloak for his body.

  There was a ludicrous element to the fragment Guiwenneth had enacted, which suggested that by her own time in history the story was already old and being recounted with typical Celtic exaggeration. Others in the circle that evening – even though they had laughed at Guiwenneth’s eccentric performance – were adamant that the furious exchange with his Mother had occurred when Mabon was many years older. Two accounts made it clear that it was not just his mother, but his sister as well that Mabon was expected (because of his rank) to ‘lie with’. In one version, Mabon had two sisters, both older than him, and he was expected to sleep with each of them once a year for seven years before going with them into the forest maze, at whose heart lay the Divine Gate.

  The reference seemed clear: the sisters were both lovers to him and his chosen executioners, and Mabon was having none of it! He had fled the scene – he felt himself to be an ordinary man! – denying his royal status.

  A cheerful, charismatic red-haired warrior called Conal had a tale from the cycle that was a little more ambitious. Perhaps it contained a grain of truth? I think it unlikely:

  ‘It’s a true fact that when Mabon was fourteen years of age, no more than that, he heard that his Mother’s hunters were only two valleys away from where he was hiding, their dogs like mountains, their horses each with eight legs – I’ve seen such beasts, so I have! – carrying spears that could fly round corners! These are the facts, now, so pay attention!

  ‘Mabon was hiding in the woodland when this news reached him. He began to eat stones and rocks, the trunks of trees, and to swallow clay from the river. And that’s a big appetite in a man, in case you’re not aware of it. As fast as Mabon ate these stones and trees, so he grew. The rocks built up around his belly, the trees formed into sturdy gates, the clay shapes into massive ramparts. He kept eating. Stone towers rose on the walls and an inner stronghold grew up. Do you now see what’s happened? He had formed his body into a stone fortress!

  ‘When the hunters came near, what did he do? He spat splinters of wood the size of javelins at them! The riders failed to recognise him, but the spears were cutting them to pieces, so they passed on by. Now Christian, listen to me! That’s a wonderful achievement by any account, and a story that’s as true as the feet that I’m sitting here telling it, though I may have got some of the details wrong, I can’t be sure of that, it’s a long time since my own dear mother nursed me. But it certainly saved Mabon’s life on that particular day. That’s the story I heard as a child, so I did, and it’s a true tale.’

  There was a period of silence, all eyes on Conal, then a sort of collective sigh.

  Guiwenneth glanced at me. ‘The Irish,’ she whispered in exasperation.

  I soon realised that knowledge of Mabon was very fragmentary and confusingly contradictory. The fate and ill-fortune of a young ‘dream-hunter’, as he was often referred to, was known from Ireland in the west to the mountainous land of the Kurgan in the east, and by the dishevelled heroes and heroines of many ages, in particular the Bronze Age Minoans, though the jarag from ten thousand years in my past did not recognise Mabon in any shape or form.

  Mabon’s story, at its heart, seemed to be that of a Princeling born into a matriarchal society, perhaps on one of the Mediterranean islands such as Corsica or Crete, who had refused to conform to the rituals of that society: marriage to his mother, immolation at the hands of his sister. He had escaped sacrifice as a youth, fled, survived by his wits and muscle in the wild, but had finally been tricked out of hiding and either buried alive or imprisoned – but certainly confined alive in a grim place.

  He was ‘divine’ – half human, half god.

  And by all accounts he had been born out of ‘an animal’s dream’ on a mountainside, in the heart of a land surrounded by ocean.

  In prehistoric times!

  ‘How is it that Uspathadyn was searching for him?’ I asked Guiwenneth, in bemusement. ‘The man lived in the Welsh mountains, thousands of years later.’

  ‘He’d inherited the task, of course. The task has been passed on since that terrible time in lost memory.’

  ‘And Kylhuk inherited the task from him.’

  ‘Tricked into doing so.’

  ‘And now Kylhuk is waiting to trick me in turn.’

 
; ‘You’ve asked this of Gwyr already,’ Guiwenneth said slyly. ‘And Gwyr still doesn’t think so. You are not man enough for the task. You are too much an outsider. But your presence has persuaded Kylhuk that the rescue can be achieved. The result will be amazing.’

  ‘Yes. And it still amazes me that until recently, I had never even heard of Mabon!’

  PART FOUR

  The End of Wandering

  Though I am old with wandering

  Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

  I will find out where she has gone,

  And kiss her lips and take her hands;

  And walk among long dappled grass,

  And pluck till time and times are done

  The silver apples of the moon,

  The golden apples of the sun.

  W.B. Yeats, from

  The Song of Wandering Aengus

  Seventeen

  A tall, black-maned cat came running at me from the bushes on its hindlegs, startling me as it flung itself onto my body, the feline features melting to reveal Issabeau in her wildcat furs. I fell to the ground, caught in her embrace. She straddled me, her dark hair flowing over my face, her breath sweet. ‘If you value your life,’ she whispered, ‘don’t fight against this kiss.’

  And she pressed her wet mouth against my own, pushing my head to the ground. Her fingers squeezed my shoulders, keeping me still.

  Eyes open as the kiss continued, I could see that she was listening. When I tried to move she urged me down again, her own gaze flickering left to right, her mouth eating at mine. It should have been intimate, but Issabeau was elsewhere and very frightened.

  And an image flashed into my eyes: a raging sea, a rain-swept shore, a girl running from horses!

  A few seconds later, in the real world as I knew it, the woodland stirred. Something gigantic walked past in this lazy, summer’s afternoon. I heard its growl. A second creature followed it, and to the other side of us a third, stalking through the forest. Turning my head slightly, I glimpsed a figure like an upright wolf, but its massive head was like the skull of a dog, covered with thin, grey skin. The skulled face turned to look down at me, came closer, a foul sight. It sniffed, snarled, licked at its bony chops, then turned away. It grumbled several words. Growls were answered. This awful troop moved on and Issabeau, after a circumspect few moments, disengaged from me, wiping a hand across her lips.

  ‘They didn’t see us. Kissing can be useful.’

  ‘Thank you for the kiss.’

  ‘Thank you for not moving. If they had sensed you, they would have sensed me, and we would both be dead. I could only protect us with that kiss.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘Good news and bad news,’ she said, helping me to my feet. She was amused by something now, looking me up and down.

  ‘What were they?’ I repeated.

  ‘Scaraz,’ she said. ‘Winter creatures. Like wolves, but like the bones of wolves. They eat flesh. In summer, they are green and often friendly. Then they are known as dauroz. I think it means “green man”.’

  ‘But this is summer,’ I said, and she smiled.

  ‘That’s the good news. It means we are close to the Long Person. The Scaraz have come along her, that much is obvious. That’s why they are displaced and not in their time or in their season or on their guard. Didn’t you smell them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They smelled of time. The Long Person! We are almost there.’

  ‘If that’s true, we should tell Kylhuk …’

  But Issabeau said, ‘Wait a moment.’

  She stepped up to me and put her nose against my neck. ‘You smell of the ocean … the salt sea! What did you see when I protected you with the kiss?’

  ‘A girl running. A wild sea by a rocky coast. Just a glimpse. Was it you?’

  Issabeau had gone quite pale, a look of alarm on her face. ‘Well well,’ she said after a moment. ‘I let you in. I let you see. I didn’t mean to do that.’

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She was close to me, staring at my eyes. ‘You are a strange man, and I don’t understand who you are. But I trust you, which is saying a lot. Christian … we are almost there, almost to the Long Person, and when we have reached her, nothing will be the same again. There is something that puzzles me, something that haunts me. I don’t know why, but I think you may have an answer for me. Will you try?’

  ‘Yes. Gladly.’

  ‘Will you take another kiss to see the kiss that saved my life?’

  ‘What can I possibly say? I had no idea that magic was so stimulating.’

  Issabeau smiled wryly. ‘I thought you loved Guiwenneth.’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Then put a little winter where it counts …’ she said, wriggling on my hips pointedly as she lay down and embraced me again.

  * * *

  The sea again, surging against the girl’s legs as she lay in the surf, aware of rain falling and a sky lowering and darkening. Her mother had crawled from the water, dragging her infant son. The crates with the animals in them were spread along the beach, among the spars and flotsam from the wreck. Too tired to lift her head, too dazed by concussion from the rocks, the girl could only stare across the billowing waves at the ship’s stern, still high above the heaving ocean.

  ‘My animals …’ she whispered, but there was no sound from the broken cages, though she was half aware of the drowned shapes curled within them.

  After a while, the cages were dragged away. She could hear them being moved across the shingle. The rain grew more drenching before it receded. Slowly the girl’s senses returned. Distantly, she could hear the dull canter of horses, coming towards her.

  She forced herself to her feet and stared along the shore. Seven or eight riders, still far away, one of them a woman with billowing black hair, one an old man. They moved almost eerily through the misting air, but they were riding hard.

  She ran up the beach, into the shadow of the cliff, then scampered from sea cave to sea cave, looking for a hiding place.

  In one, its passage reaching deeply into the hill, she saw her crates, her creatures, and she flung herself among them.

  ‘Owl! Cat! Oh no! Roebuck! Eagle! Oh no, no!’

  Each corpse she stroked or held, but there was no way of bringing life back to them. ‘Who dragged you here?’ she cried. ‘Who tried to save you?’

  A woman’s voice shouted angrily. She crept to the mouth of the cave and saw her mother, terrified, dishevelled, running from the hunters. The corpse of her infant son lay naked in the tidal zone, limbs shifted by the waves. The hunters rode after the poor woman, passing the sea cave without a glance.

  ‘I have to hide. I have to hide …’

  Her thoughts selfish, now; all about survival.

  She drew her skinning knife and slipped the feathered pelts from the owl and eagle, the hides from the deer and the cat, sticking the skins to her face and her arms and across her clothes. The skins moved into her, swallowed her. Her eyes sharpened with the owl, the eagle put murder in her mind, her senses heightened like a cat’s, her limbs grew sinewy and strong.

  Dressed as this strange, many-coated beast, she crouched in the sea cave and watched as her mother was ridden into the ocean, pushed back into the swell by a mailed knight and by the sorceress with the wild, black hair, who screeched abuse at her until the poor woman stumbled and slipped into the turning tide, dragged suddenly away, and down into the deep, and out of the world.

  ‘I will kill you for that murder, Vivyane,’ the girl-beast whispered, but it was a foolish thing to have done, since the old man with his tight growth of grey beard who had sat back from the troop of armoured men, suddenly glanced her way, as if her words had reached him. The girl felt her heart squeeze as the dark eyes spotted her and the mouth formed into a silent, triumphant word.

  His glance was noticed by Vivyane, who screamed angrily at her steed and galloped the animal up the shore.

  The sea-cave girl in her
skins cowered back. The cat snarled and the owl watched. The deer made ready to bolt. The eagle chattered, anxious to kill.

  Vivyane appeared in the cave entrance, breathless from the ride, damp with rain. She looked into the darkness, eyes bright like a wilder cat than her prey.

  ‘Where are you hiding?’

  She looked to where the girl was concealed behind her creatures; she frowned, then took a step forward …

  A youth moved suddenly out of the shadows of the sea cave. He was tall, wiry, dressed in brown leather and linen, stained black with the ocean and hanging with weed. What little facial hair he possessed was white with salt.

  ‘Leave my pet alone!’ he shouted defiantly.

  Vivyane stood uneasily in the cave mouth, staring at the sea-crusted man who had risen from the darkness.

  ‘I have never seen a creature such as this,’ Vivyane said, pointing to the girl in her skins.

  ‘You’ve seen it many times,’ defied the youth. ‘You should open your eyes. This creature is my pet and I will not see it harmed.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Vivyane asked. She was holding a short, pointed staff, wickedly sharp, its haft carved with the signs of her strengths.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked again as the youth stood defiantly silent.

  ‘If you can see it,’ he said, ‘then by the Good Christ, you can have it, and my pet as well. And me too for that matter. Because as God Knows, if you can see my name, nothing will matter but the name. That is my challenge to you.’

  His words provoked Vivyane to a fit of fury. Her figure filled the mouth of the cave. But she didn’t step inside, kept at bay by the challenge and by confusion. Instead, she screeched abuse at the cowering, pelt-covered girl and flung her staff at the crouching creature. The hard wood turned in the air like a knife and its point pierced the buck’s skin covering the girl. A moment later, Vivyane was gone, riding furiously back towards the fort, the sharp-stubbled old man and his knights galloping behind her.