Ancient Echoes

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘She can’t be more than a mile ahead of us. Don’t you see? She’s running, but she can’t hide. The moment I entered her realm there was a link between us and she has to sever that link to be free of me.’ William smiled sympathetically and shook his head, then indicated that when he had been a boy a close friend of his had been trampled by a juvenile ‘tusker’ (a mammoth) and had talked a similar sort of nonsense ever after.

  For the better part of two days, Greenface led us on a labyrinthine chase through the hills and valleys that circled round the swirling Eye. She was a fast runner, but not skilled at hiding her tracks or traces. Our limited talents in noticing the signs of our quarry were compensated for more than adequately by that laxity.

  Twice I saw her surprised at how far ahead of us she had run. On the first occasion I glimpsed her as a distant shape moving over a bare hill, crouching as she searched for danger; on the second, she was standing between two towering cedars, her arms stretched out like Christ on the Cross, staring back across the valley to where William and I picked our way carefully down the steep slope. She was against the setting sun and remained there motionless for the twenty minutes that I stood and stared at her. Was she again saying: leave me alone?. Or was her behaviour an echo of the rituals that had imbued her life when once she had lived upon the earth, a prayer at dusk amongst the dark wood of the great trees?

  ‘She’ll set traps for us,’ William had warned, two days ago, and his words had made us cautious, and therefore slowed our progress, and Greenface was escaping.

  Now I threw caution to the wind – a metaphor that I mimed with a slash across my throat and a puff of air across my palm, tossed away carelessly, gestures that again exasperated the Ice Age hunter-dancer – and ran on ahead, slipping and sliding down the defile to a thin sparkle of water, and the cedar-covered slope beyond.

  The figure of the woman stayed still for several minutes more, then abruptly disappeared.

  I stood among the cedars, dwarfed by their massive size, made calm and clear-headed by their heavy scent and the semi-tropical heat that bathed this new border. Everything was very still; the tremor in the earth had gone. I was not at all sure which way the Eye lay, whether behind me, or ahead. I had become disorientated and I could easily have been going deeper into this unconscious land, or back towards the place of churches, bulls and channels, the Hinterland where Angela could send me signals.

  I was lost, and I felt the vast distance between my isolated eye and the full return to consciousness as a form of panic. Suddenly, I wanted to go home. Suddenly I had had enough.

  Behind me, William gasped up the slope, flexing his neck with discomfort, probably from the unhealed wound, dripping with a sweat he had rarely known. A man of the cold, a carrier of the winter dance, he was more alien in this hot forest, this tranquil place of giants, than I was, and it was clear now that he had come as far as he could manage in his determination to assist me.

  ‘There’ll be traps,’ he said again, shaking his head. ‘You mustn’t do this. You mustn’t pursue so carelessly. She’s warned you enough. She doesn’t want you, my friend. Give up the ghost …’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Jack! Give up the ghost!’

  ‘I can’t.’

  And yet … I could. I was frightened. William saw my hesitation and breathed a sigh of relief, fitted neatly in between his striving gasps for breath.

  ‘Let’s go back to the lake. It’s getting hot.’ A breeze stirred the giant cedars. A voice whispered ‘Fetch her back’ and a shadow ran around me, a small girl.

  I turned to follow the dream, or memory, an illusion, anyway, reminding me that even now, as I voyaged in my own machine, Natalie was playing with the grey-faced phantom, listening to his funny stories, shedding ghosts of her own, perhaps, peeled away by the entity that had escaped me, as it waited for me to fulfil a bargain: a life for a life.

  I had to go on – and yet I felt called back! – I had to make a last try to catch up with the woman …

  Was I being called?

  Disturbed by the sense of anxiety that pervaded both this forest of towering cedars and my own perceptions, I sent William back to the camp.

  ‘You don’t need to come any further. Why don’t you wait for me by the lake? We’ll cross together, to rescue Ethne.’

  His eyes brightened suddenly. ‘You will help me then?’

  ‘If I can. And with all my heart. A promise is a promise.’ I looked through the forest. ‘I need one more try for Greenface, though. If I can’t catch her now, I’ll have to think again. But I’ll come back to you first.’

  ‘Thank you. I feel very weak, just now.’ He was glad to be released, I realized. ‘I need you, Jack. If I see her, I’ll want to kiss her. I need you to remind me of the danger!’

  ‘I’ll do that, all right.’

  William gathered his things and walked away from me, already thinking again about Ethne. As he departed he stumbled slightly, glancing back apprehensively. I could see smears of crimson on his waist and left arm. He was bleeding again, he had exerted himself too much. But he was a strong young man and now, with the pressure of running off him, he would have time to recoup fully before attempting to cross the lake.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ I called. He turned and stared at me, raising his arms in question.

  I called again, ‘I’ll come back to you within a day or so. But wait for me. I’ll not be long!’

  He smiled and nodded, raising a hand in parting. He was soon gone, dropping down the slope as he retraced our earlier passage from the lake. I felt very sad to see him go.

  This forest, though, was a wonderful place, its majesty and tranquillity reached to my heart. A rich, golden light filled the spaces between the monumental trunks of the cedars. The ground was soft and yielding as I walked. The wind was musical as it flowed in the clearings, a murmur of comfort.

  Like an animal, all senses pricked, I moved between the pools of light, and I was at peace here; but there was something else, something I knew with all my heart.

  Greenface was close by!

  She had waited for me. She was watching me from among the trees, a shadow against the buttressed columns, moving around me, behind me, always keeping out of sight.

  I walked for an hour without looking back, then stopped in a cedar grove and talked out loud, reasoning that since Greyface had been able to communicate with me in his various, violent, persuasive ways, the woman too might understand the language of the man in whom she moved.

  ‘Your partner has a hold over my daughter. I think he means to kill her unless you return to him. I don’t understand why. He wants you back. I know you’re afraid, but I don’t understand your fear, and I don’t understand your partner’s anger. Please come back with me. Please complete your journey …’

  She was so close.

  And yet she stayed in hiding.

  A few minutes after my loud talk to the forest I heard movement ahead of me and continued to jog and walk along the rough track. I hoped to see the woman, to glimpse her again, but she was circumspect, now, in the way she observed me, and besides, William’s advice about traps had begun to haunt me. I was alert for snares and trip-wires to such an extent that my attention was not focused.

  I tried a merry dance-and-dart around the sprawling roots of the silent giants, hoping to surprise her, to encounter her, even to entice her with the simple humour of my capering.

  Birdless, this forest, no creature stirred in the canopy to suggest her movement, her alarm at my antics. I was a lone man going mad with the scent of cedar, tripping on the ground-briar that grew in profusion.

  But she was there, waiting for me, and she caught me at dusk, with the sun reddening and deepening, a light reminiscent of that in the Hinterland …

  For some time the land had been descending towards a narrow valley, a steep sided gorge, blocked in the distance by the sheer wooden wall of some as yet unidentifiable structure. Whatever had been lodged, askew and broken at the
bottom of the valley, was huge, and as the darkness grew deeper I could make out lights and movement in its region, but no further sense of anything other than that.

  I was so curious about this vast construction, which seemed almost to grow from the valley walls, that I had stumbled into the trap before I realized it.

  Whether by charms, magic or otherwise, or by a skilful manipulation of the thorny undergrowth, a cage of yellow briar-rose curled suddenly around me, snaking from the earth, flexing from the bushes, winding into a prison that nipped, snagged and tugged at me. The scent of the rose was sweet, the prick of the curved thorns unbearable as I tried to move. I stood quite still, therefore, embraced by the tangling bush, listening to the stealthy approach of the woman who had snared me.

  She circled me twice at a distance like a prowling animal, studying me. She seemed almost naked, having rid herself of the heavy cloak, the belt of clattering knives, the small roll of fur, the blowpipe and spears. By the last glow of twilight I could see the complex design of green lines on her face, the patterns on her tight, hard chest, above the loose tunic with its glitter of shells, the scars in neat rows down the front of each thigh. She wore tight sandals on her feet, strapped firmly to her calves.

  ‘I’m hurting,’ I said quietly. Even breathing drew thorns into my skin. It felt as if the briar-cage was tightening slowly.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Why are you following me?’

  Her voice was very soft, the accent lilting, the words, at least as I perceived them, English, which surprised me but didn’t startle me. I know you!

  ‘You travelled in me,’ I said. ‘There was a man with you. I saw you often in my dreams. Don’t you recognize me?’

  She stood. Without the cloak she seemed willowy. She was as tall as me. She came over, dark eyes shining, and peered through the briar. The sudden curiosity in her face served to melt the hardness. She was lovely to look at, full-lipped, high-cheeked, dark-eyed. I can’t find better words to describe the subtlety of her beauty which was not in any way marred by the intricate patterns of green lines and small designs that were pricked out on her skin.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Now that I look at you … I’ve seen you in my dreams too. And you are the face that guarded the horn gate. I was frightened of you. I couldn’t pass through.’

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘My name is Ahk’Nemet.’ (This is a phonetic attempt at the word she used to indicate her name.)

  ‘And your friend? The man you were running with?’

  ‘Not my friend. My brother. His given name is Baalgor. It’s a common name.’

  Not her friend? I had seen them making love; years ago, I had described the passion with relish to the eager children of my class at school.

  ‘Baalgor has sent me to bring you back to him.’

  She spat on the ground, suddenly angry. ‘I wondered why you were following me. Go back to him. I intend to return to the wounded land.’

  Those were her words. The wounded land.

  ‘I’ve run long enough. I can’t run any more.’

  ‘Where is the wounded land?’

  She smiled. ‘Where a land lies bleeding and abandoned. Where else? It’s my home. I belong there. I should never have followed Baalgor. I should never have done what I did.’

  Intrigued, I asked, ‘What is the name of your land?’

  ‘Gl’Thaan Em,’ she said, and I repeated the phonemes, aware at once of their familiarity. Glanum? Could the two places be the same?

  ‘I know that land,’ I told her from my thorn cage. ‘Only I know it as a city. Called Glanum. A city of shrines.’

  ‘There are many shrines in Gl’Thaan Em,’ she said, imitating my own expression. ‘They are the Bull places, the sanctuary woods, the revengers, the snorting pursuers of the destroyers – like me. Gl’Thaan Em is the wall that holds the beasts; but now it is the wounded land. Baalgor and I did the wounding. He has escaped through the horn gate. But for me, there is only one thing to do: go back and die. I must do it. The Bull place that follows me is too close, and to die beneath its stones is to die for ever, and that frightens me.’

  ‘What did you do to – Gl’Thaan Em – to be so afraid?’

  ‘What does it matter? I couldn’t cross the horn gate, so my only life, now, is to go back and hide among the shadows. I’m tired of running. I’m tired of being followed. You’re no bull-revenger, but you threaten me, and I can’t live with your shadow over mine.’

  The rose thorn tightened slightly, cutting into my face and arms so painfully that I cried out.

  ‘I have a daughter. Baalgor will kill her unless I bring you back.’

  Ahk’Nemet was already walking away, scratching at her backside beneath the tunic, shaking her head. She fetched her furs, cloak and weapons from behind a cedar, stepped back into the gloom, a slim shape against the fires burning along the top of the wooden city beyond, where the valley narrowed. She was staring at me again.

  ‘I have a life too.’

  ‘Then come with me. Come back through the horn gate and persuade Baalgor home to the wounded land–’

  She laughed. ‘Can a camel graze on the mother moon?’

  I assumed her metaphor was intended to express impossibility.

  ‘All my life I’ve dreamed of you. I saw you running. I saw the bull. I saw the white towers, the rivers, the cliffs, the fights with nightmare creatures, the vigorous sex you seemed to enjoy with Baalgor, the way you hunted. I watched you open your bowels each morning and bleed with each moon. I’ve felt your fear, your hope, your pleasures and your distress. You’re a part of my life, Nemet. Baalgor too. You live inside me. I am the gate through which he passed. And I’m the gate you refused to open. I am a dream within my own dream, and you are a dream within the same dreamer. I am that dreamer. And my daughter’s life is being scoured out, cored from the inside like a ripe fruit. I have one life, one daughter, one chance to save her. Please come back with me. Please come back to Greyface.’

  ‘Greyface?’ She laughed out loud. ‘Baalgor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s true. There’s the grey of death in him, and the grey of his beard, and that white clay he uses to blind the eyes that cover his body soon goes grey. Greyface. A good name for the eye in a corpse.’ She hesitated. ‘But I can’t help you. I have to go home.’

  ‘What about my daughter?’

  ‘Teach her to fight. Or have another child.’

  Her callous words inflamed me. I felt a call home as urgent as any need I could imagine, and I tore at the briar, ripping my flesh, but broke it down, careful of my eyes, shedding the cage and howling with rage and pain as I stumbled down the valley, looking for the running woman, listening for her.

  ‘Come back! Oh Christ, come back!’

  I glimpsed her. She was in the night shadow of the towering wooden wall, below the carved and fire-illuminated totems that leaned out from the ramparts. I could hear animals, a cacophony of sound inside this fortress; and drums beating a fast tattoo, and the screech and whine of ancient instruments. She had gone towards a low gate, a simple hole in the wall with, as ever, the skull of a horned animal leaning out across it. For a second I saw her figure, crouching, then darkness took her. By the time I reached this gate she had vanished. I peered into the tunnel, aware of the redness of the light at the far end. Ducking down, I went in, feeling my way below the thunder of drums and dancing, and the vibration of the creatures that were being paraded within this structure.

  Suddenly I was on the side of a hill, blinking against the deep red of a familiar sun. There was a swift movement behind me, but I was too late to turn and defend myself, and a foot kicked me between the shoulders, sending me tumbling into the unknown.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she called after me, but I was lost already, slipping down the slope of land, falling endlessly it seemed, the sun moving above me, the glitter of silver catching my eye, until–

  I came down in dust and bruises to rest a
gainst the angled roof of the church.

  This was the Hinterland again.

  Somewhere below me, my name was being called, and I began to move as if in a dream, surfacing from a sea of unconscious towards a brighter light, the steady chanting of my name.

  I thought briefly of William, waiting for me by the lake shore. How long would he wait before recklessly crossing the water to Ethne, to a place where his death was assured?

  ‘Sorry, William … she tricked me … but I’ll be back … a promise is a promise … I’ll be back to help you …’

  PART FIVE

  Flesh and Shadow

  22

  He had imagined the return from the Hinterland would be like coming out of a dream, but the sensation was quite different. Instead of experiencing confusion, the dissolution of reality, in fact the journey, his close encounters, remained as real, as painful, as they had seemed at the time. The trap and the trick by Greenface were minutes only in his past. He could still smell the odour of the thundering beasts inside the wooden-walled town, still hear the dancing and music and he was in pain from the rose thorns. Nothing fragmented into ghostly disconnection. He might simply have stepped through a garden gate from one house to another.

  ‘I was so close,’ Jack said as he sat on the couch and was shoulder-massaged by strong fingers, while a wan-faced Angela pulled and stretched his tired fingers. ‘She tricked me – she’s afraid to come back, but I have a hold on her. I’ve got to try again …’

  ‘For the moment, just relax,’ Steve said, passing him a glass of water.

  ‘I’d rather have a beer.’

  ‘I’m sure you would. But no alcohol until we’ve debriefed your Midax shadow.’

  ‘Hurry, then. Hurry. I’ve got to get rid of this taste of fish gum!’

  But there was something wrong, he could sense it in the atmosphere of the room, he had known it from the moment the Midax state had terminated – and it was transparent in Angela’s demeanour. They had called him back from the Deep because there was difficulty at home.