Avilion Robert Holdstock

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART • ONE - Jack at the Edge

Wood Haunter

Oak Lodge

Beyond the Edge

Huxley’s Shadow

Between Worlds

Iaelven

Elf-shot

Armour of a King

Under-Realm

PART • TWO - The Villa

The Valley

The Villa

Yssobel

Jack

Painting the Past

Game and Promise

Ghost Rising

The Crossing Place

Parting

Return

The Crossing Place: Moonsilver

PART • THREE - Yssobel in Avilion

Armour of the King

Yssobel in Avilion

Palace of Green Porcelain

Reflections

The Sylvan Fortress

Peredur and Christian

PART • FOUR - Avilion Alive

Fire Dance

The Crossing Place: Crow Choice

Field of Tartan

The Riot of Her Blood

The Riot of His Blood

The Lake

Won’t Tell

The Fury of Survival

The Time Machine

Silver

Silver Dreams

Yssobel’s Last Song: The Crossing Place

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgements

Also by Robert Holdstock

THE MERLIN CODEX

The Iron Grail

Celtika

The Broken Kings

MYTHAGO CYCLE

Mythago Wood

Lavondyss

The Hollowing

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

Avilion

Ancient Echoes

Merlin’s Wood

The Fetch

Avilion

ROBERT HOLDSTOCK

Orion

www.orionbooks.co.uk

A Gollancz ebook

The right of Robert Holdstock to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Gollancz

An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

London WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

eISBN : 978 0 5750 8826 9

ISBN 978 0575 08301 1 (Trade Paperback)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

www.robertholdstock.com

www.orionbooks.co.uk

This ebook produced by Jouve, France

To Sarah.

Twenty-five years on from Mythago Wood, you are still

cariath ganuch trymllyd bwstfil

But now farewell, I am going a long way

With these thou seest - if indeed I go

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) -

To the island-valley of Avilion;

... Where I will heal me of my grievous wound

From ‘The Passing of Arthur’:

from Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The ghost is as the man

ibid

Echo: Mythago Wood

Ryhope Wood is as ancient as the Ice Age, primal, undisturbed for twelve thousand years; and it is semi-sentient. As small as Ryhope Wood seems, it contains a vast world. Within its apparently impenetrable boundaries, legendary figures and landscape come alive, born from the collective memory of those who live in its proximity.

In 1948, Steven Huxley returned to England from France, to his home, Oak Lodge, at the edge of this remote patch of woodland.

His older brother Christian was waiting for him there. Their father, George, had disappeared into the wild two years before.

George Huxley had discovered the secret of Ryhope Wood. He had called the ancient ghosts that lived there mythagos: the images of the myth.

One of these figures of legend was the Celtic Princess, Guiwenneth of the Green. George and Christian Huxley had become entranced by this beautiful and feisty echo of the Iron Age, this ‘image of a myth’, after she had emerged from the edge. They had fought over her, but had lost her.

Soon after Steven’s return, his brother also disappeared into the wildwood, trailing his father and searching for the woman he desired.

But Guiwenneth of the Green re-emerged for Steven - and their love was sudden, genuine, and profound. Sadly, it was a short-lived love at the edge of the wood.

Christian, aged by many years and remorseless in his search (Time is strange in Mythago Wood), returned with armed men and took his prize, leaving his brother for dead.

Yet Steven survived, and he and Christian met again at the very heart of Mythago Wood, and in a bitter winter. Steven exacted revenge. Christian was dead. But so was Guiwenneth, cut down by one of Christian’s mercenaries. She was taken to Avilion, also known as Lavondyss.

Steven held faith in her return, however, waiting at the top of the valley known as imarn uklyss: ‘where the girl came back through the fire’.

He was rewarded - old love was reignited, and two children were the consequence, named Jack and Yssobel, both of them half human and half mythago.

What follows now is a story of Blood and the Green.

And of Resurrection.

PROLOGUE:

Yssobel

The stone stood stark against the moon, towering over Yssobel as she stared at the monument from the edge of the wide glade with tears in her eyes. The journey here had been long, far longer than she had expected. There had been times when she had despaired of ever finding the true trail to this place. But she was here now. She had found it at last.

Pale light illuminated the stone’s flanks, showing by shadow the old script carved there, a different tale on each side, four in all, four echoes of the life of a great man, and a great king.

The monolith whispered to her, greeted her. As she walked towards it in the night, it seemed to lean slightly, as if to embrace her, the illusion of welcome.

I’ve found you, she thought in triumph, and then gave voice to the words. ‘I’ve found you!’

Yes, she was sure of it. This was Peredur’s Stone, the marker of the man’s grave. This was where her mother had died and been taken to Lavondyss; this was close to where her mother had returned, renewed and vibrant with life. This was the place of ending and beginning.

Yssobel reached the stone. The smells of night and earth enveloped her. She touched the first of the cold sides, feeling the smooth carvings in the rough-hewn rock. She traced the patterns, her mind a dance of recognition as the images blossomed in her imagination.

Peredur and the Nine Eagles. She smiled as she recognised a part of the legend that was her mother’s. It was a story with which she was very familiar.

Walking round, setting loose her tumble of hair as she did so, she embraced the second flank.

Peredur and the Song of the Islands of the Lost. This was strange. She didn’t recognise it, though she recognised the song. Her mother, Guiwenneth, had often sung it. But for all that she had learned and dreamed about Peredur, she had never heard of his link with this tale, these islands. She moved away from it.

At the third face, her heart started to race a little: Peredur and the Shield of Diadora. This, she knew about: the shield that reflected the past, and if viewed carefully could show a glimpse, at the edge of its inner, polished centre, a hint of what might come. It had been one of Peredur’s prized possessions.

Yssobel stood for a long time in front of the fourth flank, that side of the tall stone that lay in moon shadow. Here she sang quietly, words composed whilst on her journey. When that small celebration was done, she whispered a chant of promise to her mother and promise to her father. She blew a kiss to her brother Jack, who would, no doubt, be following his own path, somewhere else in the land. She missed him. Then, with a smile, she reached to feel the carvings, tracing them as she had done with the others, reading the marks and spirals, her fingers so expert that they could have read them in complete darkness. But she frowned again as she traced:

Peredur and Yssobel.

‘That can’t be right,’ she said to the stone. ‘I don’t belong to your time. This isn’t the rune that I dreamed. I dreamed of you at The Crossing Place of Ghosts.’

But perhaps this was one of the changes that could occur in this world, she thought to herself. Perhaps this signified that Peredur would look after her on her journey inwards. It was a comforting thought.

A dark bird, perched on top of the monument, suddenly stretched its wings and drifted silently away, across the clearing and into the forest edge. Yssobel saw it, but was not made apprehensive by it.

She had been so engrossed in her inspection of the stone that she failed to hear the stealthy approach from behind. The first she knew of it was when her tumble of hair was yanked gently but firmly. Stifling her cry of surprise, mind and limbs suddenly sharpened, she drew her long-bladed Greek knife in a blur of speed and swung round ready to strike. She immediately relaxed and laughed.

The face that watched her was benign; it blinked, sighed, and the horse turned away. I’m here too. And it’s late.

The moon lowered, the glade darkened. Now Peredur’s Stone was a shadow against stars. Yssobel lay in her small shelter, wrapped in a long sheepskin, and stared and thought and remembered. She had fed her horse; the packhorse she had brought with her towards the heart of the wood had perished on the way, not from the exhaustion of carrying her supplies but from predation by the creatures that stalked the valley down which she had ridden. She was glad that Rona, her favourite - a small mare, with a long black and white mane, her flanks grey - had made it this far.

Peredur and Yssobel. She hadn’t expected that.

But she had dreamed long, long ago that the rune-marks would be there, the patterns, the codes that signified the tales; and when she had told her mother, her mother had cocked her head, stared at the child of five summers, smiled, and said nothing. A look that signified she was thinking very differently.

The sun rose and Yssobel rose too, prepared herself and the horse for the day, then walked to where the sun was casting the Stone’s shadow. She looked along that shadow towards the leaning trunk of a broken oak - blown down by a storm wind, no doubt.

That is where I go. That is where I go to find him.

She led Rona to the narrow space below the tree, led the way through to find a narrow track that widened to a grassy trail. It might almost have been a road. The road was in a hollow. Tree-lined earthen banks rose on each side. She was puzzled; this wasn’t right. She swung herself onto Rona’s back and cantered forward, watching and listening, and she had travelled a long way, lost in her own thoughts, before she thought to slow down and rest the mare.

There should have been fire here, marking the way through. She had seen fire in her dreams, and her father’s account of this place was that a wall of fire guarded the deepest of the lands in Ryhope Wood. But there was just the forest trail, and the sense that human hands had built the way. The world had changed. The wood had changed its mind.

Yssobel rode for most of the day and was about to rest when she caught the scent of a lake. The wind had freshened. The smell of the fresh water was clear and sharp and clean. Intrigued, she pressed forward.

The wind shifted and she stopped suddenly. Faintly, then more loudly, she could hear the din and clatter of battle. She kicked the mare on and the trail began to curve. The horse was straining slightly. She could smell the lake as well, and was thirsty. Yssobel hauled her back. The battle was very close now, and its sounds made her stomach clench and her senses sharpen. The beat of shields, the ringstrike of iron, the wailing departure of men, the screaming triumph of killers, the noisy protesting of horses ridden through the fury, these signs of vicious struggle waxed and waned on the air.

Yssobel’s copper hair billowed out like a cloak behind her as the wind strengthened, bringing with it the sharp tang of blood, and she took a moment to gather it and knot it to the side, using a silver ring. She was about to kick forward again when a horse burst through the undergrowth above the bank and stumbled its way down and across the track. A man lay slumped on its back, arms dangling, features obscured by a small helmet that covered half his face, which now was red from a strike. As the horse leapt up the opposite bank, so he fell heavily to the ground, rolling back to the road. For a moment gleaming eyes watched Yssobel, a hand moved towards her. Then brightness became blur.

She rode on. The battle was loud now, and she dismounted, crawled stealthily up the bank and through the sparse woodland until she could see the hill, and the swarm of men on that hill, the sky filled with streaming pennants and clouds of fine yellow hair, blowing across the site of battle, glittering elementals engaged in the fray.

She saw the man at the centre of the action. His face-helm was black, his banner green. He was bloodied and raging. He rode with others as a troop, but even as Yssobel watched, so he was struck by a javelin, pushed back on his horse, then struck off it. Ravens rushed towards him and the struggle over his body became fierce. The tone of the conflict had changed. It became static, pressing, urgent.

Yssobel pulled back. She had seen enough. But as she sat, huddled, at the top of the bank, she began to realise just what it was that she had seen. She looked towards the lake, remembering the stories she had been told by her father, remembering the dreams she had inherited from her mother. Quickly, she returned to the fallen rider and stripped the corpse of its armour and face-helm.

Yes - she would stay here tonight, in hiding, and watch events unfurl.

PART • ONE

Jack at the Edge

Wood Haunter

The man materialised from the edge of the wood so suddenly that the two boys, fishing from the opposite bank of the brook, almost slipped into the water with shock. He stood midstream in the shadows for a while, the water bubbling around his crude soft leather boots. He was wearing buckskin trousers, had a jacket or cloak slung casually over his right shoulder, and a pack over his left. His filthy shirt was open to the waist, revealing a heavily tattooed torso.

The boys scrambled back onto the bank and stared at the stranger, who met their look with a cool, pale, searching gaze of his own. His face was lean and lightly bearded, scars on the skin visible in places through the black hair. On his left arm a strip of white fabric, bulging with moss that dangled from its edges, was stained with red, suggesting a recent wound. He seemed unbothered by it.

After watching the boys for a while he looked towards the spire of the church in Shadoxhurst, squinting against the sun.

‘Shadokhurze?’ he asked, still staring at the distant village. Though his pronunciation was strange, they recognised his meaning.

‘That’s right, mister,’ said the older of the boys, a gangling, ginger-haired youth who spoke nervously.

‘How far in paces?’

The boys exchanged a confused, wide-eyed look. The younger, much smaller boy, said, ‘A thousand, maybe.’

‘Maybe a million,’ the other added.

The man looked quizzically at each of them before his face broke into a broad grin. ‘Depends on the size of the paces, I suppose.’

The boys smiled as well, one less willingly than the other.

Now the stranger came towards them, tossing his pack onto the bank, bundling up his odd-looking jacket and crouching down between them. He ran his free hand through the water as it flowed beneath him, towards the edge. He inspected the moss patch on his arm briefly, then glanced up quickly. ‘What do you call this stream?’

‘We don’t call it anything.’

‘It’s the sticklebrook. Do you know where it flows to?’

The boys shook their heads. ‘Nobody does,’ said the older one. ‘Can’t follow it in. You try and follow it in and you end up coming back. It twists you about in there. I’ve tried it. It’s scary. When did you go in?’

The man glanced up. ‘I didn’t go in,’ he said softly. ‘I came out.’

‘Came out of where?’

‘Came out of what’s in there. There’s a lot to see in Ryhope Wood. That is its name, isn’t it?’

They nodded agreement. Then the older boy made a sound of surprise, his mouth gaping. ‘You’re one of the wood haunters! You’re speaking English, so I didn’t realise it. But that’s what you are. A wood haunter.’ He hesitated, nervous. ‘Aren’t you?’

The stranger considered the question, then splashed water onto his face and slowly stood up.

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t know what you mean by that. But you’d be amazed,’ he went on, ‘at what this little stream becomes a few thousand paces in. It’s very big, very deep, very rough. There are tributaries that run into it and I used a boat to get here along most of it. From inwards. Hauled it onto a sandbank in a beech forest, maybe four thousand paces from here. Hid it among rocks. The Muurngoth hunt in those places, not far from the edge. The rivers run in all directions; and they know how to trim a sail too. I don’t want to lose my boat.’

He smiled then, and stepped onto the bank. ‘This is where the stream goes in. My father’s directions were right. I’m on the right side of the wood.’

He looked around, inspecting the landscape. ‘Do you know the house here? Oak Lodge?’

The boys watched him blankly, then shook their heads. Again, it was the older one who spoke. ‘There’s no house near this wood. Just fields and pastures and sheep. And old fencing. And some earthworks. The Manor House is over the hill.’

‘Oak Lodge? You’ve never heard of it?’

‘There’s no house anywhere near here, mister. That’s the truth.’

‘Oh, but there is.’

‘What makes you think so?’ the other boy asked, with a frown.

‘What makes me think so? Because my father lived there for a lot of his life. And so did my grandfather, who was a scientist and an explorer. His name was George Huxley. My father’s name was Steven. And I’m John Huxley. Jack, if you like. And I’ve come a long way to find my home. What are you two called?’

‘Eddie,’ said the fair-haired older boy.

‘Won’t tell,’ said the younger, with a glare.

‘I understand. More than you might know.’ He smiled. ‘ “Won’t Tell.” ’

He gave the boys a friendly look and turned away to pick up his heavy pack, then thought of something and came back. He reached into the pack and pulled out two odd circular objects, bits of twig and small thorny briars, interwoven intricately, with two longer twigs curling out and down like inverted tusks. He tossed one of the objects to each of the boys, who caught them and studied them curiously. They looked up and the older one, Eddie, asked, ‘What is it?’

‘It’s what we call a daurbrak.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘It’s a shield. It keeps a Green Man away if he comes at you. You put it in your mouth with the twigs pointing down. It confuses him. They’re called daurog. He doesn’t have very good eyesight, you see?’

With a wave and a twinkle in his eye, Jack Huxley turned away and began walking briskly round the edge of Ryhope Wood. Looking back after a few seconds he called out, ‘There is a house here, you know. It’s just that you boys can’t see it.’

Oak Lodge

The two boys had been right. No house stood outside the dense edge of trees. But Jack was an insider. He had lived all his life in the heart of Ryhope Wood, very far indeed from the sight and understanding of the people who lived outside. Now he searched the shadows of this forgotten forest, peering with expert eyes into the gloom, seeking form that was alien to the tangle of trunk and branch. Soon he saw it: a perpendicular wall of brick, forty paces or so in.

Jack noticed something else. Where he stood, the earth was recently healed. He stabbed at the grass with his toe, drew his foot along the ground. There had been roots here - he could feel their echo. Until recently this had been on the line of the edge, twenty paces from where it brooded now.

The wood was shrinking, drawing in her skirts.

It was a strange thought, an unexpected one. Oak Lodge had once been even more thoroughly consumed, it seemed, but was now being given back to the land.

He would have to ponder this later. Now he merged with the undergrowth, the part of him that was human giving way again to that part of him that had been generated in the womb of the forest. The part of him that was mythago: born of the wood. Wood haunter, as the boys had referred to it. The reference had startled him. Haunter was how he himself thought of the mythago side of his life - the green side, as his sister Yssobel called it, not the red-blood side.

From the overgrown garden, in the embrace of oak and ash, through the tangle of briar and creeper, Jack peered at the tall house, with her three ivy-shrouded chimneys, her shattered windows, her grey brick walls. For a moment he thought he could hear the echoes of children running and laughing, the shouts of a mother to slow down and do something constructive, the grumble of a father’s voice complaining about the noise when he was trying to work.

The house, in silence, was vibrant with imagined life. The echo passed away.

Jack picked his way to the back door, which now leaned heavily off its hinges and was rotten. Pushing into the building through the kitchen, he was surprised to find that far from the musty, tree-invaded rooms that he had expected, the interior of the house was almost as if it had only just been locked up and left empty. The air was fresh and warm. There was nothing faded here, though the light was gloomy.

How long had it been like this, he wondered? How long since the last occupant had crossed the garden towards the wood and disappeared inwards for all of time?

This place would be his base. All his life he had longed to see the outer world, the world of his family’s origins, spreading away from Oak Lodge in a wide arc, over hills and along roads. The excitement he felt was intense, but he suppressed it for the moment.

He would be especially intrigued to see the study. He had tried to imagine, whilst in the heartwood, what this grove of learning and understanding had been like. He had seen many sacred enclosures as he and Yssobel and his father explored the wood around their home: the remnants of ‘enchanter caves’, sanctuaries devoted to certain mysteries, and, in some of the more civilised ruins they had come across, a room where scrolls littered the floors or the walls were a confusion of hieroglyphs and signs. Those were places where long-gone minds had sought answers, with chalk or graphite, to the secrets of whatever aspect of life, the stars or nature had obsessed them.

These were his father’s words, more or less, but they had fired Jack’s young mind. Answers, yes. But what questions to ask?

Finally only two remained: what is the outer world like? How do I get there?

He was here now. He stepped tentatively into the enchanter’s cave and looked around. Cracked and shattered glass-fronted cases of weapons, tools, exquisitely patterned bowls and fired-clay beakers lined one wall. Clusters of spears, rusting swords and wooden weapons were stacked in the corners. Several shields, oval and bright with design, were hanging from hooks on another wall. Skin clothing, cloaks, long colourful tunics and bone armour were piled in a tangled and musty mass in a recess by the chimney breast. Huxley’s office was a cramped museum, filled with the chill of survival, the rage of territory, the warrior, the hunter, the clay-shaper, the little songs of life: a wardrobe of the past.

Jack smiled. He was more than familiar with many of these exhibits, if not these exact ones. For all of his short life he had encountered weapons, domestic items and clothing very similar to these fragments collected by his grandfather. And he had seen them used.

A broad, heavy desk and chair were at the centre of the room and Jack imagined the man working there, bent over his journal, obsessed with the terrors and wonders to be found within the edge of Ryhope Wood.

Jack’s father had suggested that before he do anything else, should he arrive safely at the ‘old family home’ (said with a laugh), he should go to the main bedroom, where he might find, in a drawer or cupboard if the place had not been ransacked, a photograph of the ‘man’ himself.

The stairs were creaky and Jack went up slowly, following a sketched map of the house. The ceiling in the bedroom was dull with time, the bed enormous, covered with bedding that was not rotten, but rank and damp. Wardrobes and chests of drawers lined the walls. They were mostly full of clothes, objects wrapped in paper, boxes of implements, and albums. He had opened several of these out of curiosity, recognising his father from the black and white pictures in one album he found, when he glanced up and saw the brooding face of a lightly bearded man, framed on the wall.

The picture was covered with filthy glass, but the moment he rubbed the dust away he saw an image very like the sketch he carried: broad-chinned, high-browed, eyes narrowed and the skin around them lined, thin lips neither scowling nor smiling.

And the gaze, though straight, was clearly focused elsewhere. This was a portrait of a man who seemed indifferent to everything around him.

‘Hello, George,’ Jack said.

He stared at the face, stared into its eyes, talked to it, engaged with it, memorised it. There was a moment, as he stood there, when something downstairs shuddered. He realised he was standing above the man’s old study.

‘Goodbye, George. Time to try to raise you.’

Jack went downstairs again, out of the house and across the garden. When he was in the gloom, feeling that familiar and welcome tug of the earth at the soles of his feet, reaching a hand between trees for the comfort of the murmuring he could feel there, he shouted, ‘Grandfather! George!’

Comfortable though he was with tracks and rivers and open spaces. Jack was equally at home in the tighter, tangled womb-like copses and spinneys that formed so frequently and so suddenly, even though they were often the forming-places of mythagos.

He repeated his call, perhaps his summons. He waited; and called a third time.

He decided that that would do for a start.

Jack went upstairs again, prowling, searching, memorising for his father, and completed his second task before the dusk began to darken the house.

‘A book,’ his father had said. ‘There’s a book somewhere in my room, probably in a pile with other books. If it’s still there. The whole house has probably been looted, stripped. But if not, I’d like to have it.’

He struggled to remember the title for a moment, and then found it. The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells.

‘And something of my brother Chris’s. Some small thing. I’ll leave it to you. Nothing too heavy. You’ll need to take care. You will take care . . .’

‘I’ll take care.’

Jack went to the room marked on Steven’s sketch map as ‘Chris’s room’ and after a look around found a small box of light, shiny chess pieces. Intrigued by the material from which they had been fashioned, he tucked the box into his belt. His father had carved chess pieces from wood, back in the villa, and had made a board, and it was a game that Christian had loved and at which he had excelled.

Tired now, and hungry, Jack decided that the study was the best place to make his camp for the night, and after eating a small amount of his meagre supplies he curled up gratefully in the corner where the room seemed warmest.

Beyond the Edge

With first light came the sound of his name being called. Jack had been more tired than he’d realised. Those last days on the river had been a test of strength as well as of nerve as he had approached the edge but found himself fighting against the elements; as if the wood were reluctant to allow him home.

His name again. He sat up, rose and went to the shuddering tap, with its hesitant flow of water, and washed his face.

Leaving the house, he made his way to the field, and as he emerged from the wood again so he saw the older boy, Eddie, standing at a distance. He smiled when he saw Jack and held up a bag, then approached, less apprehensive than the day before, but still cautious.

‘What brings you here?’

‘I told my mum about you. She asked a lot of questions. She thought you might want some food and milk.’

Jack was pleased. He accepted the bag. ‘Thank you. Thank your mother.’

‘Just milk and some bread and eggs.’

‘That’s very kind.’

The boy hesitated. He was more smartly dressed than the day before, and when Jack commented on this, Eddie said, ‘You know what today is?’

Jack said that he didn’t.

‘It’s Easter. We always go to church on Easter Sunday. I go early so I can get away and do other things. There’ll be a big party on the green this afternoon. Do you like beer?’

Jack laughed. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘There’ll be beer and a hog roast later. But you’ll need money.’

‘Money, alas,’ said Jack, with a smile. ‘Money and I are strangers.’

‘Well.’ The boy was thoughtful. ‘Maybe you could tell some stories. About what it’s like in there?’

‘Maybe.’

‘My mum wrote a small book about the wood. Maybe she’ll interview you. I know she’s interested in you.’

Eddie must have been talkative indeed. ‘I’d like to meet her.’

‘I’ll tell her.’

Distantly, a bell sounded, a single strike followed by several others, and then a cascade of notes that had Jack entranced.

‘Eight o’clock,’ the boy said, glancing at something on his wrist. ‘Fifteen minutes to go. In at eight, out by eight-thirty. No sermon. It’s the only way to do it.’

He grinned, turned, and half ran, half walked towards the distant town, but suddenly glanced back. ‘You look strange. Jack.’ He had hesitated before calling the stranger by his name, as if he felt it impolite. ‘You don’t look right. You need different clothes.’

And then he was gone.

How should I look? This is my look. These are my clothes. This is my skin, decorated in the way we decorate our skins in the villa, in the inner home, by the fires, facing the hunt, facing the hunter. This is the way I look. How else should I look?

Jack brooded for a while, seated at the desk in the study, drinking milk and cracking the raw eggs. They were bland compared to what he was used to, but he was glad of them.

There was an apple in the bag as well, a russet, rough-skinned fruit that had a flavour like none he’d ever tasted before.

How should I look?

He decided then to shave his beard. He found a knife in the kitchen and sharpened it, but discovered that it was useless. He had made things worse - the curl of his light beard was now a hacked mess. He severed what he could, trimmed it as best he could, then combed his hair straight back, plastering it to his scalp in the style that Eddie had worn.

Then he thought: why am I doing this? I haven’t come here to look like a prince. I am here to make contact with the world of my father’s childhood, and my grandfather’s life.

The sun was high, though the day was cool, and Jack set off again towards the town, following the iron rails of the old railway track, following his young advisor.

Almost at once he was thrilled by the new perspective.

As he strode away from the edge of Ryhope, he truly felt that he was entering another land. The air smelled different. The sounds were muted and eerie; and yet delicious. A single huge oak stood on a rise to his left, what he would have called a ‘signal’ tree. He sensed history in that solitary growth, in the wide spread of her spring branches. As he topped the rise, so he could see distant hills. There was the glitter of a river, pastures, enclosures, scattered farm buildings. A tamed land, unlike anything he had experienced.

The old tracks curled away between high banks, and he found a small gravel road which seemed to lead towards the sound of distant noise from the town, and the tall grey tower that he could see, and the rise of smoke.

Behind him Ryhope seemed small and distant, and Oak Lodge was invisible.

If he felt disorientated at all, it was a passing dizziness, a moment’s hesitation. The blur of sound was enticing. A stringed instrument was playing. Only when he turned to look back did he hear the melancholy hum of the forest, a deep murmuring that seemed to shift and fade.

The road became firmer. A group of children, with two adults, came past on bicycles. He knew about such vehicles. He hadn’t realised they could move so fast. He saw the frowns on the adults’ faces as they stared at him. The looks were not welcoming.

Soon he was at the town’s entrance. The music was very assertive and rhythmic. The air was heavy with conversation and laughter. The smells of roasting meat were sublime. The grey church tower was stark against the clear blue of the sky. Its bells were silent now.

Jack was hot and he stopped to splash water on his face from a trough at the edge of the town, where water spurted from a carved face. He felt dizzy for a moment, almost as if his head were being twisted on his neck; a sensation of being pulled, pulled back the way he had come.

I’m not having this!

He took a few steps forward. Now he could see the open space where people were gathered. There was a large fire, and a pig hung on a spit above it. Bales of straw were scattered everywhere, and a group of musicians sat in a semicircle, playing jauntily. Again he started to walk, but his legs suddenly felt dead. He stood quite still, astonished at the sudden sense of being locked inside his body. His vision blurred, his head began to make nonsense of the sounds.

Nothing would move. A deep, mournful moan blew through Jack’s consciousness - a summons! He was able to turn, to look back along the road. Ryhope Wood could not be seen, and yet he sensed that it had reached a great hand towards him and was grasping at his heart and liver, squeezing him, tugging at him.

No! I must go further!

One more step and his world exploded. He fell heavily, shaking like a man in a fever, screaming with pain, though the pain was not in his body, just in his mind.

Jack was aware of the disturbance around him. The voices that sounded now were crow voices, taunting, the shrill shriek of the scavenger. Something hard struck his cheek, and he tasted blood. Another blow to his stomach. Laughter. He was being mocked, though the words, the abuse, meant nothing to him in sound, only in intent.

Something stinking landed on his face. Then something wet. Another blow, and then a stone, cracking against his cheek.

The disturbance ended as suddenly as it had started. Gentle hands eased him into a sitting position. A voice was saying, ‘That’s him. The wood haunter. He’s called Jack.’

‘Everything’s all right now.’

A woman’s voice. The clouds were scudding behind the high grey tower. Roast meat and the smell of wine were strong. The music, which had faltered, had started again, and the murmur of voices inhabited his mind, like the droning of bees.

‘Everything’s all right. I’m just going to wash your face.’

Again, cold water, a gentle touch. The cooling sensation calmed Jack’s heart. Slowly he focused on the pale face before him, kindly, a delicately featured woman with ice-blue eyes and fair hair.

‘I told him he looked strange,’ a boy’s voice said.

‘He didn’t know any better. Go and get a shirt and some soap. And here . . .’ She was fumbling in a polished leather bag, ‘Get a good thick pork roll, and a pint. Tell them Julie sent you.’

‘Yes, mum.’

Now a different pair of hands lifted him, strong hands, helping him stand, leading him away from the music, beyond the water trough and to a wall, where he sat. And gradually the world came back into focus. And with it the pain of his bruises.

‘Why was I hit?’ Jack asked quietly.

‘Because of what you are,’ the woman said. ‘I’m so sorry. Not everyone behaves that way.’

A man’s voice: ‘You’ve come a long way, I think.’

Jack nodded. ‘A long journey.’

‘From Europe?’

The words signified something, but not enough for Jack to respond. The woman said, ‘Not from Europe, I think. From somewhere older. More distant.’

Jack sighed, trying to take in the face that regarded him so earnestly. She was trying to smile, but there was a frown on her, indicating a curiosity and an anxiety that made him uncomfortable.

‘It has, yes . . . it has been a long journey. I’ve dreamed of being here. I was warned that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave. But I’ll try again. I’ll keep trying.’

The man’s hand was heavy and reassuring on his shoulder. ‘Don’t judge us by the teenagers. They have nothing better to do. What they called you: forget it. Just words. Just names.’

What they called me? I don’t remember.

Eddie came back. He was a blur of speed, a whirlpool of activity, arriving and skidding to his knees, holding out a fragrant piece of meat in a soft dough. Jack took the food and placed it in his bag. The proffered drink smelled sour and unpleasant. The offered shirt was accepted.

‘It will cover those tattoos,’ Julie said, with a smile. ‘And here. You rather need this.’

It was a piece of wax that smelled like pine. Jack knew what it was, and how to use it.

‘I’m going back.’

‘Be careful.’

He stood shakily, his legs only finding their strength again as he reached the tracks. He didn’t look back, aware that the bells in the grey tower had started to ring again. Aware of anger; and kindness. And that he had found the limit of his adventure.

He had hoped to go so far. He was devastated now to realise that his father had been right. There was too much of the mythago in him to allow him into the world of his human origin.

He reached the Lodge and sat down in the corner of the study, touching the bruise and the cut on his face, staring at the cooked meat, cold now, and feeling like a corpse.

Jack cried for a while, tears of anger and confusion. Then he left the house and went to the same enclosed place where he had called for his grandfather the night before. And staring into the darkness, thinking of Huxley, he called again. It was a moment when he at last broke from his own turmoil, from his own self-doubt.

He went back to the house, ate the meat and drank the milk that Eddie had brought for him that morning and later that afternoon. And he began to rethink his situation.

Huxley’s Shadow

Jack spent a disturbed and restless night. The shock of the day played on his mind, in particular the terrible feeling of being dragged back to the house, a wrenching sensation that seemed to have bruised him more deeply than the physical attack upon him.

When he tried to think about it, huddled in the darkness, he could only explain it by the sense that something was coming alive in him, something that he had always known was there: his mother’s side of him, which afforded him insights and sensations in the deep forest but which had always been suppressed beneath the human part of his existence.

The wind was strong, and the house was noisy. The hanging clothes shifted spectrally; floorboards creaked and doors swung on their rusting hinges. The house seemed unhappy. The moon vanished, and the small light that Jack had enjoyed for the early part of the night faded into a thin starlight.

He tried to sleep, and perhaps had drifted off just briefly when he woke to the sound of voices. They were a distant murmur, a man’s voice and the chatter of a child who was being told to ‘huuish’.

Rising quickly, Jack went to the window that looked out across the garden to where he knew a gate had once marked the exit from the property. A tall hooded shape stood there, featureless but staring at the Lodge. He held two staffs, one in each hand, each as tall as the man himself. Beside him, the pale face of a boy - perhaps a girl - also stared at the building, and suddenly this smaller figure pointed excitedly and directly at Jack and began to babble in a language that Jack didn’t recognise.

The man took both staffs in his right hand and used the left to pull the child to his side, silencing him. Then they turned and walked away, neither into the wood nor away from it.

For the rest of the night, Jack sat by the window, watching the gloom and the waving of branches against the dark and glittering sky, waiting for another visitation; but none came.

He did sleep at last, but woke to the sound of his name again. The call was not the boy’s; it was the woman’s, Julie’s, or so he thought, and when he picked his way to the field he was proved right. It was a brisk day, and the field was damp with dew.

She smiled at him. He recognised the same kind face from yesterday. She was wearing a loose white jumper and tight blue trousers, and had clothes over one arm and a bag in her hand.

‘Good morning,’ she called. ‘How are your bruises?’

‘Sore.’

‘I’ve brought some antiseptic . . .’

Jack didn’t recognise the word.

‘For the cut,’ Julie went on. ‘And breakfast. And two old shirts and some trousers that might fit.’

She was frowning as she approached, then she smiled brightly and held out the gifts. ‘I’m sure we can find something for you to trade. If only your story. Your history. If that would be all right with you . . .’

Again the uncertainty, and when Jack didn’t respond she looked crestfallen for a moment, slightly embarrassed.

‘Well, something, anyway,’ she said. ‘I hope the clothes fit.’

‘Thank you.’

She brushed a hand through her hair and looked over her shoulder into the distance. ‘Well . . . I’d better get to work. First day of the week.’

On impulse, slightly dazed from the night’s restlessness, and perhaps from the kick he’d received the day before, Jack said, ‘Would you like to come and see the ruins?’

Julie bit her lip, glancing beyond him, thinking hard.

‘I’ve heard there is a house there, but no one goes there. Most people think it burned down. This is a very strange woodland; it feels dangerous. I don’t like my son playing near here, but he fishes in the stream.’

Jack nodded. ‘It’s where I met him. And his friend who wouldn’t tell me his name.’

Julie pulled a face. ‘A nasty piece of work, if it’s who I think it is. Eddie shouldn’t mix with him. He’s the boy who kicked you. Did you understand what he was calling you? The word? The name?’

Jack shook his head, hardly able to remember anything. ‘Just as well,’ Julie went on. ‘Not to be repeated.’

‘Someone said that to me yesterday, but I was too dazed. Come and see the house. It’s not far to walk . . .’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘All right. I am interested,’ she added more brightly. ‘I’ve written a small pamphlet on Ryhope. About some of the figures that have been seen here. Haunted Wood.’ She folded her arms, again looking beyond Jack and frowning. ‘All right. But I mustn’t be long.’

He led the way through the scrub and over the low bank that seemed to mark the edge. Following the narrow track through the trees, it was a matter of moments before the wall of the house could be seen. But already Julie was shaking, her arms held tightly across her chest, her breathing oddly laboured.

Jack hesitated, watching her. Perspiration was beading her face. ‘Can you see the house?’

She looked at it and nodded. As Jack walked on, she followed nervously, then suddenly cried out. ‘Where am I going?’

‘To the house.’

She shook her head violently. ‘No, this isn’t right. It doesn’t want me. I’m going to be sick.’ She started to turn and twist, looking frantically about her. ‘This isn’t right.’

She stumbled away from him, bumping into trunks, tripping over roots, and Jack chased after her and led her out to the field. She was shaking.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered in a small voice. ‘That was very unpleasant. I’m sorry. I hope the clothes fit . . .’

And with that Julie started to run back towards the old railway line, and the road that wound through the farms to the town, only slowing to a walk when she was about to disappear from view. She didn’t look back. Jack watched her go with some sadness.

It doesn’t want me.

What had she meant by that? What had she been feeling? The house was just a ruin; a very intact ruin, certainly. It gave no signs of having been burned or ransacked, used by wayfarers. The wood had grown around it, embracing the bricks and mortar. Jack had the uncanny feeling that the house was being protected. But from what? Against what?

Ransacking, perhaps. Or curiosity?

He returned, that morning, to the ‘sticklebrook’, and though the shallow water was cold, he stripped and washed, feeling invigorated by the action. The clothes felt strange on him. He was not used to buttons, but understood them instinctively. He tucked the blue-fabric trousers into his boots. The garment felt loose around the waist but he managed to tighten it through the belt loops with some twisted ivy. He had rope in his small boat, but that was a good stretch inwards and along the dangerous riverland where the Muurngoth had their enclosures. He wanted only one visit back there, and that was to find the inwards river and return to the old villa that was his home.

Jack walked along the edge of the woodland for most of the afternoon, watching machines at work on the land, fighting the urge to run down one of the absurdly woolly sheep he saw in a flock (for its meat), standing for a long time by a field, admiring the fine, lean horses grazing the pasture, beasts that would have towered above the ponies that his family had accumulated as pack animals. They were creatures from a vision-dream, drawn out, extended, long-necked and long-legged, and when they ran they were so graceful they might have been birds in flight.

With the coming of late afternoon he returned to Oak Lodge. He had not hunted but he would open one of the metal containers in the cupboard, an experiment, anything to keep the hunger pangs controlled. He had long since learned not to acknowledge hunger, only to satisfy the craving when the opportunity arose.

He was in the kitchen, staring at the shiny cans, knife in hand ready to jab one of them open, when he heard a sigh from deep in the house, and the sound of a chair scraping on a wooden floor. His heart raced for a moment, then calmed.

Jack put the knife down. Intrigued, but not alarmed, he walked quietly along the corridor towards the study where Huxley had worked so intensely in the past. He heard another sigh, almost a grumble. Then the sound of a hand being slapped several times on the desk - a sound of frustration, he was sure.

At the entrance to the study, Jack stopped. The old man sat with his back to him. The late-afternoon light cast a beam across the wide desk and the scatter of papers and books that were piled there. They had not been there yesterday. The man was writing and sighing, writing and sighing, shaking his head, looking up and drumming his fingers on the mahogany surface as he paused to consider his words. Jack knew at once who it was.

Seen from behind, this shade of George Huxley looked hunched and old. He wore a faded green jacket. His hair was mostly grey, long, curled over the jacket’s collar. There were bits of leaf in his hair; his skin was browned and desiccated, and small strands of briar were caught in the jacket and in his trousers.

There was a pause and Jack heard the whispered words: ‘Familiar. All very familiar, but not right. Not right. The vortices have shifted; the places of power are not there now. The tracks are not the same. Everything has shifted . . .’

The scribbling began again, the head bowed to the task.

Jack whispered, ‘I know who you are. Let me see your face.’

Had Huxley heard that murmur? He stopped writing, sat up a little, cocked his head; puzzled. After a moment’s listening he turned in his chair, arm resting on the back, and peered down the corridor past his watching grandson. Jack was leaning against the frame of the door, hands in pockets, motionless.

‘Steven?’ Huxley called. He listened again, then repeated, ‘Steven? Christian? That you? Steven?’

‘It’s Jack. Steven’s son. His brother, Christian, is a long time lost in the heartwood.’

‘Steven?’ the old man murmured again, his voice fading as he leaned to peer further along the corridor, seeing nothing. Then, with a twitch of his eyebrows and a shake of his head, he turned back to his work.

Jack walked carefully into the room and stood on the other side of the desk. Huxley was heavily and scruffily bearded. A streak of white marked his chin. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery. The hands that rested on the desk, one holding a pencil, the other holding down the page of a battered journal, were skeletal, almost woody. There was tremor in the fingers, and the handwritten words were shaky.

‘You can’t see me,’ Jack said softly. ‘I wonder why?’

Huxley responded to the sound, but again looked over his shoulder, frowning deeply before continuing his scrawl.

Jack stood there for a few minutes, then came round to stand behind his grandfather and read what was being written.

It is strange to feel belonging. Yet not belonging. It is curious to feel summoned, but to not know the summoning entity; neither its nature, nor its purpose. I believe I have been ill and in a state of dreaming. Certainly, I am abundant with experiences from my explorations of the wildwood and its strange landscapes, though many of them are hazy. Perhaps an effect of my sudden awakening.

The house is not right. It is familiar, but overgrown, and there is a ghost here. I sense its presence. Perhaps the ghost is that of my own existence, returned in frail form. And summoned.

All is familiar and yet not right. The study is not as I remember it, though it contains memories that I can relate to. It is as if clever hands have put the pieces of a jigsaw back together; the jigsaw is wrong, but the pieces, for some reason, fit together.

There are books here. But all randomly placed. I do not know if my earliest journals are still intact. I cannot remember where I hid them. I write in the notebook of a schoolboy, found among Steven’s effects in his room. The room has been disturbed recently. Again: I cannot fathom why or how I know this.

What shall I make of the ghost in the lodge? Is it a mythago?

The oak vortex, once accessible only after an hour’s walk inwards, has perhaps shifted out to encompass this rotting building. I had always believed that the points of power, the fluxes of time and space that are scattered around the edge of Ryhope, were flexible in their position, their movements as unpredictable as a storm.

I remember a different season, cold and harsh, heavy snow and mindless savagery, a huddle and a hiding for survival as I journeyed. That was not long ago, but I remember nothing in between. Yes, I believe I am surfacing from a state of dreams, and must accordingly make a record of my experiences with all accuracy and concentration, especially if whatever, or whoever, has summoned me has a purpose in mind.

Jack gently touched the old man’s shoulder, noticing the flinch. But it was a flinch ignored. The pencil was hovering over the page, caught between thought and the haunting presence.

Jack said, ‘I’m Jack. Steven’s son. I summoned you.’

No response from the strange figure at the desk.

‘The why and the wherefore of that summoning is not important at this moment. But the name Yssobel is a name I want to whisper to you, and ask you to imagine. Yssobel. She is your granddaughter, and she is lost; she is searching for a life that will take her into danger. That is what your son Steven believes. And of all her family, you have gone furthest and deepest into the sorts of places that Yssobel might have travelled. There is so much to explain to you, George. Though not yet. But hold Yssobel in that ghostly mind.’

Huxley was staring straight ahead. His flesh had gone cold and pale and his hands were shaking more than before. He didn’t even look at the page of the notebook as he wrote - as if in the dream state to which he had previously referred - the letter Y.

Thinking that his visitor was here for a while yet, Jack went to the kitchen and quickly opened a tin of what turned out to be soup of indeterminate nature. When he returned to the study, he found it empty. The window was open and a breeze was making the primitive clothing on their hangers twist and turn. The simple notebook was still open, the pages fluttering, held down by a stone. It was as if they were inviting inspection, and Jack peered at the entry for the last time that day.

All Huxley had added was a question mark after the letter Y.

Between Worlds

During the night, Huxley returned to Oak Lodge. Jack lay quietly in the darkness, watching the figure as it stumbled about the study, touching here, staring there, breathing hard, whispering from time to time; and occasionally making a forlorn sound, a sound of loss.

This very solid ‘shade’ of his grandfather roamed the house. Jack listened to it as it climbed unsteadily up the stairs and visited each room in turn. Furniture was shifted, objects were dropped.

Finally, Huxley came downstairs and looked out of the study window that faced towards the open land, and the world in which he had been born.

Again, he seemed to be silently crying; and then, without showing any awareness of his grandson, now crouched close by, he turned and crossed to the French windows to the garden, opened them and was gone.

Determined to try again to reach the town, Jack dressed in the new clothes but tucked his cloak into his pack. He always felt comfortable with the cloak. A glance in the mirror suggested that he was still wild-looking, his hair long and still showing the signs of the tight braids he usually wore. The boys’ hair had been cut very short, as had Julie’s husband’s.

On impulse Jack sharpened his knife on a stone step and this time cut with more vigour, lopping off the locks and saving them carefully.

A second glance in the mirror suggested that he had made things worse, not better. He looked as if he had been in a skirmish, his head intact but his hair having taken the brunt of the assault.

It was too late to reverse the damage but, as if she had intuited his next move, Julie had clearly come to the path either earlier that morning or during the evening. A second bag was hanging from the branch of a tree at the edge: another shirt, another pair of trousers, shoes that seemed to be made of soft leather, a box containing cold chicken and slices of a rich meat, and a strange hat.

The hat was flat on his head, with a stiff peak. It was patterned in green and black. Inside was a handwritten note: Your hair needs trimming; meanwhile, advise you tuck it under this (if it fits). J.

Jack laughed and called out, ‘Why, thank you again. I’m glad someone’s looking after me!’

The cap was strange. He pulled it down as far as he could. The sky was becoming dark and, glancing up, he saw rain clouds. The smell of rain was strong, sweeping over the hills that lay towards the setting sun.

And now he noticed something else: the edge of the wood was not where it had been two days before. It was further towards the ruined lodge. The ground was rough, scarred, though coarse grass and stubby thistles covered the marks. But now, when he turned to stare back into Ryhope, the human part of him could see the traces of the old house, even though just faintly: a touch of dark red and grey within the shadows.

Why, he wondered, was Oak Lodge being returned to the open world? Who or what was guiding this passage back to the light?

The rain started to fall, at first just a shifting shower, a freshening of the air and the pasture, then a heavier downfall below gloomy, sweeping clouds that seemed to coil above him, watching for a while, before fleeing on, away into the distance; and behind them the sky brightened and the rain eased.

By then Jack was soaked. This was nothing new, but the fabric of the clothing he now wore was so thin that it turned cold against his skin, and the cloak came out, and he buckled it at the shoulder, and felt happier at once.

Shadoxhurst was quieter today than on the day of the festival. He reached the water trough and looked along the road to the green, with its central stand of oaks, where the musicians had played, the hog had been roasted, and the brutal little boys had come for him. There were a few people walking dogs, a group of children standing outside the church, listening restlessly to someone talking to them. The shops were quiet. A few cars, mostly coloured silver or dull green, murmured their way along the streets. Jack watched them with fascination. He had always longed to see such a vehicle, but these were like nothing his father had painted for him. His father’s drawings had shown black, squat machines. The vehicles he watched now were more like iridescent beetles.

He was also disturbed by how quiet it was. This was a strange thought, when he addressed it, because he had lived all his life in a quiet place, a villa with a farm, close to a deserted fortress; the sudden eruption of noise and life, of visitations or people passing by were always exciting (sometimes frightening). He had sometimes experienced the sort of vibrancy that he had witnessed during the festival, but it was a rare thing. The festival, however, had seemed to him to have a true life, to be how things should always be. Until his collapse and the attack upon him, he had felt the first suggestions of having ‘come home’. Of having made the transition between worlds.

A few minutes of pleasure that had been disrupted by aggression.

Nevertheless, this quiescent and subdued town brought out feelings of sadness in Jack. He longed for noise! He longed for a swirl of life.

How long he stood by the water trough staring into the distance he didn’t know. He was aware that he was hoping to see Julie. She would recognise him and come and greet him. Perhaps she would turn out to be the guide between the worlds, just as he - for her - could be the guide inwards. Both she and her son had suggested that she was intrigued by Ryhope, and that she had an insight into its inner realm. Jack had had little experience of women during his later formative years in the villa and the wild lands around it, but he had enough instinct to recognise interest in him.

The encounters with Julie had been shy, yet revealingly intimate. When he allowed these thoughts to wander aimlessly as he scanned the town, so what he saw was the look in her eyes, the way she had looked at him rather than the way she herself looked.

Jack took a deep breath, unbuckled the cloak and packed it away, glanced down at his saturated shirt, shivered with the cold, then took the next step. Literally, the next step. He walked past the trough towards the church. He waited for the clutch at his bowels and head, the wood-scream that would turn him round and draw him back. He kept walking.

The scream didn’t come. He reached the centre of the green, and leaned against one of the oaks there.

It had started to rain heavily again; the group of children dispersed quickly, and the streets emptied suddenly. Jack was startled by the sound of a car starting up and driving off, its tyres screeching. Voices shouted, followed by laughter. Doors slammed and three people, hidden below wide rain-shades, ran quickly to a building where a sign showing the crude image of a Green Jack was hung. A moment later Julie appeared from the same building, running in the same direction. He started to call to her, but found he couldn’t speak the name. Even so, she glanced back, quickly, querulously, before entering the same building, which Jack knew was where food was served and where the sour drink that had been offered to him two days before was sold.

I can walk there. I can make it there. I can join her, talk to her. I can extend the edge of my world . . .

He repeated this thought many times, but all the time he stayed where he was, in the half-shelter of the oaks, almost as rooted as the old trees themselves. He was brought back to consciousness by a quiet voice, a man’s voice, saying, ‘You look very wet and very lost. Can I help you at all?’

For a moment as he looked around, Jack saw nothing but the green, the oaks, the distant hills, the hints of forest. He had looked through the man several times before the figure came into focus. He was standing very close, wearing a long coat and a black leather hat, from which rain was dripping. His face was grey with a stubbly beard, his eyes dark-rimmed, narrowed, possibly curious, certainly tired; but not old.

‘Can you see me?’ the apparition asked.

‘Yes. Yes, I can.’

‘It took you a while, though. Quite a while.’

‘I didn’t see you at first. That’s true.’

‘I know what you are,’ the grey man said. ‘I know your nature. They rarely come here. I usually find them in the fields, or out by the railway tracks. Sometimes in the river. You are the first that has tried to come into the town. There must be something special about you.’

‘The first? The first what?’

‘You know exactly what I mean. Eddie hasn’t exactly been discreet about you. You remember Eddie?’

‘The fair-haired boy. Yes, I met him. He was good to me, brought me some food. His mother brought me clothes.’

The other man glanced up and down at Jack and smiled. ‘The rain makes them fit, at least. They don’t really suit you. It wasn’t so much the clothes you wore, you know - the other day, when the vermin in this place treated you so badly; it wasn’t the clothes. It was the smell. But the rain has helped with that.’

‘And soap,’ Jack added. ‘You said: “the first”. I asked, “The first what?” ’

‘Wood haunter. You’re a wood haunter.’

‘That’s what Eddie called me.’

‘It’s what you’re all known as. Generally.’

All of us?

‘My father has a different name for it,’ Jack said. ‘But how much of that name I am, I don’t know. I just know that I have a “haunter” side, and that he sees the wildwood differently.’

‘I understand. And your father’s name for it,’ the man asked carefully, ‘myth imago? Would that be right?’

‘Mythago,’ Jack whispered.

The black-coated man thought about that, then nodded his head and took off his hat to reveal a long length of grey hair, tied back in a plait. ‘I’m something of the wild myself,’ he said quietly, ‘though not as wild as you. A wild life ended in humility, tucked up inside grey stone. Vows taken, counsel accepted, especially among the middle-aged. Services unattended, and an odd witness from one temple of new practices, to older practices on the green, an even older temple. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Not a word,’ Jack said.

‘I’m what is called “the vicar” here. I came to it late. It’s a long story. A very long story. But that’s my church now, built of good local stone by long-dead craftsmen from all over the land. And a bit of local labour. Nearly a thousand years ago. I’d like you to come into my church, dry off, and have something to drink and something to eat. What do you say?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘You’ll try to eat?’

‘I’ll try to get to your church.’

Greybeard frowned for a moment, then seemed to understand. ‘Haunted. Haunting. The ghost is never far away from the grave. Ryhope is your home and your grave. I think I understand. There are chains on you. Chains made of vines and briar.’

Jack stared at this strange man and all cold in his body had gone. This was his second encounter during which he had suddenly felt a sense of being known, understood and welcomed. Perhaps the bridge between worlds was not in the steps taken, but in the encounters made. Julie had touched his heart. This man had inspired courage.

‘I think I can make it.’

‘Good. It’s Jack, isn’t it? Jack of Ryhope? Jack of Leather? Jack the Haunter?’

‘Huxley. Jack Huxley. And you?’

‘Caylen Reeve. Some call me “The Reverend” Caylen Reeve but, as I said, there’s a story behind that. For another time. If you can make it into my grey-stone mausoleum, please regard the tomb as your home. All wooden pews available for sleeping. Sacrifice what you like upon the altar. I deal only in church wine and Indian takeaways. Only one rule: don’t ring the bells. It’s a job I love and guard jealously. And if the stone walls start to sweat and swell, leave fast and go back to Ryhope. I mean that very seriously. But for the moment - if you make it - a mere three hundred paces! - shall we have some Indian cuisine?’

‘I have no idea what that is.’

‘No. I don’t suppose you do.’

Jack remembered his father talking to him about the Indian Nations. ‘Buffalo?’

Caylen laughed. ‘Buffalo? Ah, I see what you mean. Well, I can ask. But it will come in a spicy sauce.’

Courage!

Caylen walked ahead of him, a confident stride, the wide-brimmed hat now settled upon his head again, catching the light rain. Jack followed, focusing on the door to the grey building, aware that he could hear a whisper of urgency, the moaning song of return.

I’ve come this far. I’ll go that small step further!

He fought the sudden urge to turn and run. He reached the steps, five of them, that led to the open doors of the church. Hard-eyed now, and solemn, Caylen watched him as he hauled his feet up those five simple slabs of stone. His stomach was hurting, his head contained a sound like the raging of a river, the rushing of water over rocks, the crash of waves against the steep cliffs where the river turned. He was shaking.

‘You’re doing well. You’re doing very well indeed. It’s important to stretch the chain.’

Calm words from the expressionless man, his grey eyes seeming unblinking as Jack reached the door. ‘Stretch the chain and you can find the dream. You will never break the chain. But stretch it, stretch it: that is in your own power. Ten more paces, Jack. Stretch for ten more paces. Come on.’

Ten more paces!

He felt as if stones were dragging at his feet. His head was hammering against a wall. Branches whipped him, water sucked him down. The screech of elementals was unbearable - almost There would be peace in running back. There would be silence and relief in returning to the lodge.

‘Five more paces, Jack.’

He flung himself forward, then screamed in pain, embracing a cold marbled floor, feeling strong hands on his shoulders.

‘Far enough. This is far enough.’

The hands pinned him down, but this was not aggression: the hands were holding, supporting, fingers pushed into his muscles to relax them. He had twisted round and faced the spill of light from the open doors of the church, and a woman was standing there. She hesitated only for a moment before running to him, crouching down and whispering words he couldn’t take in. Two gentle fingers on his face; soft breath on his lips. The flow of words between the woman and the priest were murmurings of urgency, then calm.

‘You’ve done well, Jack. You’ve extended the edge of your world.’

‘Julie ...’

‘Yes.’ She leaned down towards him, bright and smiling. ‘The little brats are in school. And the clothes suit you. The hat doesn’t. And what in the name of all that isn’t holy have you done to your hair?’

‘Cut it. Your suggestion.’

Laughter. Julie said, ‘I’ll find a way to rescue it. Just stay calm, Jack. Altar wine for the boy!’

This last was addressed to the vicar.

‘I’ll see if I’ve got any left.’

More laughter.

Courage!

He was cold now, and the space he was sitting in was high and wide, and cold and grey, and the light that struck his face came through shaped windows, and some of it was coloured and confusing. A gentle hand was entwined with his, and still there was the soft breath, sweet breath. The grey-haired man was bustling about, but mostly writing in a book while almost simultaneously spooning a stew into his mouth. The food was fragrant and unusual, the texture of the meat so soft it might have been a flavoured bark fungus. Jack had eaten a little, but the pungent spices and the burning sensation of one of the meats had made him retch. A cooling drink, not unlike a weak goat’s milk, had helped his stomach calm down.

Earlier, Julie had fussed at his hair, using scissors and a very fine comb to cut away the tangle that he had left, leaving nothing on his neck and scalp that he could touch with any confidence. But she had kept every length of hair in a paper bag - he remembered crying out that she should do so - and he clutched the bag as if it were a container of life itself.

‘I need to go home.’

‘Yes,’ Julie said. ‘You’ve come further than before. That took some doing, I imagine.’

‘It was . . . easier at first. Then hard. My head is a rage of noise.’

‘Go home. You’ve come very far.’

Jack suddenly became aware of her, turning sharply, his face so close to hers that she pulled back slightly, then smiled, leaning forward again. He said, ‘I pushed further. But I can’t push much further than this. Perhaps it’s enough. I feel cold here.’

She listened to him in silence; stayed silent; then said, ‘I can’t be sure of what you’re feeling. But when I tried to come to the old Lodge yesterday, I was terrified. You forced your way here against your fears. I’d like to try again: for the house. Tomorrow. If you’ll help me.’

‘Of course.’

‘Help me overcome the terror.’

‘I understood what you meant.’

‘And we can talk?’

‘Yes. Of course. You might even meet my grandfather.’

He noticed the way Julie’s breathing changed, how her whole body tensed, her heart racing for a moment, her sweat changing odour suddenly, exuding excitement.

Whatever it was he had eaten, Jack was suddenly wretched again, and crawled to the huge stone bowl where he had earlier emptied his stomach. He retched for a second time, clinging to the carved edge of the basin, then pressed the metal button with its little cross for a flow of water to swirl away the mess. And after that, without looking back, he picked up his pack and ran, cumbersomely but with increasing strength, out of the town and towards the wood.

Back in the tranquillity of the study, he wondered if Huxley had been there during the day.

It was clear that his grandfather had returned to Oak Lodge, however briefly, since the notebook had gone, and Jack doubted that anyone else would have removed it.

Iaelven

Shortly before dawn Jack had visitors. He had been expecting them.

The flickering light of torches appeared at each window of the study, the flame burning a strange green. At the same time the soft trilling of pipes began again, their rising and falling tunes entrancing and distracting. It was the sound of pipes that had alerted Jack earlier to the arrival of a band of Muurngoth.

He had seen the signs of them along the river, close to where he’d been forced to hide his boat. It didn’t surprise him that they had now come to the edge. It was what they did: seeking to steal from the outside world, to abduct and remove, to pillage life to take back to their own enclosed realms, where time was ruled by a set of whims different to those of Ryhope Wood itself.

Jack was prepared for the visit and had armed himself with iron and arrows. He had found a bow among Huxley’s museum artefacts that could still pull efficiently, although he wouldn’t risk using the willow to its full capacity. There was something about everything that Huxley had collected that suggested life, but brittle life; newness, but a certain fragility due to age.

He knew how to handle Muurngoth in small numbers, though they were dangerous. If the pipes began to shrill and the Muurngoth began to sing in their distant, echoing voices, the human part of him would be as susceptible as any other human to their summoning charms. They had been called by many names, he knew from his education at the villa.

He tried to assess the size of the group, first by listening to the bone pipes - he heard four - and then by counting torches: two at the windows, but a further four on the woodland side of the lodge. When the torch at the outer window vanished, he darted there and scanned the darkness, noticing three altogether. Eight, then, which probably meant ten or twelve, since some would be hugging the darkness, unlit, waiting.

Jack strung the bow, found an iron-tipped arrow - silver would have been better - and strode to the flame at the double doors to the garden. As he came to the glass panels, reflection confusing him for a moment, he saw the eyes of the creature that was searching the interior. They were looking down at him!

He took an involuntary step back, startled to realise the height of this investigating Iaelven. Not Muurngoth, not the small, teasing creatures he had often come across during his youthful years in the wood: these were Amurngoth! They were a far more dangerous species of Iaelven. He had seen them only once before.

He thought back to the signs, the traces he had seen on the river. Yes, now he remembered that the fire-pits had been large, the temporary wooden enclosures too wide for the less robust form of this life.

But they would still respond to his defences. Jack stepped forward again and unlatched the French windows, pulling them in with his bow hand as he thrust the iron-tipped arrow forward with the other.

The Amurngoth looked at him through the narrowed vertical slits of its eyes. The stink that came from it was overwhelming. Its pursed mouth stretched into a parody of a human smile and it shook its head slowly, the long frill of its hair flowing like weed in water.

It made a whispering noise, then sang briefly, a sound that set Jack’s skin crawling and which made him falter, almost dropping the pointed and drawn arrow.

But his shadow stepped forward, screeching loudly, drew back the bowstring and pressed the iron point of the arrow against the Amurngoth’s bare-boned chest.

It retreated, dropping the torch. Shrilling sounds, and a chatter like magpies, signalled the sudden and rapid departure of the raiding band, though Jack noticed, with human eyes and Haunter instinct, that they moved along the edge, rather than retreating inwards.

They were out for prey, and they clearly had Shadoxhurst in their sights.

The Amurngoth were the true ‘stealers’. Change-hunters. They stole the new and left their own behind. They carried a supply of shards, unshaped pieces of wood, usually rowan or willow, and when they found the opportunity to steal, they were adept at shaping the shard to reflect the stolen life, usually that of an infant child, sometimes an older child, though that involved a great deal of effort. In Jack’s father’s time, the Amurngoth had all but disappeared, though, in the generations before, the Amurngoth had become a considerable and tangible presence in the outer world. It was akin to a slow invasion. It had worked well for many generations; but the Amurngoth had been frustrated by the one thing they could not control: change.

They never changed, and they lived by different rules of time. The world they coveted changed and was steady in the passing of days.

The days, eventually, had passed the Amurngoth by. On the outside world, at least.

But they were here again now, and Jack couldn’t help but think that they had been following him. This was more of his Haunter’s instinct. Having seen the traces of them by the river, mistaking them for the smaller kind, he’d assumed they existed at that location. But perhaps they had merely overtaken him.

His journey from the Villa to the edge had been an opening of a channel, perhaps. He felt alarmed at the thought, since it meant he might have put the small town over the rise in danger, all because of his curiosity.

Could they move that far from the edge of Ryhope Wood? It was a consoling thought that if a half-human could only just make it, a non-human would be drawn back far more quickly. Nevertheless, he would have to find a way of warning the priest without alarming him, and suggest he find a way to quietly spread the word: there is danger at the edge.

The torch that the Amurngoth scout had dropped had ceased to flare, but it would still be useful. It burned again as Jack picked it up, but the flame died as he placed it in the kitchen sink. The chaotic chorus of birds was signalling first light and he made a rapid inspection of the dew-frosted land, walking rapidly as far as the silent outskirts of Shadoxhurst itself, inspecting the pasture and the rough tracks for signs of the Iaelven, but he saw nothing but animal traces.

Returning to the sticklebrook, he stood at the place where twin alders crossed and let the Haunter look for signs of the band.

They had been here. This was where they had found the open land. But they had not progressed further than this, returning instead to the deeper wood, and moving towards the Lodge on one side, and . . . yes . . . they had divided into two groups, the other exploring away from the house.

Everything was silent now. There would be no piping, no singing, no enchanting summons. Not now, not in the day. But the Haunter was uncertain. It sensed that the Amurngoth were still close, folded up in their nests, awake and canny, listening and learning.

Tired and hungry, Jack returned to Oak Lodge and savaged open another of the cans from the larder. The contents were soft and smooth, tasting of very little that he recognised, and he ate it with the chewy but sweet bread that Julie had brought him the day before. Once again, he tried to remember the joy of his mother Guiwenneth’s sharp-flavoured cooking, the solid, fatty meats, the belly-satisfying grain cakes, the scalding and soothing broths.

He finished the can and the bread and made a quiet decision to go hunting later - but beyond the edge, not within it. There might well be new game to find in the hinterland around Shadoxhurst.

As the empty can clattered into the sink, so a sound came from above, as if an animal had been suddenly startled.

It surprised Jack as well, and he reached at once for his bow and arrows, wiping the blade of his iron knife clean and sheathing it.

The sound had come from the room where - he tried to remember the way this house was constructed - yes, where his uncle Christian had stored his belongings, slept, and prepared for the day.

Jack went upstairs; there was little point in being quiet since the wooden boards creaked loudly, several of them threatening to give way beneath his hesitant step, so much so that he almost ran to the landing and then walked purposefully to the open door of Christian’s room.

He saw a bed that was now dishevelled, a scatter of books, an open wardrobe, the clothes scattered.

A voice whispered, ‘Chris?’

Turning, he saw his grandfather standing at the top of the stairs. Huxley was staring at him, yet through him. The old man held shirts and trousers in his arms; in his right hand he held the school notebook in which he had begun to keep his latest record. He had a vacant look and was wildly unkempt, his trousers creased, his feet bare. He had shaved his beard roughly, and there was dried blood on his neck and cheek. His hair was sticking out in spikes, perhaps the result of a restless sleep.

He had been here all night. While the Amurngoth had probed the edges of the Lodge, Huxley had been upstairs all the time!

‘Hello, George. Hello, Grandfather. Can you see me?’

‘Chris?’

‘Jack. It’s Jack.’

‘Steven?’

‘No. Not Steven. Jack.’

Jack approached the man cautiously. The rank odour from the man’s body was suddenly overwhelming, no doubt the same smell of sweat and travel, of distraction and the wild that would have greeted the two boys on Jack’s first appearance at the edge of Ryhope.

‘You need a bath, old man. A good wash.’

‘Chris?’

Huxley was staring into a different time; whether into a truly remembered time, or a time created out of the mythago’s dreams, Jack had no way of knowing. Was this the real man, returned after many years’ absence? Or a mythago drawn from Jack’s human side? Haunter, the wildwood aspect of Jack, whispered: not real.

And yet this Huxley, this risen presence, knew what he had had, knew what had been in his life, knew his sons, and knew that he had given his life to documenting the apparitions and the phenomena, even the nature, of Ryhope Wood.

In his right hand he clutched the simple journal in which he - a mythago - was accounting for his new existence in the home from which he had vanished in 1946, a disappearance that had not resulted in a reappearance until now.

Jack stared hungrily at the tattered notebook. Had his grandfather been writing during the night? He had obviously been curled up on Christian’s narrow bed; he had raided the wardrobe for clothes; he had surrounded himself with the tangible memories of one of his two sons.

But had he written in the journal? And had he proceeded beyond that question mark after the letter Y?

Was there anything, yet, about Yssobel?

George Huxley seemed to wake from a daydream. He became aware of the clothing he was clutching and let it drop. His gaze still vacant, still not aware of his grandson, he stumbled awkwardly down the stairs and into his study, sitting down heavily at the desk, smoothing out the pages, staring for a moment at the garden windows. Then he plucked a pencil from the holder and started to write.

Jack found a cushion, tossed it to the floor in front of the cabinet of flint and bronze artefacts, and sat down, folded his arms and watched Huxley. They were face to face across the room, and occasionally Huxley looked up, looked directly at Jack, but in a distracted way, as if thinking rather than seeing, returning quickly to the rapid scrawl of words.

There was something of a fever in the older man. His breathing was loud, with long pauses, gasps of understanding, little sighs of satisfaction, and the occasional groan of frustration. And he talked constantly, though the words were uttered so sibilantly, and in so low a voice, that Jack could make out very little.

I made you, Jack thought, and with that thought there came a moment’s affection.

Old man: lank hair, grey, rough-hewn cheeks and scarred chin, sagging eyes, clothes dreamed out of nightmare; and the pulse of blood in his temples, and the odour of moss and undergrowth on the breath.

I made you. I summoned you. And you came, equipped with memory. My father was right. You would come equipped with memory. And you have it, though you think of it as jigsaw.

Each time gaze met gaze, Jack felt his heart race. It was impossible to tell whether Huxley was seeing him or not; and yet, there was the distinct sense that the older man was aware of the presence of his half-human, half-Haunter descendant.

‘Yssobel,’ Jack finally said aloud. ‘Your granddaughter, my sister. Yssobel. She is the very image of a woman you once loved: my mother. Guiwenneth.’

At the sound of the name, Huxley frowned, though he did not look up. He paused for a moment before continuing to write.

‘Yes, Guiwenneth,’ Jack persisted from his sitting position, almost taunting the man now. ‘So beautiful. You loved her. You summoned her. You summoned love, because you wanted it, as I have summoned memory - memory of you, grandfather - because I need it. Guiwenneth!’

Huxley made a keening sound, his eyes closed, his body hunched, the hand that held the pencil now shaking. If he spoke words, Jack again could not hear them. And after a moment, the spasm of grief, or whatever was causing the distress, passed away.

‘Yssobel,’ Jack repeated now. ‘I know you can help me find out where she went. I saw you talking to her, at the edge of the villa, when I was younger. Was it you? Or a shade of you? How do I know? But Grandfather, you know of your granddaughter. You know of Yssobel.’

Yssobel, the shade of Huxley murmured, and Jack leaned forward.

‘Yes. You remember her.’

Huxley looked around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. ‘Yssobel.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Yssobel,’ breathed the ghost.

Jack spoke softly: ‘When I was a boy, I saw you. I saw you many times at the villa, where your Steven lives now. And a few seasons before she rode off, before she disappeared, I saw you talking to her. You came and went, just as you always do. You came out of the wood and you whispered to her. She remembered nothing of your visits, but I do: I saw you so many times. Whispering, whispering. You know, you alone know, where she went, and why she went, and what drove her away. Talk to me, George. Talk to me. About Yssobel!’

‘Yssobel,’ the man repeated quietly, sitting up straight, as if he had just seen something startling. ‘Oh no, oh no . . .’

The forlorn voice, the forlorn whisper, were the last words the mythago spoke.

Huxley pushed back from the desk and stumbled to the French windows, pushing them open and staring into the gloom of Ryhope. As Jack struggled to his feet, the old man lurched away. He could not possibly have walked so fast as to have vanished into the wood by the time Jack reached the garden. But Huxley had gone, absorbed yet again.

Jack called for him twice. Silence was his only reply.

He went back to the study and sat down at the desk, leaning close to the scrawl of words, deciphering them as best he could.

I have been dragged from the grave. The ghost-lit boy has dragged me here. He stinks of the wood, a stink I know so well.

Dragged from the grave, but also dragged out of time. I was lost. This haunting ‘boy’ has resurrected me, and I begin to remember the LIFE before.

So much reconstructs itself. The jigsaw shuffles, the pieces turn and twist and shape and fit. Bit by bit, shape by shape, echo by echo, memory by memory, all begins to congeal. I am . . . Huxley. I can shape my life.

I am reborn with the flesh and mind and recollection of my first incarnation. That is to say - as far as I can tell. I can shape it, both the flesh and the dream. In order to remember. And the ghost-lit boy will recognise me. But will I recognise the ghost-lit boy for what it is?

Is it attached to me? This boy? A version of myself? I have no way of knowing yet.

The genesis of ‘myth imago’ forms is more intricate than the Ur-Huxley, the original form of me, could possibly have understood.

I am more aware than him, though it is his struggle to understand that drives my own curiosity.

Ur-Huxley? Jack stared at the word, bemused by it. ‘The original form of me.’ Did he mean the real man, the true man, the man who had been a child, had grown, had learned, had lived in the Lodge, had explored, sired two children; had pursued a strange dream; and died in the heartwoods?

So the memories and dreams of Ur-Huxley also rose in the mythago, just as the ragged clothes were re-formed, just as the flesh and bone, the blood and beat and pulse of the heart were shaped again.

But from whose memory? From the human side of Jack? From Steven? Or from Jack’s ‘haunter’ side, the aspect of him that was silently in tune with the timelessness of the wildwood.

Haunter was quiescent inside Jack, understanding nothing of this. Haunter was instinct.

Jack turned back the pages of the notebook to see what had been written during the night when the Amurngoth had visited and distracted him, while all the time his grandfather was upstairs in hiding, sketching his visions in words.

This scrawl was even harder to decipher, but underlined several times was his sister’s name. And under that bold statement, which signified either confusion or realisation, were the words: Yss. Her birth. Eagles.

The name Yssobel, or Issaubel, is whispered to me, and I have remembered a small story relating to the later life of Guiwenneth, though I cannot remember who told it to me, nor where it was that the story was spoken.

She was born in the early evening. Eagles flew around the fortress during her mother’s labour, and with her first cry of life they scattered, though one came back later and stayed. The child was in distress. At dawn, when she was taken to the spring to be drowned and reborn, the child reached and wailed, watching the solitary eagle through eyes that showed awareness, but no comfort, only anxiety. And yet - piercing through the misty, infant blue - curiosity!

Yssobel was the daughter of Guiwenneth, who was known as ‘the Green’ and was of noble birth, being the daughter of the Warlord Peredur and his wife Dierdrath.

In her childhood years, Yssobel and her mother were close and affectionate, and Yssobel learned much about her mother’s hardships, and the loss of her father under cruel circumstances. But in later years, the friendship between mother and daughter was broken.

Guiwenneth wounded the girl with her words, and the house became angry.

Although Yssobel continued to live in her parent’s house, hardly any words were spoken between them, and when they were, they were brief and usually harsh.

There came a day when Guiwenneth went out from the fort and never returned. All that is known of her is that she was heard singing the Song of the Islands of the Lost, which are reached by one of the five valleys that lead away from her father’s memorial stone at the edge of Lavondyss.

Distraught at the loss, her daughter went to search for her, and in doing so found a new world of her own. She, too, disappeared.

There is another story about her, almost as small, but more intriguing. It is unresolved. I must try to reimagine it.

At this point, the entry had been underlined and it ended; the journal was closed over the pencil. By the harsh light spilling into the room, Jack could see a handprint, made perhaps from sweat. He pressed his own hand against it, not truly knowing why he did so.

The account was a shadowy reflection of the true events - they had not occurred in a fort but in the Roman villa where the family had lived until its abandonment. And Jack was intrigued by certain things, particularly the reference to the memorial stone. And The Sons of the Islands of the Lost was a favourite song of his mother’s. But he needed more if he was to find his sister and, in that finding, understand what had happened to Guiwenneth.

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 deeply 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 . . .’

He stepped back to the desk and put down the book, stroking the cover almost regretfully, his hair obscuring his face and his expression. ‘Yssobel,’ he repeated, as if relishing the name. ‘The image of her mother.’

She followed the shadow of the king’s stone . . .

An odd change was happening in Huxley. He sat down in the desk chair and stared at his hands. The skin was dry and cracked, the knuckles showing hard and swollen like the knots on the branches of trees. The aura around him was of mould. Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes, though he showed no signs of being sad.

Looking up at Jack, he searched the young man’s face, then smiled affectionately. ‘You are! Yes. The image of my son. But then - how do I remember?’

He went into a huddle of thought, staring at nothing. Then in an authoritative and firm tone of voice he suddenly said, ‘There are parts of the wood where the generative powers are very strong. I call them vortices. They are associated with springs, or trees, usually oak and elm. Sometimes with clearings, especially those with shrines at their centre. Sometimes with very ancient tracks. They are the birthing places of the images, though I was never privileged to witness such a moment of generation.

‘But I have come from deeper. Far deeper. Someone drew me here.’ Huxley looked sharply up at Jack again. ‘You? Would that explain Yssobel? Your need; me; your needed mythago. My regenerated mind, my experience of wandering, the tales I’ve heard . . . somewhere in me there is a memory of the girl I never knew, a memory from stories I had heard about her. Your father was right. Huxley, when he was pure flesh and blood, would have been delighted to know that he could be brought back with a fragment of his intellect and memory, as well as his tweed clothing and ragged boots.’

Suddenly the old man shrank into himself again. The moment of resurrection was gone. Whatever sustained him, whatever sentience, whether inside him or acting from around him, was maintaining this mythago form of the scientist; it was not powerful enough to hold him in full life.

He was speaking words that Jack could hardly hear.

‘Mythagos . . . weaken at the edge. Whatever draws them there . . . once they are there, they are trapped. Insects in a web. The world sucks them dry. They become brittle. Fragile. They dissolve back into earth. True power for this form of creature lies at the heart of the wood. Lies where it begins. The place I have heard called Lavon d’yss.’

Jack sat down on the floor, as close to his grandfather as he felt he could. Huxley peered down at him through watery eyes. ‘I think I’ll sleep for a while. Where do you sleep?’

‘Over there,’ Jack indicated his bedroll and furs. ‘Sleep there if you want. It’s not as comfortable as the bed upstairs, but far less damp and rank.’

Huxley shuffled out of his chair and walked to the corner, kneeling down, then lying down, curling up on his left side, knees drawn up. A bony hand reached for a fur and tugged it over his legs.

He became very quiet.

Jack watched him for a while, and then must have dozed off. He was awoken abruptly by the pressure of a spear-point in his chest, and in the darkness was aware that Huxley was standing over him, weapon in hand, growling, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’

Acting by instinct, Jack slapped the shaft aside, struggled to his feet, only to be pushed down by his grandfather whose strength seemed to have returned tenfold.

‘Where is he?’ the frail, rank spectre insisted, holding Jack’s neck, face so close to Jack’s again that he could smell the forest.

‘Who?’

‘Christian! Christian! Where is he? Tell me now!’

‘My father’s brother?’

‘The killer. The killer. He took her from me. He took the beauty from the wildwood. He took my dream. He killed her. He killed her. Where is he? Where is he?’

‘George . . . let go. Go softly. I’m Jack. Steven’s son. I don’t know where Christian is. My father thinks he’s dead.’

A lie! But it seemed appropriate.

‘Go gently, grandfather. Grandad. George. Gently. I’m half mythago. As fragile as you.’

Though his grandfather didn’t feel so fragile at that moment.

Gradually Huxley quietened down, kneeling back, staring at the spear from the cabinet, then casting it aside.

‘I was dreaming. A rage dream.’

‘We all have them.’ Jack sat up and embraced the old man. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘It’s the middle of nothing,’ was the bleak reply.

‘A friend of mine called Julie has given me a herb called tea, which tastes sharp and bitter when boiled in water, but is what another friend of mine, from where I was born, would call “the welcome taste of strangeness”. Would you like to try some?’

‘No!’

Huxley began to ramble, suddenly wild-eyed again, em phasising certain words and phrases as if rehearsing them. ‘When the pre-mythago begins to form it is first glimpsed at the edge of vision: a flitting shadow, a shape, a flash of colour. As for the other senses, a fleeting odour, of sweat or sex, or a swift breath, a whispered nothing, an elemental touch to the cheek, or hand, a brush stroke of contact. This indicates that the sentience that abides within this primordial stand of wildwood is beginning to engage with the manifested forms of the archetypes accumulated in the human mind over many hundreds of thousands of years! Whatever governs this primary mythago-genesis—’

‘Huxley!’

Jack stopped the old man in his incoherent flow, and George Huxley glanced up sharply, almost angry in the dim light. ‘Go gently,’ his grandson urged. ‘You’ll break a twig.’

‘Too many broken already,’ was Huxley’s rather gloomy reply, and Jack laughed quietly, though at something he remembered from home, from his growing up, not at the old man’s grim demeanour.

‘Yes. Yes indeed.’

It was dawn. A thin light began to illuminate the study and Huxley’s hunched, sad shape. Jack lay on his side, head in hand, watching the man who had haunted his childhood, and who had been one of the reasons for his longing to find Oak Lodge, and the world of science.

Distantly, there was the sound of two sharp ‘cracks’, short pulses in the air that made the Haunter side of Jack start with shock. Huxley sat bolt upright, then glanced to the window.

‘What was that?’ Jack asked.

‘Gunshots.’

For a moment Jack was too confused to think. Then he scrambled to his feet, pulled on his boots and raced to the outside world.

‘Stay there!’ he called back. ‘Don’t go away. Please!’

The dawn air was fresh. The dew lay heavy on the fields, glistening as the light began to strengthen.

Which way? Which way?

Instinctively he ran towards the brook, brushing the tiredness from his eyes as he skidded on the wet grass. When he came in sight of the stream he saw the solitary figure of a man standing there, legs braced apart, shotgun hanging limply in one hand, wide-brimmed hat drawn down over his face.

When Caylen Reeve looked up, his eyes were bright with tears, his mouth set thin. ‘I failed,’ he said as Jack walked up to him. ‘I failed in my task.’

Jack looked down at what was sprawled on the bank of the stream.

Blasted twice through the chest was a creature of hideous shape and appearance, its mouth stretched open in agony, its eyes sunken, its tongue protruding, its long bony fingers clawing at the wounds in its shallow frame. There was no blood in evidence, just gaping holes where the shot had ripped it open.

‘A changeling?’

‘Mature form,’ Caylen said, agreeing. ‘I hadn’t expected that. Infants are their normal prey.’ He looked grim. ‘They leave wood dolls behind and if they’re allowed to the dolls grow and take on a human feel. I was warning against infants. I chased this one all the way from the village. But I’m afraid the Iaelven have got what they came for. I can’t sense them now. They’ve run deep, looking for the way back to their hill.’

The dying changeling began to ooze glistening sap from its mouth. It shuddered and keened.

Caylen Reeve drew a machete from behind his back and with a single brutal stroke he cut off the eerie sound.

The not-reverend regarded the corpse with sadness, then glanced at Jack. ‘I don’t know what you expected to find when you found the open world, but I don’t imagine it was this.’

Jack sighed and shook his head. ‘I expected something magical. Something peaceful. Castles, cathedrals, seashores. A child’s dream, I suppose. But I don’t regret the journey.’

‘Good luck,’ said the churchman. ‘I hope your dream gets you home. As for me, I’d better go and see if anything is lost . . .’

He dropped his gun, reached down and picked up the creature by hair and heel, dragging its remains into the trees.

As Jack walked back to Oak Lodge, Caylen made his way back to Shadoxhurst. At the top of the ridge the man turned and waved. Jack had been watching him, and he raised his hand. The change-hunter disappeared over the horizon.

‘George? Grandfather?’

Jack walked into the study, only to find it deserted. He searched the house quickly. The man had gone. The exercise book was on the desk, however, and Jack flipped it open. Huxley had left a last entry, its writing testifying to his sudden decay.

Many paths lead into Lavon d’yss, but they twist and turn with time. Yssobel followed shadow of the stone where her mother died. She found the Crossing Over place by a bold act. Treacherous act.

J is image of my son. More of the man than wild. Sentience of the man and sentience of the old wood.

what power in combination to bring me alive, ghost from ghost.

and with half remembered life. Knowledge of work on first discovery of mystery of old wood, and same passion to understand secrets of this strange place.

are there other Huxleys? Do they think same thoughts? Regeneration beyond understanding. But incomplete. Life force not strong fading

rotting faster than usual degrading of myth form if only could see Isabel image of mother—

It was here that the scrawl finished. Jack had great difficulty reading it, though Haunter helped intuitively. The last few words were almost childlike, exaggerated in shape, as if Huxley had been summoning every last ounce of strength to force through the thoughts.

He knew, perhaps, that he was being drawn by a much greater force than he could control, back into the shadow of Ryhope Wood, to be absorbed and finished.

Jack went to the rear garden. He called a couple of times, but was not surprised when he received no answer. He felt oddly forlorn. The encounter, for him, had been intense: he had touched the past; and perhaps he had learned a little about what had happened to his sister.

Returning to the study, he read again everything that his grandfather had written, then carefully folded the notebook into his leather sack, packing it along with the copy of The Time Machine and the little chess set.

Suddenly his name was called. It was Julie’s voice. He went to the front of the house. She and Caylen were running towards him. He waited for them to come to the wall. Julie was looking frightened and desperate. ‘You have to go,’ she said, as she caught her breath.

‘I’d advise it,’ Caylen added, looking at the house. ‘They’ll strip this place. And if they take you too, you’ll die for reasons you know too well.’

Jack was confused, shaking his head. Caylen went on, ‘There’s a boy missing from the town.’

His expression, a direct look at Jack, indicated that the reason should not be revealed to the townswoman.

Julie said, ‘It’s the Hawkings’ boy. Eddie’s friend. The police are in the town, asking questions, and they’ll come here as soon as they hear about you. And everybody is talking about you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

With a last sad glance, Julie turned and half ran, half walked back towards the road.

Jack watched her go, then caught the look in the churchman’s forlorn gaze. ‘I haven’t taken the boy. Why should they suspect me?’

‘Welcome to the edge of the world,’ Caylen said grimly. ‘You must go, Jack.’

‘That was my intention. I have half of what I came for. There is nothing left for me here now. But I had nothing to do with the boy’s taking.’

‘I know that. They don’t. Come on!’

They walked swiftly along the edge of Ryhope Wood to the stream. Caylen followed Jack beyond the edge, and responded as did Jack to the sudden pull and tug of the interior. At once Jack’s human side felt disorientated, but the Haunter side emerged and focused through the distortion of space. The first thing they encountered was the gruesomely slaughtered carcass of a horse, no doubt stolen from a nearby field.

The Amurngoth had slaughtered the beast and stripped away most of the flesh. They had taken the head, no doubt as a trophy or to hang in the Iaelven caves. The kill was too recent to be rotting. Jack drew his knife and cut strips of flesh for himself, finding a thin branch, sharpening it and threading the strips so they would dry.

There was a murmur of human noise some way away, but he was safe here.

Then Caylen said, ‘If you hurry you can travel behind them. They know the short cuts through the earth, the openings, the under-realm, and they close some distance behind the band.’

‘It depends on where they’re going.’

‘With their new Change? They’ll be going close to the heart, to one of their hills. And if they had followed you here, as you think they did - then the hill must be close to your home.’

Jack stared at the other man, the full Haunter, and shook his head. ‘You amaze me. What it must be like to live your life I can’t imagine.’

Caylen Reeve smiled thinly. ‘Strange. And strangely wonderful. I live in a kind of hinterland. There are times that I want to go back into the wood and just quietly die. But where do I die? Where do I belong? And sometimes I dream of pushing further from the edge. But if I become unstable, then I’ll die in a different way. That I know! So I stay here, comfortable and happy. Except for today. Today I failed.’

‘For the first time.’

Caylen shook his head. ‘For the first time? No. But for the first time in a long time.’

They made their farewells again. Whatever the fate of Oak Lodge, Jack would never know about it. He walked along the bank of the stream, slipping down into the water, crossing the natural stone bridge where the stream suddenly became a river and the greenwood began to swallow the light for a while.

Haunter whispered: I sense them. Sit back. Don’t try so hard. I’ll take us on their trail. Concentrate on Yssobel and what Huxley said about her.

And the entity that was Jack relaxed into its wildwood side, thinking:

She followed the shadow of the king’s stone . . .

Under-Realm

The Amurngoth were slow travellers. But Caylen Reeve had been right to urge Jack to follow as soon as possible. As they moved, the forest widened slowly ahead of them. When they approached a sheer cliff it became the ghost of a cliff. Along a river, the very air itself seemed to open like a cat’s eye.

Their traces were obvious, those of their ‘stolen’ more so, since Iaelven left a different spoor to humans’. Jack followed them fast. They left a stink behind them that was unmistakable, so he was confident of being on the right trail. They had taken the stream to where it became the river, walked along one side, crossed over, then settled for a while. This was the place where he had hidden his boat. They had found it, inspected it, and clearly rejected it as useless.

They didn’t need the river. They had the Iaelven trails.

But that pause in their passage inwards allowed Haunter to catch up, running Jack like cloud shadow, weaving through the wood, through the rocks, through the tangled masses of briar that seemed to flourish towards the edge, almost as a defence.

They had entered a stone gorge, leading inwards though not downwards. He could see the sides beginning to contract, shaping back to normal form. As he ran, stumbling on the rocks and clutching at his two leather packs, he was almost sucked in as the space closed behind him.

This was a very different channel, darker, colder, and it echoed: he could hear the whistling, clicking language of the Iaelven ahead of him, and the muffled but angry objection of a boy.

In this dank defile Jack’s breathing became laboured. Twice he stumbled and the sound of displaced stones seemed to echo for ever. Ahead of him, the movement of the Iaelven was uninterrupted.

Stop trying so hard, Haunter urged him. Look straight ahead. What do you see?

Jack stared into the gloom. Then, at the edge of vision, shapes began to form, some human, some animal, some seeming to peer at him, others running past. He had experienced this before.

That world is always there. Remember what your father told you? That at the edge of vision we can glimpse the early forms of mythagos.

I’ve seen them before, but never so clearly.

That’s because I am seeing them for you. This is one of those places where the generation of the mythago is strong. Your mind is in a turmoil of generation. Let it do its business in the wood, and let your body relax. Let me take us on the trail, silently.

I need to be aware.

You ARE aware. I am you. I just know the trails better.

I reached the edge. I managed to see the Lodge.

With a lot of help from me. If you had tried the journey without me, it would have taken you years. I knew the way.

I know you did.

Persuading you to give way to the haunter is very hard.

I’ll give way now.

Good. And now we have the chance of a very swift return. This Iaelven band smells familiar. They will lead us home. Let go, let Haunter have the limbs. Sleep, dream, create. I’ll feed you as we travel.

He passed through trees, through hills, the world twisted around him, and he turned giddily as the whole landscape stretched and warped.

He ran from grassy slope to underground passage, with a raging torrent of water carrying him in the dark, until suddenly ahead:

The dark shapes of the Iaelven, doggedly walking their trail, the small boy walking in the middle of them, a pack on his back, a staff in his hand, his head turning this way and that as he took in the strangeness that surrounded him.

Haunter roused Jack. They were in a vast cavern. Sound echoed and echoed again. The walls were patched with phosphorescence. A river ran through the centre, but there were stone banks on each side, and the Amurngoth had built a fire in the distance and were crouching at the edge of the icy water itself. The sound of their talk was shrill and unpleasant. The boy was sitting under the guard of a small Iaelven. He was wrapped in a leaf cloak. One of the Amurngoth was washing his clothes.

Where is this?

A crossing place, Haunter said. They are waiting for another clan. They are close.

Jack watched from hiding as a strange act of care occurred. Spears were joined at the point to make a rack, and the boy’s wet clothing was hung there to dry. Two of the Iaelven went to the bulging water-scoured walls and scratched marks, using dark stone knives. The whistling and clicking was constant, a persistent chatter which suddenly stopped.

A second band of Amurngoth emerged from what Jack had thought to be a shadow on the rock wall, but was most likely the exit from a separate cave system.

These were more colourful and taller. The two bands spread out cautiously across the sloping bank of the underground river, and sat down, facing each other on either side of the boy.

An argument occurred. Much slapping of the cold rock. Much shaking back of the long hair. Several times small stones were scattered angrily between the two groups, one or other of the two sides reaching to a pouch to grab a handful of the pebbles and throw them.

After a while there was silence. The new band stood and stalked, without referring to the others, across the icy water and disappeared into a cleft in the rock again.

The boy crowed with laughter. Whatever he understood of the situation, he had at least comprehended that something had failed for his captors, an exchange perhaps, a trade. The wet clothes were taken down and flung at the lad.

He pulled them on without demur. The band rose and gathered their weapons and sacks, and were soon lost at the far end of the cavern.

They are stuck with him, Haunter laughed. I think we should stick with them.

I agree.

Later, they were walking through sun-dappled woodland. The Iaelven seemed almost to fly as they passed through this place, moving so fast that Haunter was breathless. The guardians of the boy lifted him and lowered him, like two parents with their child. Their progress was so fleet that at times Jack/ Haunter found himself in silence, aware of nothing but shadow and sun through the canopy, streaks of light and silence.

Then a whistling cry would alert him to the direction they had taken. Soon he could smell them again, and soon they were descending, but not before Jack had seen the state of his body, his limbs obvious to his inspection, his face reflected back when he stooped to drink from a shallow pool of water.

His hands were brown, the bones gnarled, his skin so translucent that he could see the network of thin veins deep in his flesh. When he touched his face he felt no flesh at all, just carved wood, dry-lipped and stark.

I’m a corpse! I’m drying out!

A corpse in good hands, Haunter reassured him. Give me control. You are in good hands. Now get back to dreaming. Create! Bring life to the wood. You, the human. We are going deep again, and this will be difficult. But I think the journey is almost over . . .

He slept and he dreamt, and in his dream he saw the king’s stone, though it cast no shadow. He had an idea, now, of where his sister had gone. But he had been gone a long time from the villa. In his dream he began to question whether he had done the right thing, forging his way to the edge of the wood; on a whim; with the idea that he could summon the spirit of his grandfather, and in doing so ‘read’ the memories of the man, in the hope that the old man would have found stories to do with Yssobel.

You were right, Haunter whispered through his dream. Your intuition was right. How we go from here, I don’t know. Stay sleeping. We’re almost at the cavern. These Iaelven are even more familiar to me now.

When Jack woke next it was with a start, an unvoiced cry of fear.

The Amurngoth’s face was close to his, long fingers gripping his shoulder, foul breath dizzying and vile as he became more aware and focused.

The cat’s eyes were wide. Jack became aware that he was in a rock-walled hall, from which hung bones, skulls and shapes fashioned out of wood. And as he looked harder, he saw the petrified forms of both Amurngoth and human. There was a dull glow in the place, and the echoing of movement and voices, the familiar song of the Iaelven.

This was the trophy hall.

Almost out. The stone figures are dead heroes from the Iaelven wars. I can hear their whispered memories.

The haunter side of Jack had withdrawn when this Amurngoth had approached, though not completely. Its whisper came to him: Female.

Another Amurngoth passed behind the female, glancing down. There was the smell of fresh winter air. The creature that held him offered him a carved bowl of pungent fluid, and he realised it was water. Jack sipped it reluctantly, though the taint was of nothing more than moss. When he had drunk a little, she cast the bowl aside and as if by magic produced the polished iron elf-shot that Jack had been carrying. She looked at it carefully before casting it aside too. Transfixed by the fierce eyes of the Iaelven female, Jack was only vaguely aware that his leather packs were still beside him, opened but not ransacked.

Knew we were following.

No danger. Stay calm.

The Amurngoth rose to her feet and pointed back into the hall. Jack felt weak as he struggled to stand, and was still shocked at the skeletal nature of his body. He was aware also that his beard and hair were long and matted, coarse with sweat and mud, and stinking powerfully.

In the distance he heard a boy’s wailing cry. It broke down not into sobs but into growls of rage. A fighting spirit.

The female Amurngoth never let her gaze shift from Jack’s, but she was watching him restlessly.

‘Let the boy go . . .’ he started to say, and at once her hand clutched at his throat, the long fingers finding pressure points and causing him pain. The hold did not relax, but again he managed to gasp:

‘Just let him go back. He doesn’t belong here. What good can he bring you? He’s unhappy . . .’

A series of clicks in his face, accompanied by a fetid stench, seemed to signify that he should be quiet.

Haunter, distantly, unnecessarily, whispered: She says no.

The Amurngoth picked up the water bowl and squeezed liquid from a sack that she carried. The sludge was dull red, and smelled of fruit. She offered this to Jack but he turned his face away. Placing the bowl down beside him, the female rose and departed, but as she did so she revealed to Jack’s view a slim and silver woman, a pale gleam in the trophy hall. She was as thin as a willow, and it was only the grey of her hair and the pallor of her face that made her seem silver. Her dress was grey as well, although it picked up the phosphorescence of the cavern. Her eyes were green and seemed not to see. They were blind eyes, blinded by time and sorrow. They saw Jack, but from a soul that had long since become weary. And yet she was lovely.

She stood above him for a moment before slowly kneeling and taking his hand in hers.

‘You saw me once,’ she said. ‘There was a fire in the field behind your home. You were young. The change-hunters let me out into the air and I saw you. Did you see me?’

Jack struggled to find memory in this hall of chaos. He scoured his childhood dreams. He couldn’t remember.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer him. Cocking her head, she touched his cheek with a slender finger; ephemeral and sad.

‘Jack, you are at the edge of your world again.’

‘You know my name?’

‘I know your name. I watched you play, I watched you grow. You are home now, a field away, a wall away; your villa is there, beyond this hill. You must not try to save the boy. The Iaelven have a task for him.’

He stared at her, confused. ‘Who are you? Do you have a name?’

‘Nothing, no one of importance,’ she said dreamily. ‘I was taken as a small child, and sometimes I think my name in the old world was Deirdra, though perhaps that is just a wish. Here, they refer to me as Silver.’

‘You’re a Change. That much is clear.’

‘Yes. Like the boy you followed, but older. Much, much older.’

She didn’t look old at all. Jack was again struck by her elfin beauty. ‘Why did they steal you?’

She smiled, leaning back on her haunches. ‘For a task that I refused. They brought me here, yes, a Change in swaddling: to be a bride.’ She laughed quietly; leaning forward, she whispered, ‘To go willingly is one thing. The Iaelven do not understand resistance.’

Again she sat back, moonglow in frail body, ancient beauty sustained by the under-realm.

She sighed. ‘I know what is going through your mind.’

‘That you should escape?’

‘That I should escape,’ she echoed. ‘But my time is gone. I am now in limbo. I age very slowly. And your son, if he fights, will be in limbo too. You should go back into the fresh air, Jack. The Iaelven have been tolerant of you. That tolerance is a rare gift.’

His son? She meant the Hawkings’ boy.

‘What do they want with him?’

Silver shook her head. ‘Nothing until he’s grown. The Iaelven travel the under-realms and sometimes they need the strength of men like you, like the boy. Human strength. If they’ve taken your son . . .’

‘He’s not my son.’

She seemed surprised. ‘If they’ve taken the nameless boy it’s because they have lost one of his kind. There is nothing you can do for him, Jack.’

‘And for you?’

‘Nothing,’ she repeated, with a shake of her head. ‘I am the ghost bride. I denied the Iaelven warrior who fetched me. I wax and wane with the moon now, but they will never let me die. Go on, Jack. Go home.’

She rose, serene and gentle, translucent. Turning from him she walked away, but her left arm stretched back, the pale hand reaching for him, and he stood and took that cold hand. She walked him through the trophy hall.

Echoing distantly, he heard the sound of a boy’s voice, still angry, defiant.

Fight, he thought. Fight for your life.

The trophy hall narrowed and became no more than a ferny and dank crevice in the hill. Silver stepped aside and pushed Jack forward. He caught the last glance in her eyes, the last sallow smile, the subtle movement of her lips as she whispered goodbye.

Then he stepped out of the hill and onto the open land. It was icily cold, and in the dead of night. The field that stretched away from him, down towards the villa, was frosted. The villa was a dark sprawl of buildings with bright torches along its outer walls. There was a sense of desertion about the place. The moon was crescent. The surrounding hills were dark in the gloom, though against the pale night cloud the valleys that led away from here could be seen as cuts in the ridge.

A man was standing in the middle of the field, holding a guttering torch. He was leaning forward, peering hard at the hill, at the cleft in the hill where it opened below the tree line.

Silver gave Jack the lightest of pushes with her finger. He glanced back to acknowledge her as she withdrew into her own darkness. Then he stepped out into the frosting night and called for his father.

Steven Huxley dropped the torch and bowed his head, and Jack went down to greet him.

‘I’m home,’ he called. ‘I’m home! And I know where Yssobel has gone.’

PART • TWO

The Villa

The Valley

At dawn on the day of her fifth birthday, Steven took Yssobel to see the valley through which her mother had returned, several years ago, after her time in Lavondyss, the land beyond time, the place of healing. Yssobel was a strong and robust child. Steven had hoisted her onto his shoulders for the walk, and she gripped his hair with small fists of iron. Her legs, clamped around his neck, threatened to strangle him.

‘Easy, girl. Easy. My neck’s not as young as it used to be.’

Yssobel was excited by the dawn treat, although as yet she had no idea of why she was being taken to see the valley known as imarn uklyss. All she knew was that imarn uklyss meant ‘where the girl came back through the fire’.

The air was fresh, the light stark and clear.

‘The valley! The valley!’ she chorused as her father walked her through the enclosures, towards the tall gate that separated their homestead from the wild. And though she shouted the words in English, she also called them out in other languages.

Aged five, Yssobel could already speak in tongues, and her favourite was the language of her mother Guiwenneth, which had a ring to it and which could be used effectively in arguments with her older brother Jack because of its rich content of abusive expression.

The valley opened before them, forested on both sides, wide, with the silver gleam of three rivers that seemed to flow from nowhere, disappearing into the distance to where the valley narrowed. There it curved away to the right, taking its secrets with it, to begin its dangerous course towards Lavondyss itself.

But here, beside a stream, in the overhang of willows, sitting on the smoothed grey edges of rocks, Steven let his daughter down to survey the passageway through which her mother had returned. There were no creatures to be seen this morning, other than birds: a flock of starlings, the usual crows, and a solitary eagle circling in morose fashion, as if half asleep.

Yssobel stared into the valley. The sharp breeze caught her auburn hair and she brushed at it; but her green eyes searched only for the unknown. Her feet kicked at the rock, her hands clutched the cold stone; curiosity made her pale face glow.

Steven watched her for a while.

How like Guiwenneth. That half of you that is Guiwenneth. The wildwood half.

It was not the same with seven-year-old Jack. The boy, tall and edgy for his age, was human in all respects; or if not, then the wildwood had not yet exerted its force upon him.

This was not Jack’s day. This was Yssobel’s.

The sky brightened, the valley shed its gloom. Slowly.

‘That eagle’s seen its prey,’ the girl announced suddenly, just as Steven was about to speak.

‘How do you know?’

‘The gleam in its eye. It flashes with the sun. It’s cocked its head three times now, in the same circle. Breakfast is on the ground. The eagle is pretending not to know.’

‘You can see that from here?’

Yssobel laughed and looked up at her father. ‘Can’t you?’

When he looked back, the eagle had disappeared, only to reappear a moment later, rising with speed, legs dangling, wings beating, its prey hanging limply in its talons.

‘Sometimes,’ Steven said, ‘I believe you know this world better than I do. And I’ve lived here for twenty years.’

‘I dream that I’ve lived here for ages,’ the girl said quietly, then kicked the stone seat again with her heels and said in a sing-song voice: ‘The valley. The valley. Tell me. Tell me.’

‘Have you heard of the giant known as Mogoch?’ Steven asked. The girl frowned, then said brightly, ‘Yes. From Jack. He used his tooth to mark a great man’s grave.’

‘It is a big tooth,’ her father agreed. ‘And it marks the grave of Peredur. And do you know who Peredur is?’

‘An eagle!’

‘He transformed into an eagle, certainly. But he was a great king. And . . . and . . .’ The two of them exchanged a stare.

‘And?’ Yssobel prompted.

‘He was your grandfather.’

‘My grandfather was an eagle?’ The girl looked delighted.

‘More than that. Much more than that. But about the valley: this is the short and simple story: ‘At that time, in the life of this people, Mogoch the giant was set a task by the Fates and walked north for a hundred days without resting. This brought him to the furthest limit of the known world, facing the gate of fire that guarded Lavondyss.

‘At the top of the valley was a stone, ten times the height of a man. Mogoch rested his left foot on the stone and wondered for what reason the fates had brought him this far from his tribal territory, to the edge of the Unknown Region.’

‘What’s the Unknown Region?’

‘It’s what I call Lavondyss. Now be quiet and listen . . .

‘A voice hailed him. “Take your foot from the stone.”

‘Mogoch looked about him, looked down, and saw a hunter, standing on a cairn of rocks, staring up.

‘ “I shall not,” said Mogoch.

‘ “Take your foot from the stone,” shouted the hunter. “A brave man is buried there.” ’

‘Peredur! Peredur!’

‘Yes, Yssi. Peredur. Now be quiet.’

‘ “A brave man is buried there.”

‘ “I know,” said Mogoch, not moving his foot. “I buried him myself. I placed the stone on his body with my own hands. I found the stone in my mouth. Look!” And Mogoch grinned, showing the hunter the great gap in his teeth where he had found the brave man’s marker.

‘ “Well, then,” said the hunter. “I suppose that’s all right.”

‘ “Thank you,” said Mogoch, glad that he would not have to fight the man—’

‘He would have won - the hunter would have won!’

‘Yssi! Quiet! I’m trying to tell you the story.’

She jumped up and down on the rock, her face beaming, hair swirling.

‘ “And what great deed brings you to the borders of Lavondyss?”

‘ “I’m waiting for someone,” the hunter said. “Someone of importance to me.”

‘ “Well,” said Mogoch after a moment, staring down at the hunter. “I hope they’ll be by shortly.”

‘ “I’m sure she will,” the hunter said, and turned from the giant.

‘Mogoch used an oak tree to scratch his back—’

‘An oak tree ? He should have used a pine!’

‘Quiet!’

‘—then killed and ate a deer for his supper, wondering why he had been summoned to this place.

‘Eventually he left, but named the valley ritha muireog, which in his own language meant: “where the hunter waits”.

‘Later, however, the valley was called imarn uklyss, which means: “where the girl came back through the fire”.’

For a short while after he had finished recounting this tale, Steven was silent, his gaze on the steep-sided valley, his mind detached from the purpose of this visit to the place where he had finally settled.

It was not a dream that had drawn him in, nor even a memory; it was an uncertainty. He could remember the long journey through the valley, from the place of fire, from the stone, to this quiet place where he had waited. He could remember the horrors and the struggle against the unseen and unknown presences that inhabited this land, sufficiently so to feel an echo of that terrible time.

But he could also remember the joy and delight, the hope and calm that rose in him when, sitting on this very rock, he had seen a shadow become a shade; and a shade become a form; and the form shape itself into the a woman he had known.

The woman had stepped out of the valley and come to him. And her wounds had healed, though she was bedraggled and scratched by a journey that had taken her through her own hell and hardship.

But the blood and bruising on her body had not mattered, only the smile and glow of relief when she had seen him.

‘I’ve found you,’ she said.

‘Yes. I knew you’d come.’

Steven remembered how she flowed into his embrace, all strength gone, letting his own strength hold her. She seemed so small. So light. Her fingers sought his hands, clutched them hard. Her breathing became calm. Her hair was matted with time and travel, with forest and river. It was a mat of copper, long, unkempt, smelling strongly of toil.

‘The return was very difficult,’ she whispered. ‘The return was very difficult. I hope I’m safe now.’

He remembered how he had held her, pressing his face against hers, opening her mouth with his, welcoming her with all of his body and clutching her to him, not letting her go, tasting and remembering everything about her.

And when she started to cry he picked her up and carried her home.

And when she slept, he sat by her and listened to the words she spoke in her dreams, the same words, over and over.

‘The return was very hard. I hope I’m safe now.’

A small foot gently kicked Steven on the shoulder. The valley cleared in his mind’s eye and became the steep-sided shadowy pass that he had brought his daughter to see.

Yssobel was standing on the rock, looking down. The breeze was catching the tassels on her fur leggings. Her hair, red like fire in this strange light, was flapping over her face. The look in her eyes was questioning, not alarmed. ‘Where were you?’

‘Dreaming,’ Steven replied.

The girl looked down the valley.

‘I liked the story. I’d heard some of it from Jack.’

‘You told me.’ Steven had taken his son through the same ritual two years before.

Yssobel stretched out her arms in front of her, fingers pointing before she turned her palms so that they seemed to embrace what she was seeing. A moment later she let her arms drop.

‘The girl who came back through the flames was my mother.’

‘Guiwenneth. Yes.’

‘But who was the hunter? Who was waiting?’

‘Who do you think?’

‘Jack didn’t tell me. But it’s obvious. It was you.’

‘Me. Of course.’

Yssobel shivered. She was still standing and Steven could see that she seemed uncomfortable. So small a girl, so much expression in her face. He asked, ‘What is it?’

‘I was just thinking. I was thinking about how long you waited.’ She looked down, meeting his gaze. ‘How long did you wait, daddy?’

The innocent question was like a blow to his head and heart. ‘If I knew the answer to that, my darling, I’d have been able to move away from this place. I waited a long time. But I don’t know how long. All I know is that I waited too long. By the time Guiwenneth came back, I was too much a part of the valley. I can never go home.’

Yssobel frowned. ‘But you are home. This is your home.’

Realising that he had made a mistake, Steven stood and gathered the girl into his arms. ‘Yes, of course. This is very much my home. But we’ve talked about my childhood and you know I had a home a long way from here. At the edge of the wood. That’s all I meant. I can’t go back to the old place. I’m happy here.’

‘Do you want to go back?’

‘I’m happy here, sweetheart. With you and Jack and Gwin. This is my life. This is my world.’

The girl stared at him long and hard, still frowning. Then she shook her head and took her father’s face in her hands. What she said next shocked him.

‘But you’re not. You’re not happy.’

‘Why do you say that?’

She looked sad now. ‘I don’t know. I think it might be because ... because ...’

‘Tell me.’

‘Because . . . you wonder what will happen when we’re grown up. Where do we go? When will we go? We can’t stay here for ever.’

No, darling. We can’t. My God, you understand my fear more than I understand it myself.

Steven said, ‘Let me put it another way. I’m happy with you. I can’t think of a greater happiness than to have my family with me as I get old and creaky—’

‘And can’t hunt like you did!’

‘And can’t hunt like I used to hunt—’

‘Can’t throw your spear and hit anything other than a rock!’

‘I most certainly can.’

‘Can’t shoot straight; always putting funny smelly infusions on your shoulder to ease the pain.’

‘The pain is called arthritis, and if you keep reminding me of my infirmities I’ll wish a touch of it on your tongue!’

‘Can’t even wrestle the calf down to the ground.’

‘But Jack can. And do I not make excellent vegetable juice and bread? And do I not tell you great stories? About the people who live all around us, and who sometimes we can see? And a few of whom you’ve even met?’

The girl nodded enthusiastically. ‘I like your stories. I like Odysseus best of all. He makes me laugh. I wish he wasn’t so lost.’

‘Be careful of Odysseus.’

‘He’s lonely, though he has a lot of visitors and they talk for hours. He’s learning all the time.’

‘Be careful of him. I don’t like you riding off to visit his cave.’

‘I know, I know. He’s a trickster. But he makes me laugh.’

‘Your mother and I think he’s dangerous. And he’s older than you.’

‘Two years? He’s Jack’s age, daddy.’

‘Even so . . .’

This was not the time to readdress his concerns about his daughter’s meanderings, her acquaintance with the people who had gathered at this end of the valley, this stopping place for the spirits who had crossed back from Lavondyss. It was time to go back to the villa.

‘Come on.’

Steven reached up his hand to help Yssobel down from the rock where she was standing, but again she stared into the valley. And was looking puzzled.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘You weren’t the hunter,’ she whispered. ‘You weren’t the one who was waiting.’

Something about her demeanour, perhaps the way she was trembling, arms limp by her sides, alarmed Steven and he found himself unable to move. ‘What do you mean? I waited for Guiwenneth and after a long time she came back, and here we are.’

‘You can’t have been the hunter,’ the girl said softly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s still there. The hunter is still there. Still waiting. I can see him. He’s only a shadow, but I can see him. The hunter is there. He’s sad, he’s confused, and he’s calling to me.’

The girl’s hands were icy cold. Steven reached for her and after a moment she allowed him to take her down from the rock.

‘There’s no one there now. No one who should concern you. This is just . . .’

Just what? Dream? Fantasy? Imagination?

Before he could find a way to express his thoughts, Yssobel said, ‘I’m not imagining things.’

‘Sweetheart: in the world in which we live, imagination is everything. Of course you’re not imagining things. What you see is what you’ve made. With this . . .’ Steven tapped her head. ‘The hunter in the valley is not me. I’m here. It’s you. Do you understand me? Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Yssobel hugged her father. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. There is no such thing as a dream. A dream becomes life. You’ve told me this.’

‘Good girl. Five years old, going on twenty. Good girl. Now tell me: the hunter you can see, if indeed he is a hunter. The hunter in the valley. Does he have a name?’

Yssobel was silent, shivering. Suddenly she became strong again, pulling herself away from her father’s embrace. She was small and stout, strong and sturdy, and she walked away from Steven, towards the twin pillars that seemed to mark the entrance to the valley.

‘His name is resurrection. He is held together by his scars. And he needs to be healed of his wounds.’

Was this Yssobel speaking?

‘There’s no such name as “resurrection”.’

The girl was silent. She looked suddenly sad. ‘It’s not his real name. Anyway, he’s gone now.’

She came back to her father and took his hand, leading him away from the valley. They walked along the track that led to the villa, and Jack was waiting for them at the gates. The tall, thin boy looked anxious.

‘Gwin’s gone,’ he said. He always called his mother by her name. ‘She got upset by something.’

‘What do you mean, “gone”?’

‘She took the grey and a packhorse and rode through the east gate. I think she’s gone up to the old stone Dun, her father’s fort. But I’m not sure. She took Hurthig with her.’

Hurthig was a mute young man, a Saxon, strong from working the villa’s forge, with a good protective arm.

Steven was stunned for a moment. The boy had watery eyes. Whatever had happened, it had been upsetting for him.

Behind Jack, Rianna appeared, walking across the courtyard from the villa itself. She was one of several older women who came to the villa occasionally, and who were trusted to look after the children. She had come, with others, from Dun Peredur, the fort of Guiwenneth’s birth, and now a haunted place a half-day’s ride away. They lived most of the time in shelters along the edge of the river that flowed into the valley, but over-wintered in the greater company of this old Roman ruin.

‘I was at the river, listening to the water,’ she said. ‘Guiwen neth came to find me before she left. Jack is right: she is very disturbed.’

‘Did she say anything?’

‘Nothing.’

Yssobel whispered: ‘Is mummy upset?’ She held her father’s hand tightly.

‘I think so.’

She hesitated, frowning slightly, but only for a moment. ‘Is it . . . is it because of that man in the valley?’

Steven looked down at his daughter. She was strangely bright-eyed and brightly curious. ‘I don’t know, Yssi. I’ll have to find out.’

The Villa

Steven had discovered the ruined villa in the fifth year of his wait for Guiwenneth; five years, that was, as far as he could estimate. The valley itself was a dangerous place. He had had no horse. It took him many days to make the journey from one end to the other, and he was constantly aware that other beings were walking the same tracks: some shadowy, real and curious of him; others ephemeral, often giving themselves away only by their movements through the woods, or the disturbance of the river.

As he wound his way through the wide pass, he often saw boats or small colourful barges, floating down towards the stone. They were eerily silent as they passed, and as still as death, though sometimes a face would appear from beneath a cowl and stare at him forlornly.

He had always found some form of shelter, and manageable hunting, fruit orchards and wild crops, and the makings of fire.

He was not unaware that what he encountered was surfacing from his own memory. He tried to suppress the darker thoughts he carried. To think of romantic stone castles and armoured knights was to think of war. The brightest notion he carried was of a Roman villa, terracotta tiles, whitewashed walls, colourful mosaic floors in every room, a place packed with animals and laughing children; and with stores of grain and wine.

Some forgotten part of legend embraced such a farmstead, and one day he had discovered that it had formed there, at the top of the valley - though not exactly as he had expected it.

The outer gates were broken and rotten, the courtyard cracked and weed-infested. The villa itself was in disrepair. Most of the roof tiles had slipped and were broken, the mosaic floors of the ten rooms grown through with roots or scrubby trees. The two gardens, at the side and the back, were growing wild, though the trees were mostly fruit trees, untended, knotty with calluses on their bark, and thick with fungus. But still producing.

The gates faced the deep valley. At the rear, a field led to a steep hill, rising to thick wood. There was a small gate to what Steven called ‘the east’, and outbuildings to the ‘west’. All around, there were smaller valleys, leading away into smaller unknowns.

Several of the rooms were habitable and Steven spent time cleaning them, and sealing them against whatever weather this end of the valley might choose to throw against the place. After he’d cleared the gardens and the central courtyard of the square-shaped villa, the land began to grow flowers among the fruit trees, and it attracted bees, and wild fowl, and small wild pigs that rooted and ran when he approached but seemed almost to embrace the villa, as if once they had been a part of it, and their very tangible spirits were returning.

And people came too. At first just drifters, seeking shelter before continuing on whatever journey was taking them to their final destination. Once, ruins of this sort had been the living spaces of all manner of migrating peoples, after the Roman occupation of Britain had ended. Eventually the villas had fallen, returned to earth, been covered by new land.

Not this one.

Steven tried hard to locate some clue as to the nature of the family that had lived here in the centuries when the old stone and river gods, and the gods of hearth and home, had still been invoked. A family of four, he discovered: parents; the children a boy and a girl. And each had had their own sanctuary, a fact he surmised from the statuettes and wax remains he found; and each had had their own servants or slaves.

The villa had also been a place of horses. He found the collapsed stables in the woodland behind the villa itself.

There was one group of arrivals he recognised at once, having seen them when he had first entered Ryhope Wood. They arrived at night, waving torches to signal that they were there, calling out in a language of Germanic dialect with which Steven had become vaguely familiar. A man, a woman and a boy who didn’t speak, and they were called Ealdwulf, Egwearda and Hurthig. They had with them six scraggy and tired horses, on one of which was a leather bag containing the mummified arm of a tattooed man, a beautiful, ornate gold ring on its middle finger. The relic of their warrior king, Steven discovered later.

They were seeking a place they had heard of; a place of healing. They refused to say its name.

Steven smiled, thinking to himself: That’s a lot of healing.

But Ealdwulf and Egwearda stayed, and Hurthig grew, became strong and great fun with his antics, and told wild tales in mime from his own dreams. Hurthig seemed less concerned with the family’s journey than with his curiosity about the strange land in which he found himself.

And they were still living in the villa when Steven took his five-year-old son Jack to the head of the valley. They were still there, protecting and involved in the everyday routine of living in Villa Huxley, when Steven returned with Yssobel to find his son upset and confused, and Guiwenneth fled to her father’s fort.

‘Can I come with you?’ Jack was anxious.

‘No. You stay here with Egwearda. Have you finished the repairs to the drainage channels?’

The boy shook his head. It was work he hated and Steven knew that, but it had to be done. ‘I’ve seen him again. The old man. I’ve seen him.’

Steven had slung a saddle and supply sack over the back of one of the horses, and Ealdwulf had supplied a second. He was ready to go after Guiwenneth, but realised now that his haste was due more to concern for the woman than care for his son.

Ealdwulf took the horses to the gate and tethered them, and Steven took Jack to the shade of an olive tree, where they sat down for a while together.

‘Where was he this time?’

‘Across the river, standing in the shadow.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘He was watching me. He didn’t say anything.’

‘What were you doing by the river?’

Jack hunched down a little. ‘Just fishing.’

‘Catch anything?’

‘A rainbow. It slipped the hook.’

Steven waited for a moment, knowing that Jack’s disturbed state of mind was because of his growing obsession. ‘Was it my father? Are you sure?’

The boy agreed silently. ‘He’s very grizzled and very scruffy, but I can always tell it’s him. His eyes, the way he looks at you . . . it’s just like you. He stands and stares, then turns and disappears. It’s like he wants to come in, but can’t cross over. I feel sad for him.’

Suddenly alert to his father’s frown, Jack sat up. ‘I’m not afraid of him! I don’t think he’s dangerous.’

‘I know you’re not.’

‘But it’s as if . . . he’s lost.’

‘We’re all lost, lad. We’ve been lost since birth. We’re in a place of the lost. But you and I, and Yssi and Gwin, we’re alive, right? We’re alive. We live well. We can’t get out, but who needs to? When you’re older you can leave home and make of this place what you will.’ Steven reached an arm around his son. It was so hard sometimes to make joy out of their situation, to encourage in the lad a sense of belonging in a world in which they did not, truthfully, belong. And soon, no doubt, he would face the same difficulty with Yssobel. She had just forewarned him of that.

Suddenly Jack asked: ‘Is Huxley alive? Or just mythago?’

‘My father? My father is dead. The Huxley you see at the edge? Mythago. Yes. You’ve seen him in too many shapes and forms for it to be anything else. Some are formed by me, some by you, some by Yssi.’

‘Why does he haunt us?’

‘I don’t know, Jack. I truly don’t know. You have to remember: it’s only you who sees him.’

Jack took his father’s hand for a moment, holding it tightly, staring across the garden. ‘I think my sister sees him sometimes. She pretends not to. Do you want to see him?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I think that if he’d wanted me to see him he would have allowed it. As it is, I’m glad that my young man, my drainage-hating son, is in touch with a memory of a man who once meant a lot to me.’

‘Can I come with you to find Gwin?’

‘No!’

It was a good day’s slow ride to Dun Peredur, through difficult country. Ealdwulf rode ahead, heavily armed. Steven followed with the packhorse.

They passed through a change of season, and for a while were in a place of never-changing dusk. Sometimes they could see fires in the forest. But mostly they rode in summer and the day.

Steven still thought of time as minutes and hours, having been born and raised outside the wood. His body innately sensed the steady passage of time.

The fort was overgrown now; most of the buildings had collapsed or were ivy-covered. The gates were hanging on their hinges, and it was certain that Steven’s approach could be heard. Dun Peredur was a small fort: it had once been a crowded place, and there were signs of casual occupation everywhere, including the use of the place by wild dogs, which Hurthig had driven off.

The young Saxon had tethered the horses by one of the forges and was sitting close by, leaning back and drinking from a small jug. When he saw Steven he nodded to his right. Ealdwulf tended to the horses, then went to his son and crouched down to talk. Steven sought Guiwenneth in the chaos of vegetation and building.

She was sitting among the overgrown stone walls that had once formed the king’s hall, but she was sad, her knees drawn up to her chin, her fading red hair a tangle, partly of the feathers she wore in them, partly of leaves and sweat. She was anguished. Steven noticed she was sitting on the circular stone slab that had once formed the feasting table. She glanced up as he approached, smiled wanly, then straightened, stretching back, lying supine and gazing at the sky.

‘You’re not a happy woman, Jack tells me.’

‘I am not a happy woman.’

‘May the man who loves her ask what has happened to turn happiness into fear?’

‘Fear?’

‘You’re afraid. I’ve only seen it in you once before, but you’re afraid.’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘What, then?’

‘Lost. Angry. Thinking of the kill.’

He was shocked by that. ‘What kill?’

‘The man who stole me! The man who raped me! The man who sent his guard to kill me! That Fenlander. Hunting me through the forest, in the snow.’

For a moment Steven couldn’t respond. Was she talking about his brother Christian? As if she had seen his confusion, as if she had guessed his own train of thought, she looked up and gave him the briefest of smiles. ‘He’s in the valley, Steve. The moment Yssi called to me from the valley, I sensed him too. It was like a knife turning in my belly. A storm of thunder. Silent, but terrifying thunder. I had to go! I couldn’t stay there, in the villa.’

Yssobel had called to her mother? Steven had noticed the moment, but it must have been when she had declared that her father could not have been the waiting hunter. The connection between daughter and mother was strong. The ‘green’ side of the girl was very strong indeed. They communicated through the very earth itself.

‘You’re safe in the villa,’ Steven said. ‘You’re safe with me. With Ealdwulf and Hurthig.’

‘Yes! Yes! But not in the valley. And not from what’s in the valley. He’s coming for me again. And I’m older, now. And you’re right . . .’ She reached for Steven’s hand and held it to her breast, clutching tightly and starting to shake with tears which she then forced back with will and strength. ‘I am afraid of him. And therefore I must kill him. I will not allow myself to be taken again.’

‘You won’t be.’

Guiwenneth was quiet for a while; then she kissed the hand she was holding, not looking up. Then she whispered: ‘Steve . . . something else. I find this difficult. Please don’t be angry.’ Tears touched his skin as she squeezed the fingers. ‘I’m not sure who I am,’ she said in a small voice. I’m not sure I’m yours. I think - I dread to think - that I’m his. That’s why I’m lost. That’s why I ran. That’s why I’ve come here, to my father’s house. I can’t dream my own life. Only you can. What happens to me has already happened to me in your own mind. Only you can know.’

Steven was shocked by what she had said. It had never occurred to him that the woman who had walked out of imarn uklyss might not be the same woman who had emerged from his own memory. It had certainly never occurred to him that she might be his cruel brother’s.

‘What makes you think this, Gwin?’

‘I don’t know. I feel haunted. It’s happened before and I said nothing. But earlier, when you took Yssobel to the valley - it was very strong.’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘I don’t think so. But he’s close again. I just know it.’

Resurrection.

‘Come back to the villa.’

Guiwenneth shook her head. ‘Not yet. I’ll stay here for a while. Hurthig will stay with me. My father’s ghost sometimes walks here. I’d like to see him.’

There was nothing Steven could really say. He kissed her, called for Ealdwulf, explained what had been said and the two of them rode back to their home.

Yssobel

Guiwenneth changed after that day. Her moods turned darker, she became distant in a way that saddened Steven. She often left the villa for weeks at a time, though when she returned she was usually radiant, almost her old self.

‘I’ve been shedding ghosts,’ she would always say, with a smile.

‘It’s certainly time to shed clothes and take a wash’ was the joke that soon became established.

Steven never asked Guiwenneth where she had been, and apart from a pronouncement that she had been ‘inwards’ and ‘shedding ghosts’, she volunteered nothing. He guessed she went up to the old fort, hoping to see her father’s ghost. When she was asleep in the villa she would often cry out for help, or murmur: ‘I hope I’m safe now.’

It took only a gentle kiss to quieten her, though.

Yssobel was also greatly affected by her father’s walk with her into imarn uklyss, but in a very different way. She became obsessed by the place. Steven was educating the children to the best of his abilities and memory, but Yssobel turned every lesson into Lavondyss. She painted from imagination, wrote childish stories, made links between the historical characters that her father spoke about and the place beyond the fire. Ealdwulf had made her a small harp. It was crude, though intricately carved; the sound it produced was raw rather than sweet. And yet, in Yssobel’s hands, it produced tunes that were mellow and sad, echoes of lost music, all flowing from the mind and the fingers of the half-girl.

Her room was in the heart of the villa and was the warmest. She had hung several painted skins on the walls, and tapestries that had been found in a storeroom, but she had left room for art.

Indeed, Yssobel’s large space, with its purple and red mosaic floor lovingly reconstructed from the scattered tesserae, had become a gallery of her art and creations. Faces and figures peered from the walls, from among the tapestries, or ran around them in ancient chases. Clay figures were grouped on small shrine tables, their bodies elongated and weird. She had made a model of how she imagined the valley to be, and tiny men and women were placed within it, marking places where she dreamed the openings from Lavondyss could be found

As she grew older the art became more sophisticated. Steven watched with fascination. He and Ealdwulf repaired other rooms in the sprawling villa and Yssobel eventually had three: one to sleep in, and two in which symbolic beauty and savagery crowded the walls and the rough-hewn tables around her workbenches.

It came as a shock one day, when Steven went to see his now-teenage daughter, to be confronted by a death mask, life-sized and painted in the true colours of recent mortality, and to recognise his own brother, Christian.

‘That one scares me,’ Steven said gently. The girl shrugged, holding it up and staring at the closed eyes.

‘There’s nothing to be scared of. This is just how he was. But he’s back now.’

Steven shivered. ‘Back where? In the valley?’

‘No. Not at the moment. Further away than that. He’s very strong now. But there’s something sad about him. I can’t tell what it is, but he’s searching for something. Or perhaps for someone.’

Yssobel turned the death mask left and right, then put it down, glancing up at her father. ‘Come to criticise or to help?’

‘I don’t criticise.’

‘Yes, you do. You do it very carefully, but I always know when you don’t like one of my paintings, or masks.’

‘Some of them are a bit grim. But as I’ve said before: your talent is remarkable.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s a forest talent, not human. It’s the green in me, not the red. I wish you could see my dreams, daddy. Sometimes they’re so wonderful I wish I would never wake from them.’

‘I’m glad you do, though.’

Yssobel was now tall for her age. Riding, swimming and the necessity of participating in the villa’s more robust tasks had made her lean and very strong. Though she had inherited her mother’s features, there was something harder about her look.

Guiwenneth had noticed it develop. ‘She has the look of her grandfather Peredur, I’m sure,’ she had once said. ‘I’ve only glimpsed him, but I think there is softness in his manner, but not in his features.’

‘Tell me a dream,’ Steven asked his daughter. ‘One of the wonderful ones.’

‘Well, I have a dream that keeps coming back . . .’

I’m very young and I’m playing in the garden with a wolf puppy. Three women are sitting, guarding me, talking and laughing. It’s a bright day and there are seven birds circling overhead.

Then the birds dart down and one of them picks me up and carries me very high. They play a game with me, swooping and soaring and one drops me - the feeling of falling is not frightening at all, just startling. And another catches me. Down below, the women are running around through the gardens and groves, staring up, but I’m being well protected by these huge birds.

Then suddenly we fly to the edge of the forest. I’m dropped and this time nothing catches me. That’s the only frightening bit. But I land on the back of a young hind and she runs into that wood, with me clinging on. And she brings me to a river, or sometimes it’s a lake, where there are armoured men sleeping. Only they’re not sleeping. They’ve been killed in battle. They’re very young. They look like they are dreaming, but they’re very still and very cold. Their armour is wonderful, bright, some of it bone-white, some spring-leaf green, some dusk-red, and one set the sheen of patterned copper, the colour of my hair, the colour of my mother’s hair. (Where it isn’t greying.)

This man is a prince. And I don’t know why I do this in the dream, but I kiss him on the cheek, and remove his helmet and his armour and put it on, and lie down beside him.

After a while we both sit up and he seems angry. Why have you stolen my armour? he asks.

Because you were pale and cold and I thought you were dead. I wanted to wear it so that you would be remembered.

He laughs. Do you know me, then? he asks

No, I say.

Then why would you wish to remember me?

For a moment I have no answer. Then I say in the dream: I need to remember something of someone, or I will have nothing to remember. I need to wear their skin.

And he asks with a smile, My armour is my skin?

Your armour is the mask, I reply, and he’s silent for a moment, dark eyes watching, brow furrowed, thoughtful.

Would you have worn it in battle? he asks, and I reply that the armour is not even as strong as a boar’s-tusk cuirass and helmet, or three layers of bull’s leather stitched through with thin shards of the hard, black thorn. But the armour is beautiful, and it fits me to perfection, and I tell him so.

Then you may take it, he says. And I will find armour of leather and bone and thorn. And wherever you go, I shall follow you until I find you again. But for the moment I must sleep. It has been a hard day, and a gruelling challenge. The tip of a sword is inside me and it is as cold as a winter’s waking.

And he lies back and closes his eyes. But as he closes them, and becomes pale again, he sings softly. It’s the song I’ve often played on the harp that Ealdwulf made for me. Though the words change, and sometimes I can’t remember them, but only because I wake at a later time in the dream.

I came to the strong place which I knew I must hold, I came to a time in my life, and I knew I must hold,

I came to the hill where the harnessed host was waiting

And the wind was waiting

And a storm of rage still silent, waiting.

And I knew that I had to hold on to what I had been given;

And that the world was changing, and that I had to hold;

And everything that I had once been given was gone,

Yet everything I had been newly given was with me. Under gloom-grey sky, and over red-green earth, We held and held until we broke.

But in the breaking, we held, and in the holding we will find Avilion.

Suddenly Steven could see Guiwenneth more clearly in the girl. Part of the dream, the first part, echoed Guiwenneth’s own story, her own mythic past, in slender detail. Guiwenneth’s own childhood had been a tale of growing up in sadness and then strength. For Yssobel, for the girl’s dream, the events were encompassed with pleasure and childish joy.

But in Yssobel, he now realised, there was a strong echo of a more violent beginning. He looked around at her room, and what had been beautiful in her art as he had seen it before became suddenly darker, though he suspected that his daughter herself had intended only the lighter shade of her creative efforts.

‘Finding dead warriors by a lake doesn’t sound very wonderful to me.’

Yssobel shook her head. ‘It’s just a beginning. I wake up feeling very good. It’s always a feeling of something that’s going to happen next, and I like that. Jack dreams of running in the forest from huge wolves and suddenly coming to the outside world. I’ve never had that dream. I do have bad dreams, but they’re from the red side, not the green.’

‘Why don’t you tell me about them? Or your mother?’

‘I tell Rianna a few of them, now that she lives here. But I’ve sworn her to secrecy, so don’t even ask her. When I’m ready I’ll tell you. When I understand them.’

Steven smiled and left her, adding, ‘Thanks for the Dead Prince story, at least. Just confirms what I’ve always known.’

‘That I’m weird?’

‘Exactly.’

‘If I had a chicken for every time you’ve told me that—’

‘You’d have a palace-full of eggs and feathers. I know. I know. Don’t be long. The table’s already set, and something smells good in the kitchen. And it isn’t chicken.’

She doesn’t confide in me. And she doesn’t confide in her woodland mother. She talks to the High Woman. Maybe all of them. I don’t mind her talking to them. They carry wisdom. But I wonder why she doesn’t talk to us? Perhaps because Guiwenneth has changed so much. She has become so haunted, so distant. And perhaps because I’ve been too reticent. If so: why the reticence? Perhaps because I’m afraid of my children. Afraid of what? Perhaps of what exists on what Yssi calls the ‘green side’. And she can tell it in me. She can sniff it as she can sniff the pungency of the earth where it hides little treasures for the table; or the remains of the long-dead. She knows I’m afraid of what might emerge from her one day. Or what might be lost from her. Or what might take her away.

Jack

Families have their rituals. They celebrate in their own ways. In the villa the seasons were celebrated, as were the passing through of strangers, the slaughter of old hogs, the birth of foals. Birthdays were greeted with wild gifts and teasing, and Yssobel always composed a song for the occasion.

The song she always sang for Jack was a deliberately created piece of nonsense, though it echoed the sense of loss that was to come. Everyone clapped their hands to the rhythm. As she rose to sing it, Jack groaned, head in his hands, imploring, ‘No. Please, no.’

Yssobel grinned. Her hair was tied high and she wore a colourful bell skirt, which swirled about her as she twirled as a prelude to the performance.

Jack, yes Jack, my brother Jack,

Hunts in the wild, chases at the run,

Brings back a kill, but dreams in his heart

Of reaching the edge,

Where our family was begun.

Where a father met a mother,

Though from forest mind she came,

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 darkness.

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 had 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.

The face of the man who called to her. The lost man.

The man she had called resurrection.

And her sadness lifted, and she began to feel warm.

Yssobel’s safe return was greeted with relief and an understanding of her sadness at the disappearance of her good friend Odysseus. The courtyard was thick with snow, though for the moment the blizzard that had until then raged all day had ceased. It was after dark and they had approached with torches, following their line of sight to where fires struggled against the wind on the walls of the villa.

Shivering and half-starved, Yssobel and Hurthig were glad to leave the feeding, rubbing down and stabling of the horses to others. The beasts had done well in the conditions. Now it was water from the well, to be heated at least to warm, that Yssobel craved.

After bathing, and allowing Rianna to comb through the tangle of her hair, she went to the dining room to join the others. Most of the winter visitors had already had their small meal and departed. Only the Saxons remained and the Huxleys. The dining room was at the back of the villa, away from the head of the valley, and therefore warmer and cosier, with its open-hearth fire and goat-skin carpet. Everything in the room had been crafted by Ealdwulf, from the long table to the hard chairs, from the drinking cups to the carved wood platters on which the frugal fare was served.

Yssobel told her parents what she had found in the Odyssey cave, as they called it. She showed them the portrait that Odysseus had painted of her, which she believed to have been his way of saying goodbye. But there was no grief in her, she explained, when Guiwenneth asked her the question, and no, no sense of loss other than that of a lost friend.

Realising what her mother was intimating, she said very pointedly, leaning across the table: ‘We were friends. We were not lovers.’

Steven murmured, ‘Good. We won’t have to be bringing gifts to a little Greek, then.’

He went on, ‘If it’s any consolation, though nothing is certain this deep in Ryhope Wood, I’m sure he’ll be safe. I don’t think anything has survived of his story between, what, five and fifteen? We shall never know why he has chosen to be in the wilderness, in a cave, making images of the various gods and goddesses. A strange isolation. But we know he went to his home at Ithaca. And we know he helped win a great siege.’

‘I know, daddy. You’ve told me the story. The hollow horse. You’ve also told me that whatever is created from our minds in this place is created with that person’s strengths and weaknesses. Not every mythago will follow its true track.’

‘I hope this one does,’ Steven said gently.

Yssobel forked up the last piece of meat from her platter, agreeing silently as she chewed, pushing the plate to the centre of the table. The Saxon family gave their thanks for the meal and left, and Yssobel thanked Hurthig again for his companionship on the ride. Then she said, continuing the previous conversation, ‘But suddenly I’m aware of the man in the valley again. The man who calls to me.’ She glanced at Steven. ‘Your brother.’

At that, Guiwenneth’s fists clenched and her voice rasped, ‘You’ve not mentioned him for years. What makes you mention him now?’

Her face had become ashen and drawn. It startled Yssobel. She had been talking out of the red side of her life, the human side. But it was the green side that regarded her mother now, and it was shocking for her to see.

Guiwenneth’s features had become like a wood skull, coated in translucent skin. Yssobel could hear the crack of wood, the creak. It was as if her mother’s whole body was being broken, resisting only because of its residual strength. Glancing at her father, Yssobel could tell that he was seeing nothing of this.

Jack had seen it, though. What he called the ‘haunter’ in him, the forest part, had perceived the terrible change in his mother. He watched her in consternation, then glanced at his sister and shook his head.

Yssobel didn’t know what she had said. She remembered that years ago Guiwenneth had fled the villa for her father’s fortress, upset by the man in the valley, but Steven had never told his daughter why. And eventually she had forgotten about it.

After a few moments Guiwenneth returned to normal, though her look was still that of an angry woman. ‘You should leave him alone,’ she whispered. ‘He is a rotten man.’

‘He doesn’t feel that way to me . . .’

‘Leave him alone!’ Guiwenneth shouted. ‘Get him out of your mind, if you can that is. If he hasn’t already snared you through the branch and root that winds through your insides.’

Steven reached out and took Guiwenneth’s hands in his. ‘Gwin. Take it easy. You’ll snap a twig!’ He smiled at the family joke, but Guiwenneth snatched her hands away. ‘More twigs snapped than you know,’ she said coldly, pushing back from the table, almost stumbling as she stood and walked from the dining room and out into the snow.

Steven came and sat next to Yssobel. He tried to put his arm around her, but she felt angry and confused, hunching into herself, dismissing the gesture. ‘What did I say? What made her angry?’

‘The man you talk about, the man you paint, the man you dream about - you do dream about him, don’t you?’

‘Not for a long time. But I still feel he’s there . . .’

‘He’s a hurtful man. He began as a child as a lovely child, though we scrapped a lot, and he usually won. He began as a man as a kind and colourful and competitive and funny man. And then he went into this wood from the outside . . .’

‘From Oak Lodge?’ Jack asked quickly.

‘From Oak Lodge, yes. He followed his father into the interior. He was curious to know what George Huxley had discovered; and he became transformed.’

‘Transformed? Into what?’

‘Something evil. A man who had become possessed by a dark element in the wood, if I can put it that way. His heart was cold, but his need was a furnace.’

‘That’s a strange way to talk,’ the girl muttered. ‘What was his need?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

Yssobel leaned forward, head in her hands. With a glance at Jack she nodded vaguely. ‘I suppose it was my mother.’

‘It was. And she still hurts. And you are wrong about him, Yssi. He is not lost, nor sad. If that resurrected man is Christian, then you should never go near him. He is harmful.’

‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘You should have told me before.’

‘Well, I’m telling you now. Never go near him.’

‘I’ll never go near him,’ Yssobel agreed in a dull tone of voice. She stood up. ‘I’m tired, now. Tell mummy I’m sorry.’ And with a kiss on his cheek, she left for her rooms.

Jack was flushed in the face, partly from the heat in the room, partly from Egwearda’s concoction, which he’d diluted but perhaps not sufficiently. He rolled the empty cup between his palms, staring down into the bowl as if scrying the future, or perhaps the past.

Steven watched him. The log cracked and spat on the hearth, and he knew that soon he would have to open the room to the others so that they could sleep. He might even join them, though there was a good fire in his own room.

Jack looked up, breaking his thought. ‘What was your brother - what was Christian searching for when he entered Ryhope?’

‘Love, I imagine. A love that he’d already lost.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I told you about the war in Europe. I told you how I stayed in Europe after the war. Chris came home. He found our father deluded - or mad, in fact: overwhelmed by his discovery of the nature of this immense realm, immense, even though we occupy only a tiny corner. One day a woman came out of the wood. She was very beautiful. She had flowing auburn hair and was dressed in hunter’s clothing, and was a princess, running from pursuers.’

‘Gwin,’ Jack said, with a smile, glancing round at the door.

‘Gwin but not Gwin.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because the Guiwenneth who came to Oak Lodge on that particular day was either a mythago created by Christian or by the man of your own obsession: my father, George.’

‘Ah, I see now. They fought over her.’

‘Fought over her, and one of them killed her.’

Jack sat back in surprise. ‘Killed her?’

‘Buried her in the earth by the chicken sheds. I found her bones. Only they weren’t bones by then, just scraps of cloth covering decayed wood.’

Thinking hard for a moment, Jack asked the obvious question. ‘Which one killed her?’

How Steven would have loved to have known the answer to that. Long ago, when he had returned home from France, to find his father lost in the wood, his brother edgy and different, finally becoming lost himself, Steven had been shocked to dig into the grave and find what was left of the woman from the greenwood. It was certain that both other men had been passionate for this beauty from early Celtic times.

So now, for Jack, he filled in the missing piece: that when he, Steven, had been alone in Oak Lodge, Guiwenneth of the Green had returned, in new guise, with different traits of behaviour and humour to the other, no doubt, but essentially the same legendary woman. And they had fallen in love, and that love had been intense. And yet they had had only a few happy days before Christian, much aged and with a band of hawk-masked slaughterers, tracked her down to the Lodge and abducted her, leaving Steven for dead.

It was now too hot in the room. Father and son rose and went out into the freezing air of the garden, stepping into the darkness through the star-illuminated snow, breath frosting, welcoming the ice of the night on their overheated faces. The moon was low and only a crescent was visible. The edge of the wood across the rise of the Amurngoth hill was a dark wall, though it was possible to make out several sets of criss-crossing tracks, some animal, others human. There was always much movement from the valley and into the surrounding hills and passes when winter came, as if the bite of winter resurrected the life that had been gathering in imarn uklyss, sending it on its various paths; summoned by human mind and sentient wood, it was dispersed at random, probably to fade and die just as the echoes they were.

‘You found Guiwenneth dead,’ Jack said. ‘But she was taken into Lavondyss. Taken by whom?’

‘I shall never tell you. That secret dies with me.’

Jack stared at his father, almost too curious for words. When he tried to question him further, Steven cut him short.

‘But you waited for her. And she came back.’

‘I waited for her. And she came back.’

And with an inward shudder, Steven thought of what Guiwenneth had said to him, in her father’s stronghold, the deserted fort that rose on the hill above Eagle Valley.

I’m not sure who I am. I’m not sure I’m yours. I think - I dread to think - that I’m his.

Winter in the land had ended. It ended as suddenly as it had arrived, and the villa was in spring sunshine between one day and the next. The animals were let out of winter quarters, but there was no confusion in them. From shivering in misery they were suddenly frisky, and breeding was in the air.

If winter had left the valley, it had not left the family, and the relationship between Guiwenneth and Yssobel became bleaker by the moon. As Yssobell’s fascination and obsession with ‘the resurrected man’ increased, so did her mother’s anger and fear; there were times when Guiwenneth walked the grounds of the villa by night, and when Steven saw her he felt he was looking at a ghost, that her body had become translucent; as if she was losing all substance, all connection with the world.

This would change, though for a while only, and it changed when Yssobel began to dream of her grandfather, Peredur. One evening when Steven passed her room, the door was open and he saw her painting in a fury. She had made her own brushes, and had traded skins and meat from her hunting for pigments with the bone-shapers, tent dwellers who regularly passed through from the valley. She was always complaining that she could never get enough yellow. Red, green, black and white, but never enough yellow.

‘One day I will try and create the National Gallery,’ Steven said from the door.

She waved the brush at him dismissively. ‘Not now. I’ve got him. I can’t hold him.’

‘Who?’

‘Go away.’

He stood in the doorway, watching her. ‘The National Gallery in London is a famous place for famous painters. I would like to take you there.’

‘Create it, then,’ she snapped, not looking up. ‘I know several painters in the region. A boat painter, a cave painter and a woman who paints bodies with iron pins and skin dyes. We can make a feast of it and discuss our work. But not now!’

My my, Steven thought; sharp-tongued, sarcastic, irritable, dismissive . . . fevered.

Yssobel was painting on parchment. He could see the black marks on the written side. ‘Where did you get the scrolls?’

‘There are thousands of them,’ she said. ‘Most of them just fall to pieces when you touch them. A lot are painted, really beautiful paintings. I just took a sackful of ones with writing on.’ She turned the strip of parchment over. ‘It’s what you call hieroglyphs. I get a small sense of their meaning, but that’s from the green side. It’s not very interesting.’

Steven could hardly speak for a moment. ‘And what does your green side tell you they say?’

‘Just lists of battles, names of warriors, lists of weapons and chariots. There’s one that has a list of boats and the number of men who went to war in them. Really boring.’ She flipped another small pile of flattened parchment fragments, as yet unpainted in her workshop. ‘This one, in fact.’

Suddenly she leaned back, chewing the end of her paint brush, gazing intently at the man in the doorway. ‘There really are thousands. A few won’t matter, will they?’

What had she found, and where had she found it? He asked the question, and Yssobel pointed vaguely in the direction of the Serpent Pass. ‘It’s like a huge palace, built right back into the hill. Green marble on the outside, polished corridors and rooms, packed with all sorts of things. Including hunting equipment.’ She indicated with a glance the sturdy bow she used, and the tall quiver of arrows, which Steven knew she could fire with great accuracy. He realised he had assumed that Ealdwulf had made them for her.

She was quite a lesson in surprise, this girl.

She was painting again. ‘I found the place with Odysseus. It’s further up the valley from his horrible cave. I suggested he moved in. Warmer, for a start, but no: he had to stay in that hole in the rock. Such an odd friend. But a good friend.’ She finished the painting with a flourish, turned it round. ‘There. Got him. But you never saw him, did you? Nor Gwin.’

‘Who?’

‘My grandfather from the green,’ she said, intoning dramatically.

‘Peredur?’

‘War chief and hero. He has a strong face. And I can see where mother and I get our hair.’

The portrait was astonishing. It might almost have been a photograph. Thoughtful, a careful gaze, the hint of a smile in a lean, young, lightly bearded face, copper hair curling from below a simple crested helmet, the only decoration being two panels showing chariots in full attack. The man’s face was slightly scarred. Around his neck, an eagle’s head in profile, on a leather cord. In the background, sketched in light detail, rose the hill with its high towers where Guiwenneth had been born. He was a striking-looking man.

‘You saw him? Or dreamed him.’

‘Dreamed, of course. Greenside dream. But he was very clear. He was laughing and drinking, with friends, somewhere out in the open, close to a small fire. I don’t think he was aware that I’d come so close. I think they’d been fighting. Not each other. I could smell blood. But they were triumphant. For the moment, anyway.’

‘He’s very handsome.’

Yssobel turned the portrait back and considered it. ‘Yes. He is. I’m sorry he had to die so horribly. Shall I show it to my mother? Or will she rage at me again?’

Steven considered the question without knowing what to say. Guiwenneth was in a black mood again, for reasons he could no longer fathom, though he knew that fear and anger were at the root of it. She was so often like this, dark and despairing, though she certainly had her brighter moments; cheerful and active, full of life and energy, and eager to leave the villa for a look at the land around.

Since there was no ‘red side’ to Guiwenneth, only the green, Steven, in the dark hours, was inclined to think that she was slowly being called back into the wood, back into Lavondyss, death in the place of creation. He couldn’t bear the thought of it, so he chose - being full of everything that was the red in man, and able to avoid more difficult issues - to put it from his mind. Although he spent as much time with Guiwenneth as he could, and as he was allowed.

‘I think she’d like to see it,’ he said. ‘She never knew Peredur, nor her mother—’

‘Deirdrath!’

‘Yes. Deirdrath. Killed shortly after the birth, but she talked of him from the world of the Unhappy Dead. She had loved him very much. What a life she had had with the princeling. Yes, I think Gwin would like to see it.’

Yssobel gave a little sigh. ‘I hope so.’ And she added: ‘Shall I try to find Deirdrath?’

‘I don’t know, Yssi. Ask her. Sometimes we like to live with the memory we have and which we hold precious, even if what we remember is just a ghost. We don’t want them changed. But Gwin has always been curious about her father. So your portrait might be a lovely gift or it might hurt. Your choice.’

The girl nodded, picked up a piece of charcoal and quickly adjusted a contour. ‘I believe he would have made a good impression,’ she said, with an admiring smile. ‘I think I’ll take the chance.’

Ealdwulf suddenly appeared in the doorway, annoyed and flushed of face. ‘Dried meat. And fruit,’ he stated slowly. ‘On the table! I called you.’

‘Sorry, Ealdwulf. Didn’t hear you.’

Father and daughter exchanged a quick smile as the Saxon moved irritably away. ‘Dried meat and fruit,’ said Yssobel softly, holding her head in her hands theatrically. ‘Oh no.’

It was Ealdwulf’s way of signalling that the meal was frugal, and badly prepared. Something had gone wrong in the kitchen. Probably an argument.

Later, Steven went to Guiwenneth’s room, the small alcove where she liked to stitch hides together to make hunting outfits, or create small images in clay or bark of the entities and memories of her childhood. Yssobel had inherited her artistic talents. Guiwenneth’s shapes and forms were stranger, far more sinister in appearance, even though she claimed they were benign.

Yssobel was sitting on the floor, leaning back against her mother’s knees. The room was illuminated with candles, and Guiwenneth was holding the portrait of her father and talking softly.

Everything was peaceful.

‘I think, yes, he must have been very like this. I saw his image on a coin, and scratched on a piece of slate. I don’t know who scratched the lines.’

Yssobel leaned back, eyes closed. ‘Probably your mother Deirdrath. When she and Peredur were in love.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘Tell me what happened. What you were told had happened. It’s time I knew.’

A mother’s hand raked gently through a daughter’s hair.

The portrait was placed aside.

Sadness and memory hung heavily for a moment, then Guiwenneth, her voice almost as weak as the frail, ghostly body that contained it, whispered what she knew of her birth. Everything she remembered. Some of it, Yssobel and Jack had already been told.

‘Deirdrath met Peredur after a battle. She tended to his wounds. I think he was just a boy then, not yet the king. He hadn’t yet fought for the war chief’s seat at what would become Dun Peredur.

‘Deirdrath’s sister, Rhiathan, was barren, but her consort, a Roman of rank, wanted very much to have his own child. He planned to stay in Britain after his time of service to Rome was finished. So when I was born, Rhiathan killed my mother and took me for her own.

‘I’m not sure where my father was at the time. Peredur was always away. War was commonplace; or perhaps he was taking hostages from another island. Ship raids along the coast were common, from another island, further west.

‘When Peredur came home he knew at once what had happened. But Rhiathan’s husband had gathered a force of men to guard the fort. Peredur and his shield-men, nine in all, went to a place and summoned the Jagad, a dangerous thing to do. She rules the pathways to the underworld. She rules ice and fire. She hunts what lies between the land and the wasteland. She can misdirect the dead on their way to the otherworld, so that a brave man can find himself stranded in nowhere rather than rejoining his fellow horsemen and heroes and starting life again.

‘The Jagad exacted a great price for her help, but she allowed Peredur and his companions to transform into any three animals they wished. That was when they became Jaguth, which means: bound to the huntress.

‘They first chose eagles. The Romans used an eagle as their standard, so I can see the pleasure he must have taken as he swooped and took me, just an infant, from the unsuckling false-mother.

‘Sadly, a bowman of great skill, as great a skill as yours, Yssi, shot him down from the air. That was that. I was passed between the others.’

‘My dream,’ the girl whispered. ‘That’s my dream.’

‘I know. The Jaguth,’ Guiwenneth went on, ‘transformed and protected me until I was old enough to ride. But then the Jagad called them back - she took back what she had believed to be hers.

‘Without their protection, I was lost. But I survived. And the Jagad, terrible woman, showed one small morsel of compassion. Every year on the day of my birth she allowed the Jaguth to find me, for a night only. And the last time I saw them was at Oak Lodge, at the edge of the wood, after I had met your father and was still happy. Before I was taken again.’

‘What is the day of your birthday?’ Yssobel asked, suddenly shivering.

Guiwenneth smiled knowingly. ‘Soon. I sense it.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I can hear them again. After all this time. Their voices are on the wind. They are coming again. But they bring a cold fire with them. Urgency and danger.’

The room had gone cold as well. The mood had changed abruptly.

Yssobel said stiffly, ‘What danger?’

‘You know what I mean,’ said her mother softly, meeting Yssobel’s gaze with cold eyes.

The girl almost screamed with irritation, twisting round to kneel facing Guiwenneth, a flame-haired, furious-faced image of the older woman. She snatched the portrait back. ‘You hear danger in everything! You smell danger in everything! What has happened to you?’

And with a loud groan of frustration, she stood and started to walk from the chamber, hesitating only when she saw Steven standing in the doorway.

Suddenly humbled, she turned back and placed the painting on her mother’s lap. Guiwenneth stared straight ahead, pale and unmoving. Yssobel walked grimly past her father, though Steven saw there were tears in the girl’s eyes.

But enough had been done by the donation of the portrait of Peredur to ease the tension between the two women. Yssobel became fascinated with her grandfather, forcing her dreams to bring him to her sleeping mind, and she painted him vigorously; and in those paintings were reflections of his history, of his life, even - once - of his childhood.

She used sheets cut from a scroll that recorded part of The Iliad. Since the paint did not penetrate through to the text, Steven ignored the disrespect for the poet who had recorded the story of a fateful few days in the siege of Troy. He couldn’t read the language anyway, and occasionally Yssobel - when ‘green’ - would rattle through some of the lines, sighing heavily with boredom. To Steven this was magic from his daughter’s mouth, even if what she read was simply the list of ships and men who had gathered from all over the Greek world to savage the city of Troy itself.

The Cretans came in eighty black ships. All these were under the command of Idomai, who carried ten spears and two shields. He led the ships from Gnossos of the two-bladed axe, from Great Walled Gortyn, from all the hundred towns of Crete.

‘Where’s Crete?’

‘An island. A long, thin island, with mountains and valleys, rivers and wilderness.’

‘I like wilderness.’

‘It was famous for a labyrinth that had a very strange attribute. For sacrifice. For a creature that was made of one part man, one part woman, one part bull and one part wood. Once a year, this monster ate a meal of Greeks, fourteen in all.’

‘Quite a feat.’

‘Quite a feast. Four times a year, at the turning of the seasons, the creature was allowed to mate. It gave rise to strange offspring.’

‘You’re making this up.’

Steven laughed. ‘A little embellishment, perhaps.’

‘But the island existed?’

‘It did. Oh yes.’

‘And the strange attribute of the labyrinth?’

‘I made that up as well.’

Yssobel smiled. ‘I don’t think you did. There is something forceful about what you said, something of truth in it.’

Another few lines from the ancient text caught her by surprise.

Twelve ships, painted with crimson bows, came under Odysseus, master of all the masters of Ithaca. This was a great host, a great force, in awe of Odysseus, whose life-force and cunning rivalled that of life-engendering Zeus.

She stared at the words, and without looking up asked, ‘Twelve ships?’

‘He took part in that great war. Against Troy. You know this.’

‘So this is part of what happened to him later. It’s strange to find it written. Master of all the masters of Ithaca. He’ll be very regal, then. Is Ithaca like Crete?’

‘Yes. A territory, a part of a greater land. Not an island. Our young friend Odysseus is destined for long memory and fame; probably most of it wrongly reported.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Time creates confusion. Time changes memory.’

‘Well, of course. Don’t treat me like a child.’

‘Sorry.’

She sighed. ‘I miss him.’

‘You might find him again.’

But Yssobel looked up and shook her head, sad and also knowing; accepting. ‘He’s moved on. Dad, you know that. If he remembers me, I’m pleased. But he’s moved on. I know that.’

Steven was quiet for a moment, trying to find the right words. He couldn’t find them.

You don’t know anything of the sort, he thought to himself. Not in this place. Not in this world. But then: I only know half of you, even though you’re my daughter.

Red side, green side. What must it feel like to have that mix? What colours your dreams?

Yssobel looked up suddenly, sharply. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘What do you mean?’

She stood and came round to him; she was curious. Shorter than her father, she put her arms around him and rested her head against his shoulder. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking,’ Steven said, ‘that I’d like you to paint a picture of Guiwenneth; and of Jack; and of me. On fragments of The Odyssey, though The Iliad will do if needs be.’

‘Why do you want pictures of yourself?’

‘To be remembered by.’

Yssobel laughed. She stayed where she was, holding Steven tightly. ‘But I know you. I can remember you. Peredur, Deirdrath - I need them because I can’t know them. Why would anyone want pictures of you? Especially of Jack! I’d have to paint him conceited and cocky.’

‘He’s not conceited and cocky.’

‘You don’t know him like I know him.’

‘Then you misunderstand him.’

‘I’m teasing.’ She looked up, pulled away a little. ‘Why? Why pictures?’

‘What if the green side of you should die? How will you remember us? If we’ve all gone.’

‘The red side of me will have everything that I need to remember. It’s blood that comes out of me when I fall and cut myself. Blood at the moon time. The wood is not in my veins, just in my head.’

‘And if the red side of you dies? What about the green?’

‘You will be legend. What else? But then, what is legend to a tree in the middle of the wild? If only the green in me survives, there is no need to mourn the passing of a father. Or a brother. Or a mother. You think too much, dad. You worry too much.’

‘I’d still like you to paint us. If all of you go, and I’m left: a small icon helps. You’ve worked so hard to bring an image of your grandfather to life. I love it. I think Gwin does too, despite your row. Use your skill to leave a little of the rest of us behind. And put something from your dreams in each painting. OK?’

‘Ok,’ Yssobel said without a pause, and with a smile.

‘And in exchange I’ll find you a horse to rival Caliburn. A better horse.’

‘For when I go?’

Steven hugged his daughter. ‘Yes. For when you go.’

‘Caliburn is a wonderful horse. But he’s getting old. He changes when we enter Serpent Pass. It’s as if he’s going home. He knows exactly where to tread as he winds up through the rocks. When he dies I’d like to place him in Odysseus’s cave.’

Steven was pleased by the thought. ‘So you’ll stay and terrorise the villa at least until the old war horse kicks his last?’

‘Yes. Of course. And Rianna has already promised me a new horse - a special horse, she says. So you don’t need to go trading.’

Game and Promise

Yssobel found Jack in the forge, helping Hurthig to beat out a new sickle blade from one of the pieces of iron that they gathered, as well as forage for the fire, from the surrounding valleys.

Her brother, dripping with sweat, was distracted. Hurthig concentrated on his job, talking to Jack with his fingers and gestures. The coals flared and water hissed in the tempering barrel, and Jack was clearly proud of his efforts.

He was learning a lot from the silent Saxon youth.

‘If you’ve come to be shod, you’ll have to wait your turn. Horses come first. And besides, I don’t know how big your feet are.’

‘Very funny.’

Jack hammered the edge of the blade, then tested it with his finger, passing it to Hurthig, who twisted it this way and that, and then nodded approval.

Wiping the sweat from his face, Jack grinned at his sister. ‘I’m getting to be quite good at this.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be rubbing down the horses?’

‘All done. The horses are happy.’

‘That’s good to know. I do like to hear that our horses are happy. And so: you’ve come to see your brother master his skills at . . . sickle making.’

He lifted the blade, made gestures as if using it as a weapon. Hurthig looked bemused.

‘Do you like doing this?’ Yssobel asked.

‘I love doing this. Oh yes. Take something old, shape it new. Bring the gleam back to the dead. Bring the cut back to the edge that was blunted by neglect.’

‘Eloquent. I suppose.’

‘Thank you. Anyway. What makes you stand here watching me? Something of iron for you? Or of bronze? I have bronze. Ask me to make it, I’ll make it. With a little help from Hurthig,’ Jack added quietly and with a confidential smirk, as if speaking quietly mattered. The Saxon was far too busy with his own thoughts and skills. ‘I’m good, but not yet good enough.’

‘Do you have silver?’

Stripping off his leather apron, untying his long hair from the strap that held it back as he worked at the fire, Jack frowned. ‘Silver. Silver? Why silver?’

‘Do you?’

‘Do I? Have silver?’ He walked to a box and opened it, peering down at the loose metal contents, moving his fingers through them. He was thinking hard. He picked out a small figurine, a woman diving as if into the sea, then a coin, turning it in his fingers. He dropped them back into the small hoard. ‘Yes, I have silver. Not much. I could probably find more. Why do you ask? I don’t waste it on horseshoes, not even for my sister.’

‘I don’t want to be shod; nor bridled.’

‘I didn’t think you did. Why silver?’

‘I want a silver ring to hold back my hair. When I ride through the deeper wood my hair catches in the branches. In the briar, if I’m hunting, I need to tie it down. Hard. A ring of silver.’

‘I tie my hair with leather. Or strips of fleece. Or strips of thin metal. Or thin rope. You could tie yours with any of those things. You could tie it back with a sharp word! Tie a parchment picture of our grandfather around it. Anyway, I know you tie your hair with bands of leather.’

‘But now I want silver.’

Jack leaned back against the brick wall that contained the fire, quickly standing up as the heat began to burn him. He swore, brushing at his backside, and Yssobel was amused. Her brother laughed too, then said, ‘All right. Silver. You have something in mind?’

‘Something thin, something designed. Something that if I end up on a field of battle, and my scalp is taken as trophy, the ring will be admired. Something that when I’ve completed my days can be passed on to my daughter. Something that will mark me as Yssobel. Something to be loved by.’

Jack stared at her, eyes wide, face expressionless.

Then he said, ‘Well, that sounds easy enough.’

After a moment, they laughed again, and he said, ‘Yssi, I’ll do my best. A ring to hold your hair. And in exchange . . .’

‘Anything.’

‘Then show me how to find the edge of the world.’

‘That, alas, I can’t do.’

‘I know.’

‘And so in exchange: what? Not another verse of that song!’

Jack turned from her. Hurthig had slumped down, sipping water from a clay flask and brushing some of it across his sweat-saturated face. Over the coals, Jack stirred the fire with the same blade he had just shaped, the reaping knife. He was not a man given to easy thought.

‘I don’t want to lose you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to lose this home, this villa. But we must move to the place that calls us. We have to.’

‘I know.’

‘How will we keep in touch? How will I know you’re safe?’

‘And how will I know that you are safe? And how will our parents?’

‘Gwin will always know. But Gwin is fading. I feel it.’

‘I feel it too.’

Jack looked up from the fire. Yssobel met his gaze.

And the young man said, ‘I don’t know why, or for what reason, or purpose, or because of what dream, or vision, or hawk’s cry of warning, or hound’s growl in your waking dreams, you want a ring of silver for your hair, but I will make it for you and pattern it as you require. With a little Saxon help,’ he stated. ‘In exchange, never let me go. And in exchange I will never let you go.’

Yssobel had slumped down by the wall of the forge, knees drawn up. She was staring into the dusk, towards the darkening sky that came from the valley, from imarn uklyss.

‘Winter’s coming.’

‘Winter?’ Jack said with a frown. ‘We’ve only just had winter. Not so soon.’

He walked away from the heat, out into the cold, stepping beyond the glow of the forge. He raised his head and took a deep breath. ‘You’re right. Winter. Again. So soon.’

He came back and sat down next to his sister. Hurthig walked past them, shivering suddenly, then used his hands to signal goodnight, and could Jack please make sure the fire was controlled until it was reduced to embers, ready for the blow of the bellows tomorrow.

Yssobel said, ‘I want to play the game. We haven’t played it for a long time, Jack. But I would like to play it now.’

‘Yssi ...’

‘Jack! I want to play the game. This might be our last time. And this time, it might be important.’

‘I have to look after the fire.’

‘The fire will die on its own. It can look after itself. It’s going nowhere.’

‘I’ll play the game. But not where we used to play it. I’ll play it here. The fire is still too fierce for silver.’

‘Then we’ll play it here.’

The fire had dropped to a glow. The winter was coming in fast, as it usually did, and in the darkness Jack could see flakes of snow. He had put out the torch, and rearranged the coals with tongs. Yssobel was curled in the corner, waiting for him, a blanket of stitched sheepskin covering her against the wind from the valley. Jack found a small crucible and embedded it in the heat.

‘I’ll melt the silver now. How big a ring do you need?’

Yssobel had already released her hair and tossed him the strap. He fitted his fingers through the loop of skin, stretched them out. ‘You do know that silver won’t be as strong as this. I’ll have to make it thicker; heavier.’

‘Do you have enough silver?’

‘I’m sure I do. But it will weigh on you. You’ll notice it.’

‘That’s what I want. As long as it keeps my hair out of the branches.’

He scrabbled through the hoard. The diving woman. A figurine of a lost god; two coins, quite large; an actual silver ring, with poor decoration, designed for a large finger. And two arrow points, though clearly weapons that had been symbolic and not practical. One of these he kept back. He placed the rest in the earthenware crucible, used the bellows on the coals beneath it, let heat and metal meld and melt. Silver would start to run at a lower temperature than iron. He blew air over the surface for a while to help bring impurities out of the true metal.

Wrapping his own sheepskin around him, he dropped down by his sister, shivered and reached for the water jug. ‘I’m ready. For the question. Who goes first?’

‘Same rules?’

‘Same rules. One question, two answers. One answer truthful, one answer not.’

‘I’ll go first,’ Yssobel said, leaning forward to bring her face close to Jack’s. ‘Are you ready for this?’

‘I’m ready.’

‘Why do you want to go the edge of the world? First answer.’

‘I long to go to the edge of the world because I will find a life there that belongs to me. Now you: why do you want to go to the centre of the earth?’

‘I want to go to the centre of the earth because I think I will find there who I am. Why do you want to go to the edge of the world?’

‘Because I will find my way home there. I will find someone I care for.’

Yssobel sat back, frowning. ‘That’s a strange answer.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just . . . strange.’

‘The game requires that we don’t question the answers,’ Jack said with mock severity. ‘Now you: why do you want to go the centre of the earth?’

‘Because . . . because there I will find an answer to the question; the question of why what should be dead is alive again. I will find everything I care for, everything that ever mattered to me, and will always matter to me. I will find Avilion. And you, Jack, brother Jack? Will you find everything that matters to you at your world’s edge?’

‘That’s outside the rules of the game. And talking of strange answers ...’

‘Forget the game. Will you find what you’re looking for? At your own world’s edge?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t have your confidence, Yssi. I wish I did. When I get there, I’ll know better.’

Yssobel made a sound of disapproval. ‘You didn’t play the game. Both of your answers were true.’

The silver had melted. Jack could tell by the sound it made that it was ready to be cooled, ready for the reshaping. He dragged his sheepskin around him. It was cold in the forge, despite the fire. Yssobel huddled, watching her brother. He lifted the crucible carefully and inspected the contents. The silver hadn’t been pure. Though it gleamed like moonlight, he could see the tarnish of copper, and black specks of sand.

‘It will have to be skimmed. And I’ve melted too much. I’ll make you a second, smaller ring.’

‘Just as long as it doesn’t drag me backwards off my horse.’

‘What pattern do you want?’

‘I have said already. Any pattern you think fit.’

Jack tipped the crucible this way and that. The hot metal shone at him, despite the impurity that stained its surface. He had a ring mould to hand, but it would be too large for his sister’s needs. Placing the crucible back on the coals, he broke the mould, snapped off part of it and pushed it back. The mould was clay. The silver would leak from it, but silver could be shaped, beaten into shape, marked.

He skimmed the silver, let it heat again, skimmed it again. All the time he thought of the hand that had made the small figurine; the hand that had shaped the arrowhead, though a point that was unusable; the hand that had struck the shape into the coin. They were echoes of other lives, condensed into what would soon become an echo of his own.

Jack poured the silver into the mould. Snow blew into the forge, a thickening blanket of cold, helping to cool the coals, though the fire still gave heat enough for the task.

It was a rough-looking ring of silver when, later, he eased it from the mould. Yssobel had left by then, tired and thoughtful. Jack took a small hammer and began to work the metal. As the sky brightened with dawn, he took an awl and began to engrave it.

Hurthig came into the shelter. He inspected Jack’s work and by the raising of eyebrows signified that Jack was doing well.

—A bracelet?

—A hair ring. For my sister.

—Then don’t close it completely.

The young Saxon turned away and began to use the bellows to fire up the crude furnace.

They were making blades and horseshoes. Everything in the villa had its time, and this was forge time, and Hurthig was an expert at iron-making.

What to say? What idea to put on the small, thin ring? He would do it in runes. He and his sister understood rune-writing. But what to say?

After a while he gave up the struggle and just carved the silver with the only thoughts he could summon.

Yssobel looked at the ring, peered closely. On one side she read: Avilion is what we make of it.

She was thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. ‘I like that. I wonder if it’s true.’

Jack shrugged. ‘Avilion belongs to you, not to me.’

‘Does it?’

‘It’s your dream, Yssi. It’s you that sees it from the edge of vision.’

‘From the corner of my eye.’

‘The gleam in the corner of your eye. Whole worlds are there.’

‘I know.’

She turned the ring round, peering hard at what Jack had rune-scrawled on the other side. What we remember is all the home we need.

With a shake of her head she said, ‘That’s a bit . . . what does dad say? Corny.’

‘Best I could come up with. Anyway, not as “corny” as your birthday song about me.’

Yssobel laughed. ‘How long do you expect to live?’

‘Twenty years more at least.’

‘Twenty more verses. I don’t think I can bear the thought.’

‘You can’t bear the thought? Who’s the one who has to sit there listening as he’s dissected by his sister’s tongue? Anyway, you’ll find a way. Just make the last verse count.’

‘Thank you for the hair ring.’

Jack tossed her the smaller ring. He had not formed it completely, not joined it. It was ragged and uneven. Broken. He had inscribed: Here to there. There to here. Yssobel clutched it and held it and smiled.

‘I like this very much. I’ll find a use for it.’

‘It’s nothing. It’s just raw silver, twisted. Nothing to it.’

Yssobel stood and glanced out into the growing storm of snow. Walking away from her brother, she said, ‘That’s what I find good about it. Goodnight, Jack.’

Winter came in. And with winter came a brief greeting from the past, welcome in its way, yet unwelcome for the news it brought.

The Jaguth came. Only Guiwenneth was there to receive them at the time, and Ealdwulf and Egwearda. So that when Steven came home, and his son came home, and Yssobel came home, they found a villa that had changed.

Ghost Rising

The stink of hounds was on the wind, the stink of fear. Bright in the moon, the villa was outlined in snow. Ealdwulf had closed the gates, but Guiwenneth pulled on her boots, wrapped herself in a sheepskin, and walked to where the ageing Saxon was trying to secure the grounds.

‘Leave them open.’

‘Something’s coming.’

‘I know. Leave them open.’

‘I don’t trust the night. Something is coming. I heard hounds calling. Can you smell that stink?’

‘They’re friends, old friend. Just friends. Leave the gates open.’

‘It’s blood, my friend.’ He took her by the arm. ‘They are not coming with good news.’

‘I know.’

‘When my father died, there was a storm of wolf’s breath on the wind. There was blood shadow. There was crow calling. And the moon was bright, like this moon.’

‘This moon doesn’t frighten me. I’ve been expecting them. Ealdwulf, I am not afraid. But, please, old friend: stay beside me.’

‘Will you protect me?’

Why was the Saxon so anxious? He was a strong man, a carpenter of skill, well fed and in robust health. And yet suddenly he looked drawn and was breathing hard, his face creased by the harsh silver light.

‘Ealdwulf. There will be nothing to protect. Not from what is coming. Later? Yes. Then there may be some difficulty.’

As Ealdwulf faded, Guiwenneth strengthened. The snow-storm began to blow hard again, and the moon disappeared. They shivered in the villa; the heating was beginning to fail.

The women from the river had come scurrying in, hooded, cloaked, carrying their belongings in their arms. Three of the horsemen who had recently been using Dun Peredur as a temporary haven on their journey also turned up at the gates, laying their weapons down and leading their animals through the snow to the stables when Guiwenneth indicated they could come in. She had met them before, and was easy with them, though they were of a later age to her. She was glad to see the ancient old hunter she called Flint, wrapped in his furs, making his way to the kitchens. He glanced up as he passed, a miserable remnant of many a savage winter in a land far from his own. He was carrying wood on his back, and Guiwenneth directed Ealdwulf to go and help him. The two couldn’t exchange words, but soon there was a better fire, the sound of laughter, and the welcome smell of simple food.

Rianna approached Guiwenneth. ‘Where is Steven?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your children?’

‘With their father. Serpent Pass, I imagine. But I don’t know.’

‘Let me go and find them,’ the older woman said, resting her hand lightly on Guiwenneth’s folded arms.

Guiwenneth shook her head. ‘Too dangerous.’

‘I can shift my form. I can run. I can fly. I’ve not tried it for a long while, but the memory is there.’

‘And be taken by a moon eagle before you make the valley? No.’

‘Moon eagles? Have you seen them.’

‘I’ve seen one. He’s above the snow. With this storm, you can’t see him, but he’s there. And you wouldn’t have a chance. Thank you, anyway.’

‘Then the drums.’

‘I was thinking of that. But Ealdwulf says there is movement in the earth. I’m not sure the signal would get through.’

Rianna crouched down, placed her hands, then her face against the bare ground, where the snow had been cleared.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Movement in the earth.’

And quite suddenly Guiwenneth felt it too. A tremor that she had experienced before, nothing alarming, nothing threatening; a vibration that seemed to have a rhythm. She was always reminded of an army on the move.

‘Try the drums anyway.’

Rianna disappeared. The snow began to ease. Darkness had taken the land, sliced through by the bright curve of the moon. Ealdwulf’s guttural voice, and Rianna’s insistent commands, sounded from the drum enclosure and almost at once the drums began to beat their own rhythm. The Saxon himself had made them, as he had made almost everything that was new and useful in the villa, and the sound managed to echo in the dark. Would it carry far enough to alert Steven and the others?

It certainly alerted the hounds that had been approaching stealthily. They began to run.

Two of them leapt onto the wall, one each side of the gate. They were huge, grey-backed, white-bellied, howling, hanging onto the stonework with their front paws, peering hard at Guiwenneth. Two more came through the gate, bounding through the snow, slowed by the snow, but determined to reach the woman who waited with open arms. When they reached her they almost struggled to get the first embrace, and Guiwenneth was left wet, licked, pushed over and laughing with the fierce and fond attention of the beasts.

‘Enough! Enough! Good to see you, but you’re rough!’

They sat down beside her, panting. The hounds on the wall scrambled over and approached; younger, leaner, they simply watched, eyes curious and wide, waiting for their masters.

Torches were flaring beyond the gate. A horn sounded, strident and deep, blasted in rhythm with the drumbeat from the signal shed, where Ealdwulf was still frantically signalling to the valleys.

Men approached. Guiwenneth stood and counted the dark shapes against the snow, counted the torches. Only five!

And the villa shook, almost throwing her off balance again. The drumming stopped. The dogs leapt up and looked to their masters, unnerved and alerted. Tiles were shaken from the roof of the villa. One of the women from the river came running through the cloister. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know.’

And then another. ‘There’s something happening in the field behind the villa. Ghosts. Rising.’

What should she do? Old friends coming from the south. A mystery rising from the north.

‘Stop that damned drumming!’ Guiwenneth screamed, and her voice made the distance. Ealdwulf appeared, ashen in the moonlight, shambling, terrified by the hounds, which merely stared at him.

The torch bearers had stopped beyond the villa’s gates. What to do?

‘Something in the field. Come with me!’

The old man ran with Guiwenneth, through the villa, out into the gardens, to the low wall which separated the enclosure from the field and the wild wood beyond. White, and gently rising, the field was host to figures struggling into the early evening. They came, all silver, some bright, some dark, some on horses, some dragging carts, some burdened with packs of supplies; an army, surfacing from the underworld.

Tall riders struggled up through the snow. Horse breath misted. Riders looked around. The whole field was filled with men-at-arms, all shivering, shouting, laughing. Flames flared as some went towards the wood, others towards the villa, most just huddling.

The army seemed to be moving east, towards Serpent Pass, but there was confusion, clear confusion.

A rider came through the churned snow, a heavy-set man wearing furs and leathers, his hair piled on his head and bound with two copper rings. He was young, though hard of feature. But his smile was easy. Two others followed him.

‘I didn’t expect winter,’ he said

‘Winter happens,’ Guiwenneth replied. ‘And too often in this place to get comfort from it.’

The young man looked to the east, standing in the stirrups of his horse. Then, looking back across the wall, he said, ‘If I asked you for food for this rabble?’

‘We have enough food for only twice the rabble you see standing before you. That’s ten at most. We have enough for a few days; fire for a few days more. I’d offer hospitality to a band of twenty, but so many?’

‘I understand. Believe me. I understand very well. I’ve lost count of how many we are. Several hundred for sure. We move through strange realms. We move through worlds defined by time. We have, I have to tell you, seen very strange sights.’

‘Good sights? Bad sights?’

‘A lot of both, my shadow lady.’

‘Delights?’

‘Oh yes. But to surface in winter? That’s no pleasure.’

‘Some love winter, some don’t.’

‘Summer is a feast. Winter?’

‘A beast. I know. Our beasts are dead, all but a few. I will gladly give you food and drink for a few of you. I can’t do more than that. Unless you take it by force.’

The young man smiled, dipped his head. ‘Lady, the man who commands this Legion would scour land for the last blade of grass. But he’s old now. We’re still confined to our movement through the world, sinking, surfacing, fighting in wars that we don’t understand. There is something about us that is beyond our comprehension. But that is what we are. Legion.’

‘Lost.’

‘I suspect so. But when I referred to “rabble”,’ he added brightly, ‘I meant just my own small group of companions.’

‘A friend of mine,’ said Guiwenneth, ‘makes good beer. A barrel is at your disposal.’

‘Accepted gladly. I don’t suppose . . .’

‘A little food?’

‘Enough for a few. If you can spare it.’

Guiwenneth looked at Rianna. ‘A ham. Fetch a ham.’

The woman gave a look of surprise and scurried away. ‘How do you feed your Legion?’ Guiwenneth asked.

‘It’s hard. We didn’t expect to surface in winter. But something, something beyond my understanding, sustains most of them.’

As he waited for the gift, the young man beyond the wall looked down at Guiwenneth, leaning on his horse’s neck, half aware of the rise and fall of the Legion behind him as they surfaced and descended.

‘I’m not going to ask your name,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t give it.’

He grinned. ‘And I’m not going to give you mine.’

‘I wouldn’t ask it, though perhaps I already know it.’

He laughed. ‘Once your hair was as bright as copper, gleaming. I can tell that.’

‘Soon your hair will be grey, bright in the moon.’

‘That’s true. But not yet. Not until the bull turns and charges.’

‘I think I understand. I’m not sure.’

The ham came, and Flint and two women from the river carried a barrel of Egwearda’s ale. The young man stepped down from his horse and leaned over the wall, taking the ham first and then, with the help of his two companions, the barrel.

They rode away. He looked back, raising a hand in respect. ‘It’s the old song,’ he called. ‘When you’re young, the bull pounds the dirt, but at a distance. Later, the bull and you are equals. Then, later still, the young bull is charging at you. What once was easy is now a challenge. As I said, it’s the old song. And when you find the music, you’ll find the words! I can’t remember the poet who wrote it, but he was right. And what keeps us alive, beyond our time, is keeping that old bull at bay.’

‘I’ll find the music,’ Guiwenneth called back against the noise of the rising Legion. ‘And I’ll keep the old bull at bay.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘Are we threatened?’ she shouted.

The young man’s voice was faint. ‘Not now. Not this time. We’re in the wrong place.’

The earth shuddered again, throwing Guiwenneth off balance. The wall against which she stood cracked, bricks fell. The villa itself twisted. The whole land seemed to distort. And in that moment, this strange army of disparate and moonlit men surged down into the snow, drowned by the earth - carts, horses, fires, all of it, all of them, moving away.

Rianna was tugging at Guiwenneth’s arm, the look on her face one of panic. ‘Strange men at the gates. I can’t understand what they’re saying, except that they keep saying your name.’

Guiwenneth consoled the older woman, though she herself was shaking.

She returned to where the Jaguth were waiting and beckoned them in. They waded through the snow and their hounds stood up, stretched and yawned, moving back as the men came forward in their heavy clothing. Five. Only five. Where were the other four? They were so heavily bearded, so lank-haired, so grimed with travel that they all looked the same, but one said, ‘You’ve aged well.’

‘Thank you. Magidion?’

‘I’m Magidion.’

Guiwenneth cried out, ‘I didn’t recognise you! But I’d recognise that voice!’ And she ran to him and tried to embrace him; the hounds growled. Her arms wouldn’t reach around the broad body and bulky clothing of the man, so she tugged his beard. The others laughed at the action.

‘Come into the villa. There’s a fire there, and food.’

Magidion shook his head. The five crouched down in the snow, working the torches into the hard earth so that they were a semicircle of figures, eerily illuminated by the tar flames. They seemed exhausted, sad. Guiwenneth went to them and sat within the half circle, but not before she had signalled to Rianna for broth and bread. The old woman was certainly terrified of these tall, ragged apparitions, but she did as she was told and scurried back to the villa. After a while of silence, Rianna returned with a wide bowl of stew. She placed it on the ground. For a woman normally so resolute in the charge of adversity, she was strangely worried. She had brought two large heavy loaves as well, and Guiwenneth broke them with her hands, passing the chunks to her friends, who scooped the fragments of meat and vegetable from the bowl, ate quietly, and at last relaxed.

‘Have you come from imarn uklyss?’

‘From the valley? Yes. An army was ahead of us, but it seems to have passed you by.’

‘I saw it. Legion. They seemed lost.’

‘They’re not lost,’ Magidion said, licking his fingers. ‘They just don’t know where they’re going. We came to warn you of the danger, but you are indeed Peredur’s daughter. They moved around you and left you standing. Sometimes,’ he added, with what Guiwenneth just discerned as a smile below the huge moustache, in the middle of the beard, ‘Sometimes I wonder why we bother.’

‘Bother with what?’

‘Watching over you. As Peredur instructed us.’

‘If you’ve been watching over me for the last few years, I haven’t noticed much watching.’

‘Then you were looking in the wrong direction.’

She smiled. Then she said, ‘I’ve been happy, you know. Not always. Not recently. I have two children. I have a man in my life that loves me and has stayed in this place, this wood heart, because he knows I can’t leave it. He gave up his world for me.’

‘A good man. I remember him. But he’s not enough, not strong enough, to hold you now. Not enough to protect you.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Legion passed you by. We saw it. We were too slow in the following. We should have been here first. But it passed you by. You were lucky this time.’

His words echoed the parting words of the young rider.

Guiwenneth scooped up snow, made a ball and tossed it at the man. It shattered on his head. ‘I’m glad to see you.’

He shook the ice from his ragged hair. ‘This has been a long walk. We’re glad to find you in good spirit.’

‘Better now that you’ve come. But tell me what has happened. Peredur, my grandfather, died on the wing. I know that much.’

‘Shot down, carrying you,’ said Magidion.

‘But the others? I can’t make you out through the whiskers and hoods. Who remains here?’

One of the Jaguth rose to his feet. ‘I am Amri’och. This is Cunus. This Orien. And here is Oswry.’

‘And the others . . .’

She stood and looked at them, her heart racing as she remembered how young they had been when she had been in their charge, and how they had been transformed into creatures as wild as the wildwood itself. ‘You’ve been halved in numbers since I saw you last.’

‘The Jagad is taking us back,’ said Magidion. ‘It was the agreement we made with her for holding you safe as a child.’

‘I know. But why have you come?’

‘To take you with us, if you wish. To protect you from what lies at the heart of Legion.’

‘Your time here is done,’ said Amri’och.

‘My time is done?’ Guiwenneth shook her head emphatically. ‘I don’t think so. What time I have left, I need to spend it here.’

Even as she spoke the words she felt their falsity.

Bread was thrown into the empty bowl. The Jaguth rose to their feet, shaking snow from their clothing. Magidion looked forlorn.

‘The choice is yours. Whichever of us is left will watch for you.’

There was no anger in his voice, though Guiwenneth heard disappointment. She stood up and reached out for him. When he entered her shallow embrace, he smelled strongly of earth.

‘I must go my own way,’ she said.

‘You are that man’s daughter.’

‘And his granddaughter lives here now.’

She added: ‘When Peredur was shot down, when he dropped me, you were the one who caught me. Would that be right?’

‘Lady, we all caught you as you fell. It’s not the order that matters, it’s the saving. The Jagad is taking us back, one by one. But as long as one of us is left . . .’

‘If I fall, there will be one to catch me.’

He bowed his head in agreement. ‘Perhaps this wasn’t such a wasted journey after all.’

‘Just to see you has given me courage. Please stay longer.’

But Magidion raised his hand, declining the invitation. He drew his torch from the snow.

‘Then goodnight.’

None of the Jaguth responded except with a nod of their heads.

They turned. The hounds rose, yawned, shivered, shook the snow from their hides, looked mournfully at the empty bowl of broth but quickly turned to the gate, leaping through the drifts, leading their masters back into the winter wilderness.

The Crossing Place

We held and held until we broke, and in the breaking we found Avilion.

For a while Guiwenneth sat and stared at the torches as they dimmed with distance. She cried a little, then Ealdwulf stopped the drumming. The sudden loss of sounds startled her. She stood. The old man came towards her, his face flushed with effort and fatigue. ‘I need to rest. I hope they heard the drums.’

‘I’m sure they did. Thank you. Use my room, it’s warm.’

He entered the villa.

What had she been thinking of? Why had she sent her protectors away? Her time here was done: she’d known it for several winters without really thinking about it.

Guiwenneth sighed. She walked into the back garden, went to the low wall where she could see the churned field, where the army had surfaced and descended. And for reasons that she didn’t understand but which seemed completely natural, she called for the young rider. She felt very calm.

The snow parted, the earth parted, he came up, his horse struggling, finding its balance. He was attentive to the animal, no eyes for Guiwenneth until horse and rider had made the hard ground. He shifted his shield onto his back, reached down and stroked the broad cheeks of his mount. Behind him his shield companions surfaced, one of them leading a bridled, harnessed, saddled mare, bringing her forward to the wall, leaving her there before retiring.

The young warrior said, ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d call, but I waited.’

‘I’m glad you waited. I wasn’t sure if I would call.’

‘I shan’t give you my name,’ he said.

‘I shan’t give you mine.’

‘Not yet, at least.’

Guiwenneth clambered over the wall and hoisted herself onto the ice-cold saddle, holding the horse’s mane, reassuring her. A fur-lined cloak was thrown to her by one of the companions and she hauled it around her shoulders, securing it at the neck with the heavy bronze clasp.

The young rider asked, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure you want to come?’

‘No. Not at all. But for some reason it feels right.’

‘You have a husband, children.’ It was a statement, not a question. He knew who she was, then.

She stared at the villa for a moment, then slumped across the horse’s withers, crying softly. ‘I know. I know. I belonged with them for a long while. Now I don’t know where I belong.’

‘There is an answer to be found. I’ll help you find it. Be strong. Hold your ground.’

Hold your ground?

‘Who are you?’ Guiwenneth whispered, and he answered, ‘I’ve already told you: that I’ll not tell you. But I’ll tell you this. It’s a song I know, though I’ll not sing it. My singing voice is terrible. And it’s a terrible tune.’

His companions made a low sound, almost like a muttered cheer.

‘But I like the words, and I like them partly because I don’t understand them, not all of them. Shall I speak the song to you before you freeze to death?’

‘Yes. Yes, do.’

One of his shield men leaned so far back in his saddle, groaning, that he fell from his horse. The young rider watched him for a moment, then turned back to Guiwenneth.

‘Since I’m not permitted to indulge in story or song by those who claim to protect me, let me say just this . . .’

He reached out his hand; she took it. His gaze was inquisitive and uncertain and pleasant. He said, ‘It’s as if I’ve met a ghost; and know at once I know her.’

Guiwenneth shivered but laughed. ‘Well, strangely, I feel the same.’

‘So what are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘I could ask the same of you.’

He let go of her hand and stared across the winter hills. ‘This is my world. Isn’t it? I feel that it is, and yet . . . I’m not sure.’

‘It’s mine too,’ Guiwenneth responded. ‘And yet - I’m not sure either.’

‘Then we’ve met where, at what? A hinterland?’

She looked at the villa, at the moonlit ridges of the hills, at the dark road to the valley, to imarn uklyss. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘A crossing place. A place of meeting. And of parting.’

He stared at her, curious, before smiling; he glanced round at his companions, then back at the woman. ‘Ghost - will you come with me?’

‘Will you keep me safe?’

‘In Legion? I wouldn’t volunteer that promise! My best is all I can promise; and the strong shields of my men here. And your own courage.’

Guiwenneth sighed. ‘I wonder if I’m dead.’

‘I can’t answer that. You look “quick” enough to me. So now decide,’ he said in a formal tone. ‘Shall I step aside? Or hold you?’

Guiwenneth now reached out her own hand, which was quickly taken. The horses were feeling the cold, the stillness. Riding was needed. Warmth.

‘That’s from your song,’ she said, and he agreed. ‘Hold me,’ she went on. ‘You say you’ve met a ghost. I feel the same. I’m not sure if you’re from my own world of dreams, or you from mine.’

‘Who is the ghost - who the host?’ he responded with amused understanding.

His companions rode up, restless. Each acknowledged Guiwenneth politely again, but frowned at the young rider.

One of them said wearily, ‘We have to go. We know you like words. You’re better than the two of us put together in just about everything; when it comes to words. But for the moment, for all our sakes, stop the mead-hall romancing!’

‘And we’ll never catch up unless we go now,’ said the other.

‘Yes. Yes, of course. One of you ride at the front, one stay at the rear.’ He looked at Guiwenneth. ‘Until we’re settled, perhaps you should ride ahead of me.’

Snow began to fall again, though lightly. A torch flared and circled in the grounds of the villa, though Guiwenneth couldn’t see who was waving it. She started to sing, a song she had always loved. The Song of the Islands of the Lost.

The four made their formation and found their way back into the earth.

Parting

During that same night, Ealdwulf and Egwearda died. Yssobel, Steven and Hurthig rode back the next day to find Egwearda on her knees in the snow, face pressed hard into the ground, as if grieving, as if to freeze her tears.

‘What’s happened here?’ Yssobel whispered.

‘I don’t know. But it’s not good.’

Jack was elsewhere, but Yssobel was certain that her brother had also heard the summoning of the drums and was finding his way home.

She dismounted, took the horses and led them to the stables. Steven went to the Saxon woman. He put his arms around her, to raise her up. He imagined she was in pain.

‘Egwearda ...’

The woman didn’t move. She was cold and hard, like rock. He sighed, then lifted her from the snow and carried her to the villa. Yssobel came running, shedding her cloak, a quick glance telling her father that she had understood the situation.

‘Find your mother,’ Steven said.

Yssobel went to Guiwenneth’s room and it was there that she found Ealdwulf. He was lying on the bed, quiet, cold. Now she understood the reason for Egwearda’s grieving death. She knelt beside him for a moment, then realised with a moment’s profound shock that something was wrong beyond the death of the Saxons. Nothing was missing from the room itself; but the room had begun to turn grey: surfaces and walls were shedding a light ash.

It was Rianna who brought the news, arms crossed, face distraught as she stood in the doorway. Yssobel rose slowly to her feet, face darkening as she saw the look in the old woman’s eyes.

‘My mother?’

‘She went with them,’ Rianna said softly, on the verge of tears. ‘I watched the whole thing. A young rider and his companions; out on the hill. We gave them food and drink as they passed, just enough for a few. But they came back later, during the night. They took her with them.’

‘They took her with them? Where were they going? Do you know?’

‘I don’t know. How can I know?’ The woman was crying. ‘Downwards. Into the earth. They seemed to melt into the earth. Riding east, towards Serpent Pass. I saw the whole thing. She was unhappy, I could tell that; but she was not taken against her will. She didn’t struggle. It was almost as if she wanted to go.’

Yssobel was silent. She touched the cold, calm face of the dead man. Inside, she too was feeling cold and dead. What have I done? There was a long silence as she thought about what to do. Then to Rianna:

‘I dropped my cloak in the snow. Fetch it, please.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going to my quarters.’

Yssobel covered the body of the old man, looked around at her mother’s private room, once a warm place where she had told stories, combed hair, made clothes, cried whilst awake, cried whilst asleep. All, now, becoming dust. Yssobel walked about the chamber, searching. She found something of importance and folded it, tucking it inside her heavy clothing. Then she went out into the frost, walked round to the wall at the back of the villa and stared at the hill. It was churned up and rough, as if a battle had been fought there. Among the trees on the ridge, a few torches glowed, the ever-watching Iaelven.

She shouted at them. Then she shouted at the night sky, at the stars she could glimpse. Then she screamed and struck the wall with her fists until she felt them bruised.

‘What have I done? What have I done? Gwin! Mother! Come back, come back.’

Tears of anger flooded her face. The red side of her was in a fury, but at herself. The red side felt guilt. Argument was remembered. Her mother’s anxious anger that her daughter might be summoning Christian from the deep. Her own unwillingness to accept anything other than a sad and needful nature in the resurrected man.

Her mother had ‘gone willingly’. Or had she? She had taken nothing, no winter clothing, no personal items, no supplies. She had just gone.

Yssobel slumped against the wall, head between her outstretched arms.

‘We must not lose you. We must not lose you.’

After a while, she returned to her own rooms, her anger gone, a strange pain inside her still insistent.

When Steven found her, she was slumped on her arms on her table, painted and unpainted parchments scattered on the floor, swept there with indifference, only the image of Peredur in place; and her hand was on the painting. Her hair was a veil across a woman who was clearly weeping softly.

‘Yssi?’

The hand clawed at the image of her grandfather. Auburn hair shook as she rocked from side to side. ‘I’d like to be alone for a while.’

‘Don’t do anything rash. Promise me?’

Yssobel sat up, tearful eyes glaring, mouth hard, as if she were about to shout some fierce rebuke to her father. But she softened her look, frowned, then nodded agreement.

‘I won’t do anything rash. I just have to think. This is my doing. This is my own doing.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘The falling-out. The anger. Her unhappiness.’

‘Guiwenneth had been unhappy for several years. She’s a mythago. She’s all from the green side. That’s the side that calls the strongest; and when it calls, you have no resistance to it. What has happened is simply a part of the cycle of her story. We have to understand that.’

‘Simply? Simply? How easy to accept that. Aren’t you sad she’s gone?’

Steven could hardly speak for a moment. The words choked in his chest as he tried to suppress his own emotion. ‘Of course I am,’ he managed to say. ‘But I understand it. I don’t like it. I wouldn’t have wanted it. I would do anything to have her back. I love her. But I understand why it must happen.’

‘You waited so long for her to come back to you. How can you let her go now?’

He had no answer except to say, feebly, ‘I waited once, and I was rewarded with a great deal of hardship and joy. I couldn’t wait again, Yssi. I’d rather follow her.’

Yssobel stood and came round to her father, looked him in the eye, then put her arms around him. ‘What if I could get her back?’ she whispered.

‘Don’t! Don’t even think about it!’

‘But what if I could?’ she asked, stepping back.

‘Then I’d lose you too. Yssi, winter’s coming to an end. Can you smell it?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Tomorrow, the day after, the snow will be gone. Cold makes us think only of the cold. Soon we can think of the future.’

‘I understand.’

She kissed him gently, looked at him gently. Steven read that look - he knew it from years of experience with her. She would agree at first, before disobeying.

He sighed. ‘I’d better go and comfort Hurthig.’

Yssobel wiped her eyes with her hands, agreeing. ‘I’ll come with you.’

The young Saxon had arranged the bodies of his parents so that Egwearda lay curled up, facing Ealdwulf. The old man’s arms held the strange relic that they carried with them, but the ring had been removed from the hand, and Steven saw that Hurthig now wore it.

Hurthig rose from kneeling and turned towards Yssobel. ‘I hope you find your Odysseus, no matter where you travel.’

These were the first words he had ever spoken. In English, with an odd accent, but comprehensible. He repeated them in his own language. His voice was mellow and deep, soft, unlike his father’s.

‘You’ve been silent since we knew you,’ Yssobel said. ‘What brings the voice now?’

‘These deaths.’

He didn’t elaborate. Steven asked, ‘Then you’ll be leaving us?’ But Hurthig shook his head. ‘This is the place we came searching for. We found many like it, but this is where they belong. And where I belong as well. I would like to build a funeral pyre, in the field.’

‘The field is yours, Hurthig. It doesn’t belong to the villa. It belongs to the Iaelven.’

Hurthig nodded his understanding, then turned away. Steven left him to his contemplation, though Yssobel remained, watching the man at his ritual. Steven heard her ask, ‘Who are you? Who are you really?’

He answered in his own language, guttural and resonant. Then he said, ‘They were the last of the old kingdom. I am the first of the new. I don’t know any more than that. Like you, like Jack, I dream of myself in future times. But there is never a name.’

All night the pyre had burned and it was still glowing when dawn came. The snowfield was alive with the colours of fire and Hurthig was still in the saddle, slumped forward in sleep.

This was two days after the deaths, two days after Guiwenneth had disappeared.

Several tall armed Amurngoth had appeared during the night funeral and watched curiously, but they had not interfered. The silvery ghost of a woman had also been seen, standing at the edge of the wood, staring down at the pyre, but for moments only.

Jack came back early the following day. He had been trying to ride up Serpent Pass to the museum, to bring back more easy metal for the forge. The Haunter side of him had detected the heavy beat of the summoning drum. He had been about to turn back anyway. For ages, Serpent Pass had been in winter.

He found Steven in his mother’s room, in distress, confused, almost unable to speak. The room was coated in a strange ash, which did not feel or smell as if it had come from burning. ‘She’s gone,’ was all his father would say.

Jack stalked the grounds, searching for any sight or sign of Guiwenneth, or of what might have happened. His face was flushed with the effort of the ride, and with anxiety. Another fire had been lit on the field behind the villa; and the field was in ruins. What was going on?

The human side was not coping. Haunter whispered to him, and the sound of summer streams and stillness calmed Jack down.

He went to find his father again. Now he was in the room where they took their meals, sitting at the table.

‘What happened here? What happened to Gwin?’

Steven looked up, shaking his head. ‘Egwearda and Ealdwulf are both dead. Hurthig is alive. Rianna says Gwin was swallowed by the earth. Riders came past. Night riders. She went with them. But, according to Rianna, willingly.’

‘Willingly? I don’t believe it. That’s nonsense. She’s been taken.’ Calm! Jack took a few deep breaths, his heart still racing. ‘Where’s Yssobel?’

‘Still in her quarters, I expect.’ Steven looked suddenly alarmed. ‘How long is it after dawn?’

There was no need to answer the question. They ran through the villa’s corridors, to the rooms where Yssobel’s gallery was still intact, exactly as she would have left it. But of Yssobel herself there was no sign.

On her table, spread so that they could be seen from the door, were the portrait of Peredur; next to it a sketch of Guiwenneth herself; and the shallow porcelain dish that Odysseus had painted, the image of the girl, which she had taken from his cave.

As his father started to bend forward, his breathing becoming desperate, Jack took his arm. ‘You go to the stables - see if her horse is still there and I’ll look for tracks.’

‘Yes,’ Steven said, and walked quickly from the room.

Jack went out into the wide courtyard and asked Haunter for help. The green side of him scanned the snow, as far as the gates, and then beyond, where the track wound towards the beginning of the valley.

Hounds had been here, and men, five of them, judging by the impressions in the frozen ground. The men had sat in a semicircle. Something hot had been placed on front of them; a cauldron, no doubt. Another figure had crouched on the other side. His mother, he imagined. Why had they sat in the snow? Why not in the villa? He didn’t understand; but he was careful to remember that pattern, and the numbers of men, and the numbers of hounds.

There were tracks, too, of the riders who had come home: Yssobel herself; Steven; Jack and Hurthig. But all tracks led inwards from the gate. There were none - and he searched the snow carefully - that suggested any departure.

His father called to him. ‘Jack? Rona is gone. Yssobel’s horse is gone. All the other packhorses are here.’

They met at the rear wall and looked at the field, and across the field at the hill. Haunter whispered: Nothing to see. But in this mess of tracks and chaos, I can’t be sure. If she went this way, she went towards the hill, or Serpent Pass. But I can’t be sure.

Had she gone to the valley?

Jack walked through the main gates, out into the cruel day, and stared at the far hills, the winter woods, the place from where his mother had struggled to return. He saw there the same hound tracks and the man tracks; they led in, then out. The outward traces suggested they had turned into the pass. There was no sign of any horse or horses going anywhere but into the villa.

Jack stood there for a long time, feeling the ice wind, listening to the silence, searching the distance for movement, seeing only the movement of cloud and the swirl of gusting snow, picked up by an elemental wind. This winter had lasted too long. Too many winters, too much wasteland. Distantly, he could hear a woman softly crying, and recognised the mourning keen of Rianna, who perhaps was sensing the end of the home.

And then his father’s voice: ‘I’m going to lose you too! I know it. Everything about you tells me that’s what’s going to happen.’

‘What about me?’

‘Your anger.’

Jack turned from the gate, walked to his father and took him in his arms. Steven Huxley was a shade of himself - dark-rimmed eyes, deep frown, shivering with cold and something more: fear, perhaps.

He was taller than his son, but now Jack felt taller. ‘We should go into the warm.’

In the villa, in Jack’s room, surrounded by his son’s models of the edge of the world, Steven started to smile. He looked at the model of Oak Lodge; at the landscape of the fields and woodland; at the small wooden buildings that represented Shadoxhurst - the church far too prominent, the spire too high. It was such a small town in the land, even though it called to all the villages around. Shadox Wood. And what had Shadox meant? Not even his father had been able to understand the meaning behind the name.

It sounded like shadow.

Steven said, ‘The edge of the world is shadow, Jack. To me it’s memory. To you, a place to find. I’ve always known that.’

He exchanged a long and silent look with the young man whom he loved. ‘But do you really need to go there now?’

‘Yes. And for a second reason.’

Rianna appeared at the door. At Steven’s signal she came in and sat at the table. ‘I didn’t see her go. I didn’t hear her go. But the horse was mine, my gift to her. And the horse was charmed. I can believe that in riding out, before dawn, she would have left no signs.’

‘Do you have any idea where she might have gone?’

But the High Woman shook her head. ‘If I’d known what was in her heart I could have followed, but it’s too late now.’

‘My thinking exactly,’ Jack said. He looked at the gaunt woman. ‘Will you look after this man in my absence?’

She seemed surprised and insulted. ‘Where else can I go? Of course. This is my home.’

‘This is my home too,’ Jack replied. ‘And Yssobel’s. To find where she’s gone I need to find my grandfather.’

Steven shook his head. ‘That makes no sense.’

We can find him. We can summon him. We can explore what he has seen. He has been close to us for years, and might have the clue to where she has gone. This may be instinct, but instinct that should be obeyed. Go to the edge, Jack. Your Haunter will get you there.

‘I think . . .’ Jack began, but paused. He corrected the word: ‘I’m certain that I can find Grandfather George.’

‘You’ll find no more than a mythago. He’ll be an impression, an echo of your own needs, your own passion. What is the point? Raising a man who is not the true man?’

‘But dad: Guiwenneth came to you with memories of her past. They weren’t yours, they were hers. You’ve always told me this. You brought her to life. You brought my mother to life. She came with life! A memory of life. So can George. If I can call him.’

‘Why do you think my father would ever venture near the edge of the wood?’

‘Because that’s where the Lodge is. Because that’s where he began. Because for him, that’s the place where he can cross between worlds. All he needs is the call. I’m guessing, of course. But I’ll try. If I can bring him back, I can ask him about my mother and Yssi.’

‘And see the world you’ve dreamed of so obsessively at the same time.’

‘But I’ll come back. I promise.’

‘What would bring you back? What reason would you have to come back if you find the world you’ve dreamed of?’

‘You. This place. This life. It’s so intriguing. But, that said, I will leave again, eventually. But not before I’ve said a proper goodbye to you.’

Rianna interrupted. ‘Would you like me to prepare food for your journey? Hurthig can saddle the horse. You’ll need a pack animal too. Are you leaving now?’

‘The day after tomorrow. I smell spring. I want the snow to go away. I’d like to be alone with my father now.’

Rianna rose and smiled, vanished like a ghost.

Jack said: ‘Well: now we can talk for a while longer. And I’ll call to you when I return.’

This was the end of the villa. Rebuilt from ruins, now it was ruined again, by the loss of so much of the warmth of the life that it had contained.

Return

Steven stood in the middle of the field. It was night, and a brisk early-autumn wind was blowing. The field had healed itself; no sign now of the passing of Legion those many seasons ago, that confused passage of time. Silver gleamed on the hill, between the trees. The silver was woman-shaped.

He watched, aware that he should go no closer.

A darker form appeared, masking the silver; man-shaped, weary. The glow of the woman made a halo around his body. Steven heard her words:

‘A friend has returned.’

And then the call of his son: ‘I’m home. And I know where Yssobel has gone.’

Silver faded, that enigmatic glow he had witnessed before, not understanding it, but gone now. His son came down the hill, a gaunt man, stinking of travel and the wild. None of that mattered. Afraid though he was of walking too far into the ground belonging to the Iaelven, Steven approached his son and held him.

‘Where has she gone?’ he asked.

‘Beyond the fire.’

‘And my father? Did you find him?’

‘I did. Not a good encounter, but good enough.’

‘Did he remember me?’

‘He remembered you. And your brother. And for a while he confused me with you, but he soon understood who I was. And he knew of Yssobel.’

Steven smiled. ‘You were right. There was a good reason for going to the edge.’

‘And I’ve brought you your book. The Time Machine. I’ve read some of it. It’s so strange! I like it, though I don’t understand the world in which it’s set. Such a strange future. And I’ve also brought a chess game. From Christian’s room. It’s all I could think to bring.’

‘Chris liked chess. Thank you.’

‘And I don’t propose to leave again for several weeks.’

His father smiled now. ‘I’m glad to hear that. But food is scarce.’

‘Food can be obtained.’

‘Not much warmth in the villa.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

‘This was a hard trip, I think. For you.’

Shrugging off his leather packs, pushing them into his father’s arms, Jack said, ‘Not hard at all. There’s a part of me that can pursue trails through anything that’s hard. I’m pleased to see you.’

Fading eyes brightened at the words, then the frown in the gaunt face again. ‘Who was the silver woman?’

They looked back towards the hill. Jack said, ‘Someone from the past. When I’ve found our Yssobel - should she need finding - I’ll come back for the silver woman. And someone else.’ He shivered with the cold. ‘Why are you asking me so much? Out here. In the field! I need to sleep and see you in the light.’

The hill was dark now, but Rianna had lit a torch and was waving it, a fire of welcome by the outer wall. Exhausted, but with his arm around his father, Jack went back to the comfort of his first home.

The Crossing Place: Moonsilver

Jack stayed with his father for several days, enjoying both the comfort of the villa and the awareness that Steven Huxley was transformed by his son’s return. It was quite clear that Steven had not been looking after himself. He was dishevelled and ragged, his eyes rimmed with dark through lack of proper sleep, and he had developed a substantial belly.

But now he was a fury of activity and chatter. And laughter.

Hurthig had maintained the villa as well as he could, though there were distinct signs of change, and Rianna had kept it clean, though she had failed to persuade Steven to wash more often and trim his hair. It was as if he had wanted an excuse to clean himself up. And that excuse had come back into his life. Apart from the paunch, he was a new man.

On the second day of Jack’s reappearance, Jack told of everything he had found at Oak Lodge.

‘You found my father? You found old Huxley?’

‘He was just the ghost of the man, I’m sure of that,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t know from whose mind he was resurrected. And it was the ghost of a journal. But he wrote about Yssobel when I whispered in his ear.’

‘And you know where she’s gone?’

‘Where she’s gone, and how she got there. But if I’m right,’ Jack had been thinking hard about what Huxley had written, about his sister’s transit to Avilion, ‘that way is not open to me.’

To the extent that he could, he recounted the scrawled contents of the notebook. Steven was fascinated and perplexed in equal measure.

Jack described the Amurngoth, and his failed attempts to walk beyond Shadoxhurst.

His father was not surprised. ‘It’s true; we would find mythagos dead on the land. They would come to the edge of the wood and peer at us, but those that tried to move outwards always perished. I didn’t know this until I read my own father’s journals, long after he had disappeared.’

Jack shook his head. ‘At least one mythago made it to the outside and survived.’

Steven was surprised. ‘Oh? What was it?’

‘Who was it! His name is Caylen Reeve; he’s been with the Shadoxhurst church for generations.’

For a moment, Steven was speechless. ‘Good Lord. The Reverend Reeve. He used to conduct the harvest festival every year. That’s the only time I ever really met him. How in the name of . . . how do you know he was from the wood?’

‘He told me. He recognised me for what I am.’

‘Tell me more.’

When Jack had finished filling his father in on the details of his journey and his edge-world experiences, he presented Steven with the two items he’d requested.

Steven looked at the copy of The Time Machine and shook his head fondly. ‘This was my favourite story when I was a child. I must have read it fifty times. Maybe more. It makes me shiver just to think about it now.’ He opened the book, read a paragraph or two to himself, then closed it and kissed it. ‘You must read it before you go again, Jack. And I know you’re going to go again.’

Jack passed his father the chess set. ‘Ah,’ said Steven. ‘He was a good player, your brother. Better than me, though not as good as George. When our father deigned to leave his study and come and spend time with us, that is. The pieces are made of something called bakelite. It was quite new.’

‘They feel strange to the touch. I would have expected ivory.’

‘Ivory or wood. Yes. This was a birthday gift from a friend of my father’s, his great companion and fellow scientist. A man called Wynne-Jones. Heaven alone knows where he is now. In our different ways, we all became lost.’ He placed book and game to one side. ‘Thank you, Jack. These are precious souvenirs.’

It was warm in this room, in the villa. It was as Jack remembered it. When his mother and Yssobel had shouted at each other, the room could seem cold. But when the family were quiet, eating and laughing together, this place of simple furniture, decoration and open hearth had been comforting and enclosing. Or was this nostalgia at work, the constant draw to home? Life in the villa had been hard, and his and Yssobel’s growing frustration at their confinement had been harshly expressed.

Perhaps it was just that he was pleased to be away from the journey, feet up, sipping Hurthig’s strange brew, appetite satisfied with Rianna’s meat stew; and seeing his father with a glow upon his face.

He stayed for seven days, helping Hurthig at the forge, Rianna with the running of the smallholding, and with her cooking. Several visitors came and went, all entertained, none particularly entertaining.

But Jack was getting restless. Something Haunter had heard whispered as they had followed the Iaelven through the under-passages of the wood kept coming back to him: that the Iaelven could traverse all boundaries.

Each evening he went up onto the slope between the villa and the wooded hill and wondered if they would appear. He called out at times. Only once did he hear anything from that mysterious, invisible entrance below the ridge, and it was not the whistle-speak of the Amurngoth but the angry and frustrated shouting of the boy, the human boy.

And only once did he see anything. The silvery glow of the young-old woman who was the eternal prisoner of the Amurngoth.

At the end of seven days Jack realised that he was now ready to go; it was not a feeling he perceived in himself, but only by looking at the signs of anxiety and sadness in his father’s gaze. Steven Huxley could tell what was in the wind, and his heart was breaking again.

‘Why don’t you stay? Yssobel will come home when she’s achieved what she needs. She has no reason to stay in that part of Lavondyss once she has found Gwin.’

Jack thought about that. ‘If she finds Gwin, she will probably find Christian. From what you’ve told me, that might not be for the best.’

Steven sighed, looked away. He couldn’t disagree. In the garden of Oak Lodge, where he had met Guiwenneth for the first time, his brother had emerged from the wildwood with fierce and mindless men, brutalising him before taking Guiwenneth; there was a part of Christian that was deeply twisted. His obsession for Guiwenneth, when the brothers had been young men, had been overpowering. Charming, unpredictable, besieged by thoughts of her, and capable of murder: yes, the encounter would be dangerous.

But Yssobel had been convinced that her uncle was a gentle man, and that he was calling to her more out of need than anything to do with desire. Yes, this might have been the way she rationalised her own obsession with Avilion, her passion to see the very heart of the wood. But whatever had happened to her, just like Jack she had been unable to suppress vision and a dream with common sense.

For several nights more Jack walked across the field and called for the Iaelven. Only the occasional screaming of the boy from Shadoxhurst could be heard. It was not the sound of punishment but of defiance.

He was half asleep, watching the stars through his window. It was a warm night; the cooking fires were now just embers, though the drifting smell of woodsmoke was soft and pleasant.

Jack became half aware of the glow of silver, as if the Moon had just surfaced into the night sky. And then his name was whispered. He lay quite still.

A hand touched his shoulder and he reacted with a startled cry, rolling off the padded bench and staring at the apparition that watched him. ‘You! You frightened me.’

Silver stood there, looking down at him. She put a finger to her lips, then smiled. The room was in strange light, but he had met this many times on his way back from Oak Lodge: sometimes golden, sometimes silver, it was light that emanated rather than shone.

‘They wish to speak to you,’ the woman said.

‘The Amurngoth?’

‘They wish you to come to them. Will you follow?’

‘I’ve been calling to them for days,’ Jack said, with a frown. ‘Is it because of my calling?’

‘It is because of the boy. And your calling. Will you follow? You will be safe, I promise you.’

Ethereal but very tangible, she walked from the room. As Jack dressed quickly he saw her pass through the gate in the rear wall and walk up the hill. He followed at a run, but she moved fast, and she had long disappeared from sight by the time he arrived, breathless, at the ridge.

Then Haunter whispered, We have company. Stay very still.

The Iaelven, two of them, had walked out of the darkness behind him. They towered over him, their breathing wheezy, their eyes a glitter of unwelcome in those ragged-hair faces. But they were not armed. Without any sound, none of the whistle-speak, they turned and walked towards the tree line. Jack followed, aware that this pair stank in a way he had never experienced before. Haunter said, That’s anger and fear. But why?

Silver suddenly greeted him. He had moved back into the Amurngoth hill without even noticing the transition.

He was in a wide fern-lined chamber. Four Amurngoth crouched there, watching him. The boy was sitting between them and he frowned when he saw Jack. Silver was seated on a low wooden stool to the side. Jack was invited to crouch. He did so, but kept his gaze on the boy’s.

There was whistling and whispering, a mouth flutter. Silver said, ‘The boy will not tell them his name. He is very obstinate.’

Jack tried to remain expressionless, but he narrowed his eyes and gave an almost imperceptible nod to the lad: Keep it that way.

And the Hawkings’ boy, as Jack knew him, with the merest twitch of his mouth, the merest hint of a smile of recognition, signalled that he understood.

The Iaelven were agitated. The conversation was heated. ‘What are they saying?’ Jack finally asked.

The silver woman thought for a moment. Then, with a deep breath, she said, ‘They do not wish to keep this boy. He is too difficult. They took him to trade him, but they cannot trade him. He is violent and aggressive; he does not cooperate. His anger screams through the minds of the Iaelven, causing pain. He is a mistake.’

Jack glanced back at the Hawkings’ boy, remembering his assertion: ‘Won’t tell you my name!’ He smiled as he remembered the defiance when they had first met.

‘Do you understand what’s being said?’ he asked. The boy shook his head.

‘She speaks really strange. You’ve got a funny accent, but I can get most of it.’

Jack glanced at Silver as if speaking to her as he warned the boy, ‘Keep your name to yourself.’

The lad laughed. ‘Won’t tell! Never will.’

Jack looked around at the dark, straggling creatures, listening to their subdued whistling. ‘What is it they want?’ he asked softly.

Silver replied, ‘They want you to take him. They want you to accept him. Return him home. They cannot tolerate him.’

Torn between concern for the child and his own selfishness, Jack was silent and confused. There was opportunity here, but at what price? Then Haunter spoke: Refuse the request.

To the woman. Jack said, ‘No. I can’t do it. Where would I take him? How? I have a journey to make. The boy is to live in the villa? With my frail father? That’s not possible.’

Silver was speaking Iaelven, translating as Jack spoke, and his words were not well received. Jack persisted: ‘If they are unhappy with the boy, then kill him. Dispose of him. Or let them take him back themselves.’

Silver said, ‘They can’t kill him. That is not in their nature. Human adults, yes. But not a child. They wish to dispose of him to you, to place him with you. Then they will take back the Change they left behind.’

Jack stared at the floor of the cave, wondering what to say to that, if anything at all. He had no idea how the Iaelven would react if they knew their hideous Change was in a shallow grave.

‘Leave him with me? No. At least . . . not yet.’

The Iaelven asked through Silver what he meant by that, and Jack said, with Haunter’s prompting, ‘I will take him home if the Amurngoth will take me to Avilion. I need to go there, but I don’t know how to get there. I need to pass by Peredur’s Stone, at the bottom of the valley. Ask them if they can help me.’

There was a long exchange. The boy stared at Jack, calm now, but suddenly slightly frightened. The anger and resistance in him was subdued as he struggled, from the look on his face, to understand what was happening. The first answer, conveyed by the woman, was that they knew about the stone, but that the stone was a crossing place. A myriad of paths led away from the monolith.

‘But can they get me to Avilion?’

Yes. But they would have to know the direction.

‘If I can find the direction, will they get me there in exchange for me keeping the boy and taking him home?’

Silver listened to the chatter and birdsong for a long while. When it fell silent, she looked at Jack; she seemed sad, but was smiling. ‘They say yes.’

From the gloom of the cavern behind the Amurngoth, an Iaelven appeared, carrying a wide wooden bowl. This was placed in the middle of the circle. The bowl contained a thick grey mass, studded with the reds and purples of small fruit. The odour was unmistakably that of fungus.

Silver said, ‘This is a rare privilege. They are inviting you to share their food. They must be very desperate for your help.’

Jack looked at her. ‘What is it?’

‘Their staple meal. They have very little variety.’

‘It looks disgusting. Don’t tell them I said so.’

‘It is very nourishing.’

And probably poisonous, Jack thought. Then Haunter nudged him. Would they want to poison us when we’ve offered to help them? That doesn’t make sense.

They may not intentionally want to poison us, Jack said to his green side. But what is tolerable to the Iaelven might cause madness in a human.

Let go, and let me eat. If I detect poison I shall spit it out discreetly.

Silver had already reached into the bowl and moulded a small ball of the mash, eating it slowly. Jack did the same, and then the group who had greeted him all spooned handfuls of the slimy cake.

To his astonishment, the food was very palatable. Pungent, unusual, with the sweetness and bitterness of the different fruits contrasting with the earthy taste of the mould. Haunter was reassuring. They have picked carefully. You can expect a wild dream, but no damage. You’ve eaten enough. Indicate pleasure and thanks.

Jack did as his alter ego suggested.

To Silver, he addressed a quiet question. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

She touched a delicate finger to her lip, brushing a small morsel of food away. ‘I told you, I have nowhere to go. I am now a part of the underworld. I serve a simple purpose: to communicate between the Amurngoth and other forms, including human. There is nothing you can do for me, Jack. But the boy? He can be taken home.’

In fact, Jack had been having very difficult second thoughts about the Hawkings’ boy. To play with the lad’s life was wrong; to use him as a bargaining counter was deeply wrong. The boy would be perfectly safe in the villa. Steven and Rianna could take care of him; he would be well fed - indeed, he would be nurtured. And he might even find a trade, under the expert eye and hand of Hurthig, at least until the young Saxon decided it was time to move on, to find his true destiny, the founding of a new kingdom.

The lad belonged with a family, living within human company.

The meal was finished. The Iaelven rose to their willowy heights and disappeared into the cavern. The boy whispered, ‘Don’t leave me.’

Leaning forward, thinking hard, Jack said, ‘I want you to stay with my father. You’ll be well cared for. I have a journey to make, and I have no idea how hard it will be, no more than I know where I’m going! Will you stay with my father? You’ll be warm and well fed.’

There was a long silence. The boy’s face twisted between confusion and anger, sadness and determination.

Finally he said, in a voice that was almost a growl of despair, ‘No! I’m staying with you. I want to stay with you.’

Surprised at the ferocious certainty shown by Won’t Tell, Jack urged him to reconsider. ‘A warm villa, good food; and I will be back. You’d be better off here.’

Again, an angry ‘No!’ There was panic in the boy’s eyes.

‘The reason?’

‘I trust you,’ Won’t Tell said. ‘You came out of the wood once, you can come out again. If I stay here, and you die, where do I go? No, I’ll take my chance with you. And make life very, very difficult for these monsters.’

‘Are you frightened of them?’

‘I was. But not now.’ He frowned, looked down. ‘This is just a dream. A horrible dream. But I’m not afraid, not really. Just a little. I want to stay with you!’

‘Then stay you will. But for the moment, you stay here.’

Jack left the hill. Despite Haunter’s reassurance, he was feeling distinctly strange. The villa glowed with torchlight. His feet embraced the hard earth, but he was moving with speed. He was running, and breathless. He flung himself against the perimeter wall, turned and sunk down into a sitting position.

He began to extend. He felt engaged with something deeper, something below him, a network. Haunter whispered, ‘I may have misjudged.’

‘I think you did. I feel very strange.’

‘It isn’t poison. I can detect poison. It’s no more than an influence. Jack is a little more Haunter than he’s used to being. Follow where it takes you. I’ll follow too.’

Where it took Jack at that moment was over onto his side, retching violently. When the spasm of sickness passed, he breathed deeply.

His limbs were drawn towards imarn uklyss. He felt himself to be a spread of roots, surging in their growth towards the bottom of the valley. There they embraced the tall stone he had never seen, only heard about, witnessed only in the furiously sketched drawings of his sister. Peredur’s monument.

This is madness. This is poison. Does it mean anything?

He was still sitting by the wall as dawn began to strike the sky with gentle light.

‘No more than you already knew,’ Haunter said. ‘Yssobel passed beyond the stone. How she did it isn’t clear, but we agree: that way is not open to you. The Amurngoth will take us. And a little of the grey cake they’ve fed you might occasionally show us the way.’

‘Show us the way? To Yssobel?’

‘We are connected. We should do everything we can to maintain that link between us.’

Slowly Jack’s senses revived; his focus became clear again. He felt hollow and hungry, vaguely alert yet weary in his body.

A while later, in the villa, his father found him. ‘Good God, you look dead. You’re yellow, Jack. Good God, good God. You’ve done something to your liver.’

Steven was suddenly anxious, but Jack waved him quiet. ‘Mushrooms. The wrong kind. I promise you, I’m a survivor.’

‘But you’re yellow!’

‘I’m also strong. It will pass.’

‘Nonsense.’

Rianna was suddenly beside him, tipping his head back and making him sip a thin foul-tasting liquid, warm to the tongue. Quite soon his body had recovered. He felt cold, but clear-headed. The sharpness of his senses had come back, not all at once but in stages. Only the Haunter side of him had escaped the chemical effect. Haunter was laughing, but there was certainly a lesson to be learned if Jack was to travel with the Iaelven. ‘I’ll be more careful,’ Haunter promised.

During the brief time of disorientation, Jack had revisited Oak Lodge in full sensory detail. Walking with Steven round and round the villa, he described again the strangeness of the place.

‘It was covered by woodland. There is no question of that. But in the time I was there, the woodland pulled back, exposing the front walls, then the whole house. I didn’t see it happen, though I felt it. A very unreal experience.’

Steven listened, intrigued and agreeing. ‘When I returned there, after the war, something similar happened. It was after Chris had disappeared, though he would shortly come back with his brutal troop of mercenaries and take Guiwenneth.

‘But in the time I was there alone, a whole orchard grew overnight, taking over the garden. It was amazing to watch. Some trees even grew into the house. Did you see signs of tree damage inside?’

Jack thought back to what exactly he had seen as he’d explored the Lodge, but answered that he hadn’t. He was very quiet, very dreamy.

‘What is it?’ Steven asked after a moment. ‘What are you thinking? About the Lodge.’

‘I was wondering if it was not everything it seemed. It was ramshackle, yes, and damp, but could have been abandoned only a season or two ago, not thirty years in outside time.’ Jack turned to look at his father. ‘I think your old home lies in a sort of “tidal” zone. Not that I’ve ever seen the waves on a beach. But there was that feeling of the house being first swamped, then exposed - a slow, steady movement.’

‘Not that slow when it’s exposed, from what you say. But what are you saying? Oak Lodge . . . a mythago?’ It was clear to Jack that Steven had never considered this possibility.

But then, Jack was not sure of his own reasoning; all this was coming from his encounter with an Iaelven food gift.

‘It just did not seem to belong there. Right there, at the edge of the strangest forest. Why would it have been built? Why does Ryhope hide it, then release it?’

After a moment, Steven sighed, turning back to the villa. ‘I wonder if that’s right? If that is right, then it must have changed its shape over many thousands of years.’ He took a breath, then looked hard at Jack. ‘When my father moved in, when he took the Lodge, it was to write a book analysing the ideas of Charles Darwin on evolution. I taught you about him, if you remember: as much as I could, since I didn’t really grasp the principles myself.’ He smiled, recollecting his own dreadful ignorance as he had tried to give a reasoned and careful heartwood’s education to his offspring. ‘He very quickly dropped that task and started to explore Ryhope. That was when it all went wrong, for him and for us. He was a changed man. His language was all “zones” and “vortex” and “ley pathways and matrices”, all short cuts through the forest, defences against intruders, and manipulators of the weeks and months and years. He aged very rapidly when he should have aged very slowly. I wonder if you’re right? Perhaps Oak Lodge was Ryhope’s way of communicating with the world beyond its edge. A passage in, a passage out; a connection between the first forest and the ever-evolving world.’

Jack was lost now. But it occurred to him that if his father had grown up inside a house that was the evolved version of such a gate, then perhaps it had been the Lodge itself that had called back George Huxley.

But these were wild thoughts, perhaps made wilder by the chemical brew that he had ingested, courtesy of the Iaelven.

They stood in silence for a long time, cool in the breeze, each of them thinking of a different world, each sensing the passing of this one. Finally, with a sigh and clapping his hands together, abandoning nostalgia, Steven said loudly, ‘But I can assure you, I’m all human, and so was George. It’s only my children who can step in and out of the shadow of the forest. How are you feeling now?’

‘Very well.’ Jack hesitated. ‘Steven?’

‘I like you calling me Steven. Better than Dad.’

The young man smiled acknowledgement. ‘Steven: when this is over, when I find Yssi - and I will find her, I promise - when it’s done, would you like to go home? Back to the edge?’

‘Let’s go in, Jack. I’m getting cold. Would I like to go back? With Gwin gone . . . you know what? Yes. Yes, I think I would. But that is for later.’ He glanced solemnly at his son. ‘For the moment, I’m guessing it’s goodbye again.’

Jack kissed his father on the cheek, taking the older man by surprise. ‘You don’t belong here, Steven. Nor do I. I can’t speak for Yssobel, but I inscribed a small broken silver clasp for her. Rune writing, of course.’

‘What did it say?’

‘What we remember is all the home we need.’

His father frowned. ‘Not exactly an encouragement to return, then. Where did that sentiment come from?’

‘Ealdwulf. He was doomed to wander, though his son is likely to find his own land and establish his own kingdom. He’ll be gone soon, I’m sure of it. He has that faraway look.’

Steven had noticed and said so. ‘It’s true; this place is beginning to decay. Its life-force is fading. We built it up from ruins, but the ruins were from memory, shaped by need. Now the villa is being reclaimed, brick by brick. This is part of the land the Amurngoth claim as theirs, and I suppose they will have it back.’

Jack had noticed earlier how much the villa was in disrepair, despite the young Saxon’s efforts, as if it had been storm-battered on too many occasions. The Amurngoth had been tolerant. They had hardly ever used the track that led from the hill through the villa’s grounds, though perhaps they had used it at night. The Huxleys had avoided the hill, and the two communities had lived in respectful coexistence for many years. But now, as Steven was aware, everything that could sustain this particular landscape within Ryhope Wood was fading, weakening.

It made Jack’s task more urgent. Haunter was a constant whispered voice of warning: that Yssobel was walking into danger. The green and the green were in distant, frail, but vital communication.

PART • THREE

Yssobel in Avilion

Armour of the King

As she reached the head of the valley, Yssobel turned for a last sad look at the villa. In the dawn light, it seemed so peaceful. She tried not to imagine the sorrow that would soon transform that silence into anguish.

She noticed that she had left no tracks, nor had the packhorse. Patting Rona’s narrow neck she gave a silent thanks to Rianna. The High Woman’s gift was endowed with a certain charm: it was as if Rianna had known that Yssobel needed not to be followed.

With a wave of her hand she turned again and rode into imarn uklyss.

After several days, she lost the packhorse to a band of Muurngoth but managed to save some of the supplies before galloping away from their stinging arrows. The journey was hazardous. She rode through the shallows of the river wherever possible, and camped where she could see in a wide arc.

And at last she came to the monolith.

It was taller than she had expected, taller than she’d painted it, but she recognised the rune snakes, each coiled serpent containing one of the four tales of Peredur. The monument seemed to whisper to her, to greet her. As she walked towards it in the night, it seemed to lean slightly, as if to embrace her. The illusion of welcome.

‘I’ve found you,’ Yssobel said quietly. ‘And when the sun rises I know you’ll show me the path to Avilion.’

Before she slept she ran her fingers over each of the rune snakes, puzzled to read Peredur and the Song of the Islands of the Lost. She didn’t recognise it, though the song was familiar, a sad piece which her mother had often sung when she had thought she was alone and not being overheard. Peredur and the Nine Eagles was familiar. And Peredur and the Shield of Diadora, Peredur’s prized shield, able to reflect what had been and what might be to come.

The fourth rune snake puzzled her again: Peredur and Yssobel.

‘That can’t be right,’ she whispered to the stone. ‘I don’t belong to your time. This isn’t the rune of my dreams. I dreamed of you at The Crossing Place of Ghosts.’

But she was too tired to think about it now, and after tending to Rona she curled up in the moon-shadow of the monolith and entered her own world for a few hours.

In the morning Yssobel stood for some while in the shadow of her grandfather’s memorial, staring at the forbidding darkness of the forest to which the shadow pointed. Then she clicked her fingers and Rona came up to her. She stroked the horse’s cheeks for a while, then, with a last glance at the monolith, she heaved herself into the saddle and galloped towards the wildwood.

As if she were a ghost, she passed into the gloom; as if she were a ghost, she rode through the frontier, red side surging with determination, green side drawing on the sap and succulence of the wood.

And she emerged onto a track, a holloway, that was deserted, unused, yet not overgrown. She could see the traces of stone, laid carefully in that road. Old, then, shaped for a purpose. Where would it lead her?

Yssobel rode for most of the day and was about to rest when she caught the scent of a lake. The wind had freshened. The smell of lake water was clear and sharp and clean.

The wind shifted and she stopped suddenly. In the distance, she could hear the scream and cry of battle.

The trail began to curve as Yssobel spurred Rona on. The horse was straining slightly. She could smell the lake as well. Rona was thirsty, no doubt. The ride had been long, but Yssobel hauled her back. The battle was very close now, and its sounds made Yssobel’s stomach clench and her senses sharpen. The drumming and clash of shields, the ringstrike of iron, the wailing of men as limbs were slashed and life began to fade, the screeching triumph of killers, the noisy protesting of horses ridden through the fury; these signs of a vicious struggle waxed and waned on the air.

Yssobel’s copper hair billowed out like a cloak behind her as the wind strengthened suddenly, bringing with it the sharp tang of blood. She took a moment to gather it and knot it to the side, using the silver ring-clasp that Jack had made for her, tying her hair as he had shown her. She briefly ran her fingers along the inscription he had made.

Avilion is what we make of it.

‘Oh yes, brother. Oh yes indeed.’

She was about to kick forward again when a horse burst through the undergrowth above the bank and stumbled its way down and across the track. A man lay slumped on its back, arms dangling, features obscured by a small helmet that covered half his face, which now was red from a strike. As the horse leapt up the opposite bank, so he fell heavily to the ground, rolling back to the road. For a moment gleaming eyes watched Yssobel, a hand moved towards her. Then brightness became blur.

She rode on. The battle was loud now, and she dismounted, crawled stealthily up the bank and through the sparse woodland until she could see the hill, and the swarm of men on that hill. The sky filled with streaming pennants and clouds of fine yellow hair, blowing across the site of battle, glittering elementals engaged in the fray.

She saw the man at the centre of the action. His face-helm was black, his banner green. He was bloodied and raging. He rode with others as a troop, but was suddenly engaged in single combat with a bronze-armoured man whose white hair streamed from below a demon’s helmet. This fight was contained within the ring of horsemen who rode at the centre, nose to tail, a mix of armies containing and respecting the duel.

There were no arrows in the air, just the forward surge and backward press of ranks of warriors, struggling at spear- and sword-point. Men fled from the wide, low hill, others seemed to appear from nowhere, shields sparkling, bone, bronze and iron shining, sometimes reddening.

Why did she recognise this fierce encounter?

In her red heart she knew why - the story she had been told often by her father. It took the green side to hear the sorrowing voices crying: ‘Arthur - take care! Withdraw. He is too strong for you.’

‘Stay with me!’ came Arthur’s reply, the cry of all war-chiefs who are certain that the moment of triumph or passing has come close and must be encountered.

And even as Yssobel recognised Arthur, so he plunged his blade into his opponent, who reeled for a moment, then struck back with his javelin.

The narrow spear found a home in Arthur’s breast. He was pushed back. A sword strike followed, cutting through the face-helm.

As Yssobel watched, so he was struck again by the javelin, pushed back on his horse, falling from the saddle.

The protecting circle broke.

Ravens rushed towards him and the struggle over his body became fierce. The tone of the conflict had changed. It became static, pressing, urgent.

Yes, she would stay here tonight, in hiding, and watch events unfurl.

With a thunder of hooves, a dozen or so men rode away from the battlefield. Dusk was close. Yssobel watched them as they struggled down the bank, onto the old track, a rider on each side of a man slumped in his saddle, holding him in place. They raced off towards the lake and Yssobel, armoured and masked in the dead man’s war-cloth, followed at a distance.

The track was rich with blood, the air heavy with its sour smell.

The horsemen thundered out of sight, two of them suddenly turning back, unmasked, hair flowing freely, spears held low and at the ready. They were youthful men, shields on their backs, eyes bright as they came rapidly at Yssobel, who reined in and galloped up the bank and among the trees. They pursued her for a while, shouting in gruff voices, but the shadows contained her and when she stopped and looked out into the light she could see them sitting there, silhouettes, searching the gloom but failing to locate her.

They turned and disappeared and after a long while she cautiously urged Rona back to the holloway and at a gentle trot moved again in pursuit.

The lake was suddenly there. There was no sign of the escaping party, but Yssobel could hear the whinny of horses and the clatter of shields being discarded. A wooded knoll rose to her right. She dismounted and led Rona again into the gloom of the trees, tethered the horse and crept to where she could see down to the wide shore and the vast expanse of gleaming, reed-fringed water.

Her green side eavesdropped as she watched events unfurl.

Gwei eased the helm from Arthur’s wounded face. The blow had cut through the cheek metal to the cheek itself, splitting the bone. Arthur’s eyes were narrowed with pain, his wild red hair clotted. Emereth cradled him, kneeling behind him, glancing frequently at Gwei as his companion unlaced the chest armour. He put a finger in the first of the wounds there, then leaned down to kiss the cut, holding the flesh closed with his fingers as his tears fell upon the drying blood.

‘It’s done,’ Arthur whispered. ‘This is the dream. For me, it’s over.’

‘The wound is horrible,’ Gwei said. ‘Morthdred found the killing mark all right. You’re done for.’

‘I knew it when the point went in. But we held for a long time, didn’t we, Gwei? We held strong.’

‘We broke,’ said Emereth.

‘A battle too far,’ murmured one of the others, who were all crouched in a semi-circle around the dying war chief.

‘Morthdred was always going to break us,’ said another.

‘No!’ Arthur shouted, then gasped with the agony of the wounds in his chest. ‘No . . . he was never going to break us. Not all of us. Don’t you understand? For me, it’s finished. For you, far from finished.’

‘Then why are we sitting by this lake,’ whispered Bydavere angrily, ‘refugees from a blood- and shit-stained hill?’

Red rage grew fierce in the dying man’s features. He had eyes for Gwei, and a severe look for his closest shield man, Bydavere.

‘Who are these whimpering men?’ he said to the sky. ‘I don’t recognise them. How many whimpering men? How many survived the iron task? How many fell? Answer me, Gwei.’

‘Fallen?’ said Gwei. ‘Many! Scattered? Many! Of your shield ring, twelve are fallen. Twelve survive. We came out of it well.’ He spoke with enthusiasm, recognising, perhaps, that his dying friend needed to be surrounded by men who were still strong.

‘Twelve dead,’ Arthur sighed. ‘Twelve ahead of me, then. Into Avilion.’

‘You’ll meet them there,’ Bydavere said.

‘However they got there,’ Emerith added.

‘And all of us, in time,’ Gwei whispered, ‘wherever it is you’re going.’

A new strength came into Arthur. Through pain-hardened eyes he looked at Bydavere. ‘Morthdred has broken me, but only me. Do you understand what I’m saying? I do not wish to die in the presence of whimpering men. The sword at my side has his blood on it. There is a mark on his body, a cut as deep as his bone, that is Arthur-marked. The sword will find that place again. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ Bydavere replied.

‘Take it, then, and don’t rest until the sword mark in Morthdred is opened, and opened to the crows.’

Bydavere reached over and unbuckled Arthur’s sword belt. He drew the blade; it was dulled with Morthdred’s blood.

‘Take it to the lake and wash it,’ Arthur said. ‘The blood is failure. It will find the place of failure, and fail again. The cleaned iron will find the traitor and pierce him true to its purpose.’

Bydavere rose and walked along the lake’s edge, then waded through the reeds to clean water. He returned, the blade sheathed, and knelt among his companions.

‘What’s going to happen next?’ asked Gwei, looking around him. Geese flew out across the lake. Evening was approaching fast and the wind was beginning to blow.

‘Of that, I’m not sure,’ Arthur said with a pained laugh. ‘Except that I’ll be dead before they come for me.’

‘And coming for you? That’ll be what?’ asked Bydavere, staring back across the lake.

‘A boat, a barge. The dream I had as a child wasn’t clear. I believe there will be women in the barge, women of rare beauty and great kindness.’

The shield men laughed. One said, ‘May I share your dreams? I’ll pay.’

‘I’ve always loved my dreams,’ Arthur said when the laughter had subsided. ‘There is promise in them, and pleasure.’

‘So we wait with you . . .’ Bydavere murmured.

‘Yes.’

‘For a boat or barge, you say.’

‘Yes. You wait and watch.’

‘To take you where? What is this Avilion?’

‘The land of healing, Bydavere. I’ll meet you there one day.’

Arthur caught Gwei’s frown. ‘What is it, Gwei? Old friend.’

Gwei took a deep breath. ‘It isn’t over. Morthdred’s men are scattering. You fell, but the battle didn’t end. Can’t you hear the crows? Half of them are still hungry. I can’t wait to get after Morthdred. Stay alive long enough for me to bring you his head.’

‘What a keen man you are, old friend. I always admired that in you. Is the blade cleaned?’

‘Bright as if it were newly forged.’

‘Show me . . .’

From the look in Gwei’s eyes it was clear that orders had been disobeyed. Gwei pulled the blade from its scabbard. Morthdred’s blood remained, dark and crisp on the metal.

Gwei said: ‘I want to return his own moment of failure to the failing life when I sever that neck of his. Why wipe away the moment of his wound? Rust on iron! Let the bastard suffer!’

Arthur struggled to sit up against his own killing pierce. Everything about him now was frail. ‘Gwei: a clean blade, a clean strike. It’s the certainty I want, the certainty of his silence in this life. Clean the blade in the lake. Let the blade shine as it strikes the traitor who brought me to my own end.’

Gwei withdrew, back to the reeds, back to the dusk-dark water.

‘Light a fire,’ Arthur said. ‘Do we have supplies? Food? Enough for a dying feast?’

‘Enough for a dying drink,’ said Ethryn, the youngest of the surviving shield men. ‘Food enough for twelve scavengers.’

‘Scavenge after I’m gone. Just sing and laugh and wait until the barge comes for me.’

‘Barge or boat,’ Emereth reminded him.

‘Whatever comes, make sure I’m in my war cloth, and that my face is helmeted, and my hair is tied tightly. Whatever happens, don’t resist it. My friends, your other friends are finding their own way to Avilion. My dream told me the nature of my own transit.’

Emereth said, ‘We won’t interfere. We’ll drink your health at the funeral games, and the health of Avilion as it welcomes Arthur.’

‘Good man.’

Gwei returned from the lake, his face grim. Arthur said, ‘Have you cleaned the blade?’

‘No.’

‘No? Why not?’

Gwei looked around at the others, then at Arthur. ‘Because you’re wrong. If I clean the blade, then the blade is new. We want the blade old; stained; hungry for vengeance. A new blade might seek new blood. It’s old blood you want, and the blood trail. After the strike in the belly of your cousin, the bastard Morthdred, it will be keener for the rust stain. Keener on the scent. The final act, which I shall deliver with pleasure, my friend, will be the harsher and the more final for it. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Arthur nodded. ‘You’re right. I see your point. Don’t wash the blade.’

‘It makes sense,’ Gwei said.

‘I agree,’ Arthur replied. ‘Sometimes what seems right isn’t truly right. If we don’t listen, we don’t understand fully. Listening makes things right. I can trust you to do the final work for me. Like an old man trusting his son, even though we are the same age. And you will keep things right for me.’

‘Yes,’ said Gwei. ‘I will.’

And Emereth added, looking round at the rest of the men. ‘Shall we begin the funeral games? Is it too soon?’

Yssobel was watching from the tree line, the red side in her beating hard, the green side savouring this edge of worlds, the lake shore, the distance to another world. She had imagined it would be misty. In fact it was clear and vast, more like an ocean than a lake, stretching away to the horizon, a gleam of dusk grey and blue, with the first glimmer of starlight on its breeze-ruffled surface.

As dusk made shadows of all things that moved, so a shadow moved towards her, one of the companions, a burly, half-armoured man. He walked up to Yssobel’s hiding place, and she drew back into the embrace of the coiled tree roots where she had been lurking, watching.

The shadow loomed and the man urinated, sighing with relief. For a moment as he tucked himself away he peered into the bosk, as if sensing a presence. It was Bydavere.

Yssobel practised the death breath, and held it for a long time.

With a curious sound, a grunt of dismissal, the man turned away and went back to where the war chief now lay on a bier of branches, his face and body armoured. Dressed again in the war cloth, face hidden, arms folded.

Two of Arthur’s men had slipped back to the battlefield, to the looted baggage train, to the place of the dead and dying. They had joined among the scavengers. They had weapons, and the war chief’s standard, which had been left, broken, halfway down the hill. They stripped the long banner from the shaft of ash and folded it between the silent man’s hands.

They had also brought flagons of wine.

As their horses grazed the shoreline, so Arthur’s entourage drank and became drunk. Night fell, and the men fell, curled by the lake, curled in their cloaks; men at the end of days.

Yssobel slipped out of cover. She shed the armour of Morthdred’s warrior and crept as quietly as possible to where Arthur lay on the bed of branches, enclosed and almost completely hidden behind his mask and cloak. Gwei stirred slightly, mumbled in his sleep, sat up and stared at the lake - a moment of alarm for Yssobel - then flopped back. He seemed to be crying in his dreams. So much had been lost that day.

For a moment Yssobel considered what she was doing. The lake was still. Stars illuminated its silent waters. The moon was hidden. Avilion, the place of her dreams, lay on the far side of this stretch of water, and she knew that a barge would be coming for the man who lay dead before her.

Gently, quietly, she eased Arthur from the bier. Step by step she pulled him from the wood frame. Breath by gentle breath she dragged him to the trees.

No one stirred.

When she was in cover, she dragged more fiercely, pulled the body deep into the copse.

By green light she surveyed the calm and handsome features of the man. His face was light with stubble, his hair tied elaborately. She drew out the small, open silver ring that Jack had fashioned for her, and copied the hair knot of the dying king, tying her own long locks into place.

Then she leaned down and kissed Arthur full on the mouth. His lips were cold, yet not death-cold. He didn’t stir. She kissed him again, held the embrace, reached to hold his face in her hands. Bloodied, yes, but beautiful. A man of strength and certainty, a face of love and humour. She pushed back the long, lank hair from his brow, kissed him between the eyes, then let her face rest against his for a while; breathing.

‘You don’t need the passage,’ Yssobel whispered. ‘You belong here. But I know you won’t forgive me for stealing your journey.’

Then she stripped him naked, every scrap of clothing, running her hands down his body, touching every part of him.

And then she stripped herself. The night was cool. She lay on Arthur’s body for a while, embracing him with her limbs, enclosing him, thinking of this most audacious of acts she planned, letting the warmth of her body seep into the hardening frost of his own flesh. Her skin bristled with the breeze. She lay on him and held his face again, and kissed him again, wondering if the eyes would open and his hands reach round for her.

She almost hoped for it.

He lay quiet. Cool but not cold, though he was certainly on the death road.

‘I’m stealing the armour of a king,’ she whispered to him. ‘I’ve dreamed of this moment. I never knew why I would steal the armour, just that I would have to do it. I do have a reason.’

Arthur lay silent. Yssobel sang quietly:

And I knew I had to hold on to what I had been given

And that my world was changing. And that I had to hold.

And everything that I had once been given was gone

Yet everything I had been newly given was with me.

Stay with me. For a mother’s sake.

I will embrace your armour.

Hold on. Let me steal this little time inside your skin.

I can’t afford to break.

‘I will go to Avilion instead of you. But I will return and make good this theft. I promise.’

He lay silent.

There was no more time. His shield men lay sprawled and unconscious inside their cloaks, close to the lake. Ale-slumber was deep, but surfacing from that sleep was fast, as she’d often seen happen with Ealdwulf and his son.

She dressed Arthur as best she could in her own clothing. Rona was nearby, and Yssobel took the animal’s blanket and covered the dying king with it. Then she released Rona with a kiss and a word, leading her quietly to the track and sending her back to where worlds changed, hoping that the horse would struggle into imarn uklyss and gallop home, home to the villa.

Arthur’s clothing, his boots and armour were on the large side for Yssobel but not so much that she felt uncomfortable. She walked to the lake, lay down on the bier, crossed her hands and though the helm-mask watched the stars as they shifted in and out of clouds.

Her breathing slowed. At dawn, Gwei rose sleepily and stood by the lake, staring across the reeds, to where the mist was lifting.

And then he called out, ‘The boat is coming. This is the time.’

Yssobel could hear the gentle stroke of oars. Aware that the shield men were lined up, watching the water and paying no attention to her, she lifted her head slightly. The reeds parted and a snub-bowed barge nosed into the shallows. It was wide and ugly, with a crude sail drooping around a roughly hewn mast. Two tall men stood at the stern, each with a long pole which they pushed easily into the mud. Two women in brilliant red and green garb, their faces veiled in white, held short oars. The barge was trimmed with purple, and the long, lean shapes of three hares, dancing in a circle, had been carved into the prow itself.

The two women rose to their feet and beckoned to the shield men to bring the bier onto the vessel. Yssobel felt herself lifted, then raised onto shoulders. One of the men cried quietly, others whispered words that might have been goodbye, or good fortune, or good journey.

Eyes closed, breathing hardly at all, Yssobel waited for the bier to settle into the barge. She lay between the two women.

The men dug their poles into the mud and pushed away from the shore. The two women sat beside the bier, staring ahead of them, unmoving, watching the land until the barge turned and faced open water. When they were out on the lake again, they lifted their veils, took up their oars and began to stroke slowly and steadily. They sang softly. Yssobel watched the clouds through the face-helm, experiencing a strange peace.

After a while the poles were placed down and the men crouched and took the oars from the women. The barge shifted on the water as a breeze came up and the crude sail unfurled and stayed. The men stared impassively ahead, but Yssobel was suddenly aware that one of the women was watching her from the corner of her eye. She tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, keeping her eyes closed, sensing the woman rather than seeing her.

A hand rested on her chest. A voice whispered so quietly that it might have been the passing hiss of a breeze: ‘Stay still. Don’t arouse the boatmen. If you do, they’ll turn the barge around. They are dedicated to their task, and you are not the task.’

That same woman lifted her white veil. A pale, drawn face turned to look down at Yssobel, a face without decoration and almost without blood; ghostly, yet kind.

Again they sang, this time in harmony, but they sang in a language that was obscure even to Yssobel’s green side, though she sensed that its theme was life being rescued from the hill of crows and taken to the island of the lost.

She repressed all tendency to engage with these women in case she should respond without control and make herself known to the wrong eyes.

Night came and the stars appeared. The sail billowed out and the lake became choppy. She couldn’t hold her bladder any more and hoped that the men would not notice the sudden release, though she was so thirsty that her body was preserving water.

With the new dawn the sail flopped, and the men tied it to the mast and picked up the long poles, pushing down into the shallows, feeling for the lake bed.

Suddenly the barge was passing through the upper branches of drowned trees. The women pushed with their short oars and the vessel at last came to a slow halt on the lake’s bank. The men jumped down and hauled the barge further onto the land. Each then took one end of the crude bier, lifted it and carried it ashore.

Something was said. Angry words spoken by one of the barge-men. From his gestures it was clear that he was questioning the lightness of the corpse; that he was suspicious.

The other man reached down suddenly, lifting the helm from Yssobel’s face, and the act of audacity was exposed. A hand hauled at Yssobel, dragging her upright. It was one of the women. The men glowered, reaching for the knives at their waists, but the two women shed their robes of red and green, exposing leather armour of the same colours. They were a striking sight, one, clearly the younger of the two, with luxurious black hair, the other with long braids of silver.

There was an exchange of shouts and threats. The older of the men leaned towards Yssobel, his pale eyes furious. ‘What have you done?’ he asked in a voice that sounded like a wolf’s growl. ‘What have you done with the man we came to fetch?’

‘I took his place. I had my reasons.’

‘Get back in the barge,’ said the other. ‘Do it now.’

‘She stays,’ said the younger woman, stepping in front of Yssobel.

The man nodded slowly, looking between all three of the women. ‘But we don’t. We’ll fetch the man who waits for us, and when he arrives here you’ll pay for this with more than your life.’

The boatmen spat on the ground, then turned away and pushed the barge from the shore, leaping aboard and taking up the poles. For a long while Yssobel watched them go, aware that hands were on her arms.

When at last she looked round, she saw that she was being greeted by warm eyes and warm smiles. The younger woman said, ‘I’m Uzana. My sister is Narine.’

‘Where am I? Is this Avilion?’

‘It’s a part of it, but remote,’ Uzana said. ‘This is one island among many islands. We know them quite well. And a friend of yours is waiting for you. Though he doesn’t know it.’

‘How do you know?’ Yssobel asked, confused.

‘We read your dreams.’

‘Welcome to the place you’ve made your own,’ said Narine.

During Yssobel’s long transit across the lake, her red side had abandoned her.

Her green side, existing in a different realm, did not recognise at first the place to which she had come. As the barge drifted away, angry abuse being shouted from it by the men on board, Uzana helped Yssobel remove Arthur’s armour and fold it carefully, ready to be stowed on the packhorse which Narine had fetched out of cover, along with their own mounts. There was a fourth horse, saddled and bridled, with green colours tied to its mane and fetlocks. Narine tossed Yssobel the reins.

‘We have a long ride. Do you need to wash? Take relief?’

‘Both. And food and water. That lake was a long crossing, and I was supposed to be dead. I held for a long time, but couldn’t hold for ever. I need to get clean and feel alive again.’

The two women laughed at something private while waiting for Yssobel. Then they passed her a flask and a good-sized piece of cold beef, which she chewed as they started off at a slow pace.

They broke to a canter as they approached a narrow defile in a dwarf-tree-covered hill. As they eased their way through the narrow, treacherous and winding gap, Yssobel asked, ‘If this is not the Isle of Avilion, what is it?’

‘Wait!’ called Narine, riding at the front.

They emerged from the hill and were looking down at a shoreline - rocky coves and short sandy beaches. The cliffs behind were riddled with caves, and there were bright, white-marbled structures scattered here and there.

‘Which island is it?’ Yssobel persisted.

‘The island of the lost,’ Uzana said, and Yssobel was startled, but pleasantly so.

‘But I know a song about this place! My mother’s song. She always called it the Song of the Islands of the Lost.’

And my grandfather is associated with the place, she thought. It is the first of his rune snakes.

Without thinking, without noticing the alarm on her new companions’ faces, she started to sing the song that Guiwenneth had been so fond of. Almost at once, Narine had clapped a hand to Yssobel’s mouth, silencing her. Uzana reared as her horse reacted with alarm, then reached out to squeeze Yssobel’s arm. She was shaking her head, but smiling.

‘Don’t sing it! Don’t ever sing it! If you do, then, like your friend, you’ll be lost.’

Who was this friend? Yssobel wondered. And then remembered Rianna’s sad words:

‘She was singing that lovely song. The sad one. The one that suddenly bursts into joy.’

‘Come on!’ Narine urged, but Yssobel held back.

‘I don’t understand. There is something I don’t understand.’

The other women turned around to look at her. Patient, now. Time seemed to stop; there was silence in the air.

And Yssobel said, ‘You came for the dead, didn’t you? That’s what I was taught. You came for Arthur after his death.’

They laughed.

‘Death?’ questioned Narine. ‘We come for all deaths. Even the living ones. We’re collectors. Especially from battlefields.’

‘Some of the dead hold on,’ Uzana added. ‘They value what they’ve been given and will not give it up.’

And Yssobel asked, ‘Then what are you?’

‘Waylanders,’ Narine replied.

‘We show you the way to other lands.’

‘Sometimes we’re called “waylands”.’

‘Guides, leaders, valks, morgvalks, peckcrows, morrikans . . .’ Uzana added.

‘So many names.’

‘So simple a task.’

They laughed again, but kept their gaze on Yssobel.

Yssobel thought for a moment. ‘And the task?’

Narine said, ‘To take you to where you have to go.’

‘And to take you carefully. We care about the journey.’

‘But you came for Arthur!’

And Uzana said softly: ‘We’ll come for him again, if needs be.’

Narine went on, ‘As we crossed the lake, our world changed. A world shift. It happens to us. We suddenly knew, on the lake, that we were coming for you.’

‘How?’ Yssobel asked, confused but not disturbed by what they were saying.

‘I told you,’ said Uzana. ‘We read your dreams.’

Yssobel said: ‘I still don’t understand. In my dream, in my father’s story, he was taken to Avilion by three queens.’

‘Well, weren’t there? Three?’

‘That man, that warlord we came to collect,’ Narine said fiercely, ‘He was his armour. As for how much more he was than that - who knows?’

‘And you wear Arthur’s armour now! Queen and king in one.’

‘Virgin beauty, soft-skinned, encased by bloodied leather.’

Narine agreed, smiling and glancing at Yssobel. ‘Iron-cut, yes, and deeply wounded, but strong enough to bear the blows.’

‘For a while at least,’ the other woman added. ‘Strength contained, concealed in strength.’

‘Life, vibrant, in the vale of death. Which is why you will be tested!’

‘Welcome to the place you’ve made your own.’

‘Indeed!’ said Narine. ‘Now, let’s get on!’

Yssobel in Avilion

Odysseus dreams

In his dreaming, he had seen her: the flame-haired girl, riding towards him.

In his dreaming, he had loved her. There was passion in his dreaming.

A cool sea breeze accompanied him as each day he walked to where the beach began, to the soft sea touch, and stood there; sometimes spear in hand, sometimes shield upon his back. In anticipation.

Eyes closed; asleep yet not asleep.

Not singing, now. Not here.

He had sung the song of the Island of the Lost, and was lost until awakened fully. In the half-awakened part of him, below Lethe’s comforting, concealing shroud, below her sleep-veil, he knew that this was no more than rehearsal time.

This was his life in practice. This was the dream of the dream to come.

The flame-haired girl would rouse him.

And sometimes he whispered her name:

Yssobel.

‘There he is,’ said Narine. ‘There’s your man.’

I recognised him at once. He was older, though not by much. He was standing at the edge of the strand, leaning on a spear, a shield cast in front of him, half in the water. He was staring out to sea; wistful yet mournful.

I dismounted, flung Uzana the reins. ‘Are you safe?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes.’

‘He looks aggressive. Are you sure he is a friend?’

‘Very much my friend. But stay close. There’s something not right here. But yes . . .’

I looked at my horse-straddling companions as they leaned down to rest after the hard ride. ‘Yes, I feel safe.’

Dear Odysseus.

He looked so confused, but recognised me as I walked up the shore towards him. I was unarmed. He dropped the spear. He acknowledged me with a quiet smile, and then turned away.

‘Follow me,’ he whispered.

Built into the cliffs behind the sea was the entrance to a palace; it was identical to the marbled gateway that had led to his cave in Serpent Pass, though beyond the pillars there was an open gate, not the grim mouth of a hollow in the hill.

‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked as we walked.

‘I do. I do. Though memory is faint for the moment.’

‘We were lovers. In a different place. Don’t tell my father. I lied to him.’

‘I think we were,’ he agreed. ‘Though I think a greater task, a greater love is coming to me.’

‘You’re right. I won’t tell you her name. Nor the perilous journey you’ll make to find her, though I’ve read of it. I know of it.’

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘I won’t.’

He paused, turned back. ‘You know more of me than I know of myself, then. Though I already have an idea, as you’ll see.’

‘I will never betray the trust that comes with knowing you so much. I need you for a while. Be my friend, please; just for the time I need you.’

He looked at me, not so much confused as curious. Then he bowed his head. ‘I accept that. Now follow me. I will take you to a frightening place. Perhaps I need you too. Who knows? Who knows where fear of the future grows?’

Broad-shouldered, dark-kilted as he was, I couldn’t help but touch his spine.

Odysseus turned again and took me in his arms. The embrace was strong.

‘I wish I could remember more,’ he murmured as he eased his arms away, but still holding me. ‘I seem to have spent my life on this abandoned beach.’

‘Your future has much in store. Abandonment will be a part of it. Don’t be frightened. At the end, there is enlightened vision.’

‘Tragedy? Love?’

I closed his lips with mine, a brief memory of the past, a past that I knew could never last.

He smiled. He looked so beautiful when he smiled, a glimmer of delight in his dark eyes. I’d taken him by surprise.

I said, ‘What we had we had; what he have we have; what will come to us will come to us.’

He laughed. ‘Bad poetry.’

‘Never claimed to be a good poet; just, if you can cast your mind back . . . a good lover.’

‘Gods, I wish I could cast that line. To fish for those moments, a feast of memory. I remember bleeding.’

‘Blood in our passion; yes, blood was the flood of love.’

And then he was stone again, as if some life-force had abandoned him. Glazed and sorrowful, he seemed to look into the void. He turned his back. Walked along the corridor.

‘Follow me. But stay with me.’

And I followed; and stayed.

Yssobel dreams

Now Yssobel began to see what her companions had hinted: that this was a place she knew well. She took the silver hair clasp that her brother Jack had made for her and read the words again:

Avilion is what we make of it.

Yes. This was a part of the place she had dreamed of, when her mother had sung the song, the Song of the Islands of the Lost. She had not expected to find Odysseus, certainly; but it began to make sense to her. And it made sense that she’d felt that sudden need, almost unspoken; the need for his help.

She would speak about it when the moment was right. He was walking through his own future, and the palace was a place of unfelt memory. She was alive here, vibrant. She sensed that he felt lonely.

There was a wide room with a table in it, and wine on the table, and food; chairs enough for a dozen or more. The walls - eight of them - were bright with flowing, terrible images, and Odysseus sat and looked around, then took Yssobel in his gaze. ‘Is this my life?’

Yssobel sat and picked up fruit and olives. She was very hungry, and was also thinking of Narine and Uzana, still on the shore. ‘May my friends have some of this? Is there enough to spare?’

‘Of course,’ Odysseus replied with a little laugh and a teasing grin, picking up a black olive and tossing it to Yssobel. ‘I don’t even know how it gets here. Someone takes care of me. Someone here, hidden in the darker rooms.’

‘I’ll take it later.’

She looked at the living marble walls. Strange creatures moved there, monstrous. And women of great beauty, walking as if in dreams, looking back across their shoulders; enticing.

And there was war. A great walled city, men engaged in a struggle no less violent but more heavily populated than the battle where she had seen Arthur take his final fall.

Yssobel suddenly shocked to see a woman being hauled up the steps of the city by hard-faced, hard-armoured Greeks. They clearly had intentions for her. Her infant son was taken from her arms and cast to his death from the high wall, screaming as he fell, screaming as she screamed. She was then subjected to the imperfection of love. And Odysseus himself, a much, much older man, was among the abusing men.

This was a heart-stopping scene. It took the anticipated delight of the fruit out of Yssobel’s mouth. She stared at her young friend, already knowing, yet suddenly realising, what he would become.

A dark moment.

‘So this is to become my life,’ Odysseus said, as if hearing the unspoken thought, looking around at the reflecting room, before standing to face the wall that was showing the death of the child.

‘Yes. I think it is. I’m sorry.’

He smiled with sadness. ‘Don’t be sorry. I’ve known it since I landed here. I’d hoped you could contradict me. Obviously not. It’s hard to believe I will be that brutal.’

‘Don’t think about it. You have something to do before this even begins.’

‘Yssobel.’ He turned to look at her, a fierce, beautiful but frightened young man’s gaze, not ready yet to face the violent days ahead, his arms crossed across his chest, as if holding in the fear of the rage and blood that he knew he must spill one day.

‘I do not wish to be that man. I truly do not wish to be that man.’

‘But that is the man you are. Though not yet. Don’t think about it.’

‘War? That I can understand. But that woman . . . what we will do to her . . .’

‘Her name is Andromache. The wife of Hektor. Troy was the war. I painted images, some of them of you, on the back of the scrolls that taught me about them.’

Odysseus frowned, stood and searched the shaping wall.

‘Hektor? I know him. He’s here. He stares at me.’

He saw the man, pointed him out. On the shaping wall, metal-eyed Hektor was running towards him, shield held hard, sword hidden behind his back. ‘Hektor. There! A fierce fighter. He terrifies me. All bronze terrifies me when shaped into the leaf-blade. But it’s not my own weapon that will kill him. A ghost I know as Achilles will kill him.’

‘That’s right. Achilles will take him down. But the city will fall.’

The young man came back to the table.

He took Yssobel’s hands in his. There were tears in his eyes. ‘Not fallen yet. I’ve not even been there. It seems as if I’ve a long and dangerous path to walk.’

‘That’s right,’ Yssobel replied. ‘And I do not believe you are in any real fear of the leaf-blade.’

‘If you think that’ - he smiled thinly as he looked at her - ‘then you don’t know the twist and thrust of fear. But I do hope you’re right.’

He sighed, looking thoughtful and anguished for a moment. Relaxing then, he returned his attention to Yssobel. ‘Now: to you. What help is it that I can I give to you? I’ll do anything I can.’

Yssobel hesitated for a long moment; her gaze was drawn again to the savagery of the Trojan Andromache’s death by the Greeks, the child torn from her arms. It was a moment of doubt; whether or not to stay with this man, in his oracular palace. But she reminded herself: he was not yet the man that he would become.

She said softly, ‘I need to find my mother.’

Suddenly, Narine was at the door, a horse held by the reins that she gripped in her hands. She was not happy.

‘We’re starving!’

She eyed the table where food was plentiful. Uzana peered over her shoulder. ‘How long were you going to make us wait?’

‘Come in,’ Odysseus said gently. ‘Leave the horse, though.’

They sat and ate like beasts, always watching the young Greek. They drank water, not wine. They settled back and looked around at this living-walled room. Narine noticed the beach charge towards the defences of Troy, and the men coming towards the observer. ‘Quite a battle!’

‘Quite a life,’ Uzana added, looking around at the shifting images, the heaving sea, a crystal palace towards which a salt-soaked and beaten man was crawling. ‘What strange beasts. What a journey this shows. Is this your life to come?’

‘Apparently.’ He glanced at Yssobel.

‘Does it daunt you?’ Uzana asked.

‘Very much so. But I’ll work out strategies to cope with it. Especially after the journey home after the war.’

‘Well: if it is, I’d like to be there with you. There is excitement in your life; challenge.’ Uzana looked round at the scenes. ‘How does it end? Your life.’

‘With slaughter, if the wall is to be believed.’

Uzana and Narine followed his hand to where it pointed at his murdering of several men in a small, tight room, where a tree was growing and holding up the ceiling. ‘That is my home. Those men tried to steal it. But as yet, I haven’t begun even to shape the home. This oracle is almost too challenging.’

Narine stuffed a fig into her mouth, looking quickly at Yssobel, a look that said: is he mad?

‘We should get on,’ Yssobel said. ‘I have to find an army of ghosts called Legion. And there is a man to find, riding with it. I need to understand him.’

‘Legion?’ Odysseus said. ‘Why would you want to find Legion?’

‘Because they’ve taken my mother Guiwenneth.’

‘Zeus! Legion! That will be a task!’

‘You know it, then?’

His eyes had brightened. ‘I’ve seen it several times. I don’t know where it is now, but I know where to start looking. But getting there will not be easy.’ He looked at Uzana. ‘I assume you’ll come with us?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then eat up. Eat everything. But not the table,’ he added, with a smile. ‘I sleep on it. I’ll tend to your horses. Tomorrow we ride.’

‘Where to? And how far?’ asked Yssobel. ‘We have to think of supplies.’

‘To a set of caves, fronted by green porcelain. I’ve seen it. And yes, it’s a long journey. But it contains a mirror to the world. We’ll see things there.’

‘The palace of green porcelain!’ Yssobel whispered, almost to herself. It was the place she had visited often with Odysseus, on her long rides out from the villa. It was clear to her that he could not remember those Serpent Pass excursions. So she said only, ‘My father talked about it. He’d read about it in an ancient book . . . a bound set of scrolls,’ she added, when Odysseus looked puzzled. ‘The story of a man who made a creature from metal and stone that could move through time.’

‘Like Legion, then,’ Odysseus said, intrigued.

Yssobel knew very little about Legion, but she agreed anyway.

And though she felt a touch of guilt about the way in which she’d used some of those scrolls for her paintings, the guilt fled from her like a startled hare.

Palace of Green Porcelain

In the morning, Odysseus was extremely cheerful. He was up early, saddling the horses - his own was a pure white mare - and was soon to be seen galloping away from the palace, down to the sea, where he turned and shouted something abusive, laughing as he did so.

He was dismissing his future, for the moment.

Yssobel and the others followed him on what was a long ride around the island’s shore, to a narrow causeway that stretched across the ocean, vanishing into dawn haze. Lake had become sea here, though Yssobel had not noticed the moment of separation of waters.

‘It’s a dangerous crossing,’ Odysseus said. ‘If you slip into the sea, you’re lost. Something below the surface is very hungry, and very fast. I saw it happen several times. That’s why I have no friends left here. But so far I’ve been lucky.’

He led the way, keeping his mare under tight control. The causeway was only slightly wider than a horse’s tread, and the ground was slippery.

Throughout a long and silent day they walked the bridge between islands, below a cloudless sky, stopping for nothing, keeping a steady pace, alert for danger.

Soon the island came into sight, rising like bull’s horns from the water; two mountain peaks.

And the causeway widened and reached the narrow rocky beach, where a steep path led through the gorge between the mountains. Here, for a while, they rested and refreshed themselves.

‘Not far now,’ Odysseus assured them, though Narine seemed to know where she was.

After a difficult scramble up the stony path, the cliffs closed in; the passage became gloomy. Again, Yssobel recognised the place: Serpent Pass.

She took the lead, revelling in the eerie sense of familiarity. In just a short while she saw the first flash of light on green. As they came closer, so the carved effigy of a bull, shaped from glistening green porcelain, became clear in profile, its gaping maw the entrance.

This was like yet unlike the strange museum in Serpent Pass, behind the villa. Perhaps that particular manifestation of the mind had been her father’s. This, perhaps, was a memory of her father’s tale of the ‘metal and stone machine that travelled in time’, entangled with her own ideas. She had certainly noticed the exquisite statue of a bull that seemed to have been guarding the entrance to the museum.

Yssobel began to wonder what Odysseus had brought her here to see.

‘More reflection,’ he said when she questioned him. ‘A shield!’

Narine and Uzana waited in the cool gorge. Odysseus led Yssobel through the open mouth of the bull. It was even colder here, and gloomy, but after walking for a while a green light began to glow, and shapes began to emerge from the rooms through which they passed. There was nothing alive among them; they were exhibits just as Yssobel’s room in the villa had been filled with objects which she had collected. Just as her grandfather George Huxley had filled his own ‘Oak Lodge’, at the edge of the world, with objects that he’d collected.

But they were fascinating. And they were most certainly from her father’s imagination.

‘I love this place,’ Odysseus said as they walked through the sometimes echoing chambers, descending steps into rooms lined with shelves of scrolls (at which Yssobel glanced with a fond guilt), ascending to where vast human figures stood, their arms upraised, their eyes wide. ‘But what is this?’

He had led Yssobel into a wide room filled with dark metal machines, some of which had wheels, wide wings and crosspieces on their snouts. These were painted brightly, some of the decoration reflecting teeth. Everything here was a chaos of war. War machines. There were the more familiar chariots, two-wheeled and four-wheeled, and several of what Yssobel knew - from what she had learned - were guns. Massive pieces of war architecture, leaning heavily, or broken.

Odysseus said, ‘You can enter some of these strange metal beasts. There is a space inside. Some have spaces big enough for several men. If they were in war, they would be a good place to hide, and this hard metal . . .’ he banged his fist against one of the machines ‘. . . would stop a spear. I find these monsters fascinating.’

‘War horses,’ Yssobel said, remembering an expression of her father’s.

‘War horses,’ Odysseus echoed. ‘That’s a good name for them. I’ll remember that.’

The palace of green porcelain, this strange museum of past and future, dipped and turned, as if the earth itself had moved and shaped it. In places it was disintegrating, the marble cracked, the plaster falling. In one such place they passed a room of paintings, and Yssobel was entranced.

Here were men and women and children, all with strangely pallid and blank faces, holding hounds and horses, dressed in exaggeratedly ornate clothing, staring out as if to say: Help me; I’m frozen in time. And scenes of sea battles between huge ships, mast- and sail-shattered, but so many masts and sails! And a picture of a screaming woman, being dragged up steep steps by armoured, hard-faced men.

‘I don’t understand these scenes,’ Odysseus said. ‘Some I feel I know, some make no sense.’

‘They’re beautiful. Not all of them. But most of them. They put my own painting to shame.’

‘Whatever your painting was like, don’t ever let anything here put it to shame. Some of these people look miserable. And the horses are too big. And the ships are a nightmare of size. No ship that big could sail. Come on: let me show you where the monsters live, before I take you to the shield.’

But as Yssobel followed him into another gloomy passage, so she glanced at a broad picture, a terrible scene, of men in strange uniforms walking through smoke, with short spears held before them, and walking not on a beach or a hill but over multicoloured cloth, which seemed to embrace the fallen bodies of other men. Beside it were words written on a piece of thin parchment.

She snatched this down, and her red side surfaced again for an instant, and she read the first line: I walked for my life across a field of tartan.

Not understanding, but feeling drawn to it, Yssobel folded the sheet and tucked it away. Odysseus was shouting for her and she followed.

This was a place of wonders. Odysseus was beside himself with laughter as he led her through a gallery of weird reptilian creatures, some small, some of enormous height and length. ‘What strange, perverted god made these?’ he questioned. ‘All neck, tail and teeth. By Zeus, I hope my later journey doesn’t involve an encounter with any of these echoes of a mad mind.’

‘I hope so too.’

But as they left this display of forgotten night-born beasts, she looked again at the purloined parchment sheet.

A field of tartan?

And then he led her into the gallery of shields. There were hundreds, all slung from the rafters, turning and clanging against each other in a wind that blew from a narrow window, opened to the upper part of the gorge. Round, oval, tear-shaped, the geometry of these faces was astonishing and beautiful, as were the colours and the patterns, the animals and symbols, and the war-marks that had distorted, sometimes severed, many of these hand-held hopes against the coming blow.

‘This is my favourite room,’ said Odysseus. ‘And this is my favourite shield.’ He slowed the turning of a round shield with the image of a horse painted onto the outer leather. Thin bronze covered its face, but its weight came from wood and hide and wood and hide, four thick layers. This would have been heavy.

Yssobel remembered the shield that he had stared at so forlornly, half embraced by the sea waves. This shield was identical.

Odysseus was in contemplative, reflective mood. ‘Does the shield choose the man? Or the man the shield? I wonder. What does the shield - so many different shields - tell about the man who carried them? What does the armour of the man or the woman who wore it tell about the man or the woman?’

Yssobel was lost by his brow-furrowing thinking.

‘Odysseus. My friend . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Bad poetry. Stop glooming. Show me the shield that you brought me here to see.’

With a sly glance at her, and a wry smile, the young Greek beckoned Yssobel. As she followed him through the shield room he suddenly turned, caught her in his arms and kissed her, swiftly but with meaning.

‘I do love you.’

‘I love you too.’ She pushed him away. ‘Now. Show me the shield.’

‘It’s behind your back.’

It was a shield that could only have been carried by a man of enormous height and strength. When she stretched out her arms, she could not embrace its edges. It was made of rough wood in layers at the back, and again had leather pressed in between. But its surface, its shining front, was brilliant; patterned from some incorruptible metal, or perhaps a magician’s way with powdered crystal.

And yet, as she looked at it, there was nothing but reflected light, and her own distorted image in the main shield, and in the green crystal boss that centred it.

‘And this is . . . ?’

‘Diadora’s shield.’

Yssobel was stunned by its simplicity, having been shocked by its size. ‘I’ve heard of this. There is a story about my grandfather - Peredur - that relates him to this shield. If this is the shield.’

‘The shield of Diadora,’ Odysseus said, and reached to swing the war-mirror to an angle. ‘Don’t look at it. Be aware of it. From the corner of your eye. Such strange visions can be seen. You’ll probably understand them. I can’t.’

Yssobel looked Odysseus in the eyes, remembering, remembering. But then, as he’d said, she started to see images in the shield, glimpsed from the corner of her gaze.

Her brother Jack, struggling to drag a horse and a boat along a river that was flowing wildly against him. She saw him drag the boat onto the bank, disguise it, then lead the horse to open space, and sunlight. She saw two boys sitting by a stream. They were alarmed at first, then calm. Jack, her brother Jack, knelt in the water between them and washed. He was bleeding. She could hear the murmur of conversation, but not the words. And she heard laughter.

Odysseus asked: ‘Why are you smiling?’

‘My brother found the edge of the world. Or will find it. His name is Jack. Does this shield look into time?’

The young Greek shrugged. ‘No idea. But it shows other worlds, and they’re happier than the world shown in my own palace. Which is why I come here when I can.’

‘I need more. How do I get more?’

‘Keep watching. Think of what you wish to see.’

‘Everything. Everything. I wish to see everything.’

He was hugely amused. ‘How long do you have? To see everything.’

‘Everything, I mean, to do with finding my mother, Legion, and a man . . .’ She hesitated, not sure of her words. ‘A man who seems to have been resurrected. A man called Christian.’

‘And he is? What, who?’

‘My uncle. I need to understand him.’

Odysseus acknowledged that, and with a polite bow withdrew from the shield hall. ‘I’ll be outside, with the grave gobblers!’ He laughed at his own rough reference. ‘Take your time. This time is yours.’

Yssobel knelt by the Diadoran shield, staring ahead of her, letting the edge of vision entice the images. She called for her father, but to her surprise found that Jack was there again.

He was walking in a strange, unearthly land, an Underland, with the tall and hideous beings which they had come to call Amurngoth. There were some twenty of them, and a rough-faced, tousled boy, clad in deerskin trousers and shirt, carrying a short spear. He looked angry. Jack was walking with him, his face also set grim.

‘What’s happening, brother?’ she whispered, and at once he stopped. They all stopped. He looked around him, puzzled, then dropped to one knee, his arm around the boy, but staring through the shield. And she heard his voice, as if over a great distance.

‘Who’s there? Yssi? Is that you? It sounds like you . . .’

‘Where are you?’

‘Coming to find you. I believe you’re in danger.’

‘How are you finding me? How do you know where to look?’

‘I can hardly hear you. We must put Haunter in touch with green. How did I know where to look? Huxley’s journals. You’re in Avilion, and I know how you got there. I’m coming through a different path. With the Amurngoth. We’ve come to an arrangement. I hope I’ll be able to keep it. Are you safe?’

‘Safe? Yes. For the moment. I have friends with me. When I find Legion, things will change.’

‘Then I’ll find you at Legion! Yssi . . . ?’

‘Jack?’

‘Do you still have the silver clasps?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Keep them safe. I miss you, sister. But we’ll find each other. Time isn’t controlling us in this place. We control Time. Am I talking to red or green?’

‘Red, I think. I thought I’d lost her.’

‘Let green take over. I am more Haunter than Jack. So when you find wildwood, we can speak more easily.’

And he had gone, the image faded, his distant words of parting drawn back into time.

She slumped for a while, head on arms on the patterned floor, tears not quite flowing; but she felt lonely. The encounter through the mirrored surface had been wonderful. And yet her own words, until then thoughts unspoken, had frightened her.

When I find Legion, things will change.

Why had she said that?

Yssobel straightened up, her head banging against one of the other dangling shields, a moment’s easier pain, before once more turning her edge of vision to Diadora.

But what to try and see? Her mother? Legion? She thought for a while, and then on impulse called quietly:

‘Christian.’

He woke suddenly, and with a cry. He had been dreaming of Oak Lodge. In his dream he had been fishing on a pond with his brother Steven; their hooks had caught an old boat, a broken boat, but the lines had held and they had hauled it to the surface. He had waded in and pulled the wreck to the muddy bank.

He had been dreaming of their amazement, their inspiration: was this the work of pirates? Was there a body to be found?

He was dreaming about the discovery, and the story that might go with the resurrection of this sunken wreck, ten feet down in the millpond, close to their home.

But awake, and with a cry, he had roused those sleeping near to him. He stood, shivering, looking around at the low fires, the stacks of arms, the half-roused army sleeping here on the open plain. They were moving through time towards a battlefield, but as yet he had no sense of direction: forward or back; just that they were being summoned. Legion ploughed the earth as it ploughed time itself; Christian, waking up, was returned to his secret fear that they would be facing a future war, and not one for which this vast, mixed, strange and ghostly army was prepared.

Harsh, hard eyes watched him as he prowled, cloak around his body, a shiver in his limbs. He held tightly to his sword, hidden below the cloak. He knew that his leadership of Legion was something he would soon have to contest.

Fires burned, his mind was in flames. Who’s there? he thought, unwilling to speak aloud in case his fear was shown.

Walking into darkness, away from the fires, he remembered the fire that had taken his life, the huge fire that separated his home from Lavondyss; from the place where the spirit ran with the wind; from the dreaming place, where he had been reborn.

Walking into darkness, he remembered Guiwenneth, and he hunched into himself as he remembered his passion for her, and how he had taken her, how he had killed his brother Steven, only to fail, to find Steven a stronger man, and a man who had come back at him with full fury.

He remembered his sense of loss at losing Guiwenneth, though he had abused her, though he had loved her; but he had abused her. He had been a lost man then. Now, suddenly, waking from this dream, he felt lost again.

Guiwenneth was watching him. Or was it truly Guiwenneth? The hair was the same bright, coppery flow, half shrouding the face, that pale, green-eyed face, that knowing, wonderful, silently smiling face; that loving face. But this was not her.

Who, then? He was confused.

Who’s there? he whispered.

She stepped forward and he turned to face her. There was only darkness, the darkness of the plain, where Legion was encamped. But she was in the corner of his eye, and watching him.

Why do I know you?

She was silent, though. She was kneeling, now, her arms crossed, her head bowed as if in grief. She said nothing.

You terrify me. You ghost.

He had no sooner thought the thought than the apparition vanished. The air was fresh, there was a warm dawn light beginning to shimmer on the far hill, men were rising, and men were at his side, holding his arms, watching him with curiosity, but also with compassion.

He shrugged them off and went back to where his armour lay. Sensing their presence behind him, he turned, half unsheathing his sword. The four of them stood very still. They seemed alarmed and angry with his action.

The youngest of the four said, ‘You seemed disturbed by something. If we can help, we will.’

These were his guard. They rode ahead of him, or beside him, four men he trusted. They wore dull-coloured tartan kilts and heavy deerskin jackets. They favoured weapons that he could not use himself.

The youngest spoke again: ‘You need to be strong. We need to be strong for you. What is it?’

‘I’m haunted by the past. I can’t think why. There: is that enough show of weakness for you?’

‘Weakness? Where’s the weakness? What you took you took. What you take you take. What will be taken from you is what will be taken from you. You can do nothing about the first; the second is something you can decide upon. The third is the excitement!’

He looked at this young, brash man, held his gaze. ‘Bad poetry. But you’re right. I can’t remember your name.’

‘Peredur. Not a name to forget. Remember it well.’

Reflections

The wind was freshening. The shield hall was a place of bell chimes as they clashed. The shield of Diadora, immense and heavy though it was, began to move.

Yssobel looked at it directly. Its surface was like an ocean; rippling. There were patterns in its face, movement that flowed. She became entranced by it, unable to tear her gaze from the silvered aquamarine beauty of it.

‘Turn away!’

She reached to touch it, but a hard hand grasped hers and held it back.

‘Look away!’

As quickly as he had been there, Odysseus withdrew.

‘I thought you’d gone outside,’ Yssobel said.

‘Didn’t trust you not to look,’ he replied from behind her. ‘Have you seen all you need to see?’

‘I don’t know. A while longer?’

‘Why ask me? Take as long as you like. I have no immediate plans.’

There was a silence then.

Odysseus said quietly, ‘Ask for what you truly wish to see. I’ll give you a hint. It’s your mother. It doesn’t take much of a mind to understand that.’

‘Be quiet! Go away.’

‘The first, yes. The second, never.’

Yssobel waited until he had settled again, then called for Guiwenneth.

There was nothing of her but shadow. She walked through the camp, wrapped in her cloak, wrapped in her own arms. The moon was low; fires guttered in the light breeze. Men and women slept around the glow. She walked as a shadow.

Then, suddenly, an owl, white breasted, diamond-eyed, rose before her, wings spreading and folding as it flew from its roosting place. Such life in this death!

And as if the bird were the sound of new life, now she heard her daughter.

‘I’m coming to find you. I’m coming to bring you home.’

‘Yssobel?’ She looked around, alarmed, searching the dusk. ‘Don’t. Don’t. You never understood. Leave me alone. I am here to take care of an old wound, and if you interfere I’ll lose my life again.’

‘The resurrected man.’

Guiwenneth was suddenly aware that this was oracular contact. She stared at one of the fires. ‘Call him what you like. Love him as you like. I need time to find and kill him. Go away!’

‘I’m coming to find you.’

‘You will never manage that. Even if you did, it would be too late.’

‘I intend to take you home.’

The spectre of Guiwenneth laughed loudly. ‘There is no going home.’

‘You sang the Song of the Islands of the Lost when you left. You can unsing it.’

Guiwenneth turned slowly in a full circle, trying, perhaps, to get a glimpse of her daughter. She laughed. ‘How do you unsing?’

‘I don’t know, mother. But there must be a way.’

‘Leave me, daughter. Go back to where you belong. Find Odysseus and marry him.’

‘Odysseus is here. We found each other again. Marriage is not a prospect. Our paths will soon draw apart.’

‘A shame. A shame,’ this vision regretted. ‘He was a handsome boy.’

‘My father is missing you.’

Guiwenneth sighed and dragged her long hair around her face; in the mirror-shield she looked thoughtful and, for a moment, lost. Then the flash of hard-eyed green again. ‘Steven will cope. He always knew that our life together would be a fleeting one. He’s no fool, your father. Where are you?’

‘In a palace, watching you through the edge of vision. From the corner of my eye. You seem so sad, Gwin. And so angry.’

‘I’m here to do a deed, Yssi. If you wish to see anger, watch me in a while. This is a big army. Getting to its centre is hard. But when I get there . . .’ Guiwenneth paused, tightened into herself. ‘Leave me to my own devices! I miss you too; and Jack. But this is the end for me. Try to keep your paths together, you and the Greek.’

‘That, I know now, will be impossible.’

‘Then find life’s pleasure soon. Leave me, Yssobel. Leave me alone. Don’t follow me. Don’t waste your life.’

And as if Guiwenneth’s words could command the oracle, the Diadoran shield became just reflection and brightness. The image was gone.

Yssobel banged the surface with her fist, crying for a moment. Then that reassuring hand upon her shoulder, and when she stood, Odysseus was there.

‘I heard your side of a difficult conversation.’

She wiped the tears from her eyes, angry at herself. ‘My mother is stubborn. I must find this Legion.’