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.
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‘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!
&n
bsp; 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.