Advent (65 page)

 
Holly, singing. In the wintry desertion the sound of it was like the promise of warmth, so beautiful Gav found himself blinking away tears. He strode on as best he could until he was near enough the gate to make out the words of the carol.

Now the holly bears a berry as blood is it red

Then trust we our Saviour who rose from the dead

And Mary bore Jesus Christ our Saviour for to be

And the first tree in the greenwood it was the holly

Holly, holly

And the first tree in the greenwood it was the holly

When he came to the entrance the song stopped. The thin rails of the iron fence stuck out of the snow, marking the line of the driveway as it curved down into the screen of trees. Their branches were black and motionless as the iron. To the left was what had three days earlier been Aunt Gwen’s house. In the barren monochrome the thing outside the ruined door stood out like a desert flower, burnished green studded with its two pairs of blood-red circles.

 
Gawain went in, under the gaze of the red eyes.

 
‘Don’t stop,’ he said, when he was almost close enough for the limbs to swing out and crush him. ‘That was beautiful.’

 
The head inclined, loosening a breath of snow. When it spoke, Gawain felt a peculiar stab of joy.

 
‘You hear, then? Men have ears, after all?’

 
Smiling foolishly, he spread his arms, indicating the surrounding silence. ‘Couldn’t really miss it.’

 
‘I warned and am ignored. Why, White Hawk? I bid you run, yet here you are again.’

 
Gawain glanced around, but the landscape was perfectly, immaculately still. ‘This is my home,’ he said. ‘I don’t belong anywhere else.’

 
The tree-woman’s bulk stirred, a colossal statue coming alive.

 
‘Your death is commanded.’

 
He made himself remember that he wasn’t afraid of it any more. ‘You’re going to kill me, then?’

 
‘Not I. Not I.’ Its limbs flexed, descended. He stood his ground as they circled behind him. ‘But the hunter has your scent. Your path is marked.’

 
‘OK,’ he said, more bravely than he felt. ‘I’ll just have to hurry up.’

 
‘He will break you. Rake and rip and leave you to rot. He—’

 
‘Yeah, I get the idea.’

 
‘Then get you gone.’

 
Gawain shrugged and shook his head. His decision was made. Like he’d said to Owen, there was a thing he had to do. Now that everything else in his life was gone, it didn’t even feel brave, or complicated, or surprising. It was just all there was.

 
‘I’m going to find Marina.’

 
‘You will find murder.’

 
‘You’re not much help, you know.’

 
‘Help?’ It managed to fill the one syllable with bitter laughter and tender grief all at once. ‘Holly, help? I am haled here, cleaved to this tree, and my roots riven earthwards. I am weaker than a word of yours. Do you believe it? A day-old boy-child is a greater thing than Holly. Did not your kind make ghosts of us merely by forgetting? Am I not less than a trick of your thought?’

 
He shrugged again and glanced towards the darkening horizon. ‘I have no idea, to be honest. I don’t know what you are. I’m just going to try and find my friend.’

 
‘The changeling child.’

 
Gawain remembered standing in shock at the door of the chapel, hearing the dry rustling voice.
The girl, a changeling. The boy, an orphan, and ward of her you seek.
Perfectly simple, though even then – even just yesterday – he hadn’t been able to so much as take in the words.

 
‘Holly?’ He tried to meet its look, tried to talk to it the way he’d have talked to anyone. ‘What does that mean, “changeling”?’

 
Holly swayed sinuously, impossibly graceful. ‘Ah, May Hawk. I would tell you tales, had we time. I would sing you stories. Fairy-children, cradle-theft. Ballads of the otherborn. You would lean on my trunk through the night and listen. But your trail grows warmer. You would never see the dawn.’ It bent closer, shaking its head. ‘Nor will you see dusk, if you tarry. Go, boy, before you are found. Go.’

 
There was a powerful temptation to make it talk again. While he had its attention, nothing seemed to matter except keeping it. He forced himself to notice the gathering dark. ‘Can you at least tell me where she is?’

 
‘The half-girl?’

 
‘Marina, yeah.’

 
The limbs spun lazily outwards. ‘Holly sees only this. Little enough. The child went in and never came out.’

 
In the silence that followed Gawain stared into the pupilless red eyes. Their impassive stillness was like a repetition of the word.
Never.

 
‘Went in where,’ he said.

 
‘My master’s dwelling. Take your way elsewhere.’

 
‘What do you mean, she didn’t come out?’

 
‘We are not men. What we say we mean. Now be gone.’

 
‘No. Listen.’ He breathed deeply. It could have meant anything, he told himself.
Never
. A voice so beautiful couldn’t have told him what for a stupid moment he thought it was telling him. ‘I have to go. I’m going to find her.’

 
‘Where my master dwells?’ Holly managed to sound amused and horrified at once. ‘You would hurry to your own massacre?’

 
‘You’ve really got a way with words, don’t you?’

 
‘It is all the ways I have, now.’

 
‘Yeah. Well, I can’t go anywhere else either. I can’t run away any more.’ This was true; he fastened on the truth and tried to speak with more conviction. ‘I mean it. I just can’t.’

 
‘Is it so hard for men to live?’

 
‘Marina.’
An ocean girl tends it.
‘She’s got something I need.’

 
Again the long humming exhalation, and now a shape like a smile bent the black lips. Its branch-arms lifted slowly.

 
‘Man’s desires,’ it sighed. ‘Mystery, mystery.’

 
Gav felt himself blushing under his chapped and frozen skin. ‘It’s not like that.’

 
‘Love and death.’ The gorgeous voice was a warm whisper. ‘Death and love. Man’s day-star and night-star. Your kind lives and dies and never learns which is which. You seek one here and will find the other.’

 
‘I’m not in love.’

 
‘Touch me.’

 
‘What?’

 
‘Touch me, White Hawk. Lay your hand on Holly.’

 
You’re kidding
, he was going to say, but didn’t. Instead he took two steps forward, towards the ashy mottling on the bark of its limbs, the tiny caps of snow on the sleek berries of its nipples. He reached out his fingers to the green waist.

 
‘Mortal warmth,’ it whispered, somewhere just above.

 
He let his hand spread over the surface. Cold and smooth. His fingers recognised the wood, the wild fecund holly. But he felt the other life as well, inside the tree, something belonging to a world or a way of being he’d always thought (or been told) he was only imagining, a life he had no word to describe.

 
‘You are not altogether the child I chased away.’ The part of it he touched moved a little. ‘Though your hand is a human hand still.’

 
‘Yeah.’ He felt absurdly uncomfortable about its breasts being at the level of his face. He stared fixedly at his fingers. ‘I think I figured some things out.’

 
‘Go on, then, White Hawk.’

 
Reluctantly he withdrew his hand and stepped back. ‘I’m Gawain,’ he said, inexplicably shy.

 
‘White Hawk. Hawk of May. Live to see another day.’

 
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. Far enough away that he felt he could look up at its snow-crusted head again, he surprised himself by adding, ‘If I can figure out a way to release you, I will.’

 
‘Your will weighs nothing beside the warlock’s.’ Gawain twitched and looked around. ‘Pay Holly no heed. Go warily.’

 
Warlock?
All at once it seemed like a good idea to hurry up, before he decided to run away after all.

 
‘And the hunter will return. Do not be seen, once-boy. Do not be seen.’

Thirty

He hurried down
towards the wood, not looking back until the trees closed around him. Holly’s jagged shape stood out against the skyline. He couldn’t tell whether it was still watching him.

 
In the shelter of the wood the snow was thinner and he walked through it quickly, a cage of knotted shadows appearing to move with him. His first glimpse of the house brought him up short, heart racing, guts churning. Through bars of intervening branches he saw light in upper windows, the unsteady radiance of firelight. Its shimmer made the house look like it had half-open eyes, flickering across the garden, watching for him. The fear he’d been ignoring asserted itself with a vengeance, all in one sick rush. Holly had as good as told him he was going to his death. He squeezed against the bark of a tree and tried to get a grip on himself. Ridiculous, he thought to himself. This is stupid. There’s someone in there who can turn crows and trees into people and make dogs breathe fire. How am I supposed to face that? Turn round and go. Now.

 
He stayed tight to the trunk.

 
You seek one here and will find the other
.

 
It could have meant anything, he told himself again. Or nothing. Just another song, just a hum of sweet words. There was no reason at all to think Marina might be . . .

 
He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. It didn’t matter how frightened he was. He had to go and find her.

 
He edged round the tree and started through the undergrowth. Powder fell around him, shaken loose by tiny motions in the canopy. He trod carefully around thorny stems, all furred white. Soon he could see the front doors with their bands of metal. Between them and the edge of the wood stretched the unkempt avenues and borders of the garden. Anyone moving across that open ground would stand out as obviously as Holly outside the lodge. And even if he reached the doors unnoticed, what then?

 
He stared at the house’s irregular grey outline, feeling increasingly desperate. He wasn’t even sure he could remember his way around inside. How was he going to find one person when he couldn’t even guess what else might be in there with her? If only he could get inside secretly, with time to look around. If only . . .

 
If only there was another way in.

 
But there was. Of course there was. She’d shown him the very door. And he was the one who’d noticed that it was unbarred.