Beyond the Deepwoods (2 page)

Spelda sighed. Twig felt her warm breath on the back of his neck, and smelled the pickled tripweed she had eaten for lunch. He wrinkled his nose. Like so much of the food which the woodtrolls relished, Twig found tripweed disgusting, particularly pickled. It was slimy and smelled of rotten eggs.

‘This time it will be a little different,’ he heard his mother saying. ‘This time I will finish the tale.’

Twig frowned. ‘I thought I'd already heard the ending.’

Spelda tousled her son's thick black hair. He's grown so fast, she thought, and wiped a tear from the end of her rubbery button-nose. ‘A tale can have many endings,’ she said sadly, and watched the purple light from the fire gleaming on Twig's high cheekbones and sharp chin. ‘From the moment you were born,’ she began, as she always began, ‘you were different…’

Twig nodded. It had been painful, so painful, being
different
when he was growing up. Yet it amused him now to think of his parents’ surprise when he had appeared: dark, green-eyed, smooth-skinned, and already with unusually long legs for a woodtroll. He stared into the fire.

The lufwood was burning very well. Purple flames blazed all round the stubby logs as they bumped and tumbled around inside the stove.

The woodtrolls had many types of wood to choose from and each had its own special properties. Scentwood, for instance, burned with a fragrance that sent those who breathed it drifting into a dream-filled sleep, while wood from the silvery-turquoise lullabee tree sang as the flames lapped at its bark – strange mournful songs, they were, and not at all to everyone's taste. And then there was the bloodoak, complete with its parasitic sidekick, a barbed creeper known as tarry vine.

Obtaining bloodoak wood was hazardous. Any woodtroll who did not know his woodlore was liable to end up satisfying the tree's love of flesh – for the bloodoak and the tarry vine were two of the greatest dangers in the dark and perilous Deepwoods.

Certainly the wood of the bloodoak gave off a lot of heat, and it neither smelled nor sang, but the way it wailed and screamed as it burned put off all but a few. No, among the woodtrolls, lufwood was by far the most popular. It burned well and they found its purple glow restful.

Twig yawned as Spelda continued her story. Her voice was high-pitched but guttural; it seemed to gurgle in the back of her throat.

‘At four months you were already walking upright,’ she was saying, and Twig heard the pride in his mother's words. Most woodtroll children remained down on their
knuckles until they were at least eighteen months old.

‘
But
…’ Twig whispered softly. Drawn back inside the story despite himself, he was already anticipating the next part. It was time for the ‘but’. Every time it arrived Twig would shudder and hold his breath.

‘But,’ she said, ‘although you were so ahead of the others physically, you would not speak. Three years old you were, and not a single word!’ She shifted round in her chair. ‘And I don't have to tell you how serious
that
can be!’

Once again his mother sighed. Once again Twig screwed up his face in disgust. Something Taghair had once said came back to him: ‘Your nose knows where you belong.’ Twig had taken it to mean that he would always recognize the unique smell of his own home. But what if he was wrong? What if the wise old oakelf had been saying – in his usual roundabout way – that because his nose didn't like what it smelled, this was
not
his home?

Twig swallowed guiltily. This was something he had wished so often as he'd lain in his bunk after yet another day of being teased and taunted and bullied.

Through the window, the sun was sinking lower in the dappled sky. The zigzag silhouettes of the Deepwood pines were glinting like frozen bolts of lightning. Twig knew there would be snow before his father returned that night.

He thought of Tuntum, out there in the Deepwoods far beyond the anchor tree. Perhaps at that very moment he was sinking his axe into the trunk of a bloodoak. Twig
shuddered. His father's felling tales had filled him with deep horror on many a howling night. Although he was a master carver, Tuntum Snatchwood earned most of his money from the illicit repair of the sky pirates’ ships. This meant using buoyant wood – and the most buoyant wood of all was bloodoak.

Twig was uncertain of his father's feelings towards him. Whenever Twig returned to the cabin with a bloodied nose or blacked eyes or clothes covered in slung mud, he wanted his father to wrap him up in his arms and soothe the pain away. Instead, Tuntum would give him advice and make demands.

‘Bloody
their
noses,’ he said once. ‘Black
their
eyes. And throw not mud but
dung
! Show them what you're made of.’

Later, when his mother was smoothing hyleberry salve onto his bruises, she would explain that Tuntum was only concerned to prepare him for the harshness of the world outside. But Twig was unconvinced. It was not concern he had seen in Tuntum's eyes but contempt.

Twig absent-mindedly wound a strand of his long, dark hair round and round his finger as Spelda went on with her story.

‘Names,’ she was saying. ‘Where would we woodtrolls be without them? They tame the wild things of the Deepwoods, and give us our own identity. Ne'er sip of a nameless soup, as the saying goes. Oh, Twig, how I fretted when, at three years old, you were still without a name.’

Twig shivered. He knew that any woodtroll who died without a name would be doomed to an eternity in open sky. The trouble was that until an infant had uttered its first word the naming ritual could not take place.

‘Was I really so silent, Mother-Mine?’ said Twig.

Spelda looked away. ‘Not a single word passed your lips. I thought perhaps you were like your great-grandfather Weezil. He never spoke either.’ She sighed. ‘So on your third birthday, I decided to perform the ritual anyway. I…’

‘Did great-grandfather Weezil look like me?’ Twig interrupted.

‘No, Twig,’ said Spelda. ‘There has never been a Snatchwood – nor any other woodtroll – who has ever looked like you.’

Twig tugged at the twist of hair. ‘Am I ugly?’ he said.

Spelda chuckled. As she did so, her downy cheeks puffed out and her small charcoal-grey eyes disappeared in folds of leathery skin. ‘
I
don't think so,’ she said. She leaned forwards and wrapped her long arms around Twig's chest. ‘You'll always be my beautiful boy.’ She paused. ‘Now, where was I?’

‘The naming ritual,’ Twig reminded her.

He had heard the story so often, he was no longer sure what he could remember and what he had been told. As the sun rose, Spelda had taken the well-worn path which led to the anchor tree. There she tethered herself to its bulky trunk and set off into the dark woods. This was dangerous, not only because of the unseen perils that lurked in the Deepwoods but because there was always the chance that the rope would snag and break. Woodtrolls’ deepest terror was being lost.

Those who did stray from the path and lose their way were vulnerable to attacks from the gloamglozer – the wildest of all the wild creatures in the Deepwoods. Every woodtroll lived in constant terror of an encounter with the fearsome beast. Spelda herself had often frightened her older children with tales of the forest bogeyman: ‘If you don't stop being such a naughty woodtroll,’ she
would say, ‘the gloamglozer will get you!’

Deeper and deeper into the Deepwoods, Spelda went. All round her the forest echoed with howls and shrieks of concealed beasts. She fingered the amulets and lucky charms around her neck, and prayed for a swift and safe return.

Finally getting to the end of her tether, Spelda pulled a knife – a
naming
knife – from her belt. The knife was important. It had been made especially for her son, as knives were made for all the woodtroll children. They were essential for the naming ritual and, when the youngsters came of age, each one was given his or her individual naming knife to keep.

Spelda gripped the handle tightly, reached forwards and, as the procedure demanded, hacked off a piece of wood from the nearest tree. It was this little bit of Deepwood which would reveal her child's name.

Spelda worked quickly. She knew only too well that the sound of chopping would attract inquisitive, possibly deadly, attention. When she was done she tucked the wood under her arm, trotted back through the woods, untied herself from the anchor tree, and returned to the cabin. There she kissed the piece of wood twice and threw it into the fire.

‘With your brothers and sisters, the names came at once,’ Spelda explained. ‘Snodpill, Henchweed, Poohsniff; as clear as you like. But with you the wood did nothing but crackle and hiss. The Deepwoods had refused to name you.’

‘And yet I have a name,’ said Twig.

‘Indeed you have,’ said Spelda. ‘Thanks to Taghair.’

Twig nodded. He remembered the occasion so well. Taghair had just returned to the village after a long spell away. Twig remembered how overjoyed the woodtrolls had all been to have the oakelf back among them. For Taghair, who was well versed in the finer points of woodlore, was their adviser, their counsellor, their oracle. It was to him that the woodtrolls came with their worries.

‘There was already quite a gathering beneath his ancient lullabee tree when we arrived,’ Spelda was saying. ‘Taghair was sitting in his empty caterbird cocoon, holding forth about where he had been and what he had seen on his travels. The moment he saw me, however, his eyes opened wide and his ears rotated. “Whatever's up?” he asked.

‘And I told him. I told him everything. “Oh, for goodness sake, pull yourself together,” he said. Then he pointed to you. “Tell me,” he said. “What is that round the little one's neck?”

“‘That's his comfort cloth,” I said. “He won't let anyone touch it. And he won't be parted from it neither. His father tried once – said the boy was too old for such childish things. But he just curled up into a ball and cried and cried till we gave it back to him.”’

Twig knew what was coming next. He had heard it so many times before.

‘Then Taghair said, “Give it to me,” and stared into your eyes with those big black eyes of his – all oakelves have eyes like that. They can see those parts of the world that remain hidden to others.’