Mythago Wood - 1 (33 page)

For my part I had ceased to worry about how the legend of the Outsider ended.
Sorthalan had said that the story was unfinished. I took that to mean that there
was no preordination of events, that time and situation were mutable. My concern
was only for Guiwenneth, whose face both haunted and inspired me. She seemed
always to be with me. Sometimes, when the wind was mournful, I thought I could
hear her cry. I longed for pre-mythago activity: I might have glimpsed a
doppelganger, then, and taken comfort from that illusory closeness. But since
passing the zone of abandoned places all that activity had gone - for Keeton
too, although in his case, the loss of the shifting peripheral shapes was a
mercy.

We came within sight of the village and realized that we had come back, now,
to something almost alien in its primitiveness. There was a wooden palisade on a
raised earth bank. Outside the bank were a few yards of chipped and razor sharp
rocks, rammed into the ground like crude spikes, a simple defence, simply
overcome. Beyond the wall the huts were of stone, built around sunken floors.
Crossed wooden beams formed the support for roofs of turf and occasionally a
primitive sort of thatch. The whole community had the feel of being more
subterranean than earth bound, and as we entered the gateway through the earth
wall we were conscious only of the dull stone, and the heavy smell of turf, both
fresh and burning.

He reached towards us as we approached, and held out a clay pot. In the pot
was a dark red cream. I accepted the gift, but more was obviously required.
Behind them a few huddled figures had appeared, men and women, wrapped against
the cold, watching us. I noticed bones lying on raised platforms beyond the
squat huts.

And on the air came the smell of grilled onions!

I passed the clay pot to the old man, and leaned forward, imagining that I
was expected to daub my features in some way. He seemed pleased and touched his
finger to the ochre, then quickly drew a line on each of my cheeks, repeating
the decoration on Keeton. I took the pot back, and we went deeper into the
village. Keeton was still agitated, and after a moment said, 'He's here.'

'Who's here?'

But there was no answer to my question. Keeton was totally absorbed in his
own thoughts.

This was a Neolithic people. Their language was a sinister series of
gutturals and extended diphthongs, a weird and incomprehensible communication
that defies even phonetic reproduction. I looked around the bleak and uninviting
community for some sign of the connection with myth, but there was nothing to
demand interest save for an enormous, white-fac.aded tumulus being constructed
on a knoll of high land towards the mountains, and an elaborate display of
intricately patterned boulders surrounding the central house. Work was still
continuing on the carving of these stones, supervised by a boy of no more than
twelve years of age. He was introduced as
Ennik-tig-encruik,
but I
noticed he was referred to as 'tig'. He watched us searchingly as we, in turn,
watched the work of pecking out patterns using antler and stone.

Were these people associated with the earliest memories of the tombs?

It was a question never to be answered. We had come too far inwards; we had
journeyed too far back into the hidden memories of man. Only the Outsider myth
could be related to these primitive times, and the earliest Outsiders of them
all: the Urshuca.

A grey and shivery dusk enveloped the land. Freezing mist shrouded the
mountains and the valleys around. The woodland was a stand of sinister black
bones, arms raised through the icy fog. The fires in the earth huts belched
smoke from the holes in the turf roofs, and the air became sweet with the smell
of burning hazelwood.

Keeton abruptly stripped off his furs and pack, letting them fall to the
ground. Despite my query, he ignored me, and ignored the old man, walking past
him towards the far side of the enclosure. The white-haired elder watched him,
frowning. I called Keeton's name, but was aware of the futility of the act.
Whatever had suddenly come to obsess the airman, it was his business alone.

I was taken to the main hut and fed fully on a vegetable broth in which
rather unpleasant chunks of fowl were floating. The tastiest food presented to
me was a biscuit, made from a grain, nutty in flavour, with a slight aftertaste
of straw - not at all bad.

In the distance, as I peered into the nightland, other fires burned between
the mountains. These pinpricks of light were clearly communities. But in the far
distance, eerily illuminating the mist, was a stronger, widely diffuse glow. We
were already coming into range of the barrier of fire, the wall of flame
maintained by flame-talkers, the boundary between the encroaching forest and the
clear land beyond. There, the world of mythago wood entered a timeless zone that
would be unexplorable.

Keeton called my name. I turned and saw him standing in the darkness, a thin
figure without his protective clothing.

'What's going on, Harry?' I asked as I stepped up to him.

'Time to go, Steve,' he said, and I saw that there were tears in his eyes. 'I
did warn you . . .'

He turned and led me to the hut where he had been sheltering.

'I don't understand, Harry. Go where?'

'God knows,' he said quietly, as he ducked through the low doorway into the
warm, smelly interior. 'But I knew it would come to this. I didn't come with you
just for fun.'

'You're making no sense, Harry,' I said as I straightened up.

The hut was small, but could have slept about ten adults. The fire burned
healthily in the centre of the earth floor. A matting of sorts had been laid
around the edge of the floor space. Clay vessels cluttered one corner;
implements of bone and wood were stacked in another. Strands of grass and reed
thatch dangled from the low roof.

'Stiv'n!' he exclaimed, his accent so like Guiwenneth's.

And I crossed the floor to him, dropped to my knees, and with a sense of
incredible confusion, and yet great pleasure, greeted Magidion, the Chieftain of
the Jaguth.

My first thought, strangely, was that Magidion would be angry with me for
having failed to protect Guiwenneth. This sudden surge of anxiety must have made
me seem as a child at his knees. The feeling passed. It was Magidion himself,
and his Jaguth, who had failed her. And besides: there was something not right
with the man. For a start, he was alone. Secondly, he seemed distracted and sad,
and his grip on my arm - a welcoming gesture - was uncertain and short-lived.

'I've lost her,' I said to him. 'Guiwenneth. She was taken from me.'

'Guiwenneth,' he repeated, his voice soft. He reached out and pushed a branch
deeper into the fire, causing a shower of sparks and a sudden wave of heat from
the declining embers. I saw then that there were tears glistening in the big
man's eyes. I glanced at Keeton. Harry Keeton was watching the other man with an
intensity, and a concern, that I could not fathom.

'He's been called,' Keeton said.

'Called?'

'You told me the story of the Jaguth yourself -'

I understood at once! Magidion, in his own time, had been summoned by the
Jagad. First Guillauc, then Rhyd-derch, and now Magidion. He was apart from the
others now, a solitary, questing figure, following the whim of a woodland deity
as strange as she was ancient.

'When was he summoned?'

'A few days ago.'

'Have you spoken to him about it?'

Keeton merely shrugged. 'As much as is possible. As usual. But it was enough

'Enough? I still don't understand.'

Keeton looked at me, and he seemed slightly anguished. Then he smiled thinly.
'Enough to give me a slight hope, Steve.'

'The "avatar"?'

If I felt embarrassed as I said the word, Keeton just laughed. 'In a way I
wanted you to read what I was writing.' He reached into the pocket of his
motorcycle trousers and drew out the damp, slightly dog-eared notebook. After
cradling it in his hand for a moment he passed it to me. I thought there was a
certain hope in his eyes, a change from the brooding man who had developed over
the last few days. 'Keep it, Steve. I always intended that you should.'

I accepted the notebook. 'My life is full of diaries.'

"This one's very scruffy. But there are one or two people in England . .
.' He laughed as he said that, then shook his head. 'One or two people back home
. . . well, their names are written at the back. Important people to me. Just
tell them, will you?'

Tell them what?'

'Where I am. Where I've gone. That I'm happy. Especially that, Steve. That
I'm happy. You may not want to give the wood's secret away . . .'

I felt a tremendous sadness. Keeton's face in the firelight was calm, almost
radiant, and he stared at Magidion, who watched us both, puzzled by us, I
thought.

'You're going with Magidion . . .' I said.

'You've come all this way to find heaven,' I said softly. 'To find peace,' he
said. 'That's the word, I think.' 'And Magidion knows of this . . . peaceful
place?' 'He saw it once. He knows of the beast god that guards it, the
"avatar" as I call it. He saw the city. He saw its lights, and the
glimmer of its streets and windows. He walked around it by watching its spires,
and listening to the night-calls of its priests. An incredible place, Steve.
Images of that city have always haunted me. And that's true, you know ..."
He frowned, realizing something even as he spoke. 'I think I dreamed of that
place even in childhood, long before I crashed in the ghost wood. I dreamed of
it. Did I create it?' He laughed with a sort of weary confusion. 'Maybe I did.
My first mythago. Maybe I did.'

I was bone-weary, but I felt I had to know as much from Keeton as possible. I
was about to lose him. The thought of his departure filled me with a powerful
dread. To be alone in this realm, to be utterly alone . . .