Authors: Robert Holdstock
At the end of the dance he sang the first calling song. His voice was loud in the still night air and the herons clattered above him, irritating him as he summoned forgotten words and melodies from his other life.
But when the song was over, the bower window closed. He frowned, thought hard, then turned twice and started his second dance, drawing the miasma around him, feeling the condensing moisture with its stinks and perfumes of the wood. He danced a wide circle through the wood and returned to the bank of the brook. The bower window was open again. He cast quick glances at it as he turned and whistled, and when his back was to the bower he allowed a smile to touch his face. His heart was racing with anticipation.
At the end of the moon, however, she was still inside the hawthorn wall.
Disappointed and exhausted, he returned to the shelter, though as he stooped to enter the dry place she emerged and sang slowly and sweetly from the top of the bank, a brief call, thanking him.
Delightedly, he whistled back.
He couldn’t sleep. The earth shook below him, sounded strange. The trees that surrounded the dell, its brook and bowers, trembled and shifted, as if a storm was coming. At some point, in the depth of the dark, a horse rode through, breathless, burdened by a man’s shape, which struck at the low branches. Later, four foxes came to drink, barked, fled when something stirred in the hazel scrub. He watched that dark shape apprehensively, the faint gleam on tusks. He had sensed it, but not how big it was, and for a while he wondered if it was watching and waiting for him as prey. He was relieved when, after a few hours, he heard it move away.
At dawn, he danced again, before drinking from the cold water of the brook. Then he returned to the Mask Tree and stood with his back to the carved and painted faces, feeling the enfolding bark, letting the air and aroma drift across him, watching the day’s shadows pass with the sun, the light on leaves, the movement of trees and fern, the restless passage of clouds in the far distance, at the edge of the great canopy overhead.
And then at dusk he danced for the hawthorn bower with renewed energy. He crossed the brook and ventured up the bank to the lines of briar, turned and called, sang a song that had arisen in his soul like a dream, when he had been standing by the Mask Tree.
He retreated to the stream and waited for the night and dark. When the dell was bright with moonglow he danced again, in his own miasma, singing vigorously, and this time she emerged from the bower, approaching the brook slowly, entering the scent cloak around him, her body wrapped in grasses, her hair flowing, the streaks of silver bright.
She did a quick dance of her own, then laughed as he responded vigorously, encouraging him, before bounding off, disappearing into the night, following the curving bank of the brook, out of the dell and into the deep wood.
He leapt into the air and raced after her, drawing the miasma with him.
All night she led him on a wild and sensuous chase through the deepwood. He had known her in another dream. He remembered her pleasures, and they sang to each other from oak, ash, glade, and earthen bank. Soon—it was that deathly time before dawn—they came to a high stone rise, a sheer wall of grey rock, carved with grim faces, and draped with ivy. She turned back from this ruin, then led the way to a dry-earth place, among small trees without thorn or rose briar, and here she danced and sang for a while, before beckoning for him.
He stepped quickly through the trees, grasped her, and they fell to the ground. She shredded the leaves from his arms and chest, tore the crow-feathers from his belly and held him. He bit through the grass knots and uncovered her, entwined his fingers with her hair, pressed his body against hers. Her mouth was soft and wet, her taste familiar and exquisite, the touch of her skin thrilling as they rolled together on the dry ground.
Midges plagued his back, biting hard; a mosquito droned faintly near his ear; an earthworm slid through the fingers of his hand as he grasped the raw earth for support; but he was in the earth with her, and the smells of earth and sweat, of blood and her mouth filled his senses, filled hers, and they moved frantically, then gently, then vigorously again, but always together, his mouth going down on hers when she began to scream, so that he drank the sound and the pleasure, sucking every cry, every tremor, every arching thrust of her body against his own, until after a long while she fell back breathless, holding his skin, his damp flesh, easing him to the edge of her body, then tugging him deep again, giggling and teasing.
When she had finished kissing him she lay below him, peaceful, breathing gently, looking up through the canopy, at the stark light, the shifting light, but listening to furtive movement inside the cold, false stone of the ruin close by.
The miasma flowed over them as the night changed, and the deathless dawn crept through the grass and the fine roots of the trees, and the pores of the leaves. Everything was suddenly very cold, very wet. A new vibrancy flowed suddenly about the lovers and the earth wrapped them with tendrils, feeding on the chemicals on their skin before drawing back.
And as dawnlight replaced the dark, Richard rolled away from the curled woman beside him and entered a lucid dream state in which he murmured her name and his own, and began to remember who he was, and the events at Old Stone Hollow.
He was cold, and curled into a ball, and he was tired, so he dozed, aware of movement and whispering all around.
Skin of Stone
At some time during the waking of their bodies and the reawakening of their minds, Helen had risen and left the clearing in the trees. Fully conscious again, Richard followed her and found her by the high stone wall, a greyish, naked shape in the morning haze, her long hair thrown back as she stared at the stone faces above her. Richard approached and she turned, stared darkly at him for a moment, then smiled and reached for him. They hugged for a long time, shivering slightly, rubbing each other’s backs for warmth. “I have a feeling you were glad to see me,” she said dryly.
“You remind me of someone I once knew. Helen Silverlock…”
A tighter hug, a longer shiver.
“I hoped you’d find me,” she said. “It’s been a hell of a long wait. I buried Dan a long time ago, back at the Station. I’ve missed you.”
Her words reminded him of the note she’d left, in another time, a misplaced time. Should he mention it? He decided not, saying simply, “When Lacan described the process of going ‘bosky’ to me, he made it sound dreamlike and silent, a great deal of communing with the rustling leaves and lapping lake waters. It wasn’t like that at all. First I went on a mad stampede with herds of bison and gazelles and packs of wolves, then I followed your smell, acted out some sort of mating ritual, hunted you through the wood and became totally and absolutely rampant.”
“And so did I,” she said quickly, perhaps sensing the apology that was about to be expressed, and silencing it with a grin and a direct look. “I wanted you very much.”
“Me too.”
“And wasn’t it wonderful?”
“I certainly feel a lot better. Thank you.”
She pinched him very hard, sharing his smile. He went on, “My mouth is full of mud and leaf mould. I’m scratched and bitten … and I think I jabbed a crow’s feather into your rump … at one of the more passionate moments…?”
“You did. I forgive you. Try to control yourself next time.”
“I coated myself with clay and feathers. I pranced around by the brook like a prize prat, singing to you. God knows what I was singing…”
She suddenly laughed, dark eyes wide with delight, then kissed him on the mouth. “But you were
wonderful!
I was half-aware of the songs because they were familiar from
this
life, and half responding to them like a bird responding to a mating call. Sound pheromones! But you really aroused me—the primitive me—even though you were singing such funny things. That’s what brought me out of the bower, dragged along by my own instincts.”
“For God’s sake—
what
did I sing?”
She did a little bobbing dance, arms slightly out from her sides, knees bending, silver-dark hair falling over her breasts, eyes twinkling with mischief as she sang, “
Love, love me, DO.
”
“
Beatles
songs?” Richard cried. “I sang
Beatles
songs? You’re joking!”
But memory came back; full, horrifying, and embarrassing memory.
“Christ. I
did.
And Presley:
There’s a place for us.
”
“Uh huh.”
“And then suddenly
you
sang.
I can’t get no satisfaction.
”
“Which at that time I couldn’t. But you seemed to remember how much I liked the Rolling Stones. You chased me through the wood singing ‘Jumping Jack Flash!’”
“I did … I remember now. Oh my God…”
Laughing, she said, “I thought that was great. You almost blew it the first evening, though, singing Beach Boys stuff. And something about,
I am the very model of a modern Major General.
”
He groaned. “Gilbert and Sullivan? Dressed in leaves and feathers, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a wildwood, I tried to seduce you with
The Pirates of Penzance?
Oh God. This is going to be hard to explain to our children.”
“Talking of which…”
She pulled away from him, walked towards the stone wall. “Do you recognise this place?”
“Yes. But it feels dead.”
It was a hard feeling to articulate. It was not just that it was ruined, but there was no
life
to it of any form. The trees that grew over it, the ivy that spread across its walls, the space between its stone buttresses and the nearby woodland, all these things were
silent.
There was an emptiness of spirit. It was an abandoned place.
“Dead, yes,” Helen said. “But not dead enough. There’s someone inside. He’s been watching us. I think I know who it is…”
With a frisson of both excitement and apprehension, Richard whispered, “Alex!”
But Helen said, “No. Not Alex. A more recent arrival at the ruins.”
* * *
In her time in the bower, in her time in the otherworldly state of nature that the Station knew as “bosky,” Helen had become adept at creating warm and protective clothing from the living and dried fabrics of nature. Ivy, both thin and thick, could be used to create a clothing frame, then cross-stitched with grasses, or strong plant stems, and infilled with soft litter, or broad leaves. She dressed them both in minutes, and though the vestments itched and scratched, the hard chill that had begun to become intrusive became limited to hands and feet.
As she worked, Richard enthralled her with details of his encounter with Jason and the
Argo.
Then he asked her about the last three years of her own life, after the Long Man had snatched him away and carried him back to Oak Lodge. “It was as if he knew where I wanted to go.”
She nodded agreement. “That’s what I eventually realised. I’d passed him twice, trying to find my way back to the Station, but he didn’t see me. I couldn’t get out of that land no matter how hard I tried. I must have been there six, seven months. Eventually I confronted the Long Man, said yes when he asked me ‘Helpen?’ and he took me back to the Station. That’s his function in legend: to lead you home. I don’t know his full story.
“McCarthy found his own way back, following shadows of course, but he died soon after. He was never very strong. And then one day, Lytton turned up. I thought he’d been killed by the Jack-chapel, but no. It spat him out…”
“That’s what Elizabeth said.”
“You’ve seen Elizabeth?”
“Briefly.”
Richard told her of the encounter that had brought him back to Ryhope. When he described Elizabeth’s abduction, Helen closed her eyes and shook her head. “Poor woman. She had it so hard those last few months…”
When Helen had finally returned to Old Stone Hollow, there was news of Dan. “That’s why I didn’t come and find you. I was missing you very much.” She smiled almost wistfully. “I felt I’d known you for a long time. But I went off looking for Dan, and that was a year’s journey, and I found him, what was left of him. And buried him. Lytton by then had scoured Huxley’s papers again, and worked out how Alex’s shadow might be loose in the wood. He sent me to get you … you weren’t there … I don’t understand what went wrong, yet. But anyway, I left the note, came back, and Trickster struck at us from the cave. It was no more than a shadow, all claws, tusks, and destruction. It tried to eat Lytton. It killed Wakeman, and pursued me for days. I couldn’t handle the confrontation. I wasn’t even sure this was
my
Coyote. Then I went bosky, came here, close to the tree covered with faces, and made my home. God alone knows how long I’ve inhabited that dell. But something stirred in me, waking me up, when you came along. Singing your little songs…” She laughed again, shaking her head, then looked up at the grey stone wall.
“I think it’s time to take a look inside … Find our old friend.”
They entered the remains of the cathedral through the vaulting arch where great oak doors had once opened to the sanctuary within. Richard stared into the vast, silent ruin and began to recognise it, though its name escaped him. He had been here before, however, and Alex too, a long time ago in another world, his son at that time a tiny child, awestruck and silent, staring up at the vaulted ceiling, at the light through coloured windows. Alex had called out in the heavy stillness, listening to the sound of his voice passing through the high spaces, an echo creature that had delighted him as much as the grimacing faces that had watched from the stone, and the serene figures that had moved in the glass.
“I know this place—I’ve been here before—but I can’t remember it—but I do remember these from our last journey! The agony figures. Do you see?”
He walked between the first broad columns, each with the statue of a dying man, St. Sebastian on one side, the stone of his face melting, the stubs of arrows still visible, the twisted Christ on the tree on the other, features faded as if dissolved in acid, but the musculature still defined, so that tortured limbs and a deeper pain communicated powerfully from the dead marble.