Wildwood
Authors: Janine Ashbless
Contents
Prologue: Oak King, Holly King
1.
Something Old, Something New
About the Book
Avril Shearing is a landscape gardener brought in to reclaim an overgrown woodland for the handsome and manipulative Michael Deverick. But among the trees lurks a tribe of environmental activists determined to stop anyone getting in, led by the enigmatic Ash who regards Michael as his mortal enemy. Avril soon discovers that on the Kester Estate nothing is as it seems. Creatures that belong in dreams or in nightmares emerge after dark to prowl the grounds, and hidden in the heart of the wood is something so important that people will kill, or die for it. Ash and Michael become locked in a deadly battle for the Wildwood – and for Avril herself.
About the Author
Janine Ashbless is a well-established writer of fantasy, horror and erotic fiction.
She is the author of
Burning Bright, Cruel Enchantment, Dark Enchantment, Divine Torment
and
Enchanted
, all available from Black Lace.
Also by Janine Ashbless:
Cruel Enchantment
Divine Torment
Burning Bright
House of Dust
(In the Black Lace novella collection
Magic and Desire
)
Bear Skin
(In the Black Lace novella collection
Enchanted
)
Dedicated to D.F. –
who was far too good for the students he taught.
I can only apologise.
Prologue: Oak King, Holly King
I climb the gate and go into the wood
.
It’s the high end of summer, the last few weeks before the tints on the leaves overhead start to change. The foliage around me is at its darkest and thickest and greenest. Underfoot there’s no trace of damp, but I almost feel as if I’m moving underwater. I take one of the winding paths at random, knowing that it will switch about and fool me and steer me into unfamiliar and dangerous places
.
They – the People of the Wildwood – emerge from between the trees and fall into step with me; at first I see them only distantly or from the corner of my eye and it’s easy to pretend it’s all just my imagination. Soon, as I leave the safer margins of the wood and sink deeper, they grow bolder and I can look straight at them, but always there’s something ambiguous about them, something that suggests that the flicker of shadow and the glow of sunlight, the chance nod of a branch or the startled flap of a bird’s wing is not something that simply confuses my eye and makes it impossible to bring them into focus, but something intrinsic to their nature. They are impossible to define but they are there: hunched elder-tree witches and wrinkle-faced apple-men, trolls bearing crusts of leaf mould upon their shoulders from where they’ve been sleeping, spindly bramble-urchins with sharp eyes and sharper teeth, horses of yellow bone, and boars of mud and withered leather. Hybrid things from a place where chitin and bark and skin and earth are interchangeable, and hair is grass or reeds or mats of phosphorescent mycorrhizae.
Things
that look, so long as I’m smart enough not to pay them close attention, like scarecrows, and things that look like road accidents and things that look like nothing I have analogues for. Some are even beautiful. They whisper in languages I’ve never heard and their ancient eyes are full of sorrow and promise and need
.
I carry on walking, my heart in my throat, my blurring eyes fixed on the path. There is no way back from here. I must find what I’m looking for before they close in on me. And close they do, from the sides and the rear, until they’re right at the edge of the path. They smell of wet compost, of earth and old leaves and fungus. It’s not unpleasant. But as they close the smell grows stronger and the light greener and the creak and crunch of their steps louder, until I’m hemmed in on all sides and they tower over me. Their expressions are variously cunning and wise, vacuous and gleeful, but none of them are kindly
.
Eventually I am crowded to a halt. I feel like I can hardly breathe. Then just as I’m sure I’m to be torn apart, two of them step aside and, in the gap, is revealed the first familiar, human face among all that crowd. It’s Ash, and he looks at me with a smile that is both pleased and surprised and it goes straight though my breastbone to lodge in my chest. My heart thumps with relief and a warm, tingling wave brushes my skin from top to toe
.
‘
Avril?’ He’s wearing what I take to be a grey coat, and a wreath of oak leaves. He is king in the wood, I tell myself. From my right an elder-witch, the eyes in her grey face holes full of rot, reaches out and plops a wreath upon my own head. Raising my hands I discover a crown of birch, the triangular leaves still fresh
.
My entourage draws back a little, forming a circle around us
.
‘
We bring the queen,’ says a voice over my shoulder, a voice that rumbles like rocks in a barrel and originates at a point several yards over my head
.
Ash looks around the crowd, frowning. ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. You’re mistaken
.’
‘
Your queen,’ thunders the voice, and a huge hand catches me in the back, slamming me forwards. Ash opens his arms just in time to grab me and I end up against his chest, half the breath knocked out of me. His coat feels solid, like armour
.
‘
You don’t understand.’ He says it gently, like a traveller anxious not to give offence in a foreign land, and under the copper arch of his brows his greenish eyes linger regretfully on mine. But he still says it. ‘She can’t be
.’
‘
Yours!
’
‘
No
.’
‘
No,’ I chime. ‘Please realise. We can’t
.’
‘
If not yours, then ours,’ says the voice
.
That shuts us up. Through the circle ripples a low murmur of anticipation and greed. I glance hurriedly at the hulking mob and then back at the man whose arms are round me. ‘Ash
…’
He blinks. His eyes are darker than normal, his pupils wide in this dim green light, and he looks suddenly uncertain
.
He wouldn’t turn me over to them, surely?
‘
We could, you know,’ I say, and it comes out high and shaky
.
‘
Could we?
’
I nod, frantic
.
‘
Well, we could.’ His breath is shallow
.
‘
So as not to upset them.’ My arms are around his neck. His dreadlocks are heavy on the backs of my hands
.
‘
That would be polite,’ he admits. He brushes aside a birch twiglet that has come astray from my crown and is lying against my cheek. My skin seems to catch light from his touch. His other arm is holding me very close indeed. ‘It’s an understandable error they’ve made
.’
‘
Perfectly
.’
‘
Yours!’ thunders the voice in satisfaction
.
‘
So long as you realise that,’ he murmurs. His lips are perilously close to mine
.
‘
Of course
.’
‘
Mine,’ he agrees, an edge of hoarseness to his raised voice
.
‘
Yours!’ they chorus, scores of inhuman voices lifted together. Then they retreat from us, fading back into the wood as they go, and we’re left alone in a narrow clearing hemmed in by trees. Ash and I pull back slowly to arm’s length
.
‘
Are we safe?
’
‘
Are we ever safe?’ he answers ruefully. ‘They’re watching, if that’s what you mean
.’
‘
Oh.’ I’ve realised that his coat is made of tree bark interlaced with ivy, and my wandering fingers find a coarse edge of the strange garment. ‘Then I suppose we have to
…’
‘
I suppose we do
.’
I try to slip my fingers under the edge of the coat, but I jerk with shock as a bark plate breaks off and falls, revealing a patch of chest about the size of my palm. The rest of the bark seems to be stuck to his skin. ‘Did that hurt?
’
‘
Uh.’ He looks just as shocked as me. ‘No
.’
I touch his warm skin with my fingertips. The bark has left no imprint. Carefully I prise off another piece and Ash watches curiously. I find that the ivy does not come away so easily; its tiny flat rootlets cling tenaciously to his skin. Instead of the tribal tattoo at his shoulder he has green and jagged leaves growing there and I trace the tendrils with my fingertips. Green on cream: the colour contrast is dizzying
.
‘
What about you?’ he asks, running his hand down the curve of my waist. My own dress is composed of curls of papery white bark and they fall effortlessly beneath his touch, leaving a wake of smooth skin that’s a deep golden brown at this time of the year. Ash makes a noise in his throat that I take to be
appreciation
and I feel suddenly self-conscious. He’s right: it doesn’t hurt. Instead each piece falls away with a tingle of nerve endings that is pure pleasure
.
‘
It’s not as if we’re attracted to one another.’ It’s hard to keep my voice steady
.
‘
Not in the least,’ he says, his hand shedding birch-bark curls like confetti as he runs it round and over my breast, spiralling in. ‘We’ve never been like that, Avril
.’
‘
I know.’ I’m finding it hard to speak as he closes on my exposed nipple. ‘Oh God.’ My fingers scrabble clumsily at the oak bark, revealing swathes of ivory flesh
.
‘
You’re not enjoying this.’ His voice is teasing, his breath warm on my ear
.
‘
Neither are you
.’
His next pass bares my right flank and hip. I lift my thigh against his to allow him access all the way down and I feel his response – a surge in the plated region of his groin. Ash winces
.
‘
It’s OK,’ I tell him, gently stripping him of his armour and exposing the warm velvet flesh beneath, inch by inch. He moves in my hands like a hatchling struggling from its shell and I cup his balls and caress his cock, urging it erect. It jerks between my palms, flushed and proud. ‘I can see how reluctant you are
.’
‘
Yes.’ He looks dizzy. ‘That’s quite obvious
.’
‘
Very, very obvious,’ I say with appreciation. His glans is glossy like polished wood. I trace fingertip paths up the solid length of his shaft and feel obliged to remind him, ‘This doesn’t mean anything
.’