of October I noticed that I could not spend more than
an hour at the house before becoming restless, an unease that could only be
dispelled by returning to the glade and taking up my watching post, seated
cross-legged just inside the tent, watching the gloom a few yards away. On
several occasions I took long, rather nervous sorties further into the forest,
but I disliked the sensation of stillness and the tingling of my skin which
seemed to say repeatedly that I was being watched. All this was imagination, of
course, or an extremely sensitive response to woodland animals, for on one
occasion, when I ran screaming and yelling at the thicket wherein I imagined the
voyeur was crouched, I saw nothing but a red squirrel go scampering in panic up
into the crossed and confused branches of its home oak.
Where was Christian? I tacked paper messages as deep in the wood, and
in as many locations, as I could. But I found that wherever I walked too far
into the great dip that seemed to be swallowing the forest down, I would, at
some point within the span of a few hours, find myself approaching the glade and
the tent again. Uncanny, yes, and infuriating too; but I began to get an idea of
Christian's own frustration at not being able to maintain a straight line in the
dense oakwood. Perhaps, after all, there was some sort of field of force,
complex and convoluted, that channelled intruders back on to an outward track.
And November came, and it was very cold indeed. The rain was sporadic and
icy, but the wind reached down through the dense, browning foliage of the forest
and seemed to find its way through clothes and oilskin and flesh to the cooling
bones beneath. I was miserable, and my searches for Christian grew more angry,
more frustrated. My voice was often hoarse with shouting, my skin blistered and
scratched from climbing trees. I lost track of time, realizing on more than one
occasion, and with some shock, that I had been two, or perhaps three days in the
forest-without returning to the house. Oak Lodge grew stale and deserted. I used
it to wash, to feed, to rest, but as soon as the worst ravages of my body were
corrected, thoughts of Christian, anxiety about him, grew in my mind and pulled
me back to the glade, as surely as if I were a metal filing tugged to a magnet.
I began to suspect that something terrible had happened to him; or perhaps
not terrible, just natural: if there really were boars in the wood, he might
have been gored by one, and be either dead or dragging himself from the
heart-woods to the edge, unable to cry for help. Or perhaps he had fallen from a
tree, or quite simply gone to sleep in the cold and wet and failed to revive in
the morning.
I searched for any sign of his body, or of his having passed by, and I found
absolutely nothing, although I discovered the spoor of some large beast, and
marks on the lower trunks of several oaks that looked like nothing other than
the scratchings of a tusked animal.
But my mood of depression passed, and by mid-November I was quite confident
again that Christian was alive. My feelings, now, were that he had somehow
become trapped in this autumnal forest.
For the first time in two weeks I went into the village, and after obtaining
food supplies, I picked up the papers that had been accumulating at the tiny
newsagents. Skimming the front pages of the weekly local, I noticed an item
concerning the decaying bodies of a man and an Irish wolfhound, discovered in a
ditch on farmland near Grimley. Foul play was not suspected. I felt no emotion,
apart from a curious coldness, a sense of sympathy for Christian, whose dream of
freedom for Guiwenneth was surely no more than that: a fervent hope, a desire
doomed to frustration.
As for mythagos, I had only two encounters, neither of them of much note. The
first was with a shadowy man-form that skirted the clearing, watching me, and
finally ran into the darkness, striking at the trunks of trees with a short,
wooden stick. The second
an hour at the house before becoming restless, an unease that could only be
dispelled by returning to the glade and taking up my watching post, seated
cross-legged just inside the tent, watching the gloom a few yards away. On
several occasions I took long, rather nervous sorties further into the forest,
but I disliked the sensation of stillness and the tingling of my skin which
seemed to say repeatedly that I was being watched. All this was imagination, of
course, or an extremely sensitive response to woodland animals, for on one
occasion, when I ran screaming and yelling at the thicket wherein I imagined the
voyeur was crouched, I saw nothing but a red squirrel go scampering in panic up
into the crossed and confused branches of its home oak.
Where was Christian? I tacked paper messages as deep in the wood, and
in as many locations, as I could. But I found that wherever I walked too far
into the great dip that seemed to be swallowing the forest down, I would, at
some point within the span of a few hours, find myself approaching the glade and
the tent again. Uncanny, yes, and infuriating too; but I began to get an idea of
Christian's own frustration at not being able to maintain a straight line in the
dense oakwood. Perhaps, after all, there was some sort of field of force,
complex and convoluted, that channelled intruders back on to an outward track.
And November came, and it was very cold indeed. The rain was sporadic and
icy, but the wind reached down through the dense, browning foliage of the forest
and seemed to find its way through clothes and oilskin and flesh to the cooling
bones beneath. I was miserable, and my searches for Christian grew more angry,
more frustrated. My voice was often hoarse with shouting, my skin blistered and
scratched from climbing trees. I lost track of time, realizing on more than one
occasion, and with some shock, that I had been two, or perhaps three days in the
forest-without returning to the house. Oak Lodge grew stale and deserted. I used
it to wash, to feed, to rest, but as soon as the worst ravages of my body were
corrected, thoughts of Christian, anxiety about him, grew in my mind and pulled
me back to the glade, as surely as if I were a metal filing tugged to a magnet.
I began to suspect that something terrible had happened to him; or perhaps
not terrible, just natural: if there really were boars in the wood, he might
have been gored by one, and be either dead or dragging himself from the
heart-woods to the edge, unable to cry for help. Or perhaps he had fallen from a
tree, or quite simply gone to sleep in the cold and wet and failed to revive in
the morning.
I searched for any sign of his body, or of his having passed by, and I found
absolutely nothing, although I discovered the spoor of some large beast, and
marks on the lower trunks of several oaks that looked like nothing other than
the scratchings of a tusked animal.
But my mood of depression passed, and by mid-November I was quite confident
again that Christian was alive. My feelings, now, were that he had somehow
become trapped in this autumnal forest.
For the first time in two weeks I went into the village, and after obtaining
food supplies, I picked up the papers that had been accumulating at the tiny
newsagents. Skimming the front pages of the weekly local, I noticed an item
concerning the decaying bodies of a man and an Irish wolfhound, discovered in a
ditch on farmland near Grimley. Foul play was not suspected. I felt no emotion,
apart from a curious coldness, a sense of sympathy for Christian, whose dream of
freedom for Guiwenneth was surely no more than that: a fervent hope, a desire
doomed to frustration.
As for mythagos, I had only two encounters, neither of them of much note. The
first was with a shadowy man-form that skirted the clearing, watching me, and
finally ran into the darkness, striking at the trunks of trees with a short,
wooden stick. The second
Similar Books
