The Hollowing (43 page)

He was startled by movement behind him and grabbed for his knife. Something had been climbing the ivy ladder to the falcon window. Half-dazed, he turned and reached down to defend himself against the intruder.

“It’s me,” Alex said.

The boy scrambled the last few feet and huddled on the wide stone ledge, shivering slightly, watching the fire in the distance, close to where his Mask Tree grew in the forest. “Arno’ and Sarin have gone down into the crypt. I think they’re sleeping. I’d like to stay up here while you’re waiting for Helen. If that’s OK…?” He seemed apprehensive.

Out in the wood the sound of a wolf triumphant split the night. An instant later the sound was cut off. There was something chilling, something very final about that sudden silence.

“
Is
it OK?” the boy asked.

Richard smiled and reached to pinch Alex’s pale cheek. He glanced back to the fire, which had now begun to fade.

“It’s OK,” he said.

END

Appendix

Editor’s note:
George Huxley recorded numerous folk tales, myths, and legends, mostly obscure, which he heard or interpreted during his explorations of Ryhope Wood between 1928 and 1946. He dates
Jack His Father
to 600
BC
, an early Celtic version of a much older
Kurgan
tale.

R.H.

Jack His Father

Jack was sowing the last of the summer wheat when the smell of smoke told him of the raid on his village. His sister, who had better hearing than a hound, yelled “Horsemen!” and ran quickly to the cover of the woods. From the tree-line she called to Jack to hide. The boy followed her as far as the first tree, but stood with his back against it, strong against the coming storm. In the distance he could see the smoke rising from the enclosure where his father’s house would now be burning.

“I still have a father, a mother, a sister, and three brothers,” he said desperately to the birds that circled the field. The ravens departed noisily, mocking him. The geese descended to eat the summer seed, and Jack’s heart sank.

The armed runners came first, searching for crops and cattle. They led three calves with them, and two horses, which trotted in silence since their jaws had been tied. These men were young. The horsemen and the warlord’s chariot came after, riding suddenly from the trees, hooves drumming, chariot wheels creaking. Two of the horsemen saw Jack and galloped down upon him. Jack stood his ground, his right fist clenched around the last of the wheat. He saw the sacks that were tethered and slung across the withers of the horses, and thought at once of the pigs and fowl that he and his sister had so carefully raised.

“Don’t tell them I’m here!” whispered his sister from hiding. “Since you’re so stupid that you won’t hide, then your head it’ll be, but don’t give me away.”

“You’ll give yourself away, if you don’t shut up.”

The man in the chariot was Bran, resplendent in dark leathers and a red cloak. He wore a crested war helmet, and the silver curve of the moon was stitched into his corselet. He was black-haired, big-handed, clean of face. The blue and black symbols of his clan, the Boar and Eagle, spread richly across his cheeks and chin. Now he crouched in front of Jack, amused by the boy, and of a mind to bargain.

“I see you wear good shoes,” he says. “Cowhide, is it? Well-stitched, I think.”

But Jack blows a hard breath at the man. “Take them from me or leave them on me, it makes no difference. If you’ve done us harm I’ll follow you faster than cloud shadow.”

The horsemen laugh, but the man with the crested helmet does not.

“That’s a fine talisman, that bone carving, that boar, on the leather there, around your neck.”

But Jack blows a hard breath at the man. “Take it from me or leave it on me, it makes no difference. If you’ve done us harm I’ll come at you from a hawthorn thicket faster than the breeze.”

The horsemen shift nervously now, horse-chains rattling, sacks of booty swinging in the cooling day. The crested man draws a small bronze dagger and meets the defiant gaze.

“That’s a brave tongue you wag at me, that lip-licker, there, that loud proclaimer.”

But again Jack blows a hard breath. “Cut it from me or leave it in me, it makes no difference. If you’ve done us harm I’ll sing in your ears as the crows feast on your eyes.”

The dagger points at Jack’s right hand. “I’ll have what’s there, then. I’ll have what you hold, or cut it from you, that clenched hand.”

“Cut it from me, then. It’s the only way you’ll get it, and what I hold will vanish.”

“What does that fist conceal?”

“Seeds,” says the boy.

“What sort of seeds?”

“The seed of a tree that takes no more than a day to grow and can make a house where there’s always a feast of pork roasting on the fire.”

“I’ll certainly have that,” says Bran hungrily. “And I’ll have more. What else?”

“The seed of a tree that takes no more than a day to grow and can make a boat fit to cross any haunted lake.”

“I’ll have that too, and more besides. What else?”

“The seed of a tree that grows faster than the hair on a man’s face, and can give shelter and fruit to a host of men. From its top can be seen the Isle of Women.”

“I’ll have that, and twice over!” says Bran, his eyes lively, his hand patting his balls. “Or die in the trying.”

So Jack says, “What will you give me for them?”

He can hear the sound of women crying. A cold wind brings the smell of smoke and slaughter over the fields, where the geese stalk the new seeds, and the ravens cast dark shadows.

And Bran says, “I’ll give you the best singing voice a man could wish to hear.”

Jack laughs. “I’ll certainly take that from you.
And
I’ll have more.”

“Then I’ll give you the prize of all pigs taken in this raid.”

“I’ll certainly take that from you,” says Jack hungrily. “And I’ll
still
have more.”

“Then I’ll give you back your father,” says the helmeted man, this Bran, with a scowl, slapping his knees to signify an end to the bargaining. “And promise to make you a better man than him. There, now, it’s done, this game. That’s all.”

Jack agrees and holds out the seeds to the chieftain, who takes them and looks at them angrily. “This is wheat!”

“Not everything is as it seems,” says Jack with a laugh.

“Indeed, but that’s right, that’s very true.”

The chieftain shakes his head and scowls, then goes to his chariot and fetches a sack, which he tosses to the boy. When Jack opens it, his father’s head, half-lidded and bloody, grimaces at him from its cold grave.

Bran and the horsemen laugh and turn to ride along the river. The chief calls from his wicker chariot, “Indeed, Jack, you were quite right there, correct in what you said. Not everything is as it seems. But I kept my part of the bargain, that bargain there just now, which you cheated on! Your father was the wild pig of your clan I prized the most, and he sang for his life more sweetly than your three brothers, who I’ll be taking with me, in those sacks, there, which you thought were pigs. And since he’s dead, your father, then it takes no magic to make you the better man!”

When they’ve gone from sight, though, Jack kisses his father’s face and consoles his sister. Then he crosses to the field where the fat geese are almost finished with the wheat.

“You’ve taken my last seeds!” he shouts at the birds. “Now you must pay for them. There can never be a better man than my father, so make me my father now, and return me to that chariot, that armoured man, who killed him, to follow him.”

And he catches a goose by its legs, holding the bird down, while the crows circle and chatter with amusement at Jack’s cleverness. The goose is ashamed at its greed, the eating of the wheat while Jack had fought for his life. The air is suddenly full of feathers, and the sound of the Screech Owl that has been summoned, and by her magic Jack takes the shape of a raven which feeds upon the sad eyes of his father. Then the raven becomes the head. Only a goose is strong enough to carry the head in its sack, and this goose flies up above the furrows, and then to the west, following the chariot. Jack’s sister takes their father home, to the burned village.

When the goose is above Bran’s chariot, it lets the sack fall.

Then Bran opens the sack, and Jack-his-father opens his eyes. And he says, in his father’s voice, “Give me back my sons.”

“Never!” says the chief, but he ties the sack again and rests his foot upon it as he rides, frightened by what has happened.

*   *   *

The first night after the raid they camped on open land. Bran planted one of the seeds, more by way of humour than expectation, and pissed upon it. But Jack-his-father rolled unseen from the chariot and changed his shape again. He sang as he grew, a head becoming a tree, a strong oak, spreading out over the camp, reaching boughs to the ground and using leaves as a roof. When he had enclosed the raiders and their horses, he made the fire spring up and the wood spit and hiss with the rich fat of a spitted pig. He made sap run as honeyed ale and watched as the men below him fell into a pleasant stupor. The crows in Jack’s branches flew down and stole back the severed head of his eldest brother. “Carry it safely,” Jack said, and the sound of his voice woke Bran, but too late to stop the birds from flying off, out of this unknown region.

On the second night, Jack-his-father taunted Bran. “One of my sons is safe again, taken home. Give me back the others.”

“Not even if the flesh rolls from my bones and I catch my death of a cold.”

They were by a lake. Jack waited until Bran planted a second seed and pissed upon it, crying, “To see the Isle of Women, that would be a fine raid!” then, when the man had laughed scornfully and retired to sleep, he rolled from his sack and grew into a strong willow. He reached out over the deep water and shaped his prow, then his hull, and used branches as oars. He became a low, sleek galley, and the raiders found him in the morning and imagined it had drifted to the shore by night. They clambered aboard and rowed to the middle of the lake, towards the forest trail beyond that led to their own land.

But half-way across the lake, Jack opened the branches that formed the hull and the galley foundered. Man and beast swam to the shore, but a great pike caught the hair on the head of Jack’s second brother and carried the head up the river, out of this unknown region, back to the land of his birth. Jack-his-father was gathered in and slung across the neck of a horse, to be carried on. He felt like singing, but kept silent.

A third night, then, and Bran placed Jack-his-father in the ground, placing the last of the wheat seeds from the bargain into its mouth. “If you make a tree that can shelter and feed my companions, and from which I can see the Isle of Women, then you shall have your third son back.”

Jack grew. He was the oldest of oaks, wide and strong, trunk dressed with creeper and a place big enough for a house in the angle of every branch. The host of men camped below the spreading lower branches. There were fallow deer here, plump geese, and sweet, young pigs. The hunting was good. Sharp-juiced apples grew from the middle boughs. Strong-breasted fowl nested higher, within bowshot. Wild wheat bristled from the swathes of ivy, and made good bread. It was a great place to be, below this solitary oak, and they stayed here for the better part of the season, growing fat and thinking themselves on the Island of Ease.

Each day Bran climbed higher into the tree, but turned back before reaching the top out of fear, not liking the way the birds sang. But all the time he was thinking of what the Bold Boy had said to him: that he would be able to see the Isle of Women from the higher branches. It was a place Bran hungered for. To know its direction would give him great power over the land. He would not be caught by the spirit tracks that confused mortal men if he knew where, in the west, he was heading.

Jack-in-the-tree waited.

One evening, when the skies were clear and the air still and warm, Bran climbed the tree to the very top. From here he could see to the edge of the world. He saw the Isles of the Mighty, the Land of the Young, the Isle of Women, and when he had learned how to get to them all he began to climb down. But as fast as he climbed down, so Jack-in-the-tree grew, until the oak became so heavy above the ground that it began to wave and bend in the wind. Soon it cracked across its roots, and fell heavily to the rocks on the shore of the Isle of Women, where the body of Bran was smashed and broken.

Jack became himself again, the Bold Boy, Loud Proclaimer, and picked up the head of his youngest brother. He could never run faster than the hound, so he became a hound in form, and ran from this unknown place, back to the lake, back to the open land, back to the ploughed field and over the rise of forested ground to the place of his father’s lodge. His brothers were there, but his sister had disappeared the summer before, and he would not find her again for many years.

He spat out the last of the seeds and planted them, then rebuilt the house. A town flourishes there now, and it is still the best part of the island for growing wheat. A white figure, carved on the hill, marks the place of Jack’s defiant stand against the raiders. From its head, looking towards the setting sun, his sister’s strange tomb can sometimes be seen at dusk.

ALSO BY ROBERT HOLDSTOCK FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

Celtika

The Iron Grail

Mythago Wood

Lavondyss

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE HOLLOWING: A NOVEL IN THE MYTHAGO CYCLE

Copyright © 1993 by Robert Holdstock

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Publishers,
1993

Published by Earthlight, 2003, an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd.

All rights reserved.

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

An Orb Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue