Darkhenge

I was at the fortress

when the trees and shrubs marched…

“THE BATTLE OF THE TREES”

Someone was flying. Rob realized it was him.

His body was a creaking, lightweight framework, jointed in impossible places. He was streamlined, and currents of cold air moved above and below him, and he banked and tilted on them, as if they were solid.

Far down, lost deep inside a tiny skull, his mind looked out through wide-angled eyes, saw a concave hemisphere, its colors muted and new and unnamed. Were there words for the colors only birds could see, or the instinctive lift and balance of feathers on the wind?

In Vetch’s druid bag, maybe. Nowhere else.

Ahead flew a hawk and a white owl, who had once had names. He had no name either, but was a floppy-winged creature, green-sheened, with a quill of feathers. He searched for words and they came, but from another life far away, lying in the grass, birdwatching on the downs with Mac. Plover. He was a plover.

Snow stung him. He realized it had been snowing for a long time, a swirling whiteness that was frosting the air and almost obliterating the forest below. But through gaps, between gusts, he could see enough.

He could see that the forest was on the move.

Did it walk? Or did it just grow? He sensed its progress, the swift, purposeful surge toward the east, a million slithers and rustles and strides. There were beasts down there, migrating or fleeing; glimpses of strange-skinned creatures among the massed trees, birds that swooped and circled in flocks above the impenetrable canopy.

But it was the trees that were terrifying. Ancient oak and flimsy hawthorn, coppery stands of beech, stocky elms, streaming in movement. All the hedgerow growth, elder and blackthorn and ivy and gnarled apple. Willows along the banks of invisible streams. Rank on rank of conifer, dark armies of fir and pine and spruce.

From this height he saw that the landscape they invaded was his own landscape, the Wiltshire hills that he knew as green and sheep shorn, smothered now under the primeval forest, as it must have been centuries ago, before Darkhenge was made; that secret wildwood of shadows and magic animals, of outlawed men who lived like beasts. The forest that was mankind’s enemy and the place where his imagination was born, that he destroyed and dreamed of, burned and built in, cut down and made of its timbers entrances back into himself.

A draft from the hawk’s swoop tipped him.

Below, he saw a structure in the wood, a tormented red castle, its shape mystifying. The hawk began to drop toward it, circling deftly down eddies of snow. Carefully, the owl and the plover followed, descending through sleeting showers.

Nearer, the caer gleamed. Frozen in loops and hollows, its red wool hung with icicles. Snow swirled through its openwork tunnels. It seemed deserted.

When Chloe woke, the duvet was far too heavy and yet the room was as cold as ice. Sitting up, she felt a weight of snow slide off her and slump wetly to the floor. Shivering, she stared around.

A blizzard was howling outside. Here the dark-timbered bed had filled up with snow; it crusted the wardrobe and her dressing table, dusted the picture frame, filled the slippers that poked out from under the stool. She breathed out a cloud of dismay.

How long had she been asleep?

She had to hurry! Leaping out, she heaved the warped door of the wardrobe open and tugged out clothes. They weren’t hers. A white dress trimmed with fur, a great coat of ermine, boots. There was a muff too, and a fur hat; giggling, she pulled them on, feeling like some Cossack or the Snow Queen.

Then she hurried Callie back out into the latticework of tunnels.

They were clogged with snow. Furious, she stamped her foot and soft powder dusted her new clothes. Vetch was wrong! She wasn’t doing this. She wanted to get on, to the last caer, but it was as if something else was always holding her back. She’d ride hard now, and not stop till she reached it. She’d sort out this mess.

“No more snow!”

She said it firmly, commanding. Still flakes fell, tiny and deadly.

“I said, no more. That’s it. STOP.”

But it didn’t stop. It fell with a gentle insolence, and the realization turned her cold. The weather was not obeying her. She was losing control.

She wanted to scream into a tantrum but couldn’t;

she felt chilled, and subdued, as if while she had slept another part of her had been forgotten. Instead she climbed onto Callie and paced through the frozen mesh. Once she looked back, hearing something shiver, and tinkle, thinking Vetch had come after her. She almost wanted him to be there. But only the red tunnel twisted into dimness, snow falling through it.

She was alone. And though she told herself not to be stupid, she knew she was scared. She wished the King would catch up with her. He was her only friend now. Had he left her because of what she’d asked him to do? Had she pushed him too far?

It took a while to find a passage that was clear, and when she did, it led into a place where the red threads had been wound around a network of dark timbers, weaving in and out of them to form a high wattled fence, higher than she could see over. She walked the horse around it, curious. The entrance was on the far side, a thin gap, that you’d have to turn sideways to squeeze through.

An eye slit. Would she?

She drew Callie to a halt, and had almost decided to dismount and take a look when, from inside the structure, the bell rang.

It was so loud!

She put her hands to her ears; with a shudder, Callie reared up, and Chloe had to grab at the reins in panic. All through the Woven Caer the echoes of the great chime vibrated; icicles fell like daggers, birds fluttered, the whole frail structure trembled, slid, began to collapse.

Instantly Chloe kicked her heels in and urged the horse into speed. Ears flat, Callie galloped, leaping snowdrifts and tangles of wool, her rider hanging on low under the drooping roof, not knowing where they were going, until with a sudden emergence into moonlight they were out, racing over a broad white down-land under the perfect circle of the moon.

Hauling the snorting horse around, Chloe stared back.

Silently, without speed, the Woven Caer was crumpling. It fell inward softly, imploding and springing back like a great pile of fibers.

Snow settled on it and guilt shot through her like the stab of a knife. Had she left Vetch to smother in there?

Before she could think of it a hawk swooped out of the snow, straight into her face.

Chloe screamed and ducked.

The bird was fast; it dived and veered off, but it was the second attack that caught her, a green plover that came straight at her head so that she lost balance, and with a scream of terror fell off into the drift, hands out.

She fell into snow and yet into some past where the snow was chalk and hard and there was a black car skewed across the lane, and people running and running toward her. A car horn blared. Her fingers bled onto chalk and flint.

“NO!” she screamed. “I won’t remember! I won’t!”

Shaken, she scrambled up. Callie was shivering, blowing smoky breaths of fear, her eyes white. The birds rose, swooped, screeched down.

Chloe ran.

Vetch had got his hands and half his body free when the bell rang. As soon as he heard it he knew what it was, so when the owl flew down and turned into the King, staggering dizzily against him, he shoved the masked figure off impatiently. “The bag. Do you have it?”

“Clare does.”

Vetch said, “What?”

“Too hard to explain.” The King’s fingers worked at the knots and tangles hopelessly. “I’ll never get all this undone! The castle is collapsing!”

Vetch looked grim. “I know that. Keep still.”

“But—”

“Keep still!” It was hard like this. From so far away. He gripped the frozen red strands hard with his left hand, put the thumb of the right to his mouth and bit. A tiny fleck of blood welled up through his skin; he tasted its salt, quickly closed his eyes.

Far away, in other worlds, through dreams and nightmares, heroes walked.

One of them was powerful, a giant. In the darkness of his mind Vetch made the words come, made them strong. Strong enough to cross distances of silence and mistrust.

“Mac. Mac, listen to me. I need you. I need your help.”

Chloe struggled. She forced her way, waist deep, up the smooth snow slope, tearing a ragged gash in its beauty. Ahead of her the banks rose, immense and shining, a rampart of snow and chalk, the Ice Caer, the seventh fortress, Caer Siddi itself. Behind, like an inexorable shadow, the forest pursued her, sending out roots and tendrils to trip her, and tug at her, and she screamed and fought with fury against the clogging drifts.

The snow was another betrayal. It seemed hard and then crumpled, its surface crunching.

However she struggled, the forest was faster. It loomed behind her, over her. Its shadow darkened her. And as she scrambled and tugged her boots out and hauled herself up to the caer, the hawk and the plover came down right in front of her; she dodged around them, plunging for the dark, narrow gap of sky that was the entrance ahead.

“Chloe! Chloe! It’s me. It’s Rob.”

She stopped.

He was standing right behind her, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t move at all.

“I’m sorry.” The snow creaked. “About all of it. I didn’t know how you felt. Maybe, back there, you didn’t know either.”

“And that makes it all right?” Now she turned.

The trees were lined up behind him. Clare was there too, looking tired and bedraggled. Chloe smiled at her sourly. “You’ve gone over to them, I see. All of you are against me now.”

She folded her arms inside the muff, pleased at how Rob shivered in his ridiculous summer clothes. “Well, you listen to this. I’ve come this far. I’m going inside the caer. For once I’m going to do something that I want to do, decide something all for myself, with no one else telling me. Can you understand that, Rob?”

He looked at her. She was so assured, so strange across the snow.

“I can understand that, Chloe,” he whispered.