Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood

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Mythago Wood

ROBERT HOLDSTOCK

e-book ver. 1.0

I had that sense of recognition . . . here was something which I had known all my life, only I didn't know

it...

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

commenting upon his first discovery of British folklore and folk music

Part of this novel appeared in a different form in

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1981.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Allan Scott, whose 'Anglo-Saxon Primer for Visiting Ellorgaesten', written especially for me, was of

great service. My thanks also to Milford - for the enthusiasm that inspired the vision.

The pronunciation of George Huxley's coined word mythago should have the emphasis on the second syllable.

for Sarah cariath ganuch trymllyd bwystfil

Prologue

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Edward Wynne-Jones Esq. 15 College Road Oxford

Edward -

You must come back to the Lodge. Please don't delay for even an hour! I have discovered a fourth

pathway into the deeper zones of the wood. The brook itself. So obvious now, a water track! It leads

directly through the outer ash vortex, beyond the spiral track and the Stone Falls. I believe it could be

used to enter the heartwoods themselves. But time, always time!

I have found a people called the shamiga. They live beyond the Stone Falls. They guard the fords on the

river, but to my great satisfaction they are willing story-tellers, which they call 'life-speaking'. The life-

speaker herself is a young girl who paints her face quite green, and tells all stories with her eyes closed so

that the smiles or frowns of those who listen cannot effect a 'shape-change' upon the characters within the

story. I heard much from her, but most important of all was a fragment of what can only be Guiwenneth's

tale. It is a pre-Celtic version of the myth, but I am convinced that it relates to the girl. What I managed to

understand of it goes thus:

'One afternoon, having killed a stag with eight tines, a boar twice the height of a man, and cured four

villages of bad manners, Mogoch, a chieftain, sat down by the shore to rest. He was so mighty in deed and

build that his head was half-covered by clouds. He spread his feet out in the sea at the bottom of the"

cliffs to cool. Then he lay back and watched a meeting take place between two sisters upon his belly.

'The sisters were twins, equally beautiful, equally sweet of tongue, and skilled with the harp. One sister,

however, had married the warlord of a great tribe, and had then found herself to be barren. Her

complexion had become as sour as milk left too long in the sun. The other sister had married an exiled

warrior, whose name was Peregu. Peregu held his camp in the deep gorges and deadwoods of the far

forest, but came to his lover as a nightbird. Now she had produced his child, which was a girl, but because

of the exile of Peregu, her sour-faced sister and an army had come to claim the infant.

'A great argument occurred, and there were several clashes of arms. The lover of Peregu had not even

named the child when her sister snatched the tiny bundle in its heavy cloth wrappings and raised it above

her head, intending to name it herself.

'But the sky darkened as ten magpies appeared. These were Peregu and his nine sword-kin, changed by

forest magic. Peregu swooped and caught his child in his claws, and flew upwards, but a marksman used

slingshot to bring him down. The child fell, but the other birds caught her and carried her away. Thus she

was named Hurfathna, which means "the girl raised by magpies".

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'Mogoch, the chieftain, watched all this with amusement, but had respect for the dead Peregu. He picked

up the tiny bird and shook the human form back into it. But he was afraid that he would crush whole

villages if he prodded out a grave in the country with his finger. So Mogoch popped the dead exile into

his mouth and twisted out a tooth to stand as a monument. In this way Peregu was buried beneath a tall

white stone, in a valley which breathes.'

There can be no doubt that this is an early form of Guiwenneth's tale, and I think you can see why I'm

excited. The last time the girl was here I was able to question her about her sadness. She was lost, she told

me. She could not find the valley which breathed and the bright stone of her dead father. It is the same. I

know it, I feel it! We must summon her again. We must go beyond the Stone Falls again. I need your help.

Who knows where and when this war will end? My eldest son will be called up soon, and Steven soon

after. I shall have more freedom to explore the wood, and deal with the girl.

Edward, you must come. With kind regards,

George Huxley. December '41.

PART ONE

Mythago Wood

One

In May 1944 I received my call-up papers and went reluctantly away to war, training at first in the Lake

District, then shipping over to France with the 7th Infantry.

On the eve of my final departure I felt so resentful of my father's apparent lack of concern for my safety

that, when he was asleep, I went quietly to his desk and tore a page out of his notebook, the diary in which

his silent, obsessive work was recorded. The fragment was dated simply 'August 34', and I read it many

times, dismayed by its incomprehensibility, but content that I had stolen at least a tiny part of his life with

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which to support myself through those painful, lonely times.

The entry began with a bitter comment on the distractions in his life - the running of Oak Lodge, our

family home, the demands of his two sons, and the difficult relationship with his wife, Jennifer. (By then,

I remember, my mother was desperately ill.) It closed with a passage quite memorable for its incoherence:

A letter from Watkins - agrees with me that at certain times of the year the aura around the woodland could reach as far as

the house. Must think through the implications of this. He is keen to know the power of the oak vortex that I have

measured. What to tell him? Certainly not of the first mythago. Have noticed too that the enrichment of the pre-mythago

zone is more persistent, but concomitant with this, am distinctly losing my sense of time.

I treasured this piece of paper for many reasons, but particularly for the moment or two of my father's

passionate interest that it represented - and yet, it locked me out

of its understanding, as he had locked me out at home. Everything he loved, everything I hated.

I was wounded in early 1945 and when the war finished I managed to stay in France, travelling south to

convalesce in a village in the hills behind Marseilles, where I lived with old friends of my father. It was a

hot, dry place, very still, very slow; I spent my time sitting in the village square and quickly became a part

of the tiny community.

Letters from my brother Christian, who had returned to Oak Lodge after the war, arrived every month

throughout the long year of 1946. They were chatty, informative letters, but there was an increasing note

of tension in them, and it was clear that Christian's relationship with our father was deteriorating rapidly. I

never heard a word from the old man himself, but then I never expected to; I had long since resigned

myself to the fact that, even at best, he regarded me with total indifference. All his family had been an

intrusion in his work, and his guilt at neglecting us, and especially at driving our mother to taking her own

life, had blossomed rapidly, during the early years of the war, into an hysterical madness that could be

truly frightening. Which is not to say that he was perpetually shouting; on the contrary, most of his life

was spent in silent, absorbed contemplation of the oak woodland that bordered our home. At first

infuriating, because of the distance it put between him and his family, soon those long periods of quiet

became blessed, earnestly welcomed.

He died in November 1946, of an illness that had afflicted him for years. When I heard the news I was

torn between my unwillingness to return to Oak Lodge, at the edge of the Ryhope estate in Herefordshire,

and my awareness of Christian's obvious distress. He was alone now, in the house where we had lived

through our childhood together. I could imagine him prowling the empty rooms, perhaps sitting in father's

dank and unwholesome study and remembering the hours of denial, the smell of wood and compost that

the old man had trudged in through the glass-pannelled doors after his week-long sorties into the deep

woodlands. The forest had spread into that room as if my father could not bear to be away from the rank

undergrowth and the cool, moist oak glades, even when making token acknowledgement of his family. He

made that acknowledgement in the only way he knew: by telling us - and mainly telling my brother -

stories of the ancient forestlands beyond the house, the primary woodland of oak, ash, beech and the like,

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in whose dark interior (he once said) wild boar could still be heard, and smelled, and tracked by their

spoor.

I doubt if he had ever seen such a creature, but that evening, as I sat in my room overlooking the tiny

village in the hills (Christian's letter a crushed ball still held in my hand) I vividly recalled how I had

listened to the muffled grunting of some woodland animal, and heard the heavy, unhurried crashing of

something bulky moving inwards, towards the winding pathway that we called Deep Track, a route that

led spirally towards the very heartwoods of the forest.

I knew I would have to go home, and yet I delayed my departure for nearly another year. During that time

Christian's letters ceased abruptly. In his last letter, dated April 10th, he wrote of Guiwenneth, of his

unusual marriage, and hinted that I would be surprised by the lovely girl to whom he had lost his 'heart,

mind, soul, reason, cooking ability and just about everything else, Steve'. I wrote to congratulate him, of

course, but there was no further communication between us for months.

Eventually I wrote to say I was coming home, that I would stay at Oak Lodge for a few weeks, and then

find accommodation in one of the nearby towns. I said goodbye to France, and to the community that had

become so much a part of my life. I travelled to England by bus and

train, by ferry, and then by train again. On August 20th I arrived by pony and trap at the disused railway

line that skirted the edge of the extensive estate. Oak Lodge lay on the far side of the grounds, four miles

further round the road, but accessible via the right of way through the estate's fields and woodlands. I

intended to take an intermediate route and so, lugging my single, crammed suitcase as best I could, I

began to walk along the grass-covered railway track, peering on occasion over the high, red-brick wall

that marked the limit of the estate, trying to see through the gloom of the pungent pinewoods.

Soon this woodland, and the wall, vanished, and the land opened into tight, tree-bordered fields, to which

I gained access across a rickety wooden stile, almost lost beneath briar and full-fruited blackberry bushes.

I had to trample my way out of the public domain and so on to the south trackway that wound, skirting

patchy woodland and the stream called 'sticklebrook', up to the ivy-covered house that was my home.

It was late morning, and very hot, as I came in distant sight of Oak Lodge. Somewhere off to my left I

could hear the drone of a tractor. I thought of old Alphonse Jeffries, the estate's farm supervisor, and with

the memory of his weather-tanned, smiling face came images of the mill-pond, and fishing for pike from

his tiny rowing boat.

Memory of the tranquil mill-pond haunted me, and I moved away from the south track, through waist-

high nettles and a tangle of ash and hawthorn scrub. I came out close to the bank of the wide, shadowy

pool, its full extent hidden by the gloom of the dense stand of oak woodland that began on its far side.

Almost hidden among the rushes that crowded the nearer edge of the pond was the shallow boat from

which Chris and I had fished, years before; its white paint had flaked away almost entirely now, and

although the craft looked watertight, I doubted if it would take the weight of a full grown man. I didn't

disturb it but walked around the bank and sat down on the rough concrete steps of the crumbling

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MythagoWoodMythagoWoodROBERTHOLDSTOCKe-bookver.1.0Ihadthatsenseofrecognition...herewassomethingwhichIhadkno\wnallmylife,onlyIdidn'tknowit...RALPHVAUGHANWILLIAMScommentinguponhisfirstdiscoveryofBritishfolkloreandfolkmusicCopyright©RobertHoldstock1984PartofthisnovelappearedinadifferentforminTheMagazin...

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