Merlin's Wood by Robert Holdstock
‘I’m sorry, Tig. Burton called you a beast … I understand …’
‘Not once. Many times,’ said Tig. ‘I hated Burton. I gave Burton everything he had earned.’
Tentatively Farrel touched the boy’s shoulder and when Tig did not flinch he secured the grip and smiled. ‘Burton was not my friend … but he was known to me and he was important to me. I was upset to see him dead. Forgive me, Tig. I didn’t mean what I said.’
‘I didn’t understand what you said.’
Farrel, guiltily, realised he had shouted in English. He laughed quietly, almost thankfully. He wouldn’t have wanted the boy to hear what he had called him. He needed sleep too much and the boy was potentially very lethal.
He walked back to Burton’s body and covered it over. A few feet away another mound began to move and Farrel and Tig ran out of sight and watched.
SIXTH TRANSMISSION – EIGHTH DAY
Burton is dead. Tig killed him, perhaps some months ago. I am terrified of Tig now and don’t dare question him further about Burton. If only I knew where Burton’s equipment was hidden. Tig knows, I’m sure of it. He has hidden it. I pray that in the same way that he indicated Burton’s grave to me (uncompromisingly) he will lead me to Burton’s records. Burton understood what I have been watching, he must have done – he participated.
Meanwhile I am back in the cave and Tig, now, is in full control. I sleep fitfully and in snatches – terrified of him striking when my defences are down. I woke, last night, to find him crouching over me, peering at my sleeping face. I dare not ask him to refrain from startling me like this. My head hurts and my heart is in pain, as if in anticipation of a long-bone shaft being driven through it.
I can’t get my field-link equipment. The crog is active again. Over the last day many Tuthanach have risen from the earth and returned to their homes – men, women, children, they return with bountiful energy and begin to lead a life no different from the Ceinarc or the Tagda – what were they doing in the earth? What have they gained? What was the purpose of it all?
SEVENTH TRANSMISSION – TENTH DAY
The trickle of Tuthanach returning to their crog has ceased. They are all home. I remain in the cave, uncertain, insecure. Tig hunts on my behalf, but no longer eats with me. He has become very affectionate, but behind the kindness is a repressed anger that I truly fear. Sometimes he stands in the cave entrance and shrieks with laughter. The garble of words he yells refers to Burton and to me, and I hear ‘stone legs’ and ‘twisting head’, two favourite Tuthanach insults. He invariably ends his tirade of abuse by defecating in the cave mouth and elaborately holding his nose and backing away. And a few hours later he brings me a hare or a brace of fat doves, some gift, some appeasement for his show of fury. A bizarre boy and not – I now realise – backward at all, but in some way insane. Listen to me! Do I understand the meaning of my own words any more? What do I mean – insane? Is my behaviour sane? Tig is more than just a boy. I suspect he was chosen for his role – Tig-never-touch-woman-never-touch-earth; the only Tuthanach not to touch earth in the strange way I have described … why? Why Tig? Or should I ask, why one Tuthanach? What was he watching for? What are they asking of him now? What role does he fill?
Tig seems aware of some finality in his role. On his most recent visit he came with a large chunk of meat – deer, I think. Tears filled his eyes as he passed the joint to me and accepted a small portion back. We ate in silence. As he chewed he watched me, and tears flooded down his cheeks. ‘Farrel, my friend, my dear friend,’ he said, over and over. The warmth was immense. The Tuthanach have no way of expressing magnificent friendship and he struggled to voice his feelings and I eventually had to stop him. I had understood. ‘Farrel and Tig are the only ones not to touch earth,’ he said. ‘Tig can’t, but Farrel …’
Time and time again he began that sentence, staring at me. Each time he said it I was filled with his intensity, and with my own anxiety. The thought is terrifying, truly terrifying.
Then the anger from the boy, the shrieking. He raced out into the dusk and vanished swiftly. I face another night alone, more than half afraid to close my eyes … not just Tig, though that is certainly a part of it, but the past … my past. I am haunted by memories and faces; they fill my dreams, and I can sense my own time in everything I smell or see here. It is insecurity that makes me rue the warmth of civilisation, and I shall not bend to any great desire to return; but it hurts, sometimes. Sometimes it really hurts.
*
Three days after the seventh transmission two Tuthanach males came to the cave and crouched in its entrance watching Farrel. They were both middle-aged, dark-haired, and their skin was decorated with green and blue dye: circles around their eyes, lines across their cheeks, elaborate patterns on their breasts and bellies. They looked angry. Farrel remained quite still, trying to hide his fear.
Then Tig came slipping into the cave, boisterous and noisy as ever. Farrel tried to piece together something from the boy’s excited gabble, but all he could make out were words for ‘woman’ and the insult ‘stone legs’.
A tension grew in the pit of Farrel’s stomach and wild thoughts filled his mind. What was Tig up to?
The next thing he knew he was being chased from the cave by the two men. Tig grinned at him, and winked elaborately. ‘Soul curers,’ he said, pointing to them. ‘Make soul good for this Farrel. Make this Farrel’s soul ready for earth.’ And he patted his loins.
Farrel felt terrified.
They took him to the crog and led him inside the skin wall, past the fire pit and to a smaller circle of skins around which were grouped several women and children. He was led to a small tent and pushed to the ground. Making no attempt to speak to him, nor demonstrating any puzzlement over him, the men left. After a while one of the younger women got up and walked across to him.
By that time, realising that his sexual need was far more intense than he had admitted to himself for the last few days, Farrel was lost in thoughts of his past.
He saw the Tuthanach woman through a blur of remembered faces, saturated bodies and irritatingly noisy beds. He smelled her through an imagined veil of perfumes, cigarette smoke and the salty and erotic smell of sweat. He felt pain as he remembered these things, a real pain, unlocalised. The woman had crouched before him, her wool skirt drawn up above her knees so that she displayed her white and grossly fat thighs to Farrel’s casual gaze. He tried not to think too hard about what he saw.
Then she extended her hand and cocked her head to one side, smiling broadly, letting him see that only two of her teeth were missing.
Farrel took her hand, pressed the cool, firm fingers and noticed how the woman’s palm was sweating like his. The past surged into his mind; agony:
A girl he had known for years as a friend. He had been taking his leave of her small, two-roomed apartment, conscious that his wife would start to worry soon. With his usual calculated shyness he had reached out and shaken her hand again, playing at being nervous. ‘I don’t like all this hand shaking,’ she had said, in a way that made him realise that she had wanted to say it on previous occasions. ‘I’d much rather have a cuddle.’ So he had cuddled her, and she had not let him draw away. She was tall and lean and felt awkward against his stocky, muscular body. But it had been a long moment, and a good one.
He realised he was excited and the Tuthanach woman was pleased. Her breath was sour as she leaned across him, her left hand gripping him gently between the legs; she kissed each cheek and then the tip of his nose. Then she rose and tugged him to his feet, pulled him into the tent and slipped off her clothes.
She picked up a stone chip, artificially smoothed by all appearances, and made marks on it with a piece of flint. Farrel watched her as he undressed. Her breasts were full and plump at the ends, flat and sac-like where they grew from her body. He hated that. She smelled of animal grease and smoke (as did he) and of something else, something pungent and sexual and offensive. Spitting on the stone she grinned at Farrel and
As Farrel climbed onto her recumbent body and tried to find her he noticed that she popped the stone into her mouth and swallowed it.
They made love for about ten minutes. At the end of it she was obviously disappointed, and Farrel for no reason that he could identify felt like crying.
EIGHTH TRANSMISSION – FIFTEENTH DAY
It has begun. Newgrange, I mean – the building has begun. Yesterday I crept around the crog and went to the hills overlooking the Boyne, where the cemetery is located. There was much activity down by the river, men and women gathering water-rolled granite boulders for the facing of the mound; they carry these, one per person, in a great chain up the hillside and the piles grow large. Earth is being excavated from several sites ready for the tumulus. Several small tombs on the site have been demolished for the earth and rock they can offer. The past no longer matters. Only the great tumulus seems to concern them now. The first massive orthostats have been dragged to the site, and an artist is working on what can only be the small lintel that will lie above the passage entrance. The work, especially the art, will take many months. The air is filled with the sharp sounds of repeated picking blows as symbols and designs are carved on the dressed rocks, ready for incorporation into the tomb. The speed with which they work is fantastic, but the job they face is enormous. Who will be buried here? Who will be honoured?
I walked closer to the activity, managing to remain undetected behind some trees, and watched the artists at work. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Tig directing the symbol-carving operations! Some thirty men, all old, all frail, were crouched beside or above their slabs and each worked on specifications laid down by the darting, probing, shouting form of the boy.
I watched fascinated for a while, until the sun, beating bright and hot upon my naked back, drove me away to a shadier place. Tig must have caught sight of me because, as I crept down the hill towards the slopes rising to the unbuilt mound of Knowth, he came racing after me, calling my name.
‘It will be a huge mound,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘A great temple.’
‘A temple to whom, Tig?’
But he just laughed and slapped his hands together. ‘They have all forgotten the symbols of the earth, and the wind, and fire and water,’ he babbled happily. ‘This is why I was left behind, to remember, to teach them …’ He was obviously delighted about it. ‘Soon this Tig shall no longer be Tig-never-touch-woman.’
‘Will this Tig touch earth?’ I asked him.
He fell moody, but brightened suddenly and grinned. ‘This Tig never touch earth always … but this Farrel … this Farrel will touch earth soon … this Farrel will understand and learn the symbols.’
‘This Tig might kill me,’ I said carefully. ‘Like he killed that Burton.’
He slapped his genitals repeatedly, not hard, but apparently quite painfully for he winced visibly. ‘If this Tig kills this Farrel may legs turn to stone.’
And at that moment … I felt the compulsion, the fascination to discover, the intrigue, filling me like some uncontrollable ecstasy, like a psychological magnet pulling me down towards the earth. Tig danced happily about … had he seen my possession? He ran off, then, shouting back over his shoulder, ‘This Farrel knows where to go.’
I am torn between desire to know, and fear of knowing. I keep seeing Burton’s rotted corpse, lying there, denied that same knowledge by a thin shaft of bone and a vengeful child. But I also remember the pull of the earth, the feel of magic and glory, the glimpse (for glimpse is what it was) of some great power lying beneath the grass …
I will have to make my choice soon.
Farrel knew where to go all right. He thought about the knoll and its now empty burden of graves, and as the night wore on and a heavy rain began to drum across the countryside, sending icy rivulets across the uneven rock floor of his cave, so the knoll, dark and invisible in the night, seemed to beckon to him. Tig writhed before him, a boy at the mercy, the whim, of forces dying, but still far greater than any that man had ever conceived of, either now or in Farrel’s own time, far in the future. And yet, perhaps that was wrong – perhaps the people of this time had conceived of the sons and daughters of the earth who somehow, inexplicably, were directing the destiny of the Tuthanach. Perhaps it was only with time and greater self awareness that man came to forget the spirits and guardians of all that he surveyed, the rock and stones, the trees and winds, the earth, the vast earth; mother …
She called to him and Farrel responded with fear. They had been with him for some time, directing his thoughts, but their touch was tenuous, uneasy. Farrel drew back into his cave and covered his head, blocked his ears and eyes and tried not to see nor hear nor feel what was coming to him: he tried not to think of it, but he could not empty his mind of their presence.
He screamed, confused and terrified by the strangeness of the contact. Dark-eyed, shivering with cold and terror, he cowered in his cave until morning, and dawn-light, and peace again.
He ran across the storm-threatened land, pacing heavily on the saturated turf, waiting for the next cloudburst. Tig scampered towards him and he felt a great sense of relief.
The boy saw his fear and laughed, jumped high in the air, then clapped his hands together in glee.
‘What does it mean?’ cried Farrel.
Tig-never-touch-woman-never-touch-earth dropped to his haunches and plunged his fingers between the tightly knotted grass mat.
‘This Farrel is being prepared to touch earth,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
‘But this Farrel is afraid. This Farrel is terrified!’
‘There is no need to be,’ said Tig, suddenly less childish. He watched Farrel through bright, deep brown eyes. Grease and paint were smeared about his cheeks and chin, a meaningless mosaic of colour and half formed design. The wind blew suddenly strong and Tig shivered. He rose to his feet and glanced up, rapping his thin arms around his naked torso. Farrel too hunched up and followed the boy’s gaze into the heavens, where dark clouds and lancing sunlight played confusing chase games across the valley.
‘What is going to happen to this Farrel?’ asked the man.
Tig smiled, almost patronisingly. ‘Wonderful things.’
‘What is underneath the grass? What is hidden there?’
‘This Farrel will soon know. Fear is unnecessary. This Farrel will lose nothing he has not already lost.’
Farrel stared at him, feeling suddenly old, suddenly alien.
‘What has this Farrel lost?’
Tig grinned. ‘His past, his people, his dreams, his strange images. This Tig never understood them, never understood the words. This has always been between us. When this Farrel has touched the earth they will be gone. We will build the temple together: we will build our dreams and our people together.’
‘It sounds magnificent,’ said Farrel. ‘But this Farrel is still afraid.’
Tig laughed again. ‘Afraid of the earth?’ He scuffed the ground with his bare feet. ‘Afraid of clouds? Afraid of sun?’
‘Afraid of …’ He stopped, unsure. ‘This Farrel doesn’t know what of.’
Tig slapped his hands together, shook his head. ‘This Farrel should go back to the cave. Wait there. When you are called, go to them. Go to them.’
Unquestioningly, resigned to his bizarre fate, Farrel turned and walked back to the overhang.
By dusk it was raining again.
She called to him and again Farrel responded. He was still afraid, but Tig’s words, his reassuring attitude, helped him overwhelm that fear and put it from his mind.
He walked through the driving rain, the clay in his hair running into his eyes and mouth, giving him a foretaste of the great oral consummation to come. He swallowed
Through the night and the rain Farrel ran, until he found himself, without thinking, on the knoll that rose above the woods, the great source of earth energy that he had tapped so briefly, so frighteningly, several days before. And here he lay down on the ground, in the trench left by one of the Tuthanach, and stretched out his arms—
Gripped the mother’s flesh—
Penetrated the mother’s fertile womb, ejaculated with the ecstasy of contact—
Ate her breast, drank the cold and grainy milk of her glands, felt it flood into his body, through the apertures of his prostrate corpse, driving the substances of his canals before it, replacing his warmth with its own loving cold. Earth closed over his back, the rain filtering through ran down his skin, drained deep into the tissues of the soil below. His lungs filled with mud – he breathed deeply and after a moment his heart stopped, his breathing stopped … suspended, touching the earth.
Almost immediately they were there, rising out of the deep rock, flowing through the earth and the pores of the soil, entering Farrel’s body through the tips of finger and penis, down the earth bridge that extended along the convolutions of his gut. He was consumed by them, consumed them for his own part, welcomed them and heard their dying greeting, the words that had flowed through the minds of the Tuthanach during the previous weeks …
I am earth, Farrel, I am the earth, I am of earth, the earth is within me and without me, I am soil and rock, diamond and jade, ruby and clay, mica and quartz, I am the litter of the dead who live in crystalline echo in the sediments of sea and lake, I am ground, I am woman who suckles the infant flesh of man and beast, I am womb and anus, mouth and nose and ear of the great world lover, I am cave and tunnel, bridge and haven, I am the sand that sucks, the field that flourishes, I am root and clay, I am life pre-carnate, I am dirt, who has been called Nooma and Shaan, and is Tutha and Cein, and will be Ga-Tum-Dug and Nisaba, I will be Geshtin and Tammuz and my branches will be earth against the sky and all will be one, I will be Faunus and I will be Consus, I will be Pellervoinen and Tapio, I will be Luonnotar who floats on white water and touches the wind, I will be Asia and Asia-Bussu, Lug and Jesus, I will be coal and ore and I have existed since a time of desolation and of thunder and of sterility – you, Farrel, who know all these things should know also that this is the moment of our great dying, the breath of wind passing out of the body of earth and into the memory of man …