Coldfall Wood Read online

  And then he was gone.

  Ru felt the ground beneath him lurch alarmingly even as a shadow-shape ghosted across his vision, moving fast, all but impossible to focus on: he saw a blur of movement, rustling leaves in all shades of decay, and the deceptive impression of antlers dipping down in challenge, like a rutting stag.

  Áríseaþ!

  Rise up! The command reverberated through his body, carried through his blood by the song.

  Áríseaþ!

  Rise up, for Albion, for this once great land of ours.

  Rise up, fight for what has been lost. Remember all that has been forgotten.

  Rise up; reclaim the fields and the forests, the rivers and streams, the hilltops and the valleys.

  Rise up, champion. Rise up, giant. Rise up, brothers mine. Rise up, my sons.

  Rise.

  And so it echoed in his mind, the chorus as simple and irresistible as:

  Rise up!

  Rise up!

  Rise up!

  “I will rise,” Ru Brooke promised as the chalk ground welcomed his body. He sank lower, to the knees, to the waist, and resisted every instinct to fight what was happening. He braced his hands on the grass that grew on either side of the white outline. It didn’t feel real beneath his fingers. Fear thrilled through his body as he sank deeper. It wasn’t enough to silence the panic in his mind as the chalk filled his mouth, choking the air out of his lungs as it spilled down his throat.

  And then the land closed over his head, burying him alive, side by side with his brother in crime.

  Áríseaþ!

  The song commanded.

  Áríseaþ!

  He became the land.

  He tried not to fight it, but basic survival instinct took hold as the chalk began to suffocate him. He lashed out at the ever-constricting liquefied rock all around him, wriggling and writhing desperately in the precious few seconds before he ceased to be. He felt the remorseless crushing weight on his ribs, the first sharp crack of bone as his sternum collapsed, and still it bore down on him, solidifying around him. It cocooned his body—setting across his eyes, nose and mouth sealing his airways off—even as it became his corpse.

  Rupert Brooke was buried in a tomb of chalk.

  A minute, an hour, a year, time lost all meaning in limbo. He was painfully aware that he was dead. He had always imagined there would be no consciousness in death, and caught himself panicking at the prospect of an eternity of awareness trapped in his chalk grave, unable to move, not needing the basics like sustenance, water, air, and unable to turn his mind off and stop thinking. It was in every way imaginable, Hell.

  He felt rather than heard the song as it continued all around him, carried by the stones.

  He saw in his mind’s eye two giants, twins white as chalk towering over the trees, clubs in their hands ready to give their lives once more in defense of the land they loved. The Song of Albion swelled to fill his mind, within it a single recognizable word: Gogmagot.

  If this was death, it was a strange one.

  Áríseaþ! The voice demanded. His body responded, the bones pushing back against the crushing weight of the rock, the cracks this time from chalk shards sheering away from the base rock.

  “I will rise!” he screamed, the chalk in his throat absorbing any attempt at sound, carrying it from the outline of one giant to the outline of its twin where Corenius the Britain’s cry of “I will rise!” answered him.

  The rock above his head cracked, a fissure opening up. Through it he saw the silver of the moon.

  The fissure widened as he strained against it. He felt pain for the first time in minutes—it had only been minutes, hadn’t it?—as he pitted his body against the land, and won, inch by precious inch, opening the fissure wide. Cold air rushed in to fill the cracks between the broken stones. It felt delicious against his skin, so full of life. He felt vital. Alive. But different. Changed. Like he was being born again. A butterfly. A moth. A creature forced to claw its way back to life out of a chalk cocoon. White stone crumbled beneath his fingertips as he clawed at it, tearing his nails off in a desperate scramble to be free. To live.

  He twisted his body to free his hands, earning the precious freedom to reach up, over the edge where chalk met sky, and found the grass with his hands.

  He tilted his head back, swallowing down a huge lungful of air and choking on it as he tried to suck it down past the chalk still clogging his throat.

  It demanded every ounce of strength he had to claw his way out of the chalk tomb.

  Across the curve of Cane Hill he saw Stephen Blackmoore climbing out of his own grave, moonlight shining down on him with artificial intensity. It wasn’t Blackmoore anymore than he was still Ru. His skin was as white as chalk, his body so much taller than it had been only moments ago, stretched thin like the chalk man carved into the side of the hill, his frame awkwardly twisted, shoulders burdened.

  It was Corenius clawing his way out of the earth.

  And he was Gogmagot.

  The champions of the hill: born again to the chorus of Albion’s need.

  The song soared inside him. It fueled his blood. It was the magic in his veins. This land: his home. This land: his protectorate.

  “I will rise!” the giant bellowed, beating his chest.

  Corenius matched him blow for blow, then set off down the hill toward the city below.

  Gogmagot followed him down.

  16

  Danny Ash wasn’t like his friend.

  He wasn’t the Gatekeeper. He was something else.

  He stood there with a joyous idiot smile on his face, free to discover exactly who he was. Everything around him looked different now. Or maybe it was just the way he saw it that had changed; after all the Rothery was still the Rothery and the old wood was just that, the same place they’d played as kids when they’d been together in Herla House. Everything was the same as it had been an hour ago. He was the only thing that had changed. Danny caught himself whistling the snatch of a familiar melody and for a moment thought it was an old tune, something from a forgotten movie, but it was more essential than that. The music owned a place inside his soul. It was rooted deep down in the darkness of his primitive hindbrain where instincts learned by ancestors long forgotten dwelt. Instincts like fear that were taken for granted by modern men, but had to be learned once upon a time.

  It was the Song of Albion.

  The music of the land itself.

  The tune of Mother London calling out to her children.

  The nurturing harmonies of her soul.

  Danny let the music fill him body and soul, and let his own song fill the night as the rain fell, drumming on every surface around him. His song and the counterpoint drumming of the rain on the canopy of leaves made for a bittersweet symphony.

  It felt like he was home for the first time in his life.

  All around him the foliage encroached on the clearing, choking out the moonlight but at the same time sheltering him from the growing storm. The nature of the song changed. Now it sounded as though he was listening to a haunting strain of panpipes. The melody was ephemeral, each note fleeting.

  He caught a glimpse of a figure moving through the trees. It was almost impossible to focus on it as it blundered through the endless layers of leaves, blending in with the natural world so absolutely with armor of bark and branch. He saw a few red berries within the holly over its chest as the Knucker in turn watched him.

  It wasn’t alone. There were others. Smaller, fleet of foot, moving lightly from tree to tree through the ancient wildwood, watching him. Danny only ever managed glimpses of their strange childlike silhouettes, seeing the trailing leaves of their clothes as they slipped tantalizingly out of sight before he could see them properly for what they were.

  The nature of the song changed.

  He hadn’t realized it at first, but where there had been the haunting woodwind strains of pipes now the trees were filled a more demanding sound, wood on wood like drums.


  Tendrils of fog spilled out from the fairy ring toward the circle of trees around him. Tommy didn’t move. He had the same idiot-rapture grin on his face. The effect was most peculiar; it seemed to be roiling out through an open doorway, but there was no door, no arch, no keystone, and try as he might all Danny Ash could see out there was an ever-thickening mist.

  The dark figure of a man began to take shape within the mist. Only he was like no man he had ever seen before. His frame was stunted, and there was something wrong about the way his legs were jointed, almost as though they bent backward. Wraiths of fog curled around the dark man as he advanced.

  “Cume, Godbearn, se foldweg biþ gerúmed.”

  He couldn’t see the speaker. The words, though utterly alien to him mind, echoed back to him through ancestral memories. Come, child of god, the path is cleared.

  The drums, he realized, originated on the other side of the mist, not from within the impenetrable darkness of the trees.

  Danny saw the towering figure of an antlered man on the edge of the clearing, beckoning the dark man to join him.

  “Se foldweg biþ gerúmed,” the Horned God repeated, though this time the same words resounded with an entirely different meaning in his mind. The doorway is open.

  Danny tried to get an angle to better see what was happening, only for a childlike figure to step out into the path ahead of him. The girl had a crown of daisies tangled in her hair and a smile to melt his heart as she dropped into a deep curtsy, but that was the full extent of the softness. When he looked up, Danny saw that the girl’s skin bore the same natural tones as the forest she called home, a subtle shift of hues from deepest greens to golden browns, textured like the fading sun. Her eyes were ancient. It wasn’t about color or depth. They had seen the world age through a millennium that defied her small childlike form.

  A scar ran down the girl’s right cheek, from just beneath her eye all the way down her throat, disappearing beneath her dress of leaves.

  “Brother,” she said, her voice faltering as she reached out a hand, beckoning Danny toward her.

  Two more of the curious children stepped out into the glade behind him, meaning he was effectively surrounded. He heard a rush of footsteps in the undergrowth, crashing through the bracken, and caught sight of a great black dog, twice the size of a Rottweiler, but with the same incredible physicality. The animal was fast. It rushed toward the antlered figure, responding to his call. It turned, looking at Danny with eyes that burned brimstone-bright and for just a moment he was paralyzed. Rooted to the spot. A second black dog circled the sacred grove in the opposite direction. The thing was huge. It moved with pantherlike grace, powerful muscles bunching and releasing, bunching and releasing, as it prowled around the enclosure. He watched the pair of them circle the fairy ring three times each in opposite directions. At the end of the third circuit, closest to him, one of the pair stopped to sniff at the air, isolating his scent. The beast had four wickedly sharp incisors, saber-toothed, that were too big for its mouth to contain.

  Danny didn’t dare move.

  He wasn’t sure he even could.

  Tommy grinned his idiot grin, the mist curling around his legs. He watched Danny and the Children of the Forest do their dance.

  The fear fell away as they ran up to hug him, tiny voices babbling excitedly, the only words he could easily make out being “You are home, Brother,” despite the fact that those weren’t the words the children of the wildwood used. The voice was honeyed. And that was exactly how it felt as Danny fell into their embrace.

  He felt their lips on his as they pulled him down by the hair to cover him in kisses, each one gentle but hungry at the same time. It was innocent in one breath, and oh-so-knowing in the next.

  The first children dragged him down to the ground.

  Their appetite was insatiable.

  Danny felt their hands all over him, pulling at his jeans, tugging at the buckle of his belt, at his boxers, lowering them even as more kisses smothered his face. The kisses reached his neck, and as they tore at the buttons of his shirt, down the flat planes of his stomach, not stopping as they traced the tight lines of muscle down to his cock. Tiny hands stroked him even as their lips closed on his mouth and more hands covered his eyes.

  It was heaven.

  And it was hell.

  Balanced.

  He could hear the dogs prowling around the fairy ring, the rasp of their breath, the heavy footfalls of their passage around the stones. Blind, he had to focus on his other senses, willing them to come alive. He could smell the heady fragrance of the grass, all of the grass—the thin reeds, the long blades, the scrub, each type with its own unique signature. There was a loamy richness, more than just the soil, and a freshness to the air that was unlike anything he’d breathed in the city. He could taste the lack of choking pollutants pumped into it. Danny lost himself to the sensory overload, falling into memories of the land as he tried to concentrate on each individual caress even as their sense of urgency became undeniable.

  He knew he should be frightened.

  Everything that was happening to him was wrong.

  But the song calmed him, swept away his fears, whispering to him just how right it was.

  Finally, the Horned God commanded, “Cume.”

  Come.

  The demand had a double meaning.

  Danny tried to open his eyes, but all he could see was the darkness of the palms of the hands cupped across them.

  He tried to speak, but there were no words.

  “Open yourself up,” he heard. Simple words, but they might as well have been riddled in tongues, as he had no idea how to satisfy their request.

  The song rose in the air around him, and in it Danny heard so many memories of the land, and of her first children. He tried to focus on them, holding on to just one, but even as he did, it slipped away to be replaced by another and another. There was so much he needed to know, but it was so far beyond his understanding. The hands roamed all over his body, finding his most intimate places, and their explorations brought pleasure he had never imagined possible. And still the hands worked his body even as his fingers dug deep into the earth, connecting Danny body and soul with the land as the powerful release swept over him.

  “Don’t be afraid to die,” a voice whispered in his ear.

  The dark man.

  It had to be.

  The voice curled around him. Insidious.

  Before he could react, Danny felt a weight on his chest as the dark man straddled him. The children of the wildwood pinned him down, pulling his arms and legs painfully wide to accommodate the dark man. Now the hands on him were threatening in their ministrations. There was nothing sensual about the touch. Nothing tender. Danny felt fingers dig into his chest: a sharp stab of pain accompanying the breaking of his skin as the dark man’s wickedly sharp nails parted the muscle to get at the bone.

  The music swept and swooned all around him, consuming him.

  He was lost to it for the longest time, carried away. He saw colors in the music, the world around him losing shape and form in favor of a sort of watercolor wash, shades of green fading into brown into blue, and sunbursts of red where the Gatekeeper still hunkered down beside the door into the other place.

  Danny opened his eyes to see the cruel face of the dark man glaring down at him.

  “You are mine, child, promised to me by my lord. Let me in.” Only he didn’t say “lord”; the word he used was dryhten. Danny knew it, like so many of the strange words he’d heard since the call reached his ears. He had always known it. It was the language of Albion. The true tongue. Danny didn’t have the luxury of time to dwell on what his understanding meant. He felt the man’s clawed fingers tear at his heaving chest, his panicked breathing multiplying the agony a thousandfold. He twisted his head left and right, trying desperately to wriggle out from beneath the man’s weight, but there was no escape. The man drove his hand into Danny’s chest, burrowing deeper even as he leaned forward to run his
rough tongue over his lips. It wasn’t a kiss. He was tasting him. His touch was vile. Invasive. There was no pleasure to it, unlike the children who had prepared him for this violation.

  Danny’s grip on consciousness swam away from him.

  “Hush now,” the man commanded; masculine, powerful. His voice resonated in every leaf and tree around them. “Surrender yourself. Become who you were always meant to be. Say your name. Taste it on your lips, know it to be true. Remember who you were and who you will always be. Tell me, who are you? Say it.”

  Names have power.

  Names are the key to the soul.

  All he had to do was say his name—the name he wanted them to share in some fused body, parasite and host.

  “Say it,” the man demanded. “Just one word. Let it live in your mouth.”

  Danny bucked against his weight, refusing to give in to him. The movement offered a glimpse of his legs. The man suffered from some weird deformity, his legs bent back the wrong way, the joints in his knees backward. He wore some sort of fur trousers—no, that was a lie; Danny’s mind was trying to rationalize the sight of the fawn’s hind legs and cloven hooves. The creature’s cock was red and angry, raging, but not through any sort of sexual gratification or promise of release. He was simply reveling at being alive, being here, not trapped in his prison on the other side of the mist. “Rise up, Púcel,” he demanded, bucking back against Danny’s naked belly. He gyrated his hips, rubbing his tip against the muscles of Danny’s stomach. His touch left a snaillike trail across the contours of skin.

  Danny gave in to him, and said it, recognizing as he did it so many other names this creature had been called once upon a time: Puck. Pan. Bucca. Hob. Akercock. Woodwose. Green Man. Devil. All of them were true in their own way, but none of them were his true name, the one that gave power to his magic.