Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) Read Free

same, then squirmed and twisted into his oilskin. He followed the older man, out onto a path that looked down on the drowned stone circle.
    ‘There!’ Jacques said again. ‘You see?’ He pointed through the rain beyond the circle. ‘You see the stones of the second ring? Two rings together, side by side, stretching into the sea, one of them more drowned than the other.
Can
you see?’
    Two dark fingers of smooth rock appeared thendisappeared beneath the swell, a long way out across the ocean.
    ‘Yes,’ Martin said, adding, ‘How old are they?’
    ‘The rings?’ Jacques shrugged. ‘Six thousand years, some say. Or maybe only a few years.’ He chuckled. ‘It depends on how you think of them. When we built them, when we put them upright, they marked a land that was hallowed, but has now been swallowed. Maybe people around here are descended from the builders, eh? Who knows? The stones wear the sea like a skin. You can see how it gleams on them! At low tide, during the hot summers, you can walk among them. It’s muddy, they’re crusted—’ he meant with barnacles, ‘but you can touch them. I’ve heard stories that they sing, some that they dance, and some that they feed on the blood of young girls.’ He laughed again, glancing at Martin curiously, green eyes narrowed against the wind and rain, but watching for a reaction. ‘And of course, under certain circumstances, or maybe in certain minds, they do. They do. Everything is true. I’ve always believed in spirit,’ he said. ‘But it’s something you just accept, not make into daft ritual. Do you have them in Amsterdam?’
    ‘Girl-eating stones?’
    ‘Ritualisers. The people who sing to the stones. The people who think that aliens made them. Crystal gazers.’
    ‘We call them The New Age. The Age of Aquarius, in the sixties. People then used to long for it to come. I’ve worked with many of them. Most of their dream washope, expectation. If their dreams
had
come true, they’d anyway have grown older, moved on …’
    Jacques laughed throatily, then hawked and spat away from the wind. ‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘Dreams are for dreaming, not living. But that said, there’s one dream I’d like to have come real, which is why I asked you here. I’ve lived my life with it. I stood here and hoped it. I longed for it. I dreamed of my father for years, for decades. If I could switch back the clock …’
    Martin wasn’t following his drift and said so. Jacques pointed out to sea again. ‘There. Right there. Follow my finger …’
    He was pointing to the outer ring of stones, perhaps to the tallest stone that could be glimpsed at the ebb of the swelling water.
    ‘I was fourteen years old,’ Jacques said. ‘The storm had come in fast. The far horizon darkened, but Eveline and I kept playing on the beach. My mother seemed alarmed, but we kept playing on the beach. The blackness spread like colour soaking through water. It swept towards us, although where we played was still in the sunlight. My father was on the small boat. Eveline and I had each had turns with him. Now he was alone, and enjoying a few minutes of peace away from us. The sail was full and he was turning to come back to the bay. The darkness was like a veil, like a net being flung towards us. The sea began to rise, and we were called from the beach and taken up this very path. Soon the sea began to heave into the rocks. The stone circles were awash. We watched the swirl of cloud, the blackness. It was flowing very fast. I had never seen a storm like it.’
    Jacques was suddenly speaking strangely, almost dreamily. Martin felt that this story, this memory, had been rehearsed for years. He spoke as if reading from a book.
    ‘My father got tangled in the rigging. The boat was very small. It seemed to skip for a moment in the sea-wind, nosing up then down and the man seemed to be sitting very precariously. He was drenched, his thick white hair draped about his face. The boat was awash.