The Bone Forest Read Free Page B

watching you," Wynne-Jones said quietly, as they walked away from the house, still shivering in the crisp and fresh dawn. All around them the world was coming alive. The light was sharp to the east, and the wood was dark, shadowy, yet becoming distinct with that peculiar clarity which accompanies the first light of a new day.
    Huxley stopped and shrugged his pack from his shoulders, turning to look back at the house.
    Sure enough, Steven was pressed against the window of his bedroom, a small, anxious shape, mouthing words and waving.
    Huxley stepped a few paces back, and cupped his ear. Chickens clattered close by, and the old dog growled and worried in the hedges. Rooks called loudly, and their flight, in and among the branches of Ryhope Wood, made the day seem somehow more desolate and silent than it was.
    Steven pulled the sash window up.
    "Where are you going?" he called down, and Huxley said, "Exploring."
    "Can I come?"
    "Scientific research, Steve. We'll only be gone today."
    "Take me with you?"
    "I can't. I'm sorry, lad. I'll be back tonight and tell you all about it."
    "Can't I come?"
    The dawn seemed to lengthen, and the early spring cold made his breath frost as he stood and stared at the anxious, pale-faced boy in the window, high in the house. "I'll be back tonight. We have some readings to take, some mapping, some samples to take… I'll tell you all about it later."
    "You went away for three days last time. We were worried…"
    "One day only, Steve. Now be a good boy."
    As he hefted his pack onto his back again, he saw Jennifer standing in the doorway, her face glistening with tears. "I'll be back tonight," he said to her.
    "No you won't," she whispered, and turned into the house, closing the kitchen door behind her.

FOUR
… poor Jennifer is already deeply depressed by my behavior. Cannot explain it to her, though I dearly want to. Do not want the children involved in this, and it worries me that they have now twice seen a mythago. I have invented magical forest creatures—stories for them. Hope they will associate what they see with products of their own imaginations. But must be careful.
    There is a time before wakening, an instant only, when the real and the unreal play games with the sleeper, when everything is right, yet nothing is real. In this moment of surfacing from the sleep of days, Huxley sensed the flow of water, and the passing of riders, the shouts and curses of a troop on the move, and the anguish and excitement of pursuit.
    Something bigger than a man was moving through the wood, following the pack of men that ran before its lumbering assault.
    And there was a woman, too, who came to the river, and touched her hand to the face of the sleeping/waking man. She dropped a twig and a bone on him, then left with a laugh and swirl of perfumed body, the sweat of her skin and her soul, sour and sexual in the nostrils of the recumbent form that slowly…
    Came to waking…
    Came alive again.
    Huxley sat up and began to choke. He was frozen, and icy water ran from his face.
    He was deafened by the sound of the river, and his sense of smell was offended by the stink of his own feces, cool and firm, accumulated in the loose cotton of his underclothes.
    "Dear God! What's happened to me… ?"
    He cleaned himself quickly, crouching in the river, gasping with the cold. From previous experience he knew to bring a change of clothing and he searched gratefully in his pack, now, finding the gardening trousers and a thick, cotton shirt.
    He fumbled with shaking fingers for his watch and closed his eyes as he saw that it had been four days since he had reached this place, dazed and confused, and lain down on the shore with his head on his arms.
    Four days asleep!
    "Edward! Edward… ?"
    His voice, a loud, urgent cry, was lost in the rush and swirl of this river; he was about to shout again, when the first piece of memory returned, and he realized that Wynne-Jones was long gone. They had parted days before, the