Part 5 (1/2)

David s.h.i.+vered at the thought of Leroi and his wolves descending upon him, their jaws and claws tearing at his flesh. He was beginning to understand the cost that might be paid in searching this place for his mother, but it seemed as if the decision to return home had already been made for him, at least for now. He could always come back here again, if he chose. After all, the sunken garden still remained, a.s.suming the German plane had not entirely destroyed it when it crashed.

They came to the glade of enormous trees through which he had first entered the Woodsman's world. As they reached it, the Woodsman stopped so suddenly that David almost ran into him. Cautiously, he peered around the man's back in order to glimpse what it was that had caused him to stop.

”Oh no,” gasped David.

Every tree, as far as the eye could see, was marked with string, and every string, David's nose told him, was daubed with the same foul-smelling substance that the Woodsman had used to keep the animals from gnawing upon it. There was no way of telling which tree was the one that marked the doorway from David's world to this one. He walked on a little, trying to find the hollow from which he had emerged, but every tree was similar, every bark smooth. It seemed even the hollows and gnarls that made each one distinctive had been filled in or altered, and the little path that once wound through the forest was now entirely gone, so the Woodsman had no bearings to follow. Even the wreckage of the German bomber was nowhere to be seen, and the furrow it had carved through the earth had been filled in. It must have taken hundreds of hours, and the work of many, many hands, to achieve such an end, thought David. How could it have been done in a single night, and without leaving even one footprint upon the ground?

”Who would so such a thing?” he asked.

”A trickster,” said the Woodsman. ”A crooked man in a crooked hat.”

”But why?” said David. ”Why didn't he just take away the string that you had tied. Wouldn't that have worked just as well?”

The Woodsman thought for a moment before answering. ”Yes,” he said, ”but it wouldn't have been so amusing to him, and it wouldn't have made such a good story.”

”A story?” asked David. ”Whatever do you mean?”

”You're part of a story,” said the Woodsman. ”He likes to create stories. He likes to store up tales to tell. This will make a very good story.”

”But how will I get home?” asked David. Now that his means of returning to his own world was gone, he suddenly wanted very much to be there, whereas when it had seemed that the Woodsman was trying to force him to return against his will, David had wanted nothing more than to stay in the new land and look for his mother. It was all very peculiar.

”He doesn't want want you to get home,” said the Woodsman. you to get home,” said the Woodsman.

”I've never done anything to him,” said David. ”Why is he trying to keep me here? Why is he being so mean?”

The Woodsman shook his head. ”I don't know,” he said.

”Then who does?” said David. He almost shouted in frustration. He was starting to wish there was someone around who knew a little more than the Woodsman. The Woodsman was fine for decapitating wolves and giving unwanted advice, but he didn't seem to be keeping up with developments in the kingdom.

”The king,” said the Woodsman at last. ”The king might know.”

”But I thought you told me that he wasn't in control anymore, that no one had seen him in a long time.”

”That doesn't mean he isn't aware of what's happening,” said the Woodsman. ”They say that the king has a book, a Book of Lost Things. It is his most prized possession. He keeps it hidden in the throne room of his palace, and no one is permitted to look upon it but him. I have heard it said that it contains in its pages all of the king's knowledge, and that he turns to it in times of trouble or doubt to give him guidance. Perhaps there is an answer within it to the question of how to get you home.”

David tried to read the expression on the Woodsman's face. He wasn't sure why, but he had a strong feeling that the Woodsman wasn't telling him the entire truth about the king. Before he could question him further, the Woodsman tossed the sack containing David's old clothes into a copse of bushes and started to walk back in the direction they had come.

”It will be one fewer thing to carry on our journey,” he said. ”We have a long way to go.”

With a last, longing look at the forest of anonymous trees, David turned and followed the Woodsman back to the cottage.

When they were gone, and all was quiet, a figure emerged from the beneath the spreading roots of a great and ancient tree. Its back was hunched, its fingers were twisted, and it wore a crooked hat upon its head. It moved quickly through the undergrowth until it came to a copse of bushes dotted with swollen, frost-sweetened berries, but it ignored the fruits in favor of the rough, dirty sack that lay amid the leaves. It reached inside, removed the top of David's pajamas, and held the clothing to its face, sniffing deeply.

”Boy lost,” it whispered to itself, ”and child lost to come.”

And with that it grabbed the sack and was swallowed up by the shadows of the forest.

XI.

Of the Children Lost in the Forest and What Befell Them

DAVID AND THE WOODSMAN returned to the cottage without incident. There they packed food into two leather bags and filled a pair of tin canteens from the stream that ran behind the house. David saw the Woodsman kneel by the water's edge and examine some marks upon the damp ground, but he said nothing to David about them. David glanced at them in pa.s.sing and thought that they looked like the tracks left by a big dog, or a wolf. There was a little water at the bottom of each, so David knew that they were recent.

The Woodsman armed himself with his ax, a bow and a quiver of arrows, and a long knife. Finally, he took a short-bladed sword from a storage chest. After only the slightest pause to blow some of the dust from it, he gave the sword to David, and a leather belt upon which to wear it. David had never held a real sword before, and his knowledge of swordsmans.h.i.+p did not extend much further than playing pirates with wooden sticks, but having the sword at his side made him feel stronger and a little braver.

The Woodsman locked the cottage, then laid his hand flat upon the door and lowered his head, as though praying. He looked sad, and David wondered if, for some reason, the Woodsman thought that he might not see his home again. Then they moved into the forest, heading northeast, and kept up a steady pace while the sickly luminescence that pa.s.sed for daylight lit their way. After a few hours, David grew very tired. The Woodsman allowed him to rest, but only for a little while.

”We must be clear of the woods before nightfall,” he told David, and the boy did not have to ask him why. Already he feared to hear the silence of the woods shattered by the howling of wolves and Loups.

As they walked, David had a chance to examine his surroundings. He was unable to name any of the trees that he saw, although aspects of some were familiar to him. A tree that looked like an old oak had pinecones dangling beneath its evergreen leaves. Another was the size and shape of a large Christmas tree, the bases of its silver leaves dotted with cl.u.s.ters of red berries. Most of the trees, though, were bare. Occasionally, David would catch sight of some of the childlike flowers, their eyes wide and curious, although at the first sign of the approaching Woodsman and boy, they would draw their leaves protectively around themselves and quake gently until the threat had pa.s.sed.

”What are those flowers called?” he asked.

”They have no name,” said the Woodsman. ”Sometimes, children stray from the path and become lost in the forest, and they are never seen again. They die there, consumed by beasts or slain by evil men, and their blood soaks into the ground. In time, one of these flowers will spring up, often far from where the child breathed his last. They cl.u.s.ter together, just like frightened children might. They are the forest's way of remembering them, I think. The forest feels the loss of a child.”

David had learned that the Woodsman generally did not speak unless spoken to first, so it was left to him to ask questions, which the Woodsman would answer as best he could. He tried to give David some sense of the geography of this place: the king's castle lay many miles to the east, and the area in between was spa.r.s.ely populated, with only the occasional settlement to disturb the landscape. A deep chasm separated the Woodsman's forest from the territories farther to the east, and they would have to cross it to continue their journey to the king's castle. To the south was a great, black sea, but few ever ventured far upon it. It was the domain of sea beasts, dragons of the waters, and constantly wracked by storms and huge waves. North and west lay ranges of mountains, but they were impa.s.sable for most of the year, their peaks topped with snow.

While they walked, the Woodsman spoke more to David of the Loups. ”In the old days, before the coming of the Loups, wolves were predictable creatures,” he explained. ”Each pack, rarely numbering more than fifteen or twenty wolves, had a territory where it would live and hunt and breed. Then the Loups began to appear, and everything changed. The packs began to grow; allegiances were formed; territories grew larger, or ceased to have meaning at all; and cruelty raised its head. In the past, perhaps half of all wolf pups died. They needed more food than their parents, for their size, and if food was scarce, then they starved. Sometimes they were killed by their own parents, but only if they showed signs of disease or madness. For the most part, wolves were fine parents, sharing their kills with the young, guarding them, giving them care and affection.

”But the Loups brought with them a new way of dealing with the young: only the strongest are now fed, never more than two or three to a litter, and sometimes not even that. The weak are eaten. In that way, the pack itself remains strong, but it has altered their nature. Now they turn upon one another, and there is no loyalty between them. Only the rule of the Loups keeps them under control. Without the Loups, they would be as they once were, I think.”

The Woodsman told David how to tell the females from the males. The females had narrower muzzles and foreheads. Their necks and shoulders were thinner, their legs shorter, yet they were faster when young than males of a similar age and for that reason made better hunters and deadlier enemies. In normal wolf packs, the females were often the leaders, but once again the Loups had usurped this natural order of things. There were females among them, but it was Leroi and his lieutenants who made the important decisions. Perhaps that was one of their weaknesses, suggested the Woodsman. Their arrogance had led them to turn their backs on thousands of years of female instinct. Now they were driven only by the desire for power.

”Wolves will not give up on prey,” said the Woodsman, ”not unless they are exhausted. They can run for ten or fifteen miles at speeds far faster than a man can travel, and trot for five miles more before they have to rest. The Loups have slowed them somewhat, for they choose to walk on two legs and are no longer as fleet as they once were, but on foot we are still no match for them. We must hope that, when we reach our destination tonight, there are horses to be found. There is a man there who deals in them, and I have gold enough to buy us a mount.”

There were no trails to follow. Instead, they relied upon the Woodsman's knowledge of the forest, although as they traveled farther and farther from his home, he stopped more frequently, examining growths of moss and the shapes the wind had carved from the trees in order to satisfy himself that they had not strayed. In all that time they pa.s.sed only one other dwelling, and that lay in brown ruins. It appeared to David to have melted rather than fallen into disrepair, and only its stone chimney remained standing, blackened but intact. He could see where molten droplets had cooled and hardened upon the walls, and the buckled s.p.a.ces where the windows had collapsed in upon themselves. The route they were taking brought him close enough to touch the structure, and now it was clear that there were chunks of a lighter brown substance embedded in the walls. He rubbed his hand upon the doorframe, then chipped away at it with a nail. He recognized the texture, and the faint smell that arose.

”It's chocolate,” he exclaimed. ”And gingerbread.”

He broke off a larger piece and was about to taste it when the Woodsman knocked it from his hands.

”No,” he said. ”It may look and smell sweet, but it hides its own poison yet.”

And he told David another story.The Woodsman's Second Tale Once upon a time, there were two children, a boy and a girl. Their father died and their mother married again, but their stepfather was an evil man. He hated the children and resented their presence in his home. He came to despise them even more when the crops failed and famine came, for they ate valuable food, food that he would rather have kept for himself. He begrudged them every meager bite that he was forced to give them, and as his own hunger grew, he began to suggest to his wife that they might eat the children and thereby save themselves from death, for she could always give birth to more children when times improved. His wife was horrified, and she feared what her new husband might do to them when her back was turned. Yet she realized that she could no longer afford to feed them herself, so she took them deep, deep into the forest, and there she abandoned them to fend for themselves.

The children were very frightened, and they cried themselves to sleep that first night, but in time they grew to understand the forest. The girl was wiser and stronger than her brother, and it was she who learned to trap small animals and birds, and to steal eggs from nests. The boy preferred to wander or to daydream, waiting for his sister to provide whatever she could catch to feed them both. He missed his mother and wanted to return to her. Some days he did nothing but cry from dawn until dusk. He desired his old life back, and he made no effort to embrace the new.

One day, he did not return when his sister called his name. She went in search of him, leaving a trail of blossoms behind her so that she would be able to find her way back to their little supply of food, until she came to the edge of a small clearing, and there she saw the most extraordinary house. Its walls were made of chocolate and gingerbread. Its roof was slated with slabs of toffee, and the gla.s.s in its windows was formed from clear sugar. Embedded in its walls were almonds and fudge and candied fruits. Everything about it spoke of sweetness and indulgence. Her brother was picking nuts from the walls when she found him, and his mouth was dark with chocolate.

”Don't worry, there's n.o.body home,” he said. ”Try it. It's delicious.”

He held out a piece of chocolate to her, but she did not take it at first. Her brother's eyelids were half closed, so overcome was he by the wonderful taste of the house. His sister tried to open the door, but it was locked. She peered through the gla.s.s, but the curtains were drawn and she could not see inside. She did not want to eat, for something about the house made her uneasy, but the smell of the chocolate was too much for her, and she allowed herself to nibble on a piece. It tasted even better than she had imagined, and her stomach cried out for more. So she joined her brother, and together they ate and ate until they had consumed so much that, in time, they fell into a deep sleep.

When they awoke, they were no longer lying on the gra.s.s beneath the trees of the forest. Instead, they were inside the house, trapped in a cage that hung from the ceiling. A woman was fueling an oven with logs. She was old and foul-smelling. Piles of bones lay stacked on the floor by her feet, the remains of the other children who had fallen prey to her.

”Fresh meat!” she whispered to herself. ”Fresh meat for old Gammer's oven!”