wooden book

Suddenly, Redhood popped his maned head out of a tent nearby. He looked at her, then beckoned with his head. 'Hide,' he said.
'It's not going to be any use,' she said. 'We should run.'
'If running, snagged by Hunt, ate,' he said, 'Hide, now, here.'
'Honestly,' she said. 'Maybe we should just speak to them.'
'No,' he said. 'Hunt is Hunting, yes, but Hunt is Hunted too.'
Then she saw it, a kind of strange darkness that almost appeared to be made of mercury or wire and rain and smoke, swarming around the legs of the horses, revealing them by throwing them into brilliant relief like a woodcut. The instant she saw it she felt again that dreadful sense of being always alone, and it was nothing to do with being about to die or be captured, it was a loneliness that extended deep down into the pit of her stomach and always had done, was always waiting.
Redhood grabbed her hand and dragged her into the tent. It smelled of leather and tea inside. Nothing at all was visible. The wind whirled past the doorway.
She tried to catch her breath. 'What do we -'
Somebody put their hand over her mouth, and then suddenly Redhood began to slowly speak to them, words coming slowly out like the first drops of rainfall or the first breaths of a steam train, and then gathering in speed and sense. He was speaking to them, not just talking, he was telling them a story.
In the story, a girl met a bear, and the bear didn't eat her and she wanted to thank him so she married him. And she started weaving a wedding dress, when her mother climbed up the thread out of the grave and tried to pull her down with her into the great hereafter. But she wove her mother into the dress and swapped it with a boy for a walnut, and the boy went off wearing the dress and turned into his sister, and the girl opened the walnut and there was a town inside.
Then it began to get complicated. The twin sisters were both heirs to a kingdom, but since they couldn't both be queen they declared a civil war. And a man who used to chop wood for his family got caught in the war and taken away to fight. There was a bit about how his family had to chop wood while he was away, and his seventh son chopped a tree open and it was hollow inside and there was a goose in it that laid golden eggs. Kendall thought she'd heard this one before, but it suddenly went off in new directions because the other seven brothers were turned in to pillars of salt for trying to steal the goose. And meanwhile, the girl was flying around the town in the walnut with wings made of her own hair. The man who fought in the war was haunted by a ghost of the man he'd killed.
And at the beginning, the wind was very strong outside of the tent, but after a couple of hours of these stories it was silent. Though not the silence that suggested it was safe outside, just the silence that you'd hear if you were buried a long way under the ground.
Kendall wondered if Redhood were conjuring something up. Would a demon suddenly leap out of his head when he got to the end of all this? He spoke like a man possessed. It was practically talking in tongues. What else was this than a church? She thought she should be afraid of him, but she only felt surer and safer for him, especially considering what was going on outside of this drumskin.
She waited to see what would happen, but she didn't see, because the next thing she knew she was waking up, late into the morning. She rubbed her eyes and tried to remember her dreams. She'd dreamt she was buying a bag of crisps in Boots, in Lewisham Shopping Centre, and then she opened the bag and it was full of red leaves, and she shook them out over her feet and realised she wasn't home, would never be home, would only have these dreams.
Ho hum, she thought, and went out into the waking world. The morning air was biting, the light was the colour of milk.
'Did the Doctor turn up for the party in the end?' she asked Father Tock, dryly.
He shook his head. 'We have not seen a hair of him,' he intoned.
'Oh,' she said, as brightly as she could. 'Well, let's just hope he wasn't eaten.'
'I do not think the chance is there, unless it was by some bear - the Royal Hunt of the Moon will steal you, not a quick kill.'
'Oh,' she said again. 'Oh, oh, oh. Fine, then. Who were they, by the way?'
'We know nothing more than what they say about themselves,' said Tock. 'They lurk among the greenery, but sometimes they are forced to show themselves. When they attack we know that something rides their tails, and Redhood weaves his stories still we're safe inside the maze. They follow lines of thought, these things, and netting them takes skill. But nesting up the stories holds them off until the dawn.'
'I see,' said Kendall. 'And how did Redhood discover he had this ... talent?'
'Something like it waited in him like a man inside a church, and then inside the wood he ...' Tock tailed off. 'Doctor.'
Kendall whirled round. He was leaning nonchalantly against a tree, hugging his overcoat around him. 'Don't stop, it's fascinating,' he said.
'Where have you been?' asked Kendall. Then she said it more angrily. 'Where have you been, and why did you leave me?'
'I wanted to see something but I thought it might be dangerous,' said the Doctor.
'That's not an excuse. You left me alone.'
'I didn't.'
Kendall turned and nodded gratefully at Father Tock. 'No, I'm sorry. But you left me alone with strangers, which is bad. Worse, even, maybe!'
The Doctor's eyes widened. 'I didn't realise it would worry you so much.'
'Don't you ever think about anything apart from the adventure?'
'It's not like that, it's all mixed up together. You know how I care for you.'
'Like a dog. You left your dog to be minded by your new best friend while you ran off and did goodness know's what. Travelling in time apparently.'
'What?' He looked intruded upon.
'Perhaps I should help with the men,' said Tock. Kendall hadn't noticed that the encampment was being packed up. She must have slept a lot longer than everybody else. As Tock moved off, she went closer to the Doctor and lowered her voice. It just takes one person to behave like a little boy, she thought, and we're all standing here in the wood shouting and stamping our feet and wearing our mittens on string through our sleeves.
'Did you go by Tardis? Well?'
'No. I didn't leave the wood.'
'But you've got apple blossom all caked around your shoes. This is winter, in case you hadn't noticed. You should always wipe your feet before coming back into another time; you're really slipping on this whole 'time traveller' biz, aren't you?'
He smiled. 'You'd make a good disciple of Sherlock Holmes, wouldn't you? Yes, I did travel in time, but not via the Tardis. I noticed earlier on that there's a patch of wild-wood nearby to where we landed, and I assumed that that affected ... well, interfered with our journey.'
'There's a time machine hidden inside it?'
'Not exactly. Come with me, it'll be easier to show you. I don't think I understand it myself.'

The Tardis seemed to stare at Kendall as she passed it, there was something yearning and accusative in the way it just stood there, open, wounded, waiting for them to come back and do something for it. At least, she thought, the light is dimmer in there. It must realise it doesn't have to light it up because we're not there.
How can a machine guilt-trip me?, she thought, looking back over her shoulder at it. That's the downside of technological evolution.
'It's just this way,' said the Doctor, and drew it toward what seemed impossibly thickly twined trees. They had to squeeze to get in among them; it was like climbing into a shirt made of branches and bark and leaves and dirt and spiders. 'This is the heart of the forest, the oldest part. It's ancient.'
'It's very dark,' she said, emphatically. And it was. Crawling deeper and deeper into it, she suddenly found she couldn't see.
'Take my hand,' he said.
'I'm fine, thank you.'
'I'll lead you as far as I can,' he said, and she felt the fingers brush her hand.
'If I can't see, I don't see how - oh, yes, super-duper alien eyes, I'd forgotten.'
'Not to mention the fact I've been in here before,' he said, and she suddenly realised how quickly he wanted them to move, as he tugged on her arm and began to practically drag her after him. She didn't think it would be possible to run through such dense woodland but they were practically doing it, and a moment later she realised she wasn't really aware of the trees or anything else responsible for the darkness; just the darkness.
'I feel lost,' she said. 'Pleasantly, almost. Are we still the wildwood?'
'We're between wildwoods now,' he said.
'So, is it a crashed alien spaceship doing this or what?'
'I can't explain it as simply as that - it's more like dreaming, really. Wittgenstein said that the world is all that we know it is, and if you're able to forget certain things, maybe they aren't facts any more. And then there's something the wildwood, something retained.'
'Guiding us?'
Suddenly, there was a big boom of muted light, and when they went through it she realised it was a canopy of leaves. The forest they were in now was very like the one they'd been in when they first arrived, except that it was spring, and everything was alive and in bud. A man in a mottled green dressing gown stood with his back to them. The Doctor cleared his throat.
'I should have known you'd be back sooner than you said you would,' said the man, turning to greet them. He had a long soft round face and looked like he'd been sleeping rough for a long time; his prickly beard green and grey with mould and leaf, his eyes weary and cynical in spite of how young he looked.
'Well, I was worried I'd be wandering for a while. You know, popping in and out of other points in the forest. The whatever-it-is in the darkness obviously builds some kind of affinity with the people who get into it. A pity, as I'd love to see your Victorian incarnation.'
'A hundred years ago,' replied the man in the dirty dressing-gown, 'It must have been a sad time for the woods, the first poisonings in the air. Sometimes, when I climb to the tops of the trees and stand with the birds looking up at the clouds I feel it, like I've smoked a hundred fags in one go.' He smiled, sadly. 'I suppose the forest deserved a member of Greenpeace, eh? Not a lazy old boy like myself.'
'I'm sorry,' said Kendall, 'I appear to have become invisible. My name's Kendall.' She stepped forward and extended her hand to shake. The man touched it gently, and his touch was cold as ice. She drew back involuntarily. 'Sorry,' she said. 'Did you say that you're an incarnation of the forest?'
'I'm Goodfellow. You must be the Doctor's friend - I knew he had one, though he didn't mention you.' He smiled. 'I never thought I'd tell anybody about this, but since you're travelling with the Doctor, I suppose you're privy to certain secrets of the Universe. So, as for your question: I am and I'm not. I don't quite understand it myself. There's something that's in the wood, something primal, like the first stab at consciousness the Earth made. It's in every bit of wood you could imagine, every tree you've ever seen. It connects every copse and forest and piece of woodland, and it looks out for people. For a person. Anyone. To try and do the more complex bits of its thinking, that's my understanding of it.'
'The forest is like a wooden book, that's how you have to think of it,' explained the Doctor, 'and it needs a human to read it and to write it too.'
'And the wildwood - do you travel in that?' asked Kendall.
'No. It is a part of me - I cannot travel into myself.'
'How did you get the gig?'
'Like something of a 1930s musical,' he said, 'I stumbled onstage in the middle of the show and they hired me for the spot. I was... lost, at the time. I needed this place as much as it needed me.'
'We've met another incarnation of yours,' she told him. 'Redhood.'
A look of pain crossed Goodfellow's face. 'A part of it remembers him. I feel the memory without access to the detail. It is highly supernatural.'
'No kidding.'
'The thing is,' said the Doctor, 'there's something wrong in the forest, isn't there? Something linking the wildwood, Redhood, something called the - what was it? Royal Hunt of the Moon? And a kind of darkness.'
'Darkness is part and parcel of the forest, Doctor. It is where the animus of the woods is unrestrained by reason or confusion.'
'But do you know what this problem is? Is a part of the forest damaged?'
'Or the animus,' Kendall added. 'Or you?'
He looked at her, but spoke to the Doctor. 'There are breaks in the circuit. Some way or other is open.'
A sudden drop of rain stung Kendall's nose. A wind was picking up. 'Surely the big granddaddy of the woods knows what's going; can we speak to it directly?'
'Not unless you want to take over from me,' said Goodfellow.
'Something has to be done,' said the Doctor in reply, but Kendall wasn't entirely sure what he meant.
Somewhere in the darkness, a forlorn trumpet sounded like an animal's cry. Kendall caught a darting silverish colour out of the corner of her eye. 'What was that?' she was saying, as the Hunt suddenly poured out of the gloom like a huge cloud of smoke, and pounded onto the earth, circling the three of them.
'Run!' cried the Doctor, and they scattered, weaving between the horses.
Goodfellow ran to a tree and climbed inside it; the Doctor ran in another direction; Kendall went straight back into the wildwood. She knew, straight away, that something was in the darkness with her. Something sorrowful and awful and ready for her. 'No,' she told it, her fear mounting, 'Please, this isn't right. I'm going to leave him. I don't want to be risking everything with things like you any more, I don't want to have these kinds of -'
The darkness fell into her lungs. She was breathing another country's air. Cuckoos were cooing at her, but she could see nothing.

* * *

'Not that way!' the Doctor was calling to Kendall, but she didn't come back out and she didn't reply.
One of the men of the Royal Hunt stood over him. There was nowhere to run to. 'Your friend was a perfect quarry,' he said. 'How fortunate you brought her along.'
'Let me go and help her, please!'
'You must atone for the death of the Royal Family of the Moon,' said the huntsman, netting him like a fish and carrying him into the sky.

TO BE CONTINUED ...!