The Hollowing by Robert Holdstock Page B

of her skull, he perceived anxiety. She wanted to show him something.
    She led the way to the ground and reached around in the grass until she found a place in the earth where she could root. Alex curled into her, and flowed with her on the Big Dream …
    It was the height and the depth of summer and the daurog moved through the stifling wood like shadows in the green. It was thick with heat. Where the forest thinned they passed through the deep wells of light, raising faces to the sky so that the sun shone on their polished tusks, emerging now from full, thick leaf on their fat bodies. Oak and Ash led the slow journey to the cathedral. Hazel and Holly kept to the fringes of any clearing. Beech, Birch, and Willow walked slowly, using tall staffs to keep touch with the ground. Behind them, moving carefully, always watching, always listening, always feeling for the eyes and ears that came to him through the rootweb, the shaman was a sinister presence, never quite visible, taking deep root quite often so that he trailed behind the family, catching up with them by moonlight, as the others of the group formed into a spinney to rest.
    The shaman had carved a face on his thick staff. Sometimes when he pushed the gnarly wood into the earth, Alex was drawn up to the face, and the shaman watched him, silently and closely, scratching the face with thorny nails, then clattering his tusks before walking on.
    They were in summer, then, and safe. They were closer than before, and searching for the stone place, for Alex. But there was something wrong with them, an emptiness that could not be conveyed, only touched. They sought something more than Alex, and they were in great pain.
    Now he reached again, journeying on the Little Dream, feeling for his father, and touching the man, expecting to find sadness but finding a new joy. He was close and he was with a woman, not his mother. They were dancing by a fire. There was contentment and excitement in the air. The boy edged closer, came closer, and slipped back into the earth, draining towards the dancing man, expanding through the giant roots, curling around the deep stones, the hollow tombs, the bones of the dying-down and the being-born that littered the vast wood. When he could hear the sound of song and pipes, feel the drum of the dancers in the earth, he rose from the rootweb, and called for the man he loved …

Old Stone Hollow
    (i) The Bone Yard
    Five hours later, Lacan led the way out of the tangle of dark wildwood into clearer, lighter forest. Tall columns of stone rose among the trees, ivy-covered, weathered, some carved with the shapes of armoured men, others inscribed with glyphs and symbols reminiscent of those to be found in the Minoan remains of the Aegean. Further on, they passed below four corroding bronze pillars, each decorated with the faces of lions, one fallen at an angle and resting against an oak.
    Lacan led the way carefully, taking a winding path through these majestic ruins. A huge wooden building, steeply thatched, had slipped to one side, folding into itself. Elm saplings had begun to penetrate the roof. Fallen idols, crudely hacked from stumps and sarsens, littered the ground before it, and Lacan ducked below the cracked, oakwood lintel to snatch a photograph of the interior.
    The place was known as the Sanctuary. It was a collection of shrines and temples, and according to Lacan was dangerous.
    “At least two hollowings lead away from here. We’re not sure where exactly. We know a safe path and we keep to it. But this is where Dan Jacobi went missing, over a year ago. There’s his marker. Richard saw the grey and rotting doll, hanging loosely in an ivy trail from a tall column. “I think he must be dead by now,” Lacan went on. “I have a feeling for such things. But it’s still all we can do to stop his wife going after him. She won’t believe he’s dead. Good for her! All love is blind to reason, and maybe that’s why some people are so