The scrub around them grew thicker and wilder and less friendly looking. Soon they were crossing a landscape of rough rock, dusty soil and large gorse bushes. The gorse was adorned with the brilliant yellow flowers of the season, which gave the scene a sort of beauty that was rendered frail by the thick layers within layers of green-grey and dead-brown gorse thorns. There had been some patches of gorse in and about Wurmgloath, but these bushes were much larger: huge, propped up on giant gnarled stems that were thicker than the boy’s thighs. Each bush looked as impassable as a wall of iron needles. As they walked deeper along twisting paths, the bushes soon grew in size, until they were taller than Dapplegrim. After a while longer the gorse was taller than Caewen riding atop Dapplegrim. It became obvious that the three of them needed to pick a very careful path through the maze of spines, or be forced to go back the way they had come.
The shadows deepened as the day wore on. The boy, feeling the sun and the exhaustion of the last few days, started to drift off in the saddle. His eyes constantly fluttered shut despite his efforts to stay awake, and he nodded off completely at least two or three times. Each time he woke with a start before gradually slipping back into sleep again, yawning all the time.
In those brief moments of sleep, he dreamed of strange voices whispering in his good ear. They were old deep green voices of the earth, and he felt them crowd in and pluck at his clothing and tug at his hair, until he felt that he was about to be overwhelmed by woody, knotted, moss-encrusted, clay-dirtied fingers.
He woke, suddenly.
The landscape had not changed, although the sun was getting on more to late afternoon, and the shadows were longer and richer and more golden at the edges. The gorse that had surrounded them when the boy had last nodded off, now stood tall enough to be mistaken for small trees. Dapplegrim was picking his way along a thin trail between two huge profusions of spines. Edging forward, they arrived at a place where the path split into many smaller passages. Caewen sounded drowsy herself when she said, “I don’t know if this is getting us any closer to breaking out of this mess. Maybe we should turn about?”
But when the boy looked over his shoulder, and he said, without thinking. “I don’t know if we can. Where is the path?”
Dapplegrim wheeled around. He snorted. Caewen made a scowling, unhappy face.
“Are the gorse-trees moving?” she said, though it was unclear if she expected an answer.
The boy shook his head, confused. “They can’t be moving. Bushes don’t walk.”
It was Dapplegrim who said, “That’s only mostly true.” He trotted around in a half-circle, and they looked over the walls of gorse needles. The path behind them was closed off, just as if no living creature had ever pushed its way through those spines and barbs.
A while passed. Then Caewen spoke. “Some trees walk,” she whispered, “in places where the green earth is too long undisturbed by footprints of men or beast. A quickness can enter into trees.”
“I met a walking willow once,” said Dapplegrim. “Before your time,” he added, looking at Caewen. “Nattering old chatterbox. And I’ve seen rowans that walk too. And there are mumble-oaks, though they only move about at night when no one is watching. I should tell you a story about them sometime.”
“Assuming we ever get out of here.” Caewen mopped her brow with the back of her hand. She was still unhealthy looking from the weird-workings of the previous days. Her hair was damp and lank. “Let’s push on.”
They did, but it became harder to push through, and several times they were forced back. The needle tips left bloody streaks along Dapplegrim’s flanks. The boy’s ankles were exposed because his trousers were too short and he had only stubby woollen socks that he couldn’t pull up, so he was getting slashed and cut too. He lifted his feet up so that he was crouching–a bit precariously–in the saddle to avoid the gorse-prickles.
They found another path, and worked forward through the ever-narrowing passages between the thorn-walls. Soon the gorse was so thick that the sun was blocked out by the branches above. It was becoming more and more difficult to find any way forward. After ten or so minutes of thrashing through a narrow gap in the gorse they stumbled out into a small grassy clearing that rose slightly above the rest of the landscape.It was not even a hill, but more of a slight bulge of the earth. There were old broken bones scattered in the grass. It seemed to be the remnants of a rider and horse, though the gorse roots plunged through the ribcages of both man and beast, and the human skull was half-hidden a long way under the shadow of one very thick gorse-bush–almost as if it had been dragged there. Spiky tendrils draped across the brow, and roots wrapped around it. It looked for all the world as if the gorse bush had got hold of it, and did not want to let it go.
There was nothing else in the small cleared space except for the dry grass and one very ancient, very dead tree that looked like it might once have been a hawthorn or maybe even a wild apple.
“This doesn’t bode well,” said Caewen.
They cut away to the left, through a gap, and struggled for a long time. They often had to take passages they didn’t want to, simply because any better direction was nothing but a solid wall of hard old spines. All around them, above and below, the gorse flowers were brilliant and yellow, sweet and perfumed. They pushed and worked through the bushes, and they seemed to be making some progress, but then broke out into that same grassy clearing again. The old dead bones lay under the dead tree. A cloud passed over the sun, and the air darkened, until it was sombre and dreary feeling.
The boy could not shake a feeling of strange hopelessness that came over him as he looked on the scattered old bones. The air seemed to swim before him and it seemed like the bright yellow gorse flowers became even brighter until they were like candleflames in a murky grey-green fog. Their smell grew stronger too. “What’s the point? We’re just going to come back here, over and over.”
“No.” Caewen sounded grim. She drew her sword. “No. We’ll cut our way out, and if that doesn’t work we’ll burn a way out. I’ve a flagon of lamp oil. What matter is it, if this is some patch of ill-haunted wood-and-thorn? I swear it’ll burn just as brightly as any other straggle of weedy gorse-bush.”
As soon as she said the word ‘burn’ it was as if a hard squall went through the bushes on all sides, and they bent and swayed as if strong winds were tearing at them, though the air was quite still.
“Hur. I don’t think they liked that… talk of flames and oil…”
“No matter,” Caewen swung down and made towards a larger gap in the gorse with her sword drawn, but it closed right in front of her. The boy found he was hardly able to follow the movement it was so subtle. It seemed like wherever he looked, the movement of the gorse-thorns was everywhere else, and only when he tried to take in the whole picture did he realise how much the bushes had moved to close off the path that had been there.
Caewen moved to attack the gorse with her sword. Watching, it seemed to the boy that the gorse fought back, but again, subtly. There was never a quick or obvious movement of any leaf, branch or thorn. And yet, Caewen’s sword was quickly tangled, and then her feet were entwined and twisted up with thorns too. Dapplegrim seemed to wake from something of a drowsy stupor and yelled, “No!” without warning. He plunged towards Caewen kicking and thrashing and even trying to bite the gorse. The boy clung onto Dapplegrim’s neck, desperately. He realised that he felt strangely and very suddenly awake. Then he realised that the floral perfume in the air was gone. He was painfully alert to everything. It was like being shaken awake after slumbering in a warm pool of water.
All three of them were rapidly encircled in the prickling suffocating gorse. Caewen had disappeared entirely from view, enclosed in the tangle. Dapplegrim was fighting to find her, but the boy could see it was quickly becoming hopeless. He held on, wondering whether he could somehow pull Caewen up into the saddle if they did find her. And then, the strangest thing happened: a cloud of brown and black feathers fluttered around his face and blew into the gorse. The boy couldn’t fathom where they had come. It was as if someone had shaken out a feather pillow over them. Puzzled, he looked up. Perched in the dead tree, using his hands and feet to support himself, was a small boy. He was thin, had a deep, brown skin and eyes that were the same sort of orange you see in owl-eyes sometimes. His hair was wild and tangled, and caught full of feathers. The rest of him was naked, and he made no effort to hide his nakedness at all. It was like the nakedness of a beast: unconscious and blithe. Though it would be a good guess that this strange, brown-skinned child was half-grown to adulthood, he couldn’t have been taller than three foot. His folk must have been quite little when fully grown. There was also a light-boned fragility about him too, as he bobbed in the dead branches. It looked as if a stray wind might tumble him out, and set him drifting over the gorse.
“Hullo. What are you doing?” said the tree-perched child.