He still thinks of her, and he’s never going to love you the way he loved her, not ever. It doesn’t matter what you do or what you say. He still loves her. He. Still. Loves.
Rose hit him. She struck him on the cheek with the palm of her hand. It wasn’t a hard slap, and she pulled the blow as soon as she realized what she was doing, but the impact was still enough to rock David on his heels. His cheek smarted, and his eyes watered. He stood, openmouthed with shock, then brushed past Rose and ran to his room. He didn’t look back, not even when she called after him and said that she was sorry. He locked the door behind him and refused to open it to her when she knocked on it. After a while, she went away and did not return.
David stayed in his room until his father came home. He heard Rose speak to him in the hallway. His father’s voice grew louder. Rose tried to calm him down. There were footsteps on the stairs. David knew what was coming.
The door to his room was almost blown off its hinges by the force of his father’s fists upon it.
“David, open this door. Open it now.”
David did as he was told, turning the key once in the lock, then stepped back hurriedly as his father entered. His father’s face was almost purple with fury. He raised his hand as if to hit David, then seemed to think better of it. He swallowed once, took a deep breath, then shook his head. When he spoke again, his voice was strangely calm, which worried David more than the previous show of anger.
“You have no right to speak to Rose in that way,” said his father. “You will show respect to her, just as you show respect to me. Things have been hard for all of us, but that does not excuse your behavior today. I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do with you, or how you’re to be punished. If it wasn’t already too late, I’d pack you off to boarding school and then you’d realize just how fortunate you are to be here.”
David tried to speak. “But Rose hi—”
His father raised his hand. “I don’t want to hear about it. If you open your mouth again, it will go hard with you. For now you will stay in your room. You will not go outside tomorrow. You will not read and you will not play with your toys. Your door will remain open and if I catch you reading or playing then, so help me, I will take a belt to you. You will sit there on your bed and you will think about what you said and about how you’re going to make it up to Rose when you’re eventually allowed to return to life with civilized people. I’m disappointed in you, David. I brought you up to behave better than that. We both did, your mum and I.”
With that, he left. David sank back on his bed. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t stop himself. It wasn’t fair. He had been wrong to talk to Rose that way, but she had been wrong to hit him. As his tears fell, he became aware of the murmuring of the books on the shelves. He had grown so used to it that he had almost ceased to notice it, like birdsong or the wind in the trees, but now it was growing louder and louder. A burning smell came to him, like matches igniting and tram wires sparking. He clenched his teeth as the first spasm came, but there was nobody to witness it. A great fissure appeared in his room, ripping apart the fabric of this world, and he saw another realm beyond. There was a castle, with banners waving from its battlements and soldiers marching in columns through its gates. Then that castle was gone and another took its place, this one surrounded by fallen trees. It was darker than the first, its shape unclear, and it was dominated by a single great tower that pointed like a finger toward the sky. Its topmost window was lit, and David felt a presence there. It was at once both strange and familiar. It called to him in his mother’s voice. It said:
David, I am not dead. Come to me, and save me.
David did not know how long he had been unconscious, or if sleep had at some point taken over, but his room was dark when he opened his eyes. There was a foul taste in his mouth, and he realized that he had been sick on his pillow. He wanted to go to his father and tell him of the attack, but he felt certain there would be little sympathy for him from that quarter. There was not a sound to be heard in the house, so he assumed everyone was in bed. The waiting moon shone upon the rows of books, but they were now quiet again, apart from the occasional snore that arose from the duller, more boring volumes. There was a history of the coal board, abandoned and unloved upon a high shelf, that was particularly uninteresting and had the nasty habit of snoring very loudly and then coughing thunderously, at which point small clouds of black dust would appear to rise from its pages. David heard it cough now, but he was aware of a certain wakefulness among some of the older books, the ones that contained the strange, dark fairy stories he loved so much. He sensed that they were waiting for an event to occur, although he could not tell what it might be.
David was certain that he had been dreaming, although he could not quite recall the substance of the dream. Of one thing he was sure: the dream had not been a pleasant one, but all that remained was a lingering feeling of unease and a tingling on the palm of his right hand, as though it had been stroked with poison ivy. There was the same sensation on the side of his face, and he could not shake off the feeling that something unpleasant had touched him while he was lost to the world.
He was still wearing his day clothes. He climbed out of bed and undressed in the dark, changing into clean pajamas. He returned to his bed and wrestled with his pillow, turning this way and that in an effort to find a comfortable position in which to go to sleep, but no rest came. As he lay with his eyes closed, he noticed that his window was open. He didn’t like it to be open. It was hard enough to keep the insects out even when it was closed, and the last thing he wanted was for the magpie to return while he was sleeping.
David left his bed and carefully approached the window. Something curled over his bare foot, and he raised it in shock. It was a tendril of ivy. There were shoots of it along the inner wall, and green fingers extended over the wardrobe and the carpet and the chest of drawers. He had spoken to Mr. Briggs about it, and the gardener had promised to get a ladder and trim back the ivy from the outside wall, but so far that hadn’t happened. David didn’t like touching the ivy. The way it was encroaching on his room made it seem almost alive.
David found his slippers and placed them on his feet before walking across the ivy to the glass. As he did so, he heard a woman’s voice speak his name.
“David.”
“Mum?” he asked uncertainly.
“Yes, David, it’s me. Listen. Don’t be afraid.”
But David was afraid.
“Please,” said the voice. “I need your help. I’m trapped in here. I’m trapped in this strange place and I don’t know what to do. Please come, David. If you love me, come across.”
“Mum,” he said. “I’m frightened.”
The voice spoke again, but it was fainter now.
“David,” it said, “they’re taking me away. Don’t let them take me from you. Please! Follow me, and bring me home. Follow me through the garden.”
And with that, David overcame his fear. He grabbed his dressing gown and ran, as quickly and as quietly as he could, down the stairs and out onto the grass. He paused in the darkness. There was a disturbance in the night sky, a low, irregular put-putting noise that came from high above. David looked up and saw something glowing faintly, like a meteor falling. It was an airplane. He kept the light in view until he came to the steps that led into the sunken garden, taking them as fast as he could. He didn’t want to pause, because if he paused he might think about what he was going to do, and if he began thinking about it, he might become too afraid to do it. He felt the grass crumple beneath his feet as he ran to the hole in the wall, even as the light in the sky grew brighter. The plane was now flaming redly, and the noise of its sputtering engines tore through the night. David stopped and watched it descend. It was dropping fast, shedding burning shards as it came. It was too big to be a fighter. This was a bomber. He thought he could make out the shape of its wings lit by fire and hear the desperate thrumming of the remaining engines as the plane fell to earth. It grew larger and larger, until at last it seemed to fill the sky, dwarfing their house, lighting up the night with red and orange fire. It was heading straight for the sunken garden, flames licking at the German cross on its fuselage, as though something in the heavens above was determined to stop David from moving between realms.
The choice had been made for him. David could not hesitate. He forced himself through the gap in the wall and into the darkness just as the world that he had left behind became an inferno.
VII. Of the Woodsman and the Work of His Ax
