The Martian in the Wood

III

From the beginning the trees seemed to resist her. She thought the thick black trunks were like a crowd of inconsiderate men, their backs turned, through which she had to force her way.

The trees themselves were heavy with age, the squat trunks weighed down by huge branches, and hollowed out by lichen and rot. Branchlets and twigs, gaunt, leafless and tangled, pulled at her coat and scratched her flesh where it was exposed, and snagged on the straps of her backpack. The ground was soft, yielding, a cake of rotting mulch and foul-smelling lichen; it seemed to suck at her feet, and the roots tripped her with malevolent purpose. She quickly tired.

It was dark too, and the last of the December daylight would not last long.

She tried to be systematic. She had brought that pot of paint; with a small brush she dabbed bright yellow splashes on the trunks she passed, every few yards. As she went on, and the dark closed in, she looked back at the line of yellow dots that receded back through the Wood, a track of her footsteps. A way out, and a guide to keep her straight as she pushed on into the Wood.

Which method of navigation worked well enough until she came to the snow.

There had been no snowfall in Holmburgh that winter, not yet. Yet here it was, a scatter of flakes on the ground at first, soon piling up into drifts that would further clog the way. Well, her boots and leggings were reasonably waterproof. She adjusted her gloves, pulled her fur-lined hood around her face, and pushed on, under a big bent branch a little like an archway into winter, and kicked her way through drifts that could be waist high. Still she marked her way with the yellow paint splashes. She knew the Wood was only three miles across – only a mile and a half to the centre. She was making slow progress, she knew, but even so she had no sense that she was nearing the heart of things, let alone emerging from the Wood’s far side. She had her watch, but her sense of time swam; she wished she had written down the precise time she had set off.

Still she pressed on, still she made her marks.

And then, quite suddenly, she came to a clearer space, where twigs and branches had been brushed aside and the snow trampled down, as if by the passage of huge hooved feet. On the trees she saw scrapes on the bark, even lengths of coarse russet hair. It was as if some immense animal, or a herd of them, had pushed through here. At least the ground here was easier to navigate. She stepped cautiously over muddy slush frozen into ridges, following the more open path. The air was colder still, a dry, sucking chill. She tucked her gloved hands under her armpits, her arms wrapped around her torso for a bit of warmth.

Then she saw brightness ahead, beyond the trees. It was as if she was nearing the edge of the Wood, as if the trees were thinning at last. But the light beyond seemed stark, pale grey or white, with none of the muddy green of the English ground that, she knew from her circumnavigations, lay beyond the forest. Not the end of the Wood, but evidently she was coming to the edge of a clearing.

And there, beyond the last trees, before the grey light, huge shadows passed. She heard a soft ripping of turf.

Instinctively cautious, she approached the open space but stayed tucked behind the final screen of trees. And she saw deer.

She thought they were deer. Tremendous animals they were, with muscular torsos and rust-brown hair, and the big males sported sculptures of antlers that must have been ten feet across, chipped and scarred. As this herd moved, slow and graceful as grounded clouds, they worked steadily at the sparse grass that grew here; that was the soft ripping sound she heard. And she smelled their rank animal presence, the dung they dropped.

She cowered back, into the trees, obeying instinct. She had never seen such animals, not in the wild in England, not in any zoo.

The herd did not take long to pass. There were only perhaps a dozen individuals, she saw, including females and a couple of infants, leggy and uncertain. But they had blocked her view of the clearing. When they passed, she expected to see a wall of trees not far beyond.

But the scrubby grass stretched away, into a dense, cold mist that obscured any far side to the clearing, any horizon. More animals were dimly visible through the mist. Great beasts like boulders, wrapped in orange-brown fur. She thought she saw a trunk curl, heard a thin trumpet. And further out, a herd of still more extraordinary animals, though as giant as the rest: massive bodies on quite fine legs, each graceful head with a single horn protruding from the nose. Like beefy unicorns, she thought, and she almost giggled.

But how could this great space be? The whole of this Wood was only a few miles across. She knew that was true. She had walked around it, more than once. Where was this?

A hare popped up, right in front of her, gazing curiously. A very ordinary animal, but pure snow white. Not all the fauna of this place was gigantic, then.

Something broke in her, some dam of composure overwhelmed at last by this flood of sensory experience. Perhaps it was the hare. Gasping, she pushed back into the forest’s shade which, clinging and sinister as it was, seemed almost a comfort after the tremendous vistas beyond the tree line. She could see her paint marks; she could simply run all the way home.

But she made herself stop, think, breathe. She checked her watch. It had stopped. Yet for all the distance she had walked, it still seemed to be early evening. She was looking for her brother, she reminded herself. She had to go on.

But to cross that clearing – even assuming she could find the far side – seemed an unwise course. If the huge deer and storybook unicorns and the rest did not trample her, then the huge cats or other predators which must feed on these archaic giants would target her in their turn.

So she cut sideways, and began to walk around the clearing while staying in the cover of the trees. She remembered how she had circumnavigated the exterior of the Wood; now here she was circling a clearing entirely contained within that same scrap of forest, following a circle that itself seemed much larger than that outer perimeter. “Best not to think about it, Zena,” she told herself, her breath a helmet of mist around her head, her hands and feet growing numb.

She walked on in this fashion until she smelled wood smoke.

She had found another clearing in the Wood, though much smaller than the plain of beasts. This one was dominated by a sandstone bluff, like a tilted block, on top of which only straggled trees had embedded their roots. She could see immediately that the south-facing wall of the bluff offered shelter from the worst of the wind.

This was where the people gathered, near the mouth of a cave, a wind-carved hollow in the rock.

Zena, still in the cover of the trees, crept closer, scarcely daring to breathe. People: they wore bundles of crudely-cut furs, all squatting on the ground, around a heap of old wood that burned fitfully, a tendril of smoke rising up into the cold air.

A slab of meat, a haunch from one of the great animals of the clearing perhaps, lay on top of the fire. More butchered meat lay in the cave, and skins, stripped but bloodied, evidently not yet treated, lay in a neat pile beyond. The sizzle of fat and the rich aroma of the meat made Zena suddenly feel hungry herself. If time was swimming here, how long did her body think it was since lunch?

And the people: she counted eight of them, six men and women, one adolescent, one infant. A small band, a family perhaps. It was hard to judge their height as they sat close together in their circle, swathed in their furs, unstitched wraps that obscured their bodies. She thought the adults were short, stocky, surely no more than five feet tall.

A woman reached over now and began to pluck at the tangled beard of one of the men, picking out bits of meat, what looked like insects. Her wrap fell away, and where her arms were exposed Zena saw how her flesh was scarred with what looked like healed cuts, and a discoloured patch like a burn. And she was muscular, her biceps bulging, like an Olympic shot-putter. The woman’s face, as she worked quite tenderly at the man’s beard and hair, was odd: the nose broad and flattened, the chin receding, the forehead shallow over a heavy brow. Yet she was somehow beautiful, Zena thought. Calm. Strong. Enduring.

Zena watched for a timeless time. They had not noticed her. Occasionally the people spoke, in what sounded like short, sharp sentences.

Then they shifted, as one man left the circle and went behind the rock bluff, perhaps to urinate. Zena was able to see now what the little circle of people had surrounded. In a shallow pit in the ground, scraped out and lined with a kind of bowl of leather, another child lay, a mere infant, unmoving, swaddled in fur. The child, no more than a year old perhaps, was evidently dead, Zena saw immediately, and she thought she could smell a whiff of decay. Yet the little pit was adorned with what looked like trophies: bits of horn and antler, and one complete skull – of a unicorn, she thought, a heavy, horse-like head with a single tusk protruding from the nose.

There was movement from beyond, in the shadows of the cave. Another figure came forward, naked, the body hairless, shivering. He stumbled out of the dark, muttering, and with his hands held out; he seemed to be asking for water. But when he opened his mouth Zena saw he had oddly long teeth – a very carnivorous mouth – a feature that distorted the jaw.

At first, despite the deformed jaw, Zena thought this must be a normal man – normal? of modern appearance, at least – slim, perhaps six feet tall, not stocky like the others but well built: like a rugby player rather than a shot-putter, perhaps. But his forehead was oddly flat, his head misshapen. He seemed injured, his bare skin bruised and scraped, and one leg dragged. Zena was astonished that, naked, he wasn’t disabled by shivering. But his eyes were dull, as if he were concussed.

The group watched him approach, considered his outstretched hands. The adults shared a glance, though no words were spoken. Zena thought she could read their unspoken message. It’s time.

Two of the women lunged at the tall outsider, and wrestled him to the ground. Struggling, he began to scream. Massive fists fell like hammers on an anvil.

And a hand was clamped over Zena’s mouth, and she was dragged back.

A face loomed over her: Nathan’s, of course, gaunt, bearded, caked with dirt and dried blood. He whispered, “If I let you go will you keep quiet?”

She just glared back.

He uncovered her mouth and stepped back cautiously. He was dressed in rags, she saw now, the remains of his clothing supplemented by scraps of fur. He wore his boots, but they had lost their laces – an odd detail. He looked gaunt, wiry, wasted. His face was pale, and seemed to shine in the shade, as if the bone were glowing within.

“Try that again,” she hissed, “and I’ll bite your finger off.”

He grinned. “Isn’t it marvellous, though?”

She longed to punch him. But she turned to look again at the people in the clearing. Nathan had dragged her a little deeper back in the trees, and she had only an occluded view of the camp site under the bluff.

“They accept me,” Nathan said now, peering out as if enviously. “I think. I bring them bits of food I’ve trapped. Hares and such. Once I fixed a spear – set the stone blade back on its shaft with a bit of gum and twine. They do make complex tools, unlike the other fellows – by complex I mean made of more than one thing, stone blade and wooden shaft stuck together, as opposed to just a wooden stick.”

“What other fellows?”

“Him. The tall chap with the bad teeth.”

“Bad teeth? Is that all it is? But the shape of his head… And what of these others?” Their conversation was a thing of urgent whispers. “Since when have we had savages camping out in our Wood, Nathan?”

“Savages?” He grinned, looking feral himself. His gums were bleeding, Zena saw. “Not that. Very sophisticated fellows, these, and very successful – of their time.”

Zena was no expert on prehistory, but she had visited the museums. “I think I know what you mean.”

“Neanderthals,” he whispered, as if in delight. “I think they are Neanderthals. The shape of the skull, the jaw, the squat bodies. The very fact that they are living here, in the cold climate that suits them. It all fits, you see.”

“What climate? Nathan, you know as well as I do – or perhaps you don’t, given the time you’ve spent in here – that Holmburgh hasn’t seen a flake of snow this winter.”

“Not outside,” he said easily. “But here, you see, it’s different. Look – everyone says this bit of forest is a relic of the Ice Age. Beyond the advance of the glaciers, never cleared by the farmers. Isn’t it logical that where a scrap of the Ice Age persists, its denizens might too?”

Zena scoffed. “What, in this bit of wood? And for all this time – what, thirty thousand years? Just eight or ten of them?”

“What’s the alternative? After all they could be self-sufficient in here, in this Wood, a handful of hunters. Generation after generation. You saw the herds – I saw the way you came, past the clearing. The Neanderthals were here a long time before us – three hundred thousand years, the palaeontologists say, expert hunters who roamed all over a frozen Europe. If they always lived in small, scattered bands, like this –”

“It makes no sense,” Zena said, abruptly bewildered by the impossible illogic of this place. “This Wood makes no sense. A three-mile forest that contains a clearing five miles wide, at the minimum. Where it snows only here, and nowhere else. Where relics from thirty thousand years ago live on, and nowhere else.” She looked at her brother. “And what of the storm?”

“Storm?”

“In the summer. The tall structure you saw, the explosion – the multiple lightning strikes…”

But Nathan was paying no attention. He watched, fascinated, as the heavy people subdued the tall, terrified, lone man. “They’re getting ready, Zee-zee. Look, I think we’re watching a sort of funerary rite. They’re honouring the child they lost – I saw it, it got a cough in the autumn, and wasted quickly. And what they will do now – I’ve seen it before… Can’t you feel it? Can’t you sense the rightness of it?”

One of the Neanderthal types, a heavy-set man, was picking up a shard of bone that had been sharpened and chipped to give a kind of serrated edge, like a rough saw. The man on the ground struggled harder, if still feebly, but massive hands held him down in the littered dirt.

“You’ve seen what? What is this, Nathan? What are they going to do?”

He grabbed her arm. “You must stay quiet,” he hissed. “They accept me now. It’s taken me months to achieve that much. And this is where I want to be. Where I must be, with them. Can’t you feel it?”

The trapped man screamed, his voice high, boyish. The Neanderthal lifted his blade.

Again Nathan clamped his hand over Zena’s mouth.

The blade swept with a single rasp across the man’s throat. Blood gushed, the colour a vivid red against the pale ground. As the victim writhed on the floor, the Neanderthals stood back.

Then one heavy-set fellow grabbed the wounded man by the ankles, and lifted him up, with one hand, so he dangled upside down over the bowl where lay the corpse of the child. The man, gurgling, his neck spewing blood, thrashed and struggled still – he was like a landed fish, Zena thought, displayed for the weighing. But a sharp punch to the temple by another of the Neanderthals stilled him. Now the blood simply poured out, like wine from a bottle, into the leather bowl and over the infant corpse.

Zena broke away from her brother and ran. He pursued her, calling her name in urgent whispers, but she evaded him.

When she wrote to Walter about this episode, she omitted the details of her own terrified flight back through the Wood. One can only guess at the fearful struggle through the clinging, suffocating forest – the fragment of relief when one of her own paint marks was found on the bark of a tree, so she knew she was not lost – the tremendous release when she at last burst out of the Wood, in sight of the Lodge itself.

And the shock, which she did report to Walter, of discovering once she got back into the house that only three hours had passed since she had left it.

When Walter received her latest letter, he decided he must visit in person.