A face, there, in the crook of a branch, black, triangular and leering, with slits for eyes and pointed ears sticking up through a thatch of moss-coloured hair.
Gone again. A hoot of high-pitched laughter, like that of a demented child. The wood was still, but for a distant patter like rain on a canopy of leaves. Feet? Impossible to tell. That laughter again, distant this time, merry and disquietening. It faded, and was gone.
He reloaded the shotgun.
—And spun round at the noise, but it was only Cat dumping a dead animal on to the leaves and glaring at the levelled shotgun with eyes narrow in her mired face.
'There was something in the trees,' he told her lamely.
'There are many things in the trees. You can't shoot them all.' She bent and without further ado began cutting into her catch. It was a large piglet, Michael saw, dun-coloured except for black stripes running along its body from nose to tail, He watched in horrified fascination as she slit the throat and held the body up by the hind legs while a thick stream of dark blood gushed out. It had hardly finished steaming on the ground before she sliced into the skin and gralloched the animal, pushing the steaming entrails to one side.
At last she jointed it, licked her fingers, and began to sharpen sticks of firewood.
Breakfast. Somehow the edge of Michael's appetite. had disappeared.
'How did you catch it?'
'Easy.' The fire hissed as she placed thes kewered joints over the flames. 'Their trails are simple to follow, the young as simple to snatch if you are fleet of foot. It is the mother you must beware. They are good mothers, the wild sows.'
'You're a mess.'
'I'm a huntress. Mind the meat, and I will make myself presentable.' She snatched up her shift and made for the stream. His gaze followed her as she went, the tangled hair flowing down to her buttocks, the smooth movement of muscle in her calves, the tight curve of her hip as she knelt by the water.
Behind him the stink of blood and fresh entrails was being drowned by the appetizing odour of roasting pork. He felt hungry again.
Cat was humming as she splashed, a dark sound, sweet as honey. The tune he had once heard being sung in the wood at home. He grimaced. She was rubbing a handful of green leaves over her arms, breasts, belly and thighs, crushing them to the skin. He looked away, swallowed, and twitched his trousers into a more comfortable position.
When she rejoined him, dressed and wet-haired, he had to sniff at her to confirm the smell he had caught over the roasting meat. 'Chewing gum!'
She shook her head. 'Mint leaves. I found a few along the boar track, faded by the season but still with some goodness in them. See?' She thrust a forearm under his nose and he breathed in the tang of spearmint along with the slight woman smell that underlay it. He kissed the forearm and she laughed, then began retrieving pork from the flames.
It was black and seared on the outside, white underneath and pink at its heart. They chewed in silence, their faces smeared with grease, juggling the hotter pieces in singed fingers.
'Tell me about the things in the wood,' Michael said when they had finished gorging themselves.
She sucked grease off her fingers and wiped them on her filthy shift. Once white, it was now the colour of beech bark.
'People fear the wood. Your kind of people. They build barricades to keep it out and burn the trees so the branches will not touch their houses. They stick up crosses everywhere to keep off the beasts, and never venture out after dark. They grow crops and herd animals, build things and haggle over money. But there are others. The tribes, the wanderers who roam the forest at will, setting up a village here and there for a few days, a week, a year, and then moving on. They build huts, fish the streams, hunt the boar and wolf. Live free.'
'Like you.'
She frowned. 'Not like me. They are people, you see.'
'So what are you?'
'A fairy.' She struck a pose.
'You're no fairy. Fairies are tiny, with wings and such.'
'Ach, what do you know? And there are the other folk, the tree folk who keep to themselves, helping or hindering as they please. And the trolls, of course. Wood trolls, stone trolls, good and bad. Odd things, half beast. The forest is alive with them at night. That is when they hunt. In the day they are stones or tree stumps.'
'Who is the Horseman?'
She fired a black-browed stare at him. 'The Devil. He seeks souls. The black wolves follow him sometimes, and the manwolves.'
'Manwolves? Werewolves, you mean?'
'Whatever. They are the worst of the beasts. They carry disease with them and increase their numbers with infection when they've a mind to. Terrible things.'
'One came after us.'
She nodded. 'Terrible things. Servants of Satan, the village folk call them, They steal babies and drink blood. And then there is the forest itself. It knows things. It lives just as we do, and remembers all that it sees.' She paused, looking up at the kaleidoscope of branches above. 'I love the forest.'