The Book of Lost Things (2006) Read online

  “It’s chocolate,” he exclaimed. “And gingerbread.”

  He broke off a larger piece and was about to taste it when the Woodsman knocked it from his hands.

  “No,” he said. “It may look and smell sweet, but it hides its own poison yet.”

  And he told David another story.

  The Woodsman’s Second Tale

  Once upon a time, there were two children, a boy and a girl. Their father died and their mother married again, but their stepfather was an evil man. He hated the children and resented their presence in his home. He came to despise them even more when the crops failed and famine came, for they ate valuable food, food that he would rather have kept for himself. He begrudged them every meager bite that he was forced to give them, and as his own hunger grew, he began to suggest to his wife that they might eat the children and thereby save themselves from death, for she could always give birth to more children when times improved. His wife was horrified, and she feared what her new husband might do to them when her back was turned. Yet she realized that she could no longer afford to feed them herself, so she took them deep, deep into the forest, and there she abandoned them to fend for themselves.

  The children were very frightened, and they cried themselves to sleep that first night, but in time they grew to understand the forest. The girl was wiser and stronger than her brother, and it was she who learned to trap small animals and birds, and to steal eggs from nests. The boy preferred to wander or to daydream, waiting for his sister to provide whatever she could catch to feed them both. He missed his mother and wanted to return to her. Some days he did nothing but cry from dawn until dusk. He desired his old life back, and he made no effort to embrace the new.

  One day, he did not return when his sister called his name. She went in search of him, leaving a trail of blossoms behind her so that she would be able to find her way back to their little supply of food, until she came to the edge of a small clearing, and there she saw the most extraordinary house. Its walls were made of chocolate and gingerbread. Its roof was slated with slabs of toffee, and the glass in its windows was formed from clear sugar. Embedded in its walls were almonds and fudge and candied fruits. Everything about it spoke of sweetness and indulgence. Her brother was picking nuts from the walls when she found him, and his mouth was dark with chocolate.

  “Don’t worry, there’s nobody home,” he said. “Try it. It’s delicious.”

  He held out a piece of chocolate to her, but she did not take it at first. Her brother’s eyelids were half closed, so overcome was he by the wonderful taste of the house. His sister tried to open the door, but it was locked. She peered through the glass, but the curtains were drawn and she could not see inside. She did not want to eat, for something about the house made her uneasy, but the smell of the chocolate was too much for her, and she allowed herself to nibble on a piece. It tasted even better than she had imagined, and her stomach cried out for more. So she joined her brother, and together they ate and ate until they had consumed so much that, in time, they fell into a deep sleep.

  When they awoke, they were no longer lying on the grass beneath the trees of the forest. Instead, they were inside the house, trapped in a cage that hung from the ceiling. A woman was fueling an oven with logs. She was old and foul-smelling. Piles of bones lay stacked on the floor by her feet, the remains of the other children who had fallen prey to her.

  “Fresh meat!” she whispered to herself. “Fresh meat for old Gammer’s oven!”

  The little boy began to cry, but his sister hushed him. The woman came to them and peered at them through the bars of the cage. Her face was covered with black warts, and her teeth were worn and crooked like old gravestones.

  “Now which of you will be first?” she asked.

  The boy tried to hide his face, as though by doing so he might avoid the attentions of the old woman. But his sister was braver.

  “Take me,” she said. “I am plumper than my brother, and will make a better roast for you. While you eat me you can fatten him up, so that he will feed you for longer when you cook him.”

  The old woman cackled with joy.

  “Clever girl,” she cried. “Although not so clever as to avoid Gammer’s plate.”

  She opened the cage and reached in, grabbing the girl by the scruff of the neck and dragging her out. Then she locked the cage once again and brought the girl to the oven. It was not yet hot enough, but it soon would be.

  “I will never fit in there,” said the girl. “It’s too small.”

  “Nonsense,” said the old woman. “I’ve put bigger than you in there, and they’ve cooked just fine.”

  The girl looked doubtful. “But I have long limbs, and fat upon them. No, I will never manage to get into that oven. And if you do squeeze me in, you’ll never get me out again.”

  The old woman took the girl by the shoulders and shook her. “I was wrong about you,” she said. “You’re an ignorant, foolish girl. Look, I’ll show you how big this oven is.”

  She climbed up and stuck her head and shoulders into the mouth of the oven.

  “See?” she said, and her voice echoed within. “There’s room to spare for me, let alone a girl like you.”

  The little girl ran at her and with a great push she shoved her into the oven and slammed the door closed. The old woman tried to kick it open again, but the girl was too quick for her, slamming the bolt on it (for the old woman did not want a child to break free once the roasting had begun) and leaving her trapped inside. Then she fed more logs to the fire, and slowly the old woman began to cook, all the time screaming and wailing and threatening the girl with the most awful of tortures. So hot was the oven that the fats of her body began to melt, creating a stench so terrible that the little girl felt ill. Still the old woman fought, even as her skin parted from her flesh, and her flesh from her bones, until at last she died. Then the little girl drew wood from the fire and scattered burning logs around the cottage. She led her brother away by the hand as the house melted behind them, leaving only the chimney standing tall, and they never went back there again.

  In the months that followed, the girl grew happier and happier in the forest. She built a shelter, and over time the shelter became a little house. She learned to fend for herself, and as the days went by she thought less and less of her old life. But her brother was never happy and yearned always to be back with his mother. After a year and a day, he left his sister and returned to his old home, but by then his mother and his stepfather were long gone, and no one could tell him where they were. He came back to the forest, but not to his sister, for he was jealous and resentful of her. Instead, he found a path in the woods that was well-tended and cleared of roots and briars, the bushes beside it thick with juicy berries. He followed it, eating some of the berries as he went, never noticing that the path behind him was disappearing with every step that he took.

  And after a time he came to a clearing, and in the clearing was a pretty little house, with ivy on the walls and flowers by the door and a trail of smoke rising from its chimney. He smelled bread baking, and a cake lay cooling on the windowsill. A woman appeared at the door, bright and merry, as his mother had once been. She waved to him, inviting him to come to her, and he did.

  “Come in, come in,” she said. “You look tired, and berries are not enough to fill a growing boy. I have food roasting over the fire, and a soft place for you to rest. Stay as long as you wish, for I have no children, and have long wanted a son to call my own.”

  The boy cast the berries aside as the path behind him vanished forever, and he followed the woman into the house, where a great cauldron bubbled on the fire and a sharp knife lay waiting on the butcher’s block.

  And he was never seen again.

  XII

  Of Bridges and Riddles,

  and the Many Unappealing

  Characteristics of Trolls

  THE LIGHT was changing as the Woodsman’s story ended. He looked up at the sky, as if in hope that darkness might be
held back for a little longer, and suddenly he stopped walking. David followed his gaze. Above their heads, just at the level of the forest’s crown, David saw a black shape circling and thought that he heard a distant cawing.

  “Damnation,” hissed the Woodsman.

  “What is it?” asked David.

  “A raven.”

  The Woodsman removed his bow from his back and notched an arrow to its string. He knelt, sighted, then released the arrow. His aim was true. The raven jerked in the air as the arrow pierced its body, then tumbled to the ground not far from where David stood. It was dead, the point of the arrow red with its blood.

  “Foul bird,” said the Woodsman, as he lifted the corpse and pulled the arrow through its body.

  “Why did you kill it?” asked David.

  “The raven and the wolf hunt together. This one was leading the pack to us. They would have fed our eyes to it as its reward.”

  He looked back in the direction they had come.

  “They will have to rely on scent alone now, but they are closing on us, make no mistake. We must hurry.”

  They continued on their way, moving now at a slight trot, as though they themselves were tired wolves at the end of a hunt, until they reached the edge of the forest and emerged onto a high plateau. Ahead of them lay a great chasm, hundreds of feet deep and a quarter of a mile wide. A river, thin as a length of silver thread, wound through it, and David heard the cries of what might have been birds echoing from the canyon’s walls. Carefully, he peered over the edge of the crevasse in the hope of getting a better look at what was making the noise. He saw a shape, much larger than any bird that he had ever seen, gliding through the air, supported by the updrafts from the canyon. It had bare, almost human legs, although its toes were strangely elongated and curved like an eagle’s talons. Its arms were outstretched, and from them hung the great folds of skin that served as its wings. Its long white hair flowed in the wind, and as David listened, he heard it start to sing. The creature’s voice was very high and very beautiful, and its words were clear to him:

  What falls is food,

  What drops will die,

  Where lives the Brood,

  Birds fear to fly.

  Its song was taken up and echoed by other voices, and David could make out many more of the creatures moving through the canyon. The one nearest to him performed a loop in the air, at once both graceful and strangely menacing, and David glimpsed its naked body. He looked away immediately, ashamed and embarrassed.

  It had a female form: old, and with scales instead of skin, yet still female for all that. He risked another look and saw the creature descending now in diminishing circles, until suddenly its wings folded in, streamlining its form, and it fell rapidly, its clawed feet extended as it seemed to head directly for the canyon wall. It struck the stone, and David saw something struggle in its claws: it was a little brown mammal of some kind, scarcely bigger than a squirrel. Its paws flailed at the air as it was plucked from the rocks. Its captor changed direction and headed for an outcrop beneath David in order to feed, shrieking in triumph. Some of its rivals, alerted by its cries, approached in the hope of stealing its meal, but it struck at the air with its wings in warning and they drifted away. David had an opportunity to examine its face as it hovered: it resembled a woman’s but was longer and thinner, with a lipless mouth that left its sharp teeth permanently exposed. Now those teeth tore into its prey, ripping great chunks of bloody fur from its body as it fed.

  “The Brood,” said the Woodsman from nearby. “Another new evil that blights this part of the kingdom.”

  “Harpies,” said David.

  “You’ve seen such creatures before?” asked the Woodsman.

  “No,” said David. “Not really.”

  But I’ve read about them. I’ve seen them in my book of Greek myths. For some reason, I don’t think they belong in this story, yet here they are…

  David felt ill. He moved away from the edge of the canyon, which was so deep that it gave him vertigo. “How do we get across?” he asked.

  “There is a bridge about a half mile downriver,” said the Woodsman. “We’ll make it before the light fades.”

  He led David along the canyon, keeping close to the edge of the forest so that there was no danger of them losing their footing and falling into that awful abyss where the Brood waited. David could hear the beating of their wings and, on more than one occasion, he thought he saw one of the creatures briefly ascend above the rim of the canyon and regard them balefully.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said the Woodsman. “They are cowardly things. Were you to fall, they would pluck you from the air and tear you apart as they fought over you, but they would not dare to attack you on the ground.”

  David nodded, but he did not feel reassured. In this land, it seemed that hunger inevitably overwhelmed cowardice, and the harpies of the Brood, as thin and emaciated as the wolves, looked very hungry indeed.

  After they had walked for a little while, their footsteps echoed by the beating of the harpies’ wings, they saw a pair of bridges spanning the gorge. The bridges were identical. They were made from rope, with uneven slats of wood for the base, and they did not look terribly safe to David.

  The Woodsman stared at them in puzzlement. “Two bridges,” he said. “There was only ever one bridge at this spot.”

  “Well,” said David, matter-of-factly, “now there are two.” It didn’t seem like such a terrible imposition to have a choice of two ways to cross. Perhaps this was a busy spot. After all, there didn’t seem to be any other way to get across the chasm, unless you were able to fly and were prepared to take your chances with the harpies.

  He heard flies buzzing nearby and followed the Woodsman to a small hollow just out of sight of the chasm. The remains of a cottage and some stables stood there, but it was clear that the property was deserted. Outside one of the stables lay the carcass of a horse, most of the meat already picked from its bones. David watched as the Woodsman peered into the stables, then looked through the open doorway of the house itself. With his head lowered, he walked back to David.

  “The horse dealer is gone,” he said. “It looks as if he fled with whatever horses survived.”

  “The wolves?” asked David.

  “No, something else did this.”

  They returned to the chasm. One of the harpies hung in the air nearby, watching them, her wings beating a fast cadence to keep her in place. She stayed in that position for just an instant too long, for suddenly her body spasmed and the barbed silver tip of a harpoon shot through her chest, a length of rope anchoring the shaft to a point lower down on the canyon wall. The harpy grasped the harpoon, as if she could somehow wrest her body from it and escape, but then the beating of her wings began to fail and she plummeted down, twisting and turning until the rope reached the end of its length and she was brought up short, her corpse striking against the rock with a dull, thudding sound. From the edge of the chasm, David and the Woodsman watched the dead harpy being hauled up toward a hollow in the wall, the barbs of the harpoon preventing the corpse from sliding off. Finally, the body reached the entrance to the cave and was pulled inside.

  “Ugh,” said David.

  “Trolls,” said the Woodsman. “That explains the second bridge.”

  He approached the twin structures. Between them was a slab of stone into which words had been laboriously, if crudely, carved:

  One lies in truth,

  One’s truth is lies.

  One path is death,

  One path is life.

  One question asked,

  The path to guide.

  “It’s a riddle,” said David.

  “But what does it mean?” asked the Woodsman.

  The answer quickly became apparent. David had never imagined that he might see a troll, although he had always been fascinated by them. In his mind, they existed as shadowy figures who dwelled beneath bridges, testing travelers in the hope of eating them when they failed. The fig
ures that climbed over the lip of the canyon, flaming torches in their hands, were not quite what he had expected. They were smaller than the Woodsman but very broad, and their skin was like that of an elephant, tough and wrinkled. Raised plates of bone, like those on the backs of some dinosaurs, ran along their spines, but their faces were similar to those of apes; very ugly apes, admittedly, and ones that seemed to be suffering from severe acne, but apes nonetheless. Each troll took up a position in front of one of the bridges and smiled grimly. They had small red eyes that glowed sinisterly in the gathering darkness.

  “Two bridges, and two paths,” said David. He was thinking aloud, but he caught himself before he gave anything away to the two trolls and resolved to keep his thoughts to himself until he had come to some conclusion. The trolls already had all the advantages. He didn’t want to give them any more.

  The riddle clearly meant that one bridge was unsafe, and to take it would lead to death, at the hands of either the harpies or the trolls themselves, or, assuming both parties failed to act quickly enough, by falling a very long distance and landing hard on the ground below. Actually, David thought both bridges looked pretty ramshackle, but he had to assume that the riddle had some truth to it, otherwise, well, there was hardly any point in having a riddle at all.