I jerked my eyes in its direction.
And felt a wave of faintness sweep over me. Dear gods, I shouldn’t be here, I had no business here, I shouldn’t be seeing this…oh, gods, I was everyone’s doom…had I brought calamity to this ritual as well?
The stag was vanishing.
Curve by curve, line by line. His hindquarters had all gone, and his spine was dissolving as I watched. His back legs were there one moment, and gone the next.
Walter was carving the stag into Jack’s flesh.
And as he did, so the stag disappeared, line by line.
I knew then that I was witnessing the final marriage of Jack to his power and potential as the god of the forests. He was literally absorbing all that Og had been. After this ritual was completed, then so would Jack be absolute.
I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here…
Too late to run away now…
Then a terrible sense of dread permeated my bones.
Something was standing behind me.
I didn’t want to look, but I had to. I couldn’t bear not to know.
I slowly turned my head.
She was standing about ten feet away, barely visible, but there. The despicable, terrible parody of the young woman, hiding her true nature behind that cold mask of beauty.
And then, for the first time in all these years, she spoke.
“Good girl,” she whispered, the patronising bitch. “You’re doing just what is needed.” Her face grimaced in a smile so cold that I cringed and clamped my eyes shut.
When I opened them again, she was gone.
Achingly slowly I looked back into the clearing, sure that all must be staring in my direction.
But no. Walter was still carving into Jack’s shoulders and back, the Lord of the Faerie was now looking at Jack rather than the stag—which was virtually all gone save for his shoulders and head—and Malcolm was studying the bloody tableau at the stump.
I felt frozen, my life stilled. This had been Catling’s plan, that I should be here; perhaps so that my presence should corrupt Jack’s final transformation.
The Lord of the Faerie was leaning down to Jack now, and I barely summoned the interest to keep on watching. He’d taken hold of Jack’s left arm, and was helping Jack to turn over so that he now lay with his bloody, mangled back against the stump.
I saw a glimpse of Jack’s face as he twisted, and it was truly terrible. That he was in agony there could be no doubt, and it appeared as if he could barely control his limbs—the Lord of the Faerie had to grab him at one point to stop him sliding off the stump.
Walter now began to carve into the front of Jack’s shoulders and chest. Walter was doing what all good priests of every religion have done since the beginning of time.
He was acting as a conduit for the god power.
I looked to Jack. He was flexing his legs very slightly up and down, his hips swivelling from side to side, as if he was in so much pain he could barely restrain himself from leaping up from the stump.
I found myself rubbing my own wrists, and wondered that Catling had not thought to wrap me in agony while she was here.
Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to interrupt the ritual taking place within the clearing.
The stag was now reduced to its spread of blood-red antlers, and as I watched even they disappeared.
Walter sighed, blinked, and tossed the scalpel to one side. His shoulders sagged momentarily, then he aided the Lord of the Faerie to pull Jack into a sitting position.
Jack’s entire torso was awash with blood. I could see the darker scoring of the lines Walter had cut into his flesh, but as there was so much blood about I could not make out their pattern.
As if I could not guess what pattern they would make.
I sank as low as I could. My protecting beech and crab apple were in Jack’s direct line of sight, and I was more scared than ever that I would be discovered.
Walter had now picked up a mortar and pestle, and was grinding away at whatever he had in the bowl. Then he set the pestle to one side, scooped up the ground ingredients in his fingers, and started to rub it into Jack’s cut flesh.
Jack cried out, and I winced. He twisted under Walter’s ever-rubbing fingers, but the Lord of the Faerie had him by the upper arms, and Walter continued to work away, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing over Jack’s shoulders, his back, down his chest.
Occasionally a low moan came from Jack’s lips, and his body flinched and shuddered as Walter’s fingers rubbed too deep here and there.
Then Walter stepped back.
“It is done,” he said. “I have made the mark.”
“And the mark has made Jack,” said the Lord of the Faerie.
Malcolm walked forward, and in his hand he had a pristine white towel. He rubbed away, first at Jack’s back, and then his shoulders and chest, removing the worst of the blood. He was not rough, but it could hardly have been a pleasant experience for Jack.
As soon as Malcolm had stepped back, the oncewhite towel now hanging limp and bloodied from his hands, the Lord of the Faerie made as if to help Jack to rise, but Jack shrugged him off irritably.
“I am no cripple,” he said, and he slid his feet down to the grass and stood upright.
He was still directly facing me, and thus I had clear sight of what happened next.
He stood, his head hanging down, his arms limp, his chest and shoulders looking as though they’d been through a mincer, then he shuddered, his arms jerked, and his head snapped up.
His body quivered, and appeared to blur for an instant.
Then, in the silence, I gasped, because his shoulders and chest (and back also, I knew, though I could not see it) completely lost their bloody aspect and appeared as though they were covered with blue-black living lines. I had thought Walter to be carving the image of the stag into Jack’s flesh, but that was not quite so.
I could see elements of the stag in the lines that marked Jack’s shoulders and chest, but there was far more to those lines than just representation.
They lived. They had power of their own.
It was the forest woven into his flesh. And something else, although I could not immediately make it out.
Jack stood, his head cocked very slightly to one side, his entire presence so powerful and so beautiful I could not have looked away even if I had been commanded to do so. He shook his head very slightly, as if to clear it.
“Well?” said the Lord of the Faerie.
Jack straightened, and looked the Lord of the Faerie directly in the eye.
“You were right,” he said, and his voice, although low, seemed to vibrate with…not power—knowledge, maybe. “I feel entire, at home with both myself and the forest. Complete.”
SEVEN
Epping Forest
Sunday, 10th September 1939
The skin about the Lord of the Faerie’s eyes crinkled, the only sign of his deep emotion. “Then I am most pleased for you,” he said, his eyes trailing over Jack’s upper body.
The mark covered Jack’s shoulders (and also running a couple of inches down over the tops of his arms), the top part of his back, and the front of his chest; its wounds had already healed over into faded blue-black slightly raised lines, their meanderings partway between a tattoo and a scar. Although it had been a scant few minutes since Walter had finished, the mark looked as though it had been there for decades, fading into Jack’s flesh as if it were a living part of him.
The Lord of the Faerie ran one of his hands over the markings. “If you look at it one way,” he said softly, “you can see the spread of the stag’s antlers. But if you narrow your eyes and look another way, you can see…” His eyes slid up to meet Jack’s. “Then you can see the Ringwalk. Tell me, Jack, who are you now? Man, or stag? Kingman, or Ringwalker?”
Jack gave a slight smile. He opened his mouth, about to answer, but then he stilled.
His entire being stilled. And then the marks on his body moved slightly. They seemed to blur, and then shift as if rearranging themselves more comfortably, but the movement was so slight that the Lord of the Faerie, watching, was not quite sure if the mark had moved, or if it was his imagination.
Jack lifted his head, and looked towards the eastern edge of the clearing, where stood a great beech and a scrubby crab apple. A moment later he strode over, leaned down, and hauled out a white-faced Grace.