All this time, as I went through the wood, I was haunted with the feeling that other shapes, more like my own size and mien, were moving about at a little distance on all sides of me. But as yet I could discern none of them, although the moon was high enough to send a great many of her rays down between the trees, and these rays were unusually bright, and sight-giving, notwithstanding she was only a half-moon. I constantly imagined, however, that forms were visible in all directions except that to which my gaze was turned; and that they only became invisible, or resolved themselves into other woodland shapes, the moment my looks were directed towards them. However this may have been, except for this feeling of presence, the woods seemed utterly bare of anything like human companionship, although my glance often fell on some object which I fancied to be a human form; for I soon found that I was quite deceived; as, the moment I fixed my regard on it, it showed plainly that it was a bush, or a tree, or a rock.
Soon a vague sense of discomfort possessed me. With variations of relief, this gradually increased; as if some evil thing were wandering about in my neighbourhood, sometimes nearer and sometimes further off, but still approaching. The feeling continued and deepened, until all my pleasure in the shows of various kinds that everywhere betokened the presence of the merry fairies vanished by degrees, and left me full of anxiety and fear, which I was unable to associate with any definite object whatever. At length the thought crossed my mind with horror: “Can it be possible that the Ash is looking for me? Or that, in his nightly wanderings, his path is gradually verging towards mine?” I comforted myself, however, by remembering that he had started quite in another direction; one that would lead him, if he kept it, far apart from me; especially as, for the last two or three hours, I had been diligently journeying eastward. I kept on my way, therefore, striving by direct effort of the will against the encroaching fear; and to this end occupying my mind, as much as I could, with other thoughts. I was so far successful that, although I was conscious, if I yielded for a moment, I should be almost overwhelmed with horror, I was yet able to walk right on for an hour or more. What I feared I could not tell. Indeed, I was left in a state of the vaguest uncertainty as regarded the nature of my enemy, and knew not the mode or object of his attacks; for, somehow or other, none of my questions had succeeded in drawing a definite answer from the dame in the cottage. How then to defend myself I knew not; nor even by what sign I might with certainty recognise the presence of my foe; for as yet this vague though powerful fear was all the indication of danger I had. To add to my distress, the clouds in the west had risen nearly to the top of the skies, and they and the moon were travelling slowly towards each other. Indeed, some of their advanced guard had already met her, and she had begun to wade through a filmy vapour that gradually deepened.
At length she was for a moment almost entirely obscured. When she shone out again, with a brilliancy increased by the contrast, I saw plainly on the path before me—from around which at this spot the trees receded, leaving a small space of green sward—the shadow of a large hand, with knotty joints and protuberances here and there. Especially I remarked, even in the midst of my fear, the bulbous points of the fingers. I looked hurriedly all around, but could see nothing from which such a shadow should fall. Now, however, that I had a direction, however undetermined, in which to project my apprehension, the very sense of danger and need of action overcame that stifling which is the worst property of fear. I reflected in a moment, that if this were indeed a shadow, it was useless to look for the object that cast it in any other direction than between the shadow and the moon. I looked, and peered, and intensified my vision, all to no purpose. I could see nothing of that kind, not even an ash-tree in the neighbourhood. Still the shadow remained; not steady, but moving to and fro, and once I saw the fingers close, and grind themselves close, like the claws of a wild animal, as if in uncontrollable longing for some anticipated prey.
There seemed but one mode left of discovering the substance of this shadow. I went forward boldly, though with an inward shudder which I would not heed, to the spot where the shadow lay, threw myself on the ground, laid my head within the form of the hand, and turned my eyes towards the moon Good heavens! what did I see? I wonder that ever I arose, and that the very shadow of the hand did not hold me where I lay until fear had frozen my brain. I saw the strangest figure; vague, shadowy, almost transparent, in the central parts, and gradually deepening in substance towards the outside, until it ended in extremities capable of casting such a shadow as fell from the hand, through the awful fingers of which I now saw the moon. The hand was uplifted in the attitude of a paw about to strike its prey. But the face, which throbbed with fluctuating and pulsatory visibility—not from changes in the light it reflected, but from changes in its own conditions of reflecting power, the alterations being from within, not from without—it was horrible. I do not know how to describe it. It caused a new sensation. Just as one cannot translate a horrible odour, or a ghastly pain, or a fearful sound, into words, so I cannot describe this new form of awful hideousness. I can only try to describe something that is not it, but seems somewhat parallel to it; or at least is suggested by it. It reminded me of what I had heard of vampires; for the face resembled that of a corpse more than anything else I can think of; especially when I can conceive such a face in motion, but not suggesting any life as the source of the motion. The features were rather handsome than otherwise, except the mouth, which had scarcely a curve in it. The lips were of equal thickness; but the thickness was not at all remarkable, even although they looked slightly swollen. They seemed fixedly open, but were not wide apart. Of course I did not remark these lineaments at the time: I was too horrified for that. I noted them afterwards, when the form returned on my inward sight with a vividness too intense to admit of my doubting the accuracy of the reflex. But the most awful of the features were the eyes. These were alive, yet not with life.
They seemed lighted up with an infinite greed. A gnawing voracity, which devoured the devourer, seemed to be the indwelling and propelling power of the whole ghostly apparition. I lay for a few moments simply imbruted with terror; when another cloud, obscuring the moon, delivered me from the immediately paralysing effects of the presence to the vision of the object of horror, while it added the force of imagination to the power of fear within me; inasmuch as, knowing far worse cause for apprehension than before, I remained equally ignorant from what I had to defend myself, or how to take any precautions: he might be upon me in the darkness any moment. I sprang to my feet, and sped I knew not whither, only away from the spectre. I thought no longer of the path, and often narrowly escaped dashing myself against a tree, in my headlong flight of fear.
Great drops of rain began to patter on the leaves. Thunder began to mutter, then growl in the distance. I ran on. The rain fell heavier. At length the thick leaves could hold it up no longer; and, like a second firmament, they poured their torrents on the earth. I was soon drenched, but that was nothing. I came to a small swollen stream that rushed through the woods. I had a vague hope that if I crossed this stream, I should be in safety from my pursuer; but I soon found that my hope was as false as it was vague. I dashed across the stream, ascended a rising ground, and reached a more open space, where stood only great trees. Through them I directed my way, holding eastward as nearly as I could guess, but not at all certain that I was not moving in an opposite direction. My mind was just reviving a little from its extreme terror, when, suddenly, a flash of lightning, or rather a cataract of successive flashes, behind me, seemed to throw on the ground in front of me, but far more faintly than before, from the extent of the source of the light, the shadow of the same horrible hand. I sprang forward, stung to yet wilder speed; but had not run many steps before my foot slipped, and, vainly attempting to recover myself, I fell at the foot of one of the large trees. Half-stunned, I yet raised myself, and almost involuntarily looked back. All I saw was the hand within three feet of my face. But, at the same moment, I felt two large soft arms thrown round me from behind; and a voice like a woman’s said: “Do not fear the goblin; he dares not hurt you now.” With that, the hand was suddenly withdrawn as from a fire, and disappeared in the darkness and the rain. Overcome with the mingling of terror and joy, I lay for some time almost insensible. The first thing I remember is the sound of a voice above me, full and low, and strangely reminding me of the sound of a gentle wind amidst the leaves of a great tree. It murmured over and over again: “I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree.” I found I was seated on the ground, leaning against a human form, and supported still by the arms around me, which I knew to be those of a woman who must be rather above the human size, and largely proportioned. I turned my head, but without moving otherwise, for I feared lest the arms should untwine themselves; and clear, somewhat mournful eyes met mine. At least that is how they impressed me; but I could see very little of colour or outline as we sat in the dark and rainy shadow of the tree. The face seemed very lovely, and solemn from its stillness; with the aspect of one who is quite content, but waiting for something. I saw my conjecture from her arms was correct: she was above the human scale throughout, but not greatly.
“Why do you call yourself a beech-tree?” I said.
“Because I am one,” she replied, in the same low, musical, murmuring voice.
“You are a woman,” I returned.
“Do you think so? Am I very like a woman then?”
“You are a very beautiful woman. Is it possible you should not know it?”
“I am very glad you think so. I fancy I feel like a woman sometimes. I do so to-night—and always when the rain drips from my hair. For there is an old prophecy in our woods that one day we shall all be men and women like you. Do you know anything about it in your region? Shall I be very happy when I am a woman? I fear not, for it is always in nights like these that I feel like one. But I long to be a woman for all that.”
I had let her talk on, for her voice was like a solution of all musical sounds. I now told her that I could hardly say whether women were happy or not. I knew one who had not been happy; and for my part, I had often longed for Fairy Land, as she now longed for the world of men. But then neither of us had lived long, and perhaps people grew happier as they grew older. Only I doubted it.
I could not help sighing. She felt the sigh, for her arms were still round me. She asked me how old I was.
“Twenty-one,” said I.
“Why, you baby!” said she, and kissed me with the sweetest kiss of winds and odours. There was a cool faithfulness in the kiss that revived my heart wonderfully. I felt that I feared the dreadful Ash no more.
“What did the horrible Ash want with me?” I said.
“I am not quite sure, but I think he wants to bury you at the foot of his tree. But he shall not touch you, my child.”
“Are all the ash-trees as dreadful as he?”
“Oh, no. They are all disagreeable selfish creatures—(what horrid men they will make, if it be true!)—but this one has a hole in his heart that nobody knows of but one or two; and he is always trying to fill it up, but he cannot. That must be what he wanted you for. I wonder if he will ever be a man. If he is, I hope they will kill him.”
“How kind of you to save me from him!”
“I will take care that he shall not come near you again. But there are some in the wood more like me, from whom, alas! I cannot protect you. Only if you see any of them very beautiful, try to walk round them.”
“What then?”
“I cannot tell you more. But now I must tie some of my hair about you, and then the Ash will not touch you. Here, cut some off. You men have strange cutting things about you.”
She shook her long hair loose over me, never moving her arms.
“I cannot cut your beautiful hair. It would be a shame.”
“Not cut my hair! It will have grown long enough before any is wanted again in this wild forest. Perhaps it may never be of any use again—not till I am a woman.” And she sighed.
As gently as I could, I cut with a knife a long tress of flowing, dark hair, she hanging her beautiful head over me. When I had finished, she shuddered and breathed deep, as one does when an acute pain, steadfastly endured without sign of suffering, is at length relaxed. She then took the hair and tied it round me, singing a strange, sweet song, which I could not understand, but which left in me a feeling like this—
I saw thee ne’er before;
I see thee never more;
But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,
Have made thee mine, till all my years are done.
I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me again, and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light wind that had arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a trance of still delight. It told me the secret of the woods, and the flowers, and the birds. At one time I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests, over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things—I had almost said creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers at every turn. At another, I lay half dreaming in the hot summer noon, with a book of old tales beside me, beneath a great beech; or, in autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered me, and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of decay; or, in a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I went home to a warm fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs to the cold, snowy moon, with her opal zone around her. At last I had fallen asleep; for I know nothing more that passed till I found myself lying under a superb beech-tree, in the clear light of the morning, just before sunrise. Around me was a girdle of fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought nothing with me out of Fairy Land, but memories—memories. The great boughs of the beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth stem, with its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like undeveloped limbs. The leaves and branches above kept on the song which had sung me asleep; only now, to my mind, it sounded like a farewell and a speedwell. I sat a long time, unwilling to go; but my unfinished story urged me on. I must act and wander. With the sun well risen, I rose, and put my arms as far as they would reach around the beech-tree, and kissed it, and said good-bye. A trembling went through the leaves; a few of the last drops of the night’s rain fell from off them at my feet; and as I walked slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the words: “I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree.”
Interview: Simon Morden
Simon Morden’s Metrozone (Petrovich) Trilogy, Equations of Life, Theories of Flight & Degrees of Freedom won the Philip K. Dick Award. The adventures continued with The Curve of the Earth. Currently the author is writing a series of novels about Down, a world linked to London by a network of mysterious portals. Down Station was released at the beginning of the year, with The White City out in October. Here Simon Morden talks to Gary Dalkin.
Gary Dalkin: Down Station was published in February, and when I reviewed it for Vector I wrote that it felt rather like a Young Adult novel, and wondered if it might not have been better marketed that way. It also seemed very much like a set-up novel, introducing the world of Down and a group of characters—most prominently the dutiful 19-year-old Sikh engineering student Dalip and 18-year-old Mary, streetwise from being in and out of care all her life—then giving them an initial adventure and setting them on a quest to reach the possibly mythical White City. It seemed there could be an indefinite number of adventures along the way before anyone ever reached the city, but then the title of the second book in the series was announced as The White City, so it’s not giving anything away to say that some of the characters from Down Station do, eventually, reach their destination. At which point I think it’s worth noting that The White City feels like a very different book to its predecessor: Mary and Dalip have really matured from when we first met them: no one turns into a dragon and there are no magical battles. Rather, we get pirates, some pointers towards a much bigger picture, and find the White City is not at all what we might have expected. With all that said, how important is it to you that each book has its own distinctive feel? Surprising developments towards the end of The White City leave possibilities for the series wide open. It feels now like the story could go in all sorts of directions, and that’s rather exciting …
Simon Morden: I could, if I wanted to, write the same story over and over again with the serial numbers filed off. It makes sense to give readers a predictable, satisfying read that isn’t too challenging, and to repeat that formula and build a brand. Publishers love that. Marketing really loves that. And it works. It works incredibly well across all genres—from crime and thrillers, through war stories and family sagas, historical novels and fantasy, to science fiction. People make careers out of writing variations of the same book for their entire lives. Kudos to them: they’ve found their audience and they know how to please them. We are, for all our artistic pretensions, part of the entertainment industry: an industry which is worth £70bn to the UK economy. We shouldn’t lose sight of that.
Having laid all that on the table, I have to acknowledge that I don’t do that. I could do that, but I don’t. Writing books is a solitary task. It involves locking yourself away for hundreds of hours and fashioning a vicarious experience out of nothing but the same twenty-six letters and some random pieces of punctuation. If I’m going to subject myself to that discipline, then I’m going to want to, at the very least, entertain myself. So, in the initial draft stage, I’m writing for an audience of precisely one: me. I appreciate that might make me sound like a terrible narcissist, but, really? If I’m not enjoying it, I strongly suspect that anyone who subsequently reads the story isn’t going to either.
I’ve tried to make every book I’ve written different from the previous one. For the Petrovitch books, Equations of Life is a flat-out, old school cyberpunk thriller. Theories of Flight is my war story. Degrees of Freedom a Cold War spy caper. The Curve of the Earth is a bastard mutation of a buddy film. The fifth book (written, unpublished) is different again. And so on: Arcanum is an epic fantasy that turns by degrees into the most science fiction story I’ve ever written.
On to Down. It was interesting to hear your thoughts on whether it should have been marketed as YA—there is, of course, nothing to stop the teenagers finding it for themselves. My moral compass regarding what can and can’t go in a YA novel is somewhat skewed in that I grew up reading adult SFF, with all the sex, violence and drugs that involved. So maybe Lovecraftian existential horror and pit-fighting wild animals are good to go. I’ll mention it to my editor!
This is a really long answer to a relatively simple question, for which I apologise. Yes, The White City is a different type of story to Down Station. It’s a continuation but, inevitably and naturally, it’s going to be different story, because the protagonists are growing in their understanding of how Down works and are becoming more comfortable in their new roles. So, Pirates! Adventure! Treasure! And all the weirdness of The White City we can’t talk about.
The end? I loved writing that. I didn’t know it was going to happen until it happened. Dalip’s surprise is my own. The possibilities are now, literally, limitless.
GD: Which leads me to something I’ve been wondering about. Given you didn’t know what was going to happen until it happened, how much do you plan and plot in advance, either with these books or in general? I’d assumed that you knew essentially all about Down, this strange world where people from various times find themselves when fleeing from London for various reasons, but clearly it can surprise you as much as the reader. And sort of allied to that question, which came first: the world in which the Down novels are set, or the central characters? And if the world came first, how do you decide whose story to tell within that setting? Presumably, given the right circumstances, anyone in London could find themselves in Down …
SM: This is where I get to sound like the Worst Author Ever. Either that or the Wizard of Oz, dazzling you with magic when it’s all done with mirrors. I don’t plan. I don’t plan at all. Sometimes I have an end point but no beginning. Sometimes I have a beginning but no idea where it’s going to go. Sometimes I have several ideas that I’m kicking around and they’ll suddenly line up in my conscious mind as being related. My preferred method of writing is simply to sit down and write, describing the scene to myself as I go along, then stitching another on after that, and so on until I’m done. I don’t know when I start how long it’s going to be, or anything about the plot arc. I’m literally making it up. When I reach the end, whenever that is, I stop.
That, of course, means that it can get problematic when I work with big publishers who want to see an outline, not just of book one, but of any subsequent books in a series. We’ve pretty much come to an arrangement now where I write something that sounds feasible, and they don’t hold me to it when I give them the manuscript. I do, of course, then have to turn in something that’s just as good as the outline, if not better.
It also means that I end up writing a fair bit more than gets published, because I’m off on a frolic of my own, outside of any contract, just putting the words down and indulging my flights of fancy. If the result is good, then I’ll write a proposal based on what I’ve actually written, and I’m able to hand any interested party a fully-functioning draft if they’re interested. I acknowledge that it’s a ridiculous way to work. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter: Equations of Life was written before I sold it. Down Station was written before I sold it. The White City outline possibly vaguely resembles the The White City that’s being published in October. Sometimes, I can end up spending a year on a project that goes nowhere. But please, don’t try this at home. You’d have to be mad to do it the way I do.
So I should really answer the question now, shouldn’t I? Down wasn’t planned. I didn’t work out the magic system before I started. The only clues I had were was the idea of opening the door and seeing a whole new world, and a series of Channel 4 documentaries I remembered about night workers on the London Underground. I wrote about the people I saw in those programmes, to start off with. There are no natives to Down—so people like Crows and Bell are also part of that ‘anyone in the right circumstances’ scenario. Everyone you eventually meet has a story of coming to Down. I just started with my protagonists, and described their experiences of Down as they happened. I have to trust my subconscious a lot, that it will have already done the heavy lifting by the time I need to set something in stone. Mostly it works. Sometimes, it needs a bit more editing than otherwise would be necessary.
That’s how I do it. I suppose I didn’t know any better, and now I’m entrenched in that way of working, and can’t stop.
GD: Mary and Dalip work well as a contrasting pair of protagonists. A more conventional writer would likely have put them together romantically by now, but there’s no sign of that, which is refreshing. Dalip is an interesting choice of character, in that Sikhs feature rarely in SF and Fantasy, a notable exception being perhaps Walter Jon Williams’ Days of Atonement. Was Dalip inspired by one of the people featured in the Channel 4 documentaries? He takes his faith very seriously, and while the books don’t touch much on the spiritual side of his beliefs, he has a very strong moral sensibility. How was it, yourself being a Christian, writing about a member of a different faith, especially in terms of understanding how Dalip sees the world and getting him ‘right’? More generally, how much does your Christian faith inform your fiction? Was there a particular concern to ensure that Dalip was a fully rounded character, which he clearly is, and not a stock representative of his religion? Was there even some worry from your publishers that your portrayal might cause offense—I’m remembering when JK Rowling was attacked by Sikh leaders in India for her portrayal of a Sikh character in The Casual Vacancy.
SM: Regarding Mary and Dalip’s friendship. Yes, I’m aware that in any given stressful situation, standard operating procedure is that two people of compatible sexualities will inevitably become romantically attached, the strength and speed of such bonding being directly proportional to the degree of threat. If one saves the other’s life, then it’s an absolute and inviolable law of the universe that they’ll fall in love … because that’s what happens in real life.
