The Bone Forest Read Online Free PDF Page B

streamers as the great stallion galloped in panic toward me.
    I thought I had moved quickly enough to take avoiding action, but before I knew it the beast had collided with me, one front leg striking me a blow to the side, then its shoulder pitching me down. I curled up to protect myself, but my body seemed to disobey and struggled to stand…
    For one eerie moment I sensed I was
behind
the flaming figure, feeling the heat on my body, the wind and fire on my face, the rough movement of the horse below me.
    The illusion lasted a second only before I was pitched backward again, stunned and disorientated as I lay on the ground, stifled as if hands were pressing down on my mouth, neck and lungs.
    I recovered swiftly.
    I cannot record the full detail of what I saw in that clearing—so much has faded from memory, perhaps because of the blow from the stampeding horse. I am still shocked by the nature of the sacrifices and the awareness that the murdered men seemed
willing participants
in this early form of acknowledgment of the
power of the horse
.
    Such wonderful creatures, and yet they would be both friend of Man and carrier of his destruction…
    All of this was passing through my mind as a freezing night fell upon the primeval world, and other thoughts too: by horse would come war, and plague, and the populations to overrun and overwhelm the food available from the land. By horse would come the fire that clears, and kills, and cleanses.
    But this forest, this event, reflected something that had occurred
tens of thousands of years before the present
! Was I witnessing one of the first true
intuitions
of early humankind? That the beast could be both friend and foe to a tribe that increasingly looked for control over nature itself? Sacrifice was made to new gods: the assuaging of fears. And it entertained me to think that later, much later, John the Divine would remember these early fears, and talk of the four horsemen, in fact describing his deep-rooted memories of an ancient understanding…
    But with darkness came silence, and with the freezing silence of night came my helpless abandonment to sleep.
    I awoke from the dream to the wet nuzzling of a dog. I was at the edge of Ryhope Wood—God alone knows how I had got there—in the scrub that overlooks the fields of the Manor House. The dog was a springer, being walked by an alarmed and determined woman, who strode away from what she presumably believed to be a tramp. She called for her hound, which bounded after her, not without a regretful and hungry glance toward me.

SEVEN
    When he opened the back door to Oak Lodge, Jennifer screamed and dropped the mug of tea that she was holding. She looked at her husband through wide, frightened eyes, then collapsed back with relief against the table, laughing and brushing at the tea which had spilled over her dressing gown.
    "I didn't realize you'd gone out again…" Her words were meaningless, but he was too tired to think. He said, "I must look terrible. I should bathe at once." He was dog tired. He drank the fresh tea she made, and wolfed down a slice of buttered bread. Steven came and watched him as he undressed, stripping off his stinking clothes, drawing hot water from the tank to make a deep bath. Jennifer picked up the clothes, frowning as she watched her husband.
    "Why did you put these on again?"
    "Again? I don't know what you mean…I'm sorry… to have been away so long…"
    He sank into the water, groaning and sighing with pleasure. Steven and Christian giggled on the landing outside. They had seen their father's naked body, something they had never witnessed before, and like all children this glimpse of the forbidden had amused and shocked them.
    When he had washed himself, and dried off, he went to Jennifer and tried to explain. She was distant. He had already noted from the calendar that his absence, this time, had been two days. For himself, the passage of time had been much greater, but even so, Jennifer was rightly