The Book Of Lost Things

The Woodsman looked at him sadly. “Your mother is dead. You told me so yourself.”

“But I heard her! I heard her voice.”

“Perhaps, or something like it,” said the Woodsman. “I don’t pretend to know every secret of this land, but I can tell you that it is a dangerous place, and becoming more so with every day that passes. You must go back. The Loup Leroi was right about one thing: I can’t protect you. I can barely protect myself. Now come: this is a good time to travel, for the night beasts are in their deepest sleep, and the worst of the daylight ones are not yet awake.”

So David, perceiving that he had little choice in the matter, followed the Woodsman from the cottage and into the forest. Time and again the Woodsman would stop and listen, his hand raised as a signal to David that he should remain silent and still.

“Where are the Loups and the wolves?” David asked eventually, after they had walked for perhaps an hour. The only signs of life that he had seen were birds and insects.

“Not far away, I fear,” replied the Woodsman. “They will scavenge for food in other parts of the forest, where they are less at risk of attack, and in time they will try once again to steal you away. That is why you must leave here before they return.”

David shivered at the thought of Leroi and his wolves descending upon him, their jaws and claws tearing at his flesh. He was beginning to understand the cost that might be paid in searching this place for his mother, but it seemed as if the decision to return home had already been made for him, at least for now. He could always come back here again, if he chose. After all, the sunken garden still remained, assuming the German plane had not entirely destroyed it when it crashed.

They came to the glade of enormous trees through which he had first entered the Woodsman’s world. As they reached it, the Woodsman stopped so suddenly that David almost ran into him. Cautiously, he peered around the man’s back in order to glimpse what it was that had caused him to stop.

“Oh no,” gasped David.

Every tree, as far as the eye could see, was marked with string, and every string, David’s nose told him, was daubed with the same foul-smelling substance that the Woodsman had used to keep the animals from gnawing upon it. There was no way of telling which tree was the one that marked the doorway from David’s world to this one. He walked on a little, trying to find the hollow from which he had emerged, but every tree was similar, every bark smooth. It seemed even the hollows and gnarls that made each one distinctive had been filled in or altered, and the little path that once wound through the forest was now entirely gone, so the Woodsman had no bearings to follow. Even the wreckage of the German bomber was nowhere to be seen, and the furrow it had carved through the earth had been filled in. It must have taken hundreds of hours, and the work of many, many hands, to achieve such an end, thought David. How could it have been done in a single night, and without leaving even one footprint upon the ground?

“Who would so such a thing?” he asked.

“A trickster,” said the Woodsman. “A crooked man in a crooked hat.”

“But why?” said David. “Why didn’t he just take away the string that you had tied. Wouldn’t that have worked just as well?”

The Woodsman thought for a moment before answering. “Yes,” he said, “but it wouldn’t have been so amusing to him, and it wouldn’t have made such a good story.”

“A story?” asked David. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You’re part of a story,” said the Woodsman. “He likes to create stories. He likes to store up tales to tell. This will make a very good story.”

“But how will I get home?” asked David. Now that his means of returning to his own world was gone, he suddenly wanted very much to be there, whereas when it had seemed that the Woodsman was trying to force him to return against his will, David had wanted nothing more than to stay in the new land and look for his mother. It was all very peculiar.

“He doesn’t want you to get home,” said the Woodsman.

“I’ve never done anything to him,” said David. “Why is he trying to keep me here? Why is he being so mean?”

The Woodsman shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Then who does?” said David. He almost shouted in frustration. He was starting to wish there was someone around who knew a little more than the Woodsman. The Woodsman was fine for decapitating wolves and giving unwanted advice, but he didn’t seem to be keeping up with developments in the kingdom.

“The king,” said the Woodsman at last. “The king might know.”

“But I thought you told me that he wasn’t in control anymore, that no one had seen him in a long time.”