round his legs. Ankles trapped, he crashed forward, face down on to the brown mulch of the forest floor.
More leathery tentacles wrapped round his wrists, and Paul’s mind gave way to fear and exhaustion, screaming back into the impenetrable fortress of unconsciousness.
Paul awoke in sunlight, with the vague feeling that he was lucky to be awake at all. He felt strange, cramped, and in an unfamiliar bed. Then, fully awake, he remembered the events of the night before. In the daylight he saw that the leathery tentacles were just some sort of rope, and they were the reason for his cramped awakening.
He was lying on a wooden bed that was a little like a shallow baby’s cot, with his hands and feet tied to the siderails. Surrounding the bed were earth walls–he was obviously in some sort of hole. High above, the sun beamed down, harsh and bright without any leafy interference. On the far side of the hole, a rope ladder hung down from the surface, which was three metres or so above, at least by Paul’s reckoning.
A prison hole, thought Paul gloomily, just like in the film on TV the week before last. Only in the film the bad guys ended up in the hole. But then, in the movies, heroes didn’t go running around weird forests in shorts, trainers and dirty white T-shirts. They also didn’t worry about things like food and drink, Paul thought, acutely aware of his dry and cracking lips, and the dull, rumbling complaint of his stomach.
He tried licking his lips, but there was no moisture in his mouth. Even tears were beyond his dried-out body and he found himself unable to cry. Closing his eyes, Paul thought he might as well die then and there, and save himself the trouble later on–when a few lumps of earth fell on to his chest.
“What were you doing in the forest?” a voice suddenly asked from somewhere above–behind Paul’s head, so he couldn’t see who it was. “And how did you get where you were?”
Paul’s mind snapped back from his despairing thoughts and he craned his neck back to see who was talking. But he couldn’t raise his body from the bed, and so couldn’t arch back far enough. He tried to answer, but only a dull croak came out.
“You wish for some water?” asked the voice, though not in a particularly compassionate tone. “Open your mouth.”
Paul did so immediately, and a cascade of water splashed over his face and up his nose. A little found his mouth. Despite being nearly drowned, it was a very welcome drink, revitalising Paul’s tiny store of determination, and lessening his feelings of despair.
“Now,” said the stern, deep voice. “What were you doing in our forest?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” croaked Paul. “I was just looking for my sister, and then…I was just looking for people.”
“People?” said the voice. “What sort of people were you looking for?”
Frightened by the voice, Paul didn’t answer for a moment. It sounded odd, murky and overlaid with rustling sounds, as if the speaker had to think before talking, and move his lips through a layer of leaves.
“I wanted to find someone. Anyone who could help me find Julia. A town, or a house, where I could find out where I was…where the forest is, I mean.”
“Julia, towns, houses,” muttered the voice, as if cataloguing items of interest. “You won’t find any of them here. And you say you don’t know where the forest is?”
“No, I don’t…is it…is it very far away from Australia?”
“Australia?” repeated the voice, with an odd pronunciation of the name–all drawn and twisted. “Perhaps you are even farther away than you can reckon. If it is of any use to you, this is the Forest of the May Dancers…I am a May Dancer,” added the voice, suddenly closer. “At least, that is what your kind call us.”
Paul felt a slight shudder go through his heart–a tremor of fear that passed through like a metal sliver. Footsteps crunched on the dirt above and Paul looked up.
He had expected to see some sort of man. But the May Dancer who looked down on him had only the shape of a human. He was covered in shifting patterns of leaves, that rustled and moved about his body, revealing skin the texture and colour of ancient bark. His head was also covered in leaves, which streamed behind him in a russet mane. And his eyes were those of an animal: the eyes of a cat carefully watching its prey.
Paul felt just like a mouse caught in the petrifying gaze of a hunter. Even the smallest movement might cause this strange creature to spring, to suddenly snap the tension.
“So,” said the May Dancer, half closing his fearsome eyes, “you have not seen our kind before.”
It was a statement rather than a question, Paul understood. Somehow, he had become the mouse that the cat couldn’t be bothered chasing.
“You have never seen a May Dancer before,” said the creature above, in a half-whisper, as if thinking aloud. “Therefore, you have never seen us dance on the borders of the forest. In fact, as you have never even heard of us, you cannot even be of this Kingdom. And you seek a…Julia.”
Without warning, the May Dancer leapt across the hole and was gone. Startled, Paul instinctively flexed his body to leap away–succeeding only in hurting his wrists and back, held by those leathery ropes.
The next few hours passed in a half-dream, marked by the slow drifting of clouds overhead. Faint sounds carried to him, the noises of the forest: strange bird-calls, and occasionally the heavier thumping of something larger passing nearby. From all this, Paul assumed that he was still in the forest, though the clear sky above indicated a large clearing.
My mid-afternoon, the sun was high above the hole. Paul lay beneath a layer of sunshine with only his feet in shadow, unable to look up because of the glare. The sun made him tired, despite his hunger, and he began to slowly drift off into a nightmarish sleep.
When he awoke, the hole was in darkness, though it was not cold. There were slight sounds all about the hole, sounds that might have been footsteps or muffled whispers…sounds that Paul almost heard and then wondered if he’d imagined them.
Then the May Dancer spoke again. “We have talked of you among those of our people here, and you are to say more. Questions will be asked and you will answer them. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Paul. “Yes–anything you like.”
Another Dancer, farther from the hole, asked the first question, in a softer, stranger voice than the original May Dancer. The words seemed to be more of a wind song than speech and Paul couldn’t understand it, being mesmerised by the lilting tone, rather than listening. The first May Dancer repeated the question: “How did you come to be in the forest?”
“I was following my sister,” replied Paul. He wasn’t sure how he’d come to the forest himself “Her and that horrible doll. They’d built a sort of fire–and then they just disappeared. The fire was sort of scattered, but I rebuilt it and jumped through–and I was in the forest. I didn’t mean to be there–I was just trying to find Julia.”
“Enough,” interrupted the May Dancer. Paul listened to him talking to the others, whispers like wind in the reeds, a tune played by the earth rather than by man. It was rather eerie, he thought, listening to the long, sighing notes in the darkness. Only then did Paul notice that there were no stars–none at all in the vast expanse of the black sky.
“Why
