The Bone Forest
Encyclopedia
The Bone Forest is a book opening with a novella
of the same name followed by seven short stories. All were written by Robert Holdstock
and published in 1991 (UK) and 1992 (US). This novella is a prequel to the entire Mythago Wood
cycle. According to the author it was written "to fill in the background and back-story to Mythago Wood" at the request of a screenwriter who was working on a planned movie version of Mythago Wood.
The 1991 and 1992 editions of the book contain seven short stories in addition to the novella The Bone Forest., after which the volume takes its name. The additional stories in The Bone Forest bear little relation with either time or events in the Mythago Wood cycle, yet the short stories are largely influenced by the fantasy
realm created as part of the Mythago Wood cycle.
The Bone Forest has both won and been nominated for fantasy literature
awards.
along with the tales Scarrowfell, Thorn and Earth and Stone.
The Bone Forest
The main narrative expands the back story of tensions in the Huxley family taking place in time before the events in Mythago Wood. In this novella George Huxley must contend with a Doppelgänger
mythago of himself, who is physically threatening and interacting with his family in undesirable ways. In particular the relationship between George Huxley and his sons is explored.
The story takes place between January 1935 and the late Summer of 1935. The Huxleys reside in Oak Lodge, on the outskirts of Ryhope Wood. One Winter night they are visited by the "Snow Woman." She is a mythago, but the Huxley boys believe she is a gypsy. The Snow Woman leaves a talisman
, a necklet of bone and wood, which Steven keeps. In the Spring, George Huxley and Edward Wynne-Jones undertake explorations in Ryhope wood, become separated and encounter dangerous mythagos spawned by Steven's imagination. In a dramatic encounter taking place at an ancient Horse Shrine, George Huxley physically collides with a mythago stallion
; this collision results in the creation of the Gray-Green mythago, an alter ego
of George Huxley.
When George Huxley returns to Oak Lodge, he discovers the Gray-Green man is writing in his journal, upsetting his children, and having intimate relations with his wife. Both forms agree they must try to recombine, but disagree on the method. This leads to a climactic final scene in which they race to the Horse Shrine (and back in time.) The Gray-Green mythago tries to destroy Ash and hang George Huxley, but fails. George relives the collision with the wild stallion, which results in the Gray-Green mythago being banished to the woods and Wynne-Jones reappearing. The story ends back at Oak Lodge with George realizing that many of the intervening events, but not all, seem to have never happened.
George Huxley : George is the protagonist of the story and father of Steven and Christian. George is a 45 year old, tall and lean man who is a scientist in the field of psychology
. He has studied with Carl Jung
, researched archaeology
and obsessed over various myths.
Over the course of his studies of Ryhope wood, George produces a scientific journal in six volumes, a personal diary and a detailed map of Ryhope wood.
Jennifer Huxley : Wife of George and mother of Steven and George.
Steven Huxley : A young boy who has just celebrated his 8th birthday prior to the events of The Bone Forest.
Edward Wynne-Jones : A researcher in historical anthropology
who teaches at Oxford University. Wynne-Jones is a diminutive and fussy man who smokes a pipe. He is approximately the same age as George Huxley. Together Wynne-Jones and George Huxley study Ryhope Wood extensively in the 1930s. Wynne-Jones makes scientific equipment designed to interact with the paranormal in Ryhope Wood.
or Merry Man, and Green Jacks
or Jack o' the Greens. Non-recurring mythagos include "Crow Ghost" (a fast, aggressive male with a painted face), three half-man/half-wolf
creatures, and a monkey-faced man (perhaps a Cro-Magnon
). The Twigling mythago is mentioned in passing, but plays no part in the narrative.
Ash/The Snow Woman : This powerful woman has copper colored hair and wears white fox furs. She is the composite of an ancient shaman prototype and a character from a child's story housed in Steven's imagination. She possesses deep knowledge of both Ryhope wood and its mystical artifacts
. She holds power over untamed horses and can manipulate both time and the seasons within the forest.
The Four Horse Hunters : These four men herd stallions through the woods. Their faces are painted red, green, yellow, and blue.
The Gray-Green Man : This mythago is a Gray-Green version of George Huxley; he moves unnaturally fast and is sinister in nature. He is an archetypal representation of the trickster. He exhibits animal litheness and is in much better physical shape than the human George Huxley.
Urscumug : A male half boar/half human representation of the first hero
from earliest myth. The malevolent and ancient Urscumug, a variation on the wodewose, is sought out by George Huxley, but never encountered.
Thomas, a mason, is the protagonist of this short story. He is compelled to work at night to finish a secret carving on his village’s first Christian
stone church. The church is being constructed on Dancing Hill, a site of both pagan
and Christian religious significance. His project is to carve a semi-animated stone block depicting Thorn, lord of the wood, also known as the Green Man
. Completing the project before similar carvings of the twelve apostles are finished will imbue Thorn with power over the church. This story simultaneously explores tension between Christian and pagan and a growing conflict between Thomas’ conscience and the god Thorn. The story was inspired by William Golding
's novel The Spire
. The story was also included in The Oxford Book of Fantasy, edited by Tom Shippey
.
The Shapechanger
This story takes place in England, AD 731 at a Saxon
village adjacent to the Dancing Hill, which holds the ruins of an ancient shrine (the setting of the previous short story, Thorn.) The two main characters are Wolfhead, a wild shaman, and Inkmarker, an orphaned child of 10, who subsequently escapes from a monastery and joins Wolfhead.
Wolfhead is summoned by Gilla, the chief of the nearby village, to help rid the village of a demon
whose power emanates from a stone-lined well in the center of the village. A weakened stone god at the ruins of the ancient shrine warns Wolfhead and Inkmarker of this outsider demon Mabathagus, god of the earth, and father of Hecate
. Inkmarker undertakes ritualistic coming-of-age tasks, but becomes hopelessly entangled with the demon as he confronts it.
The Boy who Jumped the Rapids
This is the story of Caylen, an adolescent boy and member of a forest community in mainland Europe. Caylen is the son of Caswallon, his village’s chieftain. Caylen is considered possessed because he is able to see through two illusions, one a sheer cliff wall known as Wolfback, and the other a river which appears as rapids, but is actually calm and placid. This river marks the geographical boundary of Caswallon’s lands. North of the river is a changing landscape with ancient stone buildings and a tall metal totem, both constructions beyond the skill of Caswallon’s people.
One day a red haired warrior of Nordic origin visits the village. The warrior wears a horn-helmet and long black robes that flow and billow. He bears a child’s spear, that of Rianna, a girl of honor among his people who was brutally murdered by a mercenary.
While Caylen makes friends with a 9-year old boy named Fergus and avoids the bullying abuses of another boy Domnorix, both from his village, the warrior builds a small wooden shrine
to honor Rianna in a glade, Old Stone Hollow.
On Caswallon’s orders, Glamach, the village druid
, ritualistically abuses Caylen to cleanse him of his evil. Caylen flees the village to avoid this abuse just as five warriors from the north appear to hunt and execute the warrior. As Caylen flees, he is faced with a decision to between saving the warrior’s sacred spear or his friend Fergus.
Time of the Tree
This is an episodic short story told from the viewpoint of an anthropomorphic
land. Each episode chronicles events taking place on the land's surface, or skin. The episodes along with brief summaries are:
Magic Man
This short story takes place in the North American plains and explores the magical power of ocher cave painting
. The story involves a group of Native American
tribal hunters living off bison, deer and reindeer. The main character is One Eye, an elderly village shaman/painter who resides in a shrine-cave which overlooks the village and grasslands beyond. “He Who Carries a Red Spear” is the tribal leader whose son frequents One Eye’s cave.
The tribal leader persistently pressures One Eye to use magical paintings to improve his hunting success, not just those of the overall village. The tribal leader’s son has innate cave painting abilities and an interest in bears, one of the few animals that will hunt humans. As tensions mount between One Eye and the tribal leader, the son discovers the power of his own cave paintings.
Scarrowfell
This short story focuses on Ginny, a young girl, and the part she plays in a ritualistic dancing festival. This festival proceeds from one small English
town to the next, finally ending at Scarrowfell on Lord’s Eve day. Ginny, who is an orphaned child with an adoptive mother and a small group of friends, has nightmares and long bouts of sleep leading up to the arrival of the festival. The climax of the story involves a magical pagan ritual inside a ring of elm trees.
The Time Beyond Age
This is a science fiction
short story describing a scientific experiment in which two subjects’ rate of aging is increased in an environment that is devoid of all disease. The subjects live for the equivalent of centuries and evolve into exaggerated archetypes of male and female. Eventually they die, but not before the perpetrator of the experiment self administers the life-altering treatment.
..."
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Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
of the same name followed by seven short stories. All were written by Robert Holdstock
Robert Holdstock
Robert Paul Holdstock was an English novelist and author best known for his works of Celtic, Nordic, Gothic and Pictish fantasy literature, predominantly in the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction....
and published in 1991 (UK) and 1992 (US). This novella is a prequel to the entire Mythago Wood
Mythago Wood
Mythago Wood is a fantasy novel written by Robert Holdstock that was published in the United Kingdom in 1984. The conception began as a short story written for the 1979 Milford Writer's Workshop; next a novella of the same name appeared in the September 1981 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy &...
cycle. According to the author it was written "to fill in the background and back-story to Mythago Wood" at the request of a screenwriter who was working on a planned movie version of Mythago Wood.
The 1991 and 1992 editions of the book contain seven short stories in addition to the novella The Bone Forest., after which the volume takes its name. The additional stories in The Bone Forest bear little relation with either time or events in the Mythago Wood cycle, yet the short stories are largely influenced by the fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
realm created as part of the Mythago Wood cycle.
The Bone Forest has both won and been nominated for fantasy literature
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
awards.
Contents
The 1991 and 1992 versions of The Bone Forest start with one novella and are followed by seven short tales.- The Bone Forest
- Thorn
- The Shapechanger
- The Boy who Jumped the Rapids
- Time of the Tree
- Magic Man
- Scarrowfell
- The Time Beyond Age
Previous publications
The short stories in The Bone Forest previously appeared in a variety of publications between 1976 and 1989.- Thorn first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...
, 1986. - The Shapechanger first appeared in GM Magazine, 1989.
- The Boy who Jumped the Rapids first appeared in Beyond the Lands of Never, 1984.
- Time of the Tree first appeared in Zenith, 1989.
- Magic Man first appeared in Frighteners 2, 1976.
- Scarrowfell first appeared in Other Edens, 1987.
- The Time Beyond Age first appeared in Supernova, 1976.
Subsequent publications
The novella The Bone Forest was published as part of the 2009 Gollanz edition of Merlin's WoodMerlin's Wood
Merlin's Wood; or, The Vision of Magic is a short novel written by Robert Holdstock and was first published in the UK in 1994. The novel is considered part of the Mythago Wood cycle, but takes place in Brittany, France instead of Herefordshire, England...
along with the tales Scarrowfell, Thorn and Earth and Stone.
Novella plot summary
The main narrative expands the back story of tensions in the Huxley family taking place in time before the events in Mythago Wood. In this novella George Huxley must contend with a Doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
mythago of himself, who is physically threatening and interacting with his family in undesirable ways. In particular the relationship between George Huxley and his sons is explored.
The story takes place between January 1935 and the late Summer of 1935. The Huxleys reside in Oak Lodge, on the outskirts of Ryhope Wood. One Winter night they are visited by the "Snow Woman." She is a mythago, but the Huxley boys believe she is a gypsy. The Snow Woman leaves a talisman
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
, a necklet of bone and wood, which Steven keeps. In the Spring, George Huxley and Edward Wynne-Jones undertake explorations in Ryhope wood, become separated and encounter dangerous mythagos spawned by Steven's imagination. In a dramatic encounter taking place at an ancient Horse Shrine, George Huxley physically collides with a mythago stallion
Stallion (horse)
A stallion is a male horse that has not been gelded .Stallions will follow the conformation and phenotype of their breed, but within that standard, the presence of hormones such as testosterone may give stallions a thicker, "cresty" neck, as well as a somewhat more muscular physique as compared to...
; this collision results in the creation of the Gray-Green mythago, an alter ego
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
of George Huxley.
When George Huxley returns to Oak Lodge, he discovers the Gray-Green man is writing in his journal, upsetting his children, and having intimate relations with his wife. Both forms agree they must try to recombine, but disagree on the method. This leads to a climactic final scene in which they race to the Horse Shrine (and back in time.) The Gray-Green mythago tries to destroy Ash and hang George Huxley, but fails. George relives the collision with the wild stallion, which results in the Gray-Green mythago being banished to the woods and Wynne-Jones reappearing. The story ends back at Oak Lodge with George realizing that many of the intervening events, but not all, seem to have never happened.
Human characters
Christian Huxley : A boy as well, Christian is the more rambunctious older brother of Steven Huxley.George Huxley : George is the protagonist of the story and father of Steven and Christian. George is a 45 year old, tall and lean man who is a scientist in the field of psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
. He has studied with Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, researched archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
and obsessed over various myths.
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
Over the course of his studies of Ryhope wood, George produces a scientific journal in six volumes, a personal diary and a detailed map of Ryhope wood.
Jennifer Huxley : Wife of George and mother of Steven and George.
Steven Huxley : A young boy who has just celebrated his 8th birthday prior to the events of The Bone Forest.
Edward Wynne-Jones : A researcher in historical anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
who teaches at Oxford University. Wynne-Jones is a diminutive and fussy man who smokes a pipe. He is approximately the same age as George Huxley. Together Wynne-Jones and George Huxley study Ryhope Wood extensively in the 1930s. Wynne-Jones makes scientific equipment designed to interact with the paranormal in Ryhope Wood.
Mythagos
Many mythagos appear in The Bone Forest. The major mythagos are listed below in detail. Minor mythagos appearing include the recurring Robin HoodRobin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
or Merry Man, and Green Jacks
Green Man
A Green Man is a sculpture, drawing, or other representation of a face surrounded by or made from leaves. Branches or vines may sprout from the nose, mouth, nostrils or other parts of the face and these shoots may bear flowers or fruit...
or Jack o' the Greens. Non-recurring mythagos include "Crow Ghost" (a fast, aggressive male with a painted face), three half-man/half-wolf
Lycanthropy
Lycanthropy is the professed ability or power of a human being to undergo transformation into a werewolf, or to gain wolf-like characteristics. The term comes from Greek Lykànthropos : λύκος, lykos + άνθρωπος, ànthrōpos...
creatures, and a monkey-faced man (perhaps a Cro-Magnon
Cro-Magnon
The Cro-Magnon were the first early modern humans of the European Upper Paleolithic. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are radiometrically dated to 35,000 years before present....
). The Twigling mythago is mentioned in passing, but plays no part in the narrative.
Ash/The Snow Woman : This powerful woman has copper colored hair and wears white fox furs. She is the composite of an ancient shaman prototype and a character from a child's story housed in Steven's imagination. She possesses deep knowledge of both Ryhope wood and its mystical artifacts
Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
. She holds power over untamed horses and can manipulate both time and the seasons within the forest.
The Four Horse Hunters : These four men herd stallions through the woods. Their faces are painted red, green, yellow, and blue.
The Gray-Green Man : This mythago is a Gray-Green version of George Huxley; he moves unnaturally fast and is sinister in nature. He is an archetypal representation of the trickster. He exhibits animal litheness and is in much better physical shape than the human George Huxley.
Urscumug : A male half boar/half human representation of the first hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
from earliest myth. The malevolent and ancient Urscumug, a variation on the wodewose, is sought out by George Huxley, but never encountered.
Short story plot summaries
ThornThomas, a mason, is the protagonist of this short story. He is compelled to work at night to finish a secret carving on his village’s first Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
stone church. The church is being constructed on Dancing Hill, a site of both pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
and Christian religious significance. His project is to carve a semi-animated stone block depicting Thorn, lord of the wood, also known as the Green Man
Green Man
A Green Man is a sculpture, drawing, or other representation of a face surrounded by or made from leaves. Branches or vines may sprout from the nose, mouth, nostrils or other parts of the face and these shoots may bear flowers or fruit...
. Completing the project before similar carvings of the twelve apostles are finished will imbue Thorn with power over the church. This story simultaneously explores tension between Christian and pagan and a growing conflict between Thomas’ conscience and the god Thorn. The story was inspired by William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
's novel The Spire
The Spire
The Spire is a 1964 novel by the English author William Golding. "A dark and powerful portrait of one man's will", it deals with the construction of the 404-foot high spire of Salisbury Cathedral; the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin...
. The story was also included in The Oxford Book of Fantasy, edited by Tom Shippey
Tom Shippey
Thomas Alan Shippey is a scholar of medieval literature, including that of Anglo-Saxon England, and of modern fantasy and science fiction, in particular the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, about whom he has written several scholarly studies. He is widely considered one of the leading academic scholars...
.
The Shapechanger
This story takes place in England, AD 731 at a Saxon
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
village adjacent to the Dancing Hill, which holds the ruins of an ancient shrine (the setting of the previous short story, Thorn.) The two main characters are Wolfhead, a wild shaman, and Inkmarker, an orphaned child of 10, who subsequently escapes from a monastery and joins Wolfhead.
Wolfhead is summoned by Gilla, the chief of the nearby village, to help rid the village of a demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
whose power emanates from a stone-lined well in the center of the village. A weakened stone god at the ruins of the ancient shrine warns Wolfhead and Inkmarker of this outsider demon Mabathagus, god of the earth, and father of Hecate
Hecate
Hecate or Hekate is a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and crossroads.She is attested in poetry as early as Hesiod's Theogony...
. Inkmarker undertakes ritualistic coming-of-age tasks, but becomes hopelessly entangled with the demon as he confronts it.
The Boy who Jumped the Rapids
This is the story of Caylen, an adolescent boy and member of a forest community in mainland Europe. Caylen is the son of Caswallon, his village’s chieftain. Caylen is considered possessed because he is able to see through two illusions, one a sheer cliff wall known as Wolfback, and the other a river which appears as rapids, but is actually calm and placid. This river marks the geographical boundary of Caswallon’s lands. North of the river is a changing landscape with ancient stone buildings and a tall metal totem, both constructions beyond the skill of Caswallon’s people.
One day a red haired warrior of Nordic origin visits the village. The warrior wears a horn-helmet and long black robes that flow and billow. He bears a child’s spear, that of Rianna, a girl of honor among his people who was brutally murdered by a mercenary.
While Caylen makes friends with a 9-year old boy named Fergus and avoids the bullying abuses of another boy Domnorix, both from his village, the warrior builds a small wooden shrine
Shrine
A shrine is a holy or sacred place, which is dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon or similar figure of awe and respect, at which they are venerated or worshipped. Shrines often contain idols, relics, or other such objects associated with the figure being venerated....
to honor Rianna in a glade, Old Stone Hollow.
On Caswallon’s orders, Glamach, the village druid
Druid
A druid was a member of the priestly class in Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, and possibly other parts of Celtic western Europe, during the Iron Age....
, ritualistically abuses Caylen to cleanse him of his evil. Caylen flees the village to avoid this abuse just as five warriors from the north appear to hunt and execute the warrior. As Caylen flees, he is faced with a decision to between saving the warrior’s sacred spear or his friend Fergus.
Time of the Tree
This is an episodic short story told from the viewpoint of an anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
land. Each episode chronicles events taking place on the land's surface, or skin. The episodes along with brief summaries are:
-
- Tundra – Describes the retreat of ice cover from the land and migration of animals.
- The Birch Accession – Describes the growth of forests upon the land’s skin and how the lifespan of trees is used to measure time.
- The Coming of the Wildwood – As the land warms, temperate forests and larger animals begin to take hold.
- The Elm Decline – Trees are being cleared for the first human settlements; their burning of trees feels like pinpricks on the skin of the land.
- The First Totems – Humans organize into clans that develop religious icons, boats and engage in tribal warfare.
- The Temple Builders – A temple of circular stones is built by humans and witnessed by travelers from afar.
- Ritual Sacrifice – A young woman is sacrificed and sunk to the bottom of a lake, becoming part of the earth.
- Journey to the Underworld – The spirit of the sacrificed woman, embodied in various elements of the natural world, travels throughout the lands.
- Our Lady of the Chromosomes – The land passes the secret of fire-hardened flints to humans via the spirit woman. Forsaken, the spirit woman is reborn as a disastrous flood, temporarily wiping out the humans.
- Anger of the Gods – After a long sleep, the land awakens to find itself covered with an urban landscape. This irritation is scraped away, destroying the civilization.
Magic Man
This short story takes place in the North American plains and explores the magical power of ocher cave painting
Cave painting
Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest European cave paintings date to the Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known...
. The story involves a group of Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
tribal hunters living off bison, deer and reindeer. The main character is One Eye, an elderly village shaman/painter who resides in a shrine-cave which overlooks the village and grasslands beyond. “He Who Carries a Red Spear” is the tribal leader whose son frequents One Eye’s cave.
The tribal leader persistently pressures One Eye to use magical paintings to improve his hunting success, not just those of the overall village. The tribal leader’s son has innate cave painting abilities and an interest in bears, one of the few animals that will hunt humans. As tensions mount between One Eye and the tribal leader, the son discovers the power of his own cave paintings.
Scarrowfell
This short story focuses on Ginny, a young girl, and the part she plays in a ritualistic dancing festival. This festival proceeds from one small English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
town to the next, finally ending at Scarrowfell on Lord’s Eve day. Ginny, who is an orphaned child with an adoptive mother and a small group of friends, has nightmares and long bouts of sleep leading up to the arrival of the festival. The climax of the story involves a magical pagan ritual inside a ring of elm trees.
The Time Beyond Age
This is a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
short story describing a scientific experiment in which two subjects’ rate of aging is increased in an environment that is devoid of all disease. The subjects live for the equivalent of centuries and evolve into exaggerated archetypes of male and female. Eventually they die, but not before the perpetrator of the experiment self administers the life-altering treatment.
Critical commentary and awards
Critiquing the tale Scarrowfell in the anthology Other Edens, John Clute remarks that "Scarrowfell...floods the frail tale it ostensibly relates with a jumble of moods, too many characters, too much music, and expiation/initiation too complex to be explained in the pages it takes, and bevies of mummersMummers Play
Mummers Plays are seasonal folk plays performed by troupes of actors known as mummers or guisers , originally from England , but later in other parts of the world...
..."
- The Bone Forest was nominated for the World Fantasy AwardWorld Fantasy AwardThe World Fantasy Awards are annual, international awards given to authors and artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the field of fantasy...
in the category of Best Collection in 1992.
- Scarrowfell, Valley of Statues and Other Stories and its translation, published in French, won the Prix d'Imaginales award in the New Fantasy category in 2004.
Chronology of works in the Mythago Wood cycle
The order in which the Mythago cycle works were written/published does not necessarily correspond to the order of events within the realm of the Mythago Wood cycle. For example, Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn and the novella The Bone Forest are prequels to Mythago Wood even though they were published at a later date. The novel Merlin's Wood (1994) and short stories in The Bone Forest and Merlin's Wood have little bearing on the events in the Ryhope wood. See the table below for a chronology of events within Ryhope wood.!width="40%"|Followed by:
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Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn is a fantasy novel by British author Robert Holdstock. It was originally published in the US in 1997 The story is a prequel to Mythago Wood and explores the Christian Huxley's quest into Ryhope Wood and the apparent suicide of his mother, Jennifer Huxley...
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