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me more about yourself. And if you wish to know more about me, then simply ask. It would be preferable for you to show yourself, perhaps at the edgewood. I am quite used to strange encounters. We have much that we need to talk about.
     

EIGHT
    He had just finished writing when the car pulled into the drive. Doors slammed and he heard the sound of Jennifer's voice, and Steven's. Jennifer sounded angry. She came into the house and a few seconds later he heard Steven go into the garden and run down to the gate. He stood from his desk and watched the boy, and was disturbed by the way his son glanced suddenly toward him, frowned, seemed to stifle back a tear or two, then went to hide among the sheds.
    "Why do you neglect the boy so much? It wouldn't hurt you to talk to him once in a while."
    Huxley was startled by Jennifer's calm, controlled, yet angry tones speaking to him from the entrance to his study. She was pale, her lips pinched, her eyes hollow with fatigue and irritation. She was dressed in a dark suit and had her hair tied back into a tight bun, exposing all of her narrow face.
    She entered the room the moment he turned and crossed to the desk, opening the book that was there, touching the pens, shaking her head. When she saw the bone she grimaced and kicked at it.
    "Another little trophy, George? Something to frame?"
    "Why are you angry?"
    "I'm not angry," she said wearily. "I'm upset. So's Steven."
    "I don't understand why."
    Her laugh was brief and sourly pointed. "Of course you don't. Well, think back, George. You must have said something to him this morning. I've never known the boy in such a state. I took him to Shadoxhurst, to the toy shop and the tea shop. But what he really wants—" She bit her lip in exasperation, letting the statement lie uncompleted.
    Huxley sighed, scratching his face as he watched and listened to something that simply wasn't possible.
    "What time was this?"
    "What time was what?"
    "That… that I said something to Steven, to upset the boy…"
    "Mid-morning."
    "Did you come and see me? Afterward?"
    "No."
    "Why not? Why didn't you come and see me?"
    "You'd left the study. You'd gone back to the woods, no doubt. A-hunting and adventuring… down in dingly dell…" Again she looked at the grim and bloody souvenir. "I was going to suggest tea, but I see you've eaten…"
    Before he could speak further she had turned abruptly, taking off her suit jacket, and walked upstairs to freshen up.
    "I wasn't here this morning," Huxley said quietly, turning back to the garden, and stepping out into the dying sunlight. "I wasn't here. So who
was
?"
    Steven was sitting, slumped forward on the wall that bounded the rockery. He was reading a book, but hastily closed it when he heard his father approaching.
    "Come to my study, Steve. There's something I want to show you."
    The boy followed in silence, tucking the book into his school blazer. Huxley thought it might have been a penny-dreadful western, but decided not to pursue the matter.
    "I went deep into Ryhope Wood this morning," he said, sitting down behind the desk and picking up his small pack. Steven stood on the other side, back to the window, hands by his sides. His face was a sad combination of uncertainty and distress, and Huxley felt like saying, "Cheer up, lad," but he refrained from doing so.
    Instead he tipped out the small collection of oddities he had found at the Horse Shrine, and beyond: an iron torque, a small wooden idol, its face blank, its arms and legs just the stumps of twigs that had once grown from the central branch; a fragment of torn, green linen, found on a hawthorn bush.
    Picking up the doll, Huxley said, "I've often seen these talisman dolls, but never touched them. They usually hang in the trees. This one was on the ground and I felt it fair game."
    "Who hangs them in the trees?" Steven asked softly, his eyes, now, registering interest rather than sadness.
    Huxley came close to telling the boy a little about the mythogenetic