Timothy Ferguson's Blog, page 78

Heathcliff: I’d step away from the window if I were you

So, listening today to Kate Bush and “Wuthering Heights” I was struck by a few questions.

Why does the ghost have to keep telling Heathcliff it is Cathy? Surely he knows what Cathy looks like. It’s not an amorphous blob. It looks, if we are to believe the film clip, rather like a woman in a white dress…who looks rather like Kate Bush and changes costume if you are American.

My answer, which I think is rather more interesting from a gaming perspective, is that it’s not Cathy at all. It is some sort of faerie. It’s clearly a psychopomp, and it has a traditional ward in that it can’t enter a house unless invited in. It even tells him its come to grab away his soul. Now: it is possible this psychopomp is here to lead him to a paradisal existence with his one true love, but I think we can discount this cheery hypothesis, due to my other question.

If this is Cathy, why is she singing at the wrong window?

In the book, you’ll recall she was calling at the window of a guest, who recounted her as a dream to Heathcliff. Does the ghost of a person’s true love do that? Misread the directions?

So, this is a supernatural predator that’s trying to break into Wuthering Heights and eat the soul of Heathcliff. This makes the song far more interesting, because it’s a confidence trick.

If looking for versions on YouTube, please be aware that many of the people who have sung covers seem to treat this as a Kate Bush impersonation contest. I’d like to point you toward the version by Wolfmother, not because it is particularly excellent, but because at least they try and do it their own way, with decent diction, rather than as an excuse to push the heights of their vocal ranges.

Virtue sets for characters in “The Shadows in the Smoke”, an Ars Magica adventure for GoPlay Brisbane

I’m wanting to give strong direction to new players here, so the virtues can’t just be “Divide by 2 rather than 5 for spellcasting totals”. I’m looking to give a serious twist to the characters, and put in some Victorian steampunk pseudoscience too.

Here are the basic virtue sets

Monkey Testicles

Your character has eight monkey testicles implanted in his abdomen. They give you the ability to perform feats of endurance far greater than those usual to the scholars who do magic. You do your best to mitigate it, but they also incline you toward blistering rages when you are frustrated. A firm punch to the right midsection is cripplingly painful to you: like being kicked in the groin, but magnified many times over.

Nightwalker

While you sleep, your spirit can roam. While roaming, it can be invisible and intangible, or it can take a ghostly appearance and move objects. Your ghostly form is ethereal in a purely mechanical sense: that is, it is made of ether, a subtle gas which is used as an anesthetic. Your ghostly presence generally renders people unconscious, although with careful stage management you can often stand close enough to a chimney or window to mitigate the effects a little.

Nobleman

You are the heir of a nobleman. This means you are wealthy and socially connected, but also that, at a cellular level, you believe, you are fundamentally superior to the people who are around you. Many aspirational people know this, and act accordingly. Magic which causes fear or confusion in lesser people does not affect you because of your blinding arrogance. Poor people, however, sense your aura of superciliousness, and loathe you.

Prosthetic hand

Your left hand is a miracle of modern engineering, but looks normal while gloved. It is virtually indestructible, and you are capable of crushing stone with your fingers. You are not capable of some acts of superhuman strength because the hand is grafted into the normal bone of your forearm, so you can’t do anything which would rip your arm off at the elbow. Sight of the ungloved hand can fascinate or terrify people.

Pyroempathy

Fires like you, can communicate with you, and will even do slightly unnatural things at your request. You don’t need to see a fire to command it, but it needs to be within human earshot of you. All types of fire are included, so you can speak with street lamps and the boiler fires in steam engines. An unfortunate side effect of your power is that the deafening, incoherent howling of the Sun forces you to avoid direct sunlight.

Shapeshifter

You can take the form of a rat or rook (raven) with only a moment’s delay. While in animal form, your human nature is undetectable. Your clothing does not change with you unless you happen to be wearing a particular, prepared suit of clothes. You only have one set which shifts with you, and it can’t contain any metal or plant products. Choose what it looks like now. In animal form you can speak with either mammals or birds, but after returning to human form it can take you a few minutes to adjust your mind to social niceties.

Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic

A quick note to mention my latest Librivox recording: Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic is useful for Ars Magica players whose stories are set along the great Ocean, and is interesting for folkloristis generally. My part’s about Antilia, which I’ve been trying to shoehorn into Ars for a decade or so. Sadly the myth, although it gives pre-1220 dates, can only be tracked back to about the 14th Century, so it’s out of bounds.

Spare Antagonists: Fir Darrings

A race of faeries who didn’t make it into the book. I hope you enjoy them. A model maker on DeviantArt has a great little sculpture of one of these: not nearly as animalistic as I imagined, but I want to note it for you.

The Rat Thieves

Fir Darrings are little, ugly faeries whose forms are a mixture of man and rat. They live in subterranean nests. They wish to keep the child because they are unable to enter the Dominion. They want a human collaborator, able to retrieve for them the food and manufactures of human civilization.

Faerie Might: 5 (Imaginem)

Characteristics: Int 0, Per 0, Pre -3, Com 0, Str –12, Sta +1, Dex +3, Qik +3

Size: –6

Virtues and Flaws: Focus Power (Pishogue), Cognizant Within Role, Faerie Sight, Personal Power (Invisibility), 2 x Little, Monstrous Appearance Sovereign Ward (Dominion).

Personality Traits: Sneaky +3

Combat:

Thrown Stone: Init+3, Attack +7, Defense +6, Damage –10.*

Soak: +1

Wound Penalties: –5 (1), Incapacitated (2), Dead (3+)

Pretenses: Athletics 2 (digging), Awareness 2 (strange smells), Charm 2 (children), Folk Ken 5 (edibles), Forest Lore 3 (lost items), Profession : Scrounger 6 (raw materials for making things), Speak 5 (Local language), Thrown Weapon 3 (stone).

Powers:

Focus Power (Pishogue): up to 3 points. May create effects up to level 15 (2 intricacy points reduce cost when used.). Pishogue is the art of making things appear to be their opposites. For example, making young people look old, whole things appear broken, rotten food appear fresh, and valuable things appear worthless.

Invisibility: 0 points, Init +1, Imaginem (2 intricacy points reduce Might cost)

R: Per, D: Sun, T: Ind

(Costs 15 spell levels. (Base 4 +2 Sun +1 for moving image))

Equipment: Tiny capes and tools made of cobbled together dertitus..

Vis: 1 pawn, Imaginem, rat skull

Appearance Little rat men, about a foot tall, with poor personal hygiene and a tendency to fight in packs.

Spare Antagonists: Terpsichore

Anotgher leftover foe from Antagonists.

Terpsichore is a Vessel of Iniquity who causes dancing mania. She has found far fewer victims available since the beginning of the processions, since Abaissier’s victims and hers overlap. Terpsichore is not above assisting those investigating the flagellant movement, because its dissolution would allow her to continue her own plans. She may send her people to attack flagellant processions, but the flagellants just see this as evidence that they are doing what God wills, forcing demons to lash out at them. Abassier may hide his own involvement by setting the player characters against the False Muse, unless he can bend her to his service.

Terpsichore

A demon of contagious dancing.

Order: Vessel of Iniquity

Infernal Might: 15 {Corpus)

Characteristics: Int 0, Per 0, Pre +3, Com 0, Str 0, Sta 0, Dex +4, Qik +2

Size: 0

Virtues and Flaws: Puissant Carouse

Confidence Score: 1 (3)

Personality Traits: Depraved +6, Hateful +6.

Reputations: Causer of Mania 1 (Infernal), Vessel of Iniquity 1 (Infernal)

Combat:

2 x callused feet: Init +1, Attack +9, Defense +8, Damage +3

Soak: 0

Fatigue Levels: OK, 0, –1,  –3, –5, Unconscious

Wound Penalties: –1 (1–5), –3 (6–10), –5 (11–15), Incapacitated (16–20), Dead (21+)

Abilities: Awareness 4 (dancers), Carouse 9+2 (dance), Brawl 6 (feet)

Powers:

Envisioning, 1 or 5 points, Init  0, Mentem: For 1 point, allows the demon to enter and twist dreams. For 5 points, allows the demon to create a waking hallucination. If used to terrify, the victim can ignore it with a Brave Personality trait roll against an Ease factor of 9 or more. Failure to resist leads to a profound physical reaction, like a seizure.

Form of Wickedness, 2 points, Init 0, Mentem: Allows the demon to manufacture a solid form of pure sin. It forces those around the demon to begin carousing if they lack sufficient Magic Resistance. A Stamina stress roll against an Ease factor of 6 is needed every hour, failure costing a Fatigue level, and a success breaking this Power’s hold. The Power also ends when the victim falls unconscious. A botch causes temporary insanity and imposes a Minor Personality Flaw appropriate to the sin. This form may only be maintained for one round, after which the demon must take spiritual or human form.

Form of Man, 0 points, Init 0, Corpus: After assuming corporeal form, see Form of Wickedness, earlier, the demon can take the form of any human. To take the form of a specific person, the demon must have seen her. The demon can take spiritual form directly from human form.

Highly Contagious Obsession, 1point per 25 victims, Init 0, Mentem:  When a person is committing a sinful thought or deed, the demon may impose its Obsession Trait if this Power defeats magic resistance. This gives the person a temporary Personality trait of Manic and at the next opportunity he must make a roll, opposed by any suitable Personality trait, to prevent them dancing. If the Obsession fails, the temporary trait is lost. If it succeeds, the trait is acquired permanently. Any human who becomes a victim of this demon’s Obsession power becomes a carrier of that Power and can pass it on to anyone she touches while dancing, using the same series of rolls.  Every twenty-fifth victim costs the demon 1 Might point, and the Power ceases to be contagious if either she runs out of Might or a day passes without someone being infected. Once the power ceases being contagious, it continues to affect the afflicted as described earlier.

Weakness: Protected group (the clergy)

Vis: 3 pawns of Perdo, feet

Appearance: The natural appearance of this demon is sin made manifest as a formless dark shape. She can, however, take human form, and usually prefers that of an attractive young woman, slightly exotic for her place of manifestation.

Foes left over from Antagonists: Orgoglio

 For the next three weeks, I’ll be posting one new creature a week. These were left out of Antagonists because I’d already made things complex enough, and the process of editing is basically one of simplification and clarification. So, two demons and a tribe of faeries were left over. I can see how two of the three could be reworked for later use in articles or books, which is what I used to do with my off-cuts, but I’m time-short at the moment, and so I think I’ll let these go on the web, and hope for novel ideas when I next need something with these shapes for the plots I’m working on.

Actually, the first demon also fails on a line-style and good taste level, so he’d never make it into an Ars book. Sometimes the ideas just aren’t winners. The character is based on a villain in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

Orgoglio

Orgoglio, is a demon so swollen with Pride that his name means “Pride” in Italian. His usual strategy is to take possession of convincing orators and use their pride to lead people into sin. Abaissier has taken these people as his cult leaders, and Orgoglio resents this sudden lack of victims. His physical form is large and powerful, and he vents his frustration by attacking those he might otherwise possess. He may do this in his material form, or by possessing scholars disputing with flagellant leaders.

A robust demon of godless Pride.

Order: Vessel of Iniquity

Infernal Might: 15 {Corpus)

Characteristics: Int 0, Per 0, Pre +3, Com 0, Str +2, Sta +4, Dex +0, Qik +0

Size: +2

Virtues and Flaws: Berserk, Tough

Confidence Score: 1 (3)

Personality Traits: Depraved +6, Hateful +6, Angry +4

Reputations: Embodies Pride 1 (Infernal), Vessel of Iniquity 1 (Infernal)

Combat:

Mace : Init +1, Attack +3*, Defense +0, Damage +10**

* +2 when berserk

** +5 if he has time to recover his magical mace.

Soak: +7 or +9 when berserk

Fatigue Levels: OK, 0, –1,  –3, –5, Unconscious [Give the penalties for every fatigue level the character has. There may be more to add in.]

Wound Penalties: –1 (1–7), –3 (8–14), –5 (15–21), Incapacitated (22–28), Dead (29+) [

Abilities: Awareness 4 (rivals), Guile 6 (dance), Single Weapon 7 (feet), Theology 6 (heresy).

Powers:

Envisioning, 1 or 5 points, Init  0, Mentem: For 1 point, allows the demon to enter and twist dreams. For 5 points, allows the demon to create a waking hallucination. If used to terrify, the victim can ignore it with a Brave Personality trait roll against an Ease factor of 9 or more. Failure to resist leads to a profound physical reaction, like a seizure.

Form of Wickedness, 2 points, Init 0, Mentem: Allows the demon to manufacture a solid form of pure sin. It forces those around the demon to begin carousing if they lack sufficient Magic Resistance. A Stamina stress roll against an Ease factor of 6 is needed every hour, failure costing a Fatigue level, and a success breaking this Power’s hold. The Power also ends when the victim falls unconscious. A botch causes temporary insanity and imposes a Minor Personality Flaw appropriate to the sin. This form may only be maintained for one round, after which the demon must take spiritual or human form.

Form of The Proud Man, 0 points, Init 0, Corpus: After assuming corporeal form, see Form of Wickedness, earlier, the demon can take solid form. See Appearance for details.

Possession, variable points, Init +2, Mentem: The demon stores some of its Might in a temporary pool in a victim, after overcoming Magic Resistance. When this pool is spent, the possession ends. The two pieces of the demon can only communicate if in sight of each other. The demon controls the actions of the host, but must spend Might to have the victim perform taks they consider abhorrent. This requires the demon to make a roll of stress die + spent Might points against the victim’s Personality trait roll.. It also costs 1 might to use a Supernatural ability, or the same number of Might points a possessed supernatural creature spends to use one of its powers. Orgoglio.may possess multiple people simultaneously.

Contagious Obsession, 1point per victim, Init 0, Mentem:  When a person is committing a sinful thought or deed, the demon may impose its Obsession Trait if this Power defeats magic resistance. This gives the person a temporary Personality trait of Proud and at the next opportunity he must make a roll, opposed by any suitable Personality trait, to prevent attempting to crush others with his words. If the Obsession fails, the temporary trait is lost. If it succeeds, the trait is acquired permanently. Any human who becomes a victim of this demon’s Obsession power becomes a carrier of that Power and can pass it on to anyone he abuses, using the same series of rolls.  Every added victim costs the demon 1 Might point, and the Power ceases to be contagious if either she runs out of Might or a day passes without someone being infected. Once the power ceases being contagious, it continues to affect the afflicted as described earlier.

Weakness: Protected group (celibates)

Vis: 3 pawns of Perdo, body

Appearance: The natural appearance of this demon is sin made manifest as a formless dark shape. He can, however, take a solid form. Orgoglio appears as a vaguely humanoid, ten foot tall, ambulatory phallus. He has small arms and legs and, if given time to retrieve it, fights using a mace made from an oak that grew in the centre of the Earth.

First update for the Antagonists page

There’s a brief update of the page for Antagonists, discussing inspirations. I’ll be adding extra material as time allows in the next few weeks.

Mythic Sicily: Sometimes the Web Just Hands it To You on a Plate

Flickr: Ciara Mara

With my Sicily writing I’m kind of stalled because I didn’t study the geography enough going in.  So, I started looking for Sicilian maps.  Sometimes the Internet just hands you random awesome. 

Check out the second map at  http://www.bestofsicily.com/roadmap.htm and note that each ancient site has its own minipage of description.

So, that’s basically all I need to get started  on a geography chapter for my Sicilian writing.  Bonus.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Ars Magica note: a charm, a curse, a villain and a vis source

Our final, and longest, visit to Arthur Machen’s The White People gives us a villainess, a hero, a vis source and a basic story outline. I hope you’ve enjoyed our visits to Machen’s novella.

Nurse said there was once a young lady of the high gentry, who lived in a great castle. And she was so beautiful that all the gentlemen wanted to marry her, because she was the loveliest lady that anybody had ever seen, and she was kind to everybody, and everybody thought she was very good. But though she was polite to all the gentlemen who wished to marry her, she put them off, and said she couldn’t make up her mind, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to marry anybody at all. And her father, who was a very great lord, was angry, though he was so fond of her, and he asked her why she wouldn’t choose a bachelor out of all the handsome young men who came to the castle. But she only said she didn’t love any of them very much, and she must wait, and if they pestered her, she said she would go and be a nun in a nunnery. So all the gentlemen said they would go away and wait for a year and a day, and when a year and a day were gone, they would come back again and ask her to say which one she would marry. So the day was appointed and they all went away; and the lady had promised that in a year and a day it would be her wedding day with one of them. But the truth was, that she was the queen of the people who danced on the hill on summer nights, and on the proper nights she would lock the door of her room, and she and her maid would steal out of the castle by a secret passage that only they knew of, and go away up to the hill in the wild land. And she knew more of the secret things than any one else, and more than any one knew before or after, because she would not tell anybody the most secret secrets. She knew how to do all the awful things, how to destroy young men, and how to put a curse on people, and other things that I could not understand. And her real name was the Lady Avelin, but the dancing people called her Cassap, which meant somebody very wise, in the old language. And she was whiter than any of them and taller, and her eyes shone in the dark like burning rubies; and she could sing songs that none of the others could sing, and when she sang they all fell down on their faces and worshipped her. And she could do what they called shib-show, which was a very wonderful enchantment. She would tell the great lord, her father, that she wanted to go into the woods to gather flowers, so he let her go, and she and her maid went into the woods where nobody came, and the maid would keep watch. Then the lady would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to them, and she sang to them, and they writhed round and round, faster and faster, till she told them to go. And they all went away directly, back to their holes, and on the lady’s breast there would be a most curious, beautiful stone, shaped something like an egg, and coloured dark blue and yellow, and red, and green, marked like a serpent’s scales. It was called a glame stone, and with it one could do all sorts of wonderful things, and nurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glame stone with her own eyes, and it was for all the world shiny and scaly like a snake. And the lady could do a lot of other things as well, but she was quite fixed that she would not be married. And there were a great many gentlemen who wanted to marry her, but there were five of them who were chief, and their names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir Richard, and Sir Rowland. All the others believed she spoke the truth, and that she would choose one of them to be her man when a year and a day was done; it was only Sir Simon, who was very crafty, who thought she was deceiving them all, and he vowed he would watch and try if he could find out anything. And though he was very wise he was very young, and he had a smooth, soft face like a girl’s, and he pretended, as the rest did, that he would not come to the castle for a year and a day, and he said he was going away beyond the sea to foreign parts. But he really only went a very little way, and came back dressed like a servant girl, and so he got a place in the castle to wash the dishes. And he waited and watched, and he listened and said nothing, and he hid in dark places, and woke up at night and looked out, and he heard things and he saw things that he thought were very strange. And he was so sly that he told the girl that waited on the lady that he was really a young man, and that he had dressed up as a girl because he loved her so very much and wanted to be in the same house with her, and the girl was so pleased that she told him many things, and he was more than ever certain that the Lady Avelin was deceiving him and the others. And he was so clever, and told the servant so many lies, that one night he managed to hide in the Lady Avelin’s room behind the curtains. And he stayed quite still and never moved, and at last the lady came. And she bent down under the bed, and raised up a stone, and there was a hollow place underneath, and out of it she took a waxen image, just like the clay one that I and nurse had made in the brake. And all the time her eyes were burning like rubies. And she took the little wax doll up in her arms and held it to her breast, and she whispered and she murmured, and she took it up and she laid it down again, and she held it high, and she held it low, and she laid it down again. And she said, ‘Happy is he that begat the bishop, that ordered the clerk, that married the man, that had the wife, that fashioned the hive, that harboured the bee, that gathered the wax that my own true love was made of.’ And she brought out of an aumbry a great golden bowl, and she brought out of a[152] closet a great jar of wine, and she poured some of the wine into the bowl, and she laid her mannikin very gently in the wine, and washed it in the wine all over. Then she went to a cupboard and took a small round cake and laid it on the image’s mouth, and then she bore it softly and covered it up. And Sir Simon, who was watching all the time, though he was terribly frightened, saw the lady bend down and stretch out her arms and whisper and sing, and then Sir Simon saw beside her a handsome young man, who kissed her on the lips. And they drank wine out of the golden bowl together, and they ate the cake together. But when the sun rose there was only the little wax doll, and the lady hid it again under the bed in the hollow place. So Sir Simon knew quite well what the lady was, and he waited and he watched, till the time she had said was nearly over, and in a week the year and a day would be done. And one night, when he was watching behind the curtains in her room, he saw her making more wax dolls. And she made five, and hid them away. And the next night she took one out, and held it up, and filled the golden bowl with water, and took the doll by the neck and held it under the water. Then she said—

Sir Dickon, Sir Dickon, your day is done, You shall be drowned in the water wan.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Richard had been drowned at the ford. And at night she took another doll and tied a violet cord round its neck and hung it up on a nail. Then she said—

Sir Rowland, your life has ended its span, High on a tree I see you hang.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Rowland had been hanged by robbers in the wood. And at night she took another doll, and drove her bodkin right into its heart. Then she said—

Sir Noll, Sir Noll, so cease your life, Your heart piercèd with the knife.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Oliver had fought in a tavern, and a stranger had stabbed him to the heart. And at night she took another doll, and held it to a fire of charcoal till it was melted. Then she said—

Sir John, return, and turn to clay, In fire of fever you waste away.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir John had died in a burning fever. So then Sir Simon went out of the castle and mounted his horse and rode away to the bishop and told him everything. And the bishop sent his men, and they took the Lady Avelin, and everything she had done was found out. So on the day after the year and a day, when she was to have been married, they carried her through the town in her smock, and they tied her to a great stake in the market-place, and burned her alive before the bishop with her wax image hung round her neck. And people said the wax man screamed in the burning of the flames.

Ars Magica note: Making a clay figurine to channel faerie powers

Further material from Machen’s The White People:

Then we went on a little way till we came to a little brake growing right down into the road, and nurse stopped, and looked up the road and down it, and then peeped through the hedge into the field on the other side, and then she said, ‘Quick!’ and we ran into the brake, and crept in and out among the bushes till we had gone a good way from the road. Then we sat down under a bush, and I wanted so much to know what nurse was going to make with the clay, but before she would begin she made me promise again not to say a word about it, and she went again and peeped through the bushes on every side, though the lane was so small and deep that hardly anybody ever went there. So we sat down, and nurse took the clay out of the bucket, and began to knead it with her hands, and do queer things with it, and turn it about. And she hid it under a big dock-leaf for a minute or two and then she brought it out again, and then she stood[147] up and sat down, and walked round the clay in a peculiar manner, and all the time she was softly singing a sort of rhyme, and her face got very red. Then she sat down again, and took the clay in her hands and began to shape it into a doll, but not like the dolls I have at home, and she made the queerest doll I had ever seen, all out of the wet clay, and hid it under a bush to get dry and hard, and all the time she was making it she was singing these rhymes to herself, and her face got redder and redder. So we left the doll there, hidden away in the bushes where nobody would ever find it. And a few days later we went the same walk, and when we came to that narrow, dark part of the lane where the brake runs down to the bank, nurse made me promise all over again, and she looked about, just as she had done before, and we crept into the bushes till we got to the green place where the little clay man was hidden. I remember it all so well, though I was only eight, and it is eight years ago now as I am writing it down, but the sky was a deep violet blue, and in the middle of the brake where we were sitting there was a great elder tree covered with blossoms, and on the other side there was a clump of meadowsweet, and when I think of that day the smell of the meadowsweet and elder blossom seems to fill the room, and if I shut my eyes I can see the glaring blue sky, with little clouds very white floating across it, and nurse who went away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the beautiful white lady in the wood. So we sat down and nurse took out the clay doll from the secret place where she had hidden it, and she said we must ‘pay our respects,’ and she would show me what to do, and I must watch her all the time. So she did all sorts of[148] queer things with the little clay man, and I noticed she was all streaming with perspiration, though we had walked so slowly, and then she told me to ‘pay my respects,’ and I did everything she did because I liked her, and it was such an odd game. And she said that if one loved very much, the clay man was very good, if one did certain things with it, and if one hated very much, it was just as good, only one had to do different things, and we played with it a long time, and pretended all sorts of things. Nurse said her great-grandmother had told her all about these images, but what we did was no harm at all, only a game. But she told me a story about these images that frightened me very much, and that was what I remembered that night when I was lying awake in my room in the pale, empty darkness, thinking of what I had seen and the secret wood.