The gift was repeated about two weeks later, but then nothing, and the months passed. I had not been back to the wood. Over the long winter I had read my father's diary ten times if I had read it once, steeping myself in the mystery of his life as much as he had steeped himself in the mystery of his own unconscious links with the primeval woodland. I found, in his erratic recordings, much that told of his sense of danger, of what - just once - he called 'ego's mythological ideal', the involvement of the creator's mind which he feared would influence the shape and behaviour of the mythago forms. He had known of the danger, then, but I wonder if Christian had fully comprehended this most subtle of the occult processes occurring in the forest. From the darkness and pain of my father's mind a single thread had emerged in the fashioning of a girl in a green tunic, dooming her to a helplessness in the forest that was contrary to her natural form. But if she were to emerge again, it would be with Christian's mind controlling her, and Christian had no such preconceived ideas about a woman's strength or weakness.
